Entertainment

In an annual rite known as Upfront Week, NBC, Fox, ABC, CBS, and the CW just presented their lineups for the 2012-13 TV season to advertisers in New York. The ceremonies took place in some of the city's most august concert Halls (Carnegie, Avery Fisher, Radio City Music) over four days. The broadcast companies introduced only 20 new series for the fall (down from 27 last season). NBC led the pack with six new shows. Fox and the CW had half that many. Like it or not, an awful lot of familiar faces will be returning in the fall.

ATLANTIC CITY — The stabbing deaths of two Canadian tourists outside a casino hotel left tourism officials stunned and dismayed Monday, casting a shadow over the formal opening on Memorial Day weekend of the newest gambling palace and tripping up a $30 million-a-year campaign to rebrand and revive the sagging resort town. The two victims, women ages 80 and 47, were stabbed and killed during a robbery Monday morning outside Bally's Atlantic City casino hotel, just steps from where a police officer was sitting in a patrol car. Police declined to provide the names of the victims, or precisely where they were from, pending notification of family.

Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa, 1 Borgata Way, 609-317-1000, theborgata.com. Public Image Ltd., 9 p.m. tomorrow (Music Box), $55. Harrah's Resort Atlantic City, 777 Harrah's Blvd., 800-342-7724, harrahs.com. An Evening with Wynonna, 9 p.m. tomorrow, $65, $50, $40. Atlantic City Hilton, Boardwalk at Boston Avenue, 609-347-7111, www.hiltonac.com . "I Wanna Rock," featuring Dee Snider, Lita Ford, Mark Slaughter and Jeff Keith, 8 p.m. tomorrow, $30. Tropicana Casino & Resort, Boardwalk at South Brighton Avenue, 609-340-4000, tropicana.

WHY WOULD someone use his SUV to kill a person he thought he loved. Why would someone kill a person over a $25 crack debt? Why would an 18-year-old stab a 15-year-old in school? This might not be the answer, but it makes sense to me: I woke up on a recent morning and there was a movie on one of the pay-movie channels, "Freddy vs. Jason. " After I watched the blood and the gore in this movie, I had to turn off my TV. If we as American people watch this slaughter as entertainment, then it would easy to run someone over, stab or shoot a person.

The elegant facade of a 19th-century French mansion dominates the center of the newest store at Franklin Mills mall. But the sights and sounds inside are far less tranquil. Once inside the white doors, lined up in several rows along a dark green carpet, are more than 300 video games. But despite the abundance of Pac-Man, Skee-ball, Centipede and other quarter-gobbling games, the 49th Street Galleria is more than your average arcade - it's an entertainment mecca. In addition to being video-game heaven, the entertainment store has a bowling alley, restaurants and a roller-skating rink to keep mall shoppers busy doing more than searching for the latest clothing sale.

Monique Begg's mandate was bigger than just selling cookbooks. True, she wanted to sell as many copies of Moorestown Friends Heritage Cookbook as she could for Moorestown Friends Meeting and its school, which were sponsoring the project, but Begg also wanted to tell Burlington County residents more about Quakers. "It's not that we want to proselytize, but when so many people today think that Quakers are all dead, you know you've got a problem," said Begg, a longtime member of the Moorestown Quaker meeting.

I was among the millions who contributed to making Apollo 13 the No. 1 box office hit when it broke all previous records for attendance over the July Fourth weekend. And in becoming a small part of entertainment history I also managed to learn something I'd been wondering about since those heady late-' 60s days when Neil Armstrong took that giant step for Mankind: How astronauts pee. I won't disclose the details here, except to say the "pee" scenes are among the high points of a highly enjoyable movie - a movie that is bound to have all America talking once again about reviving the nation's now-flagging space program.

LEANING BACK in his chair in his sparsely decorated Rittenhouse Square office, Avram Hornik is framed between two disparate images. Over his left shoulder hangs a dartboard, evocative of the corner bars on which he's built his local empire. To his right, Hornik's wife and young children beam from the screensaver on his computer. If it's not quite the familiar cartoon devil and angel perched on either shoulder, it's a diptych that suggests the path his life has taken. "I used to say that I tried to open places that I liked to go to," said Hornik, 39. "But I'm a father of three kids under 5. That limits the time you can spend out. Now that I'm a little bit older, the places we're opening up tend to focus a lot on live entertainment.

Sunday Matter of conscience In John Patrick Shanley's layered and engrossing 2004 drama, Doubt , a nun at a Bronx Catholic school in the 1960s becomes suspicious of a parish priest's attention to a troubled altar boy. Is she right to be mistrustful or are her perceptions the result of the threat to her own rigid beliefs by the progressive pastor? The Tony Award-winning play goes on at 2:30 and 7:30 p.m Sunday at the Walnut Street Theatre's Independence Studio on 3, 825 Walnut St., and continues with shows at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday through Friday, and 2:30 and 7:30 p.m Saturday and next Sunday.

In-Flight Entertainment Stories By Helen Simpson Alfred A. Knopf. 176 pp. $24. If the prospect of short stories about everyday life makes your heart sink a little, in fear of too much precious observation, read Helen Simpson's stories. A simple act such as dropping the kids off at school is dissected and the layers of fear, ambivalence, even deceit that occupy the driver emerge. Is this what my life has come to, the driver might think. Or, Did I delete that incriminating e-mail before I left?

The U.S. women's soccer team will play China in an exhibition May 27 at PPL Park in Chester, in preparation for the London Olympics. "We are pleased to welcome back the U.S. women's national team to PPL Park," said Nick Sakiewicz, CEO and operating partner of Keystone Sports and Entertainment. "This is the third time that we have hosted a U.S. Soccer match and we are proud to be one of the final stops for the [women] before they head off to the 2012 Summer Olympics in London.

KEVIN DESANCTIS may have supervised the creation of a tall building, but he can't leap it in a single bound. Nor does he wear blue leotards and a red cape with a giant yellow "S" on it. Nonetheless, there are those in Atlantic City who view the low-key, 59-year-old gaming-industry vet as Superman. For just like Clark Kent's superhero alter ego, DeSanctis is, they conclude, the savior of his adopted hometown. DeSanctis is CEO of Revel Entertainment Group LLC, the corporate entity that on Monday opens its $2.4 billion Revel megaresort on the eastern end of the Boardwalk next to Showboat Atlantic City.

WHEN THE Eagles announced Evan Mathis had agreed to a 5-year deal, reportedly for about $25 million, I thought about how for most of last August's training camp, nobody would have envisioned such a possibility. It wasn't until the final week or so of the preseason that Todd Herremans was moved from left guard to right tackle, with Ryan Harris experiencing back issues that led to him being placed on IR, and then eventually being released. Mathis was going to get a chance to prove he could start in Herremans' vacated spot, after Mathis had briefly filled in for Harris.

Ventriloquism, magic, and comedy all are part of the focus on children's cardiac health Sunday at the 3d Annual Simon's Day at Ambler Theater. Magician Scott Alexander and ventriloquist John Pizzi, who have both appeared on America's Got Talent , will perform as well as comedian The Great Holtzie. The Phillie Phanatic will take an EKG test at the party. The annual event, produced by the Simon's Fund, is designed to raise awareness about the importance of getting heart screenings for children.