The Movie:

The neon lights might be bright on Broadway, but apparently they're just as bright in the mountains of Afghanistan. The pursuit of fame and fortune transcends geographic and cultural boundaries, as evidenced by the 2009 documentary, Afghan Star.

The movie's name refers to Afghanistan's most beloved television show, an American Idol-styled program in which amateur singers compete for the coveted title and a $5,000 grand prize. That such a show exists in the war-torn country -- much less that it's insanely popular - is extraordinary when you consider that music and dancing were banned under Taliban rule. Once elections in 2004 ended the theocracy, however, Afghans quickly brought song and dance back into their lives. "If there was no music, humans would be sad," a blind says in the documentary's open. "There would be nothing. If there was no singing, then the ...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Just the title alone, The Private Lives of Pippa Lee, hints at a deep, dark interior world of fantasy and secrets. Oh, well. So much for truth in advertising. Writer-director Rebecca Miller, in adapting her novel of the same name, burrows into the psyche of a dutiful wife and mother, but the results are not terribly interesting.

The kicker of Pippa Lee, however, is that the blandness at its core is almost -- almost -- masked by such handsome presentation. Miller, the daughter of playwright Arthur Miller, keeps the pacing fluid and sprightly. She has assembled a superb cast and talented production team. The movie looks and feels as if it has something smart and provocative to convey. "Like many people," Pippa (Robin Wright Penn) tells us early on, "I have lived more than one life." Unfortunately, that pronouncement is about as incisive as things get. ...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Elvis: Return to Tupelo doesn't exactly cover new ground, but this spry and handsomely crafted documentary offers a concise overview of Elvis Presley's meteoric rise from Mississippi shotgun shack to King of Rock 'n' Roll.

The documentary traces Elvis' origins from Tupelo, Mississippi, to his breakout year of 1956, when the singing sensation with the trademark snarl and gyrating hips made a triumphant return to the town of his birth for a benefit concert. The film contends Presley's dirt-poor upbringing made an indelible impression on his persona. "You could hear the soil in Elvis as you could hear the cement in Frank Sinatra," says one interviewee.

Writer-director Michael Rose hits the high points over a briskly paced 90 minutes. Weaving archival footage and photographs with modern-day interviews of various Elvis scholars, colleagues and friends, Return...Read the entire review

The Movie:

In the pantheon of Christmas movie classics, White Christmas is a far cry from the sublime enchantment of It's a Wonderful Life or Miracle on 34th Street. Aside from some snow and its inclusion of the immortal Irving Berlin song, the 1954 flick doesn't even have much to do with Christmas. It fits squarely in the genre of showbiz musical: light, fizzy and pathos-free.

But the central attraction in White Christmas is the music. Conceived as a sort of sequel to 1942's Holiday Inn, its construction primarily served as an outlet for a bunch of Berlin tunes. It's reasonably fun, resolutely cheesy and not particularly distinguished. But this reviewer's opinion isn't going to make a whit of difference to the legions who adore White Christmas (a group that includes this revi...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Ballast drops you in the midst of life unfolding for three people -- a troubled boy, his put-upon mother and a man grieving the death of a brother -- in the wintry desolation of the Mississippi Delta. Their entwined stories involve some weighty issues, including suicide and drug addiction, but writer-director Lance Hammer displays remarkable restraint. In lesser hands, Ballast easily could have lapsed into heart-on-its-sleeve melodrama. As it is, the movie reveals plenty of heart, but its resonance comes devoid of cheap sentimentality. The only thing cheap about this extraordinary film, in fact, is its budget.

Ballast joins a growing number of independently made pictures concerned with people relegated to the extreme margins of society (Wendy and Lucy, Chop Shop, Frozen River, etc). Hammer, however, doesn't dwell on the poverty of his characte...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Taking Chances is a sporadically amusing trifle of a comedy that could have been much more. That might not sound like a particularly fair criticism -- after all, we're stuck with the movie they made, not the one that might have been -- but there is enough spark in this low-key indie to make you wish the filmmakers had been a bit more disciplined in crafting their oddball characters.

Set in the fictitious small town of Patriotville, the movie ponders what denotes economic salvation in recession-hit rural America. In this case, town leaders, led by the conniving Mayor Cleveland Fishback (Rob Corddry), are seduced by the idea of luring a proposed Indian casino. The only problem is that the would-be gaming center would be located on the site of a Revolutionary War battlefield and the town's historical society museum.

