THE LOVELY BONES

The Lovely Bones, director Peter Jackson's long-awaited take on Alice Sebold's beloved novel, is a stupefyingly bad movie, the kind of big-screen debacle that makes you wonder if its entire creative team wasn't suffering through some hideous, collective blockage of talent all throughout filming. You can feel it going wrong in the first minutes, when a car's quick swerve results in an unconvincing and inappropriately comedic loss of a hubcap, but the shock of Jackson's endeavor is that practically nothing in it goes right. Tonally, just about every scene here feels a little bit off, and the rest feel way, way off; it's almost as if Jackson, screenwriting collaborators Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens, and a (usually) wildly gifted cast purposely set out to make the absolute worst Lovely Bones adaptation possible.

Theatre

Joseph & the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat

Circa '21 Dinner Playhouse

Wednesday, January 13 through Saturday, March 20

Like the swallows to Capistrano, you can count on Ann Nieman to make an annual return to the Circa '21 Dinner Playhouse, as the Texas-based director has helmed each of the venue's January productions since 2005. And 2010 finds her returning for one of Circa '21's most popular titles in Joseph & the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, which Nieman last staged for the theatre five years ago, and which was noteworthy for being the last Circa '21 production to feature a certain local Arts Editor amongst its cast. Modesty forbids mentioning who that is, exactly, but ... .

Oh, screw it. It was me. I was in it. It was awesome.

As one calendar year ends and another begins, it feels like a good time to give thanks. And amidst the lame romantic comedies and thrill-less thrillers and unending stream of remakes, sequels, and - in the case of Rob Zombie's Halloween II - even the remake of a sequel, there was actually quite a lot that I was thankful for in the movie year of 2009.

NINE

Despite its mostly lackluster reviews and rather lame box-office intake, director Rob Marshall's Nine is actually pretty entertaining. But seriously, shouldn't any movie starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Marion Cotillard, Nicole Kidman, Judi Dench, Penélope Cruz, Kate Hudson, and Sophia Loren be considerably better than "pretty entertaining"? (Collectively, these performers have amassed 18 Oscar nominations and eight statuettes, though it's doubtful that Nine will do much to increase those tallies.)