Movie

Mike Psenicska says he's tried to be a good sport about his unwitting big-screen debut in the blockbuster Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. He went to see the movie with his family. He has answered strangers' questions about his sudden celebrity, has smiled for pictures and, he says, even autographed one teenager's wrist. But the 64-year-old Perry Hall driving instructor says he didn't seek the attention, and he was hoping yesterday's snow would allow news of his lawsuit against the filmmakers to come out without too much notice.

It's not clear whether Purple Violets, the new living-and-loving-in-New York film from writer-director Edward Burns, would be a good first-date movie. As the first full-length feature to premiere exclusively on Apple's iTunes store -- not in theaters -- your date would have to be cool with coming over to watch the movie on your laptop computer. Or desktop computer. Or even on the gorgeous little 3-inch-by-2-inch screen of your iPod Touch -- since nothing says romance like sharing ear buds.

We ask the Ravens the questions that really matters DERRICK MASON FAVORITE 2007 MOVIE -- Talk to me WORST DRESSER -- Jonathan Ogden MESSIEST LOCKER -- Mark Clayton BART SCOTT FAVORITE 2007 MOVIE -- Transformers WORST DRESSER -- Mark Clayton MESSIEST LOCKER -- Gary Stills CHRIS CHESTER FAVORITE 2007 MOVIE -- 300 WORST DRESSER -- Me MESSIEST LOCKER -- Brian Rimpf

Festivals are fun, unless you're organizing one. But Jed Dietz, director of the Maryland Film Festival for nine years, says it's still fun. Seriously. The man is confident. ("It's going great.") And well he should be. This year's event runs May 3-6 and is set to be bigger than ever, including a first-time filmmaker tent village across the street from the Charles Theatre. "There will be interactions with filmmakers, panels, workshops, screenings and all of that is free," says Dietz, 59, a father of three who lives in Roland Park with his wife, Dr. Julia McMillan, a Johns Hopkins University pediatrics professor.

John Travolta stars as a woman in John Water's Hairspray, which opened nationally last week. What was the last Travolta movie you saw and liked? Why? WHAT YOU SAY Although I realize John Travolta has been in many movies before Hairspray, both musical and nonmusical, I still feel my very favorite is Saturday Night Fever. His extraordinary good looks and extreme talent were certainly assets in making that particular movie a memorable one for me. Freda Garelick, Baltimore THE NEXT QUESTION The Simpsons Movie comes out today.

Dirty Dancing opened in select movie theaters to mark the 20th anniversary of the film starring Patrick Swayze. In your opinion, what made Dirty Dancing a film worth seeing again? WHAT YOU SAY I thought Dirty Dancing was one of the most delightful movies I have ever seen. In fact, I have been able to view many reruns throughout the years. The story line was pure and simple; the cast of dancers was superb, exhibiting the various Latin dances. The late Jerry Orbach was excellent as the ever-doting but overwatchful parent of teenage daughters, and Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey outdid themselves in displaying their talents.

"The Blair Witch Project," the mock-documentary horror film set in the woods of Western Maryland, has become one of the best investments in movie history.The no-budget horror movie is poised to cross the $100 million mark in box office this weekend. With its minuscule budget, it's given its backers a better dollar-for-dollar return than such ballyhooed moneymakers as "Star Wars: Episode I -- the Phantom Menace" or "Titanic," which have made more money but cost vastly more to create.At its current gross of $80.2 million, "Blair Witch" has already made several hundred times its production budget.

Clara Bow had it. And it nearly destroyed her."It," in the parlance of the 1920s, was sex appeal, and as a documentary premiering tonight on TCM amply demonstrates, Bow was one of the first to unabashedly bring it to America's movie screens. The price she paid was enormous.Not that sex was absent from the movies before Clara Bow came along; Theda Bara made a career of being exotically, unattainably and sometimes dangerously sexual, while Gloria Swanson made her early mark on films prancing scantily clad through an assortment of Cecil B. DeMille epics.

WASHINGTON -- A government investigation of the movie studio and theater industry focuses on possible violations of a 51-year-old antitrust settlement that restricts the way films are distributed, sources familiar with the case said yesterday.Late last week, the Justice Department sent information demands to the nation's top film distributors -- including Walt Disney Co., Viacom Inc.'s Paramount and Time Warner Inc.'s Warner Bros. -- as well as Loews Cineplex Entertainment Corp. and possibly other theater chains, the sources said.

Last week we asked: Columbia is increasingly becoming a cultural and arts center for the region. Does Columbia serve your recreational needs? Or do you venture into Baltimore or Washington for arts and entertainment?I've lived here since 1977. I love Columbia, but I venture out because there's no good jazz on a regular basis; there are no boutiques or coffee shops near the lake. And most important there's no art film theater, with all the theaters -- the movie theaters -- there isn't one that shows the newest art films.

