By JIM HEINRICH, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

"PAULINE KAEL: A LIFE IN THE DARK"

By Brian Kellow

Viking Adult ($27.95)

What are the odds that on the same Sunday night in November, two networks would premiere movies with the words "dog" and "Christmas" in the titles?

Well, every dog has its day, and this Sunday's the day.

"The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler" -- terrible title, good movie -- tells the true story of a Polish woman who saved the lives of 2,500 children in Warsaw's Jewish ghetto during the Holocaust.
It airs Sunday at 9 p.m. EDT on CBS.

"Loving Leah" has the commonest of plots -- two unlikely people falling in love. But because the story unfolds amid a background of Hasidic Judaism, this Hallmark Hall of Fame production (9 p.m. EST Sunday, CBS) holds some surprises, too.

"Sweet Nothing in My Ear," the best Hallmark Hall of Fame production in more than a year, tackles a subject that television rarely examines -- deafness -- in a thought-provoking and moving way.It airs at 9 p.m. EDT Sunday on CBS.

In the first scene of "The Russell Girl" (good movie, terrible title), a young assistant buyer for Macy's in Chicago, played by Amber Tamblyn of "Joan of Arcadia," learns that she has an aggressive form of leukemia and needs immediate treatment.