http://www.expressmilwaukee.com/blogs-1-1-1-9.html We meet Eleonore in The Pleasure of Being Robbed as she greets a total stranger on the street as if she’s a long-lost friend, all the while relieving her of her purse. An incorrigible thief for reasons never explained, Eleonore (Eleonore Hendricks) steels a car on a Manhattan street even though she doesn’t know how to drive. She casually gives a friend a lift back to his home in Boston (as he provides lessons in steering and breaking). Eleono]]> David Straithairn doesn’t look like the devil, but the suave physician he plays in Cold Souls (out now on DVD) trades in human souls for money. Oh, of course, he does so in the name of happiness. He even evokes the old buzzword of progress. But his glib manner and apparent sincerity can’t hide the gnawing suspicion that there is something wrong with his slickly polished enterprise of placing souls in cold storage for a fee and offering soul t]]> The gods of ancient Greece haven’t been widely worshipped since the fourth century, but linger on as important archetypes in literature and human psychology. The History Channel series “Clash of the Gods” looks at prominent figures in the Greek pantheon, with excursions into Nordic mythology and the mythos of J.R.R. Tolkien. Season one will be out on DVD and Blu-ray, March 30. The series suffers from a certain percentage of cheesy and ]]> Music is integral to most Bollywood movies, those colorful, often modestly budgeted pictures from India’s prolific film industry. Characters unselfconsciously break into song and even the gods themselves descend to join the dance. Among the most prolific composers for Bollywood, the team calling itself Laxmikant Pyarelal has issued at two-disc CD, Bollywood Remembers: Best of the EMI Years (released by Times Square Records), collecting record]]> For millions who came of age in the 1960s, peace, love and understanding was a bourgeois farce. And while the media of the ’00s fixated on Sgt. Pepper and Woodstock, for many the defining events of the late ’60s were the bloody upheavals that erupted around the world in riots from Berkeley to Berlin, the thwarted uprising in Czechoslovakia, the Cultural Revolution in China, the guerilla cells and movements operating almost everywhere except Ant]]> “Inspired by real people and events,” The Last King of Scotland (2005) should not be confused with an accurate chronicle of Idi Amin’s reign in Uganda. But the political thriller (out now on Blu-ray) about a naïve young Scott, a recent medical school graduate whose 1970s wanderlust brings him into the unlikely role of the dictator’s personal physician, gets at the emotional truth behind the insanity of Uganda in those years. And Forest Whitak]]> My Name is Khan is an unusual Bollywood movie and the soundtrack follows suit. The story concerns a young Indian Muslim with Asperger’s syndrome, living in San Francisco at the start of the last decade with his beautiful Indian wife. Khan’s life is shattered post-911. His wife weaves him when troubles strike and anti-Muslim prejudice makes his life precarious. Director Karan Johar’s film becomes a cross-country trek as Khan tries to win ba]]> Johnny Cash walked into the rockabilly scene sideways, almost by accident, yet has become the early rock’n’roll figure most admired by generations unconceived during the 1950s and ‘60s. Joaquin Phoenix stepped into a set of myth-size shoes when he took the role of Cash in the 2005 film Walk theLine (out now on Blu-ray). With his hard, fathomless eyes and stolid, chiseled face, Phoenix was well cast to play the Man in Black as the sin]]> The rise of a small, persecuted sect into a dominant force of world history, if not the single most important movement in human thought and feeling, is a large topic even for a six-hour documentary. The A&E Channel’s “Christianity: The First Two Thousand Years” (out on DVD) manages to cover most of the important points in the story with a measure of fairness. The history is fairly solid, albeit cut and trimmed to fit the format. “T]]> A few years later, the Rolling Stones would be called the world‚s greatest rock’n’roll band. But on the day in 1964 when a concert movie called The T.A.M.I. Show was shot, the Stones were upstaged by the act that preceded them. James Brown’s fervent Pentecostal soul, with his orchestrated peaks of ecstasy, was a hard act to follow. Curiously, Mick Jagger seemed to spontaneously emulate Brown in his own performance much like a