Kenneth Branagh

What do actors, models, presidents, the pope, Elvis, Hollywood madams, plastic surgeons, ACLU lawyers, skinheads, teen-age obese acrobats, Joey Buttafuoco, Donald Trump, former CIA operatives, real estate agents, transvestites and Charles Manson have in common?They are all guaranteed their 15 minutes of fame in a post-Warhol world, and they all make an appearance in "Celebrity," Woody Allen's fitfully funny, elegantly rendered musing on American culture's curious relationship to fame."You can tell a lot about a society by whom it chooses to celebrate," one character says in this slight but often droll commentary on the voracious maw of post-modern media culture, which swallows everyone in its path regardless of merit or morals.

With the arrival of David Beckham and wife Victoria, the former Posh Spice, in Los Angeles, and the airing of Victoria Beckham: Coming to America tonight on NBC, we decided to chart British imports that have translated well here as well as others that didn't - the monarchy, for one. Of course, the "British Invasion" gave us the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and the Troggs, but we could have done without S Club 7. And thanks again and again for James Bond,...

Kenneth Branagh is the comic wild card in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Each time the moviemakers flip him into a scene as blowhard wizard Gilderoy Lockhart, he rouses mirth with everything from his dippity-do hairstyle to his gleefully smug tone of voice. Lockhart turns his new position as the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor at Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry into an opportunity to promote his already best-selling books, including his new autobiography, Magical Me. And when Lockhart realizes that his students will include the celebrated Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe)

Shakespeare's Henry V is probably best known from the film versions starring and directed by Laurence Olivier (1944) and Kenneth Branagh (1989). The memory of these productions puts local performers at a disadvantage, and the play itself, with its heroic declamations, its scenes of pageantry and battle, offers serious challenges. The Chesapeake Shakespeare Company tackles the show boldly and comes off with credit. The outdoor production is being presented through July 6 at Patapsco Female Institute in Ellicott City, alternating with As You Like It. Does Henry V have a right to invade France?

WASHINGTON - Attacked a few years ago for allowing English majors to graduate without studying any Shakespeare, Georgetown University, with the help of Cambridge University Press, is publishing a magazine called Shakespeare.The 18-page glossy magazine will appear three times a year and is intended to appeal to Elizabethan scholars, people in theater and film and teachers.Michael J. Collins, the dean of the School for Summer and Continuing Education at Georgetown and the magazine's publisher, said the journal was not an act of contrition.

Much was made in recent months of Robert Altman's tussling with Polygram Films over the final cut of "The Gingerbread Man," his adaptation of a John Grisham story.Altman wound up getting his way, and "The Gingerbread Man" in theaters is apparently the one he wanted. But it's difficult to see what all the fuss was about. "The Gingerbread Man" is a good film, perfectly respectable in every way, but great art it isn't.Kenneth Branagh, best known for his vigorous adaptations of "Henry V" and "Hamlet," plays Rick Magruder, a hotshot lawyer living in Savannah.

With the arrival of David Beckham and wife Victoria, the former Posh Spice, in Los Angeles, and the airing of Victoria Beckham: Coming to America tonight on NBC, we decided to chart British imports that have translated well here as well as others that didn't - the monarchy, for one. Of course, the "British Invasion" gave us the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and the Troggs, but we could have done without S Club 7. And thanks again and again for James Bond,...

Kenneth Branagh has populated his vigorous adaptation of Shakespeare's "Much Ado About Nothing" with a trans-Atlantic cast of Oscar-winners and big-screen icons: There's Emma Thompson, of course, who plays Beatrice opposite husband Branagh's Benedick; there's Denzel Washington as Don Pedro, Prince of Aragon; there's Batman, Michael Keaton, in the Monty Pythonesque role of Constable Dogberry, and there are a couple of young Americans -- Keanu Reeves as...

Last week at a Queens, New York auction, fans of filmmaker Woody Allen acquired their own stardust memories. Hundreds of props from his many films were sold off because there was no more room for them in Allen's movie warehouse.Among the interiors and other treasures purchased were shoes from "Deconstructing Harry," mahogany radio consoles from "Radio Days" and a few gaudy sofas from "Bullets Over Broadway."Surprisingly, in a time when "Antiques Roadshow" yokels are told their Charo napkins are worth a mint, none of the cinema tchotchkes required astronomical bids.

For the first few decades, movies only came in black and white. Then color took over and elbowed its predecessor into the shadows.But a little black and white can still do a lot for a film - as New Line's "Pleasantville" proves. "Pleasantville," which opened in theaters Friday, uses glorious B&W to depict the title town, a throwback to those wholesome little villages that dominated TV screens of the 1950s (think "Father Knows Best" or "Leave It To Beaver"). The effect is both nostalgic and visually striking.

