Movie Star

The star of "Ajami," Israel's latest Oscar-nominated film, comes to work in a white T-shirt and track suit, his hair freshly gelled, his near future holding the prospect of a trip to Los Angeles. But Shahir Kabaha is not arriving on a set to rehearse lines; he's pulling into his father's bakery in downtown Jaffa, where he barely has time for a proper conversation. The amateur cast of "Ajami," after all, may have upset some long-held assumptions about Israeli cinema -- chief among them that films about Arabs, in...

LOS ANGELES — After producing last summer's opening ceremony of the Summer Olympics in London, British filmmaker Danny Boyle is back in the movies with "Trance. " The psychological caper stars James McAvoy as man who teams with a criminal (Vincent Cassel) to steal a painting but suffers a blow to the head during the heist. Unable to remember where he hid the painting, the man works with a hypnotherapist (Rosario Dawson) to regain his memory. The British filmmaker, 56, sat down to talk about "Trance" and why it's unlikely he'll...

Thomas Heath is away. But we found some news to pass along in his absence. Rockville-based Silynx Communications got a surprise late last year when it learned its tactical communications headsets would get a role in "Act of Valor," a new movie featuring Navy SEALs set for release in theaters later this month. Gil Limonchik , chief executive of the nearly seven-year-old company and himself a veteran of the Special Forces, said the company has long had a close relationship with the SEALs.

It's hard to imagine a time when the high school reunion was ever a fertile setting for a film. Like the prom, the metaphorical watershed of the reunion has for so long been drained of interest by the countless cinematic probings of its mother lode of awkwardness, glory, longing and lessons waiting to be learned that it seems like it was always an impoverished idea. So it was with no small sense of dread that I walked into " 10 Years ," an ensemble dramatic comedy set at the 10-year reunion of a group of for-the-most-part preternaturally...

NEW YORK, Aug. 6 -- Of all the roles Marion Barry has played in his years on the public stage -- activist, council member, mayor, convict, redeemed soul, mayor again, council member again -- perhaps none was more unlikely than the one he found himself in today: film celebrity. Yet there he was, at a cocktail party at HBO's midtown Manhattan headquarters, the center of attention, the subject and star of a new documentary about his many incarnations, appropriately titled "The Nine Lives of Marion Barry.

NEW YORK — Once upon a time, there was an 11-year-old Hungarian girl, with blond curls and big dark eyes and a beautiful singing voice and a singer mother who taught her how to use it. She was discovered, as such girls often are, and toured as a child prodigy; and she had staying power, which such girls often do not. At 17 she landed a role in a hit show written by one of the biggest names in show business. A great opera conductor tried to secure her services, but so did the film studios, and she became a movie star —...

Hopscotching between 1960s Italy and contemporary Hollywood, Jess Walter's " Beautiful Ruins " is a novel about memory, nostalgia and ephemera. A young man named Pasquale manages his family's hotel, Adequate View, in Porto Vergogna, Italy. A starlet named Dee Moray arrives in a boat. She's supposedly dying of cancer, and she changes Pasquale's life. Falling in love with Dee, worshiping her with a pure chivalric heart, he never forgets her. Fifty years later, Pasquale comes looking for Dee in Hollywood.

See today's Weekend section for Quick Take reviews of new films and comprehensive coverage of the movies now showing in area theaters. For past film reviews and articles, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/movies . Also opening today: Vince Vaughn's Wild West Comedy Show: 30 Days and 30 Nights -- Hollywood to the Heartland (R, 100 minutes). The movie star shepherds a troupe of four traveling comics across the country.

Today, the Major League Baseball season gets underway with the World Series champion St. Louis Cardinals playing the Miami Marlins in the Florida team's new ballpark. The Washington Nationals start their season Thursday with a game in Chicago against the Cubs. To get you in the mood for the season, here are some baseball books that bring out all the excitement and beauty of the game: the thwack of the bat, the smell of a freshly mowed infield and a ball that is going, going . . .

At first, jokes, gags and slapstick kept the audience laughing last weekend at Wootton High School, but then the mood turned dark as the school's production of "My Favorite Year" tackled father abandonment and alcoholism. Wootton took a risk by choosing the musical, which closed on Broadway after fewer than 40 performances. The Broadway show was based on a Mel Brooks-produced film of the same name starring Peter O'Toole as an alcoholic movie star and Mark Linn-Baker as the upstart...

