Yahoo! News: Entertainment Reviews

Entertainment Reviews

• Cynthia Nixon wrestles with life in a moving 'Wit' (AP)

  AP - Another "Sex and the City" star has made her way to Broadway but she's brought along a different kind of cocktail.

  
  

• Kids try to bury big family secret, in 'Yosemite' (AP)

  AP - Some family secrets are too big to bury.

  
  

• Review: Fresh stories propel 'The Old Republic' (AP)

  AP - How do you make that familiar galaxy far, far away fresh again? Take it back to an even longer time ago.

  
  

• Review: `Man on a Ledge' teeters on brink of blah (AP)

  AP - The so-called thriller "Man on a Ledge," about a disgraced cop who threatens to jump off a building to divert attention from a heist going on across the street, isn't even implausible in a fun way.

  
  

• Capsule reviews of `The Grey,' `Man on a Ledge' (AP)

  AP - "Albert Nobbs" — The role of Albert Nobbs is one that's been near to Glenn Close's heart for a while.

  
  

• The Gob Squad go back to the 1960s in new show (AP)

  AP - Can a modern-day troupe of European performance artists capture the ennui of privileged, avant-garde artistes and hangers-on during a hot New York City summer in 1965, in the midst of social upheaval that included civil rights violence, anti-Vietnam War anger and rising feminist outrage?

  
  

• Review: Tim McGraw's "Emotional Traffic" is serious and silly (Reuters)

  Reuters - Tim McGraw's "Emotional Traffic" arrives in stores as the most litigated album in recent musical/legal history. Imagine the missed opportunities for ad campaigns: Direct from the Tennessee court system to your sound system!

• Review: "Clear Heart" offers superior songwriting (Reuters)

  Reuters - Besides being one of America's greatest rock bands, the Hold Steady are the closest thing we have to a messy, rowdy, wordy, art-rock version of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band.

• Review: Ex-Beatle longs for Liverpool on new album (AP)

  AP - "Ringo 2012," Ringo Starr. (Hip-O/Ume)

  
  

• Review: Love's lowlights highlighted on new CD (AP)

  AP - Stew & The Negro Problem, "Making It" (tnp)

  
  

• "Pina": a kinetic snapshot of a brilliant career in 3D (Reuters)

  Reuters - The name "Pina Bausch" might not ring a bell, but even if you don't follow modern dance, you might still be aware of her work as a choreographer - movie fans will remember the two haunting dance pieces she created that bookend Pedro Almodovar's "Talk to Her."

• Squirm-worthy "The Divide" a contemporary "Lord of the Rings" (Reuters)

  Reuters - There's something almost quaintly Cold War-ish about the setup of "The Divide," which traps a dozen or so residents of a Manhattan high-rise in a cellar bunker after the city has been nuked by parties unknown. It's the sort of post-apocalyptic scenario that popped up throughout the '50s and '60s in films like "The World, the Flesh and the Devil," "The Bed-Sitting Room" and "On the Beach."

• Review: "Contraband" operates by the numbers, loses count (Reuters)

  Reuters - While watching "Contraband," I was reminded of the recent passing of Leonard Stern, inventor of the Mad Libs party game. Mad Libs have entertained people for decades, and no doubt taught countless children the parts of speech, but they seemingly also inspired the screenplay for this dreary, generic movie.

• Review: A most displeasing "Joyful Noise" (Reuters)

  Reuters - Like a song that's missing the second verse and half of the chorus, "Joyful Noise" lurches along in a confused fashion, leaving audience members cocking their heads and trying to make sense of the messy results.

• Sparkling revival of Shaw satire 'The Philanderer' (AP)

  AP - As the Victorian era drew to a close, older generations were confounded by modern ideas such as "equality" for women.

  
  

• Review: Close almost too stoic in `Albert Nobbs' (AP)

  AP - The role of Albert Nobbs is one that's been near to Glenn Close's heart for a while. She first played it 30 years ago off-Broadway and reprises it now in a project she's been working for some time to bring to the screen.

  
  

• Review: Craig Finn has relaxed sound on solo CD (AP)

  AP - Craig Finn, "Clear Heart Full Eyes" (Vagrant)

  
  

• 5 great movies about airplanes (AP)

  AP - "Red Tails," in theaters this weekend, is about the first black fighter pilots in the United States: the Tuskegee Airmen who finally saw battle in the skies over Europe during World War II. It's a story that's very much worth telling; the film itself, however, is hokey and old-fashioned.

  
  

• Slim biography suits America's shortest presidency (AP)

  AP - "William Henry Harrison" (Times Books), by Gail Collins: At some point every schoolchild learns that William Henry Harrison was America's briefest president, his death from pneumonia in 1841 coming just a month after a record two-hour inaugural address on a wintry day. For young minds the message is clear: Don't go outside without a warm coat, and don't talk so much.

  
  

• Review: `Face Thief' lacks characters, suspense (AP)

  AP - "The Face Thief" (William Morrow), by Eli Gottlieb: The first few pages of Eli Gottlieb's third novel, "The Face Thief," are frightfully good: a woman, later identified as Margot, falls down the stairs, life not so much flashing before her eyes as spooling out in slow motion, mingling with her bone-splintering reality and things she cannot be sure are really there.