‘Somerville’: A Cerebral Conspiracy of Nazis, Art, and Drugs : THE FRONT PAGE ONLINE

"Despite the novel’s lack of immediate urgency, the result of not fully capitalizing on the drama inherent in the book’s concept and themes, Somerville is a solid debut novel that is informative without being dry or preachy. Stanford trusts in his readers’ intelligence and capacity to pay attention, and in this sense the lack of cheap gimmicks has its benefits. Hopefully, we will see more of the good professor’s erudition in future novels. "

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Southern Comforts: The Sun Never Sets on Love at the ICT : THE FRONT PAGE ONLINE

"How refreshing, then, to see playwright Kathleen Clarke upend conventional commercial wisdom with a piece of theatre that consists of nothing more than a set and two older people who unexpectedly find romance."

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Southern Comforts. Written by Kathleen Clarke. Directed by Jules Aaron. Starring Michael Learned and Granville Van Dusen. On stage at the International City Theatre in Long Beach, Thursday through Sunday, through April 10. Visit www.internationalcitytheatre.org for tickets and information.

Rango: High Plains Lizard : THE FRONT PAGE ONLINE

A chameleon with an identity crisis is just the sort of quirky, elevated premise that waits for a Hollywood studio to come around and take it down a few notches, preferably through the agency of a starry-eyed export from a sketch comedy show. Or, in the case of animation, by treading territory already covered by Saturday morning cartoons and artless gag factories. What a pleasant surprise to the pessimist, then, that Rango smartly lives up to its promise, offering up a light but effective existential Western populated by colourful, humanized critters voiced by top-notch, chameleon-worthy actors.

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‘The Pinnacle Seven’: An Entertaining Climb Up the Peaks of Wishful Thinking : THE FRONT PAGE ONLINE

Conspiracy thrillers typically occupy the sinister, occasionally apocalyptic, spaces of the human mind. Jackie Richards’ self-billed political mystery offers a different kind of scheme, one as quaint as the romance of a workers’ revolution, only more twee: a bourgeois escapist fantasy rooted in a widely-shared frustration with the stalemated two-party system.

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The BBC’s Sherlock: Thrilling But Not Quite Elementary : THE FRONT PAGE ONLINE

The happy news is that Sherlock, produced and co-written by Doctor Who showrunner Steven Moffat along with fellow Whovian Mark Gatiss, is as good a contemporary presentation of the classic detective as one could expect, if not hope for....

The series deserves accolades for its hip, smart efforts even if, it must be said, Jeremy Brett and Edward Burke remain the definitive Holmes and Watson, and the Granada series that housed them remains the definitive screen adaptation of Doyle’s work.

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