Breaking Entertainment News and Analysis

  • Hollywood Execs Rake It In Despite Recession

    With the recession in full swing, industry execs should take a lesson from their new media counterparts.

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    Devin Leonard

  • Some thing wicked this way comes . . . again

    Every time another horror remake, prequel or spin-off is announced, a little part of me dies. And not in the good arrow-through-the-eye, tentacle-down-the-throat way of the genre, either.   I’ve lost count of the movies that I held dear in my scare-obsessed teen years — from classics "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre," "The Omen" and…

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    Michael Adams

  • Obama’s top secret new mobile device

    President Obama made it official over the weekend — access to his e-mail address is limited to a very small circle. As the New York Times reported yesterday, getting President Obama's e-mail address is the new status symbol in Washington. So small is the circle of insiders who get to trade e-mails with POTUS (like…

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    Johanna Neuman

  • Al Gore takes Google underwater

    Ever since the contested presidential election in Florida in 2000 — when hanging chads and Supreme Court intervention kept him from victory — former Vice President Al Gore has been a political rock star in Democratic circles.  When Barack Obama conferred with Gore during the presidential transition last fall, political rumors flew that the former…

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    Johanna Neuman

  • My long-distance plan for Hollywood, Part II

    READ PART ONE OF THIS POST In another time, another world, each studio made 200 movies a year and had 20 executives.    Today a studio makes less than 20 movies a year and has 500 executives. They own too many parking decks and too many billboard companies. They’re awash in overhead and it’s pinning…

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    MIKE BINDER

  • Civil War Rages at SAG

    Civil war within SAG raged on Tuesday over a lawsuit that will be filed by hardliners in the guild seeking to reinstate Doug Allen.

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    Sharon Waxman

  • Superbowl Ads Reference Recession, But NBC Sold Out

    Although NBC sold out all its commercials for the Superbowl, somehow the economic recession still slipped into the annual showcase for American retailers.

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    Wrap Staff

  • Lionsgate May Buy Summit

    Lionsgate and Summit Entertainment are in talks to merge their two companies, according to two people familiar with the negotiations.

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  • Aretha says: I’m keeping my hat!

    Smithsonian asks for the inaugural hat of the queen of soul

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    Wrap Staff

  • Dan Glickman Gets Grilled

    An interview with Dan Glickman, chairman of the MPAA.

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    TODAY’S GRILLER: Johanna Neuman

  • When Is A Broadcast Network Really A Cable Channel?

    The decline of NBC may turn out to be a bellwether for the Big Four networks that once ruled the television landscape.

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    Kim Masters

  • Why so few movies from Updike’s books?

    A large proportion of literary novelists could complain that their work has not been translated in a satisfying way to the screen.   But with an author whose career was so long-running and productive as that of John Updike, who died last week at 76, the paucity of adaptations seems downright head-scratching. For a guy…

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    Scott Timberg

  • Lay off ‘Slumdog’!

    As an ex-reporter and current day producer, the so-called "controversy" over "Slumdog  Millionaire" offends me on so many levels I'm not quite sure where to begin. Some people claim the movie exploits the abject poverty omnipresent in Mumbai. I wonder if these same critics would have attacked the movie "The Grapes of Wrath" as exploiting…

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    David T. Friendly

  • And I Am Telling You Adeola Will Not Make It To Hollywood

    As Melinda Camille sang on last night’s episode, “It’s a new dawn; it’s a new day; it’s a new life for me.” It truly is a new dawn for all of us, as the entire country embraces an Obama-fied appreciation of unity. “American Idol,” never one to miss a trend (or a new cashcow), jumps…

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    Jennifer Kelly

  • Danny Boyle takes DGA Award

    At the Directors Guild Awards on Saturday night, “Slumdog Millionaire” director Danny Boyle took top prize

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