By BARRY PARIS, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

The curtain rises on Hester's methodical preparations, to the exquisite strains of Samuel Barber's Violin Concerto: She closes the curtains in her dingy London flat, stuffs a towel under the door, puts a note on the mantelpiece, swallows some pills, inserts coins in the gas meter, turns on the valve, lies down and drifts off as it hisses ...

The cyclical nature of Stooge-mania is not unlike that associated with biblical plagues, locust invasions and the reliable return of Halley's comet.

From John Wilkes Booth to Lee Harvey Oswald, presidential assassins and co-conspirators have had a short shelf life after their dastardly deeds. A certain rush to judgment -- human and/or divine -- is evident in the fates of:

So where was the Tea Party movement -- or Joe the Plumber -- when the Sheriff of Nottingham needed them? Robbing from the rich and giving to the poor sounds suspiciously like redistributing the wealth to me.

Old actors never die. They prefer to let their really old film characters die for them.

Spike Lee has long been America's most serious black filmmaker, never lacking or shying away from a tough racial agenda. Time, now, to eliminate the word "black" from that appraisal: Lee's agenda in "Miracle at St. Anna" is no less racial-historical yet far more ambitiously universal than ever before.

For comparison purposes, conjure a mental image of Niagara Falls and the huge hydro plant there that generates 2,300 megawatts of electricity.

If you take Agent 007 and add 110 gags, you get Agent 117 -- complete with elements of James Bond and Inspector Clouseau as well as a few rogue genes from Maxwell Smart and Austin Powers -- in "OSS 117: Cairo Nest of Spies."

In "Run Fatboy Run," Simon Pegg plays a lovable ne'er-do-well who leaves his pregnant fiancee (Thandie Newton) at the altar but eventually regrets his mistake. In order to win her back, he has to prove himself better than the rich American fitness freak (Hank Azaria) she now plans to marry. How else to do that but to run -- and beat his rival -- in the London Marathon?

Sexual and artistic angst has long permeated the love stories of French and Italian filmmakers. Now comes writer-director Hong Sang-soo with a South Korean counterpart to the European existential romance.