Surprise, surprise! Two other items of interest.

BEST PERFORMANCE BY A RAP STAR

It's not Eminem in 8 Mile. No, the finest exhibition of hip-hop thespianism came courtesy of Sean "P. Diddy" Combs in Marc Forster's turbulent, clouded Monster's Ball. Combs plays Lawrence Musgrove, a prisoner on death row in Georgia, and in the prelude to and enactment of his execution, he somehow makes himself a still, quiet center for the film.

Everyone around him is going to pieces, and in the careful, neurotic observances of the execution ritual--the last meal, the head shaving, the solemn dressing of the prisoner in an ...

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