Ann Lemons Pollack
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This Week’s Wine
Happy Thanksgiving! From our house to your house, we wish you a relaxing day, a tasty turkey, and a pleasing beverage to accompany it. Now — Do you have a date at the wine store tomorrow for something to accompany today's leftovers? Hold on a minute; we have a few ideas and suggestions that will
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Mamma Mia!
“Mamma Mia” is, in many respects, an old-fashioned musical. There’s just enough dialogue to keep the songs from running together. Great acting is unnecessary. Bring on the singers and dancers, with a score that is completely familiar as it works on its second generation of excited young people. So what’s not to like? Well, maybe
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Descendants
George Clooney is a chameleon. A man of many moods, many affects, many styles, he slides from role to role as a chameleon does from color to color. He's Matt King in "The Descendants," which opens today, and he offers a low-key, rich portrayal of a man caught between his ancestors and his relatives. He's
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Into the Abyss
The German director Werner Herzog is a genius. His films range from the sublime to the ridiculous, and his documentaries are as powerful as his fictional movies. "Into the Abyss," which opens today, is a tale of death row in Texas, and Herzog is interviewing a man who was sentenced to die only eight days
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Revenge of The Electric Car
The electric car, once seen as the answer to dependence on foreign oil, air pollution and many other of the world’s problems — perhaps over-population and cancer — was off to a pretty good start a half-decade ago, but then General Motors recalled all the cars and destroyed them. Writer-director Chris Paine brought out the
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The Skin I Live In
Dr. Victor Frankenstein wanted to create life, but he botched the job. Dr. Robert Ledgard, a surgeon, wants to rearrange life, and while his creation looks pretty good, "The Skin I Live In" is more horror story than medical text. The new film from Spanish director Pedro Almodovar opens here today. It's convoluted and sometimes
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Gio’s Ristorante & Bar
You say you’re looking for a quiet place to have an especially nice meal with your sweetie? You want a place with white tablecloths and maybe a little bit of a view, not real fancy, but certainly a little? Well, bunky, have we got a restaurant for you. Gio’s keeps a low profile with its
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Melancholia
Lars von Trier makes long, slow-moving, thought-provoking, fascinating movies. They're unsettling, disturbing, different. The hand-held camera work can be off-putting. And yet, I found "Melancholia" a gripping experience. Of course, the end of the world is a gripping experience, too. Everyone thinks about it, wonders about it. Combining the end of the world with a
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Godspell
"Godspell," the musical that John-Michael Tebelak wrote while a student at Carnegie-Mellon University, marks its 40th birthday this year. Birthday presents for musical comedies usually include a Broadway revival, which opened earlier this month and apparently fussied things up with a lot of contemporary jokes, though there were many kind words for Stephen Schwartz' score.
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The Man Nobody Knew
William Colby, a man who lived in the shadows, moved there during World War II when he was a member of the OSS (Office of Strategic Services) and spent time parachuting behind enemy lines in Europe. He later headed parts of the CIA during the Cold War and was involved in some of its less-clean