Mar 14, 2010
MICHAEL LONG, Entertainment Editor
On the shortlist of artists with wildly vivid imaginations, Tim Burton occupies a special place.From his early days as an idea man at Disney Animation through a filmmaking career that has produced an unequaled array of visually groundbreaking movies, this peerless writer/director/producer has left a...
Mar 07, 2010
MICHAEL LONG, Entertainment Editor
The conductor of the Academy Awards orchestra has been given his instructions: As soon as you hear the words "I'd like to thank the Academy," cue the exit music.Perhaps his directive isn't quite that severe, but with the expanded best-picture field this year — it has doubled ...
Mar 05, 2010
MICHAEL LONG, ERIC STARK and CASEY KREIDER
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Feb 14, 2010
JON RUTTER
The Susquehanna River seems to speed up as it thunders over the brink and jumps 55 feet down the face of Holtwood Dam.Despite its eternal rush, the water always leaves behind baggage.Michael Helfrich hiked the York County shoreline on a recent wintry day and stooped to study the latest deposit. His ...
Feb 14, 2010
STEPHEN KOPFINGER
Her works have soared to the skies and plunged to the depths of despair. In between, there are celebrations of family, including a personal connection to Lancaster County.Such is the life and craft of film director Mira Nair.Born in India, Nair has made movies that explore streets populated by pimps...
Feb 07, 2010
TERRENCE RAFFERTY, New York Times
Martin Scorsese's dark, twisty detective thriller "Shutter Island" is set in 1954, in the full flowering of what W.H. Auden had just a few years earlier called the Age of Anxiety."I don't know, maybe I'm stuck in that time," Scorsese said recently, sounding a little w...
Jan 24, 2010
A.O. SCOTT, New York Times
Along with buckets of money — more than $1.6 billion so far, worldwide — and a couple of Golden Globes, James Cameron's "Avatar" has collected a smattering of controversy. Some of the hue and cry has involved matters of political allegory and theological implication, as pundits have divi...
Jan 17, 2010
DAVID GERMAIN, Associated Press Movie Writer
A loose and cheeky tone is typical for the Golden Globes. Yet Hollywood's first major prize show on the road to the Academy Awards has plenty of heavy drama for the hard times we live in.Three films with war-on-terror angles scored nominations, led by critical darling "The Hurt Locker,"...
Jan 10, 2010
DAVE KEHR, New York Times
The first Academy Awards banquet, held May 16, 1929, included a special award for Warner Bros. "for producing 'The Jazz Singer,' the pioneering, outstanding talking picture, which has revolutionized the industry."Does James Cameron's "Avatar" deserve a similar prize? ...
Jan 03, 2010
P.J. REILLY, Woods and Waters
George Acord Jr. has heard it all when it comes to anglers' opinions on the state of the Susquehanna River's smallmouth bass fishery."If a guy goes out there in the middle of July and has three bad days in a row, that means everything's dead," said Acord, co-owner of Susquehann...
Dec 27, 2009
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Years pass and tastes change, at least a little. In choosing their top films of the past decade, Associated Press movie critics David Germain and Christy Lemire stuck closely to their favorites from each year.But here and there, a film that came in a bit lower on their lists at the time has crept up...
Dec 20, 2009
MICHAEL LONG, Entertainment Editor
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has added 14 miles to my life.That's how far I'll have to run to burn off the extra 1,400 calories I'll be consuming in the form of five 3½-ounce boxes of Raisinets — one each at the five additional films nominated for best pic...
Nov 29, 2009
DAVID GERMAIN, AP Movie Writer
The last time we heard from the hand-drawn animators at Disney, they offered up the barnyard tale "Home on the Range." The 2004 'toon was so forgettable it seemed as though it really might be the last time we ever heard from the hand-drawn animators at the studio where the art form was...
Nov 15, 2009
BROOKS BARNES, New York Times
We know, courtesy of Us Weekly, that Kristen Stewart spreads butter on her blueberry bagels. People magazine just chronicled her alleged romance with "Twilight" co-star Robert Pattinson in an entire issue devoted to the movie franchise. And everyone from "Access Hollywood" to the...
Oct 25, 2009
CHRIS LEE, Los Angeles Times
Short of someone inventing Smell-o-Vision before the global rollout of the feature documentary "Michael Jackson's This Is It" on Wednesday, Oct. 28, fans will never get to know one of the most visceral aspects of working with the King of Pop."He had this amazing fragrance," s...
Oct 18, 2009
MICHAEL LONG, Entertainment Editor
"Where the Wild Things Are," director Spike Jonze's big-screen reimagining of Maurice Sendak's classic children's tale, doesn't fit neatly into a genre.It's certainly not a coming-of-age story, because the young protagonist, Max, grows in neither years nor stature, and ...
Oct 18, 2009
ROBERT LLOYD, Los Angeles Times
In 1969, five young British comedians and one young American animator came together to make a television show. Without much of an idea of what they were going to do, they were given a series by the BBC to do it in, and after hunting around for a name — "Owl-Stretching Time" and "...
Oct 18, 2009
JON RUTTER
During the iron-cold winter of 1944-45, Steve Kepchar camped under a grim exhortation."Dig deep," his sergeant said as Kepchar grubbed out a foxhole during the Battle of the Bulge. "That might be your grave."But it wasn't.The decorated World War II veteran survived his Army days. He sailed home to N...
Oct 04, 2009
JON RUTTER
"Don't get on the boat," warned the old man on the wharf. "There's sharks in the water."He was joking.But plenty of sinister agents do lurk in the cloudy depths of the Chesapeake Bay.Jenny Engle and her League of Women Voters friends traveled to Baltimore's Inner Harb...
Sep 13, 2009
MICHAEL LONG, Entertainment Editor
In 1978, when husband-and-wife duo Judi and Ron Barrett published their now-classic children's book "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs," I had just mastered tying my shoes.Kindergarteners of my day were being fed a steady diet of endearing, yet predominately tame books that had persist...