Kenneth Branagh is the comic wild card in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Each time the moviemakers flip him into a scene as blowhard wizard Gilderoy Lockhart, he rouses mirth with everything from his dippity-do hairstyle to his gleefully smug tone of voice. Lockhart turns his new position as the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor at Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry into an opportunity to promote his already best-selling books, including his new autobiography, Magical Me. And when Lockhart realizes that his students will include the celebrated Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe)

Last week at a Queens, New York auction, fans of filmmaker Woody Allen acquired their own stardust memories. Hundreds of props from his many films were sold off because there was no more room for them in Allen's movie warehouse.Among the interiors and other treasures purchased were shoes from "Deconstructing Harry," mahogany radio consoles from "Radio Days" and a few gaudy sofas from "Bullets Over Broadway."Surprisingly, in a time when "Antiques Roadshow" yokels are told their Charo napkins are worth a mint, none of the cinema tchotchkes required astronomical bids.

What do actors, models, presidents, the pope, Elvis, Hollywood madams, plastic surgeons, ACLU lawyers, skinheads, teen-age obese acrobats, Joey Buttafuoco, Donald Trump, former CIA operatives, real estate agents, transvestites and Charles Manson have in common?They are all guaranteed their 15 minutes of fame in a post-Warhol world, and they all make an appearance in "Celebrity," Woody Allen's fitfully funny, elegantly rendered musing on American culture's curious relationship to fame."You can tell a lot about a society by whom it chooses to celebrate," one character says in this slight but often droll commentary on the voracious maw of post-modern media culture, which swallows everyone in its path regardless of merit or morals.

For the first few decades, movies only came in black and white. Then color took over and elbowed its predecessor into the shadows.But a little black and white can still do a lot for a film - as New Line's "Pleasantville" proves. "Pleasantville," which opened in theaters Friday, uses glorious B&W to depict the title town, a throwback to those wholesome little villages that dominated TV screens of the 1950s (think "Father Knows Best" or "Leave It To Beaver"). The effect is both nostalgic and visually striking.

Much was made in recent months of Robert Altman's tussling with Polygram Films over the final cut of "The Gingerbread Man," his adaptation of a John Grisham story.Altman wound up getting his way, and "The Gingerbread Man" in theaters is apparently the one he wanted. But it's difficult to see what all the fuss was about. "The Gingerbread Man" is a good film, perfectly respectable in every way, but great art it isn't.Kenneth Branagh, best known for his vigorous adaptations of "Henry V" and "Hamlet," plays Rick Magruder, a hotshot lawyer living in Savannah.

WASHINGTON - Attacked a few years ago for allowing English majors to graduate without studying any Shakespeare, Georgetown University, with the help of Cambridge University Press, is publishing a magazine called Shakespeare.The 18-page glossy magazine will appear three times a year and is intended to appeal to Elizabethan scholars, people in theater and film and teachers.Michael J. Collins, the dean of the School for Summer and Continuing Education at Georgetown and the magazine's publisher, said the journal was not an act of contrition.

"El Mariachi" is already famous for being better than at least a hundred films that cost at least a hundred times as much to make, proving how much bang for the buck can be gotten when talent is added and studio and union politics are subtracted from the equation. It cost $7,000 and you can't evenget a very good car for $ 7,000! But let's not obsess on the figure. Robert Rodriguez certainly didn't; he was a University of Texas student who, with a rented 16mm camera, decided to wander into Mexico, throw together a fast, crude shoot-'em-up, which he cynically hoped to offer to Spanish-language video.

SO MANY movies. So little time.Five films open today at area theaters. This is a perfect weekend to escape chores, work and summer doldrums to the chilly, popcorn-scented darkness of a movie house.How to choose one from this crop? Which to see first?Can't do it by the stars alone. Today, critic Lou Cedrone bestows two stars each on four of the films (and the fifth goes unrated because it's a restored classic).Maybe a particular genre appeals to you.One movie roars into town with motorcycle cowboys as rebel-saviors.

It's no accident that the four cinematic treatments of Shakespeare that purists love most are Grigori Kozintsev's Russian-language "Hamlet" and "King Lear," and Akira Kurosawa's Japanese fantasias on "Lear" ("Ran") and "Macbeth" Throne of Blood").Without Shakespeare's sacred, inviolable text, we can enjoy these movies without comparisons to the originals. Even the finest English-language film treatments -- Olivier's "Henry V," "Richard III" and "Othello" -- have been subject to mean-spirited quibbling from the Shakespearean Comintern.

Kenneth Branagh has populated his vigorous adaptation of Shakespeare's "Much Ado About Nothing" with a trans-Atlantic cast of Oscar-winners and big-screen icons: There's Emma Thompson, of course, who plays Beatrice opposite husband Branagh's Benedick; there's Denzel Washington as Don Pedro, Prince of Aragon; there's Batman, Michael Keaton, in the Monty Pythonesque role of Constable Dogberry, and there are a couple of young Americans -- Keanu Reeves as...