With an ensemble cast of Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Randy Couture, Steve Austin, Terry Crews, Mickey Rourke, and Bruce Willis, The Expendables is an action film of an elite, highly trained team of mercenaries deployed to the Gulf of Aden off the coast of Somalia to halt local pirates from executing the hostages of a naval ship. The film screens on Saturday, December 4 at 10 p.m. and Sunday, December 5 at 8 p.m. Admission is $6 for seniors, University of Miami alumni, faculty, non UM-students, and staff. General admission is $8. Cash only. Free for UM students. For more information, visit www.cosfordcinema.com or call 305-284-4861.

Young Georges Bizet died soon after the premier of Carmen and thus never enjoyed the success of his creation. Carmen wasn’t initially well received, but became, and still is, one of the most famous and popular works in the opera repertoire. The film screens on Saturday, December 4 at 12 p.m. and Sunday, December 5 at 12:30 p.m. Admission is free for UM students; $18 for seniors, University of Miami alumni, faculty, non-UM students, and staff. General admission is $20. Cash only. For more information, visit www.cosfordcinema.com or call 284-4861.

Sweethearts of the Prison Rodeo goes behind prison walls to follow convict cowgirls on their journey to the 2007 Oklahoma State Penitentiary Rodeo. The annual event has been held since 1940; in 2006 female inmates were allowed to participate for the first time. In a state with the highest female incarceration rate in the country, these women share common experiences such as broken homes, drug abuse, and alienation from their children.

Part Wild West show and part coliseum-esque spectacle, the “prison rodeo” is one of the last of its kind, a relic of the American penal system. Prisoners compete on wild broncs and bucking bulls, risking severe and sometimes permanent injury. The film screens on Friday, December 3 at 7 p.m., Saturday, December 4 at 5:30 p.m. and Sunday, December 5 at 3:30 p.m. Admission is free for UM students; $6 for seniors, University of Miami alumni, faculty, non-UM students, and staff. General admission is $8. Cash only. For more information, visit www.cosfordcinema.com or call 305-284-4861.

Two of the giants of French cinema, Claude Chabrol and Gerard Depardieu, team up for the only time for the director’s 50th and final feature film, a wry thriller about a police commissioner trying to balance professional instinct with family duty. Once again, Paul Bellamy (Depardieu) and his wife are spending their vacation at her family home in a quiet town. But just as they’re settling into their reassuringly predictable holiday routine, his perennially troubled younger brother shows up, joined by a mysterious stranger seeking Bellamy’s protection. The film screens on Friday, December 3 at 9 p.m., Saturday, December 4 at 3 p.m. and 7:30 p.m., and Sunday, December 5 at 6 p.m. Admission is free for UM students and $6 for seniors, University of Miami alumni, faculty, non UM-students, and staff. General admission is $8. Cash only. For more information, visit www.cosfordcinema.com or call 284-4861.

The University of Miami’s Department of Philosophy and the Miami Art Museum will present the Seventh Annual Parodi Lecture in Philosophy of Art by Sherri Irvin on Sunday, December 5 from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Miami Art Museum, 101 W. Flagler Street. Irvin will present “Making Contemporary Art: Fabrication and Negotiation.” Irvin specializes in aesthetics and the philosophy of art. She has a strong interest in ethics, particularly the relevance of aesthetic considerations to moral agency, and is currently working on a book, tentatively titled Challenging Objects: Negotiations in Contemporary Art.  Irvin serves on the board of trustees of the American Society for Aesthetics and is the aesthetics and philosophy of art section editor for Philosophy Compass, Blackwell’s online journal. For more information, visit www.miami.edu/phi or call 305-284-4757.