BY DEAN ROBBINS In 16th century France, the virginal Mary, Queen of Scots (Adelaide Kane), is swept up in palace intrigue. Her fiancé (Toby Regbo) cares less for her than he does for France, nattering on about the political advantage of their union. An evil queen (Megan Follows) plots against her, while her ladies-in-waiting indulge […]
series
Posted inArts & Culture
The Secret of Crickley Hall
Based on a 2006 novel by recently deceased UK horror icon James Herbert, Crickley Hall concerns a family in mourning. Nearing the first anniversary of their unthinkable tragedy, the foursome moves temporarily to the title abode to escape reminders of death. You know what they say about best intentions, right? Because, as the youngest of […]
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Once Upon a Time in Wonderland is a hallucinogenic delight
BY DEAN ROBBINS A companion to Once Upon a Time, Once Upon a Time in Wonderland (7 p.m. Thursday, ABC) reinterprets Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Alice (Sophie Lowe) faces a panel of doctors in Victorian England who don’t believe her stories of an invisible cat and a hookahsmoking caterpillar. They consider her insane […]
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Stuck in the middle
Shawn Spears and her son. Photo by Mark Hancock Between the Oklahoma County Election Board and Oklahoma Health Care Authority buildings, Shawn Spears, 24, works as a clerk at Langston University. She also studies psychology full time at Rose State College and plans to finish her bachelor’s at Langston. The student has a 5-year-old son […]
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TELEVISION
The Goldbergs wallows in a decade’s worth of shame and guilt. BY DEAN ROBBINS The 1980s take a beating in The Goldbergs (8 p.m. Tuesday, ABC). An adult narrator looks back on his childhood in the days when REO Speedwagon seemed profound and even middle-aged moms wore a Madonna hairdo. The Goldbergs are a hostile-yet-loving […]
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Femme Fatales: The Complete Second Season
This second batch of episodes, 12 in all on two DVDs, seems more confident than Femme‘s freshman outing, even if story quality remains wildly varied. Tanit Phoenix (Safe House) hosts the proceedings, with scenarios that include: • a comic-book heroine, • time-traveling clones, • noir-drenched detectives • and so much moaning. For every leaden dud […]
Posted inMusic
Rock the Brick
Ali Harter Photo: Mark Hancock Friday nights this summer, the streets of Bricktown are louder — but in a good way, as the outdoor summer concert series known as Lower Bricktown Live returns to rock the public and, hopefully, drive more commerce to the area. That’s been the plan since the series’ inception in 2010. […]
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Dexter: The Seventh Season
When we last left our favorite police forensics analyst, Dexter (Michael C. Hall), his lieutenant sister, Deb (Jennifer Carpenter), had caught him in the act of doing what he does best: executing serial killers. Spread across four DVDs, these 12 episodes deal mainly with the fallout of having her world come crashing down, with Deb […]
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The Aquabats! Super Show! Season One! 2012
A surf-rock band I recall running across in the mid-1990s, The Aquabats have been reborn as superheroes in these utterly insane adventures, drawing more influence from ’70s-era Asian monster matinees à la Infra-Man than anything else. In each half-hour, our costumed quintet fights some rubber-suited creature (Manant and the Floating Eye of Death among them), […]
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The Bletchley Circle
When the meekest of them (Anna Maxwell Martin) notices a pattern in a string of Jack the Ripper-esque slayings plaguing back together, so to speak. London, she gets the band back together, so to speak. If they couldn’t tell anyone about their wartime efforts, they certainly can’t tell anyone now; after all, what could housewives […]