Film

A couple of years ago, director Jake Kasdan woke up in the middle of the night, knowing suddenly that his next film would be a fake music biopic called Walk Hard. He went on to cast John C. Reilly as Dewey Cox, the putative legend at the heart of the story, who has trouble with women and drugs and who tries on a multitude of musical personalities. Walk Hard, due out Dec. 21, also features Jenna Fischer from NBC's The Office; it was co-written and produced by Judd Apatow. Apatow and Kasdan worked together previously on the critically acclaimed TV show Freaks and Geeks.

With a new career retrospective of his recordings, a biographical film starring actors impersonating him, and a display of over 120 of his watercolors in a German museum, Bob Dylan is in the public eye a lot at the moment. The latest addition to the Dylan avalanche is a film, The Other Side of the Mirror, chronicling his performances at three consecutive Newport Folk Festivals, from 1963 to 1965. Ed Ward reports that there's more to it than just a concert film.

In Tamara Jenkins' new film The Savages, two 40-something siblings have to put their lives on hold while they learn how to deal with their elderly father, who's slipping slowly into dementia.

The film — it's a comedy — stars Philip Seymour Hoffman and Laura Linney, plus Broadway veteran Philip Bosco as their ailling dad. (Watch a clip.)

Jenkins' previous film work includes The Slums of Beverly Hills.

Film critic David Edelstein reviews The Mist, which is based on the Stephen King novel.

The film stars Thomas Jane, Marcia Gay Harden and Andre Braugher.

Say "Christopher Plummer," and some people automatically think of The Sound of Music, in which he played the Baron von Trapp.

But that's just one of about 100 films Plummer has been in; recent highlights from his big-screen career include Syriana, The Insider, A Beautiful Mind, and Inside Man. He's also had long stage career, won two Tony Awards, and performed with the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Writer-director Todd Haynes is responsible for an eclectic array of films, from the elegantly bio-paranoia drama Safe to the glam-rock celebration Velvet Goldmine and the Douglas Sirk homage Far From Heaven.

His latest experiment: I'm Not There, a kind of fantasia on the public personas of Bob Dylan. Six different actors — including Cate Blanchett — play the famously protean singer.

Brian De Palma's films include the horror classic Carrie, the crime epics Scarface and The Untouchables, and the first Mission: Impossible film.

His latest release, Redacted, is a fictional take on a real incident — in which U.S. soldiers who raped and murdered a 14-year-old girl in Iraq. It has strong echoes of his Vietnam War drama Casualties of War.

Big-screen adaptation of the blood-soaked Cormac McCarthy novel is the latest from the creators of Fargo, The Big Lebowski, and Barton Fink.

It stars Josh Brolin as a hunter who finds a stash of cash, Javier Bardem as the psychopath who wants it back, and Tommy Lee Jones as the sheriff who's trying to find out who's leaving bodies all over his jurisdiction.

The Threepenny Opera revolutionized musical theater. Playwright and lyricist Bertolt Brecht, composer Kurt Weill and actress Lotte Lenya created a sensation when their show opened in Berlin in 1928.

Two years later, the great German director G.W. Pabst turned it into a movie, and it's just been released as a Criterion Collection DVD.

Mary Lillian Ellison, better known as The Fabulous Moolah, died Friday at age 84. She was a wrestler, promoter and trainer on the so-called "lady wrestling" circuit for more than 50 years.