Everyone in Patriotville seems to think the c...Read the entire review

The Show:

Never underestimate the resourcefulness of the House of Mouse. Just in time to cash in on the Yuletide spirit, Disney has released Mickey's Magical Christmas: Snowed in at the House of Mouse, a 2001 episode from the defunct Disney's House of Mouse TV series. But why be a Scrooge about it? The show highlights a handful of vintage Disney cartoon shorts, after all, which means even this hastily thrown-together disc still makes for entertaining family-friendly viewing.

For those unfamiliar with House of Mouse, which aired on the Disney channel between 2001 and 2003, America's favorite rodent is the emcee at the House of Mouse, a nightclub that specializes in cartoons and resembles a sort of House of Blues for two-dimensional characters (insert House of Blues clientele joke here). Talk about your impressive ensemble casts - a wealth of Disney characters, p...Read the entire review

The Movie:

I know my film critic bona fides won't be bolstered much by this admission, but I've now seen Night at the Museum about 60 times. Maybe more. It's an occupational hazard of having two children absolutely bonkers about a mugging Ben Stiller, a mischievous monkey and a dinosaur skeleton that plays fetch.

But I will also confess that repeated viewings of the 2006 blockbuster, which reaped more than $574 million in worldwide grosses, have only increased my admiration for it. It's not high art, by any stretch, but the movie was funny, good-natured and reasonably inventive. Its inevitable sequel, Night at the Museum 2: Battle of the Smithsonian, keeps that agreeable vibe humming right along, and it has the advantage of stellar comic turns by dependable clutch-hitters Hank Azari...Read the entire review

The Show:

For those of us who were mere rugrats back when Saturday morning TV was as sacred as a Barbie Townhouse or a Mike Schmidt rookie card, the notion of reliving that experience via DVD is damned near irresistible. Alas, nostalgia-addled fare like Saturday Morning Cartoons 1970s, Volume 2 inevitably falls short of expectations. Revisiting the boob tube of our formative years never truly matches the innocence and excitement of sepia-toned memories -- especially when such things are at the mercy of Hanna-Barbera.

Then again, this collection of Seventies-era cartoons doesn't go quite far enough. One wishes the producers had taken a cue from, say, what the flick Grindhouse did for replicating a unique moviegoing experience. The patchwork of cartoons here is fine and fairly representative of the period, but how much more fun would it be had it included vintage commer...Read the entire review

The Movie:

There is an irresistible allure to the notion of a conspiracy. Whether the sinister plot in question surrounds the John Kennedy assassination or the 1969 moon landing, conspiracies have the paradoxical ability to promise explanation while simultaneously suggesting deeper mysteries afoot. The documentary New World Order doesn't really probe the psychology that drives conspiratorialists, nor does it pay much more than lip service to the murky fears of one-world government. But it's a fascinating picture, nevertheless, offering viewers a window on the suspicion-filled world of those who dare call it conspiracy.

Resisting what must have been a mighty temptation to editorialize, documentary makers Luke Meyer and Andrew Neel let the conspiratorialists speak for themselves in New World Order. It is easy to imagine the smugness or righteousness that would have spil...Read the entire review

The Movie:

The Beatles: Composing Outside the Beatles: Lennon and McCartney 1967-1972 is that rarest of independently made rockumentaries: It's actually very good. Smart, incisive and enthusiastic, the documentary is invaluable viewing for diehard Beatles buffs -- and informative for the casual fan.

Clocking in at 137 minutes, Composing Outside the Beatles drills deep into the solo work of John Lennon and Paul McCartney in the seven years that followed release of the Beatles' groundbreaking Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. That album, as the film notes, signaled the beginning of the end of the Fab Four. McCartney and Lennon, the Beatles' principal songwriters, were moving quickly in different directions, both artistically and personally. By the time of 1968's The White Album, the Beatles were clearly becoming a band in name only. McCartney remained...Read the entire review

The Show:

Scholastic Treasures serves up another modest treat with A Very Brave Witch ... and More Halloween Stories, a collection of animated shorts based on children's books. Aimed squarely at the preschool set, the DVD puts a decidedly breezy, sweet-natured face on trick-or-treat day.

In a seemingly arbitrary manner, the first four shorts are deemed part of the main program, while the next four shorts are considered "bonus." All are accompanied by a "read-along" function in which narration and dialogue are superimposed at the bottom of the screen.

