Love Story

"Grace" is about an elderly woman who can't remember what day it is and who continually breaks into tears. She needs help dressing and eating. Her eyes often have the look of an animal caught in a trap.One of the few things she connects with are the lyrics, "Jesus loves me this I know/ 'Cause the Bible tells me so." She sings it with the voice of a child."Grace," which airs at 10 tonight on MPT, is one of the greatest love stories you are ever going to see on TV -- anywhere on TV. That's not exaggeration.

The American Craft Council Show has been coming to Baltimore for 36 years, and the two have been good to each other: Workmanship that is as much art as craft has been embraced each year by huge crowds. But like any relationship, it can benefit from a little freshening. So organizers scoured the country — and other craft shows — for new talent, and there will be almost 200 new artists among the 700 exhibitors this weekend at the Baltimore Convention Center. They bring a wide range of offerings: exotic dolls, intricately carved gourds, whimsical furniture, jewelry that tells a love story, flowers preserved forever as glass.

A Glen Arm woman accused of shooting her estranged husband to death is mentally ill, her attorney told a jury this morning, going so far as to compare Mary C. Koontz, 60, to John Hinckley Jr. — the man who shot former President Ronald Reagan — during opening arguments. Koontz, whose trial began today, faces seven charges, including first-degree murder and first-degree assault. The prosecution intends to seek a sentence of life in prison without parole. Ronald G. Koontz, a former teacher and wrestling coach at Towson High School who later became an administrator in the Baltimore County school system, was killed June 19, 2009, three days before father's day. Prosecutor Robin S. Coffin told the jury that Mary Koontz flew from Florida where she was living, woke up before 6 a.m. in the Towson hotel where she was staying, took the gun and ammunition she had earlier purchased and went to Glen Arm. There, Koontz parked at an adjoining property and snuck through the woods.

It's another remarkably beautiful but simple video from Baltimore's Future Islands. "Balance," a cut from their Oct. 11 LP On the Water , gets a video courtesy of director Jay Buim. A nomadic couple hitchhikes along, finding enjoyment in innocent pleasures that feel wholly American - parking lot mischief, carnival rides and fried dough, aimless wandering down a highway hand-in-hand. The couple have little - really, just a backpack and each other - but their moods are never morose.

If only a few minutes of "At First Sight" rang true.Although based on a true story, this tale of a blind massage therapist whose busybody new girlfriend convinces him to undergo a risky operation to restore his sight comes across as phony as anything Washington has to offer these days.Leads Val Kilmer and Mira Sorvino exhibit hardly any chemistry (though they do share the bond of being inordinately attractive people), the script never opts for a single tug at your heartstrings when a dozen will do, and the supporting players (including Nathan Lane, Kelly McGillis and Bruce Davison)

Washington -- Say ''Hi'' to Madge and Donald. They don't know each other yet, but they will, since this is a love story. As New Yorkers they experience all the tensions of urban life and, like everyone else in their age and income bracket, they feel they aren't Realizing Their Inner Potential.Madge decided that her problem was that she was too self-effacing. So she bought a self-help book: Dr. G. Alvaro de la Blanc's best-seller ''Blow Your Own Horn: A Guide to Self-Assertiveness.'' She had a soft little voice: Dr. de la Blanc taught her to speak resonantly from her diaphragm.

Comparisons are inevitable between Robert James Waller's guaranteed tear-jerker and two other authors' works that tugged national heartstrings in the sentimental '70s. (Interesting to note: The best-selling novel of the hard-edged 1980s was "Clear and Present Danger," the techno-thriller by Maryland author Tom Clancy, which sold 1.6 million copies in hardcover)."Love Story" parallels "The Bridges of Madison County" in several ways. It, too, was a very short (131 pages), hyper-romantic but bittersweet first novel written by an academician -- in this case, Yale classics professor Erich Segal.

Sometimes it seems this first novel's purpose is to rehabilitate the literary image of the black man. And there is nothing wrong with that.He has been portrayed as an irresponsible lout, often weak, usually unsupportive, not up to the level of his woman.That is not the case with "Urban Romance," which is built around a simple city-boy-meets-suburban-girl love story. The men here come in all types: devoted, pining lovers; hustlers; arrogant, opportunistic politicians."I am not all men," one character says.

An interview with Rita Snyder, founding member of the Sampler Book Club. How did your club get started? We started in August of 1997. All of our kids went to the same nursery school. ... We had eight members. A few have moved on, but we've replaced them. We decided to stick with eight because we did not want it to be too large. We had decided to name the club Sampler because we were not going to be hard and fast about what we read. We really like to read a variety of different things. We each take turns choosing the book.

There's too much sound and not enough fury in "The Cemetery Club." It can't make up its mind whether it wants to be a love story about a widow and a widower who fight through class differences and the prejudices of friends to have a mutually satisfying relationship, or a Neil Simon roadshow full of zippy one-liners to keep cheap seats tittering.So, basically, it just doesn't work.Of the two themes, I much preferred the first. Ellen Burstyn and Danny Aiello are two performers who have always carried with them an unusual patina of authenticity, and as they grope toward this thing called love they're quite impressive.

