Having grown up with a strict father (Michael Gambon) and a prominent older brother (Guy Pearce), an otherwise capable and courtly fellow (Colin Firth) finds himself with a problem. He stutters, severely. Colin Firth plays Bertie, a stuttering Duke who finds himself crowned King George VI of England just as the country goes to war. […]
“Live to Dance” Tuesday-Wednesday 8pm, CBS I’m all for the resurgence of dance in pop culture, but I wonder if we haven’t hit the saturation point with televised dance competitions. I guess we’ll find out. CBS tries its hand at the genre with this new show, headed up by Paula Abdul, who acts as both […]
Of what does true grit consist? Grit, presumably. But also something else, something that makes it easy to distinguish from false grit. True Grit the film consists of a young teenage girl in 1880s Arkansas and the old, fat, drunk, half-blind marshal she hires to track down her father’s killer. For the girl, true grit […]
“Kennedy Center Honors” Tuesday 9pm, CBS The year is nearly over, and a new one is on the way (unless the mad serpent god Quetzalcoatl devours us all first, but that’s not scheduled to happen until 2012). That means that awards-show season is almost upon us. To get yourself warmed up for the red-carpet back-slapping, […]
Black Swan, starring Natalie Portman, premiered locally at the Virginia Film Festival in early November, but returns in wide release to Vinegar Hill Theatre this week.
Scrooged Saturday 10am-6pm, AMC If your family is as sarcastic yet sentimental as mine, this 1988 masterpiece—aired all day by AMC—should provide appropriate background viewing as you unwrap presents and deliver thinly veiled personal attacks. There have been countless take-offs of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol over the years, but I’d argue that this remains […]
Early on they were saying Tom Cruise and Charlize Theron, to be directed by the maker of Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day.
“Funniest Commercials of the Year” Thursday 10pm, TBS We’re a little over a week before Christmas, so you’re supposed to be out buying presents you can’t afford for people you don’t like (but you’re stimulating the economy, so consider it patriotic duty), or at friends’ holiday parties eating way too many snickerdoodles and becoming a […]
I wish I had an original print from Ansel Adams. Back in the days of film, I started shooting a 35mm camera when I was 13
For all the familiar ground it covers, Tamara Drewe is a welcome rarity. It’s a film about writers that’s not too inwardly verbal; a black comedy that’s not too cruel; an ensemble piece that’s not too diffuse; an adaptation of a graphic novel that’s not too callow; and, in fact, a mature film that revels […]