Perhaps more than anyone, Jim Morris knows what Ravens offensive lineman Michael Oher will experience in the coming weeks. Like Oher and the soon-to-be-released movie, "The Blind Side," Morris' life story was made into a major motion picture in 2002. But Morris was retired from Major League Baseball for more than a year when "The Rookie," starring Dennis Quaid, was released. Not even "The Rookie" was a rookie when his life was immortalized on film - demonstrating Oher's unique situation.

With a major section set in Baltimore, "American Casino," a documentary about the subprime mortgage crisis, has the power of a haymaker that somehow sneaks up on you. It's a nightmare that starts like a normal daytime drive and ends in a vortex-like sinkhole. The director, Leslie Cockburn, and her co-writer (and husband), Andrew Cockburn, design their work as a reported essay, not a grandstanding polemic or a nonfiction novel. They personalize our financial system with a no-nonsense frankness.

"The Big Combo by Philip Yordan" -- that's the title credit to this amusingly pulpy 1955 crime movie, playing at the AFI Silver on Saturday at 7:15 p.m. and Wednesday at 6:30 p.m. The reputation of the director, Joseph H. Lewis, has ballooned because of the cult fervor for "Gun Crazy," his feral 1949 version of the Bonnie-and-Clyde legend. ("Gun Crazy" plays at AFI Silver Saturday at 5:20 p.m. and Sunday at 1 p.m.) But Philip Yordan - the screenwriter - is probably responsible for this picture's liveliest gimmicks.

Our reigning smart-aleck directors, the Coen brothers, try to erase the thick line between wiseguys and wise men in "A Serious Man," a movie filled with adults stumbling in their search for truth and adolescents who can't see beyond the smoking joints in front of them. But all the Coens come up with is a movie about bad things happening to limited people. It's set in suburban Minneapolis in the late 1960s or early 1970s, when the ticky-tacky houses of the baby boom are beginning to show some wear and tear.

Where the Wild Things Are ** 1/2 ( 2 1/2 STARS) $32.6 Million $32.6 million 1 week Rated : PG Running time : 1:34 What it's about : An out-of-control boy runs away from home and into a world where monsters (including Carol, above) accept him as a king. Our take : The movie single-mindedly attacks the woe-is-me part of the childhood psyche; even the wild things, wonderful to look at, are irritating to listen to -they're like Muppet versions of the characters on "In Treatment." Law Abiding Citizen * ( 1 STAR)

From Philadelphia, I have been watching in dismay the saga of Baltimore's Senator Theatre and, especially, the pillorying of longtime owner Tom Kiefaber. I am a fan of historic cinemas, a keenly interested fan who frequently posts at websites like www.CinemaTreasures.org, and I am an active member of the Theatre Historical Society of America. As a volunteer, since 2002, I founded and have led a nonprofit organization, the Friends of the Boyd, Inc., which is seeking to ensure that Philadelphia's last movie palace, the Boyd Theatre, is restored and reopened.

If saloon-smashing Carry Nation had her ax, then the late Mary M. Avara had her scissors. And if Avara were alive today and still head of the now-defunct Maryland State Board of Motion Picture Censors, those students down there at College Park viewing Pirates II: Stagnetti's Revenge last week might not have been watching it at all if she decided to excise its sex scenes with her scissors or outright ban its showing. The Baltimore Sun reported that more than 100 students took in the pornographic film that in recent weeks pitted lawmakers, who had threatened to withhold funding from the University of Maryland, against anxious university officials, who in the wake of such a threat canceled the screening.

When The New York Times interviewed producer Jerry Bruckheimer about bringing out an upscale consumer farce called Confessions of a Shopaholic during a global economic crisis, he denied that he performed any major last-minute tinkering. Even the shopaholic's father's most relevant line - "if the U.S. economy can be billions of dollars in debt and still survive, so can you" - was part of the script before everyone was talking about a catastrophic recession. Will the plot about a woman disentangling herself from credit cards generate business or deflect it?

The owner of the financially troubled Senator Theatre held a town meeting yesterday to discuss his plans for seeking nonprofit status, a move that could open up the single-screen movie house to local plays, concerts and other productions. Tom Kiefaber said he envisions the Senator as a multipurpose entertainment and education venue if it is granted nonprofit designation, and that he no longer will run the day-to-day operations. Officials from Mayfair Consulting, a service firm helping with the transition, said it usually takes about 18 to 24 months for a business to turn nonprofit, and that the theater will continue to show movies in the interim.

The Maryland guy who campaigned for U.S. Senate two years ago wearing a white Colonial-style periwig has found another venue for offbeat political expression. Daniel "The Wig Man" Vovak is making a movie: The Blue Dress, A Comedy About Bill & Monica. I had no trouble taking Vovak seriously as a Senate candidate. (He ran against Michael Steele in the GOP primary.) But I'll confess to having doubts about his fitness for movie-making, even though he made some funny campaign videos, including one that showed his wig getting fluffed and sprayed to the strains of Vivaldi.