Don Shirley: Pianists make history
Iris Schneider on Annie Leibovitz
"Many people I know in Los Angeles believed the '60s ended abruptly on Aug. 9, 1969," Joan Didion wrote of the most notorious multiple murders in Los Angeles history.
Archive: Hollywood
"Many people I know in Los Angeles believed the '60s ended abruptly on Aug. 9, 1969," Joan Didion wrote of the most notorious multiple murders in Los Angeles history.
This happened a little bit faster than I expected. Hope there's no deal involved.
Dodgers walk off in game 2. The obstacles to covering Hollywood. Media notes, moves and changes. Plus selected tweets.
Bullet points: What you should know about the biggest story in Hollywood in years, including the names of the heroes.
Los Angeles TV news crews await the speeches at press event inside the construction site for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Museum.
Coverage of the movie mogul's professional demise, many media notes, a union surfaces at the LA Times, selected tweets and more.
Osborne's TV credits begin in 1954, but in 1977 he took up writing for the Hollywood Reporter and became the genial first host of TCM movies.
After 3½ hours of mostly uneventful filler, the Oscars show needed a picker upper. It got one.
Westwood Village, once the place where big films opened, is about to be down to just two remaining movie houses.
"A giant of American film criticism," Kenneth Turan says of Schickel, the longtime Time critic, author and documentary maker.
Finke has been awarded a Knight Nieman fellowship to "explore best practices in the reporting of breaking news and analysis in a 24/7 media environment."
The creative director and editor who brought The Hollywood Reporter back from the brink is moving to the parent company.
Wong's artwork inspired "Bambi." He contributed to other films and was also known for his beach kites.
Michael Cieply, the longtime anchor of New York Times Hollywood coverage in the Los Angeles bureau, is joining Deadline as the executive editor.
Henry Chu is the trade's new European Bureau Chief. He took the LAT buyout last fall.
900 or so friends gathered Sunday night at the Wilshire Ebell.
Forty years before "Spotlight" reminded movie-goers what reporters actually do, ATPM was the film making college students want to study journalism.
Oscar reporters had to demand access to the ceremony after corporate suits took the LAT's passes. Also: could Davan Maharaj add publisher to his title?
Spotlight won the Oscar for best picture and the Film Independent Spirit Award for best feature, with a standing ovation for the Boston Globe reporters.
Journalistic objectivity be damned, he's hoping "Spotlight" wins all six Oscars it is up for.
"David got bored with Los Angeles a long time ago,” says Tina Brown.
Rogers grew up in the Hollywood PR business and launched his own firm, The Rogers Group, in 1978.
The president has fundraisers in Hancock Park and a taping in Burbank for the Ellen DeGeneres Show.
Evening host Jim Svejda does one-hour interviews with all the Oscar-nominated composers every night this week.
If you enjoy spotting LA locations in Hollywood movies, you'll like this.
All the nominated actors are white and two are from Spotlight: Rachel McAdams and Mark Ruffalo.
You too can be an overnight success after 20 years, says the writer on the new Fox show "Bordertown."
The Wall Street Journal features Clifford V. Johnson, the USC theoretical physicist who is also a blogger and an adviser on plausible plot twists.
Michael Hamilburg was the book agent for Jim Morrison, Jackie Robinson, Vincent Bugliosi and many other writers — as well as a number of Los Angeles journalists through the years....
His career included work with David Alfaro Siqueiros, illustrating for "Sleeping Beauty" and "Fantastic Voyage," and murals for Disneyland and other Disney parks.
Three stops including San Gabriel and at the Jim Henson studios on La Brea Avenue in Hollywood.
Only five hours for supper, but it's enough time for the hard-core Musso's types to run in for a martini and a steak.
These are the first criminal charges Cosby has faced despite complaints by more than 40 women that the actor sexually assaulted them, often after giving them drugs.
All the junkyard cars are gone from U-Pick Parts and Aadlen Brothers Auto Wrecking in Sun Valley, after 53 years serving car owners and Hollywood.
The movie that all your journalist friends love is this generation's "All the President's Men."
Joe Bel Bruno jumps from the LAT's Company Town team to lead breaking news coverage at the Hollywood Reporter.
The actor does not have AIDS and says he has paid "into the millions" including to insiders to keep his status quiet over four years.
AAdlen Brothers Auto Wrecking, an institution in Sun Valley for 53 years, has supplied or been in a lot of movies, TV episodes and music videos.
The session singer best known for "Gimme Shelter" and "20 Feet From Stardom" had both legs amputated below the knee after a freeway crash. She was honored last week at The Apollo in Harlem.
LA Observed contributor Cari Beauchamp brings her film historian chops to a month-long series highlighting female directors back to the industry's first years.
Gregory Caruso was the unflinching young guy sitting just left of Jake Tapper and creating a lot of social media buzz.
The Fine Arts movie house on Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills, dark for five years, reopens Sept. 18. Opened in 1937 as the Wilshire Regina.
LAPD Chief Charlie Beck credits Milner's Pete Malloy with inspiring him to join the force.
"This is as good as it gets," says real estate broker Jeff Hyland: 157 acres on the ridge line above Beverly Hills.
Sacks announced in a February Op-ed piece that he had spreading cancer and was detaching from big world concerns like the Middle East and global warming. "My generation is on the way out…"
The "Django Unchained" actress and her boyfriend have until tomorrow to write an apology that actually sounds sorry.
Sources tell THR the magazine is close on an "aggressive exposé — more than a year in the works — about the unorthodox reporting tactics" of TMZ and Harvey Levin.
New York Magazine got 35 of the 46 women it counts as having come forward with allegations about Bill Cosby to sit for photos. It makes an impact.
Variety's chief film critic is moving to Amazon Studios as an acquisitions and development executive.
As for getting old, he sings, isn't that the goal?
A sampling of the media stories trying to find some meaning in the LA romp after 20 years.
The Hollywood Reporter editor-at-large and host of KCRW's "The Business" writes at THR today about Nicholas Winton, who died July 1 at 106.
Customers like the deep inventory of films in stock. THR's story drops names like Kyle Chandler, Steven Soderbergh and Keanu Reeves.
The Times breaks another advertising standards convention in bid to get movie ads back in the paper. Publisher Austin Beutner made the call.
The 13-0 vote allows construction to begin soon at the former May Co. building at Wilshire and Fairfax.
He bought MGM three times, owned Las Vegas hotels and at times was the richest man in Los Angeles.
The Emmy Award nominations will no longer be held at a ridiculous hour of the morning in Los Angeles (well, North Hollywood.)
Two lawyers have paid seven-figure settlements to Hollywood executives over bogus sexual abuse lawsuits.
Obama heads over to Tyler Perry's place for a June 18 fundraiser, and Clinton stops in at Tobey Maguire's the next day.
Take that, haters. Alba really is more than a pretty face and the Internet's favorite bikini body.
LA's favorite earthquake expert tweets her review of the latest impossible movie disaster to destroy Los Angeles.
Meara, the actress and comedian, died in Manhattan. Nash, the mathematician portrayed in "A Beautiful Mind," was killed with his wife Alicia in a New Jersey taxi crash.
Individual actors or set designers can't copyright their small contributions to a film, as the actress argued who was tricked into appearing in "Innocence of Muslims."
This is what Hollywood's acceptance of sexism looks like in real life, writes BuzzFeed LA's Susan Cheng -- despite a lawyer letter trying to dissuade her.
Her HollywoodDementia.com will feature short stories, novellas and novel excerpts written by Hollywood insiders "like myself."
After 15 years at USA Today, she took a buyout that saw 55 staffers leave the paper last week.
Friday is Sharkey's last day at the Los Angeles Times after 17 years, the last seven as film critic.
Nice one-day haul for the Democratic candidate, but she's also in the spotlight for agreeing to take money from even bigger donors.
Hollywood checks are the main target, of course, with an evening reception hosted by Haim Saban and Casey Wasserman.
Corliss wrote about film for Time for 35 years, becoming "perhaps the magazine’s most quoted writer of all time."
Stan Freberg had one of those Los Angeles careers. "The first great genius of American musical satire," says Harry Shearer.
Michael Fleming says last week's story suggesting there was too much diversity in TV casting was a big mistake: "Our hearts are heavy with regret."
The director and ex-member writes about why hardcore Scientologists will just not see, or believe, the truth that the Alex Gibney documentary lays out for them.
She was hit and given a black eye by actor Scott Shepherd in London, and now leads an effort to make the theater a safer place for the people who on productions.
There's been some shuffling in the lineup of political advisers to the stars and big donors. And a new candidate for the Board of Supervisors.
Bruce Feirstein, the Los Angeles-based contributor to Vanity Fair, devotes this month's investigative VF chart to a compare-and-contrast.
Simon donated his fortune from "The Simpsons" to children, animals and other causes.
Sentence of ten years in a Georgia jail could result in about a year of time served and a lengthy ban on work as a director. Miller will be the first director to serve time for an on-set death.
The actor known for playing Star Trek's Mr. Spock died of smoking at his home in Bel Air this morning.
No Twitter, no Facebook, no live blogs or online snark. So liberating. Link to winners inside.
The Star Wars Episode VII director and his wife are hosting a Santa Monica fundraiser for Marqueece Harris-Dawson, who is a candidate for the open City Council seat in South LA.
Prouser started with Reuters here on the first day of the Rodney King riots and shot close to 3,000 Hollywood red carpets before he was done.
The Los Angeles-based entertainment reporter will "engage US readers by combining the Guardian's internationalist, online journalism with US voices and expertise."
She has her first local campaign fundraiser for the Senate race tonight in Bel Air. Plus: Gavin Newsom forms 2018 committee.
We now know the answer to the question of whether Pascal would survive the revelations of her emails during the hacker attack on Sony Pictures.
In the age of smartphones, GPS and Waze, the directional signs remain a staple of Hollywood shoots.
THR's National Magazine Award comes in the category of special interest. Pacific Standard and Amanda Hess also win.
The producer of "Zero Dark Thirty" and "American Hustle" loves her video store, I guess.
Feels like an impending death in the family of film lovers, says the Wall Street Journal and KCRW film critic.
Zocalo thought he might go for a documentary or an old black-and-white classic. Nope.
Maybe not everyone watching would know that Jones is biracial, but TNT's reporter and producers should have.
"Birdman" also wins at the Producers' Guild and suddenly has best picture momentum for the Oscars.
Steve Carrell and Reese Witherspoon both got lead actor nominations for the Oscars, Patricia Arquette for supporting.
New poster is here for the film about the LA talent who played on the hit records of the 1960s and 70s.
This time I guess it's a bargain: just $23 million, cut $4.5 million since 2013.
Before moving on to Hollywood, Kaltman was a press deputy to Jim Hahn and Wendy Greuel in City Hall.
At the Motion Picture and Television Fund home in Woodland Hills, retirees from Hollywood produce, write -- and star in -- their own TV shows.
Rainer won her second Academy Award at 28 then left 1930s Hollywood in a dispute with Louis B. Mayer. Her quick rise and fall are Hollywood legend.
Of all the ways that Sony Pictures co-chair Amy Pascal's life is going to change because her studio emails were hacked and distributed around the internet, this might prove to be one of the more disturbing.
Gary Leonard observed a billboard for Sony's "The Interview" at 3rd Street and Gardner. Oops, that was yesterday.
"We have found linkage to the North Korean government," according to a U.S. government source.
Sony acted to drop plans for a Christmas Day release of the film starring James Franco and Seth Rogen (with a key part for Lizzy Caplan) after the nation's bigger theater chains said they weren't going to screen the movie because of hacker threats.
Sony hacking fallout gets more serious. LAPD adopts body cameras for 7,000 officers and will reform its crime stats methods. Court-appointed panel will monitor LA jails. Dov Charney out at American Apparel. Dodgers axe Brian Wilson. Plus more.
Producer Scott Rudin bashes Sony executive Amy Pascal, Angelina Jolie and other Hollywood figures in private emails that some media are covering and some aren't.
Grantland compiles the comments of more than a dozen figures involved in the making of Paul Thomas Anderson's 1997 now-classic Los Angeles movie.
"Boyhood" on Sunday won the voting for best picture of 2014 and three other awards by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association.
The LA journalist talked to several women who told eerily similar stories about being drugged and raped -- this was back in 2007. His story went nowhere.
The director of "The Graduate" and so much more has won an Oscar, an Emmy, Tonys and a Grammy.
Hikers found the remains of the missing Fox distribution executive in the rural high desert near Palmdale last month, according to officials. He disappeared May 1, 2012.
Two leading civil rights activists applaud the prosecution, saying that allegations of racial profiling are not "toys" to be tossed out lightly to cover up misdeeds.
Peña had a screen presence you remember in films like "Lone Star" and "La Bamba." She recently had been directing TV episodes, voicing for "The Incredibles" and "Justice League" cartoons, and had finished work on an action series for the El Rey Network.
Daniele Watts, who is black, and her white husband posted on Facebook they were rousted for being affectionate on Ventura Boulevard and deemed to be a suspected prostitute and john.
Statement from Melissa Rivers says "It is with great sadness that I announce the death of my mother, Joan Rivers….My mother’s greatest joy in life was to make people laugh."
The draft EIR is out and shows that Renzo Piano's giant ball remains in the plan and that a big Oscar statue may take over the old May Co.'s iconic sculpture at Wilshire and Fairfax.
Daily News leadership, a new photo of and a threat directed at Nikki Finke, Heather Havrilesky's column moves, plus more.
"With California in the midst of a drought, TheWrap opted against using water, and instead just waited for some of the ice to melt." Does Sharon Waxman's hair even get wet?
Zelda Williams has received a ton of warmth but also some ugliness.
Bacall, the New York model who became an overnight movie star at age 19 after appearing opposite Humphrey Bogart (then 44) in “To Have and Have Not,” died Tuesday of a stroke at her home in the Dakota building in Manhattan.
Conan O'Brien was taping his TBS show this afternoon when the news about Robin Williams reached the studio. Just before the end of the show, O'Brien informed the silent audience.
Marin County officials said the Oscar winner appeared to kill himself via asphyxia. “This morning, I lost my husband and my best friend, while the world lost one of its most beloved artists and beautiful human beings,” his wife, Susan Schneider, said.
Busy summer for Los Angeles collector (and police commission president) Steve Soboroff.
Flint will be based in the LA bureau of the Journal. He covered media for the WSJ for seven years before joining the Times.
The Herald Examiner building downtown has not been inhabited by real newspaper reporters and editors since 1989. But some of them may feel eerily at home in the jail sets recently added to the array of location sets available for rental.
Zevweb has a nice feature on how the documentary came to tell the story of the emergency room at County-USC Medical Center on the Eastside.
Couple of scenes at the director's morning gathering two years ago. "Lots and lots of dick jokes," says the videographer.
Ressner began at the LA Weekly as a messenger, moved to the Hollywood Reporter, Rolling Stone and US Weekly, then was a Time magazine correspondent in Los Angeles for more than 10 years. He also wrote for Politico.
Mazursky died Monday of cardiac arrest while at Cedars-Sinai. Writer Adam Baer has posted a nice piece about "the day Paul Mazursky changed my life."
Out near Blythe in the lower desert, the abandoned industrial settlement of Midland has been empty for nearly half a century.
In spite of Mayor Eric Garcetti's push behind a social media campaign for Los Angeles, the new George Lucas museum will be built in Chicago, the Chicago Tribune reports.
Anne Thompson helps give some perspective to the latest back and forth between the Hollywood blogger and her former colleagues.
The actress and former senior Asian correspondent for the "Daily Show" lets a Vogue question man into her LA home. He fires questions about Los Angeles and more. She speaks some Japanese. It works.
Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie and at least some of their kids were at the premiere of the new Disney film "Maleficient" tonight at Hollywood's El Capitan theatre. A Ukranian man who has harassed other celebrities was arrested.
A.O. Scott in the New York Times says Adam Sandler's "Blended" is so bad it will make your child stupid. The LA Times calls it a "fun...enjoyable romp."
Great line (from 1959) about one benefit of his unusual name: "It’s kept me out of westerns. I can’t imagine a Hopalong Zimbalist.”
Myers' Clinton ties could be a factor if Hillary Clinton runs for president. Before she became the first female press secretary at the White House, Myers worked in LA City Hall.
They don't make Hollywood careers like this any more. Rooney's IMDb credits span 1926 to 2014 (340 listings), plus two Oscars and four stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Rebhorn's most recent high-profile part was as Frank Mathison, the father of CIA agent Carrie Mathison in "Homeland." He also prosecuted Seinfeld and friends in the final episode of that series.
The president introduced the new Diego Luna film but didn't stay to watch — he said he'll watch on DVD soon. He also told Luna he loved "Y Tu Mama Tambien," though acknowledged it could not be screened at the White House.
Actor Wayne Knight did not die Sunday in upstate New York or anywhere else.
Saturday obits include Hollywood voice artist Hal Douglas and production manager Abby Singer, whose name has become affixed to the penultimate shot of the day on Hollywood sets.
Bob Thomas began to cover Hollywood for the Associated Press in 1944, after fleeing the Fresno bureau. When he retired in 2010, Thomas held records for longest career as an entertainment reporter and most consecutive Academy Awards shows covered.
Deluxe has been a major player in the production of movies on film and in digital post-production. But film is fading away.
This undated photograph of movie stars Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart appears on the California state controller’s list of unclaimed property. Credit to Larry Harnisch for noticing.
So many bungled lines on the Oscars — teleprompter troubles? — and set pieces that fell flat. John Travolta? Yeesh. Highlights and winners inside.
ABC analyst Nate Silver is better known for his politics and baseball stat work than his Oscar predictions, but he shared some data-driven observations about best picture winners this morning on George Stephanopoulos.
In the Santa Monica beach tent on Saturday, '12 Years a Slave' fashioned a near sweep of top honors at the Independent Spirit Awards. 'Twenty Feet from Stardom' snagged the documentary award.
It's stunning how fast this all happened. One day, the National Enquirer was posting a bogus story that claimed David Bar Katz was the secret gay lover of Philip Seymour Hoffman. Less than three weeks later, the tabloid is paying for Katz to create the American Playwriting Foundation.
Let's stop for a minute to appreciate the comedy of Harold Ramis: "Caddyshack" and "Groundhog Day," "Animal House," "Ghostbusters," "Stripes" and more.
"I'm tired of hiding," the actress said in a Las Vegas speech tonight sponsored by the Human Rights Campaign. "And I'm tired of lying by omission."
Caesar's 1950s NBC program "Your Show of Shows" featured Imogene Coca and writers such as Mel Brooks, Woody Allen and Larry Gelbart. Caesar died today at home in Beverly Hills.
For five years during the Great Depression, Shirley Temple was the most popular movie star in America of any age. Her popularity saved 20th Century Fox. She later became an ambassador and prominent Republican.
CD 33 contributed millions to President Obama's election campaigns. The district hasn't been up for grabs for four decades. And it's home to the likes of Jeffrey Katzenberg and Haim Saban.
New York Times media writer David Carr had some things in common with Philip Seymour Hoffman: wrestling, a role to play in the movie promoting machine, and addiction.