As spooked out as people might be of witches -- the broom-flying, pointy hat-clad variety -- A Very Brave Witch suggests that witches are just as afraid of human beings because of their non-green pigment. The title character, a young necromancer voiced by Elle Fanning (sh...Read the entire review

The Show:

Time Life is celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with a slam-bang nine-disc collection, The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Live. Featuring scores -- and I do mean scores -- of music performances and speeches from a quarter-century's worth of Hall of Fame inductions, this anthology runs the gamut of stars and styles, from the mellow croon of James Taylor to the slash-and-burn of Metallica. It's exhaustive stuff, to be sure (and somewhat exhausting, perhaps) but how can any self-respecting rock 'n' roll buff not be at least partially mesmerized?

The featured acts boast many of the greatest rock 'n' rollers of all time, not particularly surprising given that the performances are from annual Hall of Fame ceremonies. The star-studded lineup includes but is hardly limited to: AC/DC, Aerosmith, Chuck Berry, Jackson Browne, Elvis Co...Read the entire review

The Movie:

The Last Resort has some of the makings of sleazy horror goodness -- a haunted house, nubile young women, even an older fortune-teller with a scary premonition, for Pete's sake -- but then fritters it all away with drab storytelling and a surprising, if misguided, amount of restraint.

Such unfortunate tastefulness certainly doesn't apply to its opening prologue. At what appears to be a ramshackle hotel in the Mexican countryside, a man furiously scribbles a letter while a terrified woman, bound and gagged, is on her knees beside him. Then, in a move that would make Herschell Gordon Lewis proud, the man grabs a butcher knife, carves out the woman's tongue and rubs it against his own tongue. He manages to cackle maniacally (is there any other way to cackle?) before a band of locals burst in and pump him full of lead.

Still with me? If so, don't mistake this s...Read the entire review

The Movie:

I'm not sure what horrible wrongs Charles Dickens committed to deserve Matthew McConaughey, but the author of A Christmas Carol must have had some heavy-duty karma due him. How else to explain Hollywood's reigning pretty-boy doofus (McConaughey, that is, not Dickens) taking the Ebenezer Scrooge role in Ghosts of Girlfriends Past? A romantic comedy loosely based on the Dickens classic, Ghosts has traces of cleverness tripped up by its unconvincing and uninteresting lead.

McConaughey does his Texas surfer-dude shtick as Connor Mead, a successful New York fashion photographer and unparalleled ladies' man. His gifts of seduction are matched only by his callous treatment of his conquests. In the film's opening minutes, Connor delays his bedding of a pop music star so he can dump three separate lovers via computer teleconferencing.

Connor's playboy lif...Read the entire review

The Movie:

One doesn't have to be a Broadway buff to appreciate Every Little Step, a sparkling documentary that follows the 2006 revival of the venerable hit musical, A Chorus Line. Beautifully constructed and lovingly told, the movie captures the passion and drive of the so-called gypsy dancers who chase after their collective dream on the Great White Way.

Directors James D. Stern and Adam Del Deo make the most of unprecedented access to the Chorus Line auditions, but they also excel at chronicling the origins of the musical itself. Interweaving the modern-day footage with archival material, the film tells several tales -- all of them affecting. In the winter of 1974, Broadway choreographer-director Michael Bennett led a workshop in which a group of hoofers, their inhibitions loosened by wine, shared personal stories about what inspired their craft. Bennett record...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Tulpan is a gem of a discovery, one that deserves all the adulation it likely won't get. A Kazakh dramedy about sheepherders is a tough sell for movie audiences - even in Kazakhstan, probably - but this narrative-fiction debut of documentary maker Sergei Dvortesvoy spills over with warmth, humanity and a quirky charm that's difficult to define.

The title is the name of a beautiful, albeit unseen, young woman who lives with her elderly parents on a remote steppe in southern Kazakhstan. She is not the focus of the story. Instead, Tulpan embodies an all-too-elusive dream for the true central character, an open-hearted, jug-eared Russian seaman named Asa (Askhat Kuchencherekov) who has just ended a tour of duty. Now, he has returned to his native land to learn the sheepherding business from his older sister, Samal (Samal Esljamova), and his no-nonsense brother-in-law,...Read the entire review

The Movie:

If the Woodstock Music Festival in the summer of 1969 represented the pinnacle of the Sixties' flower-children movement, then the Manson Family killings, which occurred a week earlier, marked the darkest and ugliest recesses of the counterculture. Led by Charles Manson, the quasi-commune lived in an abandoned movie lot about 25 miles outside of Los Angeles, where they listened to music, dropped acid, held orgies and eventually committed murder. It's a real-life horror story chronicled in the new made-for-TV docudrama, Manson.

