CARRIE

(Author's note: Spoilers will abound. Given that the movie under consideration is an oftentimes word-for-word updating of a 37-year-old work, I hope I'll be forgiven for them.)

As remakes of beloved genre classics go, I suppose there's little point in being bothered by the new Carrie. Director Kimberly Peirce's outing, after all, is easy to sit through, smartly staged, generally well-acted, and, in most regards, incredibly faithful to Brian De Palma's 1976 original (which was, itself, reasonably faithful to Stephen King's debut novel of 1974). The CGI effects are pretty weak, and the movie isn't even slightly scary, and considering that nearly all sentient beings know what happens to poor Carrie White at the prom - with the movie's entire advertising campaign based on post-prom imagery - there's almost nothing in the way of storyline surprise, but whatever. It's fine.

Music

T. Hardy Morris

Rozz-Tox

Thursday, October 24, 9 p.m.

Founding Dead Confederate musician T. Hardy Morris performs a special concert at Rock Island's Rozz-Tox on October 24, and in reviewing the singer/songwriter/guitarist's solo debut Audition Tapes this past summer, Paste magazine wrote, "It's like Morris abandoned the 'shrooms in favor of a nice Americana-nodding spliff." The review went on to call the CD's title track "a simple slice of alt-country pie" with "a scoop of emo melting across the molasses-drenched crust," and the album itself "an all-ages potluck" and "worth a toast."

Gosh, that's an awful lot of food references. Are we sure it's not the Paste author who favored that nice Americana-nodding spliff?

GRAVITY

Alfonso Cuarón's space thriller Gravity opened this past weekend, and if you haven't seen it yet, you really should. Like, now. I'm serious. Step away from whatever electronic device you're using to read this and get in line at the cineplex - or, if the cineplex isn't currently open for business, drive over there and wait. Don't be one of those people who procrastinates until the movie hits home video and then whines about missing it on its initial release. Because I'm telling you: You're gonna want to catch Cuarón's latest on the big screen, and preferably on the biggest screen possible with your 3D glasses firmly in place. No kidding, folks: This thing is going to blow your mind.

DON JON

Writer/director/star Joseph Gordon-Levitt's Don Jon casts its auteur as a New Jersey bartender obsessed with pornography, and you can view the film as an extremely raunchy romantic comedy, or an untraditional coming-of-age saga, or a mostly lighthearted exploration of the perils of addiction. But I prefer to think of Gordon-Levitt's sprightly, confident filmmaking debut more as a modernized Pinocchio, in which, through lessons learned and a touch of magic, a creature made of wood - or rather, one sporting wood - eventually becomes a real live boy.