Plenty of stars show up on the cover of Vanity Fair despite Gwyneth Paltrow's ask that her friends shun the magazine. Editor Graydon Carter addresses the whole Paltrow saga in his editor's letter.
Schell won his best actor Oscar for the 1961 Staley Kramer film "Judgment at Nuremberg.” He later directed “Der Rosenkavalier” for the Los Angeles Opera in 2005.
Amy Poehler: "Seth, we are here to take you to the other side."
The Academy Award-winning actor was discovered this morning with a syringe in his arm and a packet of what appears to be heroin, a law enforcement source told the New York Times. He was 46. More inside.
Barbra Streisand and Mayor Eric Garcetti were among the attendees at the Fremont Place home of "Everybody Loves Raymond" creator Phil Rosenthal.
Architects Renzo Piano and Zoltan Pali have unveiled plans to adapt the old May Co. department store into the motion picture museum Hollywood (and Los Angeles) have never had.
Sherak was Mayor Eric Garcetti's designated ambassador between the film industry, City Hall and Sacremento. He died today after a long battle with prostate cancer.
For many Hollywood Democrats, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is apparently their number two choice for president in 2016, after Hillary Clinton. He was in Brentwood Thursday night for a fundraiser.
“American Hustle” tied with “Gravity” for the most overall nominations with 10. “12 Years a Slave” came in with nine. Some highlights and the full list.
The position open now is for an on-air host of entertainment programing. As I understand the plan, the coverage will begin as a segment on "Take Two" then expand to a half-hour show.
Perhaps THR should have chosen a little different wording for one of the click-bait links in its story on today's PCH brush fire in Pacific Palisades.
BuzzFeed calls its listicle 40 Movies That Define Los Angeles, which is a big overreach. But it's a fun list nonetheless. A couple I would have added, inside.
Producers Remington Chase and Stefan Martirosian have an unusual and unsavory backstory they tried to get the LA Weekly not to publish. It didn't work.
Putting stars on bikes: good idea. I had never heard of Susan Peters and her story until the 2012 book, "Hollywood Rides a Bike: Cycling With the Stars," by Philadelphia film critic Steven Rea and my friends at Angel City Press.
Myers worked in Hollywood over at least five decades and was the publicist for, among others, Marilyn Monroe, Mickey Rooney, Judy Garland and Cary Grant.
Joan Fontaine won her best actress Academy Award in 1941 for Alfred Hitchcock's "Suspicion" and was nominated twice more. She feuded for much of her career with sister Olivia de Havilland.
O'Toole died Saturday in London. "Ireland, and the world, has lost one of the giants of film and theatre," said the president of Ireland in a statement.
The Los Angeles Film Critics Association could not decide between "Gravity" and "Her" for best film of the year, but they gave the director award to Alfonso Cuaron for "Gravity."
Universal says the film production in Georgia is shutting down indefinitely. The coroner also gives some details on the deaths of Walker and Roger Rodas.
Jean Smart portrays Finke as a secret blogger whose true identity is unknown to her family. Good line: "Mom, you're on the Internet."
The film and TV actress takes to the New York Times Modern Love column to explain that she is involved with a woman and did not relish breaking the news to her son.
During a half-hour stop this evening at the Beverly Hilton before heading up the canyon to Magic Johnson's home, President Obama met with the family of Gerardo Hernandez, the TSA officer who was killed during this month's shooting at LAX. The President also met with two TSA officers who were wounded.
The LA Press Club handed out the prizes it calls the National Entertainment Journalism Awards last night. Here are the winners.
Patrick Goldstein, the longtime Hollywood watcher for the LA Times and others, has a good feature piece in Los Angeles Magazine on the current state of the four main movie biz trades. One of the best parts is the disclosure of his professional entanglements with the players.
"Moments like these — emotional, contemplative, complicated — are why we watch the Academy Awards, or used to," writes Mark Harris about Saturday night's Governors Awards. "It's certainly not to see a 10th-anniversary tribute to Chicago or to watch Mark Wahlberg banter awkwardly with a teddy bear."
Key staffers hired by Finke will carry on Deadline.com. Finke calls it "a great day" and says she is free to start a new career at a new website.
Nikki Finke is "miscast as the victim in this drama," Deadline's senior actual adult, Hollywood trades veteran Michael Fleming, writes in a post on what used to be her site. He refutes several of her core claims and says "Nikki" has turned a personal feud with buyer Jay Penske into "a public spectacle."
I guess this is what happens when you sell your website to a guy with money, then challenge him openly.
On her Twitter feed, Nikki Finke has been posting in the past hour on what sounds like the beginning of a final break from Jay Penske, the investor who bought her Deadline.com some years back.
Jeffrey Fleishman is coming home to a new beat in Calendar as a senior reporter covering film, TV and the arts.
The five-acre estate on Moorpark Street where Bob and Dolores Hope first moved in 1939 is officially on the market. It's the last big intact Valleywood estate. With pictures.
Cruise was the first to arrive when the Museum of Tolerance invited two dozen Hollywood VIPs to preview the upcoming Anne Frank exhibit.
Democrats who were disappointed they didn't get to see President Obama in Hancock Park last week will get the chance to open the checkbook for First Lady Michelle Obama.
Dolby revolutionized the recording industry with his noise-reduction system in the 1960s and transformed the way we hear movies starting in the 1970s.
Sarah Silverman met Duck at a Van Nuys no-kill shelter 14 years ago. They became best friends.
"One of the most noble things Jay Penske could ever do would be to give me back Deadline," Nikki Finke says in an interview with the WSJ's Ben Fritz. Plus: Finke notes still no correction by Sharon Waxman.
The president was to speak at the AFL-CIO national convention here and appear at yet another Hollywood fundraiser. Discussions over Syria take precedence, apparently.
Music Man Murray is the record collector who has a huge collection of vinyl kept in a building on Exposition Boulevard near La Brea. He became an actor at age 80.
In a piece for the travel section of the Telegraph, actor Hugh Laurie goes against the grain of anti-LA sentiment among his fellow Brits. "I love the hippyness – better still, the collision between hip and yup – all set against the noirish, Philip Marlowe memories of my moviegoing youth."
Two of the busiest Los Angeles communities on Facebook, Alison Martino's Vintage Los Angeles and Tommy Gelinas' San Fernando Valley Relics, are joining forces to collect and preserve the old sign from the facade of the former Tiffany Theater on Sunset Strip. They invite supporters to come out Monday and help take it down.
The master of the crime novel and the writer of many screenplays and books that were turned into movies died at home in Michigan after suffering a stroke. "A modern master of American genre writing," says the New York Times.
Van Dyke was driving east on the Ventura Freeway in Calabasas today when his Jaguar started smoking. The 87-year-old pulled over and needed some help getting out before the car burst into flames. He and his wife followed with tweets.
The LA Times did run an obituary right away on the passing of Jean Renoir in 1979. Then a couple of appreciations. Then Welles weighed in, says a copy editor who checked.
Steve Wasserman, the former Los Angeles Times books editor, has some fun remembering his friend Orson Welles in a piece for the LA Review of Books. He tells how the Times in 1979 was about to drop the ball on the death in Beverly Hills of director Jean Renoir when Wasserman, then a deputy editor of the LAT's Sunday Opinion section, decided to somehow get in touch with Welles.
The movie's funny, she's great and she lands some uncomfortable points about the male domination of movie trailer voice work. The ghost of Don LaFontaine looms over everything, even a party in Reseda.
The Chinese Theatre, where "The Wizard of Oz" premiered in August 1939, will dim the lights tonight at 9 p.m. Two Munchkins are believed to survive.
When President Obama dropped off the news radar last night in the Valley, he didn't just go to bed and watch Showtime or Evelyn Taft. (Oh wait, they are not on most TVs in Los Angeles this week.)
Michael Ansara had one of those Hollywood careers that lasted a long time and is fun to examine. Because he was of Lebanese heritage (born in Syria but raised in the U.S.), he went from the drama department at Los Angeles City College into a succession of "ethnic" roles.
Brennan, who grew up in Los Angeles, won an Obie Award for "Little Mary Sunshine" [title fixed] and was memorable in "The Last Picture Show." But it's her role as Capt. Doreen Lewis in "Private Benjamin" that many will remember most.
The veteran Hollywood marketing executive is the academy's first black president and the third woman to hold the post, after Bette Davis and Fay Kanin.
For the first time in 83 years, one of Los Angeles' "rarest naming rights assets" is available. All media references to the Theatre will carry your brand name, the pitch promises investors.
Art Ginsburg was the proprietor of Art's Deli in Studio City, which has been a politics, community and Valleywood hangout for decades. The deli will be closed Friday.
Bullwinkle held Rocky the flying squirrel in his hand outside the former home of Jay Ward Productions — right across Sunset Boulevard from the Chateau Marmont — since 1961. The statue has been removed for repairs by DreamWorks.
Dennis Farina was a police officer and detective in Chicago for 18 years before he turned full-time to acting — playing mostly, but not solely, cops or gangsters.
A casting call for Navajo speakers who could voice the key parts brought out people like Marvin Yellowhair, 54, who calls himself a “born Darth Vader." The 34-year-old mom selected to play Princess Leia had never seen "Star Wars," but decided to channel her own mother's sarcasm in the part. Star Wars in Navajo debuts this week.
Sarah Guyard-Guillot, a mother of two who had spent more than 22 years as an acrobatic performer, became the first reported on-stage fatality in the 30-year history of Cirque du Soleil. She fell an estimated 50 feet during the final battle scene in Saturday night's Ka show at the MGM Grand. The show has gone dark until further notice.
"Dear Hollywood Wax Museum," says a story in Vice. "I recently visited your Los Angeles location and was exceptionally disappointed with what I saw...It was all of your waxworks. They look like something from the nightmares of a person who has been blind since birth and has no real concept of what human beings look like."
Richard Matheson wrote "I Am Legend," which was turned into films three times, and also wrote 16 episodes of the original "Twilight Zone" television series for Rod Serling. He was the screenwriter as well for "Duel," Steven Spielberg's 1971 TV movie debut.
From 2004. "He is, as Tony Soprano might put it, a made man in the actor's studio," James Lipton said in his introduction.
The star of HBO's "The Sopranos" has died in Italy of a heart attack or a stroke.
Hofmeister is the latest former entertainment editor and reporter at the Los Angeles Times to try her hand at crisis PR with Sitrick And Company. She was at the LAT for 17 years, first as a business reporter covering media and Hollywood. She later became editor of the Business section, then the assistant managing editor overseeing coverage of entertainment.
Nikki Finke certainly doesn't sound fired. Today she announced the hiring of new television columnist Lisa De Moraes, who spent about 15 years covering TV at the Washington Post.
Lewis was an actor who played gangster “Toots” Bass in the Humphrey Bogart classic "Key Largo," then went on to open a number of restaurants that became Hollywood hangouts. Lewis and his wife, Marilyn, opened the first Hamburger Hamlet on Sunset Strip in 1950.
For their $299, guests get valet parking, breakfast sequestered away from the crowds in a luxury lounge, special access to the studio back lot, unlimited line-skipping, a tour guide and lunch. Plus lovely free gifts.
David Carr emailed Nikki Finke, took 15 minutes of verbal abuse, then tried to get to the truth of her future with Deadline. Last week's story in The Wrap, says Carr, "did not turn out to be true. [Sharon] Waxman, perhaps driven by wish fulfillment, wrote beyond the facts at hand." Waxman disagrees.
Esther Williams, the swimming star of MGM's Technicolor musicals in the 1940s and 50s, died Thursday morning at home in Beverly Hills at age 91. "Esther’s movies were sheer escapism and didn’t pretend to be anything more," says Maltin
The filmmakers "make spectacular use of Russian’s invasive paparazzi-style media freedoms on behalf of their movie, and create of a girl group that might not be the best band in the world, but is certainly the bravest." Trailer inside.
Finke posts a response in which she neither confirms nor denies that she has been "fired" from her own Deadline Hollywood by owner Jay Penske, as Sharon Waxman reported Sunday at The Wrap. "I am not going to discuss my Deadline Hollywood contract or my relationship with my boss Jay Penske," says Finke. "Why? Because I don’t have to."
The Wrap reports that Jay Penske has fired Finke. Penske's flack says it's not true. But the truth is less black and white...there is a contract negotiation involved...and Finke has reportedly been telling people she is looking to get out.
A long piece called Access Hollywood in the current Mother Jones examines Jeffrey Katzenberg as the latest deep-pockets kingmaker in American politics. The story starts with Katzenberg being wooed by Paul Begala and three other Democratic operatives in a private dining room in Beverly Hills. He goes on to give or raise $30 million for President Obama's reelection.
Hader is the next "Saturday Night Live" cast member to leave. He wants to do movies and TV in Los Angeles. We'll say this — he knows his way around the city (video.)
The actress and director chose the preventive procedures after learning that she carries a defective gene, BRCA1, and that her doctors estimated an 87 percent risk of breast cancer and a 50 percent risk of ovarian cancer. The procedures began in February and were completed with breast reconstruction in April.
In an era before CGI, Harryhausen used clay monsters and mythical creatures to bring life to live-action adventure films like 'Clash of the Titans,' 'Valley of the Gwangi' and 'Jason and the Argonauts. He was one of the sci-fi club members who patronized Clifton's with Ray Bradbury in the 1930s.
Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore, as Rob and Laura Petrie, in front of a studio audience during filming of "The Dick Van Dyke Show" in 1963. Jerry Paris can be seen directing the episode.
Stacey Farish, publisher of The Wrap since November of 2011, has jumped to Deadline's print magazine, Awardsline. She also becomes vice president of PMC Entertainment. Score one for Nikki Finke.
In last week's New Yorker, screenwriter Alan Zweibel graciously described the awful feeling of having Roger Ebert say of a movie he wrote, "North," that "I hated this movie. Hated hated hated hated hated this movie. Hated it." He also describes what occurred when they ran into each other years later in a Chicago men's room.
Jonathan Winters had one of those long, varied entertainment industry careers after working New York comedy clubs and moving to early television in the 1950s. "One of the great comedians of the 20th century," the LA Times says.
America's 1950s darling was discovered by Walt Disney in a dance recital at the Starlight Bowl in Burbank. After the original "Mickey Mouse Club" on ABC, she became popular again as a teen idol and in the mid-1960s "Beach" movies with Frankie Avalon. Diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, she long ago lost the ability to walk or talk. Last year, Canada's CTV aired a superb report on Funicello and MS. Videos and links inside.
Executive editor Lisa Fung is the second former Los Angeles Times hand to leave the editing ranks of The Wrap in the past month. Also, Jeff Sneider of Variety re-joins The Wrap as a film reporter.
Next year's Oscar awards will be held on March 2, moving later in the year to avoid conflicts with the Winter Olympics from Russia. The show will then move back to February (Feb. 22 to be exact) for 2015.
Before he shifted his sights to Hollywood, early motion picture impresario Sid Grauman built his first movie palace on Broadway at 3rd Street, beside the Grand Central Market and across the street from the Bradbury Building. The former Grauman's is now the Million Dollar, and I wandered around inside recently. It's open for tours this Saturday , but that night's showing of "Blade Runner" on the big screen is sold out. Pics inside.
The last daily issue of Variety hits mailboxes Tuesday — be sure and grab a copy to save if you are into that. For the next generation Variety, the news today is that Scott Foundas joins the trade as chief film critic. He will stay in New York.
A slab of concrete that is billed as bearing the signature of old-timey movie star Cary Grant from the wall of the legendary 1940s Hollywood nightspot is up for sale on eBay. Bidding starts at $5,000 — so it better be real.
Last night's Zócalo Public Square panel took up the question of what celebrity-driven news and websites like TMZ are doing to news reporting. And oddly enough there was a top producer from TMZ on the panel.
The Deadline.com team broke the news last night that parent company PMC is moving Variety out of its Miracle Mile office tower, and the Deadliners out of wherever they sit, and throwing them together in a building on Santa Monica Boulevard beside the 405 freeway. Nikki Finke and the Variety staffers she regularly insults together?
The push for "On the Road" is ramping up with nationwide release in theaters and video on demand set for March 22. In this clip, Kristen Stewart takes a break from making out with Garrett Hedlund to listen to him whisper at her.
When the writer Nora Ephron died last June of acute myeloid leukemia, a disease she had been fighting for years, many in the media and literary worlds were surprised. She had not made her illness a big part of her public life.
Fifteen months ago, the new deputy managing editor of The Wrap dismissed the site as "a small blog" filled with "opinion, agenda and fantasy" and "hardly a beacon of journalistic excellence." Editor Sharon Waxman was similarly dissed. All is forgiven, apparently.
Tina Fey cuts Seth MacFarlane some major slack for disappointing many viewers of Sunday's Oscars show, telling Anne Thompson of IndieWire that "It's the hardest job there is. It's a tough room. Seth did great."
Nikki Finke's post this morning at Deadline on the changes at Variety almost dripped ice water, especially when she flat-out accused the boss she shares with Variety, Jay Penske, of lying to her. Never mind: sometime during the day, the phrase "Penske lied to me" disappeared.
Nice farewell note to the Los Angeles Times newsroom from Claudia Eller, the entertainment news editor and veteran of the Hollywood scoop wars who was announced today as one of three new co-editors who will run Variety. She opens with praise for her current editor, John Corrigan, and confirms the Times counter-offered.
The other shoe fell today in the evolution of Hollywood trade Variety under new owner Jay Penske. One of the new co-editors is Claudia Eller, a 20-year veteran of movie coverage at the LA Times. Nikki Finke says Penske lied to her.
Most (but by no means all) of the reviews for last night's Oscars show and host Seth MacFarlane have not been favorable. But the early ratings for the TV show are up about four percent over last year's show hosted Billy Crystal — and much younger. And that's entirely logical, says Richard Rushfield at BuzzFeed.
The film academy voted the best picture Oscar to "Argo" and by extension to director Ben Affleck, who gave the final speech of the night and was emotional about the win. Jennifer Lawrence won the best actress Oscar for "Silver Linings Playbook," and at 22 is now a bona fide Hollywood star, if she wasn't before. Daniel Day-Lewis won his third best acting Oscar, for "Lincoln" — no actor has ever won more Oscars in the lead actor category. Complete list inside.
The media who parachute into Hollywood for the Oscars don't always get that, for the locals, the Academy Awards are something of a community event. It's not just that traffic sucks in Hollywood and officials shut down the Hollywood and Highland subway station. The week of the Oscars provides work, diversion and more.
Of "Fight Club," Kimmel writes for the Daily Beast that "I’m sure this is a great movie, but it seems like a lot of the people who really, really love it are dickheads." Same for the Terminator franchise.
Spielberg, Katzenberg and Geffen lead the way with $150,000. Boxer will headline fundraiser at Haim Saban's Feb. 20. Plus: Will Ferrell video for Garcetti and more campaign notes.
"Argo" won the top prize for best film and Ben Affleck was named best director at Sunday's British Academy Film Awards. It's on to the Oscars now. Click inside for full list of winners.
In the race for mayor of Los Angeles, Councilman Eric Garcetti doesn't have a record of accomplishment that stands out among the others, or better connections, or more popular positions, or much more money. One advantage, though, with some voters is his image as a blogger, bike rider, composer, chef and performer — like at last night's appearance alongside Moby.
