Monster Mash: Breaking news and headlines

-- Los Angeles artists, museum executives and civic leaders hail the Museum of Contemporary Art's agreement with Eli Broad — cautiously.

-- "A Christmas Carol" at the Kodak Theatre fails to cheer some theatergoers.

-- Broadway mogul Gerald Schoenfeld, who died in November at 84, left behind a 200-page memoir that settles scores with -- among others -- Frank Langella, Patrick Stewart, Trevor Nunn and Jerome Robbins.

-- Producer Emaneul Azenberg says Chicago-based David Cromer, praised for last season's "Adding Machine" off-Broadway -- and not Daniel Sullivan -- will direct next fall's Broadway revivals of Neil Simon's "Brighton Beach Memoirs" and "Broadway Bound."

-- Paris' mayor vows to block the renovation of a 17th century mansion by the emir of Qatar.

-- Salzburg Festival head Jurgen Flimm is appointed to the top job at Berlin's Staatsoper Unter den Linden.

-- The concert business reportedly grossed just under $4 billion worldwide in 2008, the most ever.

-- Craig Hitchcock is named vice president and executive director of the Paley Center for Media in Los Angeles.

-- Craig Fisher

Photo: Schubert Organization chairman Gerald Schoenfeld embraces Al Pacino at an opening night party for "Richard III" in New York in 1979. Credit: Associated Press