Meryl Streep

Workers at ExxonMobil's Massive Baytown Plant (Almost) Went On Strike over safety

The folks over at Exxon Mobil's Baytown refinery were facing a possible Norma Rae situation last week when local United Steelworkers representatives threatened a strike if the Exxon people didn't put in the health and safety provisions they'd asked for in their contracts. Local USW rep Rich "Hoot" ... More >>

Remembering Patsy Cline, 50 Years After Her Fatal Plane Crash

On March 5, 1963, country singers Patsy Cline, Cowboy Copas, and Hawkshaw Hawkins died in a plane crash near Camden, Tennesee, about 90 miles west of Nashville. Around 6:20 p.m., their Piper Comanche PA-24 aircraft slammed into the ground, killing everyone on board instantly and leaving a six-foot-d ... More >>

Mother Courage

The University of Houston mounts Bertolt Brecht’s most famous play — and stays true to his intent.

Material Girl: Madonna's Top 10 TV Commercials

They don't call Madonna the Material Girl for nothing. She's definitely a self-promoter when it comes to her music. Better yet, when she does this, it's never the same advertised persona. Take, for example, when she first came onto MTV and performed "Like A Virgin" at the 1985 VMAs versus her perce ... More >>

Oscar Categories That We Wish Existed

By now you have all seen this year's Oscar nominations, released yesterday, in Beverly Hills, California. Nine films were nominated for Best Picture, including Hugo, Moneyball, War Horse, The Artist, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, The Help, Midnight in Paris and The Tree of Life. Fun stuff, espe ... More >>

I Don't Know How She Did It

Margaret Thatcher as victimized woman in The Iron Lady.

The Film Issue: People of the Year

Your 2011 Fall/Winter Movie Preview - Part 2

​You know the drill: the fall movie season starts today, my pretties (my review of Contagion will be up soon...there's a reason it didn't make the preview). Yesterday we covered the first half of 2011's most anticipated upcoming releases, determined through a rigorous scientific analysis consi ... More >>

Pop Rocks: Chaz Bono Is Far from the Worst DWTS Contestant

Worse than her? Really?​As someone who doesn't watch Dancing with the Stars (note to self: watch DWTS for upcoming "Sight Unseen" blog), I'm not sure if I'm supposed to care about the announcement that Chaz Bono was added to the cast: Transgender activist Chaz Bono is speaking out for the fir ... More >>

Oscar Night 2011: The Live Blog!

​We are only less than three hours out from bringing you live-blogging coverage, right here, of this year's Academy Awards, and we are more than excited to take you through the night for every win, loss, awful dress, awesome dress, foible, and foul-up Hollywood throws our way.

The Hours

Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf? Virginia, for one.

Movies That Make Us Hungry

Big Night​It's really freaking hot outside, in case you hadn't noticed. And when it's really freaking hot, we get really freaking lazy (more so than usual) and we want to watch movies. Lots of them. In succession. Trouble is, movie theaters are crazy-expensive and this summer's movie lineup ... More >>

Recipe: Julia Child's Beef Bourguignon

​After Julie Powell's online rendezvous with Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking, everyone started talking about Child's Beef Bourguignon. Before Powell, and then Meryl Streep, breathed life back into this traditional French beef stew, only professional chefs and skilled cooks ha ... More >>

Baldwin, Streep & Steve Martin -- Three Old Pros Having Fun: New On DVD

Warning: Includes flagrant use of marijuana by old(er) people​Out today on DVD is the Meryl Streep/Steve Martin/Alec Baldwin triangle It's Complicated by writer/director Nancy Meyers (Something's Gotta Give and The Holiday). Actually the story isn't very complicated at all. Jane (Streep) is a woma ... More >>

Something's Gotta Give

Nancy Meyers can't keep making the same movie over and over again.

Year in Film: Three Critics' Top Three

What a Fox

Wes Anderson brings his Wes Anderson-ness to animation — and it's a fantastic fit.

Three Nights of Movie Musicals

O, mamma mia, the rain in Spain has 76 trombones

Top Chef

In praise of the Julia half of Julie & Julia.

Harvard Beats Yale 29-29

This is one football game that made history on and off the field

Puppet Masters

Things get creepy at the CAMH

Buyer Beware of Confessions of a Shopaholic

Bush and this movie agree: Go shopping! (Wait, don't.)

Meryl Streep Is Pretty Much Scaring the Hell Out of Me Right About Now

So I get the fact that this new movie Doubt starring Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman is really supposed to be about faith and trust and, well, doubt (duh), but am I the only one who is totally and completely freaked out by the trailer / commercials and the image of Meryl as a mean, nasty nun ... More >>

Doubt Wags the Finger of Moral Relativism

J'Accuse!

Ladies Light in The Women

Once grand, this story is now just another chick flick

Mamma Mia! drains the fun out of ABBA

Thank you for the music, but your movie's kinda drab.

The Year In Film

Judd Apatow's pretty good year and much more

Lions for Lambs

The odd upside of Robert Redford's terribly earnest, quite terrible war drama

Rendition

It's not torture, but this latest Mideast thriller's as conventional as they come. We're (water) bored. (Sorry.)

Evening

Chick-flick genre to Evening: Why you gotta make us look bad?

Farce of a Champion

The Delightful Dud

Cruella de Vogue

The Devil Wears Prada slaps the latest duds on an infamous fashion editor

Lost in Translation

All talk and little action, The Interpreter doesn't even make sense

Sour Lemony

Jim Carrey is in fine form, but the rest of Snicket is less fortunate

Summer Camp

Demme's Candidate overhaul goes for the knowing giggle

Farrelly Mediocre

The idiots what brung you Dumb and Dumber ain't funny no more

Sour Hours

Streep, Moore and Kidman reveal that it's sad to be sad

(Stay) Out of Africa

The cast can't transcend the overwrought script to this melodrama set in Kenya

String Along

Maudlin Music hardly matches the Craven image

Slow Dancing

Lughnasa stumbles in the leap from play to motion picture

Family-Style Friction

Strife stirs relatives in the sentimental One True Thing

Death Becomes Her

Hold the Creamed Corn

Striptease captures the essence of Carl Hiaasen's darkly funny novel

Letters

Family Troubles

Before and After asks: When a son's accused of a crime, what do you do?

Female Trouble

Two offbeat films chronicle three offbeat young women's struggles

Flings, First and Final

Two new romances approach doomed passion, as seen at different ages and stages

Letters

Streep in the Wild

Move aside Sly and Arnold, Meryl's gone muscular