After the world premiere of Brokeback Mountain at the Venice Film Festival, where it won the award for Best Picture, the publicity machines began referring to it as “the gay cowboy movie.” That tag line changed once people got a chance to see the film. Now it is being called one of the best love stories Hollywood has turned out in a long while.
If you grew up on C. S. Lewis’s Narnia books, you won’t be disappointed in The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the first in a projected series. It’s visually rich and imaginative, and emotionally stirring.
Director Sidney Lumet once lampooned the “rubber ducky” school of drama: “Someone once took his rubber ducky away from him, and that’s why he’s a deranged killer.” In telling the story of singer Johnny Cash and his tumultuous reckoning with fame—including a first marriage that crashed in divorce (though a union that produced Rosanne Cash can hardly be characterized a failure); an addiction to pill
When two violent criminals show up at Tom Stall’s diner, he is forced to take action. He overcomes the assailants, obtains their gun and kills them. Widespread news coverage tells the story of this peaceful family man who halted the killers and their spree of violence.
Orchard Gardens, a K-8 pilot school started in Roxbury, Massachusetts, in 2003 did not live up to expectations. It was racked by violence, and its 2010 test scores placed it among the bottom five public schools in the state. Andrew Bott, the school’s sixth principal in seven years, fired all the security guards and devoted the money to teaching the arts. It was a risky move that’s paid off. Tests scores have improved, even though they’re still below average, and student behavior has improved. “I’ve been more open, and I’ve expressed myself more than I would have before the arts came,” said one student who has been accepted into a public high school specializing in visual and performing arts (NBC News, May 1).