Arts & Entertainment

By TERRY MORROW
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
Call it an occupational hazard for a guy like Justin Hartley.

He was down to his shorts and the occasional T-shirt as Aquaman in the ill-fated "Smallville" spin-off that never aired, "Mercy Reef." Now he's all masked and wearing confining leather as the Green Arrow in "Smallville" this season.

Which suits him best?

"The Green Arrow costume," he says.

By PHIL VILLARREAL
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
Eric Schlosser's book, "Fast Food Nation" is a remarkable and illuminating read. What it doesn't seem to be at all is movie material. The volume is thick with statistics, historical anecdotes and grotesque imagery of exactly how animals are fed, slaughtered and processed.

You'd have to be either half-crazy or the most talented director alive to make the book into a film.

By PHIL VILLARREAL
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
Give Terry Gilliam this much: His movies are never boring.

The imaginative director crafts movies that defy expectations. "The Fisher King," "Twelve Monkeys" and "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" are all eye-poppers that leave you much to ponder.

By BRUCE DANCIS
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
It would be damning with faint praise to call "49 Up" the best and longest-running "reality" series in history. While such shows as "The Real World" put photogenic people in decidedly unreal situations, "49 Up" chronicles the life changes of 14 people over nearly five decades.

Available on DVD this week (First Run Features, $29.95, not rated) following a short theatrical run in selected U.S.

By PHIL VILLARREAL
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
Everyone knows penguins can march, but the animated dramedy "Happy Feet" shows they can dance. And sing. And preach.

While funny and filled with music, the film is also a think piece rather than a laughy-daffy slapstick fest.

By BETSY PICKLE
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
Thanks to the movies, James Bond has lived many lives over 42 years. "Casino Royale" takes him back to where he started in Ian Fleming's first novel.

Rough around the edges and markedly misogynistic, the British secret agent is reborn for the next-to-new millennium in his first outing since "Die Another Day." Daniel Craig takes over from Pierce Brosnan with no hesitance and gives notice that the 007 franchise is far from heading the way of the dinosaur.

After a black-and-white prologue set in Prague that shows James Bond (Craig) getting his double-0 stripes, James pops up in Africa, where he makes a messy public show of killing a man who appears to be unarmed.

By ANDREW A. SMITH
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
Welcome to another edition of Comics Headline Ticker, which chronicles the continuing conquest of current culture by comics characters.

_ ITEM! Marvel's Heroes Licked?

The U.S.

By MIKE PEARSON
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
("The Da Vinci Code." Sony. DVD. 149 min. Rated PG-13. $29.96. Grade: B.)

Fans of Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code" already know how it ends. The suspense in Ron Howard's screen adaptation lies in how deftly he executes the twists and turns in the complex tale of religion, murder and faith.

Tom Hanks is Harvard symbolist Robert Langdon, who finds himself suspected of killing the curator of the Louvre.

By ROBERT DENERSTEIN
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
A GOOD YEAR (C-) Director Ridley Scott and actor Russell Crowe, who worked together on the Oscar-winning "Gladiator," stumble in this comedy about a ruthless London financial trader who inherits his uncle's vineyard estate in France.

By CHUCK CAMPBELL
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
"SATURDAY NIGHT WRIST," Deftones (Maverick)

The Deftones haven't lost their touch, but they're apparently more reluctant to flaunt it if their new "Saturday Night Wrist" is any indication.

One of the best hard-rock groups to emerge in the past decade, the California band indulges itself in exploration beyond its niche, yielding a somewhat disappointing follow-up to its superb self-titled release from 2003 and gripping "White Pony" from 2000.

There's certainly no call for the Deftones to engage in the generic chaos of screamo that results in the anonymous new tracks "FM" and "Rats." If the group entered those cuts in a high-school battle of the bands, chances are they'd lose.

More successful experiments are likewise question marks.