The Learning Channel’s 10-part series “The Monastery” has a couple of advantages over your run-of-the-mill reality show. One is that it is shot at Christ in the Desert, a Roman Catholic monastery in northern New Mexico. TLC’s cameras capture the astounding beauty of the canyon setting’s piercing blue skies, hawks dawdling overhead and the lacework…

We like when things are neatly packaged and easily grasped, one character in Clint Eastwood’s “Flags of our Fathers” tells us: good and evil, heroes and villains. “Most of the time they aren’t. But we think they are.” The movie, opening today, shows us the complex and messy depiction of the Battle of Iwo Jima.…

“One anchor, five correspondents, zero credibility.” Now that’s a tagline that speaks to me. “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” celebrated its 10th anniversary this week. What? You’ve never watched “The Daily Show?” You don’t know what you’re missing. Being the “One News Organization with No Credibility to Lose” has worked well for this fake…

What are the odds that Matteo the talking diary, a pen named Quill Simona, and two doves called Piccolo and Fiona will become beloved animated characters just like Bambi, Pinocchio, or Winnie the Pooh? The producers of “John Paul II, The Friend of Humanity” are hoping so. The new Vatican-approved film, revealed at a press…

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