Film

Freebies from Verizon and Comcast could add to the fun of the Memorial Day Weekend. Verizon's offering a slew of free content for four days, and Comcast's Xfinity is giving away access to thousands of wireless hotspots through Independence Day. From Friday till Tuesday, Verizon subscribers can find more than 1,700 movies and 50 entire TV series through the cable service's 900 channel. That includes such recent theatrical films as Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, The Dark Knight Rises, Bridesmaids, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows, The Hunger Games, Hugo, Ice Age: Continental Drift, Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted, Mission Impossible - Ghost Protocol, Moonrise Kingdom, Prometheus , and Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows . They're available through Cinemax, ePix, HBO and ViewNow.

At lunchtime on May 15, 2001, CSX Locomotive No. 8888 eased down tracks in a rail yard outside Toledo, Ohio. The engine known as "Crazy Eights" picked up speed as it pulled 47 freight cars, two of them loaded with toxic chemicals, south toward Columbus. Only no one was on board. Jon Hosfeld, a native of Mechanicsburg, Pa., was in the rail yard eating his lunch. He wasn't supposed to be there that day. Hosfeld, 52, ran a CSX yard 67 miles south in Kenton; he'd come north to deposit a carload of children and Ohio's lieutenant governor in Toledo for a program aimed at raising awareness about the dangers of rail crossings.

On any given day during the last several seasons you might have found five or six Eagles sprawled out in their locker stalls catching some midday zzzzs. In most cases, the players would build themselves a makeshift bed with pillow, their heads covered with a shirt or some other piece of clothing, their outstretched legs obstructing passage through the narrow lockerroom at the NovaCare Complex. There were other places to sleep - the lounge, the trainer's room - and, it seemed, plenty of opportunities for exhausted players to nap under Andy Reid.

Everybody wants to date Kate. Well, maybe not everybody, but a lot of guys working on Katie Holmes ' new flick Mania Days apparently have warm feelings for the fair Kate, the New York Post reports. A source tells the Post that Katie, 34, has received seven offers to step out: "They were crew members and extras just chancing it. It really got on the nerves of director Paul Dalio . Needless to say, she said no to everyone," the source said. Holmes has been unattached since sundering last year from Tom Cruise . The only mushy stuff for Kate has been strictly business, with costar Luke Kirby . They play manic depressives who fall in love in a psychiatric hospital.

Now that the Kimmel Center has disassembled the imaginary time machine that long dominated its lobby, the Gershman Y across the street has something closer to the real thing: The reconstituted 1918 film The Yellow Ticket , which was partly filmed in the later-razed Warsaw ghetto and was one of the first cinematic exposés of anti-Semitism. Now on a multicity tour with a live score by violinist Alicia Svigals, founder of the Klezmatics, The Yellow Ticket will be shown at 8 p.m. Thursday (copresented by the National Museum of American Jewish History)

Rarely has a film been so superfluous. The title of Syfy's silly diversion Jersey Shore Shark Attack really says it all. Jaws swallows JWoww. Bothering to actually watch this shabby spoof feels kind of redundant. Its one redeeming quality: It doesn't come within 100 miles of taking itself seriously. And the movie's easy, breezy, cheesy air can be rather winning. For about half an hour. Tops. You want the plot? You got it. It's Fourth of July weekend in the Jersey beach town of Seaside Heights.

It's rare, in the course of interviewing movie stars about their new film, that one of the actors leans over and smacks another in the head, then rips a soggy bagel out of his mouth. It's simply not done in most proper social settings, even among pampered film actors. But then, most movie stars aren't Jacob and Adam Worton, the blond, blue- eyed, 19-month-old identical twins who make their acting debuts - actually, their crawling, grinning and drooling debuts - in the new comedy Baby's Day Out. "WWAAAAAHHH!

"Today is Black Thursday," Channel 6 cameraman Bob Kravitz said yesterday, the day Saddam Hussein had threatened a "rain of fire. " After almost a week in Saudi Arabia, Kravitz and Action News reporter Dann Cuellar have decided to sleep during the day and remain awake at night because "that's when he starts peppering us with his Scuds," Kravitz said in a telephone interview from eastern Saudi Arabia. "This was the first morning we didn't get a 'wake-up' call. We call it Scud awake," he said.

Many parents in Evesham Township have found the recent curriculum changes in the K-8 district, which include the video That's a Family!, unacceptable. The reasons vary, and I can speak only to my own rationale. While I understand and support the schools' efforts to promote respect for all persons, the district circumvented this goal when it presented materials explicitly or implicitly endorsing one particular moral viewpoint over competing views. That's a Family! was produced not to encourage tolerance, but to aggressively advocate the normalization of homosexual behavior.

The weeds are sky-high in Times Square. Deer run the avenues, hopscotching around abandoned cars. Mass graves fill Central Park. Manhattan, in the year 2012, is a ghost town. Not even Rudy Giuliani could save the place. But maybe Will Smith can. In I Am Legend , a big-budget adaptation of Richard Matheson's 1954 sci-fi novel (and two film versions: the 1964 Last Man on Earth and the 1971 Charlton Heston-starring Omega Man ), Smith plays Robert Neville, a military scientist who seems to be the last man in Manhattan.

