Throughout his career, writer-director Guillermo del Toro has capably balanced pulp sensibilities with high-end art, and the result is a filmography that is fanciful and highly enjoyable.  With “Pacific Rim,” Del Toro throws his more serious side out the window to make a big-budget spectacle that pays homage to giant-monster movies like “Godzilla” and “Gamera.” The premise of the film is as silly as one would expect, but that’s OK. Del Toro has fun with the material and, as a result, the audience does, too. 

There’s nothing funny about real-life identity theft, but that didn’t stop screenwriter Craig Mazin and director Seth Gordon from attempting to milk laughs from the subject. In “Identity Thief,” the pair tell the story of Sandy Patterson (Jason Bateman), a finance executive who gets swindled by a shameless female grifter named Diana (Melissa McCarthy). Diana starts by stealing Sandy’s unisex name. Then, she runs up masses of credit card debt, ruins his reputation and triggers a warrant for his arrest. 

The nominations for the 2012 Golden Globe awards, airing this January, have been announced. On the film front, there are some familiar names (Meryl Streep, Glenn Close, George Clooney) but also a few unexpected nominations (Rooney Mara, Kristen Wiig, Joseph Gordon-Levitt.) In television, many popular shows that we’ve seen nominated before (“Glee,” “Breaking Bad,” “Rescue Me”) were, for the most part, ignored. Instead, some surprises made the cut (“American Horror Story,” “Boss,” “Necessary Roughness”).