Film &amp; Television

Extra! Extra! 'Reader" All About It

And this book-based film may make the most headlines come Oscar night

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The boy in the striped pajamas has taken them off. Much of the writings about "The Reader" -- the Oscar-nominated, Holocaust-oriented film that turns a page on the past -- has focused on the explicit nude scenes between Hanna (Kate Winslet) and Michael (David Kross), to whom the German transportation worker gives transporting tutorials in sex prefaced by his reading...

Film & Television

Why 'Will Work for Food' Works

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Michael Elkin

What's that dizzying acrid/sweet smell coming from inside that college boy's dorm? Could he be smoking ... Lox? Could be if the boy in question was Adam Gertler and the controlled substance he was smoking came from the uncontrollable white waters of Alaska, where salmon was king and bagel its bride. From whitewater to whitefish, Gertler girded early on for...

Film & Television

True Lies

Tim Roth gets face time with a lively new series that belies the usual

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Michael Elkin

Tim Roth is living a lie. Truth is, the Oscar-nominated actor of "Rob Roy" likes it like that. Why shouldn't he? As the star of "Lie to Me," the foxy new Fox Network Wednesday night series in which he plays deception expert Dr. Cal Lightman -- based on the life of scientist Dr. Paul Ekman -- Roth gives body language...

Film & Television

Dancing With the Wars

Israel's 'Waltz With Bashir' director to find out if Oscar is the next step

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Michael Elkin

"Waltz With Bashir" -- one step forward, two steps backward? That may be the progress of peace in the Mideast but definitely not the direction of Ari Folman's much-honored, forward-thinking "documation" of his dance of death in the Lebanon War zone of the 1980s. He has directed, produced and penned a screenplay of pent-up power, with his native Israel both...

Film & Television

Academy of Musing

And the Oscar goes to ...

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Michael Elkin

Dirty heresy? Who else but Clint Eastwood could spout anti-Semitic, anti-black and anti-Asian attacks in such an enlightened time as Obama-rama and get away with it? Well, of course, it's not Eastwood, but his alter echo of Walt Kowalski and his slur-speech that drives "Gran Torino," the pedal-to-the-mettle role that just might earn Eastwood his first acting Oscar when nods...