I won't say that Shut Up, Ugly is flawless. A long conversation that Burns has with a butler is like P.G. Wodehouse with his head cut off. There is some fidgety, not-quite-necessary indie humor. But Pendarvis, whose last novel, Awesome, was about a giant sexy robot, is generally in cool command of his nonsense. You won't catch him using words like "corbelling" and "newel post." What do birds peck at?
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W. gets a B, Why so serious?, The Secret Life of Bees, More 
- W. gets a B
Josh Brolin prevails over Oliver Stone’s shaky portrait
- Why so serious?
Lego Batman is not The Dark Knight: Now, with Legos!
- The Secret Life of Bees
The real heroine is Dakota Fanning, an actress capable of conveying guilt, nerves, and idealism all at once.
- Morning Light
If it weren’t for the ritzy camera work and the trumped-up soundtrack orchestrated by directors Paul Crowder and Mark Monroe, this tub would be dead in the water.
- Into the woods
In its several productions, the Narragansett-based Theater of Thought has finessed the problem quite nicely — by making us flies on that wall, as the expression goes.
- City of Ember
Kids who see the truth when adults cannot is a central idea in children’s stories, but today’s kids would hardly recognize the grown-ups in Ember’s totalitarian society.
- A powerhouse play
For a play titled Small Tragedy , playwright Craig Lucas certainly has packed in a bundle of large feelings.
- Body of Lies
For a film dealing with Intelligence, Body of Lies has little enough of its own.
- What Just Happened
“There isn’t a film there,” Ben tells the screenwriter. Sounds like What Just Happened .
- Quarantine
Every second horror film these days seems to be shot by some desperate character with a hand-held digital camera who half the time is running for his or her life.
- Kon Asian Bistro
Kon is essentially Japanese, but it calls itself an “Asian Bistro,” inviting us to cross borders.
- Less
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Books
, Media, John Gardner, John Gardner, More
, Media, John Gardner, John Gardner, Burns, Ugly, Books and Literature, P.G. Wodehouse, Less
