Writer-director Jim Sheridan seems unlikely to repeat the deserved success he won last year with My Left Foot. His new film, based on a play by John B. Keane, is as overwrought as his last one was understated. Set in Ireland in the Thirties, the film stars Richard Harris as Bull McCabe, a tenant farmer who tries to buy the field he's rented all his life from a wealthy widow (Frances Tomelty) who hates him. Tom Berenger is a rich American who wants to bury the field under concrete and build a road. Audiences are less likely to choose sides than flee from the overacting of Harris and John Hurt as his dimwitted crony. Sometimes gorgeous scenery is just not enough.

“Time to Pretend”

Listening to MGMT’s breakthrough song, one might interpret it as being about the excesses of rock stardom, but it’s actually about the duo’s pet praying mantis. Ben Goldwasser and Andrew VanWyngarden told Rolling Stone they got the idea from the insect's jerky movements. The mantis died, but the two bandmates kept the egg sack and allowed the hundreds of eggs to hatch. “We tried to name them all, but they died after a day,” said Goldwasser, with VanWyngarden chiming in, “But the praying mantis dance inspired us.”