Live Design: The Grand Manner

Two days left to see A.R. Gurney's comic rumination on an encounter with Katharine Cornell, with Kate Burton, Boyd Gaines, and Bobby Steggert, as I resume my usual semi-usual posting, mostly about posts. Just the way it is these days.

Popdose: Cyrus vs. Predators

Alien muscle against Adrien Brody and John C. Reilly in a death match with Jonah Hill--who will survive and what will be left of them?

Popdose: Columbia Noir, Hammer Suspense

A hot summer just added a few degrees as as the moody masterpieces Human Desire (Fritz Lang) and Nightfall (Jacques Tourneur) arrive in one box set and Joseph Losey's astonishing These Are the Damned in another.

Popdose: Inception, the soundtrack

A few days before Leo and his "dream thieves" can plant themselves into our minds, Hans Zimmer and Johnny Marr insinuate themselves into our ears with its soundtrack album.

Live Design: The Merchant of Venice

Al Pacino seeks his pound of flesh in Shakespeare's confounding comedy, running in repertory with The Winter's Tale through Aug. 1 at the Delacorte.

The century mark

Gloria Stuart, star of The Old Dark House (1932) and, 65 years later, an Oscar nominee for Titanic (1997), has hit it today. (James Cameron rediscovered her when he heard her commentary on the Dark House LD, which I own.) But she's not alone, as Film Experience blogger Nathaniel Rogers discovered when he researched the most senior Oscar nominees, and his commenters chimed in with a few more. A heartening read, particularly for me, as we mourn the passing of our 16-year-old cat Tom-Yum, a star in his own right.

Popdose: Phil Spector's bad hair day

There's agony and ecstasy, and a whole lot of kvetching, in the new documentary The Agony and the Ecstasy of Phil Spector, now at Film Forum. Plus: the doc It Came from Kuchar, Toy Story 3. Agora, and the proverbial much, much more.

Memo to Elena Kagan

In the vampires vs. werewolves debate that electrified the nation yesterday during your confirmation hearing, there is clear precedent for a liberal jurist to side with the lycanthropes. From 1943’s Return of the Vampire to the Underworld movies of today werewolves are a minority constantly oppressed by aristocratic vampires. How cute the vampires are is not a matter of judicial interest. Conservative justices on Team John might disagree but when the Twilight series is hauled before the Supremes for crimes against literature and cinema there is only one way to rule in this particular debate.