Bet you didn’t know these tricks
Both these artists love their dogs — as pets and as subjects. That’s where the similarity ends.
This 1992 Neil Simon comedy was a snoozer in the 1996 film adaptation, and it remains drowsy in this productions.
Friends of Felines sanctuary provides a last chance for feral felines
For mobile vets, house calls are the norm
Week 24: Peering into a Young Bird’s Future
Maryland’s Most Humane Lawmakers

Machete

Studio Tagline: Yesterday he was a decent man living a decent life. Now he is a brutal savage who must slaughter to stay alive.
Danny Trejo is a rogue Federale out for blood, fighting to clear his name and destroy Sen. Robert DeNiro’s vicious conspiracy against illegal immigration. The Mexploitation flick is stylized ultraviolence with Michelle Rodriguez as a revolutionary taco truck vendor, Cheech Marin as a double shotgun-wielding padre, Steven Seagal as a drug kingpin nemesis. The channeling of timely anger and violent catharsis through pulpy aesthetic, script and characters promises worthy spectacle —...

Going the Distance

Studio Tagline: A comedy about meeting each other halfway.
Drew Barrymore and Justin Long are crazy for each other after a few short weeks, but then she moves out of town. Romantic comedy ensues as they try to keep the fire burning in a cross-country relationship. Previews have deadpan married man Jim Gaffigan and creepy best friend Charlie Day (his forte) supplementing wittier humor typical of the genre. But even in preview, delivery lacks snap, and humor is blunted by fuzzy wuzzies. Probably a forgettable but happy enough distraction. Prospects:...

Animal Kingdom

Studio Tagline: You Can't Play the Joker In a No Trumps Hand.
A teen boy (James Frecheville) must decide to join career-criminal family or trust a cop bent on saving him in this gritty Australian drama, based on the events leading to Melbourne’s Walsh Street police shootings in the late 1980s. Invading theatres with a slew of film Festival awards, the film has already built up award-buzz for Guy Pearce and Ben Mendlesohn’s solid performances. Prospects: Bright • R • 112 mins.

The American

George Clooney drives scenic Italian roads to a scenic Italian town where he has oblique moralistic dialogue with a local priest and admires a vixen through the scope of his sniper rifle. Oh, and he’s apparently some kind of assassin trying to ditch the game after taking care of one last job. There is evidently some action, but it looks to be a Continental bit of existential introspection heavy on aesthetic and mood. The art house spy thriller will either offer a sophisticated take on...

The Last Exorcism

An exorcist heads to the sticks to wrestle evil and his own crisis of faith in this smart and trim chiller.
Cotton Marcus (Patrick Fabian: TV’s Big Love) is palling around with a couple documentarians to film his confessional. The fast-talking evangelical minister from Baton Rouge is a sleight-of-hand exorcist standing on shaky faith, and he means to expose his own con by documenting one of his so-called exorcisms. But when he follows a handwritten plea to the Sweetzer farm in backwoods Louisiana, he discovers innocent child Nell (Ashley Bell: Stay Cool) is afflicted with something his placebo...

Arts & Culture

Studio Tagline: A comedy about meeting each other halfway.
Drew Barrymore and Justin Long are crazy for each other after a few short weeks, but then she moves out of town. Romantic comedy ensues as they try to keep the fire burning in a cross-country relationship. Previews have deadpan married man Jim Gaffigan and creepy best friend Charlie Day (his forte) supplementing wittier humor typical of the genre. But even in preview, delivery lacks snap, and humor is blunted by fuzzy wuzzies. Probably a forgettable but happy enough distraction. Prospects:...
Studio Tagline: Yesterday he was a decent man living a decent life. Now he is a brutal savage who must slaughter to stay alive.
Danny Trejo is a rogue Federale out for blood, fighting to clear his name and destroy Sen. Robert DeNiro’s vicious conspiracy against illegal immigration. The Mexploitation flick is stylized ultraviolence with Michelle Rodriguez as a revolutionary taco truck vendor, Cheech Marin as a double shotgun-wielding padre, Steven Seagal as a drug kingpin nemesis. The channeling of timely anger and violent catharsis through pulpy aesthetic, script and characters promises worthy spectacle —...
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Features

Maryland’s Most Humane Lawmakers
The Maryland General Assembly is a pretty animal-friendly place, according to the Maryland Humane Scorecard released this month. Across both houses, 117 of 188 members scored 75 percent or higher; only 12 legislators scored less than 50 percent. Forty lawmakers — six senators and 34 delegates — scored 100 percent. Representing Anne Arundel and Calvert, House Speaker Michael Busch (District 30) and Del. James Proctor ((District 27A) are 100-percenters. Eight lawmakers scored even...
For mobile vets, house calls are the norm
Ozzy isn’t sure about the ladies with the needle. The Jack Russell-Dalmatian mix warily eyes the women kneeling on owner Mary Quayle’s kitchen floor, even though the ladies in pink T-shirts pat the ground and offer treats. Ozzy would rather not be Mobile Pet Vets’ first patient of the day. Dr. Lisa Beagan and tech Robin Hennick brush off Ozzy’s rejection. They have plenty of time to win over the anxious pup. House calls don’t have a time limit. Eventually, Ozzy...
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Regulars

Bet you didn’t know these tricks
If you examine a rose plant carefully, you will notice that it has compound leaves, meaning that there are either three or five leaflets to each leaf. The three-leaflet leaves appear near the top and bottom of each stem, and the five-leaflet leaves appear in the middle of the stems. In the axel of each leaf is a vegetative bud; however, the buds are more robust and pronounced in the axels of the five-leaflet leaves than in the three-leaflet leaves. You can control the growth of roses by pruning...
Top-water fishing’s all about how you play the lure
The quiet waterscape flowing around us was only dimly illuminated by the first blush of a calm and breaking day as my son and I made our casts. Drifting slowly in our skiff on the fresh start of a gentle ebb, we were moving about 100 feet out and parallel to a long, weathered bulkhead, footed by heavy, barnacled stone piled along its base. Fish Are Biting Rockfish, Spanish mackerel and bluefish are making life interesting for anglers enjoying our nearly perfect weather the past week or so....
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Special Editions

True stories in the hands of a good storyteller outdo fiction.
In not one but four books, gutsy Anne LaBastille tells her story of her life on 20 acres in the Adirondack Mountains. In Woodswoman, LaBastille meets her husband, divorces, finds her own place in the woods and, with a few helping hands, constructs a log home where she builds a new life. The next three books — Beyond Black Bear Lake, Woodswoman III and Woodswoman IV — follow LaBastille’s efforts to protect and preserve the wild Adirondack National Park and her lifestyle....
J.R. Moehringer was abandoned by his father before birth. The boy knows him only as The Voice on the radio and seeks male nurturing from his bartender uncle and the regulars at the corner tavern. At “a place where everybody knows your name,” he learns about baseball and politics, history and sex. As he listens to the jokes and anecdotes, he learns to appreciate words and storytelling. –Marilyn Recknor
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