Paradise Lost

The life and times of an excommunicated priest. And the church he's trying to build, brick by brick.

• by Matt Stroud

Broken Bats

A mysterious disease that has killed thousands of bats may have settled in Western Pennsylvania caves

• by Adam Fleming

Arts: Scrap thieves may have damaged sculpture project

• by Chris Young

Politics: Lecture examines American "obsession" with Islam

• by Melissa Meinzer

Haggis Holiday

The traditional Scottish sausage is the star of the party.

• by Melissa Meinzer

Amigos

Familiar Mexican-American food with the quality and polish of a professionally run establishment

• by Angelique Bamberg and Jason Roth

Balmoral Classic returns for second celebration of traditional Scottish music

The Classic concludes with an evening concert at the Hillman Center featuring Bodega, BBC Radio's Young Folk Band of the Year for 2006.

• by Aaron Jentzen

Jolie Holland conjures the supernatural with The Living and the Dead

"I never try to force it, I never get nerdy and say 'I'll write this kind of song now!' I just let it happen."

• by Andy Mulkerin

Jazz violinist Billy Bang revisits Vietnam in music for Veterans Day

"When I was writing that music, I remember actually crying again and seeing the nightmares I'd been trying to get away from."

• by Mike Shanley

Radical Riffs series hosts composer and percussionist Lukas Ligeti

Ligeti strives to create electronic music with a sense of motion, a physicality that's missing when musicians are simply touching buttons and turning knobs.

• by Andy Mulkerin

The Three Rivers Film Festival

• by CP Staff

Changeling

Director Clint Eastwood's new movie is pretty much like his last few -- somber, stylish, too long, less than meets the eye -- but especially like one of them: As in Million Dollar Baby, Eastwood gives strong roles to strong actresses and examines a woman's struggle against the patriarchy. In 1928, Christine Collins (Angelina Jolie) finds that it's her against the men of the Los Angeles police force, after her son disappears and then -- in a bizarre conspiracy -- essentially replaced by another missing boy. At his best, Eastwood concentrates our attention, without getting preachy, on the way men cast off the lives and minds of women. Jolie's deeply moving performance helps to cut through its muted blue-gray color scheme and murky lighting. Christine has dimension, but Changeling doesn't, so it's like watching a movie at war with itself. One thing's for sure about Eastwood, though: 21^st-century politics aside, he's not afraid to take on corruption and sexism in 1928. [3 out of 4 stars]

• by Harry Kloman

Happy-Go-Lucky

Poppy, the cheerful, bubbly young Londoner who is the protagonist of Leigh's character study, is the sort of person we rarely see profiled in films: an ordinary person who is perfectly happy. The loosely sketched plot builds as Poppy (Sally Hawkins) enters into a series of weekly driving lesson with the extremely uptight Scott (Eddie Marsan). He is flummoxed by Poppy's blitheness, as she is by his lack of good humor. But Poppy is no caricature; she is not vapid, naive or flighty. Her strength is her optimism, and it's what infuses all the banal and even shadowy corners of her life with, if not light, than at least hope. Leigh suggests that her greatest sadness is acknowledging that every life can not be as happy (or lucky) as hers; worst of all, to Poppy, are those lives crippled by self-imposed negativity. A few of life's wholly normal pains aside, Leigh's unironic film is a sunny endeavor and full of light humor -- from Poppy's dreadful puns and nonsense phrases, to her roommate's wry sarcastic observations and Scott's compulsive and bizarre driver-training methods. This season is already full of gloom: Winter's coming, politics have stretched everyone's last nerve, the economy is ailing. Two hours with the bracingly optimistic Poppy may be just the tonic. [3 out of 4 stars]

• by Al Hoff

Madagascar: Back 2 Africa.

