Movie News

The flat-lining, alien-abduction thriller "The Fourth Kind" offers a close encounter that buries an interesting idea under a barrage of gimmicky, carnivallike hokum. The movie's unwieldy mix of degraded pseudo-documentary footage and "Unsolved Mystery"-style re-enactments is as unconvincing as it its distancing, making the small charms of "Paranormal Activity" all the more apparent by comparison.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Sundance Film Festival organizers on Wednesday unveiled plans for a one-night expansion of January's event to theaters in eight U.S. cities, hoping to encourage a discussion about the role art and cinema play in people's lives.

Lionel Barrymore. Alastair Sim. Laurence Olivier. Albert Finney. George C. Scott. Bill Murray. Michael Caine. Mr. Magoo. Scrooge McDuck.

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - "Lie to Me" star Jennifer Beals has been cast in Hallmark Channel's original movie "The Night Before the Night Before Christmas."

NEW ORLEANS - Actor Tom Hanks says viewers are in for a realistic "wartime experience" when the new film he produced, "Beyond All Boundaries," opens at the National World War II Museum in New Orleans on Friday.

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Director Julien Temple, who shot the Sex Pistols faux-documentary "The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle," is hatching another scheme.

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Zach Galifianakis has had a great fall.

HONG KONG - Zhang Yimou says his first movie in three years has shades of comedian Stephen Chow's outlandish humor and marks the first time the "Raise the Red Lantern" director shot in digital format.

NEW YORK (Hollywood Reporter) - Some true-life tales are better suited to documentaries than fictionalized feature films.

TOKYO - Brad Pitt says he is in the market for a new motorcycle.

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Maybe the movie should be called "The Chinese Box."

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Sony Pictures is taking on some Risk, acquiring the film rights to the classic Hasbro board game, in which players vie for world domination.

LOS ANGELES - Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin are taking on the Oscars.

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Frederick Wiseman has been making documentaries for the last 40 years, turning a sharp eye on a huge number of social and cultural institutions.

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - A hijacking nearly brought "Amelia" crashing to the ground.

LONDON - Jim Carrey, Colin Firth and Bob Hoskins switched on London's Christmas lights on Tuesday and attended the world premiere of the 3-D film "A Christmas Carol."

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Landing very closely on the sleeper heels of "Paranormal Activity" comes "The Fourth Kind," an alien-abduction thriller that combines purported raw case study footage with dramatic "recreations" to unsuccessful effect.

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Every tourist has some war stories.

A fun tone is undermined by disjointed storytelling in George Clooney's "The Men Who Stare at Goats," and it all starts with the disclaimer that opens the movie: "More of this is true than what you might imagine."

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Anyone who believes that directorial self-indulgence is a new phenomenon will find Serge Bromberg's documentary, "Henri-Georges Clouzot's Inferno," to be a revelation.

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - French filmmaker Pierre Morel, who most recently directed the $224 million worldwide hit "Taken," is moving on to another thriller.

LOS ANGELES - Hollywood loves money. So does Ebenezer Scrooge. So what better way to launch the holiday season than putting the old money-grubber at the head of the line to separate movie-goers from their cash?

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin were chosen as co-hosts of next year's Oscars to inject a fresh comedic twist into the ceremony while building on decades of tradition, new co-producer Adam Shankman said.

LONDON - The George Lucas empire struck back Tuesday against a British prop designer who sold replicas of the iconic Stormtrooper uniforms from the "Star Wars" movies.

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - There isn't much that's fine in "Everybody's Fine," an embarrassing misfire for Kirk Jones, who once gave us the exhilarating comedy "Waking Ned Devine," and for Miramax, a storied company now reduced to little more than a film library.

GENEVA - Roman Polanski has re-appealed to the Swiss courts to be released from prison on bail, officials said Tuesday, the latest step in the director's protracted legal battle to avoid extradition to the United States.

LOS ANGELES - Media conglomerate News Corp. said Wednesday its net income for the latest quarter grew despite analysts' expectations of a decline, thanks to strength at its cable networks and the box-office success of "Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs."

LONDON - Lawyers for Kate Winslet say the actress has accepted 25,000 pounds (more than $40,000) in damages after the Daily Mail falsely reported in January she lied about her exercise regime.

LOS ANGELES - Technology finally has caught up with Charles Dickens' imagination.

Academy Award nominee Willem Dafoe leads the world premiere cast of Richard Foreman's Idiot Savant, which officially opens at the Public Theater Nov. 4.