The political adviser for Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and other Hollywood figures signed a letter to industry activists asking for contributions of $15,000 to an independent expenditure committee that plans to air commercials pushing Wendy Greuel for mayor.
Here's the trailer for Danny Tedesco's 2008 documentary on the famed Hollywood session musicians dubbed The Wrecking Crew, screening on Saturday night at the Saban Theatre followed by a Q-A with musicians from the era.
Both Greuel and Garcetti have bases in Hollywood. The race is pitting mogul against mogul, agent against agent, says the Hollywood Reporter.
Salma Hayek endorses Eric Garcetti for mayor: "He has the heart of a hero. He's romantic..." She also cites that he plays piano, gardens, cooks and speaks Spanish and French as well as English. Watch the video.
The LA Times hires Daniel Miller from the Hollywood Reporter, per today's memo to the staff from the assistant managing editor for entertainment coverage.
Tonight at the Screen Actors Guild awards, "Argo" delivered another warning that, yes, it well could take the best picture Oscar next month. Lawrence bested Jessica Chastain and Naomi Watts.
Vose Street in North Hollywood is a workaday LA industrial street under the final approach path for jets landing at Bob Hope Airport. Valleywood shops and services, the Doc Johnson factory for rubber sex toys, and a mysterious driveway marked Faux Library.
Billy and Audrey Wilder lived for decades in the Wilshire Terrace co-op building in the Platinum Mile stretch of Wilshire Boulevard between Westwood and Beverly Hills. The apartment is on the market for $1.049 million, with monthly homeowner dues of $2,812, says Curbed LA.
The Los Angeles bureau of BuzzFeed continues to ramp up. Today Richard Rushfield et al are announcing the hire of Adam Vary as senior film reporter. He comes from the...
In the new issue of VQR, the Virginia Quarterly Review, Los Angeles journalist Adam Baer (with photographer Elizabeth Daniels) explores his own and Hollywood's draw to LA architecture, especially the modern works of Lautner.
Hollywood studios are playing ball to ensure access to the billions of dollars that await films that become hits in the world's most populous country. A story in the New York Times says the cooperation includes letting China's censors vet scripts, visit sets here in the U.S. and give suggestions on other creative decisions.
The LA Coroner's office relooked at the death of Natalie Wood last year and changed the cause of her 1981 death in the water off Catalina Island from accidental to undetermined. That's still where it stands, meaning that sheriff's homicide detectives carry the case as open.
Well, yes. Foster acknowledges "one of the deepest loves of my life, my heroic co-parent, my ex-partner in love but righteous soul sister in life...Cydney Bernard," and says this isn't really coming out because "I already did my coming out about a thousand years ago." The media are unclear how to play it.
Director Peter Bogdanovich wrote a short tribute for Saturday's memorial for the actor Harry Carey, Jr., who had been the last surviving member of director John Ford's company of western actors. "A solid professional, but also a brilliantly deadpan, hilarious raconteur of the days of the giants in pictures."
I suspect Angelenos will still call it Grauman's Chinese. TCL Chinese Theatre just doesn't have that certain something.
Lincoln" received the most Oscar nominations this morning with 12, and "Beasts of the Southern Wild" did surprisingly well. Get full list inside.
Sheen didn't say whether his comments about Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa partying with him in Baja for two hours and being able to "drink with the best of 'em" were untrue — but late this afternoon Sheen did apologize "if any of my words have been misconstrued.”
Actor Charlie Sheen tells TMZ that his photograph with an arm around Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa was taken in Sheen's suite at the new Hotel El Ganzo near Cabo San Lucas. He also says that this was not just a brief photo encounter as Villaraigosa suggested under questioning Sunday by NBC 4's Conan Nolan on "News Conference."
Last night I asked if a color candid photograph of the Beatles chatting with fans outdoors could have been from the private party held in August 1964 in the Beverly Hills backyard of Alan Livingston, then the president of Capitol Records. By this morning, LA Observed readers had provided the answer.
The fast-growing social web site BuzzFeed today launched an entertainment section. "Most exciting announcement of my career," LA bureau chief Richard Rushfield says on Facebook.
The fake stories and byline on the latest front page wrap around the Sunday LA Times are actually real, just old. 'Gangster Squad' grew out of a Times series, and the screenwriter is a former LAPD homicide detective.
What is it about non-Angelenos becoming so obsessed with old filming locations that they spend years tracking down obscure shots and facts — then write books about their discoveries that become chronicles of LA history? When you grow up in Los Angeles, you get used to seeing familiar sights in the background of movies and TV shows. You just stop thinking about it.
The son of cowboy star Harry Carey was born on his father's ranch near Saugus and went on to ride horses in the westerns directed by pal John Ford and act in many other films and TV shows. Through Ford, Carey also was part of an exclusive San Fernando Valley club of Hollywood men that's now mostly forgotten.
Actor Jack Klugman began on television in 1950 and became known as a character actor ( in "Twilight Zone" and many other series) until he broke through as the co-star of "The Odd Couple" from 1970-75 and the star of "Quincy M.E." from 1976-83. One of his most enduring roles, though, was as Juror #5 in the jury room in the Oscar-nominated 1957 film "Twelve Angry Men."
The Daily News headline writer had a brain freeze (happens to all of us) and wrote that soccer player Brandy Chastain stars in "Zero Dark Thirty," not SAG and Golden Globe-nominated actor Jessica Chastain. "So after Bin Laden is killed she takes off her shirt?," Bob Timmermann quips.
After winning Oscars for "The Hurt Locker," director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal became "entertainment’s hottest couple who wouldn’t say they were a couple since Jay-Z and Beyoncé." Now it's complicated, says BuzzFeed.
She will perform "Llorando," from the David Lynch film "Mulholland Drive," perhaps one last time on Sunday in Downtown LA. The brain surgery is expected to damage her voice.
"The Master" is the runner-up, and the Los Angeles Film Critics Association also taps the 'Master' director and actors.
There's wasn't much to buy or even see, but that didn't stop the crowds from converging Saturday at the corner estate where Bob and Dolores Hope lived from 1939 on. Photos inside include the Hopes' nativity scene that is displayed this Christmas for the final time.
The Trader Joe's on Olympic Boulevard in West Los Angeles was awash Tuesday in billboards promoting "The Guilt Trip." And not a wrinkle in sight.
The 1.3-acre estate on Moorpark Street, built for Bob and Dolores Hope in 1939, has never changed hands. We're calling it the most celebrity-infused property left in the San Fernando Valley.
"Rust and Bone” is rated R: Sex, fighting, killer whales and parental neglect.
The Dallas Morning News says that the longtime actor died this afternoon of cancer complications in a Dallas hospital. He was reportedly in town to film episodes of the TNT remake of the hit TV show "Dallas," in which Hagman played star J.R. Ewing.
The story fingers the late THR owner Billy Wilkerson, starting in 1946, as the force behind the industry's high-level collusion to exclude leftists real and suspected from working. The package includes an apology from a son of Wilkerson.
The producers call it a rare, "unflinching portrait." I suspect there's some flinching. Video: Geffen in love with Cher in 1973.
The Hollywood Reporter won six first-place awards at tonight's National Entertainment Journalism Awards put on at the Biltmore by the Los Angeles Press Club. Kim Masters of THR (and KCRW's "The Business") won entertainment journalist of the year, and THR also won for best entertainment publication and best website.
The first round of reductions at Variety under new owner Jay Penske was announced in a 1:40 p.m., unbylined post at sister site Deadline.com. A "Dear Team" memo from Jay Penske says "without a doubt, this is a challenging day." No editors or reporters got the axe.
Deadline.com editor Mike Fleming returns to the site two weeks after his dad was injured at home during the storm in New York. Fleming says he's grateful for the support of his colleagues at the website.
The venerable Magic Castle private club above Franklin Avenue in Hollywood is the basis of a feature film being developed by producer Ted Field and his company, Radar Pictures.
Could the Press Club's plan to honor Janice Min for revamping the Hollywood Reporter be a factor? Finke says the club "seems more interested in collecting entry fees and selling gala tables...than in rewarding high standards of journalism or conducting a competition with integrity."
KPCC's website has posted a nice gallery of photos from the maintenance work on the iconic Hollywood sign. Nothing like a new coat of paint to freshen up a place.
A new Los Angeles bureau, meaning mostly Hollywood apparently, will be run by Richard Rushfield and include chief correspondent Kate Aurthur. Both are veterans of Hollywood coverage and of the LA Times, among other places.
"Please be advised that PMC employees, including but not limited to Nikki Finke, Mike Fleming, Pete Hammond and Nellie Andreeva, are under long term employment contracts," says the lawyer letter.
When the Los Angeles Press Club gives its first Visionary Award to Jane Fonda in November, she will be introduced by Robert Redford. The pair starred together in "The Chase," "Barefoot in the Park" and "The Electric Horseman."
More on sale of Variety, Sunday magazine next for Register, books from Roman Polanski's sex victim way back then and on LA's hardcore music scene, some media job notes and Dean Singleton speaks. Plus more.
In reporting that his employer has now acquired his former journalism home at Variety, Deadline film editor Michael Fleming took a moment for some personal words. Plus: The Wrap claims Finke 'having a major tantrum.'
In the wake of Hero Complex blogger Geoff Boucher's departure from the paper, the LA Times has re-hired Chris Lee and moved Gina McIntyre over to be the lead writer and editor on the Hero Complex blog.
Catherine Davis, the Los Feliz woman bludgeoned to death last week by an emotionally disturbed actor, was the mother of the Los Angeles author-journalist Margaret Leslie Davis, and had a large family of friends in Hollywood who had stayed at her "writers villa" through the years.
Arnold Schwarzenegger, who recently paid $20 million for a think tank at USC, gets a segment on "60 Minutes" tonight to give just enough mea culpa on the whole cheated-on-Maria thing to sound like it was a blip. But at the Daily Beast, Ann Louise Bardach says the chronology given to CBS' Lesley Stahl and in Arnold's new memoir is anything but true
Amid talk that the owner of Deadline.com is on the verge of buying Variety, Nikki Finke announced on Deadline.com that her staff will be too busy next week on some unstated business to post breaking news nuggets.
"Harper" starring Paul Newman aired tonight on Turner Classic Movies. Here's a screen grab circa-1966 of the Mulholland Drive bridge in Sepulveda Pass, spanning what was then called by everybody the San Diego Freeway.
In 2006, an LA Times and Paramount promotion for "Mission: Impossible III" went awry. They settled with the federal government for $75,000.
Boucher, who left the Los Angeles Times earlier this month after clashing with his editor, posted the memo from Entertainment Weekly managing editor Jess Cagle on Facebook.
Character actor Lance LeGault worked in Hollywood for 50 years. You know his face and his deep voice, as in the following video.
Following a blow-up with editors last month, high-level discussions and a Florida vacation could not keep the Calendar writer and Hero Complex blogger around. His exit has staffers and outside observers both talking about editor Davan Maharaj's choice of assistant managing editor over arts and entertainment.
The producer of the “Matrix,” “Lethal Weapon” and “Sherlock Holmes” series of films was officially welcomed to Venice by press release quoting Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Councilman Bil Rosendahl. Silver is moving his production company, Silver Pictures, into the former post office on Windward Circle built in 1939 during the Works Progress Administration.
Seth Rosenfeld's book "Subversives: The F.B.I.’s War on Student Radicals, and Reagan’s Rise to Power” looks at how Ronald Reagan, both as a liberal turned anti-Communist crusader in Hollywood then as candidate and governor, helped the FBI and made use of his relationship with FBI director J. Edgar Hoover to get information not available to others. Some of that assistance involved his children, daughter Maureen and son Michael.
Gerber, 41, had left a suicide note. His crashed car was found this morning off Angeles Crest Highway.
Patrick Goldstein doesn't explain the end of his film column, but he seems to be defending how he went about it. The piece begins "When I began writing this column...
AP got a look today at the Los Angeles County coroner's revised death certificate, which now says that actress Natalie Wood died in the waters off Catalina Island in 1981 due to "drowning and other undetermined factors." The certificate used to attribute the cause of death to "accidental drowning."
Robert Redford will guest on tonight's "Which Way, L.A.?" at 7 p.m. on KCRW to chat with Warren Olney about the Sundance Sunset Cinema.
Julie Cline, the Senior Nonfiction Editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books, writes at the review today about her father's LA life and travels on the edges of the Hollywood movie machine. Her father lives on a boat in San Pedro, "a retired builder, general contractor, and salesman of everything from used cars to room additions." He's not really an actor, but he showed up in a film shot last year.
Comic Phyllis Diller lived a good long time and had a long career. Many female comedians say she paved the way. She died this morning at her Los Angeles home, her manager Milt Suchin confirmed. Watch her with Groucho Marx on "You Bet Your Life," inside.
The appeal of diving into a character has always been the back story: everything that my character has been through up to the point when the audience first encounters her, says the actress-novelist.
A man observed jumping from the high bridge that connects San Pedro to Terminal Island was dentified as Tony Scott, 68, the British film director known for such films as "Top Gun," "Days of Thunder," "Beverly Hills Cop II" and "The Taking of Pelham 123." A suicide note was found. He is the brother of Ridley Scott.
When the Cinerama Dome opened on Sunset Boulevard in 1963, it was the first new movie house built in Hollywood in three decades. Now part of Arclight Hollywood, the dome in late September will begin a week of classic Cinerama films, including the comedy that opened the place: "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World." Also on the bill are "How the West Was Won," "2001: A Space Odyssey" and assorted shorts.
The actress has tweeted that she won't lose any fingers, despite a breathless report by TMZ from expert bystanders.
The anonymous Twitter spoof account that poses as Deadline.com's Nikki Finke currently rings up suspended if you try to visit. And for whatever reason, the real Finke account is also suspended as of now.
Busch, the former Los Angeles Times reporter who was threatened over a story by Hollywood private eye Anthony Pellicano and his cronies, appeared frail and frightened-looking in court today, says The Wrap.
Judith Crist was the critic for many years on the "Today" show and in print at TV Guide and elsewhere. She had two long stints at TV Guide &mdash the first before they fired her in favor of computerized summaries of films, the second after a deluge of reader complaints forced the editors to ask her back.
Hamlisch collapsed and died in Los Angeles on Monday. He has won three Oscars, four Grammys, four Emmys a Tony and a Pulitzer Prize. He had been scheduled to return in September as conductor of the Pasadena Symphony and Pops.
Portman and Benjamin Millepied managed to keep it secret until after the fact, so good on them.
Rather than be just another Hollywood type who complains about the unprofessionalism and blackmail of the Deadline founder, the ex-agent and producer dares Finke to prove her clout.
These will be stationed in Business, and include yet another body devoted to coverage of entertainment industry awards and another covering TV, plus the return of a slot based in New York.
Ontiveros, a versatile actress from El Paso who came to Hollywood and once estimated she had a played a maid 150 times on stage or screen, died Thursday night of cancer in Whittier. She's being remembered as a Mexican American symbol and as an activist, as well as for her acting. "It is with deep sadness yet much pride that we reflect upon a woman whose immense contributions opened the door for Latinos and touched so many through her artistic talent," Mayor Villaraigosa said in a statement.
Between them, Everett and Hemsley appeared on screen in many hours of episodic television. And for many, Everett played it just right during the scene of Betty's audition in David Lynch's "Mulholland Drive."
Frank Pierson served as president of both the Writers Guild, West, and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts And Sciences. He rose in Hollywood as a screenwriter and director. He got his start on the TV series' "Have Gun, Will Travel," "Naked City" and "Route 66." He won the original screenplay Oscar in 1976 for "Dog Day Afternoon."
Video of Cruise talking the Scientology talk is included in a Daily Beast story by a defector from the Church of Scientology's elite and odd Sea Org unit. The story compares the many similarities between church founder L. Ron Hubbard and the lead character in the upcoming film "The Master."
NBCUniversal has killed a controversial proposal to build 3,000 homes on its property at Universal City. Instead the expansion will feature a new hotel and more room for the movie and TV studios and the theme park.
Asher directed 100 episodes of "I Love Lucy," brought the Gidget character to television, directed the popular series of 1960s beach movies starring Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello, and produced the "Bewitched" TV series that starred his then-wife, Elizabeth Montgomery.
Willis Edwards, part of the Robert F. Kennedy for president campaign in Los Angeles in 1968 and later a key member of the Tom Bradley adminsitration at City Hall, died today of cancer. He was the longtime president of the Beverly Hills/Hollywood Branch of the NAACP.
Richard D. Zanuck, the son of 20th Century Fox legend Daryl F. Zanuck who grew up to produce "Jaws" and other major Hollywood films, died of a heart attack Friday in Los Angeles. He was 77.
The Jewish Journal, noting that Woody Allen has made movies in London, Paris and now Rome because he gets financial help from those places, is organizing a campaign to collect enough money to convince Allen to shoot in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem.
How's this for an acting career? Raise a glass to Ernest Borgnine, who died about 1:30 this afternoon at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.
Griffith died Tuesday morning back home in Manteo, North Carolina. He received a Tony acting nomination for "No Time for Sergeants" on Broadway in 1955, before going into movies and on TV with "The Andy Griffith Show" in 1960.
Kirk Honeycutt won't stop reviewing films just because he was laid off in November as chief film critic at the Hollywood Reporter. In addition to teaching a graduate course at Chapman University, he also is posting reviews at Honeycutt's Hollywood.
Ephron grew up in Beverly Hills, made a name for herself as a journalist in New York, got into screenwriting via collaboration with then-husband Carl Bernstein on a version of "All the President's Men," and grew into what People magazine calls today "one of the most powerful figures in Hollywood as the creative force behind such blockbusters as 'You've Got Mail,' 'Sleepless in Seattle' and 'When Harry Met Sally.'"
Jon Thurber, who left the Los Angeles Times recently after 40 years or so in the newsroom, is joining The Wrap as a senior editor. He will be reunited there with Lisa Fung, the executive editor. They were colleagues in the Calendar section at the Times for some years.
Business editor John Corrigan gets the AME slot for arts and entertainment, while Ochoa — the former LA Weekly editor who is married to Jonathan Gold — becomes Arts and Entertainment Editor reporting to Corrigan. TV critic Mary McNamara also gets a new title.
It was ten years ago today that Los Angeles Times reporter Anita Busch found a dead fish on her car. There was a rose in the fish's mouth and a note that said: "Stop." She took it as a warning about her reporting — and she was right. Her life now is all about exposing corruption, she tells the Hollywood Reporter.
Andrew Sarris, the former film critic for the Village Voice and the New York Observer who died Wednesday morning, taught American moviegoers to obsess about directors.
Some of the young Hollywood hotties who met privately with President Obama on his last visit to Beverly Hills are combining on a June 29 fundraiser for the president's campaign, the Hollywood Reporter says. Jared Leto chairs, but the participants include the not-so-young such as David Fincher and Peter Frampton. Details and names inside.
Stephanie Zacharek will be laid off as chief critic at Movieline on July 13. The news, reported earlier by Matt Singer at IndieWire, has set off fresh concern about the future viability of film criticism as an actual career, or even as a job.
