The Pittsburgh advertising executive who gave us the original "Night of the Living Dead," George Romero, made several movies, the fourth of them called "The Crazies." The new film of the same title is a remake of this 1973 picture.

Director Kevin Smith, who gave us "Clerks" and "Mall Rats" and a number of other "independent" movies which made it into general release, recently had some trouble with Southwest Airlines because of his girth. One wonders if he was trying to fly to Los Angeles, because with his latest movie, "Cop Out," he has certainly gone Hollywood.

There are a lot of interesting details one could associate with Martin Scorsese's new horror movie, "Shutter Island." Unfortunately the movie itself isn't interesting.

The new family fantasy and adventure movie based on a book series, "Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief," is entertaining and inoffensive. It is probably the best family movie currently showing.

There's a hunk of bad TV currently showing in movie theaters. Garry Marshall, who made his name directing "Happy Days" and who is the brother of Penny "Laverne" Marshall has directed a two-and-a-half hour episode of seventies TV show "Love American Style" and has seen it released as "Valentine's Day."

 "Autism" is one of those terms—like "schizophrenic" and "diabetic"—which is used to mean much more than it was 50 years ago. Some words change meaning—"gay," "green." But "autism" seems to be used in ordinary conversation to mean almost any mechanical or methodical behavior, or so it seems to me.

Luc Besson is a filmmaker who has written or produced or directed a series of interesting movies, usually heavy on the action. "The Messenger," "The Fifth Element," the "Transporter" movies, and "The Professional" are examples of his work.

Modern dance company Momix put on a memorable performance at McCain Auditorium last Thursday. These days dance once again seems the art that is attracting growing interest, not just here but in Europe as well.

The new movie starring Mel Gibson, Martin Campbell's old-fashioned thriller "Edge of Darkness," is actually pretty admirable. In it old Braveheart plays a Boston police detective named, ironically, Craven.

"The Tooth Fairy" is a modest little kid's movie that won't actually bore kids and that runs about a hundred minutes. It stars Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, Ashley Judd, and Julie Andrews and has the sorts of costumes and morals one would expect from a movie of this sort.