No doubt you've heard that 3-D has become the thing at the multiplex, and that Hollywood bigs like Jeffrey Katzenberg, Robert Zemeckis, and James Cameron are making movies that capitalize on new digital-projection technologies.
"The Dark Knight" on Sunday became the second movie in Hollywood history to top $500 million at the domestic box office, raising its total to $502.4 million, according to estimates from distributor Warner Bros.
With "The Dark Knight" setting a record for highest-grossing opening weekend and "Pineapple Express" and "Step Brothers" also doing well, 2008 is on track for a record box office summer - suggesting once again that the movie business may be countercyclical to the economy.
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince the sixth installment in the blockbuster film franchise about boy wizard Harry, is moving from its planned Nov. 21 release to July 17, 2009
It is hard to imagine that DreamWorks and Paramount, the companies behind "Tropic Thunder," did not foresee some sort of reaction from activist groups.
Stoners are riding high nowadays. Fans are buzzing about the reunion of Cheech and Chong after a long feud, and a couple of tokers are lighting up the box office with "Pineapple Express."
What makes someone decide to become an actor? It sometimes seems as if the average Hollywood star is motivated mainly by the promise of a fat pay check.
No doubt you've heard that 3-D has become the thing at the multiplex, and that Hollywood bigs like Jeffrey Katzenberg, Robert Zemeckis, and James Cameron are making movies that capitalize on new digital-projection technologies.
"The Dark Knight" on Sunday became the second movie in Hollywood history to top $500 million at the domestic box office, raising its total to $502.4 million, according to estimates from distributor Warner Bros.
With "The Dark Knight" setting a record for highest-grossing opening weekend and "Pineapple Express" and "Step Brothers" also doing well, 2008 is on track for a record box office summer - suggesting once again that the movie business may be countercyclical to the economy.
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince the sixth installment in the blockbuster film franchise about boy wizard Harry, is moving from its planned Nov. 21 release to July 17, 2009
It is hard to imagine that DreamWorks and Paramount, the companies behind "Tropic Thunder," did not foresee some sort of reaction from activist groups.
Stoners are riding high nowadays. Fans are buzzing about the reunion of Cheech and Chong after a long feud, and a couple of tokers are lighting up the box office with "Pineapple Express."
What makes someone decide to become an actor? It sometimes seems as if the average Hollywood star is motivated mainly by the promise of a fat pay check.
From the Epic of Gilgamesh, composed in Mesopotamia 4,000 years ago, to Evan Almighty -- Hollywood's 2007 take on the Noah's Ark story -- floods and their catastrophic effects have long provided inspiration for storytellers.
Voters will determine if America is ready for a black president come November, but Hollywood, often ahead of the national curve, made up its mind about the issue ages ago.
Foreseeing the future is a tricky business. Why, for instance, should Hollywood moguls have paid much attention when the USB standard emerged in the mid-90's?
A fire at the storied corner of Hollywood and Vine spit flames 40
feet into the air Wednesday, burning close to landmarks like the
Capitol Records building and the Pantages Theater
On a Saturday afternoon last month, nearly 600 performers from Beijing were featured in a parade down Hollywood Boulevard to promote the upcoming Olympic games. The mayor of Los Angeles, Antonio Villaraigosa was on hand, and the theme was "Beijing welcomes you." Notably absent from the festivities, as far as I could tell, was the one thing you'd expect from a parade alongside the walk of fame: celebs. Indeed, the event itself went off with very little notice - I read about it in the Chinese press, but found no mention of it in the Los Angeles Times.
Western cinema's relationship with martial arts has been a rocky one. Like many genres, kung fu has drifted in and out of fashion, but it has never regained the same popularity as its glorious heyday in the early 1970s.
Athletes who take performance-improving drugs make all the headlines. But the culture of personal physical enhancement has pushed the use of steroids and HGH everywhere -- from Hollywood to the music industry to your next-door neighbor who doesn't want to grow old. Don't blame only the jocks.
In 2007, a low-budget feature by a first-time German director, "Das Leben der Anderen" won Best Foreign Language film at the Oscars. Over the next 10 weeks, the film better known to English-speaking audiences as "The Lives of Others" brought in $8.2m at the US box office.
We all have our favorites for the big honors at Hollywood's top awards show, but over its 80-year history there have been some classic films, performers and people behind the scenes that have been criminally overlooked by Oscar.
If Viggo Mortensen's mother saw his movie Eastern Promises, she saw her son onscreen completely naked and fighting off knives. But will she be able to see him at the Oscars?
Video courtesy APSnoop Dogg says the bright lights of Hollywood almost blinded him to the value of his family life, but in the end he realized he didn't want anyone else raising his children.
A rising star in the glare of the media, Maggie Q has long been famous as an action heroine in Asia. Recently however, she has joined the top rank of upcoming young actresses in Hollywood. Half Vietnamese, she was brought up in Hawaii, but began her career in Hong Kong's film industry after being spotted by Jackie Chan.
Hollywood film and TV writers who've been on strike nearly two weeks will return to contract negotiations Nov. 26, their union and producers said Friday.
Hollywood writers are poised to strike after their negotiating team recommended a walkout in a dispute over royalties at a Thursday night meeting of the union membership.
This must be some screenwriter's idea of a Halloween prank, setting the contract between the Writers Guild of America (WGA) and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) to expire on October 31. But can anybody in Hollywood appreciate how frightening the situation that's now coming to a head really is?
On a muggy Friday evening in September, photographers and fans lined the red carpet outside the Design Exchange in downtown Toronto. They were waiting for George Clooney, the guest of honor at the afterparty celebrating the premiere of "Michael Clayton," the hottest ticket at this year's Toronto Film Festival. Inside the cavernous room, Reese Witherspoon and Jake Gyllenhaal, Hollywood's undercover It Couple, quietly danced. A tipsy blond knocked over an ice sculpture.
