Cinema is a poignant medium where even fleeting screen time can effectively establish lingering emotionality. All it asks for are compelling performers. Rocky Handsome hasn't got any and no decibel of background score can amplify phony affection nor can clunky dialogue sounding less like conversation and more as awkward Hindi subtitles.
A stranger tale you will not see than this documentary on how North Korea kidnapped a popular South Korean actress and a top South Korean director to make films for the North. (In English, Korean and Japanese with English subtitles.) Read more
Beautifully shot on a tiny Eden-like Pacific island, this is the surprisingly convincing story of the forbidden love between two young people and how it plays out in a traditional South Seas culture. In Nauvhal with English subtitles. Read more
Russian National Ballet: Giselle; tale of unrequited love, madness, death and revenge centers around a young peasant girl and her love for a handsome Count; 7:30 p.m.; Zellerbach Theatre, Annenberg Center; $33-$45.
The Courthouses of Early Virginia: An Architectural History, by Carl R. Lounsbury. Virginia, March 2005. $65
This is a handsome, richly illustrated social history. Lounsbury quite rightly extends the notion of architecture to include not just the physical structure but also the use of the building and sites of these early community centers, so this study emerges as a broad history of the legal, political, economic, and social roles of the buildings that were the natural focal points of sprawling rural communities.