So far in this Emmy campaign season, writes Variety's Jon Weisman, "it would be hard to top this Padma Lakshmi/Bravo page for most distinctive 'For Your Consideration' ad." See her ad bigger
Here's what happens at the Malibu party at Streisand's home to raise money for the new Barbra Streisand Women's Heart Center at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. Martin Short emcees. Lisa Ling introduces Bill Clinton. Streisand sings, and so on.
Before leaving Beverly Hills this morning, President Barack Obama met privately at his hotel "with two dozen of Hollywood’s hottest young stars, urging them to involve themselves in his re-election campaign." Plus a pool report from View Park.
President Obama began the fundraising day on Wednesday by flying to San Francisco (with Giants legend Willie Mays on board Air Force One and at his side) then on down to Los Angeles. He appeared tonight at the LGBT Leadership Council gala at the Beverly Wilshire, where Ellen DeGeneres and "Glee" star Darren Criss provided the entertainment, then at a more private dinner a little ways away in Beverly Hills hosted by "Glee" creator Ryan Murphy and his fiance David Miller.
Take a look backstage, in Sid Grauman's private VIP box and around the gorgeous auditorium of Hollywood's (and probably the world's) best-known movie palace. Public tours by the Los Angeles Historic Theatre Foundation continue on Sunday morning.
Claudia Laffranchi was part of the colony of overseas journalists who cover Hollywood for global media outlets and participate in related events. She was, for instance, the host and master of ceremonies of the Locarno Film Festival’s screenings. Laffranchi was found dead Tuesday in her Los Angeles-area apartment.
If I were a betting man, or a Valley commuter hoping to avoid tonight's presidential motorcade traffic snarl, I would avoid the route between Bob Hope Airport in Burbank and Studio City as the clock approaches 7 p.m.
Sam Rubin at KTLA Channel 5 says the private memorial service for Dick Clark yesterday in Malibu was amazing. "I found the whole thing so very moving, so heartfelt, that I asked the family if I could talk about it after the fact on TV. I did so on KTLA this morning."
Councilman Eric Garcetti has given the people what they want before by posting to Facebook his inside-the-rope cellphone pics of celebrities receiving stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, in his district. Today he caught a good view of the cameras watching actress Scarlett Johansson watch them.
The Hollywood Reporter includes in its May 4 issue a 20-page special report on politics that "examines the complicated relationship between Hollywood and politics." It leads with a profile by contributing editor Tina Daunt of Obama fundraisers and power couple Ted Sarandos, the chief of content for Netflix, and Nicole Avant, the president's former ambassador to The Bahamas. "Sarandos is the man everyone in Hollywood wants a meeting with," says the trade. Included is what THR is calling "a guide to 20 of the biggest political players in Hollywood, including George Clooney, J.J. Abrams, Haim Saban and Ron Meyer."
Sharon Waxman of The Wrap has now read the script that Joe Eszterhas turned in for the Mel Gibson production of a film about the Jewish hero Judah Maccabee. It's very bloody, but true to the story.
The Hollywood publicist choked on a meat sample at the Gelson's in Century City on March 24 and died after two weeks in the hospital, The Wrap reports.
Today's the day that television station KCET has to be out of its historic former movie studio on Sunset Boulevard. Everyone has been told to vacate by 3 p.m., I'm told. The new home is in Burbank in a media building adjacent to NBC.
The basic news headline is that Warner Brothers has passed on the script that long-time screenwriter Joe Eszterhas delivered for Mel Gibson's attempt to make a movie based on Jewish...
Somebody at the KPFK studios on Cahuenga Boulevard downloaded via BitTorrent a copy of "A Beautiful Mind." NBC Universal complained to the internet provider, and you can read the email to the staff that resulted.
The site should be cleared by the end of today. Check out the photo.
Jeff Desom's time-lapse video uses only the actual footage from Alfred Hitchcock's classic "Rear Window," set to "Hungarian Dance No. 5" by Brahms.
Marc Wanamaker's collection of more than 70,000 photographs covering the history of movies and studios has found a home at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Richard Parks' documentary film about epic Los Angeles record collector Murray Gershenz, who's pushing 90, debuts on The Documentary Channel on April 21 and will also be on NPR's All Songs Considered website.
HBO is developing a drama series based on "The Madonnas Of Echo Park," the novel by Brando Skyhorse.
Republican candidate for president Mitt Romney has a $2,500-a-person fundraiser scheduled Tuesday night at the Century Plaza.
A reader emails to point out a few errors in the web slide show that goes with a photo essay by Lise Sarfati on women in Hollywood, in Sunday's New...
David Poland of Movie City News takes off from the news that Variety is for sale to put in a bit of jaded perspective the four media outlets he says function as the closest thing Hollywood has to trade publications.
Check out Veronique de Turenne's photographs from inside the gate at the Hollywood sign.
"I have every confidence that under new ownership, Variety will continue to thrive, innovate and provide fantastic insight into the sector," says Variety President Neil Stiles.
Jonathan Bernier can keep playing without paying royalties to the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce.
Sony Pictures Entertainment chairman and CEO Michael Lynton is getting oversight of the rest of Sony's U.S. entertainment units except for video games.
The Amazon-owned Internet Movie Database is secretive, annoying to the Hollywood people it tracks and the data can be wrong.
Plus: who from Los Angeles was invited to attend dine at the White House tonight with Britian's Prime Minister David Cameron.
"Casa de mi Padre," starring Gael-Garcia Bernal, Diego Luna, Genesis Rodriguez "and introducing Will Ferrell"
Tonight's fire at the corner of Santa Monica Boulevard and Orange Avenue wasn't just in another storefront. It's the former location of Radio Recorders, a legendary sound studio.
Carol Kaye played bass guitar on many hit songs of the 1960s and 70s. She came out of Long Beach, played in LA jazz clubs and broke into session work in Hollywood with an invitation to play on a Sam Cooke recording.
The plan, if the movie actually gets made, is to set it at the Canoga Park end of Sherman Way.
In advance of her hosting gig on "Saturday Night Live" this weekend, Los Angeles County probationer Lindsay Lohan will sit at the desk tonight with Jimmy Fallon.
Video: Jean Dujardin arrives at Charles de Gaulle with his best actor Oscar for "The Artist," em português.
Film, music and pop culture references to the San Fernando Valley never get old.
The mostly silent French film that was the only big 2011 movie to be filmed entirely in Los Angeles cleaned up tonight at the Oscars.
He reached his irreverent peak remarking that Brett Ratner, deposed as Oscars producer after offensive remarks about gays, might have been a better choice for the more-forgiving Grammys.
LA-based writer Adam Baer argues in a piece for The Atlantic that the film academy should follow the lead of the Grammys and begin to honor the music of movie soundtracks.
Stewart was honored last night with an award for career achievement in film at the Costume Designers Guild Awards. So we reprise her LA Observed video on "Fashioning Fashion" at LACMA.
President Obama is scheduled to land at LAX about 4 p.m. After that traffic could suck for awhile in the corridor from Brentwood to Beverly Hills.
Roy Brewer is a despised historical figure by many in Hollywood, but not by Ronald Reagan researcher John Meroney.
The Grammys handled the death of Whitney Houston by having host LL Cool J follow opening act Bruce Springsteen with some words of tribute and a prayer "for our fallen sister," and Jennifer Hudson sang "I Will Always Love You."
Fifteen or so years since Universal Music Group left for Santa Monica, the honchos at Universal City are taking down the signs on various streets and driveways that honor music legends.
One of the most-filmed locations in Los Angeles has been closed to filmmakers since May 2010.
The restored "Final Curtain" screened to an appreciative audience last month at Slamdance, where the two men got to talk about Wood.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi entertained Hollywood political players last night with her plans for regaining a Democratic majority in November. Plus: Obama's biggest Hollywood bundlers.
Yes, once again it's young and mostly white actresses, fronted by Rooney Mara, Mia Wasikowska. Jennifer Lawrence and Jessica Chastain.
Iris Schneider was with projectionist Tom Ruff for tonight's showing of Kubrick's "Paths of Glory."
The Obama Victory Fund is sending out an invitation to upcoming Obama reelection events offering local high rollers some options on how to get past their upset at the president's stance on SOPA and PIPA.
Armin Mueller-Stahl, the German actor who has settled in Pacific Palisades, recently returned to his birthplace in East Prussia to receive honorary citizenship. Oh, but it's so much more complicated than that.
The longtime Business Week correspondent in Hollywood is leaving Bloomberg BusinessWeek to be the Los Angeles bureau chief for Reuters.
The Southern California Slack Key Festival on Sunday at the Redondo Beach Performing Arts Center will feature some of the top Hawaiian musicians whose work made it into Alexander Payne's...
Clearly, top Hollywood executives feel burned that President Obama has stopped backing their very controversial pet measures to fight content piracy. But enough to drop their support? Two views from Hollywood websites.
Good on Cheryll Devall of KPCC for working up a radio piece on today's 70th anniversary of the day that Hollywood comic actress Carole Lombard died in a plane crash. Famously married to Clark Gable, Lombard was honored by FDR as the first American woman to die in the line of duty during World War II.
Check out some of the locations from "The Artist" that have played roles in silent films by Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd and others.
George Clooney and Viola Davis grabbed the best actor wins, Octavia Spencer and Christopher Plummer the supporting actor wins.
After taking another look at the 1981 drowning of actress Natalie Wood, sheriff's detectives see no reason to alter the original finding: accidental death.
The 13-1 preliminary vote today would remove to need to spend $4 million to $5 million on a ballot measure — by adopting the measure's provisions.
The Wrap just announced it has created the position of Executive Editor and filled it with Lisa Fung, most recently the online editor for arts and entertainment at the Los Angeles Times website.
Read Nikki Finke's note to Variety executives, including this line: "When is Variety going to stop stealing Deadline's scoops without any credit?"
Last week's post about Life magazine's newly available trove of unpublished on-set photos from the film shoot for "It's a Wonderful Life" brought a nice email pointer to a story by Michael Fessier.Previously on LA Observed:
Valley of 'It's a Wonderful Life'
When Encino became Bedford Falls
If Occupy LA members sneak a little civil disobedience into today's Rose Parade, they won't be the first to exploit Pasadena's big day. Sennett got there first.
Life magazine has posted online a gallery of unpublished photos from the Encino set of the 1946 holiday classic starring Jimmy Stewart.
Adding David Fincher to "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" story "has proved counterproductive," says the L.A. Times reviewer. A.O. Scott is more enthusiastic in the NYT.
The L.A. Film Critics Association is tweeting out the news from their annual vote.
Wow, just take a look at Harry Morgan's career.
This isn't a total dose of bad bookstore news, just a demi-dose for people in Valleywood.
In exchange for a special early viewing of David Fincher's "Girl With a Dragon Tattoo," David Denby and other members of the New York Film Critics Circle agreed to embargo any reviews.
Media and politics notes, plus a Hollywood obituary and more.
Nikki Finke's Hollywood news site has been slapped with Google's dreaded (and often overheated) "attack site" designation.
It seems people want to see the new Lars von Trier film with Kirsten Dunst.
Citywide "holiday filming restrictions" limit filming activity, street closures and lane closures between Nov. 21 and January 2.
Motivations behind political campaign donations by Hollywood figures are more complex than they might seem, Variety's Ted Johnson writes.
Rep. Howard Berman looks like the big winner on the dollar side.
Coming up on Nov. 17 from Live Talks Los Angeles: Darrell Hammond talks about his upcoming memoir, "God, If You’re Not Up There, I’m F*cked: Tales of Stand-Up, Saturday Night...
The Sunset 5 theaters at Sunset and Crescent Heights were once the cat's meow, but as newer theaters got bigger and better theirs got smaller and rattier — and with time the whole shopping complex became tattered.
On Wednesday night, the Geffen Playhouse run began for "Next Fall," handpicked for the schedule by producing director Gil Cates.
You knew you were in show business when you sat in Gil Cates' office, Stewart says in introducing the moment of Zen at the conclusion of last night's Daily Show.
Gilbert Cates, the stage, film and TV producer and director and the producing director of the Geffen Playhouse, has died at age 77.
Frank Buckley of Channel 5 says his idea for an international thriller called "Portofino" is being made by JC Chandor, the director of "Margin Call."
Patrick Kevin Day, the deputy editor of The Hollywood Reporter's website, is leaving after just two months to return to the Los Angeles Times as a senior web producer. A...
"Shame," the upcoming film with Michael Fassbender and Carey Mulligan, will be the 11th movie released with an NC-17 rating by a major studio or division.
First the American actress who is portraying Swedish book and film heroine Lisbeth Salander graces the cover of this month's American Vogue. Now H&M unveils a line of clothing based...
Before leaving the Beverly Wilshire this morning, President Obama had a meeting with "some of the entertainment industry's high-level executives, as well as talent representatives with access to the industry's top stars and musical acts," THR says.
Barbara Kent, a 1925 graduate of Hollywood High School, is being called the last living actress to have achieved stardom in silent films.
Plunging earnings and a stream of executive defections "have set tongues wagging."
Robert Redford romps on the roof and inside the Village movie theatre in Westwood in a 1965 clip shot by actor Roddy McDowall.
For a lot of us, the future (or potential fate) of Johnie's Coffee Shop was one of the first questions to come to mind after the news broke that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences would buy the former May Company across the street for a film museum.
Former president Bill Clinton was the final speaker at Friday evening's memorial service for Edie Wasserman at UCLA’s Royce Hall.
Mengers' death was announced by Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter, who posted this afternoon on his blog that she died last night "at her home, a short walk from the Beverly Hills Hotel, and surrounded by three of her close friends, Ali MacGraw, Joanna Poitier, and Boaty Boatwright."
Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton are around this weekend to celebrate the former president's 65th birthday and raise money for the William J. Clinton Foundation.
Pretty good month for Los Angeles in the print and web pages of the Atlantic, leading with Kate Bolick's cover story on what's happening to marriage now that men are on the decline.
President Obama will be the featured guest at a second Hancock Park-area fundraiser on Oct. 24, this one at the home of producer James Lassiter.
In a piece titled My Store Just Died, Jeffrey Miller writes at Zócalo Public Square about being manager of "the last great independent video rental store in the city of Los Angeles."
As of 1:43 p.m., Blackberries in L.A. are texting and beeping again. But it was tense there for awhile.
The landmarked United Artists Theater at the south end of Downtown's Broadway movie palace district has been sold to Greenfield Partners, a national hotel developer and real estate investment company.
On life and death, among other topics.
Steve Jobs died today in Palo Alto of complications from pancreatic cancer.
The historic landmark former May Company department store at Wilshire and Fairfax could become the major movie museum that L.A. lacks under a memo of understanding agreed to tonight between the boards of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
Q: Did you really take batting practice naked when you were with the Astros?
LA Observed readers can take their pick of events next week through Live Talks Los Angeles.
Appearing Wednesday on "Fresh Air" on to promote his new movie, "50-50," Joseph Gordon-Levitt interrupted host Terry Gross's introduction to ask "can i just have a gratuitous kiss-ass moment?"
Empire magazine puts Rooney Mara below Daniel Craig on the cover.
So far the timing of the president's moves across the Westside seems to be smooth and on schedule.
For some reason, because a Hollywood writer wrote it, the New Yorker labels the humor piece in the current magazine an "L.A. Postcard."
The boxed set to be released here will add two hours of additional footage not seen in the Swedish theatrical films made from the late Steig Larsson's best-selling novels.
Rapper and singer-songwriter B.o.B., Adam 12 and the Gay Men's Chorus of Los Angeles will provide the entertainment at House of Blues.
Paramount Pictures said today it will seek city approval for a 25-year makeover and expansion of the 56-acre studio lot on Melrose Avenue, the last of the big studios actually located in Hollywood.
Finke says she's gone until October, then blasts rival Sharon Waxman.
The widow of comedian Bob Hope died this morning.
To go with her first story this week in the print Hollywood Reporter, former City Hall reporter Tina Daunt has also joined the staff as the trade's contributing editor for politics.
The Wrap saucily offers to let THR use its website code.
Federal suit by Penske Media Corporation alleges copyright infringement and more.
Robertson, an Oscar-winning actor whose credits span "Picnic" (1955) and "Spider-Man 3" (2007), died Saturday on Long Island at age 88.
Newcomb installed the first ski lift in Southern California, at Mt. Waterman.
Gotham City goons tried to stop Jeff Schultz from getting a shot of this weekend location shoot for "The Dark Knight Rises."
Many in Hollywood (and especially in Valleywood) wish the looming primary fight between the two Democrats would just go away.
Several adult film studios suspended production Monday after the Free Speech Coaltion, an industry group, reported that a performer may have tested positive for HIV.
Rep. Howard Berman may face reelection in a new (if still Democratic) district, and a likely opponent from his own party in Rep. Brad Sherman. But his Hollywood friends are still with him.
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa goes with the end-of-an-era theme.
Edie Wasserman was called the first lady of Hollywood and with her late husband, the studio powerhouse Lew Wasserman, was a major donor to local institutions. She died today in...
KCET is announcing today a new partnership with Dominique Bigle, CEO of Eyetronics Media and Studios, to produce and air new local programs that will then be packaged domestically and globally.
Longtime Hollywood photographer David Strick is suing the Times and Tribune for using his photos 500 times.
Twenty-nine years after they frolicked on La Cienega and in the Beverly Hills fountain for the "Our Lips Are Sealed" video below, the Go-Go's showed up in Hollywood today...
Police investigating a reported suspicious package at a talent agency office on Rodeo Drive found — and blew up — a briefcase.
Imprisoned former Hollywood troubleshooter Anthony Pellicano said during his first prison interview — with Daily Beast writer Christine Pelisek for Newsweek magazine — that he knew enough about Arnold Schwarzenegger to prevent him from becoming governor. No details offered.
Before Lucy, before Desi, before she ran Desilu Studios and before even television, Ball was a showgirl and a blonde bombshell.
Lauren Ambrose will play the role of Fanny in the Los Angeles production of "Funny Girl" set to open at the Ahmanson Theatre in January.
Actor Jerry Lewis said in May that he was retiring from the muscular dystrophy telethon he had hosted since 1966, but that he hoped to make an appearance on this year's show.
No official word on cause of death, but police believe it was natural causes.
Dunaway is supposed to be living in NY, but she seems to be spending most of her time in West Hollywood.
Jacob Lassen works as a commercial actor sometimes, and crawls under houses the rest of the time.
Professor and author Leo Braudy will be the special guest, and I'll be the not-so-special interviewer and moderator, this Thursday at 7 p.m. at the Central Library in Downtown. It's for the ALOUD series.
Nikki Finke watchers are having a fun time with this morning's news that she's flacking a Hollywood-themed Facebook game with Paramount Digital Entertainment.
The Wrap is reporting that the Beverly Hills police have completed the investigation into the Nov. 16 murder of Hollywood publicist Ronni Chasen. The gun was stolen from a police officer in the Valley.
Debra Levine at Arts Meme urges movie fans to take in the final run of films curated by Ian Birnie at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
In "Berth Marks," Laurel and Hardy (and Hal Roach) show off the bridge and the old Santa Fe rail station that was beside the river.
Television writer and producer created Gilligan and "The Brady Bunch," TV sitcom milestones from the 1960s that remain popular in syndication.
The question, Patrick Goldstein asks, is why?