The tale of Charles Manson and the Tate-LaBianca murders has been recounted innumerable times over the past 40 years, but Manson the movie has at least one relatively novel spin. The picture, which recently aired on The History Channel, benefits from the on-screen recollections of Linda Kasabian, a former Manson acolyte who testified in...Read the entire review

The Movie:

As dark comedies go, Observe and Report is dark in the way the fiery pits of hell are dark. It's dark the way the charred remnants of a torched orphanage are dark. We're talking dark. Its hero is a delusional, dangerous psychopath. Its satirical targets include alcoholism, drug abuse, senseless violence, sexual predators and date rape. Such fodder can be a dicey proposition for humor, to put it mildly; and, sure enough, most of the uneasy laughs elicited by Observe and Report tend to be of the "I can't believe they're making fun of this" variety.

But writer-director Jody Hill, whose HBO series Eastbound & Down ventures into similar terrain, deserves props for sticking to his unequivocally twisted vision. It also happens to be wickedly fun, pro...Read the entire review

The Movie:

At first blush, The Betrayed appears to have the trappings of a taut, effective thriller.

Foreboding locale? Check.

Attractive woman in peril? Check.

Apple-cheeked child in peril? Check.

Masked bad guys? Check.

Suspense?

Suspense? Suspense? Suspense, anyone?

Alas, the elements don't quite gel in The Betrayed. It's all a bit obvious, a bit clunky, by the numbers. And yet writer-director Amanda Gusack's modest thriller is not without its moments of low-rent, cheesy fun.

Jamie Taylor (Melissa George) and her young son, Michael (Connor Christopher Levins), are kidnapped after a car accident and tossed into a dank, rotting warehouse. Her ski mask-wearing captors explain to Jamie that they have a beef with Jamie's husband, Kevin (Christian Campbell). Turns out th...Read the entire review

The Movie:

As the directorial debut of Carl Fukunaga, a 32-year-old graduate of New York University's Film School, Sin Nombre dabbles in the ostensibly paradoxical genre of morality tales lifted from the criminal demimonde. It appears to be an aesthetic shared by a number of recent NYU film-school grads. Joshua Marston turned drug smuggling into an ode to survival in 2004's Maria Full of Grace. In The Woodsman, also from '04, writer-director Nicole Cassell did the seemingly unbelievable with a sympathetic portrait of a convicted pedophile seeking redemption of sorts.

Sin Nombre isn't quite as defiantly edgy as those efforts, but Fukunaga is a gifted storyteller whose lyricism and visual style elevate the ma...Read the entire review

The Show:

I truly appreciate Scholastic Storybook Treasures' offerings on DVD. The series, which breathes animated life into a diverse array of classics children's books, is chock full o' charm and warmth. But Chicka Chicka 1,2,3 ... and More Counting Fun, a collection of four mathematically minded animated shorts, does not add up to one of the series' more engaging efforts.

Chicka Chicka 1,2,3 -- written by Bill Martin Jr. and Michael Sampson, illustrated by Lois Ehlert

A 2004 sequel to Martin and Ehlert's celebrated 1989 kid book, Chicka Chicka Boom Boom (which Martin co-wrote with John Archambault), Chicka Chicka 1,2,3 is a whimsical vignette about anthropomorphized numbers that climb up an apple tree while poor lil' Zero wonders aloud if there will be any room for him.

Then along comes a swarm of bees to create havoc and ...Read the entire review

The Movie:

The so-called Mumblecore movement in independent film appears to be graduating from lo-fi curio to more honest-to-goodness relatable stories, albeit ones told frill-free and on a shoestring budget. Directed, written by and starring Mumblecore mainstays Joe Swanberg and Greta Gerwig, Nights and Weekends is painfully familiar to anyone who has experienced the slow, sad demise of a long-distance relationship. Or any relationship, for that matter.

Swanberg's oeuvre, which includes 2006's LOL and 2007's Hannah Takes the Stairs, is admittedly not for everyone's taste. Like those previous efforts, Nights and Weekends feels more improvisational than scripted, and with camerawork -- long takes, poor lighting, a...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Not so much an homage to film noir as it is an exercise in hollow style, Dark Streets is almost maddeningly inert. It's certainly more frustrating than a flat-out bad movie, since it boasts a moody visual flair that stems from genuine affection for the noir formula. Ultimately, however, it is all hat, no cattle -- or perhaps "all fedora, no fatalism" would be a more appropriate phrase.

