A grumpy old man who decides to convert his run-down mansion into a convent winds up sparring with the mother superior, only to find faith in the end. On the surface it has the ring of a 2 a.m. selection on TCM with Walter Mathau under a gray toupee and

The strife between Israel and Palestine has many human costs. One that seldom makes the evening news is the economic and social toll of closed borders, which have cut off many Palestinians from the commuter jobs they once enjoyed in Israel. 9 St

Marion Cotillard was “speechless,” she insisted, while hugging her Best Actress Oscar (La Vie en Rose) and giving thank you after thank you. I was even more speechless. The French star of a subtitled film about Edith Piaf (“I didn’t even know who Edith

Playing Oscar trivial pursuit is probably more fun than watching the actual event live on TV. HollywoodWinners & Losers A to Z (published by Limelight Editions) is an almost up to date guidebook for Oscar trivia: actors department. The book went to

In the 1960s directors from the still new medium of television began migrating to the movies. One of them, John Frankenheimer, made several films characteristic of that decade’s uneasy shadow side. His masterpiece, The Manchurian Candidate (1962), is in

Predicting Oscar winners is like forecasting the weather. Reasonable minds assume you've done a good job by being right half the time. It's a hard business with all those variables, those shifting winds of insider gossip and cold fronts of media speculat

Drug kingpin Frank Lucas is no one to mess with. Denzel Washington's depiction in American Gangster reveals a man whose fierce pride is frozen into an implacable smirk. Impervious to the heroin habit on which his fortune is based, Lucas is soul on ice. W

Milwaukee native Michael Nehs is coming home to make a movie. The president of Chicago's Frontsight Productions is filming his next picture, Blue World, in his hometown. The cameras are set to begin rolling in May. Blue World is based on the 1990 n

Americans looked forward to what one columnist called "a new world of peace" after World War II, but history took the opposite course. Between rapid incursions, air strikes and massive interventions, the U.S. military has seldom rested for long

In a good Chinese costume drama, there is always an empire in turmoil, a bitter dynastic struggle, vast armies assembled in choreographed columns and balletic displays of martial arts—often by characters endowed with the power to fly. Legend of t