Howl

Let me get all the cute stuff out of the way first. About how I want to howl at the moon over this book, and that I devoured these pages, and how the change Anne Rice has made since her recent fiction, a pair of sentimental novels based on the material of the Gospels, seems almost lycanthropic. As it happens, in her terrific new novel, "The Wolf Gift," Rice's version of the werewolf legend pretty much leaves the moon out of it. Her main character, Reuben Golding, a tall, handsome young San Francisco journalist with a trust fund, instructs us in these matters.

By Evan Allen, Town Correspondent Needham dogs may soon be running wild and free -- within certain limits. An effort to start an off-leash dog park is underway, spearheaded by town meeting member Mike Verdun, who has started an off-leash dog park committee in the hopes of turning the old Nike site near the Needham Community Farm into a fenced-in park. "There's nowhere in town that you can legally walk a dog off-leash, that's why this dog park is sorely needed in town," he said.

How do you make poetry cinematic? “Howl,’’ a new film about beat writer Allen Ginsberg, asks that question without realizing the question is backward. It should be: How do you make cinema poetic? Filmmakers as abstract as Stan Brakhage and as narratively inclined as David Lynch have spent careers working out answers to that one, struggling for a visual approximation of the language of no sense. By contrast, writer-directors Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman try awfully hard to make sense of “Howl,’’ Ginsberg’s epic 1955 rant against conformity.

Let me get all the cute stuff out of the way first. About how I want to howl at the moon over this book, and that I devoured these pages, and how the change Anne Rice has made since her recent fiction, a pair of sentimental novels based on the material of the Gospels, seems almost lycanthropic. As it happens, in her terrific new novel, "The Wolf Gift," Rice's version of the werewolf legend pretty much leaves the moon out of it. Her main character, Reuben Golding, a tall, handsome young San Francisco journalist with a trust fund, instructs us in these matters.

MANTEO, N.C. -- Zacary Hunter, 8, was dressed for the occasion. His red T-shirt was adorned with an embroidered face of a red wolf and the lettering SAVE ME! His mother, Tricia, had made the shirt for him as part of a school project back home in Telford, Pa. "It was a project on endangered species, and he got assigned the red wolf," Tricia explained. "We went online for his report and learned that a lot of red wolves are in North Carolina. " So when she, Zacary, and his brother Jacob, 5, came to the Outer Banks in late June on vacation, they immediately signed up for a Red Wolf...

LENOX - Actors are sure getting a workout on local stages. From “The Mystery of Irma Vep’’ at the Lyric Stage Company to Orfeo Group’s “The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged)’’ and the recent Broadway - by way of the Huntington Theatre Company - hit “Alfred Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps,’’ scripts requiring actors to take multiple roles have become all the rage. The latest addition to this delightful genre is a British adaptation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Hound of the Baskervilles,’’ making its American debut...

Peter Hayes, the guitarist of Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, let the opening minutes of the band's set at Avalon spool out in grainy monochrome. Dressed in black jeans and a black button-up shirt, he arrived onstage alone, with his hair hanging over his face, and played through "Suddenly" without acknowledging the audience. The piano was backlit, and the effect was ethereal -- Hayes's figure was cast out over the floor, and the music was fragile but willfully choppy. Hayes seems to thrive on toying with expectation, and he allowed the song to become...

I suppose even Monet had his off days. "Howl's Moving Castle," the new film by the Japanese animation legend Hayao Miyazaki, comes on the heels of a pair of flat-out masterpieces: 1997's "Princess Mononoke" and 2001's "Spirited Away. " It contains 10 times more imagination, wonder, and sheer visual beauty than anything you'll find in Hollywood animation or boilerplate Japanese anime these days. And it's a disappointment -- the first film in which the filmmaker's obsessions have got the better of him. That said, I can't recommend the...

James Cameron has lamented that a drawback of the resurgence of 3-D technology is that too many movies exploit it and too few explore it. I would urge him to head to “Jackass 3D.’’ His spleen might be blown, and, perhaps, his mind. This is the only live-action movie to expand the bounds of the format since “Avatar,’’ and in saying so, I know what you’re thinking. The gulf is wide between flying iguana people and a filthy flying port-a-potty. Neither is anything I had seen before.

While its latest album, "Howl," is gloriously saturated in American roots music such as gospel, country, and blues, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club didn't overlook its noisier, harder-rocking past during a potent, sold-out show Tuesday at the Paradise. The California trio liberally dipped into its previous albums for an emotionally charged performance that showed off its versatility. Still, the selections from "Howl" were the most affecting. It's one thing to get an audience pogoing with wailing guitars and storm trooper drum riffs, but it's quite another to hold them rapt when...

