Millionaire

Must-sees Slumdog Millionaire : **** The film, which won the best picture Oscar, is about the unlikeliest epic hero: a ragamuffin (Dev Patel, right, with Freida Pinto) in Mumbai who becomes a contender on the Indian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. Coraline: *** 1/2 A girl follows a path into a house that looks mysteriously like her own, including almost-identical parents. Waltz With Bashir: **** In a candid cartoon documentary, a member of the Israeli army during its 1982 occupation of southern Lebanon tries to recover his memories.

The Keep By Jennifer Egan In this deliciously creepy new novel, two cousins reunite 20 years after a childhood prank gone wrong changed their lives. "Cousin Howie," the formerly uncool, strange and pasty ("he looked like a guy the sun wouldn't touch") cousin, has become a blond, tan and married millionaire with a generous spirit. He invites his cousin Danny (who as an insecure teenager left him hurt and helpless in a cave for three days) to help him renovate an old castle in Germany.

You have to see it to believe it, and even then you want to nudge the person next to you and ask: "Have we somehow entered a parallel universe here?"What you're watching is America's newest quiz show, ABC's "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" a campy half-hour unlike probably any other game show you've seen.For openers, there's omnipresent music that swells so B-movie ominously you half expect Bela Lugosi to lurch across the set.Then there's the audience, which encircles the host and contestants like an edgy fight crowd at a Vegas casino.

It might seem early in the TV year to be worrying about the cancellation of quality shows. But it's time to start fretting at least about the future of "Sports Night," even as the acclaimed and groundbreaking comedy returns to the ABC lineup tonight with another typically fine episode.When ABC announced last week that the game show "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" will air three nights a week starting next month, the matter of which shows will be displaced was mostly overlooked. One of the new "Millionaire" nights is Tuesday.

The November "sweeps" ratings period won't officially end until tonight, but the blockbuster performance of ABC's "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" is already altering the prime-time landscape and shaking up network strategy for the next important audience measurement in February and beyond.CBS yesterday announced it will launch a new quiz show, "Winning Lines," in early January, while NBC said it hopes to have its remake of "21" on the air by February."In the vein of networks being copycats, we're jumping on the quiz show bandwagon like all our other competitors," CBS chairman Leslie Moonves said yesterday during a teleconference.

WASHINGTON -- Publishing magnate Steve Forbes, retooling for a second White House run, filed papers for his 2000 campaign committee with the Federal Election Commission yesterday.The magazine millionaire, who campaigned from a mobile home in his last try for the Republican nomination, made a publicity splash by launching a well-designed campaign site on the World Wide Web to announce his filing.Forbes, 51, plans to formally declare his candidacy later this year.Opponents expect Forbes to spend in excess of $50 million this time.

For ABC, kids, dollars and lawyers proved potent Sunday night, as the triple-threat lineup of "Annie," a new round of "So You Want to be a Millionaire?" and "The Practice" dominated the first Sunday evening of sweeps.The lavish "Annie," a new adaptation of the musical that even featured an appearance by original Annie Andrea McArdle, kicked off the evening by attracting some 26.3 million viewers. That compares to 19.2 million for "60 Minutes" on CBS (which, because of football, actually ran 90 minutes, beginning at 7: 30 p.m.)

WASHINGTON -- Money isn't talking very loudly this election year.From coast to coast, rich candidates have squandered a fortune on failed campaigns, and the political calendar still has five months to go. In Tuesday's California primary, three millionaire candidates went belly-up after spending a combined $65 million of their own money."

Conservation program easy to supportThe Jan. 11 Perspective section had an article titled, "Killing bears may not be the answer," which, among other things, discussed the Maryland Department of Natural Resources' poorly marketed and poorly funded Black Bear Conservation Program.The state is trying to promote this most worthy program. Money raised is to be used to compensate farmers and beekeepers who have suffered crop and livestock damages caused by black bears.Historically, there have been numerous examples of the federal government spending millions of dollars poisoning, trapping and shooting predators, while consequently also poisoning and trapping many more nontarget animals.

Two recently published books celebrate the snipings of overpaid celebrities: "Hollywood and Whine," by Boze Hadleigh (Birch Lane Press, $19.95) and "Stupid Celebrities," by Ross and Kathryn Petras (Andrews McMeel Publishing, $9.95).A sampling from "Hollywood and Whine":"I don't mean to be a diva, but some days you wake up and you're Barbra Streisand." -- Courtney Love, after showing up hours late for a photo shoot"I want a man who's kind and understanding. Is that too much to ask of a millionaire?"

