【推荐2】DVD decisions — looking for a good movie to rent? Let us help you.

Fiction or reality? The following two classic movies are worth watching — each explores the themes of cinema, fiction and reality.

The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985)

One reason to go to the movies is to take a break from everyday life and lose yourself in the magic of the silver screen. In The Purple Rose of Cairo, Woody Allen turns this idea on its head.

Mia Farrow plays Cecilia, a New Jersey waitress, who goes to the local movie theater to escape from her boring life. Jeff Daniels is Tom Baxter, the handsome archaeologist (考古学家) hero in a movie called The Purple Rose of Cairo, which Cecilia has already seen several times. One day, Baxter decided he has had enough of being a character in a movie, and he walks out of the screen to join Cecilia in the theater. Can Hollywood find Tom and get him back into the movie or will he manage to stay in the real world forever?

EDtv (1999)

A television studio manager (Ellen DeGeneres) has an idea about how to save a failing TV station — film and broadcast a normal person’s life 24 hours a day. EDtv is born the moment her eye falls on Ed Pekurny, a friendly video store clerk played by Mattew McConaughey.

After the show’s first week on air, Ed’s fame grows and grows, but then conflicts start up, particularly with Ed’s girlfriend and his family. After a while, Ed decides he wants to stop being part of the show, but he finds out his contract (合同) can’t be reversed (撤销). But in a country that turns the TV set on at breakfast and off at bedtime, anything can happen ... Ron Howard’s comedy is well worth watching.

【推荐3】THE BEST FILMS OF 2020

Wolfwalkers is Tomm Moore’s most delightful animation. Its brave heroine is Robyn, the daughter of an English huntsman stationed in Ireland in the mid-1600s. He has the job of clearing the wolves from a forest near Kilkenny, but when Robyn goes exploring, she finds that one of those wolves can transform into a human girl. The girls' battles against destructive adults are exciting and fun, and every frame is a work of art.

Mary Anning, whose 19th-Century discoveries of fossils transformed palaeontology, although the credit went to men. Writer and director Francis Lee's romance finds Mary in middle age, scraping together a living in the seaside town of Lyme Regis.

This joyous and endlessly inventive film by Armando Iannucci is a brilliant achievement that raises the expectation for Charles Dickens adaptations. And while Iannucci roots it firmly in the poverty and class system of Victorian England. BBC Culture’s review called it “a warm and lively David Copperfield for today”.

Structured as a day in the life, The Assistant stars Julia Garner as the lowly new employee who toils from before dawn until after dusk, answering phones, printing out scripts, unpacking bottles of water: imagine a more authentic, low-key companion piece to The Devil Wears Prada. The film looks beyond one man to focus on a wider corporate culture.

【推荐3】Making it to the Scripps National Spelling Bee (a spelling competition) is an amazing achievement for any kid, but for 11-year-old Neil Maes, being born deaf made his journey especially unlikely.

After receiving cochlear implants (人工耳蜗) in both ears as a baby, he had to train his brain to understand spoken words. It took countless hours of speech therapy (疗法).

“We didn’t even know that he’d be able to talk,” said his mother, Christy Maes.

Now the soft-spoken kid from Belton, South Carolina is officially one of the nation’s top young spellers. He earned the right to take the stage in the final rounds of the Scripps National Spelling Bee.

Neil’s parents have always given him a tip, coaching him to always ask the pronouncer for the meaning of a word, so that he can be sure he heard it correctly. Most contestants do this anyway.

“He’s able to spell very difficult words. You tell him, ‘Spell this word,’ and he’s able to actually imagine what that sounds like in his head and spell the word. It’s actually quite impressive,” said Dr. Michael Hoa, who performed Neil’s cochlear implantation. “There’s a lot that goes into training your brain to do that.”

Neil’s parents didn’t know he was taking part in a spelling bee with his third-grade class until he came home and told them he had won. He made it all the way to his regional (地区的) bee that year, finishing second. Now a naturally shy fifth-grader, Neil is already worn out from the busy bee-week schedule, but he seems happy.

“Our main hope out of all of this was to encourage people that are going to be facing what we had to face,” Christy said.

But Neil said coming to the bee has motivated (激发) him to study even harder, so he can return next year.

“It’s just fun and I want to do it again,” Neil said.