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

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.

Profane, irreverent bluster by five very loud men might carry a choice scene, but it cannot carry an entire movie.

LOS ANGELES — An animated adventure about a widower who sails away in a house lifted by a bouquet of balloons and an up-close look at a bomb-squad unit in Iraq were the top critical favorites of 2009. Now “Up” and “The Hurt Locker” are top winners at the Golden Tomato Awards.