Ann Lemons Pollack

  • Love Crime

    Ludivine Sagnier and Kristin Scott Thomas, fine actresses and beautiful women, go head to head in "Love Crime," a first-rate murder mystery with lots of jealousy, sex and ambition to spice up a good story. It opens today, and has enough old-fashioned detectives and new-fashioned ad-p.r. executives to keep everything spiced up. It's the last

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  • Machine Gun Preacher

    Many years ago, one of James Thurber's fables (a series of short stories involving animals to satirize the human condition) dealt with a bear who drank until he fell asleep, misbehaved and made life miserable for his family. When he reformed, he exercised until he fell asleep, harshly criticized those who did not believe and

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  • Happy Happy

    He'd rather go hunting than make love with his wife. That's Erik (Joachim Rafaelsen), who thinks that Kaja (Agnes Kittelsen) isn't attractive enough to excite him these days. He's not involved with another woman; he simply prefers to be with his buddies. And the movie, which opens today, is entitled, "Happy Happy" and billed as

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  • Restaurant Art

    Marilynne Bradley, a local artist is having a showing of her paintings of St. Louis restaurants, both past and present. She's even included the Del Taco flying saucer building. Joe wrote about them for Relish, St. Louis Magazine's food blog, and you can read that, including the location and dates here.

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  • Wine October 6, 2011

    Wine dinners always have a festive air, but there was an extra element at Lo Russo's recently when the wines of Bolen Family Estates were on the table. The evenng marked the release of Eric Bolen's  excellent 2007 Merlot, and it also provided an opportunity to sit in on what felt like a reunion of

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  • Pueblo Solis

    Another one of those restaurants that keep trucking long after the fashionable crowd moves along to the next hot place, Pueblo Solis continues to thrive. Owner Al Solis has expanded into a room just to the north, effectively doubling the space when things get busy on the weekends. The "back" room also is slightly less

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  • Mozart’s Sister

    From the Bachs to the Brubecks, from the Marsalises to the Hendrickses, musical talent often has run in families, and while Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart lit up the latter half of the 18th century with his genius, the style of the times pushed his sister, Maria Anna, known as Nannerl, into near-oblivion. She still gets short

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  • The Addams Family Musical

    "Are you unhappy, darling?" "Oh yes, yes! Completely." This conversational fragment first saw life on a page of The New Yorker as a caption to a cartoon showing Gomez and Morticia sitting by the fireplace. Charles Addams, a cartoon artist for more than a half-century, developed the family of misfits, bad actors, sadists and other

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  • The Block

    Who ever thought that “the quiet little village of Webster Groves”would become a destination for diners? It seems to be moving in that direction, especially just west of the T-shaped intersection of Lockwood and Gore, where a large handful of new restaurants offers a wide variety. The most recent is The Block, as in Butcher

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  • Passing Strange

    It's an age-old story: A talented young man leaves home in search of. . . something. Maybe it's freedom, maybe it's riches, or sex, or rock-and roll. He travels the world, meeting all kinds of people, enduring heartache and headache, pleasure and pain, still searching. Sound like Candide? Or maybe Jacques Brel? Or perhaps Pippin?

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