For a movie that features drugs, jealousy, betrayal, sex and murder, The Snitch Cartel, Colombia's entry in the race for Best Foreign Language Film at next year's Oscars, offers a tepid rush and some nagging side effects.

Despite recounting a volatile era in the Colombian cocaine trade, director Carlos...

With his slow Queens drawl, high forehead and even higher hair, Christopher Walken has never been anything less than distinct. But in a career that spans (according to IMDB) 121 TV and movie appearances, the Oscar winner is most widely known for a specialty portfolio of volatile antagonists,...

Stephen Tobolowsky is probably a little too good at acting. Despite his above average height, his recognizable features and his slight Texas drawl (he's a Dallas native), the 61-year-old is probably better known for the names of the characters he's played.

Columbia is a city of 110,000 people in the middle of Missouri that often hosts cultural events that put the far larger metropolises of Kansas City and St. Louis to shame. The city is probably best known as the home of the University of Missouri and the dreaded Tigers.

Since her breakthrough role in 2002's Real Women Have Curves, America Ferrera has become a Hollywood leading lady by defying and frequently rewriting the term. She earned an Emmy for playing the capable, if not always best dressed, fashion magazine employee in Ugly Betty. Despite the braces and the odd...

Les Vampires

The appeal for silent movies comes not from imagining how a moldy piece of nitrate might have entertained our great grandparents more than staring at a blank wall but in catching a unique type of storytelling that's just about impossible to pull off today.

Such is the case...

Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady have made documentaries about entire subcultures, but their latest tackles a whole city. Detropia looks unflinchingly at the grim realities of contemporary Detroit, which is where Ewing grew up. The city has changed drastically since then.

In 1930, it was the fastest growing city in...

Lynn Shelton doesn't expect you to like her characters right away. In her fourth feature, Your Sister's Sister, the Seattle writer-director introduces her protagonist, Jack (played by Mark Duplass, star of her 2009 movie, Humpday), by giving him an angry diatribe to deliver -- one that sours a party held...

When Walter Cronkite declared, "That's the way it is," almost every weeknight from 1962 to 1981 on the CBS Evening News, it was easy to believe him. After all, the man was from Missouri. And it was here that the man who had covered stories all over the world --...

Thanks to David Simon, ordinary citizens -- or at least the ones with premium cable -- are now more likely to know what a second line is. Simon's HBO show Treme shines a light on the lives of working musicians in New Orleans and gives a new kind of exposure...

Since her 2004 debut album Get Away From Me, musician Nellie McKay has proved herself to be astonishingly versatile. The London-born, New York-raised songstress can change genres during the running time of a single tune.

"Sari" features her rapping to a Bach-like accompaniment, and "I Want to...

In June of 1970, Scanlan's Monthly ran an overview of that year's Kentucky Derby that contained only one paragraph about the actual race. The author neglected to mention which of horses either placed or showed. It's probably no wonder that the magazine folded shortly afterward. It would probably be safe...

Like the teenagers they chronicle in their Oscar-winning documentary Undefeated, directors Dan Lindsay and T.J. Martin weren't expected to emerge as winners. The two were up against some formidable competition on Oscar night, from their fellow nominees Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky's Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory and Wim Wenders' Pina....

In the 1930s and '40s, Busby Berkeley (1895-1976) staged a series of movie dance numbers that could rival the paintings of Salvador Dali in their outlandishness. His movies were loaded with jaw-dropping optical illusions and wound up influencing everyone from the Coen Brothers to Mel Brooks.

Despite the fact that...

Lou Dobbs' recent warning about the dangers of the new movie Dr. Seuss' The Lorax was too comical to leave unchallenged. Therefore, Bill Pryor, KCActive.com and I all teamed up to make this video on the subject.

Enjoy.

In 1985, German director Wim Wenders was prodded by his girlfriend to watch a performance of choreographer Pina Bausch's eerie Café Müller. As he recalls it now, he dreaded the evening that awaited, not knowing that what he was about to witness would change his movies and his life.

Twenty-seven...

Like a lot of people, I've adored watching reruns of Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone and waited eagerly to hear the writer-producer-host's voice informing us that something eerily unexpected was about to happen. With his well-fitting suits and unsettlingly calm delivery, it seemed as if Serling was almost marveling at...

Polish-born director Agnieszka Holland's movies and television shows have often changed the way we look at familiar events. Before 1990, most movies that dealt with World War II often presented the Nazis as monolithic monsters. While it was a lot of fun to see Indiana Jones beat up or outwit...

Having made three acclaimed features since her 1999 debut Ratcatcher, Scottish director Lynne Ramsay has told dark but almost whimsical stories that don't have easy conclusions.

While she's proud of her working class roots, Ramsay speaks over the phone in an almost musical Glasgow drawl that even laryngitis can't...

A little over 20 years ago, if you had your lunch or dinner interrupted by a caller wanting you to fork over on your student loans, I may have been the fellow who wrecked your day. I apologize. You shouldn't have had to hear from me, and it's a safe...