Sissy Spacek

Life can imitate non-art, too - that's one message you can take from a screening of Hot Rod. Midway through this proudly feckless tale of Rod Kimble (Andy Samberg), would-be stuntman or stunt-manchild, Rod's "manager-videographer" and stepbrother, Kevin (Jorma Taccone), puts together a highlight film that a neighborhood crowd treats like an inadvertent episode of Jackass. That's how most audiences will react to Hot Rod, even though the filmmakers know they're being silly. A post-Napoleon Dynamite revenge-of-the-nerd movie, Hot Rod shakes together some mixed nuts, including Rod's ramp-builder Rico (Danny McBride)

Serious talent can overcome even the most hackneyed of movie plots, as Four Christmases proves. A surprisingly deft and sometimes hilarious variation on the well-worn "holidays+relatives=hell" story line (see Home for the Holidays, Christmas with the Kranks, Fred Claus, etc.), Four Christmases works because of some genuinely funny setups, a pace that never dwells on one gag (or even one family) too long and a careful mix of slapstick and bawdy humor. But mostly, the film works because of the astonishing acting talent the filmmakers brought together to make it. No fewer than five Oscar winners - Reese Witherspoon, Robert Duvall, Sissy Spacek, Mary Steenburgen and Jon Voight - get to show their funny sides in the films.

How much of a story can you tell in 12 to 15 minutes? How much can we learn about people, their history, the traps that their lives have become, in a tale that briefly told? A lot, it turns out. Writer-director Rodrigo Garcia, who specializes in short-sketch ensemble films assembled around a theme - Things You Can Tell Just By Looking at Her was his - has rounded up an A-list of actresses (and some pretty good actors, too) for nine short, loosely interconnected stories of loneliness and the relationships that the women cannot seem to escape.

FREDDIE FIELDS, 84 Agent, studio executive Freddie Fields, the Hollywood agent, producer and studio executive who helped make stars of Mel Gibson, Richard Gere and others with films such as The Year of Living Dangerously, American Gigolo and Glory, died Tuesday of lung cancer at his home in Beverly Hills, Calif., said publicist Warren Cowan, a longtime friend. During a long, colorful career as one of Hollywood's biggest behind-the-scenes players, Mr. Fields founded the international talent agency Creative Management Associates and served as president of two major film studios, MGM and United Artists.

LOS ANGELES -- Judging from this year's Academy Award nominees, you would think all of the male members of the academy had been knocked unconscious and locked in a basement. The contenders for Best Picture are A Beautiful Mind, Gosford Park, In the Bedroom, The Lord of the Rings and Moulin Rouge. Oprah Winfrey's book club could have made these choices. Not one movie about soldiers, gladiators or cowboys. Perhaps after decades of critics bemoaning the lack of quality small films being nominated, this is a makeup year.

THE LONG Walk Home'' dramatizes an early chapter in the civil rights war, and, despite the familiarity of the material, it engages the audience. This may be history we know, but it has all been done with great dignity.The cast has much to do with this. Sissy Spacek and Whoopi Goldberg star. Spacek is a Montgomery, Ala., matron, and Goldberg is the woman who serves as her maid. It is 1955, and Rosa Parks has already sparked the rebellion by refusing to sit in the back of the bus. The Montgomery blacks, resentful of having to enter the front of the bus, drop coins, then get off and enter the rear door, stage a boycott of the bus lines.

FREDDIE FIELDS, 84 Agent, studio executive Freddie Fields, the Hollywood agent, producer and studio executive who helped make stars of Mel Gibson, Richard Gere and others with films such as The Year of Living Dangerously, American Gigolo and Glory, died Tuesday of lung cancer at his home in Beverly Hills, Calif., said publicist Warren Cowan, a longtime friend. During a long, colorful career as one of Hollywood's biggest behind-the-scenes players, Mr. Fields founded the international talent agency Creative Management Associates and served as president of two major film studios, MGM and United Artists.

Charming has devolved into almost a pejorative these days, but Tuck Everlasting is the sort of film that could change that. There's simply no other word to describe this gossamer-winged ode to love and death, an adaptation of Natalie Babbitt's 1975 novel that doesn't aspire to big truths as much as gentle persuasions and atmospheric pleasures. While a reliance on simplistic dialogue - the phrase "I wish this moment could last forever" should have been banned long ago - and a rather gaping logic hole in the final act keeps the movie from soaring the way it tries to, the talented cast (including three Oscar winners)

Earl Peyroux, 78, who was the host of more than 600 episodes of the Public Broadcasting Service Gourmet Cooking television show, died Thursday in Pensacola, Fla., after a prolonged illness. He was a culinary teacher at Pensacola Junior College when the campus public television station, WSRE, asked him to be host of a cooking show in 1977. "It lasted for 18 years, was picked up by PBS and shown coast to coast," said Jerry Gillmore, his longtime companion. "He was slightly overweight and looked like he enjoyed his food."

Ducking into an art-plex near Lincoln Center on a rainy New York afternoon a few weeks ago, I immediately headed for In the Bedroom, which had already been winning raves as the best movie of the year. After two hours, I felt I should have opted for the rain. "It's unrelenting," said the man in front of me to his wife. "It's unrelenting; it's unrelenting - and then it stops!" she added, derisively. First-time director and co-writer Todd Field based this drab picture on Andres Dubus' 18-page short story "Killings."

