Mindy Nelson admires the spirit of the thousands of charity-minded fundraisers who cast their warm bodies into the frigid waters of the Bay for Special Olympics every January.     “I thought, wouldn’t it be fun if dogs could do that?” says Nelson, fundraising and event coordinator for Anne Arundel County’s own Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.     But she preferred warmer weather for the dog day and family festival that...

In the near future, the world has become almost uninhabitable. The only areas with breathable air are The United Federation of Britain and The Colony (Australia). The rich one percent live in the UFB and force The Colony to occupy slums and work grueling hours in factories.     Douglas Quaid (Colin Farrell: Fright Night) is one of these factory drones. He spends his days screwing bolts in an assembly line, his nights drinking with buddies and moping around his grim apartment....

Eight years after the Joker held Gotham City in his grip of terror, the rich have gotten richer, the poor are in Dickensian straits and the city is at a stalemate. With the Harvey Dent Act, the city has reduced crime by stuffing the jails. Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale: The Flowers of War) is now a retired recluse who pines for lost love and hopes to heal a mind and body battered by his Batman stint.     Gotham and Wayne are pulled out of indolence by meaty mercenary Bane (Tom...

On the other side of the Delta levees is a shantytown called The Bathtub. It’s so cut off from the outside world that six-year-old Hushpuppy (Quvenzhané Wallis) envisions her community as a wonderland. Life is simple, clothes are dirty and magic is everywhere.     Hushpuppy lives next to her father Wink (Dwight Henry) and spends her day collecting pets, feeding the hodgepodge of animals, listening to the heartbeats of every creature she encounters and making sense of the...