Ann Lemons Pollack
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The Bleeding Deacon
There is a deeply authentic aura to the Bleeding Deacon, beginning with a name that is almost Cromwellian in its ferocity. It’s reminiscent of an old south St. Louis bar, brought into the 21st century by the chalkboard list of many beers that didn’t exist in that bygone day and many dishes whose names or
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The Hurt Locker
Politics get in the way when movies about war reflect those that are real – and unpopular. In the World War II days, and even during the Cold War, enemies were enemies and movie fans bought tickets to see them vanquished. But in Vietnam, and in the Middle East, where the wars are not very
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Shadowland
It’s rather dishonest, or else dumb, for Wyatt Weed, who wrote and directed, and therefore cannot blame anyone else, to name his sleazy, violent little movie, "Shadowland," when 16 years ago, the esteemed English director, Richard Attenborough, used Anthony Hopkins and Debra Winger in the almost-identically named "Shadowlands," a sort-of biography of Irish-English author C.
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The Drowsy Chaperone
Light-hearted, tuneful and no more substantial than a cumulus cloud, the Stages St. Louis production of "The Drowsy Chaperone" offers a delightful evening of entertainment while it provides both those who love musical theater and those who hate it with enough additional cement to harden their positions for eternity. It runs through Aug. 16 at
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Collected Stories
Watching a relationship grow can bring humor, or sadness, or passion, or indifference, and watching Ruth and Lisa run the six-year emotional marathon that is Donald Margulies’s "Collected Stories" takes us through a similar gantlet as Nancy Lewis and Megan Maguire wield a collection of verbal whips and truncheons that we can neither evade nor
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This Week’s Wine, July 19, 2009
Remember the old movie musicals? Mickey and Judy and their pals, in the midst of a little friendly tap routine, would spontaneously decide: We’ll put on our own show. . . and we’ll invite all our friends. . . and we’ll do it in the barn. And suddenly, they were on their way to a
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The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee
And there’s no spell-check to help out. . . . When the bell tolls at stage left, it tolls for thee, the speller who mis-spelled, and sends a miserable soul to Hell, or at least off the stage and out of "The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee," a charming evening of song, wit and
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Departures
Director Yojiro Takita gets a little mawkish toward the end, and he allows "Departures" to be about 30 minutes longer than necessary, but the Japanese tale, which won an Oscar for best foreign language film, is always beautiful, often breath-taking, mostly fascinating in the way people approach death. Masahiro Motoki, calm and handsome, is Daigo,
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I Love You, Beth Cooper
With all the teen-aged boys acting as bullies or nerds, and all the girls of similar ages painted as sluts, and both genders looking to hook up in a mass drunken orgy, we have "I Love You, Beth Cooper," in which nerds triumph over bullies, and coincidentally lose their virginity, on the night they graduate
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The Stoning of Soroya M.
It is only fair warning to point out the horror and fright one faces during "The Stoning of Soraya M.," a powerful statement against cruelty, sadism and sexism in terms of the ultimate power of the male/husband in Iran, if not in the entire Middle East. But a 20-minute scene of a woman being stoned