Movies
Matthew Broderick says he's puzzled by the bashing he's received for his actions during the first New York preview of "The Starry Messenger," a new play by good friend Kenneth Lonergan.
1. The original version of "The Box" was a short story by Richard Matheson that was published as "Button, Button" in the June 1970 issue of Playboy.
A title card at the beginning of "The Men Who Stare at Goats" announces, "More of this is true than you would believe." Less of it is entertaining than you would wish.
"More of this is true than you would believe," warns a title card at the start of "The Men Who Stare at Goats," although the ever-reliable "I know this sounds crazy, but ..." would have worked just as well.
Two-time Oscar-nominated actor James Woods has sued a Rhode Island hospital over the 2006 death of his younger brother.
CHICAGO - You'd never guess it from meeting her on the street, but Gabourey Sidibe makes an incredibly convincing troubled, abused teenager.
As Ebenezer Scrooge (not to mention The Grinch), Jim Carrey aims to put a lump of coal in the Christmas stocking and a lump of emotion in the throat. That he fails is not for lack of effort.
How do you pad out a six-page short story that strives to be nothing more than a clever little morality tale into a feature-length film? By throwing in lots and lots of stuff - practically everything but zombies. Check that: We've got two hours to fill here. Bring on the zombies, too!
Nick Counter, a longtime negotiator for Hollywood producers who led the studios through two grueling writers' strikes last year and in 1988, has died. He was 69.
You cannot ruin the essence of "A Christmas Carol." The example of a man who learns that wealth is not happiness, but happiness is wealth, is surely eternal.
You've heard about close encounters of the third kind, of course, the extraterrestrial meetings that involve contact, presumably of a benign nature. The fourth kind involves a more invasive sort of contact: alien abduction, possibly including those uncomfortable probes about which the true UFO believers are always so nervous.
Roland Emmerich has an ongoing project: destroying the world. In 1996's "Independence Day," the German director sent aliens to wipe out the White House. In 1998, he unleashed "Godzilla" to wreak havoc on the streets of New York. In 2004's "The Day After Tomorrow," he froze the planet in a new ice age.
TORONTO - Oprah Winfrey did not write "The Bluest Eye" or "Middlesex" or "Love in the Time of Cholera." But her formidably influential book club has helped many an author - alive or dead, famous or no - reach a wider audience. (Sample thank-you note from the beyond: "Oprah, thanks for your support of 'Anna Karenina.' Leo.") Now the multinational corporation disguised, cunningly, as a cultural arbiter and television personality hopes she can do a similar favor for a film she "really, really, really loves."
DETROIT - It's a quiet afternoon in downtown Detroit as an invasion is in progress.
