Dan Webster

Driving from one Puerto Rican city to the next, we found time to relax, eat good food and watch Gonzaga basketball.

Driving around the island of Puerto Rico is a lot easier than in some state-side locations, including more than a few places east of the Cascades.

Christopher Columbus may have been the first European to land on Puerto Rico's shores, but touring San Juan will tell you there's a lot more to the story.

While visiting Puerto Rico's capital city of San Juan, you're bound to confront its history.

Thanks to the National Audubon Society, South Florida's Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary offers visitors a nature hike like few others.

India is a fascinating country, with must-see sights in Delhi and Agra, though the air can be hard to breathe.

Especially when touring hard-to-access locations, taking a cruise can be a fun and fulfilling experience.

In one of the world's great cities, Christian Marclay's art exhibit The Clock is a fascinating study of time and place.

You can find any number of reasons to love Brooklyn. Here are 10 or more of them.

(Posted Saturday) The reviews for “Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2” are out, and the critical one-liners – which add up to a cumulative 0 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes – are flying fast and loose, besides being vicious. A few samples:

The commercials for tonight’s Academy Award ceremony have labeled this year’s Oscar race the most competitive in recent years, and for once there’s truth in advertising. Normally, your friendly neighborhood Oscar prognosticator would study the numbers, figure the odds and determine who’s most likely to win which award, but this year the acclaim has been all over the place. The marketplace was simply too crowded with good movies and performances, many of which were completely shut out by the Academy. For three years now, Dan Webster and I have offered up our dual predictions in the main Oscar categories: actor and actress (lead and supporting), as well as best picture and director. In 2011 and 2012, our individual guesses were all the same; in terms of accuracy, we guessed five of six right in ’12, and four of six in ’13.

Oscar is another word for fickle. I mean, think of the whole process run by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences – the promotions, the nominations and certainly the actual awarding of those cute little gold statuettes. As I say. Fickle.

‘Ricky Gervais: Out of England’ •••1/2

‘In Treatment’

‘Happy-Go-Lucky’

UFO Phil’s voice takes a conspiratorial tone. “Can you keep a secret?” he near-whispers.

All too often years are marked by their top movies. Think of 1997. James Cameron made it all about “Titanic.” In 1986, Oliver Stone took us back to Vietnam for “Platoon,” a country – not to mention concept – that Michael Cimino had explored in 1978’s “The Deer Hunter.” Francis Ford Coppola took us twice into the world of the Corleone family, first for 1972’s “The Godfather” and then for 1974’s “Godfather II.” And producer David O. Selznick made sure that 1939 would forever after be associated with the epic Civil War romance “Gone With the Wind.” Last year, though, was different. When movie fans look back at 2008, they’re not likely to recall any specific film. They will, however, remember certain images: Heath Ledger wearing the makeup of a psycho named The Joker (in “The Dark Knight”). A character named Benjamin Button (Brad Pitt in “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”) growing younger even as he ages. Frank Langella (as Richard Nixon in “Frost/Nixon”) and Sean Penn (as Harvey Milk in “Milk”) impersonating real-life figures. Kate Winslet playing both a concentration-camp guard (in “The Reader”) and a disgruntled suburban housewife (in “Revolutionary Road”).