Freebies from Verizon and Comcast could add to the fun of the Memorial Day Weekend. Verizon's offering a slew of free content for four days, and Comcast's Xfinity is giving away access to thousands of wireless hotspots through Independence Day. From Friday till Tuesday, Verizon subscribers can find more than 1,700 movies and 50 entire TV series through the cable service's 900 channel. That includes such recent theatrical films as Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, The Dark Knight Rises, Bridesmaids, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows, The Hunger Games, Hugo, Ice Age: Continental Drift, Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted, Mission Impossible - Ghost Protocol, Moonrise Kingdom, Prometheus , and Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows . They're available through Cinemax, ePix, HBO and ViewNow.

Repertory Films Ambler Theater 108 E. Butler Ave., Ambler; 215-345-7855. www.amblertheater.com . Lawrence of Arabia (1962) $9.75; $7.25 seniors, students and children 17 and under. 5/29. Bryn Mawr Film Institute 824 W. Lancaster Ave., Bryn Mawr; 610-527-9898. www.brynmawrfilm.org . Going Gaga. $7. 5/29. Colonial Theatre 227 Bridge St., Phoenixville; 610-917-1228. www.thecolonialtheatre.com . In Cold Blood (1967) $9; $7 seniors and students; $5 children 2-12.

THE NEW documentary "Crafting a Nation" spends about an hour and a half fussing over exactly what makes America's craft beer so special. It's hard work by small businessmen. It's all-natural ingredients. It's fresh, locally made and produced with care for the environment. It's about overcoming the odds and the local building inspector. Apparently, though, it's not about actually drinking the stuff. Well-researched, beautifully photographed and set to the meaningful strum of an acoustic guitar, "Crafting a Nation" nevertheless manages to almost completely miss the key attraction of craft beer: It tastes good.

Inside the former Collingswood Theatre, Tom Marchetty and Josh Longsdorf talk about assembling the cast of their new production. "We've got a photographer, a printmaker, a guy who makes portable power systems, and a woman who's got her own clothing line," Marchetty says. "We're looking for innovators," Longsdorf adds. "People who are passionate about what they do. " The 1,200-seat Haddon Avenue movie house, which was renovated decades ago for other commercial uses, reopened in January as the Factory Workers ("the Factory" for short)

Now that the Kimmel Center has disassembled the imaginary time machine that long dominated its lobby, the Gershman Y across the street has something closer to the real thing: The reconstituted 1918 film The Yellow Ticket , which was partly filmed in the later-razed Warsaw ghetto and was one of the first cinematic exposés of anti-Semitism. Now on a multicity tour with a live score by violinist Alicia Svigals, founder of the Klezmatics, The Yellow Ticket will be shown at 8 p.m. Thursday (copresented by the National Museum of American Jewish History)

In even the most functional family, there can be a painful something that triggers a strong emotional response, despite the passage of time. For the Benders, it's the digital camera. "Digital killed the family business," Ben Bender says. Yet digital just might be the route to a family-business revival, as well. Bender has become the region's only franchise owner for TapSnap, a social-media-equipped replacement for the party photo booth. To fully appreciate this cycle of commercial irony - a primary motivator of which was his cancer scare three years ago - a little history is required.

With legendary film auteur John Cassavetes as their father and Oscar-nominated actor Gena Rowlands as their mom, it must have seemed inevitable that at least one of the Cassavetes children would become a filmmaker. But all three? Alexandra "Xan" Cassavetes laughs when asked if film was a destiny pre-written for the Cassavetes brood: The 47-year-old writer-director's brother Nick, 53, and sister Zoe, 42, are also directors. Cassavetes this week follows up her 2004 documentary, Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession with the vampire love story Kiss of the Damned . "I didn't plan to be a director until I was 35. For years I wanted to do anything but!"

Deanna Durbin, 91, whose songs and smile made her one of the biggest box-office draws of Hollywood's Golden Age with fans that included Winston Churchill, died last month outside Paris, where she had lived out of public view since 1949. The exact date of her death was unclear, and family friend Bob Koster, whose father, Henry, directed six of her films, also did not know the cause. At the height of her career, the Canada-born Miss Durbin, who made her first feature, Three Smart Girls, at 13, was among the highest-paid actresses.

Chaos was in the air Thursday night in Doylestown. About 5:30, two hours before a locally produced film about a runaway slave, The North Star, was set to premiere at the County Theater, the star and director were missing. The star, former Eagles linebacker Jeremiah Trotter, was stuck in traffic. He was supposed to greet fans and media at Rob's Bar before heading down State Street in a horse and buggy, but was behind schedule. The director, Thomas Phillips, who wrote the script and shot the movie in his home county of Bucks, faced a bigger predicament.