If kids actually sit and watch an 89-minute cartoon about a talking lion, zebra, giraffe and hippo without screaming for Mountain Dew and asking every 10 minutes if it's over yet, that's a sign of a pretty good children's movie. And so it was at the advance screening of Eric Darnell and Tom McGrath's animated comedy, the sequel to the madcap 2005 adventure that put a boatload of New York City zoo creatures on the titular African island. Now, the animals once shipwrecked in Madagascar make an escape for New York, only this time they end up crashing in Africa. A fast pace and decent dialog (with voice work from Ben Stiller, Chris Rock, Alec Baldwin and the late Bernie Mac) helps Mad 2 hit its most critical benchmark: It keeps the kids entertained without boring the parents. Starts Fri., Nov. 7. (Charlie Deitch) [3 out of 4 stars]

• by Charlie Deitch

Rocknrolla

If you dug Ritchie's Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998), you should find his latest London-set crime comedy amusing; it's virtually another version, but with more recognizable actors. Once again, Ritchie lines up an ensemble cast of interconnected thugs, gangsters, druggies, ordinary blokes who lean a bit dodgy and entertainers, mixed with some well-heeled (and well-booted) Russians and a pair of sleek upper-crust players. Instead of antique pistols, the chase is on for a surprisingly mobile "lucky painting." The odd bits of plot do all snap together satisfactorily, but the film's best pleasures are its jocular dialogue and a handful of entertaining performances, among them Tom Wilkinson as an aging fixer, Mark Strong as his consigliere and Gerard Butler as the relative innocent whose failed scheme sets much of the dizzying plot into motion. (AH) [2.5 out of 4 stars]

• by Al Hoff

Role Models

If you don't quite have the energy to process a brand-new story, but need a brainless laugh or two, David Wain's raunchy comedy ought to fit the bill. In it, a couple of goofball underachievers get court-ordered to mentor two troublesome young teens. Dim-bulb party boy Wheeler (Seann William Scott) gets Ronnie (Bobb'e J. Thompson), a foul-mouthed prankster; just-dumped Danny (Paul Rudd) lands Augie (Christopher Mintz-Plasse, who stole Superbad as McLovin), who lives for medieval battle re-enactments. It all goes badly, until everybody pitches in -- during Ye Olde Ultimate Battle, natch -- to help everybody else. Awwww, two boys and two grown men inch toward maturity -- one crotch-kick at a time. It ends, as it must, with a group high-five. Starts Fri., Nov. 7. (AH) [2 out of 4 stars]

• by Al Hoff

A Sewickley gallery continues a tradition of showcasing work from the former Eastern bloc.

Such works are the equivalent of memento mori and a celebration of the inexplicable beauty of chaos as it emerges victorious over the order imposed by man.

• by Savannah Guz

Why is Bellefield Presbyterian Church in Oakland not located on Bellefield Street but Thackeray Avenue? Was the structure relocated to its current site?

Generally speaking, it's a lot easier to move people than it is to move buildings. Unless, of course, the people are fundamentalists.

• by Chris Potter

This Just In: November 6 - 13

Highlights from the local TV news: Trick-or-treating returns to Oil City.

• by Frances Sansig Monahan

A new book by two Pitt grads argues that Western activists have the Darfur crisis all wrong.

Funk says that "the history of humanitarian intervention ... is almost universally a history of government propaganda," used to justify warfare.

• by Bill O'Driscoll

The author of an acclaimed "novel in stories" about Russian-Jewish immigrants in Squirrel Hill reads here.

"'Fabulous,' I say. 'Fantastic.' I'm proficient in basic American pleasantries."

• by Bill O'Driscoll

November brings another harvest of literary readings.

Murray has published three novels including 2007's Forgery (Grove Press), and wrote the screenplay for the 2004 film The Beautiful Country

• by Bill O'Driscoll

Long Story Short

No cheap tearjerker, this world-premiere musical romance is truly touching, i.e., touching the audience with merriment and passion as well as pain.

• by Michelle Pilecki

No Place to Be Somebody

"Hip/cool" plays, which No Place must have certainly been at one time, tend to age badly, and this one most certainly has.

• by Ted Hoover

Lysistrata

Literally, the translation is awkward, like a Dr. Seuss poem written by saucy pirates.

• by Robert Isenberg

The Mystery of Irma Vep

The duo are simply not fast enough, not sharp enough, to give the production what it must have to succeed.

• by Alan W. Petrucelli

Art itself is the subject for Dan Jemmett's new show for Quantum Theatre.

He compares it to "a poem that doesn't really release its secrets easily."

• by Bill O'Driscoll