Drugs may be the contraband of choice in most modern, American crime capers, but this African adventure revolves around a present-day black market in petroleum. The picture's protagonist is Riva (Patsha Bay), a petty thief who has commandeered a truckload of gasoline across the Angolan border into the Congo with plans to resell it in his hometown of Kinshasa where the populace is in the grips of an oil shortage.

When you think of Ryan Reynolds, what mostly comes to mind are his wacky romantic romps like The Proposal, Van Wilder, Adventureland and Defintely, Maybe. Comedy chops aside, one still might naturally wonder whether he would able to summon sufficient gravitas when asked to portray a comic book superhero.

Trish Bradley, left, from Portland, says Julius Caesar was her favorite play during her visit to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland last week, where she saw six plays in three days. She was delighted with Love's Labor's Lost, and the smash hit musical, The Pirates of Penzance, a musical performed on the outdoor theater stage, and directed by OSF's Artistic Director, Bill Rauch.

Bad Teacher, Cars 2, The Best and the Brightest, A Better Life, Conan O'Brien, Can't Stop, General Orders No. 9

The Fred Meyer Broadway Over America series presents Mary Poppins – with the musical production's first-ever African American featured actress.
In an interview with The Skanner News this week, actress Q. Smith said she exults in her edgy role as Poppins' viscious nemesis, Miss Andrew (as well as two other parts, Queen Victoria and Miss Smythe). Producers of the rollicking musical describe it as "not just a fluffy copy of the movie."

In terms of slavery in the Americas, most people assume that more Africans were brought to the U.S. than anywhere else in this hemisphere. But truth be told, only a tiny fraction were transported to this soil, with ten times as many being taken to Brazil, and even twice as many to Cuba.
This is just one of the fascinating factoids divulged in Blackin Latin America, a PBSspecial hosted by Harvard's Henry Louis Gates. A half-dozen countries serve as the focus of this four-part series, namely, Cuba, Brazil, Mexico, Peru, Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

At the top of the heap was "Mormon," which has taken Broadway by storm this season. It captured nine awards, including best musical, for its offensive yet good-natured look at two missionaries who arrive in Uganda and get way more than they bargained for, including gun-toting warlords

Clint Eastwood, Sidney Poitier, Helen Mirren, Samuel L. Jackson, Tim Robbins and Forest Whitaker were among the stars who feted Freeman during a ceremony Thursday at Sony Studios, former home of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

Judy Moody and the NOT Bummer Summer, Super 8, Agrarian Utopia, Bride Flight, Just Like Us, Queen of the Sun: What Are the Bees Telling Us?, Reversion, The Trip, Trollhunter, Viva Riva!

Since 9/11, Muslims have basically become the N-words of the new millennium, being indiscriminately demonized in much the same way young African-Americans were universally vilified by the FBI during the rise of the Black Power Movement. And it this similar sort of predicament which is sensitively explored in Mooz-Lum, a coming-of-age flick by Qasim "Q" Basir.