Sharon Waxman

A word in tribute to Sydney Pollack, a director who marked our time with films that weren’t visually flashy, didn’t pioneer special effects, and were non-blockbusters in the age of the movie event. With gratitude, let’s remember "Tootsie," and "The Way We Were," and "Out of Africa." Let’s remember his ability to bring out the…

You can read the dominance of the cult of American Idol and the demise of the American music business in the cool quotient of performers at the results finale at the Nokia theater last night. Once upon a time, ZZ Top would’ve been too cool to come on this show. Graham Nash wouldn’t have been…

Who says the battle over stolen antiquities isn’t deadly serious? This came in yesterday off the wires: In Washington State, a renowned Asian antiquities expert has died in a federal jail. Sixty-two-year-old Roxana Brown was the director of the Southeast Asian Ceramics Museum at Bangkok University in Thailand. Brown had been arrested in connection with…

The Washington Post as I know it has jumped the shark. Crossed a line. Hit the wall. It’s a paper I love with all my heart, and where I worked for eight years. But in a new round of buy-outs I am told, a “blunt instrument” was used to clear the newsroom of 100 more…

A word to remember my dear friend, Joan Goodman, a talented journalist who died in the early hours of today, of cancer. She was 80, but – until recently, anyway – she looked and seemed more like 65. For 35 years, Joan was one of the foremost practicioners of the premiere form of Hollywood journalism…

I am currently writing a story for Los Angeles magazine about a serial rape case, so I was naturally drawn to this story about a rape. But it is no ordinary story, and it is no ordinary telling. Joanna Connors, the longtime film critic for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, has reached deep into her writer’s…

And this just in, from The Onion: "Dying Newspaper Trend Buys Nation’s Newspapers Three More Weeks WASHINGTON—A recent glut of feature stories on the death of the American newspaper has temporarily made the outmoded form of media appealing enough to stave off its inevitable demise for an additional 21 days, sources reported Monday. "People really…

I’m at a very lively conference probing the future of journalism and technology, at the headquarters of Yahoo! in Sunnyvale, California, NewsTools 2008. The talk here has been of democracy and widgets, citizen journalism and Twittr, sputtering newspapers and algorithms. At a very popular discussion group the question was: “Who’s gonna pay the journalists?” An…

Yes, I did it. I finally bought a Prius. Nothing makes me happier than buying a car that spews fewer fumes into the air, saves me time while also putting less money in the hands of the already-filthy-rich. Sheer contentment. I’ve been wanting one of these since I first wrote about them for the Washington…

Dear Sharon, We have never spoken but I just finished you book Rebels on the Backlot and felt compelled to write you. I am a producer who has wanted to be one since 5th grade. Six years ago I partnered with Michael Bay to form Platinum Dunes, which specializes in under 20 million dollar horror…