Infinity Theatre Company continues its first full summer season with "Little Shop of Horrors," a 1982 dark musical comedy with book and lyrics by Howard Ashman and music by Alan Menken. With this terrific production, Infinity fulfills its promise to bring New York professionals to the Annapolis theater scene. The opening notes by the five-piece, onstage live rock band signaled the exciting start of this Broadway-caliber show at Children's Theatre in Annapolis. Every role is perfectly cast from top to bottom, beginning with those sassy Skid Row street urchins, Crystal, Ronnette and Chiffon — played by Ariana Scoggins, Ardale Shepherd and Martina Sykes — who serve as a grooving Greek chorus.

More than 1,000 letters that Vincent dePaul Gisriel Sr., a World War II B-17 Flying Fortress bombardier, and Martha Owens, whom he married in 1943, wrote to one another during World War II were stored in a box in a daughter's attic, where they remained unread for nearly 60 years. Martha died in 1977, and her beloved Vince in 2003. It was after his father's death that a son, Vincent dePaul Gisriel Jr., remembered the letters. He was seeking more knowledge about his father's wartime service flying with the 8th Air Force, based in England, on bombing runs over Germany.

A Glen Arm woman accused of shooting her estranged husband to death is mentally ill, her attorney told a jury this morning, going so far as to compare Mary C. Koontz, 60, to John Hinckley Jr. — the man who shot former President Ronald Reagan — during opening arguments. Koontz, whose trial began today, faces seven charges, including first-degree murder and first-degree assault. The prosecution intends to seek a sentence of life in prison without parole. Ronald G. Koontz, a former teacher and wrestling coach at Towson High School who later became an administrator in the Baltimore County school system, was killed June 19, 2009, three days before father's day. Prosecutor Robin S. Coffin told the jury that Mary Koontz flew from Florida where she was living, woke up before 6 a.m. in the Towson hotel where she was staying, took the gun and ammunition she had earlier purchased and went to Glen Arm. There, Koontz parked at an adjoining property and snuck through the woods.

"Extraordinary Measures," starring Brendan Fraser and Harrison Ford, is a desperate drama of a father racing against time to find a cure for a rare genetic disease that is killing two of his children. So you know going in that the challenge for director Tom Vaughan is how to handle the science and the sentiment - tear-soaked terrain that has proved difficult for filmmakers over the years, from "Love Story" to "Lorenzo's Oil." Vaughan opts for restraint on both fronts, giving us a life-and-death story that feels brisk, businesslike and oddly emotionless as we follow the deterioration of the kids and the difficulties of the research, as well as the business of turning a scientific theory into a life-saving and, just as important, a profit-generating treatment.

ERICH SEGAL, 72 Classics professor, author of 'Love Story' Erich Segal, a Yale University classics professor whose first novel, the weepy "Love Story," became a pop-culture phenomenon, selling more than 20 million copies in three dozen languages, died of a heart attack Sunday in London. "What can you say about a 25-year-old girl who died?" Mr. Segal wrote in the first line of the 1970 novel about star-crossed lovers, played in the blockbuster 1970 movie by Ali MacGraw and Ryan O'Neal.

Viggo Mortensen and Kodi Smit-McPhee have eaten bugs together. They've shivered through frigid winter air, fought off desperately hungry cannibals and walked side by side on the empty and dusty roads of some future, dystopian America. So when the two actors, separated in age by nearly four decades, recently settled into a decidedly nondystopian hotel suite at the Toronto International Film Festival to recall these challenging film experiences - which they faced while playing a father and son fighting to survive in "The Road" - they did exactly what you might expect.

Infinity Theatre Company continues its first full summer season with "Little Shop of Horrors," a 1982 dark musical comedy with book and lyrics by Howard Ashman and music by Alan Menken. With this terrific production, Infinity fulfills its promise to bring New York professionals to the Annapolis theater scene. The opening notes by the five-piece, onstage live rock band signaled the exciting start of this Broadway-caliber show at Children's Theatre in Annapolis. Every role is perfectly cast from top to bottom, beginning with those sassy Skid Row street urchins, Crystal, Ronnette and Chiffon — played by Ariana Scoggins, Ardale Shepherd and Martina Sykes — who serve as a grooving Greek chorus.

ALBERTVILLE, France -- They should not be here.By all rights, they belong at home, wondering what happened to their dream of making the Winter Olympics.She was sick. And he was unsteady.But it was her toughness that brought them back to the ice, brought them all the way to a town in the French Alps via a city made famous by Mickey Mouse.So it's Valentine's Day at the Winter Olympics. There is no need for chocolates or flowers because the ice dancers have arrived.There will be couples from the Unified Team of the Commonwealth of Independent States and France, who will begin skating for gold medals.

After submerging himself in the subject of health care in "Sicko," his best film, Michael Moore comes back to crowd-pleasing form with his most wildly uneven movie, "Capitalism: A Love Story." He bases this documentary screed on the litany of disasters that have brought the once fast-breaking American economy to its kneepads - the reckless deregulation of finance and other industries, the homebuying bubble and the legal loan-sharking that went with it, the vast disparity between corporate honchos and the middle class and working poor who are supposed to fuel the economy with their consumption.

For a reminder of the good old days, when rock 'n' roll was still something of a lark and four working-class blokes from Liverpool had just taken over the world, head to the Enoch Pratt Free Library on Saturday for a free showing of "A Hard Day's Night," the 1964 film that marked the Beatles as a pop-culture force to be reckoned with, regardless of the medium. Richard Lester's brilliantly sustained piece of comic anarchy stars John, Paul, George and Ringo as a rock band (what casting!