Culture Catch-up: Dolly Parton digs those days
TV. When he was just 26, Albert Einstein stumbled upon the little equation E=mc2. Oh, and he also proved atoms existed and did some work with light that later won him the Nobel Prize. It's the 100th anniversary of that year, but instead of wallowing in self-pity because your accomplishments aren't anywhere nearly as cool, watch the findings unfold on NOVA: Einstein's Big Idea (PBS, October 11, 8 p.m. EDT), a docudrama about Einstein and his intellectual predecessors narrated by John Lithgow. Science is way more fun when acted out in period costume.
We love to hate Ann Curry, so it's a wee bit annoying that the Today show newsreader comes off extremely likable in Intimate Portrait: Ann Curry (Lifetime, October 9, 11 p.m. EDT). She does admit to flubbing up frequently, though–there's a blooper reel of her messing up her lines. And then there's all this stuff about how hard she works, and how she saved her sister from breast cancer, and the fact that she's growing her hair long for Locks of Love. OK, OK, Ann! We love you. We were wrong.
Movies. But as much as we admire Ann and the rest of the network news gang, they are no match for the gravitas and gutsiness of Edward R. Murrow and his crew in Good Night, and Good Luck, which documents the newsman's confrontation with rabid Commie hunter Sen. Joseph McCarthy. Directed and cowritten by George Clooney, who also appears onscreen as Murrow's producer Fred Friendly, the black-and-white flick is concise but powerful. And in case you're wondering which actor is channeling the spitting image of the junior senator from Wisconsin, it's McCarthy himself from archival footage. He may not have been a good politician, but darn can he act. Russian spies aren't the problem in the delightful Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. The enemy of the claymation duo is a giant hare that's terrorizing English vegetable gardens. But no, animator/creator Nick Park was not inspired by Bunnicula. "I thought this was original, using a rabbit in a horror movie genre," he told U.S. News's Marc Silver.
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