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Everybody wants to be first with a play. Premieres make more news, attract more grants and confer more prestige. There's often money involved--the theater premiering a play sometimes gets a piece of the subsequent action. It's understandable--and even applicable to other professions. Journalists prefer to break stories than follow up on news already seen elsewhere. But the facts are the facts: I can't tell you how often a New York theater will claim the american premiere of, say, an English play that we have already seen in Chicago....

American Teen, a new documentary that follows five teenagers over a single school year, opened in limited release in late July, and is making its way to other theaters across the country. director Nanette Burstein's film was produced during the 2005-2006 school year, and follows five teenagers at Warsaw Community High School in Indiana.Critics' reactions to the film are mixed, and it doesn't have universal acclaim, with some criticizing it for feeling staged or formulaic or both. When the film came out in limited release, the Los Angeles Times reported that although it 'sparked a bidding war after its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in January' it 'has been criticized as too glossy and too willfully mainstream,' while '[s]ome question its authenticity.'As to the criticism, Burstein told the paper that she 'was really surprised actually and have been upset by it. There's accusations that it's staged and scripted and that I went after the stereotypes, and it's just not true. I

"Everything happens for a reason," the devoutly Catholic Esperanza tells the new guy who has just moved in next door.

On Wednesday's episode of Project Runway 5--also known as the episode where NBC Universal uses corporate synergy to get Bravo viewers to watch NBC's Lipstick Jungle, as compared to last week when they used corporate synergy to promote NBC's Olympics coverage--the workroom clock was more ubiquitous than I've ever seen it before.The workroom clock has previously revealed how the editors play with time, and that also happened this episode. A close-up of the clock showed that it was 8:05 when Tim said the models were coming in, but as they entered the workroom, the clock was clearly visible in the background and showed 9:15, an obvious and unnecessary cheat. After the models left, another close-up of the clock showed that it was just before 9 when Terri and Suede argued.In the morning, Tim Gunn told the designers that they had one hour to send their models to the [company that paid Bravo, not me, to sponsor their] hair salon and [seriously, why should I mention their names?] makeup roo

'Transsiberian' has sex. It has drug smuggling. It has Ben Kingsley in a Russian accent. But the movie is nonsense, a thriller content to throw twists and peril around until something grabs you. Nothing ever does. You wonder where director Brad Anderson might have been headed with a movie starring Woody Harrelson and Emily Mortimer as Roy and Jessie, a ...

Told as a fable, Henry Poole Is Here tries to offer moviegoers a pool of hope in a barren landscape.

Simpson told Elle magazine about the abuse, but what she didn't reveal is that it came at the hands of high school girls, not a boyfriend.

For two years, the author lived in a Laotian hospital, in an apartment above the operating room. His experiences there inspired characters — including a country coroner — for the books he would later write.