Ann Lemons Pollack
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Barney’s Version
Barney Panofsky is nothing if not vitally alive. The hero of “Barney’s Version,” which opens today, is a man of large appetites, and of great ability to satisfy them. Paul Giamatti, flanked by Dustin Hoffman pere and fils as his father and son, offers a portrayal in which he is a whirlwind, and very funny,
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Oscar-Nominated Shorts
Of the hundreds of movie and theater reviews I write in a year, these films, the short subjects nominated for Academy Awards may bring me the most pleasure. Shorts take me back to my boyhood, when they always were part of the weekend matinees I attended at the last-run neighborhood houses. They're short (none of
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You Wont Miss Me
Maybe I’m showing my age, but another movie about disaffected, unhappy, dysfunctional young people is just boring and adds nothing to the genre. Even if it was written by, and stars, Stella Schnabel, daughter of famous artist Julian. The misspelling of the title of “You Wont Miss Me” seems to be just another example of
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The Eagle
We don’t have illegitimate sons or weeping daughters, only a few witches and not a line that is memorable or poetic, but we have broadswords, spears, lots of hand held devices that make effective killing machines, but were later replaced by telephones and game boys. With almost all the globe already at some sort of
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Hot Stuff: Salume Beddu
We got hold of some great – to mix languages – charcuterie from Salume Beddu. Fabulous on its own, but equally fabulous as an ingredient, we think, and you can read more of our discussion here.
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9 to 5
Never has the Fox Theatre stage been as busy as it was last night, and while the cast of "9 to 5" contributed some of it as actors and dancers, they contributed far more pushing, pulling, tugging and turning desks, file cabinets, cubicles, flats and anything else that could be built on wheels. Upstage went
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Wonton King
We’re lucky to have the Olive Boulevard strip of Asian stores and restaurants in University City. Such diversity of options is something that one of us, who lived in small towns in her youth, could only yearn for. And now we can explore at length, although we admit it’d be nicer if we could wander
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True West
Since Cain and Abel , and probably before, siblings have been at one another's throats, mostly figuratively, sometimes literally. Lee and Adrian are fine examples of the relationship in "True West," the Sam Shepard drama that keeps things buzzing in the first production of HotCity's 2011 season. It opened over the weekend at the Kranzberg
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Distracted
"Distracted," the play by Lisa Loomer that began its Midwest premiere run last night, is a perfect name. The Stray Dog Theatre production at Tower Grove Abbey deals with ADD, or ADHD, or whatever abbreviation is currently in favor for attention deficit disorder, in which children have extremely short attention spans and are often unable