Live music in Durham has ebbed and flowed over the years, but it's been on a definite upswing the past year and a half - and Motorco Music Hall, a 500-or-so-capacity club near the old Durham Bulls baseball park, is one of the key players.

Movie Review:  As he nears 60, Denzel Washington has begun to carve out a niche as the grumpy or morally compromised foil to young, gravitas-seeking white actors.

Movie Review:  Cast and crew err on the side of silly in "Journey 2: The Mysterious Island," the amusingly childish sequel to that unlikely 2008 hit "Journey to the Center of the Earth." They've rendered Jules Verne's novel into a jokey lark, with broad, corny wisecracks, comic sidekicks and everybody riffing on the ginormous lizards, humungous spiders and the like.

Restaurant Review:  If corporations are people, as Mitt Romney has famously proposed, then I'm pretty sure I've discovered a business that has suffered from a multiple personality disorder for the past 10 years.

It's late Friday afternoon, and Tony Rock is in Shreveport, La. It's the first stop on the Royal Comedy Tour, a stand-up comedy roadshow that has him sharing the stage with seasoned heavy hitters Earthquake, Sommore, Bruce Bruce and Mark Curry.

The North Carolina Comedy Arts Festival continues this weekend with Sketch Week, featuring performances from more than a dozen comedy groups both homegrown and imported.

Family Picks:  If your family wants to try something new for physical fitness, then Hooping Hoopla on Sunday at Marbles Kids Museum might be just what everyone needs.

As far as local excitement, Sunday's Grammy Awards will have to go a long way to top last year - when Durham's Merge Records unexpectedly snatched last-minute victory from the jaws of defeat by winning the album-of-the-year grand prize (for Arcade Fire).