Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds in The ProposalTHE PROPOSAL

"All right, you've got five minutes to sell me your pitch. Go."

"Well, it's a romantic comedy - I'm thinking about calling it The Proposal - and it's about this bitchy, selfish book editor in Manhattan who learns deeper values and becomes a better person after falling in love with her assistant."

"That doesn't sound very funny."

Robin RogersBlues singer/songwriter Robin Rogers has been performing professionally for the better part of 30 years and remembers where it was that she first felt the excitement of a live audience: on her elementary-school stage, in the early 1960s, performing an a cappella rendition of "What Child Is This?" for the students' Christmas pageant.

"It really had an effect on me when I heard everyone applaud," says Rogers, with a laugh, during a recent phone interview. "I thought, 'This is kinda cool.'"

Nicholas Charles Waldbusser, Ryan Mosher-Ohr, Ryan Anderson, Angela Rathman, and Kevin Maynard in The Last Mass at St. Casimir'sOver my many years of theatre-going, there isn't a stage trilogy I've enjoyed quite the way I've enjoyed the Pazinski-family comedies of author Tom Dudzick, a trio of lightly philosophical, understatedly touching, devastatingly funny plays that began with 1994's Over the Tavern and continued with 1998's King o' the Moon.

And I don't think I've ever loved a stage production quite the way I love the Richmond Hill Barn Theatre's current The Last Mass at St. Casimir's, the climactic chapter (written in 2002) not only in Dudzick's trilogy, but in Richmond Hill's, as Geneseo's Barn Theatre produced Over the Tavern in the summer of 2005, and King o' the Moon in the summer of 2007.

Harold Truitt and Jennifer Sondgeroth in The King & IQuad City Music Guild's current presentation of The King & I is colorful and handsomely mounted, and in one scene, at least, it's even surprising, particularly if you don't peruse the program's cast list before the production starts. (Please skip the next two paragraphs if you don't want the surprise ruined here.)

Denzel Washington in The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3THE TAKING OF PELHAM 1 2 3

Set in modern-day New York City, director Tony Scott's action-thriller The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 finds Denzel Washington playing transit-authority executive Walter Garber, a conscientious worker and devoted family man accused of accepting bribes, and consequently - 799 WORDS TO GO!!! - demoted to the rank of dispatcher. One afternoon, while monitoring routine subway transport, Garber notices an irregular stop made by one particular train, and attempts to make radio contact with its motorman. Instead, he makes contact with the train's hijacker, a tattooed psychopath who calls himself Ryder, and - 751 WORDS TO GO!!! - is played by John Travolta. Ordering Garber to secure a ransom of $10 million, Ryder insists that he'll begin shooting passengers if his demands aren't met, and given an hour to procure the money, Garber, a hostage negotiator (John Turturro), and the city's mayor (James Gandolfini) unite to stop the - 700 WORDS TO GO!!! - madman from ... .

Oh, I'm sorry, are those interruptions irritating? Well, you'd better get used to it - gripping and entertaining though it mostly is, Scott's movie oftentimes feels like the cinematic equivalent of that opening paragraph.

Zach Galifianakis, Bradley Cooper, and Ed Helms in The HangoverTHE HANGOVER

Imagine yourself at a wild, debaucherous, shameful-good-time party, one at which you imbibe copious amounts of booze and laugh all night, yet one that you get to enjoy with no subsequent hangover. That's The Hangover.

Dana Joel Nicholson and Allison Collins-Elfline in the Riverbend Theatre Collective's The Last Five YearsJason Robert Brown's The Last Five Years is perhaps the best-known, most widely adored American musical that, in all likelihood, you've never heard of. Unless, that is, you're well-versed in modern musical theatre, in which case Brown's two-character, mostly dialogue-free offering probably isn't familiar so much as borderline-legendary.

Kaci Scott and Thomas Stewart in GreaseI love TV's The Office for many reasons, but the most basic is that nowhere else on television will you find a weekly ensemble of 16 performers, each of whom is consistently in character, and each of whom is consistently funny. No matter where your eye lands in a group scene, you find yourself grinning - if not laughing out loud - at some priceless reading or reaction, and that's what routinely occurs throughout the Timber Lake Playhouse's current, knockout presentation of Grease, a production that, coincidentally, also boasts an ensemble of 16 stellar comedians. (Seventeen, if you count the hysterical, wordless, run-on cameo by Jake Bollman.) And Timber Lake's troupe even tops the sitcom's office drones in one regard, because damn, but this staff can sing.

Up's Carl FredricksenDirected and co-written by Pete Docter, Pixar's Up -- the studio's 10th full-length animated feature -- is so funny, touching, and inventive that I felt like a bit of an ingrate, if not a complete jerk, for wishing it were just a little bit better.

Eddie Staver III and Denise Yoder in Oedipus RexSure, it's the Greek tragedy to end all Greek tragedies. But is any stage tragedy, Greek or otherwise, as unashamedly, wickedly enjoyable as that of the fall of Oedipus?

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