The Wrap is bringing in Fred Schruers as a senior writer and Lucas Shaw, a recent Columbia grad, as media writer.
Nice interview by The Atlantic's Conor Friedersdorf with Rob Long, the Emmy-winning writer on "Cheers" who lives in Venice, does his weekly Martini Shot column for KCRW and continues to write for TV.
Not everyone's happy, but Councilman Krekorian is willing to play along.
I can't remember the last time I mentioned Beyonce, Wes Studi, Nastassja Kinski, Rooney Mara and Bradley Cooper in the same sentence. They are among the 178 actors, other artists and executives on today's list of newly invited members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Sharon Waxman of The Wrap calls out The Hollywood Reporter under Janice Min for lifting scoops and calling them "exclusives."
Mitchell tells IndieWire's Dana Harris that in his new role as curator for the Film Independent/Los Angeles County Museum of Art film series, "The first thing I want to do is not alienate people who have been coming to LACMA to see movies.
Conan O'Brien has sweetened, so to speak, his request for the city of Los Angeles to rename a segment of West Raymer Street beside the train tracks in Van Nuys....
Anne Thompson notes that Mitchell lands on his feet again, but she suggests the museum be aware of issues with his "skills as an administrator/manager/organizer."
In the small world of the Hollywood trades, Tuesday began with the former L.A. Times advertising exec Lynne Segall quitting MMC to become publisher and senior VP of The Hollywood Reporter. Then Nikki Finke posted a 1,300 word screed against Segall.
Ziskin died at home tonight after a long and public battle with breast cancer.
In the 1964 comedy Sex and the Single Girl, Tony Curtis (a womanizing tabloid reporter) and Natalie Wood (who plays Helen Gurley Brown) gallivant around Los Angeles — including on the new 405 freeway and its Mulholland Drive bridge.
Andrew Gold, who died Friday at home in Encino, had serious roots in the Los Angeles music scene. His father, Ernest Gold, won an Oscar for his score on the...
Mayor names new DOT head, stadium suspect stays in custody, Greuel on TV, James Arness dies and more.
Variety columnist Brian Lowry has a bad reaction to Sunday's Calendar story in the L.A. Times about the current cycle of action heroes in films being more impressively muscled than in previous rounds.
Marketing slogan: "The Feel Bad Movie of Christmas." Tag line: "She's coming." Watch the video.
Janice Min's THR makeover, Farrah Fawcett's death, Sheriff Baca's special recruit, how L.A. County cities fit together plus some quotables.
Gil Scott-Heron, Jeff Conaway, Margo Dydek, Irene Gilbert, Don Kubly, Dana Brand, Tom West.
Inspired by Oprah Winfrey's street in Chicago, Conan O'Brien calls on Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to get it done. Video.
In a clip taken from the 1968 documentary "Cineaste de notre temps," the actor and filmmaker cruises through the Hollywood Hills in a convertible — with the Beach Boys singing "California Girls" on the radio — and complains there aren't enough people in L.A.
“We’re one of the few firms that sue; we don’t just send a letter,” Singer says in a NYT mini-profile of Hollywood's guard dog to the stars.
TMZ posts the documents showing that Gov. Schwarzenegger paid the down payment on Mildred Baena's house in Bakersfield.
Stuart worked in episodic television during almost the entire run of the genre, starting with "I Led Three Lives" in 1954 and concluding with the Showtime series "Huff" in 2006.
A snippet from the press conference in Cannes where the director of "Melancholia" admits that Hitler "was not one of the good guys," but someone he understands and sympathizes with.
Lisbeth Salander is all over the agenda for a two-day symposium in Royce Hall on the late Larsson's works and the larger genre.
At least there was no groping, eh?
Roseanne Barr writes a piece in New York magazine that covers a lot of ground from Charlie Sheen to the cruel illusions of fame to the treatment of women in Hollywood.
Professional Musicians Local 47 says its programming, which they call Pro Music 47 Radio, is the first "geared solely to promoting union musicians."
Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver released a statement tonight saying they are living apart "while we work on the future of our relationship."
Laurents wrote the books for "West Side Story" and "Gypsy" and the screenplay (from his own novel) for "The Way We Were."
A "Glee" producer and New York mayor Bloomberg have a little fun at the L.A. mayor's expense.
Mitchell joined in January and now is out. Nikki Finke and Anne Thompson report different reasons.
Davis and her writing partner Bob Carroll Jr. were writing for Lucille Ball on radio when they collaborated on a TV pilot. The rest was television history. Also: Kevin Jarre.
President Obama is scheduled to land at LAX at about 2:45 P.M. Thursday. He then has to get to the Sony lot for a 4:30 fund-raising appearance, then up to Tavern in Brentwood for dinner and another fundraiser.
There were something like 5,000 people at the Nokia on Tuesday night to watch Tina Fey and Steve Martin mix and match wits.
President Obama will visit the Sony lot in Culver City and Tavern in Brentwood to meet with Hollywood donors.
Asked which one book she would recommend to President Obama, actress Wendie Malick offered one we like here at LA Observed too.
The son of Grouch Marx, he's known mostly for two books on his dad, sitcom work and the unauthorized and unflattering biography of Bob Hope.
Paramount said today it has optioned the movie rights to Ray Bradbury's classic 1950 short story collection.
A federal bankruptcy court judge unsealed an "explosive" 400-page court report on the affairs of film executive David Bergstein and his associate Ronald Tutor — then resealed the report. While it was available, the media got a look.
John Lippman, editor of the Company Town report, is moving his family to New Hampshire to work at a small newspaper that isn't on the web in a town that's not obsessed with Hollywood.
The best documentary I've seen this year, on the octogenarian New York Times street photographer who rides his bike around Manhattan, has escaped the Nuart ghetto.
Sidney Lumet debuted in 1957 with "12 Angry Men," directed "Dog Day Afternoon," "Serpico" and "Network" later in his career, and was nominated four times for Oscars.
Dawn Hudson, who has run Film Independent since 1991, will take over as CEO of the academy.
Entertainment blogger Nikki Finke may be on medical leave, but a post she put up — then took down — has prompted renewed talk of "Crazy Nikki" and "Hollywood’s leading internet terrorist."
While Sheen risks the livelihood of everyone at his show, Tina Fey lists as her greatest achievement "providing 200 people with a nice place to work."
The mainstream media sent real critics to the Charlie Sheen tour's opening night in Detroit, for whatever reason. It didn't take their experience to know it went very, very badly. But better tonight in Chicago.
AMC announced that the show's fifth season will happen, but the sixth is up in the air. Creator Matt Weiner's status also remains unclear.
Good news for LA Observed contributor Deanne Stillman, whose book, "Mustang: The Saga of the Wild Horse in the American West," will be the basis for a Hallmark Channel movie on mustang activist Velma Johnston.
David Lieberman, senior media reporter at USA Today, will join Deadline.com as Executive Editor on April 11.
A young Elizabeth Taylor plays Helen Burns in this 1943 rendition of "Jane Eyre," and shows up in the first scene (and others) in this YouTube clip.
Life.com posts unpublished photos of Elizabeth Taylor, the magazine's favorite movie star.
Taylor died early today of congestive heart failure at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. She entered the hospital six weeks ago. Taylor won two best actress Oscars, for "Who's Afraid of Virginia...
Nikki Finke alleges at Deadline Hollywood that The Hollywood Reporter "deleted embarrassing information about Summit Entertainment principals from a financial story about the studio's refinancing in order to 'horse-trade' it for the cover story interview with Jodie Foster that appears in this week's print edition.
Rebecca Mansour, who lives in Hollywood and got an MFA from American Film Institute, is in Sarah Palin's inner circle as message crafter and social media defender.
File this in the corner of your mind where you're a least a little concerned about editorial standards at the new AOL.
Dana Goodyear has a good piece in this week's New Yorker on therapist Barry Michels and psychiatrist Phil Stutz, whose niche is helping Hollywood creative types.
As part of the publicity onslaught for "The Lincoln Lawyer," the new movie from Michael Connelly's mystery of the same name, the author and lead actor Matthew McConaughey chat for a Times reporter while parked in an SUV on Connelly's old street above Laurel Canyon.
The animated movie is set in the fictional town of Dirt. There's a character, a desert tortoise named Mayor, who dreams of imported water turning Dirt into a green paradise.
Andrew Wallenstein moves from paidContent to be television editor at Variety.
KCRW's Elvis Mitchell has re-edited and posted a conversation with the late Sally Menke.
After she picked up her Oscar last night and went backstage to meet the media, Natalie Portman was asked by a reporter why she wasn't wearing Dior — she's a...
More than 100 employees of the hit TV show shut down after star Charlie Sheen's recent outburst will get full paychecks for the season's final four unproduced episodes.
Fields dismisses cease and desist letter and says that Nikki Finke and company have engaged in trade libel and unfair competition.
Jane Russell is probably best known as the busty actress whose cleavage Howard Hughes exploited so flagrantly in "The Outlaw." Her life story, though, runs through several other prominent Los Angeles threads.
All those predictions that Natalie Portman and Colin Firth would win the top acting Oscars and "The King's Speech" would win best picture — they were right.
Life magazine has posted a nice online gallery of photos from Oscars past, including this one with Grace Kelly and Audrey Hepburn backstage at the 1956 ceremony at the Pantages Theatre in Hollywood.
Melena Ryzik, lead writer for the New York Times' Carpetbagger awards blog, hit town this week and attended the Hollywood Reporter Oscars party on Thursday night at the mayor's residence...
Kind of a ragged show on IFC tonight from the Film Independent Spirit Awards — lots of gaps and fumbles. The actors also seemed fairly miserable about the chilly temperature in the tent on Santa Monica Beach.
Nikki Finke says that the Academy Of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences this morning pulled her film editor Mike Fleming's backstage press credential to cover Sunday's Oscars, citing Deadline's reporting of spoilers about the show.
Reacting apparently to Nikki Finke posting details of Sunday's Oscar telecast, Hollywood blogger David Poland has posted a "Crazy Nikki" rant that's aggressive even for him — and also says that motion picture academy president Tom Sherak should be fired "if he continues to feed her any information."
She tells the New York Times fashion magazine that she's now a French housewife who cooks every night, but there's also the designer clothes and front-row seats at the fashion shows.
There are spoilers galore in Nikki Finke's report on what will be in the Oscars show on Sunday, so tread carefully if that matters to you.
An NBC source says that "Today" will do a pre-Oscars piece about (or with?) Deadline's Nikki Finke in the 7:30 a.m. half-hour on Friday's show.
Danielle Berrin, who writes the Hollywood Jew column for the Jewish Journal, recounts her failed attempt to get an interview with Aaron Sorkin about the women in "The Social Network" — and his reaction to the column she did finally write.
Storm that's coming could bring snow to areas that rarely see it.
Javier Bardem, Helen Mirren and Matthew McConaughey have been newly added to the list of Oscar presenters at Sunday's ceremony. Mo’Nique and Christoph Waltz, winners last year and thus invited...
Deadline's Nikki Finke has publicly called out The Wrap for taking her content, and reports that a "cease-and-desist" letter was sent from her corporate overseer to Sharon Waxman and her board of directors
On a recent episode of "The Simpsons," Bart Simpson's list of "must-see attractions" for Los Angeles included Cerritos Auto Square, Keyes on Van Nuys, "The Valley," LAX lot C, the...
It's all about academy voters' second and third choices for Best Picture. 'Social Network,' maybe.
The new West Hollywood restaurant by Craig Susser, former manager at Dan Tana's, got the feature treatment in the New York Times over the weekend.
This year's 25th run of Last Remaining Seats in the Broadway Historic Theatre District will open at the Orpheum with "Rear Window," the Alfred Hitchcock classic starring James Stewart and Grace Kelly, and end there with Harold Lloyd in "Safety Last."
Great New York Times story this weekend looking deep into the phenomenon that saw J.C. Penney turn up as the #1 result on a variety of Google keyword searches: from dresses and bedding to Samsonite carry on luggage — ahead of Samsonite itself.
Bill Gates, Eli Broad, Michael Milken and a bunch of Hollywood types came out to the home of Peter Chernin Thursday night for a discussion of discuss global health issues.
Variety has openings for paid spring and summer interns.
I'm just catching up with this from last week's LA Weekly.
She says it's not her, and The Daily doesn't sound all that convinced, but they run it anyway.
Jane Fonda blogged on Tuesday that tonight's opening performance of "33 Variations" at the Ahmanson Theatre would be attended by Cher, Colin Farrell, Angelica Huston, Chelsea Handler, Rosanna Arquette, Carla Gugino, Christian Slater, Peter Fonda, John Glover, Ben Vereen, Lindsay Lohan "and many other friends and family." She was right.
The movie version of Michael Connelly's 20xx bestseller stars Matthew McConaughey as Mickey Haller, an L.A. defense attorney who eschews an office and operates out of the back of his Lincoln Continental.
Judy Graeme at Native Intelligence got a preview this afternoon of the new exhibition of costumes from the past year's Hollywood movies that opens Tuesday at FIDM.
Men are included among the young bodies that Vanity Fair hopes will boost magazine sales this year. Here's who they put on the cover.
"The Kings Speech" picked up the Screen Actors Guild's equivalent of the best picture Oscar tonight. Colin Firth and Natalie Portman picked up the top actor awards.
Jane Fonda's third act, multi-racial America, The Dude in London and more.
Robert Bucksbaum, the Majestic Crest Theatre savior who got out of the cinema biz last year, sent an email to his former patrons today saying he now owns a guest ranch in Colorado. And you're invited.
In tonight's KCRW column: location filming, "Somewhere" and Buster Keaton.
Beverly Hills Police Chief David Snowden told the Hollywood Reporter that the final ballistics report confirms that Harold Martin Smith gunned down publicist Ronni Chasen on Nov. 16.
Angelina Jolie is to blame, says Sean Smith, the Entertainment Weekly bureau chief in L.A. who quit last week to serve in the Peace Corps.
L.A. Times columnist Patrick Goldstein says Ricky Gervais and Robert De Niro made show business history by getting down and dirty on Sunday's Golden Globes telecast.
There were no TV cameras and few reporters at Saturday night's Los Angeles Film Critics Association awards dinner. That's the way VP Tim Grierson likes it.
"The Social Network" won four Golden Globes tonight, ending with the award for best drama — surpassing "The King's Speech," which had the most nominations coming in to the night.
But he says it was worth it, despite the toll on his family.
Sean Smith is leaving as Los Angeles bureau chief of Entertainment Weekly to serve overseas in the Peace Corps.
"Before Black Swan, I had never danced in my life, and I will never dance again."
Michael Russell says his employer of 17 years, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, and its awards are tainted by fraud and corrupt practices.
Elvis Mitchell, the longtime print film writer and critic who hosts "The Treatment" on KCRW, has signed on as co-chief film critic (with ex-Salon critic Stephanie Zacharek ) for the expanding Movieline.
The new W unveils the first official look at American actress Rooney Mara as Lisbeth Salander, the kick-ass heroine of the Swedish trilogy by the late Stieg Larsson.
Among the new state officials of various kinds are Susan Kennedy, Schwarzenegger's chief of staff, his press secretary and Kimberly Belshé, his cabinet secretary for health and human services.
Nice piece in the new Angeleno magazine on past residents (and current staffers) on what they like about the Chateau Marmont hotel.
Now the Hullabaloo Dancers — they dance.
Neighborhood councils, Hollywood, City Hall politics and more.
KCRW says that on tonight's "Which Way, L.A.?," City Council President Eric Garcetti and "Good Food" host Evan Kleiman will discuss details of a deal struck today between the Hollywood Farmer's Market and the LA Film School.
Sofia Coppola, that's who.
Michael Speier is no longer Nikki Finke's managing editor at Deadline, just three months after he hired on to much Finkeian fanfare. But he hasn't completely left either, she emails.
Michael Speier departs Deadline.com and other media notes.
"The Social Network" was voted best picture today by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association. "Carlos" was runner-up.
Sam Rubin of KTLA takes to Twitter to say how much he dislikes the new Angelina Jolie vehicle.
Dana Harris has been at Variety for nearly 11 years.
Andrew Blankstein at the L.A. Times has a law enforcement source who says, not for attribution, that the gun Harold Smith used to kill himself in Hollywood appears to match the gun used to kill publicist Ronni Chasen.
Sallie Hofmeister, assistant managing editor for arts and entertainment coverage at the Los Angeles Times, says in an email sent a few hours ago that she wants her Company Town entertainment bloggers to be more "surprising or interesting."
One resident at the dicey Hollywood apartment building where "Harold" shot himself last night says he had bragged about killing Ronni Chasen.
The L.A. Times is reporting that "a man described as a suspect in the slaying of veteran Hollywood publicist Ronni Chasen fatally shot himself at a Hollywood apartment house Wednesday evening as Beverly Hills police were serving a search warrant there."
LAT film columnist and Big Picture blogger Patrick Goldstein announced last night that he will be expanding his portfolio and adding James Rainey as a co-blogger.
The editors of the American Bar Association's ABA Journal have put up their annual list of top 100 legal blogs, including several SoCal gems.
Nikki Finke says the pair of actors have been asked to host the Academy Awards telecast and both have tentatively agreed.
The Canadian actor who had a long dramatic career before he was cast in "Airplane!" and as LAPD Lt. Frank Drebin in the Naked Gun movies died near his home in Fort Lauderdale.
David Poland at Movie City News talks with Natalie Portman at length about "Black Swan," her new movie.
Close to a thousand mourners overflowed the chapel at Hillside Sunday, crowding onto a patio to pay their respects to slain publicist Ronni Chasen.
The Hollywood Reporter is going with a story that the working theory is that the attack on Ronni Chasen was planned in advance and not the result of road rage or a carjacking gone awry.
Nobody has been able to advance the story much on this morning's killing of publicist Ronni Chasen, while Hollywood reacts. Services are Sunday.
Longtime Hollywood publicist Ronni Chasen, 64, was found dead of five gunshot wounds about 12:30 a.m. today in her Mercedes-Benz E-350, which had crashed into a light pole on Whittier Drive just south of Sunset Boulevard.
In the video, LA Observed's Judy Graeme goes through LACMA's exhibit on fashions of the 1700's and 1800's with Marlene Stewart, a costume designer on films such as "Ali," "The Doors" and "Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian."
The singer got her star today on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. City Council President Eric Garcetti uploaded the mobile photo to his Facebook page.
De Laurentiis died Wednesday at home in Beverly Hills. Not many Hollywood producers have this range of credits, both hits and flops.
Actress Jessica Alba, the cover babe in December's Elle, is quoted saying that "good actors, never use the script unless it’s amazing writing. All the good actors I’ve worked with,...
Leo Wolinskly, the former Los Angeles Times executive editor who joined Daily Variety as editor late last last year, has been let go.
After 11 years, the monthly gathering of media and Hollywood types started by TV writer Scott Kaufer, blogger Mickey Kaus and journalist-author Steve Oney is leaving Yamashiro.
This week's photo by Gary Leonard, as writer Rip Rense rightly suggests via email, might benefit from some background on Tyrus Wong.
"The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest," the third and ostensibly final film with Noomi Rapace playing the part of Swedish hacker-punk-heroine Lisbeth Salander, opens Friday to the approval of Roger Ebert.