Must-sees Slumdog Millionaire : **** The film, which won the best picture Oscar, is about the unlikeliest epic hero: a ragamuffin (Dev Patel, right, with Freida Pinto) in Mumbai who becomes a contender on the Indian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. Coraline: *** 1/2 A girl follows a path into a house that looks mysteriously like her own, including almost-identical parents. Waltz With Bashir: **** In a candid cartoon documentary, a member of the Israeli army during its 1982 occupation of southern Lebanon tries to recover his memories.

Capsules by Michael Sragow unless noted. Full reviews are at baltimoresun.com/movies. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button: **** It starts in 1918, when Benjamin Button (Brad Pitt) is born with an old face, dilapidated plumbing and wrinkled skin over an infant body, and ends in 2005, when his true love, Daisy (Cate Blanchett), completes the telling of his story. The movie's emotional completeness leaves you poised between sobbing and applauding - it comes from a full comprehension not just of one man's life, but of the intersection of many lives over the course of the 20th century.

Must-sees Slumdog Millionaire : **** The film is about the unlikeliest epic hero ever: a ragamuffin (Dev Patel) in Mumbai who becomes a contender on the Indian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. Coraline: *** 1/2 An 11-year-old girl (Dakota Fanning) follows a path through a tiny, square door into a house that looks mysteriously like her own, including almost-identical parents - except her "Other Mother" and "Other Father" have buttons for eyes. Wendy and Lucy: *** Wendy (Michelle Williams)

First of all, let me tell what is not on tonight, so you can plan your viewing accordingly. While the Fox reality show, Secret Millionaire, returns for its second week, the segment featuring Baltimore's Molly Shattuck will not air until Dec. 17, according to a Fox spokesman. Executive producer Greg Goldman had told The Baltimore Sun that he thought the Shattuck episode would air this week, but viewers will just have to wait. This is the show that features millionaires going undercover to spend a week with people from less-privileged backgrounds, and them giving at least $100,000 to one of the people they meet.

The most successful reality shows are those that connect with or exploit tensions in the larger society. If nothing else, Secret Millionaire, a new Fox series debuting tonight, certainly scores on that count. The series, which some Baltimore viewers have surely heard about because area resident Molly Shattuck is a participant, speaks to the nation's economic crisis and the social-class tensions connected with thoughts of who caused the problems and who will suffer most. The premise takes a millionaire out of his or her world of privilege each week and places each undercover in situations of economic distress and hardship.

Slumdog Millionaire is a tinderbox of comedy and drama about a ragamuffin in Mumbai (aka Bombay) who, at age 18, becomes a contender on the Indian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. It's a movie of kaleidoscopic contradictions and dazzling clarity. In this Dickensian extravaganza, a scrappy underclass hero comes to stand in for all of us. He teaches by example that if you sift through traumas and disappointments and get to the bottom of your own life, you can mine something of value.

"It is funny to hear all these Democrats who nominated John Kerry, who also had an heiress millionaire wife and quite a few homes, now making fun of McCain, who married an heiress wife with quite a few homes. ... No matter how many times conservatives point out all the Democratic millionaires, from Ted Kennedy to Nancy Pelosi to John Kerry, it doesn't matter. Those guys have noblesse oblige and it's okay for them to be rich." Betsy Newmark, conservative blogger

WASHINGTON - Wealthy political candidates caught a break yesterday as the Supreme Court struck down a campaign finance rule that benefits their opponents. By 5-4, the court ruled that Congress went too far when it loosened fundraising restraints for politicians facing millionaires who invest in their own campaigns. The court's majority declared that the campaign finance double standard violated First Amendment free-speech guarantees. "The argument that a candidate's speech may be restricted in order to level electoral opportunity has ominous implications because it would permit Congress to arrogate the voters' authority to evaluate the strength of candidates competing for office," Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. wrote for the majority.

Millionaire entrepreneur Alan Fabian strode from the main house on his North Carolina beach property last August to deliver the bad news to a colleague vacationing in a guest cottage. In a brief conversation, Fabian told employee Greg Barr that he was leaving for a few days to face an indictment for fraud in a Baltimore federal court. But he assured Barr that things would be OK. "He was supremely confident and saying that it was basically a misunderstanding," said Barr, who worked for Fabian at a Maryland nonprofit.

News item: The Orioles drew an announced crowd of 10,505 on Wednesday night - by far the smallest in the history of Camden Yards. My take: Club officials insist there were a lot of season-ticket exchanges for that night, but breaking the all-time low attendance record by nearly 2,700 fans in the second game of the season can't bode well for the rest of the year. If the O's end up drawing 1.7 million fans this year, we'll remember that crowd as the canary in the mineshaft. News item: The Detroit Tigers have committed $138 million in payroll to make another playoff run but are the last winless team in the major leagues.