Love Story

You don't need Doppler radar to tell which way the wind is blowing in Philadelphia. On Tuesday, Fox29 announced that it was parting ways, effective immediately, with weatherman-about-town John Bolaris . The relationship between the storm-seer and the station, which had grown frosty during his four-year tenure, hit the freezing point just before Christmas when a Playboy article appeared, recounting his adventures in Florida in 2010 with...

By Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Translated by Stanley Corngold W.W. Norton. 151 pp. $23.95 Reviewed by Harold Brubaker Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's novel of Werther, an emotionally turbulent, socially discontented, and self-absorbed young man, unleashed a media firestorm when it was published 237 years ago. It ranks among the rare works of 18th-century German literature that still have currency in the English-speaking world....

Theater 11th Hour Theatre Company: Ordinary Days Adam Gwon's chamber musical. Closes 12/11. Adrienne Theatre, 2030 Sansom St. www.11thhourtheatrecompany.org . $18-$28. 1812 Productions: This Is The Week That Is Annual show poking fun at local & national current events. Closes 12/31. Plays & Players Theatre, 1714 Delancey Pl.; 215-592-9560. 1812productions.org. $20-$36. A Cappella Humana Kevin Ramsey's musical celebration of our common humanity that explores the power & boundaries of the human voice.

By Jeffrey Eugenides Farrar, Straus & Giroux. 416 pp. $28 Reviewed by Glenn C. Altschuler On a warm spring day at Brown University in the early 1980s, after Leonard Bankhead and Madeleine Hanna had "picnicked on each other," Maddy whispers "I love you," in a voice edged with "a sense of peril. " Leonard reaches for his copy of A Lover's Discourse , by Roland Barthes, finds the page with the words "Je t'aime," and hands it to her. Overcome at first with happiness, Madeleine reads on: "Once the first avowal has been made, 'I love you' has no meaning whatever.

Sholem Aleichem: Laughing in the Darkness. Superb documentary about creator of Tevye the Dairyman, the prototype of the Jewish comic voice who laughed to keep from crying. No MPAA rating . Drive. Shamelessly entertaining action thriller starring Ryan Gosling as a Man With No Name and few words. He daylights as a stuntman, moonlights as a getaway driver, and will go to any lengths to help his pretty neighbor. With Albert Brooks. R Higher Ground. In a stunning directorial debut, actress Vera Farmiga tells the love story of a woman who embraces her evangelical faith yet wants proof of God's existence.

ALTHOUGH Anne Hathaway isn't the first actress you'd think of to inherit the Catwoman mantle from Julie Newmar, Eartha Kitt, Michelle Pfeiffer and Halle Berry, writes Daily News film critic Gary Thompson, she recently got a vote of confidence from her "One Day" director, Lone Scherfig. Sherfig ("An Education") says that after "One Day" (see Gary's review on Page 34), Hathaway needed a break from the love story genre that's made her a star. "She's very versatile and has a wide, wide range, and she's very physical, so I think she'll enjoy doing something that will allow her to express herself that way," said Sherfig, who was in town recently to promote the movie.

Count yourself lucky, parents who brought your screaming, deliriously happy daughters to see local-girl-made-good Taylor Swift's Speak Now tour at Lincoln Financial Field on Saturday night in South Philadelphia. Swift, who reminded the crowd of 51,000 early on that "I actually grew up right down the road in Reading, Pa. " - though, actually, it was in nearby Wyomissing, in Berks County - is only playing six outdoor football stadium shows on the North American tour named after her 3.5 million copy selling 2010 album.

My boss called me in and he said, "Please shut the door. " He said, "We won't be needing you to work here anymore. " He said, "Good luck. " He shook my hand. Can someone help me understand What all the years I gave him were for? Day after day, counseling laid-off executives as a consultant for one of the nation's largest career-transition companies, psychotherapist Leslie Mayer, 60, took in their fear and despair. "I felt the anger and I felt the frustration," she said.

It took some time before Brian Yorkey figured out exactly what mental condition would plague his leading lady. Yet even before the librettist/lyricist had paired the symptoms with a diagnosis, he and composer Tom Kitt knew who they wanted to play the tricky role: Alice Ripley. Years passed and incarnations of their rock musical Next to Normal (originally titled Feeling Electric ) came and went. But Ripley was never available - until she was. When the show began workshops at Second Stage Theatre in 2006, Ripley was finally free to play Diana Goodman, whose bipolar disorder wreaks havoc on her household.

NURSE JACKIE. 10 tonight, Showtime. UNITED STATES OF TARA. 10:30 tonight, Showtime. SHOWTIME, the network for characters who color outside the lines - usually way outside and occasionally with bodily fluids - says goodbye tonight to one of its more memorable. Make that several of its more memorable. "United States of Tara," which stars Toni Collette as Tara Gregson, a Kansas wife, mother and artist living with dissociative identity disorder (what most of us call multiple personalities or "that thing 'Sybil' had")