Theatre Alliance of Winston-Salem has scared up a treat for Saturday-morning television fans with its latest production, a staged reading of Spooky Dog and the Teenage Gang Mysteries, which opens Thursday for a limited engagement.

On Tuesday, March 16, the a/perture cinema (311 W. 4 th St., Winston- Salem) will present a special screening of the award-winning documentary Indestructible.

I hadn't originally intended on writing about the Oscars, until almost everyone I knew insisted that I had to. I was tempted to quote something my mother used to tell me: "I don't have to do anything." But who am I to deny popular demand?

The second times the charm for the RiverRun International Film Festival, having recently received a $10,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) to support travel costs for filmmakers and industry professionals to attend the festival.

For his role as veteran country singer Bad Blake in Crazy Heart, Jeff Bridges has dressed down for the role. Hes packed on a few pounds, grown a grizzly gray beard and adopted a slow-moving Texas twang. These are the sort of mechanics that make Academy voters sit up and take notice.

The Childrens Theatre of Winston-Salem celebrates Black History Month with a special presentation of Harriet Tubman & The Underground Railroad on Thursday, Feb. 25 at the Arts Council Theatre (610 Coliseum Drive, Winston-Salem).

The criticallyacclaimed independent chiller The House of the Devil, now available on DVD and Blu-ray from Dark Sky Films/MPI Home Video (see Page 40 for review), marks the latest outing from multitalented multi-hyphenate Ti West, who wrote, edited and directed the film.

Only a month into the new year, and already a feature film has been shot in Winston- Salem. Principal photography was completed last week on StaleMate, a romantic drama inspired by Michelangelo Antonionis 1962 classic LEclisse, which starred Monica Vitti and Alain Delon.

The world knows Walter Koenig as Pavel Chekov, the resourceful, Russian-born helmsman of the Starship Enterprise in "Star Trek" and seven of its bigscreen voyages, as well as the vicious Bester on another small-screen sciencefiction favorite, "Babylon 5."

When the independent action thriller Children of the Hunt makes its premiere on Jan. 31 at the Carousel Luxury Cinemas (1305 Battleground Ave., Greensboro), it will mark the culmination of a three-year odyssey that took longer than originally anticipated, due in part to the untimely death of executive producer and principal financier Adam Ross last year.