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My parents, who have now been happily married for 27 years, have grown up and lived in the same Los Angeles suburb for their entire lives with no intentions of ever changing this. As someone that loves traveling and living in different environments, this astounds me. But their contentedness may also be why their marriage is a lot more happy and successful than the one in Revolutionary Road, which is now on wide release in movie theaters.

More of an experience to be had than a plotted story to follow, this movie chronicles the lives of two people aiming to move to Paris and live the high life some day, not permanently succumb to the cookie-cutterisms of 1950s suburbia. Instead of being in love with each other, they are in love with a narcissistic fantasy together. But the responsibilities of raising a family erode this dream and the absence of any authentic relationship beneath it is awkward and painful.

Gran Torino is a must see movie—especially if you’re a Clint Eastwood fan in any way. It’s as if everything Eastwood has worked on perfecting throughout his career—Dirty Harry-like characters prone to wild showdowns, film directing, producing and even soundtracking—culminates into this one film, which is rumored to be his last acting performance.

Walt Kowalski, who Eastwood plays like an aged and weaker Dirty Harry, is played with such embittered disgruntlement the movie seems more comedy than drama when it begins. But as his life becomes more entangled in the lives of the Hmong community around him—one full of Asians faces his veteran memory resents even seeing—the drama begins. When he meets teenaged Thao and Sue next door after a gang fight in their front yard, he learns they are constantly harassed and pressured by a local Hmong gang until they submit to the gang’s initiation.

This is a nostalgic pick for many women and even many men that read this classic chapter book when they were younger. I’m recommending it because—in case you don’t remember or have not had the pleasure of ever reading this book—the descriptions of winter/Christmas-time cooking at the Ingalls’ cabin can make people of all ages drool. The book, an autobiography of the author’s young pioneer days in Wisconsin, goes into such delicious detail on the processes of making homemade maple syrup, snow candy, cured meats and cake that there is suspense alone in reading the next step. What a lot of men end up liking, in addition to the food details, are all of Pa’s snowy hunting adventures, lessons on how he makes rifle bullets himself and how he makes his own sled.

I know what you’re thinking and the answer is no, this movie isn’t on wide release yet. And what a shame, because the suspense and romance flowering out of the train-dodging journeys, colorful rush of metropolitan Indian life and a fateful opportunity on India’s version of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" in Slumdog Millionaire make it a must-see. So even if this isn’t playing in your neighborhood, experiencing the exciting story of the Mumbai film’s protagonist, 18-year-old Jamal Malik, is a great excuse for a date out of town. In addition to the National Board of Review already naming it the "Movie of the Year," publications like the New York Times and Los Angeles Times have praised the film with Oscar buzz. It's already received four Golden Globe nominations.

Back from racking up a couple Emmys and some Sarah Palin momentum, 30 Rock writer and star Tina Fey is back with more behind the show-biz scene comedy that's stuffed with celeb cameos. The already hilarious show aims to simultaneously pump up both the comedy and ratings by mixing in a little Megan Mullally, Steve Martin, Oprah Winfrey and Jennifer Aniston. Mullally is the first cameo up this season, acting as the child adoption evaluator for Liz Lemon (Fey). Liz’s one-time boss Jack (Baldwin) is literally trying to get back his job from the mail room up, but gets sexually harassed by his new soap-opera-obsessed mailroom director. The season starts Thursday, October 30

Susan Bourette is a compassionate omnivore married to a 30-year vegetarian. In her new book, Meat: A Love Story Bourette serves up an untraditional romance. It’s a journalist’s account of how she rediscovered a conscientious love for meat after gutting and packing animals during an undercover factory investigation.

Bourette had delved into vegetarianism for the same reasons many others have—idealistic, thrifty college days, proving to mom life can be complete without pot roasts, the healthy and glowing vegetarian friend, the vegetarian spouse, nausea-inducing images of factory farms—but she always came back to meat because of its wonderful flavor and invigorating qualities. So, in an effort to appease her conscience and love for meat, Bourette tours through ranches across the country, Canadian moose-hunts, whale-hunts with Inuits and the butcheries of Toronto and Greenwich Village in search of conscientious meat-eating. She does so successfully while creating space for other omnivores to cultivate conscientious diets as well.

READ I Am America Stephen Colbert www.makemeamerica.com If you love his daily take on world events, you’ll love his brilliant satirical book discussing everything from homosexuality to religion...