This week's round of what's hot in arts and entertainment include a balloon ride with Ed Asner and shows with two of our favorite Brits.
May 22 2009 12:00 AM EST
November 17 2015 5:28 AM EST
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This week's round of what's hot in arts and entertainment include a balloon ride with Ed Asner and shows with two of our favorite Brits.
- Up: As a culture we've just about lost the right to enjoy sweet, emotionally direct family filmmaking. If you doubt that, then go watch those Ice Age movies again. But Pixar keeps giving with this story of a 78-year-old man on a quest to fulfill a lifelong dream and the 8-year-old kid who tags along. While you wait in anticipation for opening night, play some of the cutely animated Up games .
- Drag Me to Hell: (pictured, top) Deadly spirits come to drag a woman to hell! Awesome! From Sam Raimi, Mr. Evil Dead himself. Why don't you really freak your friends out -- or just annoy them with another app request -- by sending them a curse on Facebook?
- Departures: This dark horse winner of the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film is about a laid-off musician whose make-ends-meet job of preparing the dead for burial teaches him a whole lot about life. Find out where and when it's coming to a theater near you. And if the film gets you thinking about funerals, watch this video on the business of funerals:
Get these tickets ...
- Boygroove -- begins May 29 -- Atlanta: An import from the Canadian fringe festival circuit, BoyGroove is a mockumentary play, in the vein of the film This Is Spinal Tap, tracing the rise and fall of a boy band. When beautiful Lance, who prays to Jesus for a bigger penis, gets outed, the band becomes the target of a homophobic video called "BoyGroove Sucks Dick" by Eminem-like rapper named Hypetastic. George Michael, Richard Simmons, and a Britney Spears clone all put in appearances as well. For boy-band parody fans who didn't get their fill with Altar Boyz, Atlanta's comedy-improv company Dad's Garage presents its version of BoyGroove starting May 29 and playing through June 20.
- Designing Women: The Complete First Season: Finally! After years of waiting, that other great four-women-under-one-roof sitcom of the '80s makes it to DVD. Extras include a cast reunion and 21-page booklet written by series creator Linda Bloodworth-Thomason. Read this 2006 acceptance speech by Delta Burke from the Human Rights Campaign about her fight for equality ... then get giddy over the trailer.
- Edward II: One of our great gay actors plays one of the theater's great characters, as Sir Ian McKellen tackles the Christopher Marlowe historical tragedy. This BBC filming of the production from the 1969 Edinburgh Festival first aired on PBS in 1975. Peruse photos and memorabilia from McKellen's run as Edward onstage.
- Jeeves & Wooster: The Complete Series: Before Hugh Laurie became Dr. House, he and the gay Stephen Fry were one of Britain's greatest dry-wit comedy duos. Their perfectly hilarious adaptations of P.G. Wodehouse's droll Bertie Wooster stories rank among TV comedy at its finest; this set belongs proudly on the shelf with either your DVDs or your books.