Hollywood lived its own second-chance "Rocky" story this summer as a business that looked to be going down for the count two years ago rebounded with record revenue and an unparalleled string of blockbuster hits.
Los Angeles is looking fabulous today. It's a November afternoon - bright, clear skies, sparkling ocean - and from this glass mansion in the Hollywood Hills, a flock of seagulls can be seen taking ...
A low-budget movie that chalks up $180 million around the world, would seem sure to earn its creators a pile of money - but that hasn't happened with last year's sleeper hit "Crash," a news report said Tuesday.
Letters pour in from all over the world - France and Israel and Russia - heartbreaking in their naivete and earnest ambition to make it big in the movie business. Lloyd "Skip" Press answers them al...
Like most movies directed by legendary filmmaker Robert Altman, "A Prairie Home Companion" is packed with stars. Tommy Lee Jones, Kevin Kline, and Woody Harrelson all have roles in the film based on Garrison Keillor's beloved radio show; Lily Tomlin and Meryl Streep play a musical sister act, and starlet Lindsay Lohan - hot off "Herbie Fully Loaded" - shows up, improbably, as Streep's poetry-penning daughter.
Celebrity gossip blogger Mark Lisanti, who has scorched many a celebrity on his "Defamer" site, says his job is to dissect the Hollywood culture and "make fun" of it.
Hollywood hit a well-documented rough patch last year, with annual box office receipts declining for the first time since 1991. But so far in 2006, there's some good news.
"Alpha Dog," a new movie starring Justin Timberlake, Bruce Willis, and Sharon Stone is shot and ready to be released this spring. But it could be some time before it comes to a theater near you because the movie's main character is awaiting trial for murder.
Hollywood hit a well-documented rough patch last year, with annual box office receipts declining for the first time since 1991. But so far in 2006, there's some good news.
Combining two of America's greatest passions -- marketing and religion -- niche firms in Hollywood are discovering that selling films to audiences of faith pays.
Darn, I missed the Oscars again. I adore gory spectacles. If cockfights were legal I would be there. Even bear-baiting would not be too gruesome for me. Yet somehow I always miss Oscar night.
HOLLYWOOD IS A TOWN WHERE RELATIONSHIPS ARE currency. All it takes is one or two box-office flops for today's star to become tomorrow's pariah. If that happens, the only thing that can save you are your friends at Spago. So movie industry people trade air kisses in public and rarely criticize their peers within earshot of others. That's why a meeting last June of the Directors Guild of America was unusual.
In the past quarter-century, popular culture introduced us to the moonwalk and rap music, it brought us closer to a world where wizards learn magic instead of algebra and confronted our preconceptions about AIDS.
NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Darth Vader, Batman and Tom Cruise couldn't do it. Can a bespectacled teenage wizard, a not-so-cowardly lion and an enormous primate lift Hollywood out of its funk?
Imagine filming a real-time animated movie for a fraction of the cost of a big-budget Hollywood film. All it takes is some creativity, a little bit of computer savvy and a video game.
Distributing movies digitally could save Hollywood nearly $1 billion a year. Theater owners love the idea too, since it would let them quickly shift their offerings to meet demand. But so far, neit...
With its characters serving as the inspiration for a string of successful films like Spider-Man, X-Men, and Blade, Marvel Enterprises (MVL, $22) has become a potent force in Hollywood during the pa...
The movie-going masses on Friday will learn at last the dark story behind Bruce Wayne's transformation into a masked crusader battling evil in Gotham. Hollywood is hoping "Batman Begins" is more about an end -- to what could soon be the longest box office slump in twenty years.
Summer in Hollywood usually hits in early May, when the big-budget action-adventure flicks, comedies and epics start hitting the multiplex. Between then and Labor Day weekend, the movie industry makes more than half its money.
Hero, Crouching Tiger and House of Flying Daggers -- Chinese martial arts movies have been making some breathtaking moves on the international cinema circuit in recent years.
THE GAME DEVELOPERS' CONFERENCE, the annual March gathering of videogame makers, is typically a low-key geekfest. Game designers and producers in T-shirts and jeans shuffle between seminars like Dy...
FIVE MILLION PEOPLE WATCH HAPPY Tree Friends every week--about the same number that tune in to Dr. Phil. Its mailing list boasts 800,000 subscribers, circulation that would thrill any magazine or n...
IT SEEMS A BIT SILLY TO THINK OF EXecutives from glam movie studios, TV stations, and music labels signing up to work for Bellheads. Who, after all, would trade starlets and gala openings for trans...
IF HOLLYWOOD WERE RUN LIKE A REAL business--instead of, say, like a clubby, insecure, award-crazy, star-groveling high school--where things like return on investment mattered, there would be one un...
The other night I went to a screening of the new version of The Manchurian Candidate, a timely and spine-tingling--if slightly jumbled--passion play of present-day political paranoia. I was pleasan...
Sometimes Hollywood can really deliver the fabled magic that put the tinsel in Tinseltown and sent thousands of would-be screenwriters trekking across the country for fame and fortune.
The liberal advocacy group MoveOn.org has already proved to be a force in the campaign to defeat President Bush, but it is about to get a big infusion of help from Hollywood.
In Atlanta's trendy Buckhead district, amidst the pubs, boutiques and fashionable eateries, lurks a company building an animated feature that just might get Hollywood to sit up and take notice -- figuratively, of course.
It's a bright clear winter morning in Los Angeles. A windstorm blew in the night before, scattering huge palm fronds across the green expanse of Hollywood Forever cemetery, but grounds crews are al...
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