‘Doubt’ is a sure thing

DVD

Doubt

4 stars

“Doubt,” the excellent movie John Patrick Shanley adapted and directed from his Pulitzer- and Tony Award-winning play, works on many levels. Like the play, the film is set in 1964 in a Catholic church in the Bronx.

Most overtly, the film, out on DVD this week (Miramax, $29.99, rated PG-13), is a mystery concerning whether a young Catholic priest, Father Flynn (Philip Seymour Hoffman), is having an improper relationship with one of his students at the parish school. His principal accuser is the school’s principal, Sister Aloysius (Meryl Streep), who eagerly jumps to that conclusion after one of her fellow nuns, a young teacher named Sister James (Amy Adams), confides in her that Father Flynn seems to have “taken an interest” in the 12-year-old boy, who happens to be the school’s first and only African-American student.

“Doubt” also is a meditation on how quickly people make up their minds about things that are not as clear-cut as they appear to be. As Shanley wrote in an essay for the Los Angeles Times, “We are living in a culture of extreme advocacy, of confrontation, of judgment and of verdict.”

In addition, “Doubt” offers a richly detailed examination of a particular time and place both inside and outside the Catholic Church on the verge of cultural change.

To Shanley’s credit, “Doubt” as a film remains provocative, challenging and demanding. He provides no easy answers or definitive conclusions to either the broader issues raised or the specific charge leveled by Sister Aloysius against Father Flynn.

Instead, in “Doubt” Shanley asks us all to think.

Love it

SONG

Jetstream

Doves

Singer Jimi Goodwin and brothers Jez (guitar) and Andy Williams (drums) wanted to write a song for the end credits of 1982 masterpiece “Blade Runner.” The result is the buzzing, strobing “Jetstream,” a dreamlike synth-pounder about “carbon seas, cast adrift on a trouble dream.” Yeah, I have NO idea. But it’s a sublime head-spinner for both humans and replicants, and it sucks you in like a vacuum, refusing to let go.

Sean Daly, St. Petersburg Times

Like it

GADGET

Nintendo DSi

The new DSi ($169.99) has some features I love and some I can live without, but there’s no denying it’s a nifty piece of hardware. In the long run, the most significant element of the DSi will be its ability to download software from the Internet. In this respect, Nintendo is playing catch-up to Sony’s PlayStation Portable — and certainly reacting to the threat posed by Apple’s iPhone, whose App Store has gotten a lot of people used to the idea of downloading games.

LOU KESTEN, AP

TV SHOW

Tracey Ullman’s State of the Union

9 p.m. Sunday, Showtime

The British comic returns to America to lampoon everyone from champion hog-caller Wendy Trenton to actress Renee Zellweger. Ullman doesn’t mock her subjects with these offbeat impersonations, but offers lovingly crafted observations about the foibles of humanity. Some are more opinionated than funny. Former First Lady Laura Bush is treated kindly, but it’s through Mrs. Bush that Ullman gets in her digs at W.

Curt Wagner, RedEye

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BOOK

I Love It When You Talk Retro

Ralph Keyes

Ralph Keyes sought to explain hundreds of sayings, giving the history behind them, how they developed and how they’re used now, in his book “I Love It When You Talk Retro: Hoochie Coochie, Double Whammy, Drop a Dime, and the Forgotten Origins of American Speech,” which hit shelves this week. However you like to talk, it can be funny and fun to discover the origins of classic phrases and what popularized them.

Lori Kozlowski, L.a. Times

Loathe it

ALBUM

Jigsaw

Lady Sovereign

British rapper Lady Sovereign’s second album, “Jigsaw,” tries to find common ground in a now-everywhere strain of electro-flavored club rap. It’s a good fit for her nimble and still undeniable flow, but the wheels come off whenever Sov’s newfound earnestness undermines her lighthearted appeal. The occasional high points, like the incessant techno of “Let’s Be Mates,” are stark reminders of how “Jigsaw” is the last thing we expected from Lady Sov — a record that’s just not a lot of fun.

August Brown, L.a. times