If nothing else, director Rachel Samuels and cinematographer Sharone Meir ladle on the atmospherics of its 1930s time period, but such artifice comes at the expense of a compelling story. Squint past the pea-green fog, smoke-filled interiors and gleaming art deco trappings that characterize much of the film's look, and Dark Streets is conspicuously bereft of intrigue.

At its center is Chaz Davenport (Gabriel Mann), a blandly handsome young man whose recently deceased f...Read the entire review

The Movie:

As the cradle of the blues, the Mississippi Delta is enveloped in an almost mystical allure seemingly at odds with its pervasive poverty, decay and vestiges of Jim Crow. I know. I was born in Clarksdale, a Delta town and home to some of the greatest pioneers in the history of blues, including Robert Johnson, Son House, Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker. From the hardscrabble existence of sharecropping came a unique brand of American music, one still thriving in the region, as evidenced by the documentary M for Mississippi: A Road Trip Through the Birthplace of the Blues.

In the spring of 2008, blues aficionados Roger Stolle and Jeff Konkel loaded into a van and spent a week traversing the back roads of the Delta to spotlight a dozen local blues artists. The doc boasts an endearing do-it-yourself vibe that befits a movie celebrating music that is stripped-down and t...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Note: The following review refers to the DVD version offered through the Ironweed Film Club (ironweedfilms.com) and not the version available through retail outlets such as Amazon.

In the ever-growing field of eco-conscious documentaries, earnestness appears to be what fake entrails are to slasher flicks or explosions to Michael Bay movies. Earnestness is the life-blood, but too much of it can be self-defeating. However well-intentioned they might be, such docus too often confuse artistry with no-frills, straightforward sincerity. Burning the Future: Coal in America is better than many of its ilk, not as good as others. It spotlights an apparent environmental evil, the practice of mountaintop removal mining, but the film's nobility of purpose can be a bit grating.

The impact of mountaintop coal extraction is certainly a story worth telling. Direct...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Only diehard devotees of Green Day are likely to be intrigued enough to check out not one, but two documentaries of the chart-topping punk-pop band. Indeed, the two-disc Green Day: The Boys Are Back in Town is less an exploration of the group as it is a celebration of their music. While the tone and pace are pleasant enough, the biggest handicap here, and it's a formidable one, is that one of the docs features no music from the Berkeley, California-based trio.

Such are the evident travails of being an unauthorized biography. The makers of The Boys Are Back in Town inform you right up front that the rockumentary (isn't that just a fun word to use?) will not feature any Green Day music or original interviews with the band members. Nevertheless, an honest disclaimer doesn't necessarily translate into compelling filmmaking. Just as one cannot imag...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Anyone who remembers the first incarnation of television's Saturday Night Live likely recalls Garrett Morris' signature character, Chico Escuela, the Latino baseball player with the broken English: "Base-eh-ball been bery, bery good to me." In the Dominican Republic, however, such unblemished faith in -- and love for -- baseball is no joke. A successful career in the major leagues is the Horatio Alger rags-to-riches tale of choice in the tiny Caribbean nation, where the sport holds a unique, transformative power spotlighted by the Spanish-language documentary Road to the Big Leagues (Rumbo a las Grandes Ligas) .

Outside of the U.S., the Dominican Republic contributes more professional baseball players than anywhere else in the world. And these guys aren't also-rans. They include many of today's sports superstars, such as Pedro Martinez, Albert Pujols, Manny ...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Nearly 40 years after its theatrical release, Michael Wadleigh's Woodstock remains the titan of rock documentaries. Few docus, rock or otherwise, can approach its ability to immerse audiences in a particular place and time. Now, those crafty capitalists at Warner Home Video have capitalized on the 40th anniversary of that seminal music festival with a tchotchke-stuffed three-disc package, Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace & Music Director's Cut (40th Anniversary Ultimate Collector's Edition) .

Held over three days in August, 1969, just outside the rolling farmlands of Bethel, N.Y., the Woodstock music festival showcased some of the best rock and folk of that decade, including the Who; Jimi Hendrix; Janis Joplin; Sly and the Family Stone; Crosby, Stills and Nash; Joe Cocker; Santana; Creedence Clearwater Revival; the Grateful Dead; Joan Baez; Arlo Guthrie; Coun...Read the entire review

The Movie:

You know you might be in trouble when a film's open credits "poems by." To be sure, the domestic melodrama of Home is weighted down by some heavy-handed hanky bait -- breast cancer, alcoholism, drug abuse, impotence and the copious tears of an adorable little girl - but it is saved by devastating performances by the mother-daughter combo of Marcia Gay Harden and Eulala Scheel.

