Film & Stage Reviews

Tattoos, Photos Bare East-West Split; Brecht’s Baby: S.F. Stage Making the 19th century look sexy might seem an odd strategy for a 21st-century theater. Yet California’s Berkeley Rep has come up with another clever show about Victorian obsessions.

Roasted Bodies, Lost Souls Horrify in Hanks’s War Series: TV You know you’re watching an intense war film when being machine-gunned is an act of mercy. That’s the predicament for many Japanese soldiers in “The Pacific,” a 10-part World War II miniseries that begins Sunday on HBO at 9 p.m. New York time.

Damon Searches for Chemical Weapons; Wedding Follies: Movies What manic thriller directed by Paul Greengrass stars Matt Damon as an obsessed man caught in a web of political intrigue, gunplay and spine-tingling chases?

See Nicole Kidman Sulk, Hear Chopin Play: Great London Weekend Steal a glimpse of a sulking Nicole Kidman as the Friday stop on your weekend in London.

Spitzer Documentary, Falcon Smuggling Highlight Tribeca Lineup An unfinished documentary on former New York governor Eliot Spitzer, a biopic on maverick French singer/songwriter Serge Gainsbourg and a crime drama starring James Franco will be shown at next month’s Tribeca Film Festival in New York.

Warren Spector Seeks $7 Million for Expanding Public Theater Wearing a white hardhat, former Bear Stearns Cos. Co-President Warren Spector chipped plaster with a gold-plated wood mallet yesterday in the lobby of New York’s Public Theater, signifying the latest change at what was once the grand Astor Library.

‘Scottsboro’ Turns Nightmare Into ‘Chicago’ Style Show: Review On the stage of New York’s Vineyard Theatre, John Cullum swoons, lost in reverie. Behind the white actor, nine worn black men sing “Southern Days,” a ghostly ode to Dixie as sweet-sounding as “My Old Kentucky Home.”

Phantom’s Love Gets Messy in Sequel ‘Love Never Dies’: Review The Phantom of the Opera, last seen fleeing from the bowels of the Paris opera, has resurfaced as an impresario in Coney Island.