Hopscotching between 1960s Italy and contemporary Hollywood, Jess Walter's " Beautiful Ruins " is a novel about memory, nostalgia and ephemera. A young man named Pasquale manages his family's hotel, Adequate View, in Porto Vergogna, Italy. A starlet named Dee Moray arrives in a boat. She's supposedly dying of cancer, and she changes Pasquale's life. Falling in love with Dee, worshiping her with a pure chivalric heart, he never forgets her. Fifty years later, Pasquale comes looking for Dee in Hollywood.

Ann Rutherford, a wholesome supporting actress in Hollywood films of the 1930s and 1940s, notably as Scarlett O'Hara's youngest sister in "Gone With the Wind" and as Mickey Rooney's loyal sweetheart in the Andy Hardy movie series, died June 11 at her home in Beverly Hills, Calif. She was 94 and had heart ailments. The death was confirmed by a friend, actress Anne Jeffreys. A pert brunette with strikingly big brown eyes, Ms. Rutherford was the quintessential...

NEW YORK — Once upon a time, there was an 11-year-old Hungarian girl, with blond curls and big dark eyes and a beautiful singing voice and a singer mother who taught her how to use it. She was discovered, as such girls often are, and toured as a child prodigy; and she had staying power, which such girls often do not. At 17 she landed a role in a hit show written by one of the biggest names in show business. A great opera conductor tried to secure her services, but so did the film studios, and she became a movie star — all...

Today, the Major League Baseball season gets underway with the World Series champion St. Louis Cardinals playing the Miami Marlins in the Florida team's new ballpark. The Washington Nationals start their season Thursday with a game in Chicago against the Cubs. To get you in the mood for the season, here are some baseball books that bring out all the excitement and beauty of the game: the thwack of the bat, the smell of a freshly mowed infield and a ball that is going, going . . .

In the inflexible calculus of movie romance, beauty and the beast don't add up. If there's a relationship between a gorgeous woman and an unattractive man — or vice versa — it's typically played for easy laughs. Either that, or the ugly duckling, who's often just a hot-looking movie star with a bad haircut and glasses, turns out to have been a swan all along. Not so with "Delicacy," a charming French love story about a beautiful widow (Audrey Tautou) and the schlub who loves her (Francois Damiens)

When you got home from school yesterday, what did you do? Did you do your homework? Did you play outside? Or did you talk to three reporters on the phone about your piano skills? That's what Ethan Bortnick did one day last week. On Friday in North Bethesda, this fifth-grader will become the youngest person to headline a Strathmore Music Center concert . That means he will be the main show. "I'm just a regular kid," Ethan says. "I play video games. I read, sleep, and I play a...

Readers who dote on movie star biographies, high or low, will likely be startled by "Hedy's Folly. " To begin with, it is written by neither a film scholar nor a gushing fan but by a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, Richard Rhodes, best known for his studies of nuclear weapons. Moreover, Hedy Lamarr shares the narrative with an American composer of classical music, George Antheil, the self-styled "Bad Boy of Music," whose best-remembered work, "Ballet mecanique," was briefly scandalous for its incorporation of airplane...

Dear Visiting Tourist: Please stand on the right. It is hard to properly convey how important that will be for your time here for the inauguration, so please just comply. When you are on a Metro escalator, boarding a Metro train or doing anything remotely affiliated with the transit authority's symbol, then please stand single file on the right and pass on the left. Please do not say you are visiting "The Smithsonian. " There are 14 Smithsonian museums on or around the Mall.

Thomas Heath is away. But we found some news to pass along in his absence. Rockville-based Silynx Communications got a surprise late last year when it learned its tactical communications headsets would get a role in "Act of Valor," a new movie featuring Navy SEALs set for release in theaters later this month. Gil Limonchik , chief executive of the nearly seven-year-old company and himself a veteran of the Special Forces, said the company has long had a close relationship with the SEALs.

Readers who dote on movie star biographies, high or low, will likely be startled by "Hedy's Folly. " To begin with, it is written by neither a film scholar nor a gushing fan but by a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, Richard Rhodes, best known for his studies of nuclear weapons. Moreover, Hedy Lamarr shares the narrative with an American composer of classical music, George Antheil, the self-styled "Bad Boy of Music," whose best-remembered work, "Ballet mecanique," was briefly scandalous for its...