The-Burg.com - Central Virgina's Arts, Culture and Entertainment Weekly

All of the films in Randolph College’s upcoming weekend festival focus on how individuals can create change.

The topics range from students who set out to investigate what it means to be Muslim in a post-9/11 America to a community that pulled together to make their part of the world a beautiful place to live to a dying lesbian who fought for the right to transfer her pension to her partner.

Remember the hoo-ha over whether Seth Rogen and Katherine Heigl made a believable couple in Judd Apatow’s “Knocked Up”?

In Tim Burton’s “Alice in Wonderland,” Alice has grown — not by “drink me” potion or “eat me” cake — into a 19-year-old girl.

Working from Linda Woolverton’s very Hollywood screenplay adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s classic tale, Burton shifts the story from a child Alice to a near-adult Alice, viewing her journey through a drearier, more dangerous look-ing-glass.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Kathryn Bigelow played field commander to bring her raw, relentless Iraq War thriller “The Hurt Locker” to the screen.

Breck Eisner’s insane-in-the-membrane update of the George A. Romero cult horror movie “The Crazies” opens with a brief shot of fire, devastation and small-town apocalypse, followed by a title card that takes us back to the same Iowa farm community two days earlier.

Years of moviegoing have familiarized us with tales of city folk waylaid in country towns — quirky Southern backwaters and dusty desert holes. It turns out that the convention works especially well in, of all places, rural Denmark.

NEW YORK (AP) — The Academy Awards category for best director has historically been two things: white and male. This year, the five nominees are a slightly more diverse crowd.

The deadpan comedy “Saint John of Las Vegas” opens with Steve Buscemi walking into a Vegas convenience store, plopping down an envelope full of cash and asking for a thousand lottery tickets. “Why not?” he asks with a mixture of defiance and despair.

Creation is a pretty small film considering its huge themes — evolution vs. divinity, essentially, Darwin vs. God.