CONAN: “I WOULDN’T HAVE DONE WHAT JAY DID”

Jay Leno has repeatedly said that the ribbing he took from fellow comics during the fiasco that saw Conan O’Brien step down as host of the Tonight show and Leno return to the show was merely a matter of comedians doing what comes naturally. “All comedians are friends, but when you go onstage your job […]

CONTROVERSY OVER KENNEDY MINISERIES REIGNITED

Following this week’s announcement that Greg Kinnear and Katie Holmes will star as John and Jacqueline Kennedy in the forthcoming eight-hour miniseries The Kennedys on the History Channel, the questions that arose on the series’ original announcement last year, about whether it was contrived as a hatchet job, were being raised again. In announcing the […]

U.K. DEPARTMENT STORE AD GOES VIRAL

A 90-second ad for the British department-store chain John Lewis has “gone viral” on YouTube, attracting more than 150,000 viewers this week. The ad, said to have cost nearly $10 million to produce, uses CGI to seamlessly move a woman through all the phases of her life from birth to childhood to adolescence to marriage […]

FINAL U.K. TV DEBATE; PRIME MINISTER LOSES

More than eight million viewers tuned in to the BBC Thursday night to watch the third and final debate between the leaders of Britain’s three major parties, the Labor Party’s Gordon Brown, the Conservatives’ David Cameron, and the Liberal Democrats’ Nick Clegg. The number was down from the 9.4 million who watched the first debate, […]

FREDDY DUE TO PUFF OUT DRAGON

This is the weekend when DreamWorks Animation’s dragon is expected to fall victim to Freddy Krueger. Several box-office forecasters are predicting that Warner Bros./New Line’s remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street will collect more than $30 million. But How to Train Your Dragon, which has shown surprisingly strong legs over the past five weeks […]

MOVIE REVIEWS: “A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET”

Horror films are rarely shown to critics in advance. And for good reason. They’re generally not the kind of movies that can be appraised for their cinematic artistry. Warner Bros./New Line probably shouldn’t have bothered arranging pre-release press screenings for the remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street either. “I stared at A Nightmare on […]

MOVIE REVIEWS: “FURRY VENGEANCE”

Here’s something new — a revenge movie aimed at small children. Something else kinda new — instead of cute, computer generated animals, it uses real ones. (They’re manipulated by computers, too.) No matter. The critics aren’t impressed. Actually, writes Mike Hale in the New York Times, the movie is “unbearable,” although, he hastens to add, […]

EX-“VARIETY” CRITIC LANDS ON FEET AT INDIEWIRE

Veteran Variety film critic Todd McCarthy, who was recently laid off by the trade publication after 31 years, has signed with the website IndieWire to create a new blog called Deep Focus. In his first posting he indicated that while he had received “some intriguing proposals” after he was cut loose by Variety, none of […]

JAMES CAMERON HELPING NASA DEVELOP 3D CAMERA FOR MARS ROVER

Avatar director James Cameron has been working with San Diego-based Malin Space Science Systems to develop a 3D camera that can be mounted on the next Mars rover, Curiosity, according to the Pasadena Star-News. The newspaper said that Cameron “sold” the idea of such a system to NASA administrator Charles Bolden at a meeting in […]

CBS CHIEF: NO PLANS TO CONVERT SHOWS TO 3D

CBS Les Moonves is not about to join the 3D revolution — at least not for now. Speaking at the Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills Wednesday Moonves said that he had seen old episodes of Star Trek that had been converted to 3D and “they did not knock me out.” Moreover, as reported […]

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