Set in 1969 in a predominantly Amish area of Pennsylvania, this modest indie concerns the challenging relationship between Inga (Harden) and her young daughter, Indigo (Scheel). A breast cancer survivor with the psychological and physical scars of the ordeal, Inga finds an outlet in writing poetry. She desperately needs the outlet. Inga is neglected by her workaholic husband, Herman (Michael Gaston). The couple spend their nights boozing and fighting viciously. For Inga, the circumstances a...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Only a few months after Steven Spielberg got his dinosaur on with 1993's Jurassic Park, his short-lived animation studio, Amblimation, indulged in a kinder, gentler dino-take with We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story. In the arena of family-friendly cinema, 1993 feels like an eternity ago -- two years before Pixar would effectively rewrite the playbook with Toy Story. We're Back, it should be noted, suffers by comparison to most Pixar and Disney flicks. This yarn about talking dinosaurs, time travel and aliens is bland entertainment, to be sure, but at least it isn't offensively bland, and the youngest viewers might even enjoy its facile charms.

The tale begins, inexplicably, with a flashback. We hear from Rex (voiced by John Goodman, doing his best Bing Crosby imitation), a cuddly, talking tyrannosaurus whom we meet playing golf. He explain...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Wise Blood is a strange and strangely hypnotic tale of a strange young man's journey for spiritual salvation. Oh, did I mention that it's strange? Adapting Flannery O'Connor's acclaimed novel, director John Huston did a fine job preserving the author's quirky humor and oddball Southern characters, but the 1979 film is also thematically oblique and inconsistent in tone. The result is a fascinating, albeit flawed, motion picture.

There's no denying that Brad Dourif is mesmerizing as Hazel Motes, an ex-soldier who returns home from the war. While Huston takes pains to avoid specifying a time period, the cars and other trappings onscreen would lead audiences to believe Hazel is coming back from Vietnam. Finding his rural Southern home abandoned and in ruins, the wild-eyed young man dons a wide-brimmed preacher's hat and heads to the nearby city of Taulkinham to, as he...Read the entire review

The Movie:

The 1972 documentary, Fillmore: The Last Days, pays tribute to rock 'n' roll impresario Bill Graham and the San Francisco music club he transformed into a rock mecca of the Sixties. The flick, which chronicles the final week of the Fillmore West in the summer of '71, doesn't get past Graham's gruff exterior, but it does serve up some great bands amid a bit of psychedelic-tinged nostalgia.

The Fillmore is still in business under new management, but it's a dim shadow of its heyday. Under Graham, the venue played host to some of the top groups of the decade, including such Bay Area luminaries as Santana, Jefferson Airplane, Creedence Clearwater Revival, the Grateful Dead and Big Brother and the Holding Company.

A couple of the aforementioned acts turn up in this concert doc directed by Richard T. Heffron (who also "conceived" of the film, according to opening ...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Among the final pictures by John Ford, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance reveals the legendary filmmaker poking a stick at the Old West mythologies he helped create. It's a classic, one of the director's best, and one finally given its due with this handsome Paramount Centennial Collection edition.

Liberty Valance, in form and content, is unmistakably a Ford Western, exploring the tensions between the rugged individualism of the West and its inevitable transformation into orderly society. But the 1962 film's elegiac tone is darker and sadder than most works in the director's canon. In The Western Films of John Ford, author J.A. Place calls it "Ford's clearest expression of the current of nostalgia and regret that runs through his work, isolated in this film from the compensating forces of the grandeur of the outdoors and the purifying effect of Ford's...Read the entire review

The Show:

Curious George might be one of the few television efforts to actually improve on the children's books on which it is based. That pronouncement might be heresy to generations who grew up with the misadventures of the good little monkey, but this reviewer has to admit a particular affection for the PBS Kids series.

I have reviewed a few Curious George DVD collections previously -- here and here -- and a few of the same observations are apt to be repeated in this review of the eight-episode compilation, Curious George: Robot Monkey and More Great Gadgets. Based on the beloved books by H.A. and Margret Rey, the series' greatest attribute might just be its gentle ch...Read the entire review