ENTERTAINMENT
February 19, 2010 | By Betsy Sharkey, Film Critic >>>
In "Shutter Island," director Martin Scorsese has created a divinely dark and devious brain tease of a movie in the best noir tradition with its smarter than you'd think cops, their tougher than you'd imagine cases to crack and enough nods to the classic genre for an all-night parlor game. It's 1954, the heart of the Cold War, with a conspiracy theory around every corner, when Leonardo DiCaprio's U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels and his new partner, played by Mark Ruffalo, are dispatched to an asylum for the criminally insane to investigate a dicey disappearance.
ENTERTAINMENT
February 11, 2010 | By T.L. Stanley
Fans of the late Phil Harris, the salty, tattooed captain who starred in the Discovery Channel's "Deadliest Catch," will still be able to see him doing the work he loved when the show launches its new season in April. Harris suffered a stroke late last month as he offloaded snow crabs from the Cornelia Marie in the port town of St. Paul, Alaska. He had been in an Anchorage hospital since then, where he died Tuesday night. He was 53. The popular show, one of many macho job reality series that dot the TV dial, had filmed more than half the new season when Harris fell ill. It's still unclear how the death will be handled in later episodes, a Discovery Channel spokesman said.
ENTERTAINMENT
February 20, 2010
McQueen looms large The opening of London Fashion Week on Friday was darkened by the giant shadow cast by the death of Alexander McQueen, long the enigmatic toast of the London fashion world. McQueen, who died in an apparent suicide last week, was honored with a remembrance wall that quickly became the center of attention in the mammoth fashion tent pitched in the courtyard of Somerset House. Hundreds of messages were posted to the late superstar, regarded as the provocative enfant terrible of the once staid London design scene.
ENTERTAINMENT
February 14, 2010 | By Richard Abowitz
In his dressing room, Donny Osmond, at 52 with youthful if not teen features, is a relaxed man who converses seriously and likes to get into the technical aspects of his craft. He's explaining the surprising success he and his sister, Marie, have had with their reunion show that opened at the Flamingo in 2008. He answers like a man whose entire life has been spent reading his words in print: "It is a hard question to answer without sounding narcissistic. I don't want to sound arrogant," he says That night -- granted, Saturday on Super Bowl weekend -- his manager mentions that more than 50 people have been turned away who sought last-minute tickets to the sold-out show.
ENTERTAINMENT
February 24, 2010 | By Scott Collins and Maria Elena Fernandez
In a surprise development Tuesday that casts doubt on the rest of its season, television's top-rated sitcom, "Two and a Half Men," halted production after its star Charlie Sheen announced he was checking into a drug and alcohol rehabilitation clinic. "We wish him nothing but the best as he deals with this personal matter," said a statement attributed to CBS, Warner Bros. and executive producer Chuck Lorre, who, according to sources familiar with the situation, were caught off-guard by the actor's move.
ENTERTAINMENT
February 5, 2010 | By BETSY SHARKEY, Film Critic
Dear Reader, I'm so sorry, gulp, but "Dear John" is like a very bad relationship with a very beautiful someone: You want it to work, you truly do, but the pain, the guilt, the boredom, the CW soundtrack . . . . And I wish I could say it's not them, it's me, but I really think it's them. The film's very beautiful someones are the ab-riffic Channing Tatum as John, whom director Lasse Hallström wisely keeps either shirtless or in tight tees for most of the film, and that golden girl Amanda Seyfried (" Big Love," "Mamma Mia!"
ENTERTAINMENT
December 11, 2009 | By BETSY SHARKEY, Film Critic
We're always looking for those performances that truly define an actor, where we can sit back and simply watch the talent soar. For Colin Firth, "A Single Man" is that film. Until now probably best known for his work in the "Bridget Jones" films -- the stuffy, sensitive suitor forever in the shadow of Hugh Grant's roguish charmer -- his portrayal of George, the single man that he imbues with amazing grace, should change all that. George is 52, a Briton transplanted to L.A., where he's been an English professor for years.
ENTERTAINMENT
February 28, 2010 | By David Ferrell
To prepare for the filming of HBO's epic, $200-million World War II miniseries "The Pacific," screenwriter Bruce C. McKenna accompanied a locations crew to a tiny coral island near Guam known as Peleliu. A ridge there is laced with hundreds of caves -- undisturbed for more than half a century -- where Japanese troops hid out from U.S. Marines during one of the war's deadliest conflicts. "There are still skeletons in the caves, and we saw them," McKenna remembers with amazement. "At the first cave we found, we walked in and there was the rib cage of a dead Japanese soldier.
ENTERTAINMENT
February 12, 2010 | By BETSY SHARKEY, Film Critic
Here's the surprise of the new incarnation of "The Wolfman," starring Benicio Del Toro -- there isn't one. No bite either, or humor, or camp. And the real killer . . . almost no spine-tingling dread. So I guess this is a kind of a horror story after all. Also starring, and squandering, the talents of Anthony Hopkins, Emily Blunt and Hugo Weaving, the film is built around the ancient myth of the cursed creature -- part man, part wolf, part of the time -- who battles to control the monster he discovers inside.
ENTERTAINMENT
February 27, 2010 | By Holiday Mathis
Aries (March 21-April 19): People snap to attention when you enter the room, not because they fear you but because they respect you. Taurus (April 20-May 20): Just as soon as you make a rule for yourself, you break it. When you have less on your plate, you'll have more self-control. Gemini (May 21-June 21): Get chummy with a Cancer or Scorpio and you'll learn about back roads and side streets. Cancer (June 22-July 22): Something is growing and changing right under your nose -- a marvel, really.