35 minutes
6 minutes
Average amount of time spent
reading on the weekends Kids 15 to 19
2
1 3
Entertainment
illustration by Josue Evilla (PHOTO CREDITS ON PAGE 87). READING SOURCE: U.S. BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS 2009
Four Great Storytellers
Spin Unforgettable Tales
1 M ovie Water for Elephants
The film version of
the novel Water for
Ele­phants opens April
15, starring moony
young Twilight star
Robert Pattinson and Queen of
Perky, Reese Witherspoon. As for
us, we’re eager to see the great
Hal Holbrook as the older version
of  Pattinson’s character—a Cornell
veterinary student who runs off to
join a 1930s-era circus. Holbrook,
86, has been on a roll of late ( Into
the Wild and That Evening Sun); it’s
good to see him stay busy after the
loss of the love of his life, the de-
lightful Dixie Carter. —Bill Newcott
Hear Sissy Spacek talk about Get Low, and listen to
More Lowdown
a clip from the movie, at aarp.org/getlow.
Grownups 55 to 64
2 BOOK Tell to Win
In Tell to Win, Oscar-winning
producer Peter Guber (Rain Man)
tells how Muhammad Ali used “the
hidden power of story” to get him
behind his film autobiography, The
Greatest. Ali had Guber mimic boxing
poses as the champ told of training to
beat Ken Norton in 1973—illustrating
how the film would succeed if Guber
worked just as hard. “When you en-
gage your audience like that,” Guber,
69, says, “they metabolize the story—
and tell it forward.” —Allan Fallow
3 DVD Get Low
It’s a tender if complex relationship
between Robert Duvall’s reclusive
what’s new
4
mountain man (who’s carrying a dark
secret) and Sissy Spacek’s demure
city girl in Get Low, now on DVD.
Complex roles involving actors 50
and up are rare these days, and that’s
too bad, Spacek says, because older
characters can be so interesting—
and experience is what makes them
so. “Each age is important,” says the
61-year-old Oscar winner. “But I
guess the difference is that as we get
older, our lives are layered and deep,
and hopefully we’re wiser.”—B.N.
4 M us i c Blessed
Bad boys and the girls who love
them are in short supply on Lucinda
Williams’s masterly Blessed. The
Texas songwriter has bigger catfish
to fry. There’s the sudden death of
her manager (“Copenhagen”), and a
friend’s unexplained suicide (“See-
ing Black”), redeemed by a voice like
a rough prairie wind and by loads of
gnarly guitar verve. —Richard Gehr
aarp.org/magazine 17