Insult to Injury Reports

Is the Steelers' spin dishonest or just how the game is played?

• by Charlie Deitch

Christmas Bonus

As Miles case plods on, the officers involved still collect checks for sitting at home

• by Chris Young

Lezzet

Tucked away on Semple Street, don't miss this Turkish delight.

• by Angelique Bamberg and Jason Roth

A&J Ribs

• by Lauren Daley

Pittsburgh's Mark Dignam to play a Dublin tribute to Phil Lynott next month

"Probably the first concert I went to was when Phil quit Thin Lizzy and started his solo career."

• by Aaron Jentzen

Jesse Malin hits his stride with his finest solo release, Love it to Life

Just 42, despite his three-decade pedigree, Malin doesn't sit still long enough for moss to gather.

• by Chris Parker

Acoustic guitarist Bert Jansch visits for a rare concert, with special guest Pegi Young

A unique, understated stylist, Jansch's influence transcends the British folk and blues music he emerged from and spans several generations of musicians.

• by Aaron Jentzen

Emcee contest Rhyme Calisthenics 10 features Elzhi -- and some twists

Saturday's installment will include 10 competitors, many of them returning champions like Black Sun, who won the last contest, in May.

• by Andy Mulkerin

The Tourist

How could such a movie go wrong? Two well-liked, bankable stars; dreamy European locales; a director with an Oscar on his mantle? But make no mistake: If you'd like to spend your holiday money to see what a very glossy but boring flop looks like, The Tourist is your ticket. Set mostly in Venice, the story tracks a beauty (Angelina Jolie), a hapless tourist (Johnny Depp) she befriends, a bunch of money, some Russian thugs and a scattering of Euro-cops, until we arrive at the not-at-all surprising conclusion. It has been clumsily directed (and co-scripted) by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck (The Lives of Others). He is clearly aiming for "Hitchcock light," that sublime combination of sumptuous location, sexual tension, sly comedy and tuxedoed intrigue that defined, say, To Catch a Thief. But he misses, big-time. The plot is so thinly sketched out, it may as well have been a lengthy advertorial for fine perfume. The two often-engaging stars -- who have adeptly handled their share of entertaining junk over the years -- seemed as if they were floating through on tranquilizers. The whole film was like so much expensive -- but flat -- champagne. The last shot features its stars unfurling sails for a getaway. Who can blame them? (Al Hoff) [1.5 out of 4 stars]

• by Al Hoff

Black Swan

In his thundering and tumultuous paean to artistic devotion, Darren Aronofsky tells the story of Nina (Natalie Portman), a dedicated but demure young ballerina with a New York company run by Thomas (Vincent Cassel), a wildly creative and passionate choreographer. There probably is no new way to tell a story about ballerinas and hungry artists. There are only variations on the clichés. But the fact that Aronofsky embraces all of them makes much of Black Swan somewhat irritating. Rather than go for "real," Aronofsky, a pseudo-intellectual fabulist, goes for the opposite: Nina, under pressure, begins to conjure dark hallucinations. There's a germ of an idea here, but Aronofsky takes a while unpacking it, and he plays it up like opera once he does. His movie is gorgeous to watch, and Tchaikovsky's famous music resounds. As Nina, Portman is fiercely delicate but never delicately fierce. But Aronofsky needs her to be simple to make her collapse into madness more shocking. Starts Fri., Dec. 17. (Harry Kloman) [2.5 out of 4 stars]

• by Harry Kloman

Nora's Will

Mariana Chenillo's film serves up a shiva mixed with a Seder, with sides of a Mexican wake-to-go and plenty of family discord. After Nora commits suicide, her apartment becomes a gently comedic battleground for her atheist ex-husband, an appointed Jewish prayer-reader, the Catholic housekeeper and a couple of grandkids who love playing in the cross-shaped coffin. The flow of characters through the single set works so well that the few fill-in-the-story flashbacks feel unnecessary and distracting. In Spanish, with subtitles. Starts Fri., Dec. 17. Oaks (Al Hoff) [2.5 out of 4 stars]

• by Al Hoff

Auditory experiences both unique and universal intrigue at Wood Street.

The intense nothingness of "Dark Matter" pulls viewers in like the hypothetical gravitational force its title alludes to.

• by Savannah Schroll Guz

Blue(s) Christmas

Holiday-season uncertainty for the barely insured

• by Chris Potter

This Just In: December 16 - 23

Highlights from the local TV news: Nomageddon!

• by Frances Sansig Monahan

Telling it Like it Is

A poem by Anne Rashid

We comment on 50 pages each of four recent local fiction releases.

Dave Newman's Please Don't Shoot Anyone Tonight is dead honest, often painfully so.

• by Bill O'Driscoll

She Loves Me

She Loves Me is all about charm and sweetness and niceness and charm and charm and charm and charm.

• by Ted Hoover

After quitting his day job in a "leap of faith," theatrical director and producer Mark Clayton Southers is hired by the August Wilson Center. 

"It was like I was in a trance. All I kept saying was, 'Cool.'"

• by Bill O'Driscoll

Hobson's Choice

The acting, though earnest, remains more serious than comic.

• by Gordon Spencer

Short List: Week of December 16 - 23

• Tags: Short List, Wiz Khalifa, Stage AE, Hip hop