Romance

An engagement ring is an expensive, seemingly indestructible version of those red tags taped to furniture that say: Sold. Move on, prospective buyer. This one's taken. At 20 I knew I'd never wear one. I wish I'd stuck to my guns. A sorority may be an unlikely place to develop an aversion to engagement rings. In fact, I may have been the only sorority girl on the planet turned off by ritualized diamond envy. Sorority girls would gather in a circle, sing the sweetheart song and pass around a lighted taper adorned with baby's breath and roses.

SOUTHPORT, N.C. - This is the kind of touristy fishing village that defines Southern charm. A cute little downtown filled with restaurants, a waterfront park and artsy shops. Late 19th century houses with verandas on streets shaded by towering live oaks. Herons and egrets sharing the Cape Fear River and Intracoastal Waterway with pleasure craft. It's the perfect setting for a Nicholas Sparks story. And on a hot summer day last year, the film version of the prolific author's "Safe Haven" was in production here in the isolated little town where the book is actually set, "which is unheard of," said actor Josh Duhamel, who costars with Julianne Hough in the feature directed by Lasse Hallström and adapted by Gage Lansky and Dana Stevens.

Lord Huron has had much to celebrate in 2012, including recent appearances on "The Tonight Show" and KCRW's " Morning Becomes Eclectic ," as well as warm reviews of "Lonesome Dreams," the L.A. indie-folk outfit's debut full-length. Best of 2012:   Movies  |  TV  |  Pop music  |  Jazz  |  Video Games |  Art  |  Theater  |  Dance  |  Classical music Now the group -- led by singer-songwriter (and visual artist)

Is Tom Cruise healing his heart with a new girlfriend, so soon after being bounced by Katie Holmes? So it seemed when In Touch reported Wednesday that the 50-year-old "Jack Reacher" star was spotted out at a New York nightclub a week before Christmas, hitting the dance floor with a woman half his age. "At one point, they began grinding together," a witness told the mag. "It was straight out of 'Dirty Dancing.' Tom seemed to be in his own...

Romantic but pitiless, fearlessly emotional as well as edgy, "Rust and Bone" is a powerhouse. It's the kind of risky venture only a consummate filmmaker could manage, and then only with the help of actors who are daring and accomplished. With director Jacques Audiard in charge and Marion Cotillard and Matthias Schoenaerts as stars, all the pieces have fallen exactly into place. Although "Rust and Bone" is old fashioned and sentimental at its core, this film's idea of romance is not everyone's, and it's certainly not Jane Austen's.

An epic love story, like a good horror movie, relies more on possibility than actuality. Surprise and anticipation, of what is to come and what it might mean, are what draw viewers in, binding them in fetters of pleasure and pain. Subtlety and nuance create the space between word and glance, between shadow and revelation, where imagination digs in and magnificence blooms. None of which happens, in any way, shape or form, during Lifetime's television event "Liz & Dick," a wildly graceless biopic that careens through the decades-long relationship between Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton with more petulance than passion, knocking down gin bottles and rumpling silk sheets for no better reason than that's what it says to do in the script.

Those who scour the fringes of movie houses to wade through countless slacker American indies, dour European art films, sappy Asian historical romances and all the assorted odd flotsam that washes up on screen do so hoping to find something rather like the new Indian film "Jab Tak Hai Jaan. " The film is directed by Yash Chopra, a towering influence in Bollywood filmmaking who died last month, and stars Indian superstar Shah Rukh Khan with music by A.R. Rahman. The film tells a tale of two star-crossed romances, one of a man (Khan)

Taylor Swift is on the cover of the December issue of Cosmopolitan, and inside she talks about what she does and doesn't want in romance. Unfortunately, the cover type deems her "Crazy for a Kennedy. " But since it went to press, she broke up with Conor Kennedy. So listen up, guys. The magazine hits newsstands Nov. 6. [Cosmopolitan] Ellen DeGeneres dressed up on her Halloween show as Sofia Vergara, wearing a copy of the Zuhair Murad dress in which the actress had a wardrobe malfunction at the Emmys.

The downsizing of Ayn Rand's thousand-page big-ideas novel, begun with last year's sputtering salvo in a planned trilogy, continues with "Atlas Shrugged Part II: The Strike. " A new director is at the helm, and the producers have completely recast the doctrinaire dystopia. If the aim of those changes was to breathe new life into the adaptation, the mission has failed - a detail that's not likely to deter members of the Rand choir who welcome the multiplex preaching. And although many things are in short supply in this manifesto-as-movie (the list begins with momentum and nonawkward acting)

Comparisons to such ensemble capers as "Ocean's Eleven" or "Tower Heist" are inevitable, but South Korea's "The Thieves" carves its own niche with moments of romance and stylish mayhem mixed with a more emotionally conflicted, winner-take-all sensibility than its American brethren. Director Dong-hoo Choi ("The Big Swindle"), who co-wrote the sometimes overly complex script with Gi-cheol Lee, begins by jauntily setting up the potential theft of a $30 million diamond from a Macau casino vault by an intrepid band of high-end crooks, each, of course, with a burgling specialty.