Sarah Burns

Central Park Five, the PBS-made TV-film about the wrongful conviction of five boys accused of raping a jogger in Central Park, will be aired on the network tonight (April 16) some 24 years since the event took place. Tonight's premiere comes three days before the actual anniversary of the grave event, an event that the film's co-creators Sarah and Ken Burns believe still hold relevance today following the miscarriage of justice that happened at the ensuing court case.

The trailer for Central Park Five.

The 1989 conviction, that was overturned due to lack of evidence in 2003 after each of the boys had already served prison terms, has been dramatised by Sarah and Ken Burns and David McMahon as a means to argue that we now need to readily acknowledge that the five men convicted of the heinous crime are all innocent. Sarah actually penned a thesis on the case a decade ago when she was studying at Yale, eventually expanding her work into a book that became the basis for The Central Park Five. Speaking before the premiere of the PBS special tonight, Sarah described the TV-movie by saying, “The film is about how this miscarriage of justice could have occurred.”

Continue reading: 'Central Park Five' To Debut On PBS 24 Years After The Infamous Attack

It’s slim pickings this week, in terms of big budget movies, as the industry winds down a little over the festive period (though prepare yourselves for the usual onslaught of Christmassy slush hitting the big screen in the coming weeks).

However, the new release that everybody’s chatting about right now is Hitchcock. Starring Antony Hopkins (as the legendary director Alfred Hitchcock) and Helen Mirren (as his wife, Alma Reville), there has already been discussion of the possibility of Oscar nominations coming the way of this biopic, which focuses on the era when Hitchcock was filming Psycho – widely considered to be the pinnacle of his career. The star of Psycho, Janet Leigh, is played by the ever-popular Scarlett Johansson.

Reviews for the movie have been mixed; it seems as though most reviewers are praising the performances, but not the film as a whole, which lacks clarity. The movie is only getting a limited release this week, so don’t expect it to be riding too high with box office takings but do expect some of its cast to be riding high when it comes to awards season.

Continue reading: Hot Tickets! This Weekend’s US Movie Releases