No actual knowledge of what happened, but I'll assume L.A. Live lured Film Independent's last Spirit Awards Downtown with a special deal — then didn't offer it again for next...
LA Observed helps to sponsor the Live Talks Los Angeles series of conversations around town, and producer Ted Habte-Gabr is offering tickets to LAO readers who want to take in Thursday night's session between actor Michael Caine and Sharon Waxman of The Wrap.
So, people are bothered that actors who unconvincingly play high school kids pose for a sexy photo spread in a glossy fashion magazine for men?
Rebecca Keegan and Nicole Sperling are joining the L.A. Times movie staff, writing for print and online. Read the memo.
Wicked Pictures and Vivid Entertainment stopped production after a performer identified by one industry source as a male who does gay and straight films tested positive for HIV.
This house ad for the Los Angeles Times awards season coverage is unintentionally funny, given that there are bloggers in this city with more experience and higher standards than some...
The departure of White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel to run for mayor of Chicago is not good news for his brother Ari, says Sharon Waxman at The Wrap.
Anne Thompson becomes editor-at-large, Todd McCarthy ankles for the Hollywood Reporter.
Cannell wrote best-selling novels and for TV shows like "Adam-12" and "Mission Impossible," then went on to produce series such as ""The Rockford Files," "The A-Team" and "21 Jump Street." He died Thursday at home in Pasadena from complications associated with melanoma.
The giant comics-plus convention will announce Friday it's remaining in San Dego for at least five years.
Tony Curtis starred opposite Marilyn Monroe and Jack Lemmon in "Some Like it Hot" — which the American Film Institute named the best comedy of the 20th century.— and got an Oscar nomination for "The Defiant Ones."
Art Gilmore narrated hundreds of movie trailers, television episodes and radio shows. He also worked back in the day as a news announcer at KFWB and KNX.
Arthur Penn, the director of "Bonnie and Clyde," The Miracle Worker" and "Alice's Restaurant," died Tuesday in New York a day after turning 88.
The body of a hiker reported missing yesterday in Griffith Park has been located at the bottom of a ravine. Law-enforcement sources say it's Sally Menke, Quentin Tarantino's editor on...
The film is hosted by actor Adrian Grenier, who it's said became interested when he noticed Autsin Visschedyk, then 14, taking pictures in a pack of Hollywood paparazzi.
The David Fincher movie based on Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg opens the New York Film Festival tonight.
Rob Guth, the Wall Street Journal's tech reporter based in San Francisco, is coming south to be Los Angeles bureau chief. Read the memo.
Catching up with some stuff that's been piling up.
Bacon and Mann both made their names interviewing movie stars and other Hollywood celebrities.
After Michael Speier was laid off last year as executive editor of Daily Variety, he served a stint as news editor for Sharon Waxman at The Wrap. Now he's joining Waxman's arch-rival Nikki Finke in the new position of managing editor at Deadline.
The next shock for Times readers could be an upcoming ad campaign for "Law and Order: Los Angeles" that Variety says again blurs the line between editorial and advertising, similar to previous ads in the Times for "Southland" and the King Kong attraction at Universal Studios.
Janice Min's Hollywood Reporter will switch to a weekly magazine next next month, the New York Times says. "A mix of analytical and feature articles and photo spreads, will be...
Roger Ebert and his wife Chaz will co-produce a new version of "At the Movies" for PBS, with KCRW's Elvis Mitchell and Christy Lemire of Associated Press as the main critics.
Robert Bucksbaum, who recently announced he is giving up the Majestic Crest theatre in Westwood, says in his final email to customers that a chain will be taking over and continuing to show movies.
reakout Swedish actress Noomi Rapace sat down in Venice with Anne Thompson to talk about her new movie projects, her recent introductory trip to Hollywood and leaving behind the role of Lisbeth Salander.
Janice Min's arrival at the Hollywood Reporter has left the trade's previous staffers feeling shut out, Sharon Waxman says.
Writer, filmmaker and Los Angeles political figure Kelly Candaele has launched Politics and Films to write about feature films and documentaries from a political perspective.
Appearing tonight on David Letterman's show, actor Michael Douglas said his throat cancer has advanced to stage IV, the most advanced form using that rating system.
For some (OK, me) the highlight of the Emmy awards broadcast was Jimmy Fallon, Tina Fey, Lea Michele and a bunch of other actors — even the heavyset guy from "Lost" — running through the Nokia Theater in an homage to "Glee.
The mayor of Los Angeles should go to the Emmys, but given Antonio Villaraigosa's recent controversy over freebies the question will be asked this time: was he gifted, did he perform some vaguely official function, or both?
In her column at The Wrap, editor-in-chief Sharon Waxman invites arch-rival on the web Nikki Finke to come speak at the Wrap's first entertainment industry leadership conference.
Amid all the talk about the American actress who will replace her as Lisbeth Salander in the remake of "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo," the real thing is in town this week launching a Hollywood career.
From the Beverly Hilton to Hancock Park and back they go, compliments of the feed by Jonathan Weisman of the Wall Street Journal to the White House press corps.
I was wrong: there's still life in the Lisbeth Salander topic. American actress Rooney Mara has been tapped to play the heroine of Stieg Larsson's Millenium trilogy in the English-language version of "The Girl with the DragonTattoo."
KTLA entertainment anchor Sam Rubin is executive producing and hosting a new weekly talk show for Reelzchannel they're calling "Hollywood Uncensored With Sam Rubin" and billing as "'The McLaughlin Group' meets 'Real Time With Bill Maher' with a Hollywood spin.
Wolper also produced "L.A. Confidential" and the children's classic "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory," as well as the opening and closing ceremonies at the 1984 Olympic Games in the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.
Before we leave the subject of Lisbeth Salander, this video from ABC's Nightline: author Stieg Larsson's girlfriend talks about how the character came to be introduced in "Girl With the Dragon Tattoo."
In his Great Movies series for the Chicago Sun-Times, Ebert says there are basically two kinds of people when it comes to the 2003 film "Lost in Translation." Those who get the subtle relationship of empathy and loneliness between Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson, and those who "want to know what it's about."
Noomi Rapace is so perfect as sulky, brilliant hacker-heroine Lisbeth Salander that it seems like a waste to spend any time trying to cast the part for the English-language version of "Girl with the Dragon Tattoo."
In the afternoon I parked on Wilshire, between Grand and Hope — so it was easy to spot that block in "Inception" a few hours later.
Email about one of the city's cinema treasure from owner Roebert Bucksbaum, who saved the theatre from closing once and has been trying to sell it since 2008.
"Off-Ramp" this weekend talks to Michael Q Schmidt, 57 years old and about 300 pounds, who has made his career as an actor and nude model.
Patrick Goldstein admits he was left confused by "Inception," though he liked the film, and he devotes a post at The Big Picture to why the older people are, the more they hated "Inception."
This Hollywood Reporter story with a "Glee" tie-in isn't a spoof, but it could be. Commenters at the THR site are brutal.
You Tube sensation and ex-NFL player Isaiah Mustafa talks to the Hollywood Reporter about the stardom of sorts that has come his way since he pitched Old Spice in the year's biggest online marketing coup not perpetrated by Apple.
Gammon's first television credits were in the 1960s in westerns such as "The Wild, Wild West," "Bonanza" and "Gunsmoke" — though he also showed up on "Batman," "Charlie's Angels" and...
Julie Makinen, who left the Los Angeles Times awhile back to live in Hong Kong as deputy business editor of the Asian edition of the International Herald Tribune, is returning as movie editor on the LAT entertainment desk.
The trailer for "What Women Want," with new dialogue from Mad Mel. Er, allegedly from Mel Gibson.
Ray Bradury says Mel Gibson is too busy with "that Russian girl" right now to move ahead with a film remake of his classic book.
Radar Online has posted a longer audio clip of Mel Gibson berating girlfriend Oksana Grigorieva over the phone
Well, if you mean the movie, it's way "Despicable." An ad for the new movie "Despicable Me" covers the top and bottom of the Los Angeles Times Calendar section —...
Nice little real Hollywood story on longtime camera operator Hector Ramirez, whose five Emmy nominations this morning gives him the career record.
For two reasons I'll be opening my Los Angeles Times early tomorrow.
This time the full-page ad designed to fool readers for a few seconds is a mock version of the LAT Extra section — using the real nameplate and date but...
I caught In the Heights last night at the Pantages and saw what all the fuss is about, both for the 2008 Tony winner for best musical and the fans'...
Time magazine's online team rated a bunch of blogs again this year, and for the Los Angeles-based blogosphere the results are mixed.
The March cover that featured Kristen Stewart, Amanda Seyfried, Carey Mulligan, Anna Kendrick and a bunch of other young, thin, white actresses has been the worst selling of the year so far for Vanity Fair.
When they shot "Airplane!" on the Universal backlot, it's unlikely that the Zucker brothers (Jerry and David) and Jim Abrahams expected the spoof would be analyzed and immortalized in the New York Times thirty years later. But here we are.
The Wrap has now been around long enough to reach that point in every website's life where it had to start over with a new design and back-end infrastructure.
"Memphis” won the Tony Award for best musical on Sunday night, “Red” won for best play, and Hollywood actors Catherine Zeta-Jones, Denzel Washington, Viola Davis and Scarlett Johansson all won in their categories.
Longtime political activist and Hollywood public relations strategist Stephen Rivers died Monday after a long battle with cancer.
Joseph Strick brought James Joyce's "Ulysses" to the big screen, won an Oscar for his documentary on My Lai veterans, made noteworthy documentaries on L.A.'s Muscle Beach in 1948 and an L.A. divorcee's life in 1960, and also commissioned a Santa Monica Canyon home that is the only North American residence by Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer.
The first press release has come in from Janice Min's new Hollywood Reporter.
Richard Stayton, now the editor-in-chief of Written By, was working at the Los Angeles Herald Examiner in 1985 when he met and first wrote about Dennis Hopper.
Rachel Abramowitz is leaving to to work on "Outlaw Country," a new FX show she wrote with her husband.
The underlings at Deadline Hollywood finally explained this morning the whereabouts of their missing leader.
Dennis Hopper died this morning at home in Venice, likely from complications of advanced prostate cancer.
Coleman, the child star of the hit sitcom "Diff'rent Strokes," died at a hospital in Provo, Utah after suffering a brain hemorrhage at home earlier this week.
Voltage Pictures' complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. doesn't name anybody, but incorporates 5,000 people it says illegally downloaded the Oscar-winning film "The Hurt Locker."
The Los Angeles Times Media Group on Thursday announced that it "restructured" the entertainment division of its advertising department, naming three new vice presidents. The most interesting part was buried...
"(500) Days of Summer" re-envisioned as a thriller.
he Los Angeles Theatre on Broadway was packed last night for the opening film of the 24th year of Last Remaining Seats.
Former Us Weekly editor Janice Min has been named the editorial director of The Hollywood Reporter, says Huffington Post media editor Danny Shea on Twitter.
Kent Mackenzie's 1961 film about Native Americans living in Downtown Los Angeles premiered that year at the Venice Film Festival but was not released commercially. It screens Wednesday at The Hammer.
An LAFD crew answering a 911 call pronounced screenwriter Simon Monjack dead at his home in the Hollywood Hills.
HBO is trying to make a deal with "litigious showbiz blogger Nikki Finke" to be a consultant on its new show "Tilda," which is pretty clearly based on Finke.
Remember the lawsuit that alleged Variety violated a deal by running a critical review of "Iron Cross' while the film's producers were buying ads in the trade paper? A judge said no way, on First amendment grounds.
Both drama critics of the New York Times, Ben Brantley and Charles Isherwood, say that Scarlett Johansson deserves a Tony award for her Broadway debut in the revival of Arthur Miller’s “View From the Bridge.”
Lena Horne was the first black performer signed to a long-term contract by a major Hollywood studio — MGM, for whom she appeared in “Panama Hattie” in 1942 — and by the end of World War II was being called the country's top black entertainer.
an LA Observed reader sent me to this Yale Law Review article from 1993 in which Alex Kozinski, the U.S. 9th Circuit judge, and Eugene Volokh, the UCLA scholar and law blogger, do a thorough briefing on Yiddishisms in the law.
Bella will enjoy her next kiss in "The Twilight Saga: Eclipse" at the Los Angeles Film Festival, which opens June 17 in its new downtown location at L.A. Live. See the full schedule.
The summer film's title, “Dinner for Schmucks,” gets a thorough analysis by Michael Cieply in the New York Times.
The L.A. Times Magazine has an online array of photos from yesterday's fashion spread that accompanies a Q&A with Kobe Bryant. They call it White Hot.
Redgrave died last night after a lengthy fight against breast cancer.
Lopez, a name partner at Century City's Kleinberg Lopez Lange Cuddy & Klein, has represented Michael Jackson and members of the Eagles, and had been a producer on "Selena." He...
Instead of preserving the Hollywood sign in its static condition as a legally condoned supergraphic, why not embrace its inner hotel potential?
Less than two months after losing his longtime gig as chief film critic at Variety, Todd McCarthy has signed on with IndieWire to do film commentary on a blog they are calling Todd McCarthy's Deep Focus.
Marty Kaplan, director of the Norman Lear Center at the USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism, argues that piracy, digital technology and the expectation of consumers that Internet content is free makes this "not a happy time to be an entertainment industry executive."
Sen. Al Franken of Minnesota is having a fundraiser Friday night at the House of Blues on Sunset Strip that's calling on his Saturday Night Live days.
The venture capital firm co-founded by Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz has, along with other investors, put another $2 million into The Wrap, the site says in a news release.
They can't both be right. I suppose we'll find out pretty soon which one is BSing.
Former LA Weekly film critic Scott Foundas won two awards, including print critic of the year, and KABC 7’s George Pennacchio also won a pair at the at the Los Angeles Press Club’s third annual National Entertainment Awards tonight.
Sharon Waxman sends word that while Joe Adalian is leaving as television editor of The Wrap, the TV blog he brought with him is staying.
Matthew Belloni of The Hollywood Reporter finally got to read the script for a potential HBO series about a "no-holds-barred show biz blogger." His main question going in was answered: it's definitely based on Nikki Finke.
Joe Adalian just joined the Wrap last June, but he's taking his address book and his TV MoJoe blog (originally started at TV Week) to New York Magazine's entertainment site Vulture.
Crisis PR meister Mike Sitrick has been sued in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles by a former employee (on behalf of them all) who says the boss at Sitrick and Company manipulated the ESOP to deprive current and former employees of millions of dollars
Myrna Loy crossed over from the silents to carve out a career as the witty, urbane type in 1930s Hollywood fare. She attended the Westlake School for Girls, but for decades a statue said to be based on her stood outside Venice High School. Venice alumni raised the money to restore the sculpture, and on Saturday a restored sculpture will be re-dedicated.
Judge seizes control in rare move after David Bergstein, who runs Capitol, ThinkFilm and related entities, was described in court as overseeing "the Enron of the entertainment world."
The Bruin and the older Village (the one with the Fox sign on the tower) are being taken over by Regency Theatres.
The show business news franchise anchored by Nikki Finke's Deadline | Hollywood has hired Nellie Andreeva, television editor of The Hollywood Reporter since 2004, to become TV editor.
Variety columnist Brian Lowry must have been amused by Nikki Finke's claim that the new owners of The Hollywood Reporter included a $1 million home in Malibu as part of an offer to get her to come on as editor in chief (with a salary of $450,000.) From Lowry's BLTv blog.
Variety Editor Tim Gray has been telling studio PR types that if they give casting scoops to the online competition, the paper won't run their big announcement stories in print. Plus: Nikki Finke for sale again?
Marshall had the inside access and the eye to shoot some of the most iconic images of rock and roll musicians
Variety is "in search of a full-time NY-based reporter to cover finance and entertainment," Variety.com editor Chris Krewson posts on his Twitter feed.
Fess Parker's first credit was in the 1950 film "Harvey," but he became widely known as Disney's Davy Crockett later that decade and as Daniel Boone. More recently Parker has...
With the local Blockbuster closing, Tabloid Baby blogs that the community at the far end of Sunset Boulevard from Downtown — home to Hollywood heavies such as Steven Spielberg, Kate Hudson "and until yesterday, Peter Graves" — will be without a bricks-and-mortar video outlet.
The New York Times sets up a piece examining the future of Variety and The Hollywood Reporter by saying the "feisty tradition of entertainment trade reporting and criticism...has been so severely tested in recent weeks that some wonder whether the entire era is drawing to a close."
Graves was found dead Sunday at home in Pacific Palisades.
Today's LA Observed piece during "All Things Considered" on KCRW talks about the L.A. story of this week that had a little of everything. That would be Jennifer Steinhauer's New...
When the Rams were a big deal in Los Angeles, Olsen anchored their Fearsome Foursome defensive line. He went on to be longtime color commentator for NBC’s pro football and Rose Bowl telecasts, and a television actor on “Little House on the Prairie” and in his own series, “Father Murphy.”
Los Angeles magazine arts critic Steve Erickson's nomination for an American Society of Magazine Editors award is for three reviews he wrote last year.
David Poland's Hollywood blog debuted Sept. 5, 2004 and with this entry today has reached 5,000 posts — with more than 140,000 amassed comments. In post number 4,999, he observes and elaborates that Hollywood killed Corey Haim.
It's been amusing watching today's Twitter traffic from reporters who showed up at The Hump, the exotic food restaurant in Santa Monica fingered in this morning's New York Times for serving outlawed whale meat.
The producers contend that a negative review violated the terms of a $400,000 deal with the trade to promote the movie for Oscar consideration.
Jose Pepe Fanjul, said to be one of the world's richest men, and his wife Emilia reportedly were cleaned out of millions of dollars worth of jewelry on Friday at the Four Seasons hotel — by a man in a tuxedo who chatted them up in the elevator then came to their room.
Today's moves turn out to be about much more than dropping the chief film and theater critics, who have been asked to write as freelancers. Variety is restructuring its newsroom,...
His tweet: "Variety fires Todd McCarthy & I cancel my subscription. He was my reason 2 read the paper. RIP, schmucks"
Two of the trade's most prominent writers, film reviewer Todd McCarthy and theater critic David Rooney, have been cut as cost-saving measures. Reviews will be done by freelancers.
The Chic Leak blog has some backstory on the woman who popped up to commandeered the microphone from documentary short winner Roger Ross Williams.
Bigelow becomes the first woman to win the best director Oscar, and "The Hurt Locker" takes best picture. Bigelow's previous movies: Mission Zero, K-19: The Widowmaker, The Weight of Water,...
On the Oscars red carpet, Mayor Villaraigosa complimented the animal welfare message of "Avatar" while Lu Parker smiled over his shoulder.
It's a wrap around the real L.A. Times front page this morning, arguably not as bad as last year when the paper sold an actual story spot on the real front page.
Sure was strange to see the Los Angeles Times lead the Calendar section with a big photo and Kenneth Turan review of "Alice in Wonderland" on Thursday, instead of the usual Friday. The reason for the change, according to a soft-section insider at the LAT, is that the ad department sold Disney two front-of-Calendar spots for Alice ads in Friday's paper.