The following is a press release from North Shore Art Throb: SALEM, Mass, February 8, 2012 — In the spirit of our popular monthly launch series, please join North Shore Art*Throb at Salem's Howling Wolf Taqueria, 76 Lafayette Street, on Thursday, February 16 at 9 p.m. for a night of great food, drink and live music featuring System Soul. With this night of entertainment we have one simple goal in mind: to have fun. There is no cover charge and Howling Wolf offers a varied menu and drink list.

An airline just for pets was an act of genius, Martha Hamilton figured. No cold cargo holds for Phoebe, her 10-year-old miniature schnauzer. Attendants would check on her regularly during the flight. There would even be a pet lounge for the emotional goodbye at the airport. But Hamilton and Phoebe just finished a three-day cross-country journey - in a car. The once-loved Pet Airways, created by a California real estate developer, has run into trouble, stranding cats and dogs and leaving their unhappy owners holding the leash.

First thing we do, let's kill all the coyotes. Seriously, this lowbrow Man vs. Wild comedy has to stop. For at least a decade, coyotes have been carrying off household pets and threatening people all over Boston, notably in such posh, hair-trigger suburbs as Newton, Belmont, and Brookline. The city of Belmont's website has a neat, interactive map that allows citizens to post coyote sightings. Let's just say it looks as if there are a lot more coyotes in Belmont than Dunkin' Donuts outlets.

Add another excruciating loss for the Dallas Cowboys in the desert. LaRod Stephens-Howling caught a short pass from Kevin Kolb and zipped 52 yards for a touchdown in overtime to give the Arizona Cardinals a 19-13 victory Sunday, snapping the Cowboys' four-game winning streak. It marked the third time since 2008 that the Cowboys have lost in Arizona in heartbreaking fashion. What made it worse was that Dallas should have won it, but the Cowboys called a timeout just before Dan Bailey's 49-yard field goal sailed through the uprights at the end of...

A battery of synths loomed over the stage as Nika Roza Danilova floated out in a flowing white smock. Above the band, a field of projected white radar rings shuddered as she grabbed the mike, and she let out a long snake moan that would last the whole night as her Zola Jesus project pounded out electronic banks of strings and heavy, primal drumming. The romantic and industrial Zola Jesus is three albums into a young career as of this month's "Conatus," but Monday night showed the project in a few different lights.

TEEN WOLF Starring: Tyler Posey, Crystal Reed, Dylan O’Brien, Tyler Hoechlin, Colton Haynes, Holland Roden On: MTV Time: Sunday night at 11 Horror hearts high school 4eva. They make an enduringly fascinating couple. Gothic monsters, particularly vampires and werewolves, are perfect and perfectly flexible metaphors for the torture and melodrama of the impossible years. Nightly blood lust, terrifying monthly episodes, the sudden growth of hair, the sense of immortality — these horror tropes can be used to represent...

The Subways may have won last year's Glastonbury Festival unsigned performers competition and be this year's darlings of the British music press. But here in the States, they're an album-less band with only a recent appearance on "The O.C. " and its ancillary soundtrack compilations to prime the pump for a buzz-building American tour before the release of "Young For Eternity" in February. If Saturday's show at Great Scott is anything to go by, consider the buzz built. It doesn't hurt that the three band members are very young (guitarist Billy Lunn, the oldest, just turned 21)

AwROOOOoooo! What are dignified, award-worthy thespians like Benicio del Toro, Emily Blunt, and Sir Anthony Hopkins doing in a piece of old-school hokum like “The Wolfman’’? Having the time of their lives while trying to keep a straight face. The movie is by no means good but it’s surprisingly enjoyable: a misty, moody Saturday-matinee monster-chiller-horror special that hits the same sweet spot for moviegoers of a certain age ( cough ) as those snap-together Frankenstein model kits from the late 1960s.

BOONE’S CHAPEL, Ala.— The storms that smacked the Midwest and South with howling winds and pounding rain have left 24 people dead in six states. The severe weather was blamed for seven deaths in Alabama, seven in Arkansas, two in Oklahoma, and one in Mississippi since Thursday. The system moved north and plowed through North Carolina yesterday, bringing flash floods, hail, and reports of tornadoes from the western hills to the streets of Raleigh. At least four were killed in the state.

BERLIN — Newly discovered documents have revealed a bizarre footnote to the history of World War II: a Finnish mutt whose imitation of the Hitler salute enraged the Nazis so deeply that they started an obsessive campaign against the dog’s owner. Absurdly, a totalitarian state that dominated most of Europe was unable to do much about Jackie and his paw-raising parody of Germany’s Fuehrer. In the middle of World War II — months before Hitler ordered some 4.5 million troops to invade the Soviet Union — the Foreign Office in Berlin commanded its...