Film

If a night at the orchestra were a pure investment-return transaction, Lang Lang certainly gave Thursday's audience its money's worth. It's when the actual music entered the equation that things got a little dicey. You had to look past a lot to hear it. At the front of Verizon Hall stage, with Simon Rattle leading the Philadelphia Orchestra, the pianist air-conducted or air-trilled with an idle hand when Beethoven failed to give him enough to do, mugged all manner of facial expressions, and kept leaning out to look at the audience, as if to ask: Do you like this?

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 the 1840s, Benjamin "Big Ben" Jones of Baltimore was a fugitive slave living in Bucks County. The mountainous Jones - nearly seven feet tall, according to historical accounts - made friends in the region, but in 1844, he was caught by his slave master and forced to return to Maryland. Those friends from Buckingham, however, helped him return. After raising about $700, they bought Jones' freedom, bringing him back to Bucks County, where he lived until his death. Jones' dramatic life has been recounted in books and historical exhibits, and now will be brought to the screen in The North Star , a biopic set to debut at theaters in Doylestown and Newtown this week.

Like a grand diva who can't get enough farewell tours, Les Misérables , the stage musical version, is again on a tour stop in Philadelphia against many odds. This time, it arrives amid formidable competition from the current film version that faithfully follows the musical about oppressed masses and idealistic uprisings in post-revolutionary France. By now, the touring stage shows have a fraction of the scenery seen in the Broadway original. The film is lavishly produced with major stars and has a smaller admission fee. Yet Wednesday night's opening at the packed Academy of Music clearly justified itself, thanks to a bright, unjaded cast at the top of its collective game and exercising a freedom of interpretation not always seen in touring companies that typically seek to reproduce the original-cast experience.

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!

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.

"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.

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.

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.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Pakistan deployed its army to protect diplomatic missions in Islamabad on Thursday amid some of the most sustained and violent protests yet against an American-made film that denigrates Muhammad. "We have to do everything we can to protect foreigners in the country," Information Minister Qamar Zaman Kaira told the GEO television channel, criticizing violence he said was an attempt to sabotage the government's call for peaceful rallies Thursday. "Is this the way to show respect to our Prophet?"

Repertory Films Adventure Aquarium 1 Aquarium Dr., Camden; 1-866-451-2782. www.adventureaquarium.com . 4D Theater. $22.95; $19.95 children 2-12. Ambler Theater 108 E. Butler Ave., Ambler; 215-345-7855. www.amblertheater.com . M (Germany, 1931) $9.75; $7.25 seniors, students and children 17 and under. 5/16. 7:30 pm. The Barnes Foundation-Philadelphia 2025 Benjamin Franklin Pkwy.; 215-278-7000. www.barnesfoundation.org . ArtKids at the Movies: E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982)

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)

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!"

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.

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.

In the 1840s, Benjamin "Big Ben" Jones of Baltimore was a fugitive slave living in Bucks County. The mountainous Jones - nearly seven feet tall, according to historical accounts - made friends in the region, but in 1844, he was caught by his slave master and forced to return to Maryland. Those friends from Buckingham, however, helped him return. After raising about $700, they bought Jones' freedom, bringing him back to Bucks County, where he lived until his death. Jones' dramatic life has been recounted in books and historical exhibits, and now will be brought to the screen in The North Star , a biopic set to debut at theaters in Doylestown and Newtown this week.

The city's first film festival aimed at children and a family art-making festival run in conjunction with the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts are among the 21 projects funded through the PNC Arts Alive initiative, which is concluding the $5 million program's five-year life with this round of grants. Over the course of the five years, Arts Alive has awarded 122 grants to 55 arts organizations in the Philadelphia and South Jersey region. "The creativity of Philadelphia's arts sector is clearly evident in the innovative programs by PNC Arts Alive grantees," Bill Mills, PNC regional president for Philadelphia and Southern New Jersey, said in a statement.

A little over a week ago, Sam Katz spoke to John F. Street's class at Temple University. Afterward, the onetime mayoral rivals turned political soul mates were seen huddling together for a couple of hours, prompting a cadre of usual suspects in the political class to wonder what they were cooking up. Was Street once again urging Katz to make one last mayoral run? It's never too early for rumor. There is speculation that Councilman Bill Green and mayoral aspirant Tom Knox recently reached an accommodation that would sideline Green in 2015.