Tonight at Getty House, Mayor Villaraigosa is hosting a pre-Oscars reception for Academy Awards nominees
Remarks by curmudgeonly Time critic Richard Schickel stole the show at a weekend panel to discuss the state of film criticism, pegged to the screening of the documentary "For the Love of Movies," by Boston Phoenix critic and filmmaker Gerald Peary.
Gawker suggests that a $400,000 advertising campaign by the producers of "Iron Cross" led to Variety's publisher spiking a mediocre review by Robert Koehler from the trade's website
An essay in the Chronicle of Higher Education traces the history and decline of film reviewing in the face of competition from Internet critics. "If the traditional film critic was...
In the new TV spot for "The Runaways" film, the relatively short-lived but fondly recalled SoCal fast-food chain shows up as "Pup 'n' Fries."
Actually, Labov was co-president of the Hollywood PR firm with Leslie Sloane Zelnik. Therein may lie a clue into his departure.
Scott Schuman of The Sartorialist posted this photo of longtime L.A. media person Elvis Mitchell after being interviewed by Mitchell on "The Treatment" on KCRW.
"Much blacker than even the darkest film noir," Scott says, and he means it in the good way.
Photo on Montana Avenue in Santa Monica, from a photo feature on actor Jeff Bridges in Sunday's New York Times Magazine.
Kathryn Bigelow’s “The Hurt Locker” pretty much swept the Orange British Academy Film Awards tonight at London’s Royal Opera House.
"Inglourious Basterds" and "An Education" were not eligible.
Roger Ebert wrote this week about his reactions to the Esquire story and how shocked he was to see the portrait that has gotten so much attention.
With the movie house on the verge of closing, director Quentin Tarantino decided to buy the place where he had spent so much time.
Television's most famous movie critic is rarely seen and never heard, says Esquire in a nicely detailed piece. But Roger Ebert is still reviewing movies and "producing the best work of his life."
Blanchard opened the Hollywood agency that bore her name in 1961 and represented, among others, Cheryl Tiegs, Christie Brinkley, Shari Belafonte, Rene Russo and Cristina Ferrare.
Conan O'Brien's contract language did specify that he would host "The Tonight Show" at 11:35 p.m.
Variety has a craigslist ad up looking for a part-time web editor (with one whole year of experience), prompting former Variety columnist Anne Thompson to tweet: "this after Variety laid...
Most of the local action for "Battle: Los Angeles" was shot in Shreveport, Louisiana, using painted palm trees, with other footage gathered in Baton Rouge. “You’re never going to know we didn’t shoot the movie in Los Angeles,” producer Neal Moritz.
NYU journalism professor and media critic/innovator Jay Rosen argues in a Visiting Blogger post that The Wrap fell for a tale about GOP consultant Frank Luntz going Hollywood.
The academy got what it wanted: a broader menu of best picture options, some of which aren't as worthy as one might like.
Film Independent has put up two decades of opening monologues and dozens of acceptance speeches and other clips from the show on Babelgum.
The city has paid $3.35 million for ten acres and the home designed by Paul R. Williams for actress Barbara Stanwyck, a vestige of the Valleywood horse-ranching heyday.
Orbison, who gets his star Friday, will be outside the Capitol Records tower next to John Lennon and George Harrison.
Kristen Stewart, as usual, is so uncomfortable doing media it always creeps me out a bit to watch her.
The cast of "Inglorious Basterds" won the honor for top film ensemble today at the Screen Actors Guild awards at the Shrine Auditorium.
Superior Court Judge Peter Espinoza decided today that fugitive director Roman Polanski has to return to a Los Angeles courtroom in order to be sentenced in the 1977 sexual assault case.
Here is your list of Golden Globes winners.
That's the negotiated settlement amount The Wrap hears from sources.
His last 'Tonight Show' may be Jan. 22, but Conan O'Brien had it rocking in last night's monologue.
L.A. journalist Alex Ben Block was the lead editor on the the new book, "George Lucas's Blockbusting: A Decade-By-Decade Survey of Timeless Movies." Block, now at the Hollywood Reporter, will...
Plus ex-Hollywood Reporter publisher Robert Dowling on what ails the trades.
L.A. Times editor-at-large Jim Newton is now teaching a course in journalism ethics at UCLA, part of his appointment as a senior fellow in the School of Public Affairs. In...
Hollywood columnist-blogger Anne Thompson says that hiring Mike Fleming away from Variety is a smart move for Deadline|Hollywood, if he can co-exist with Nikki Finke.
The company backing Nikki Finke's Deadline Hollywood blog is expanding the site with two more entertainment journalists, including Variety veteran Mike Fleming.
Diane Haithman, the former Los Angeles Times arts and enterrtainment writer, has joined Finke's Deadline Hollywood as an interviewer of TV show runners
The suspect knew the Fountain Theatre director and producer, police say.
From Hollywood power lunches to house arrest with an ankle bracelet.
I thought I liked Mulholland Dr. as much as the next guy, and probably more than most. But I'm surprised the David Lynch film tops a survey of the best...
Paul Frommer, a professor of clinical management communication at the USC Marshall School of Business, got the gig to create about 1,000 words for the Na'vi, who inhabit the moon...
Karina Longworth is the new film editor at the LA Weekly. She is the co-founder of Cinematical.com, the former editor of SpoutBlog, and calls her personal film blog Vidiocy. (She...
The actress died this morning of cardiac arrest at Cedars-Sinai, after being found in the shower at home by her mother, according to TMZ, citing reports from the LAFD and...
The first (I think) teaser is out for "The Runaways," billed as the story of the 1970s rock band that featured Joan Jett and Cherie Currie, among others, and...
Roy E. Disney, nephew of Walt Disney and a director emeritus of the family studio, died Wednesday morning after battling stomach cancer. His name is on REDCAT downtown. Roundup of...
Residents of Santa Monica have been warned to expect low-flying military helicopters over the city during the lunch rush on Tuesday. It may look and sound like a war zone,...
Unveiling its 2009 awards today, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association anointed "The Hurt Locker" as best picture and Kathryn Bigelow as top director, Yolande Moreau as best actress for...
This is at least the third iteration I recall, but Variety on Thursday will start charging again for some web content. Here's how the trade explains it: After clicking on...
One tactic the Hollywood news site The Wrap is using to get its name out there is to host free film screenings. Judging by tonight, it's working. So many people...
Leo Wolinsky, an editor and reporter at the Los Angeles Times for 31 years, has been named editor of Daily Variety, "encompassing both the L.A. and Gotham editions," the trade...
At this weekend's Kennedy Center Honors in Washington, Mel Brooks said that picking up the award at the age of 83 was “better late than never.” Other honorees were Dave...
In part three of Iris Schneider's exclusive-to-LA Observed posts following Bruce Lisker's reentry to society after 26 years behind bars, Bruce moves in with Kara in Marina del Rey. Iris...
Nice portrait (by Michael Muller) that goes with a profile of Ryan Seacrest by Amanda Fortini in today's T Magazine in the New York Times. She calls Seacrest the invisible...
Television writer Earl Pomerantz has been blogging about his time in the hospital leading up to, and after, open heart surgery. If nothing else, he seems in a good enough...
KFI's news Twitter feed says that convicted killer Phil Spector is at a dentist's office in Toluca Lake right now, escorted by prison correctional officers. Update: Yes, Spector was allowed...
Yes, Claudia Eller will still be digging for scoops in Hollywood. But she's shifting to also help manage the other reporters for Company Town, the L.A. Times' entertainment news operation....
Assistant Managing Editor for Arts and Entertainment Sallie Hofmeister tonight announced the second recent hire to fill openings on the L.A. Times entertainment team. We told you about Steven Zeitchik...
Hollywoodnews.com expects to launch in January with former Los Angeles Times film reporter Robert Welkos as the editor and Carlos de Abreu as CEO and publisher. Welkos posted about it...
Here's a hire that will be closely scrutinized and dissected, no matter who gets it: the LA Weekly is looking for a replacement for Scott Foundas. The L.A. Weekly is...
Hollywood marketing has changed now that so many people willingly devour flakkery on Facebook, Twitter and blogs, a New York Times story says today: Social networks like Facebook and Twitter...
LA Weekly film editor and chief film critic Scott Foundas is moving to Lincoln Center in New York as associate program director. His responsibilities will include the New York Film...
The Wrap's Sharon Waxman says The Hollywood Reporter "and several other Nielsen entertainment titles are set to be sold to James Finkelstein’s News Communications Inc., owner of 'Who’s Who' publications...
Two members of the Los Angeles bureau are among 11 staffers laid off at the magazine, says a report....
The Hollywood power lunch spot near the Cedars medical buildings on West 3rd Street is soon to shut its doors, after 20 years. “It’s not without some sadness and remorse,"...
The layoff of Alonso Duralde from MSNBC means ten members of the Los Angeles Film Critics Association have lost their gigs in the last 18 months, says David Poland at...
Some bloggers, this one included, will make minor unannounced fixes shortly after a post goes up. Hollywood blog-meistress Nikki Finke takes it to a whole new level, as Gawker's John...
Produced and directed by Walt Disney, this is an animation classic with a capital C. It's the first cartoon in the Silly Symphonies series, animated by Ub Iwerks. I figured,...
Disney-ABC Television Group today told L.A. County that it will seek approval for a 56-acre production facility - including a dozen soundstages - on Disney's Golden Oak Ranch in the...
John Meroney spent a couple of days with Gore Vidal at his Hollywood home and files his dispatch for The Atlantic. Vidal says, among other things, that concerns about Barack...
As part of the promotion for his new movie, actor Adam Goldberg drives around Los Angeles pointing out some of the things he dislikes. Among them are the food,...
The new Regal Cinemas' L.A. Live Stadium 14 debuts officially on Tuesday with the first showings of Michael Jackson's "This Is It." Variety sees the new Downtown cineplex — which...
David Carr retires his tuxedo after four seasons. The new New York Times blogger on the red carpet beat is Melena Ryzik. (She tweets here, by the way.) The paper...
Bonnie Fuller is the "tabloid maven," as Style Section L.A. puts it, who is revamping HollywoodLife.com as part of the fledgling Jay Penske media empire. Fuller has hired New York...
About a week after leaving the LA Weekly, Steven Mikulan has been inked to write a new blog for The Wrap to be called L.A. Noir. The site also announced...
The indie film party is moving to LA Live and will be held in the evening, allowing for live late-night TV on the East Coast. Next year's awards are March...
L.A. Times film columnist and blogger Patrick Goldstein says all the noise about Hollywood supporting Roman Polanski overlooks something. There's no petition going around with the names of the real...
With the chatter about Nikki Finke on high due to this week's profile in The New Yorker, Gawker's Richard Rushfield is offering $1,000 for "a recent photograph of the scourge...
You know something's up when you wake up to Sunday morning email from Nikki Finke and the flack for The New Yorker, both flagging a story in the magazine that...
The Paley Center for Media in Beverly Hills unveiled its fall schedule, starting tonight with Wayne Gretzky, Bruce McNall and a showing of "Kings Ransom," a documentary by Peter Berg...
DreamWorks founders Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen, as expected, are co-hosting a fundraiser for Jerry Brown on Nov. 18. "This will be a big launching pad for his...
Elizaveta Mukasei was posted to Los Angeles as a spy for the Soviet Union from 1939 to 1943, according to an interesting Wall Street Journal remembrance today. Mukasei, who died...
Los Angeles Magazine kicks off a new Hollywood sociology column, Cut!, in the October issue. New contributing writer Gina Piccalo writes the first one, talking to spouses and partners about...
This is kind of amusing. Yahoo's pick-up from Associated Press on the Roman Polanski arrest in Switzerland seemed for awhile this morning to include some not-for-public-consumption, reporter-editor go-between. "no surprise,...
Director Roman Polanski was arrested on Saturday as he arrived at the Zurich airport to receive an award at the Zurich Film Festival. Los Angeles District Attorney Steve Cooley's office...
Conan O'Brien took a bump to the head while performing a skit on tonight's show and was taken by ambulance to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. He's doing fine — NBC released...
At the end of her interview with the LA Weekly's Gendy Alimurung, French actress Audrey Tautou asked if she could snap the writer's picture. Does it with all the journalists...
In case you missed them: Bill Boyarsky spent a delightful evening with Norman Corwin, the 99-year-old "Los Angeles literary treasure," at the Barnes & Noble in Westside Pavilion. Visiting blogger...
The City Council voted unanimously to offer early retirement to 2,400 employees in lieu of layoffs and furloughs. LAT, Ron Kaye Producer John Wells was elected president of the...
TV producer Jay Sanderson succeeds John Fishel, who served 17 years as the Federation president and is leaving at the end of the year. A search committee picked Sanderson over...
That would be the filmmaker Michael Moore, who can't seem to stop blathering about subjects he doesn't seem to know much about. At a news conference in Toronto, he accused...
The star of "Dirty Dancing" and "Ghost" had been battling pancreatic cancer. He was 57. (AP)...
Here's an extended excerpt from a series of interviews he did in 1998 for the Archive of American Television. He talks about working with Bob Hope, Carl Reiner, Sid...
One of the greatest comedy writers - ever. He's probably best known for the TV series "MASH," but there also was "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the...
Army Archerd was a Variety columnist for 52 years, a fixture on the red carpet and at Hollywood parties — and he liked to say that his style made him...
The newest iteration of "At The Movies" debuts this weekend with A.O. Scott and Michael Phillips installed as hosts — they both filled in a lot for Roger Ebert when...
Los Angeles photographer Phil Stern turns 90 tomorrow. That's his photo of Frank Sinatra lighting JFK's smoke. Vanity Fair celebrates the big day with an online piece by David Friend:...
Variety is advertising for an editor of the daily paper and for an online editor to run the website. Also, USC Annenberg is helping to recruit a project manager "as...
Kim Masters, host of The Business on KCRW, talks about her father's part in a secret unit that killed Nazis on today's Talk of the Nation on National Public Radio....
The Hollywood Foreign Press Association and Time Warner Cable in partnership with Ovation TV have each committed $75,000 to help the Los Angeles County Museum of Art "extend continuous film...
Sharon Waxman at The Wrap says that Hollywood blogger Nikki Finke stands to pocket $80,000 out of a class-action lawsuit against E-Trade for being tape recorded without her permission. Waxman...
Variety columnist Brian Lowry isn't too smitten with the AM news station's refocus summed up in the ad slogan "Hollywood listens to KFWB." Honestly, I've tried, but I keep asking...
The screenwriter and director known for the films "Sixteen Candles," "The Breakfast Club," "Pretty in Pink" and "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" among others died today while walking in Manhattan. A...
News items: Westwood movie future bleak and Westwood's Mann Festival RIP. Click the cartoon to view it larger. See more by Steve Greenberg in his LA Sketchbook archive...
Perhaps stung by the strong critical reaction to the decision to rethink its film program, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art has put up an online forum to take...
Today's L.A. Times follows on our Thursday night news about the Festival theater closing and adds a triple whammy of bad news for Westwood: Mann is giving up its leases...
The film writer's affiliation with Variety has finally played its last note. She posts there that as of Sunday night, her Thompson on Hollywood brand will be housed at IndieWIRE....
Cari Beauchamp took her deep personal umbrage at Native Intelligence the other night, and now you can add the LAT's Kenneth Turan to the list of Hollywood and film aficionados...
Museum director Michael Govan announced the film program will be closed and rethought — audiences were down, he said. LA Observed contributor Cari Beauchamp, an author and film historian, calls...
Today's front page of the Wall Street Journal talks about Hamilton High senior Kenya Mejia receiving $1,800 to plug the movie "I Love You, Beth Cooper" in her valedictorian address...
Gawker just put out the word that the site's new West Coast editor will be Richard Rushfield, currently at LATimes.com. The note from Gawker's editor in chief is below (and,...
"We're young, we live in one of the most beautiful cities in the world, we might as well have fun while we can," Zooey Deschanel's character says in "500...
David Carr came through town a week or so ago and lands on the New York Times' front page tomorrow with a piece on Nikki Finke. Her deal to sell...
Sing along with Steve Greenberg as he mourns runaway production from Hollywood. Click the cartoon to view it larger. See the entire LA Sketchbook archive and Steve's bio in one...
Aaron Sorkin will take over the script, Steven Soderbergh will no longer direct, but Brad Pitt is still attached to star and the movie remains at Sony, says Variety's Marc...
The Forest Lawn cemetery wedged between Griffith Park, Burbank and Toluca Lake calls itself FL Hollywood Hills for marketing purposes, but make no mistake: it's in the San Fernando Valley....
Cynthia Littleton at Variety reports that Brennan, a longtime reporter and editor for The Hollywood Reporter, died today at Cedars-Sinai after a yearlong struggle with cancer. "He was my friend,...
Sharon Waxman's report that Nikki Finke inked a $14 million deal to sell Deadline Hollywood Daily has yet to be confirmed by anyone on the record, and Finke declines comment...
As part of the promotion for the new Sacha Baron Cohen movie Bruno, GQ magazine runs photos of Cohen-as-Bruno cavorting on the field with the football team at Birmingham High...
News item: Oscar keepers expand best picture category to ten in desperate attempt to hook audience. See more Steve Greenberg cartoons in the LA Sketchbook archive....
Farrah Fawcett died at 9:28 AM at St. John's Hospital in Santa Monica, according to TMZ. Ryan O'Neal and Alana Stewart were at her bedside....
Getting nominated for a best picture Oscar won't mean quite as much now that the motion picture academy has returned to ten nominations in the category. And the winner will...
The LA Weekly's parent company congratulated Nikki Finke on being acquired (for $14 million apparently) and blogs that it wants to find another online Hollywood reporter. "We've had a great...
Deadline Hollywood Daily was bought by Mail.com Media Corporation (MMC), which operates Mail.com, HollywoodLife.com, MovieLine.com and OnCars.com. From the company's announcement on her site: MMC also begins a long-term partnership...
Singer Chris Brown will have to do community labor and five years probation, stay away from Rihanna, give up a DNA sample and other steps in exchange for deal that...
For some reason Sony agreed to make a movie out of the Michael Lewis baseball bestseller "Moneyball." Brad Pitt got on board, crews were hired, shooting was to begin today...
Josef Adalian, the television editor at Variety for nine years until jumping last year to TV Week as deputy editor, is moving again. This time he is going to The...
For reasons only he can adequately explain, OC Weekly writer, author and "Ask a Mexican" creator Gustavo Arellano was on the red carpet asking questions of stars at this week's...
Info released today by county public health officials indicates there have been 22 positive HIV tests of porn performers since a scare shut down the adult video biz for a...
The Wrap has gotten hold of a memo listing the salaries and stock of top agents at William Morris. From Sharon Waxman's post: Who knows why John Fogelman, until about...
The art of the local editorial cartoon is alive and well at LA Observed, compliments of Steve Greenberg. Find him here most days. Yesterday's LA Sketchbook — Back to...
A female adult industry performer has tested positive for HIV and a "handful" of her partners are under industry quarantine for testing, XBIZ reports. So far they have tested negative....
I enjoyed "Away We Go" over the weekend and left thinking Maya Rudolph's performance was Oscar nomination worthy. So I was pleased to see Los Angeles magazine post a mini-profile...
The music industry publication shut down today, costing thirty jobs says The Wrap. Visitors to the website are re-directed to Billboard.biz. Also, The Hollywood Reporter eliminates another ten positions, including...
