50-year-old ballet gets street-smart treatment (Reuters)
Reuters - A piece of the past is beautifully revived in "NY Export: Opus Jazz," a note-perfect adaptation of Jerome Robbins' 1958 "ballet in sneakers" that updates the street-cool vibe of a piece reminiscent of his "West Side Story."more
"Red Baron"casts war hero in romantic light (Reuters)
Reuters - This hagiographic movie portrait of Germany's World War I flying ace Manfred von Richthofen, better known to posterity and followers of Charles Schulz's "Peanuts" comic strip as the "Red Baron," is most impressive while bi- and tri-planes dodge and shoot at each other in the sky. On the ground, the film falls pretty flat.more
Broadway's new odd couple an ill-conceived pairing (Reuters)
Reuters - Maybe it looked good on paper.more
Docu paints intimate portrait of late comedian (Reuters)
Reuters - A groundbreaking comedian gets a step closer to immortality with "American: The Bill Hicks Story," a portrait of the short-lived performer that will move fans while letting the uninitiated witness enough onstage highlights to leave them wanting more.more
Feinstein and Dame Edna are B'way's new odd couple (AP)
AP - Not since Felix Ungar and Oscar Madison moved in together has Broadway had such an odd couple on the boards.
more
Capsule reviews: `The Bounty Hunter' and others (AP)
AP - Capsule reviews of films opening this week:more
T.S. Eliot's `Cocktail Party' is worth attending (AP)
AP - If you've ever known a psychiatrist who thinks he or she is godlike, then T.S. Eliot's 60-year-old play, "The Cocktail Party," would be an absolute tonic for them.
more
Review: 'Repo Men' offers bloody awful future (AP)
AP - In the happy future of "Repo Men," if you need a pancreas, you can get a pancreas. It'll cost you $618,000 and, if you miss one of your scheduled "easy" payments, you'll find yourself hounded by a hired goon who will slice you open, retrieve the organ and leave you on the floor, bleeding to death.
more
Review: 'Wimpy Kid' fleshes out stick-figure novel (AP)
AP - The movie version of "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" manages to put flesh and bone on the stick figures in Jeff Kinney's wildly successful cartoon novel without altering the book's mildly subversive comic tone.
more
"Repo Men" an aggressively ridiculous thriller (Reuters)
Reuters - The future looks awfully predictable (underscore "awfully") in "Repo Men," a blood-soaked, derivative and increasingly ridiculous sci-fi thriller in which Jude Law and Forest Whitaker play a pair of hotshot repossession agents who forcefully remove artificial organs from those who fall behind on their payments.
more
Marvel a marvel in diffuse 'Book of Grace' in NY (AP)
AP - Elizabeth Marvel is one of those chameleon-like stage actresses fiercely committed to character. Whatever the play — from "A Streetcar Named Desire" off-Broadway to "Top Girls" on Broadway — she transforms herself, each portrait totally different and totally credible.
more
Spoof "MacGruber" does its best with thin material (Reuters)
Reuters - Utterly disposable but diverting, "MacGruber" manages to spin feature-length product out of an idea that few would try expanding beyond a "Saturday Night Live" skit.more
Melancholy Hamlet returns to Met after 113 years (AP)
AP - Ambroise Thomas' "Hamlet" was last performed at the Metropolitan Opera in 1897, and it's easy to see why more than a century passed before its revival.more
Film goes behind the scenes of Saturday Night Live (Reuters)
Reuters - "Saturday Night" seems like such a natural idea for a documentary -- charting the week of writing and preparation that go into an episode of "Saturday Night Live" -- that it's hard to believe it hasn't been made before. James Franco got the idea after hosting the show in September 2008, and exec producer Lorne Michaels gave him the go-ahead to bring in cameras and record an entire week.more
Review: Aniston and Butler in `The Bounty Hunter' (AP)
AP - In Steven Soderbergh's "Out of Sight," George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez memorably created romantic sparks while huddled in the trunk of a car. By contrast, the action-laden romantic-comedy "The Bounty Hunter" begins with Jennifer Aniston bursting out a trunk in a smokey blaze of ignited flares as Gerard Butler chases after her.more
Centurion an unpretentious swords-and-sandals film (Reuters)
Reuters - A refreshing answer to filmmakers who believe any swords-and-sandals film must be epic or at least overwrought, Neil Marshall's "Centurion" delivers some large-scale action but plays almost like a Roman-era Western in its depiction of a few soldiers trying to get home alive after the slaughter of their comrades.more
Review: The outer-borough farce `City Island' (AP)
AP - Set in the Bronx during an eventful spring break and populated by sexual, dark-haired people, "City Island" could, on the surface, be confused for a "Jersey Shore" sequel.
more
Teen angst revived, again, in "American Sleepover" (Reuters)
Reuters - It takes either courage or ignorance for a first-time director to tell the kind of story John Hughes, Richard Linklater, Judd Apatow and George Lucas have already done so well, but David Robert Mitchell nearly pulls it off in "The Myth of the American Sleepover."more
`Surrendered' flawed exploration of war's ravages (AP)
AP - "The Surrendered" (Riverhead Books, $26.95, 480 pages), by Chang-Rae Lee: "The Surrendered" gets off to a riveting start with a powerful first 30 pages, as readers follow an 11-year-old girl leading her two younger siblings on a refugee trek through Korea in the early 1950s.
more
David Byrne's avant-garde dance film makes sense (Reuters)
Reuters - "Stop Making Sense" is a tough act to follow, but David Byrne gives his younger self a run for his money with "Ride, Rise, Roar."more