Life can imitate non-art, too - that's one message you can take from a screening of Hot Rod. Midway through this proudly feckless tale of Rod Kimble (Andy Samberg), would-be stuntman or stunt-manchild, Rod's "manager-videographer" and stepbrother, Kevin (Jorma Taccone), puts together a highlight film that a neighborhood crowd treats like an inadvertent episode of Jackass. That's how most audiences will react to Hot Rod, even though the filmmakers know they're being silly. A post-Napoleon Dynamite revenge-of-the-nerd movie, Hot Rod shakes together some mixed nuts, including Rod's ramp-builder Rico (Danny McBride)

How much of a story can you tell in 12 to 15 minutes? How much can we learn about people, their history, the traps that their lives have become, in a tale that briefly told? A lot, it turns out. Writer-director Rodrigo Garcia, who specializes in short-sketch ensemble films assembled around a theme - Things You Can Tell Just By Looking at Her was his - has rounded up an A-list of actresses (and some pretty good actors, too) for nine short, loosely interconnected stories of loneliness and the relationships that the women cannot seem to escape.

Earl Peyroux, 78, who was the host of more than 600 episodes of the Public Broadcasting Service Gourmet Cooking television show, died Thursday in Pensacola, Fla., after a prolonged illness. He was a culinary teacher at Pensacola Junior College when the campus public television station, WSRE, asked him to be host of a cooking show in 1977. "It lasted for 18 years, was picked up by PBS and shown coast to coast," said Jerry Gillmore, his longtime companion. "He was slightly overweight and looked like he enjoyed his food."

Charming has devolved into almost a pejorative these days, but Tuck Everlasting is the sort of film that could change that. There's simply no other word to describe this gossamer-winged ode to love and death, an adaptation of Natalie Babbitt's 1975 novel that doesn't aspire to big truths as much as gentle persuasions and atmospheric pleasures. While a reliance on simplistic dialogue - the phrase "I wish this moment could last forever" should have been banned long ago - and a rather gaping logic hole in the final act keeps the movie from soaring the way it tries to, the talented cast (including three Oscar winners)

LOS ANGELES -- Judging from this year's Academy Award nominees, you would think all of the male members of the academy had been knocked unconscious and locked in a basement. The contenders for Best Picture are A Beautiful Mind, Gosford Park, In the Bedroom, The Lord of the Rings and Moulin Rouge. Oprah Winfrey's book club could have made these choices. Not one movie about soldiers, gladiators or cowboys. Perhaps after decades of critics bemoaning the lack of quality small films being nominated, this is a makeup year.

Say what you will about well-written murder mysteries and suspenseful thrillers; for truly excruciating tension, there's nothing like watching a relationship unravel. Icy silences. Seething resentments. Broken promises. Public slights. These are things that keep me on the edge of my seat in theaters, or turning the pages of books. For pure stress, wondering whodunit simply can't compare to worrying about the husband/wife, father/son, mother/daughter relationship that's disintegrating in front of me. Recently, I watched two well-crafted films in which the relationships slowly (oh, so slowly)

'The Long Walk Home'Starring Whoopi Goldberg and Sissy Spacek.Directed by Richard Pearce.Released by Miramax.Rated PG.*** 1/2 Richard Pearce's magnificent "Long Walk Home" knows the most important thing about being politically correct: that it doesn't matter.What's so wonderful about the movie is the way in which, while moral, decent, on the right side, doing the right thing, blah blah, yawn and ZZZZZZ-zzzzzzzz, it doesn't forget to be a good movie.Set in Montgomery, Ala., in 1955, during the bus boycott that was the crucible of the Civil Rights movement, it tracks the play of this crisis across the lives of two families, one white, one black, united by a domestic utility.

Serious talent can overcome even the most hackneyed of movie plots, as Four Christmases proves. A surprisingly deft and sometimes hilarious variation on the well-worn "holidays+relatives=hell" story line (see Home for the Holidays, Christmas with the Kranks, Fred Claus, etc.), Four Christmases works because of some genuinely funny setups, a pace that never dwells on one gag (or even one family) too long and a careful mix of slapstick and bawdy humor. But mostly, the film works because of the astonishing acting talent the filmmakers brought together to make it. No fewer than five Oscar winners - Reese Witherspoon, Robert Duvall, Sissy Spacek, Mary Steenburgen and Jon Voight - get to show their funny sides in the films.

We already know who the biggest winner will be on Oscar night. His name is Sidney Poitier. On Jan. 24, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences announced that Poitier would be given a special Oscar "for his extraordinary performances and unique presence on the screen" and for his "dignity, style and intelligence" as a representative of the movie industry. Poitier is the only African-American ever to receive an Academy Award in a lead acting category, when he took home a Best Actor Oscar in 1964 for Lilies of the Field.

Ducking into an art-plex near Lincoln Center on a rainy New York afternoon a few weeks ago, I immediately headed for In the Bedroom, which had already been winning raves as the best movie of the year. After two hours, I felt I should have opted for the rain. "It's unrelenting," said the man in front of me to his wife. "It's unrelenting; it's unrelenting - and then it stops!" she added, derisively. First-time director and co-writer Todd Field based this drab picture on Andres Dubus' 18-page short story "Killings."