Movie

Somewhere, a halfway decent adaptation of the 1983 hit movie “Flashdance” is fighting to break away from the amiable, strongly performed mess of a show that has arrived at the Hippodrome. Instead, we get an everything-plus-the-kitchen-sink mishmash. It's partly a traditional musical, with at least the thread of a plot - a woman who welds by day but would rather dance - and new songs that advance the storyline, more or less. It's partly a jukebox musical, with emphasis on the vintage songs that helped make the film so popular.

Christina Spearman dug out her best high school formal gown, took the day off work and headed down to the Inner Harbor on Friday morning to realize the dream of a lifetime. She was getting an Oscar. OK, that's a stretch. What she was actually getting, thanks to an 11-city Oscar Roadtrip that stopped in Baltimore, was the chance to pose with an Oscar — to hold the 81/2-pound gold-plated statuette for a few seconds and have her picture snapped with it. But the degree of difference between her and the movie folks who actually will walk away with an Oscar on Feb. 24, when the Academy Awards are presented in Hollywood, was pretty minimal.

Hansel and Gretel Witch Hunters is the latest twisted adptation of a classic tale or character, akin to tales Pride and Prejudice and Zombies or Abraham Lincolm Vampire Hunter . As might be expected from such a bizarre mashup of Grimm's fairy tale and modern culture, the movie seems to have split critics and viewers, according to early reactions. Here are excerpts some reviews: -- Tribune: Writer-director Tommy Wirkola focuses on the fights, and flings all manner of viscera at the 3-D camera as limbs are whacked off and heads and torsos explode.

For some eight years, Sheldon Candis nurtured a dream - to set and make a movie in his native Baltimore, one that reflected the sometimes mean, sometimes wondrous streets where he grew up. It sounds like a long time to dedicate to a single project, but Candis stuck with it. But Friday is the day he always knew would come. Throughout the country, audiences will be watching a film marked with the words, "Directed by Sheldon Candis. " Thanks in large part to a successful screening at last winter's Sundance Film Festival, "LUV" is opening on about 50 theater screens in 15 American cities (including Baltimore)

now playing "Django Unchained" (R). A slave turned bounty hunter sets out to rescue his wife from a brutal Mississippi plantation owner. With Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz and Leonardo DiCaprio. TownMall Cinemas (12:50, 4:20, 7:50 p.m.) "Gangster Squad" (R). A chronicle of the Los Angeles Police Department's fight to keep the East Coast mafia out of their area in the 1940s and 1950s. With Josh Brolin, Ryan Gosling, Nick Nolte. TownMall Cinemas (1:20, 4:10, 7:00 p.m.)

Jennifer Lawrence may be the best thing going for books this year. She helped propel the adaptation of "Silver Linings Playbook," and is starring in "Catching Fire," another Hunger Games movie. (Not to mention her role in screen versions of the X-Men comics .) Entertainment Weekly's look at "Catching Fire," the latest installment of the Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins highlights the flexibility of star Jennifer Lawrence. On the EW cover, she sports a futuristic jump suit and quiver of arrows, part of her battle gear in the fight for Panem.

I don't know about you, but watching the movie "Lincoln" sent me to the bookshelf and Internet to learn more about political wrangling over the adopition of the 13th Amendment. The movie was a great political science lesson, but it was obvious that Steven Spielberg's epic was a big-screen CliffsNotes version of history. It was imposible to include all of the back stories involving Cabinet members and members of Congress. For example, I wanted to know much, much more about why legislators in my home state of Connecticut voted against the amendment.

After watching the movie "Silver Linings Playbook," which is sure to garner lots of Academy Award nominations, I thought we should create another category: Best scene by a book. (If you don't mind spoilers, you can get a taste of the scene in the preview for the movie. ) The works of Ernest Hemingway figure into the plot of the movie, about the unlikely romance of two troubled young people. And "A Farewell to Arms," makes a hilarious appearance -- and exit -- in one key scene.

After a tragedy like the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in Newtown, Conn., the injection of anything short of seriousness into the subsequent public discourse about guns is touchy. But the National Rifle Association blasted numerous rounds into that particular barrier with NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre's mouth. The organization's hysteric solution to gun violence in America is to put designated sitting ducks - er, "armed police officers" - in every American school.