schoolboy athlete ]]> Pierre is downcast from the news. The professional dancer has just been told that he has a serious heart problem, which can only be addressed with a transplant; even then, the odds of success are equal to a coin toss. Afterward, Pierre (Romain Duris) trudges head down along the crowded streets, through all the busy life of Paris, slouching on his way to death. Despite the tragic dimension, Paris (out on Blu-ray and DVD), the latest film ]]> The assassination of John F. Kennedy caused a rupture in the psyche of many Americans. The History Channel documentary “JFK: 3 Shots That Changed America” (out on DVD) allows pictures from the event to speak for themselves with the aid of editorial choices that arrange them in an intriguing order. Comprised of home movies and television footage, “3 Shots” begins on the last morning of the President’s life and proceeds into the long after]]> In the colorfully packaged book Hollywood Musicals (published by QNY), Will Dodson celebrates that happiest of genres and the stars that emerged from it—Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, Bing Crosby and Gene Kelly. Musical theater in one form or another is probably as old as civilization; with the invention of talking pictures in the late 1920s, the movies also began to sing and dance. The victory of sound over silence at the bijou coinc]]> If the Coen Brothers’ 2004 remake of The Lady Killers served any purpose, it was to alert audiences unfamiliar with the 1955 original. The earlier Lady Killers was produced by Ealing Studios, which excelled during the ‘50s with droll English comedy. It was directed by Britain’s Alexander Mackendrick, shortly before heading for Hollywood to direct his classic, noirish expose of media megalomania, The Sweet Smell of Success (1957). Mackendrick’]]> For thousands of years, men went down to the sea in fishing boats. In the past 50 years, the boats became bigger and bigger as corporations, which increasingly dominated commercial ocean fishing, implemented industrial strategies. Nowadays trawlers scrape the seabed with nets the size of airline hangers, destroying the environments that nurtures many species. As a result of such shortsighted malevolence, the industry is destroying itself as w]]> Tim Burton and Danny Elfman are almost as inseparable in the imagination as Batman and Robin. Most of Burton’s films have featured original scores by Elfman, whose music is integral to the mood of the pictures. Elfman will be audible throughout Burton’s upcoming film, Alice in Wonderland (opening March 5). On the Original Motion Picture Soundtrack CD (released by Walt Disney Records) Elfman continues in his role as the last of the grea]]> Don’t get him started on movies like Attack of the Killer Bimbos (1988). Will Dodson sets strict standards in his book, Cult Films (published by QNY). For him, a cult movie isn’t simply a theatrical failure that eventually found an audience, nor a Killer Bimbo “intentionally made to appeal to cult film afficionados, and marketed as cult films without any actual cult audiences.” Quentin Tarantino doesn’t make cult films but “cult pastiches.” Dod]]> The worldwide acclaim of Breathless (1960) transformed film critic Jean-Luc Godard into the leading director of the French new wave and infante terrible of European art house cinema. Fascinated yet repelled by Hollywood, Godard approached the structure of Hollywood narrative movies with an eye for pushing cinema toward new horizons. In his mind, he may have been like a Renaissance painter who just discovered perspective. His 1963 film Co]]> The famous photograph of Lyndon B. Johnson being sworn in as President aboard Air Force One with an ashen Jackie Kennedy at his side presented a reassuring image of continuity as it was sent across the wires. John F. Kennedy had just been assassinated in Dallas and LBJ was determined to assure America—and the world—that he was in charge. The History Channel documentary “The Kennedy Assassination: 24 Hours After” (out on DVD) is a fasci]]> Asked again and again by students for a book that was critical of American history, rather than repeating the same old platitudes, Howard Zinn despaired and wrote his own. A People’s History of the United States (1980) became one of the best selling books ever on America’s past. Not long before his death earlier this year, Zinn co-directed The People Speak, which presents aspects of A People’s History before live audiences with actors and music]]>