It was a clever idea for television. “The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes” was a series based on detective stories by Arthur Conan Doyle’s less-remembered contemporaries, all of them set in late Victorian England and featuring eccentric sleuths. The 1971 firs

Grow local, eat local is the theme of PolyCultures, an inspiring, intelligently conceived documentary against agribusiness and for healthy, sustainable ways of eating and living. Filmed in Cleveland and the surrounding Ohio countryside, PolyCultures tak

The Pentecostal preacher Richard Gazowsky claimed the Lord commanded him, saying, “You will start a film company.” And not just any company, but a studio to produce the biggest movie ever, the biblical sci-fi epic Gravity: The Shadow of Joseph, a $200 m

Even in the years of painfully limited production budgets, British television produced sci-fi programs that achieved cult status in their homeland and abroad. The many incarnations of “Doctor Who” are probably the most familiar example. In 2006 the Do

Godfrey Reggio’s film Koyaanisqatsi (1982), a virtually wordless montage of slow motion footage and time-lapse photography, was a visual indictment of modern society. Koyaanisqatsi’s juxtapositions implied that civilization was utterly out of sync wit

In 1940 the Soviet occupiers of eastern Poland methodically massacred over 20,000 Polish officers and buried them in a mass grave at Katyn Forest. After the Nazi Germans turned on their Soviet allies and seized eastern Poland at the start of their inv

The cosmos keeps growing larger, extending beyond anything the human eye can see and confounding the limits of reason. First came other galaxies, a starry sea in which our Milky Way is a mere island; then the Big Bang, in which the universe came into

The Holler House (2042 W. Lincoln Ave.) is a Milwaukee institution, worthy not only of an entry in any local version of Fodor but of mention in a guidebook to the United States. Established in 1908, the Holler House is said to be the longest running b

In a deeply felt performance at the start of Apres Lui (After Him), Camille (Catherine Deneuvre) sends her college student son off to a party and receives a call from the police, hours later, telling Camille that her son is dead. Tears and grieving fo

The situation in Tibet remains grave. China continues to occupy the roof of the world and is settling large numbers of Chinese in the mountainous land, threatening to displace the native Tibetans. Meanwhile, many young Tibetans have grown impatient wi

Whales are magnificent in size and graceful in motion, the great ballet dancers of the deep. In A Life AmongWhales, a documentary out now on DVD, the aquatic beasts are observed at play and overheard singing their eerie lamentations. The discover

The characters created by one of the last century’s best selling authors, Agatha Christie, continue to captivate audiences in the new century. Recently, Milwaukee Public Television ran “Agatha Christie’s Marple, Series 4,” a new production of mysteries

The inner adult trapped inside Adam Sandler, struggling to be understood as serious or at least sympathetic, has surfaced before in movies as varied as Punch-Drunk Love and The Wedding Singer. In Funny People, Sandler plays George Simmons, a version of

Disney’s Race to Witch Mountain (out Aug. 4 on DVD and Blu-ray) is a modestly entertaining kids’ movie, adolescent division. Adult science fiction fans will have seen the story before with its UFOs and government cover-ups, good aliens and bad aliens

Face contorted in a bitter grimace, the nameless NYPD detective at the heart of Bad Lieutenant is an unhappy family man. In his fractured life, he barely maintains the outer form of his family as he descends into corruption and debauchery. The cracks ar

The flamboyant feather boas and infamous “palimony” suit were decades in the future. In the 1950s Liberace, dressed in white tie and black tails, was a concert pianist-cum-entertainer popularized through the young medium of television. The DVD set “Li

Parts of director Michael Mann’s Public Enemies, starring Johnny Depp as John Dillinger, were filmed in Wisconsin. Aside from any incentives offered by the state, one reason was the ability to use an actual location of a shoot-out between Dillinger and

Aleister Crowley was the product of a rigid, fundamentalist, Protestant sect, and a family that banished joy as sinful. Like many products of a too-strict upbringing, he rebelled in his teen years. For Crowley, however, the rebellion never ended. Long b

Since he first appeared on television in the ‘90s, Inspector William “Jack” Frost has been one of the U.K.’s most popular fictional detectives (and a familiar face for PBS Mystery viewers). “A Touch of Frost: Season 14” (out on DVD July 28) brings the

Pedro Almovodar’s films are latticed with multiple meanings, but of what exactly? A new essay collection, AllAbout Almodovar: A Passion for Cinema (published by University of Minnesota Press), examines the Spanish director from more than a dozen angle

Ask a film critic to locate the golden age of cinema and you’ll likely hear one of two answers: the late ‘30s era of The Wizard of Oz and Gone With the Wind, or the late ‘60s-early ‘70s period bracketed by Bonnie andClyde and Star Wars. Screen Wo

In the second last novel in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter cycle, the young wizard has begun his sixth year at Hogwarts and is feeling the sap of teenage in his limbs. There is turnover in the faculty and Harry’s nemesis, Draco Malfoy, is back for another

Conundrums in space and time are popular right now in pop culture. One example: the ABC series “Life on Mars,” concerning an NYPD detective who wakes up in 1973. Like many standout American shows, from “All in the Family” through &

Beyond the Sea was a labor of love for Kevin Spacey, but the film’s distribution amounted to a blink and miss proposition. Most of us missed it during its brief theatrical run. The 2004 film is out on DVD and will be shown July 10 on TV Guide Network.

Agatha Christie was the best selling author of the last century, but it wasn’t until near the end of the century, a decade after her death, that Christie’s stories were transferred to the screen without parody and in the spirit intended by their author.