Film &amp; Television

Howie's Duty: Prank or Be Pranked

And now he has his son in on the gag of a gig

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Is Clarabell staging a comeback? Buffalo Bob Smith going beyond the fringe and shelling out smiles for a new Peanut Gallery? "I don't know who that is," says manic Howie Mandel, host of "Howie Do It," debuting Jan. 9, at 8 p.m., on NBC. With a show like "Howie Do It" ... C'mon, Howie, are you punking me? Wouldn't be...

Film & Television

Ride of the Valkyrie

Or is it a Cruise? Actor/producer successfully takes on the risky business of history

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Michael Elkin

Tom, you had me at "Heil." Show me the Nazis, demands Tom Cruise, controlling the careening caper that is "Valkyrie," portraying Col. Claus von Stauffenberg, the stealthy German soldier, whose assassination plot against Hitler hit some snags, in the film opening in theaters on Dec. 25. The actual plot, coded "Valkyrie," may have plotzed, but Cruise creates a character as...

Film & Television

A Direct Read of 'The Reader'

Stephen Daldry turns the page on war-torn dramas

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Michael Elkin

Your weakly "Reader"? There is nothing weak-willed about Stephen Daldry's strong-spirited and powerfully propelling adaptation of Bernhard Schlink's best-selling novel The Reader, whose reading of the Holocaust is a riveting reminder that not all its stories have been bookended by biographers and Hollywood on one of its bathetic benders. Indeed, this is no banal bedtime story -- albeit much of...

Film & Television

History's Screen Savers?

Three holiday films face off with Hitler and the Holocaust

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Michael Elkin

Are the studios of Hollywood about to drop the dreidel on us? No spin zone, here. Latkes and lollapaloozas are in store for moviegoers at menorah time with three big features featured as Jewish gelt -- a guilt-load of riches -- at year's end and at next year's beginning. Paging "The Reader," a chilling chapter-and-verse adaptation of the best-selling Bernhard...

Film & Television

A Drama of the 'Dust' Might

By:

Michael Elkin

Housewives and husbands -- put the Hoover away: "Dust" is not "Schmutz" for the cleaning crowd. The real dirt on "Dust" is that it's destined to provide a spine-tingling time for those who think life is just a measure of inches and seconds, as fate sucks away rhyme and reason as a daily determinant. The power of the play is...