Los Angeles Times columnist Patrick Goldstein says he'll miss the occasional calls from the longtime publicist, "one of the last remaining links to the Damon Runyon-esque era where you could...
With lots of careers ending today at William Morris and Endeavor, Hollywood writer Michael Oates Palmer gives a shout out to his now-unemployed agent: palmermix My agent was a casualty...
Solters at various times represented Frank Sinatra, Barbra Streisand, Michael Jackson and other celebrity clients, says Nikki Finke. She reports that Solters died in his sleep at home, and gets...
The Hollywood Reporter announced that former Fox entertainment reporter Roger Friedman will join the trade as a senior correspondent based in New York....
Haven't seen the book yet, but I like the title. "Beverly Hills Adjacent" is a debut novel with strong local flavor and media bloodlines: it's by Jennifer Steinhauer, the New...
Fortune.com reported the basic story that Hollywood mogul David Geffen recently sought to acquire the 19% stake in the New York Times that is held by hedge fund Harbinger Capital...
Sahl, who lives in Claremont, was reported missing by his wife on Friday, the San Gabriel Valley Tribune blogged this morning. An afternoon update says that Sahl, who turns 82...
Mark has the goods at LA Biz Observed: TV Week is going online only. * Update: TV Week alum Michael Schneider blogs the history at Franklin Avenue. Also: Video story...
The celebrity news site says that the comic actor died in his sleep last night at a Los Angeles hospital. TMZ The French Mistake scene in "Blazing Saddles" with DeLuise...
"The Soloist," which I saw Saturday night in Los Feliz, worked well enough for me as entertainment, as a Los Angeles movie and as paean to the best role newspapers...
Here's your chance to own wax figures of Uma Thuman (as Mia Wallace from "Pulp Fiction") and John Travolta as Vincent Vega. They are part of a May 1 auction...
Add L.A. Times critic Kenneth Turan to those reporting back with lukewarm reviews of "The Soloist," despite wanting to like it. I could back up and write all this in...
Joint statement from the Screen Actors Guild and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers: LOS ANGELES (April 17, 2008) – The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers...
When Fox released "Dragonball:Evolution" in 2,000 theaters last weekend, it didn't bother with newspaper ads — or print reviewers, for that matter. The teens who were the target audience just...
Joe Flint will take the lead on Company Town, the L.A. Times' entry in the blog space where the NYT has The Carpetbagger. Flint has a long resume and does...
There's a local PR angle to the legal squabble between Woody Allen and Dov Charney's American Apparel. Michael Cieply captures it at The Carpetbagger, the NYT's Hollywood blog. Mr. Allen...
Variety columnist and blogger Brian Lowry wasn't impressed by L.A. Times columnist-blogger Patrick Goldstein's recent critique of the trade paper and Peter Bart. Lowry's open letter to Goldstein gets a...
While director John McTiernan awaits a new indictment over his use of wiretapper Anthony Pellicano in a divorce case, he's pushing a new documentary that alleges the Pellicano prosecution was...
George Harrison's son Dhani and widow Olivia today in Hollywood, where Harrison was honored with a star on the Walk of Fame (and they accepted a loaf of Monastery of...
Variety executive editor Michael Speier is among those losing their jobs as part of a 7% staff cut across parent Reed Business Information, says The Wrap.com. It's the second big...
Los Angeles Times publisher Eddy Hartenstein's latest split with his editors (and possibly some ad people) is over his advocacy of a front-page ad for tonight's NBC debut of "Southland"...
I've been curious what Amy Wallace would have to say about Bart being kicked upstairs at Variety, nearly eight years after she profiled him in a terrific, much-talked about piece...
Variety editor Tim Gray is now in charge of the news operation and Peter Bart gets a new position at the trade. "Bart has managed Variety's staff and news operations...
It's not just the WSJ story I linked in the Morning Buzz. Kim Masters at The Daily Beast also writes today about Hollywood squeezing stars to take less money. Masters,...
Writer-director and ex-journalist Rod Lurie uses a second bad experience with Nikki Finke's reporting to go off on a rant about the dangers of bloggers posting inaccurate stories, usually without...
I hadn't checked in with studio tradesperson Peggy Archer's blog in awhile. Today at Totally Unauthorized, she reports pseudonymously from a shooting set. One of our pivotal scenes yesterday involved...
Steven Bach was the executive at United Artists who took the fall for "Heaven’s Gate" and went on to write "Final Cut," which William Grimes in the New York Times...
Jarre won Oscars for the scores of "Lawrence of Arabia," " Doctor Zhivago" and "A Passage to India," and composed music for more than 150 other films. He died in...
Not Finke the reporter, but her website Deadline Hollywood Daily — though they are really one and the same. The Wrap's Sharon Waxman tries to figure out what the site...
Times film columnist and blogger Patrick Goldstein responds to Variety's weekend package on bloggers and says of Peter Bart: "He's launched his own blog, which you'd have to call...
Journalist Chris Willman attended an American Cinematheque screening of the 1976 Woody Guthrie biopic "Bound for Glory" at the Aero Theatre that became, he writes on Facebook, "a nerve-wracking, weird...
President Obama stayed at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza [or not; see below] on this trip into L.A. rather than bed down in one of the mansions around town, and...
The British-born actress, 45, is survived by her husband Liam Neeson, mother Vanessa Redgrave, sister Joely Richardson, aunt Lynn Redgrave and two children. Richardson won a Tony in 1998 as...
Silver had been undergoing treatment for esophageal cancer for two years. He died today at home in New York. Silver won a best actor Tony in 1988 for "Speed-the-Plow" and...
In a "Blowback" piece on the Times' opinion web page, former LAT staffer Allan Jalon goes into the controversy that ensued after Jim Bellows let Times gossip columnist Joyce Haber...
Amy Kaufman at The Wrap has a piece up raising a lot of questions about Fade In's promise of cash and an intro to Hollywood for the winners of a...
Hedges died Tuesday morning at home in South Pasadena of melanoma. He was 57. He was a leading Hollywood lawyer and also made a name for himself as an archaeologist....
Today's segment on KCRW looks behind the scenes at The Wrap, the new Hollywood news website headed by Sharon Waxman. It airs at 4:44 p.m. at 89.9 FM, or is...
Movieline is relaunching as a web portal "covering all things Hollywood" with former Defamer bloggers Seth Abramovitch, S.T. VanAirsdale, and Kyle Buchanan on board. The press release says to await...
Jennifer Siebel Newsom, the actress who married San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom, made "The Trouble With Romance" before they met. It has been out since Feb. 1 on Netflix and...
For the first time, Times reporters and editors covering entertainment in Calendar will work alongside the Business staffers who cover the harder news side of Hollywood. A new masthead job...
I agree with Mary Melton, the executive editor of Los Angeles Magazine, who blogs that the Bill Condon-Larry Mark-Hugh Jackman Oscars show was more watchable, not less. She posts: The...
Greg Hernandez, laid off by the Daily News earlier today after finishing his Oscars coverage, blogged about it tonight at Out in Hollywood. He said the site will live on...
Daily News entertainment writer Greg Hernandez worked long hours posting a whole bunch of blog items on the Oscars yesterday and today — and now posts on Facebook that he...
If you hope to win your Oscars pool, you should have had "Slumdog Millionaire" in eight categories including best picture. Full list of winners, plus backstage video at the Academy...
There will still be a Defamer brand and Hollywood posts, but they will run as a section of Gawker's main site. Owner Nick Denton explains it's part of Gawker's transition...
Dunder Mifflin's office, parking lot and hedge are located on Saticoy Street in an industrial part of Van Nuys. In case you suspected Scranton looked eerily like the San Fernando...
KCRW will announce later today that veteran Hollywood journalist Kim Masters is taking over as host of the half-hour showbiz show The Business, which airs Mondays at 2:30 p.m. Masters...
TMZ posted last night a photo it says shows Rihanna with bruises from the alleged attack by singer Chris Brown the night before the Grammys. It appears to be an...
L.A. County sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore is getting some nice attention for Sunday's visiting blogger post at LA Observed about his famous father, the actor James Whitmore. He told the...
James Whitmore, the award-winning actor who died of lung cancer on Feb. 6, wanted to be wakened to see the inauguration of Barack Obama. He wasn't always lucid by then,...
In a statement this afternoon through crisis managers Sitrick & Co., performer Chris Brown doesn't mention Rihanna but does mention God: Words cannot begin to express how sorry and saddened...
The Huffington Post says the L.A. Times was the first major media outlet to identify Rihanna as the victim of Sunday's early morning domestic violence, "despite the LAPD's refusal to...
TMZ reports that law enforcement sources tell the site Rihanna was found in Hancock Park with two "huge contusions" on her forehead, and a bloody lip and nose, from the...
Both performers were supposed to appear this afternoon at the Grammy festivities at Staples Center, but instead Brown was being booked at the LAPD's Wilshire station and Rihanna's people were...
The Tony and Emmy Award-winning actor died today at home in Malibu. He had been diagnosed with lung cancer a week before Thanksgiving, said his son Steve Whitmore, a Los...
Hollywood apparently isn't impressed that the new Los Angeles Times thinks the cutting-edge way to cover Sundance is to give a print reporter a cheap cellphone camera and have him...
Brady did the celebrity profiles for Parade magazine for nearly 25 years — his last, of actor Kevin Bacon, runs February 15. Before that he was a Washington reporter for...
Columnist-blogger Anne Thompson is among the layoffs to hit the trade today. "Today I got slashed from the ranks of Variety staffers along with some 30 people, most of whom...
The best picture choices are "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," "Frost/Nixon," "Milk," "The Reader" and "Slumdog Millionaire." For best actress: Anne Hathaway, Angelina Jolie, Melissa Leo, Meryl Streep and...
Variety columnist Brian Lowry is now blogging about television at the trade's new BLTv — "Good TV; reasonable prices." He posts that the current TV critics tour feels more pointless...
Jeffrey Katzenberg and other Motion Picture & Television Fund officials just revealed plans to close the acute-care hospital and long-term care residence at the home in Woodland Hills. About 100...
City Council President Eric Garcetti announced this morning that actor Ricardo Montalbn died today at home in his district, surrounded by family. Montalban was 88, according to Garcetti, who made...
CityBeat and film critic Andy Klein parted ways yesterday, say sources close to the weekly and to Klein. He continues apparently with KPCC's FilmWeek segment and "Off-Ramp." This follows last...
The Los Angeles production of "Wicked" closed Sunday after 791 performances (and 12 previews) at the Pantages Theater in Hollywood. Variety says the show registered more than 1.8 million admissions...
Americans who watch TV don't watch the Golden Globes any more, even if the newspapers, blogs and celebrity cable channels continue to insist they are a big thing. An average...
Longtime film writer Ella Taylor was told today that she too is being laid off by the LA Weekly, sources say. On top of the earlier news about Steven Leigh...
Word came down from Village Voice Media HQ in Phoenix that the LA Weekly can't afford a theater editor any more. That puts Steven Leigh Morris out of a job....
"Slumdog Millionaire" won for best picture, director, writer, young actor/actress (Dev Patel) and composer, A.R. Rahman. Sean Penn won the top actor prize for his role in "Milk." Anne Hathaway...
Variety blogger-editor-columnist Anne Thompson endorses Marc Cooper's autopsy on the decline in gravitas of the LA Weekly under New Times leadership. She posts: It's a sad tale. Like many L.A....
The latest web venture from Drudge Report West Coast man Andrew Breitbart goes live Tuesday. Big Hollywood, he says, "is not a 'celebrity' gabfest or a gossip outpost - it...
Variety reports that Ned Tanen, who served as president of Universal and Paramount and produced three popular "Brat Pack" films in the 1980s, died today in Santa Monica. He was...
Roman Polanski's lawyers argue that the director's bid to have that pesky sex with a minor case from the 1970s dismissed should be moved because the entire Los Angeles Superior...
Ron Boltz, announcer Bernie Brillstein, manager Bud Browne, filmmaker George Carlin, comedian Warren Cowan, publicist Gene Evans, fireworks showman Johnny Grant, honorary mayor Charlton Heston, actor Bobbi Holtzman, director...
California Editor David Lauter rebutted former reporter Anita Busch's comments yesterday in court tying the L.A. Times to convicted private eye Anthony Pellicano. Lauter, who emailed the response to Patterico,...
At today's sentencing of Anthony Pellicano, former Los Angeles Times Hollywood reporter Anita Busch — she's also the ex-editor of The Hollywood Reporter — accuses the Times of collaborating with...
I guess it was personal with Carina Chocano. [Or not. See note.] Two months after laying her off, the Los Angeles Times today named a new second film critic to...
Jane Espenson has been part of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Battlestar Galactica," most notably, and also has written episodes of "Angel," "Gilmore Girls," "Ellen," "The O.C.," "Star Trek: Deep...
The Paley Center for Media honored actor Carl Reiner tonight at the Hyatt in Century City, but apparently the main topic of conversation was the poor quality of the hotel...
Patrick Goldstein blogs at The Big Picture that Manohla Dargis, who left the LAT for the New York Times in 2004, is seen as a movie killer. It's an open...
Hollywood financier Ryan Kavanaugh's arraignment on fresh DUI and probation violation charges has been put over to Jan. 22. By then, Sheriff Lee Baca's charity hopes that Kavanaugh makes good...
Claude Brodesser-Akner, host of The Business on Mondays on KCRW, took a stand on the show against the resignation of Rich Raddon from the L.A. Film Festival over his support...
"Wall-E" is the best picture choice of the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, with "The Dark Knight" the runner-up. Danny Boyle was picked as best director in 2008 for "Slumdog...
The director of "Nothing But the Truth" blogs some praise for newly laid-off Daily News critic Glenn Whipp and others who have lost their jobs, including Premiere's Glenn Kenney and...
The Los Angeles Film Critics Association will get together Tuesday and announce its winners of the year's movie awards. The org has a newly freshened website — the group photo...
The actress plays a newspaper reporter not — repeat not, director Rod Lurie winks — based on Judith Miller in next week's new thriller, "Nothing But the Truth." Beckinsale and...
The Hollywood financier was arrested again for drunk driving, speeding and driving on a suspended license — back in October, while still on probation for an earlier conviction, the New...
Variety has details on more than a dozen jobs cuts today at its rival Hollywood trade: The layoffs amount to a significant reduction in the paper's reporting staff. Also cut...
Last night at the Beverly Hills Hotel, PEN Center USA gave a lifetime achievement award to multi-faceted writer Larry Gelbart and its First Amendment Award to the Writers Guild. Jesse...
The life of a local television news cameraman involves a lot of hurry up and wait. Case in point: this afternoon's (yawn) Grammy nominations concert, as Channel 2's Bryan Frank...
It's not often you see Hollywood lawyers the prominence of Terry Christensen go to federal prison. He was sentenced today to three years, plus a $250,000 fine, for conspiring with...
From around the local media: Sam Rubin talked to SAG president Alan Rosenberg on the KTLA Morning News. "We've made monumental moves in their direction...and they have not moved one...
Variety editor in chief Peter Bart blogs that the Screen Actors Guild decision to call a strike vote can be summed up this way: "Its other strategies having failed, SAG...
Prince has lived in Los Angeles since last spring — that is, if you consider the rarefied gated nouveau complex of Beverly Park to be part of the real L.A....
Politico's Jeffrey Ressner compiled short bios on the seven insiders who he calls Barack Obama's real friends in Hollywood. "Obamas tightly knit circle is mostly Chicago-based, but there is a...
The lead movie review in today's print Calendar section of the Los Angeles Times isn't by lead critic Kenneth Turan (his review of Stranded gets second billing.) Or Carina Chocano,...
The movie based on LAT columnist Steve Lopez's stories and book about homeless musician Nathaniel Ayers was already being promoted in trailers. But Paramount bumped it from the November schedule,...
Milwaukee lawyers Robert Bernhoft and Robert Barnes figured that getting actor Wesley Snipes off the felony tax charges he faced, and opening an office in Malibu, would gain them entree...
The New York Times' David Carr jets out to the coast and finds that in Hollywood, it's still morning in America. Hollywood comes by its indifference honestly. Certainly, the stock...
After 25 years as a talent agent and literary agent, Nancy Nigrosh is leaving Innovative Artists and Hollywood with a spirited call for a return to the lone screenwriter getting...
According to Nikki, producer Harvey Weinstein told Page Six he'll give $1 million to charity if she can produce an email that Scott Rudin wrote about Weinstein's "alleged callous treatment...
The Hollywood legend died yesterday at home near Westport, Connecticut, according to his publicist, Jeff Sanderson at Warren Cowan and Associates. Newman had been battling cancer for years and recently...
James Hibberd, senior reporter and blogger at the Hollywood Reporter, grades the 25 best and worst ad art for fall TV shows. Of the "Gossip Girl" poster he writes, "On...
Tina Fey won Emmy awards for acting, writing and being one of the executive producers on "30 Rock," which got the trophy for outstanding comedy series. Fey then took a...
Why yes, I believe they did. Terry Christensen's law firm sent out a press release today (via Sitrick & Co.) that says he'll be "withdrawing" from the practice of law...
The film in which Robert Downey Jr. portrays LAT columnist Steve Lopez, and Jamie Foxx plays downtown street musician Nathaniel Ayers, must be getting close. The trailer runs 2:31 on...
Sen. John McCain "has been relatively aggressive when it comes to tapping into the pool of Hollywood donors who, like their counterparts on the Democratic side, often give over concerns...
As Mark picked up earlier at LA Biz Observed, prominent lawyer Terry Christensen and former private eye Anthony Pellicano were convicted today of conspiring to illegally wiretap the ex-wife of...
Starr, the makeup artist for Angelina Jolie and other celebrities, was found deceased inside his Silver Lake Elysian Heights apartment. He was described variously as 48 or 51. Police forced...
LA Observed author David Rensin was on a book tour-vacation when Hollywood manager and producer Bernie Brillstein ">died, but I for one have been anticipating David's reaction. He helped Brillstein...
Bernie Brillstein, the successful Hollywood manager and producer, died last night after suffering from complications following double-bypass heart surgery in February. Here's a snip from Cynthia Littleton's story on the...
Journalist Sharon Waxman blogs that the trade paper is on the market, based on two sources....
O'Brien takes over from Jay Leno next June 1, NBC announces. AP Also: Ebert and Roeper quit "At the Movies."...
A special edition of Claude Brodesser-Akner's The Business that aired at 2:30 this afternoon (and will again at 7 p.m.) features a rare head-to-head conversation with the dueling presidents of...
On one side, the Screen Actors Guild has just hired Sitrick and Company, Nikki Finke reports. AFTRA, on the other hand, uses 42West, the firm whose Hollywood practice is headed...
Britt Allcroft is the Santa Monica-based creator of "Shining Time Station" on PBS and "Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends." If you have been the parent of young children, you...
The writer of the Times' weekly Big Picture column will now start posting to a blog, also called The Big Picture. The print column will become a rehash of what's...
The once-edgy comic who played on his counter-culture roots died about 6 pm at Saint John's Health Center in Santa Monica. He was admitted in the afternoon for chest pains,...
KCRW host Harry Shearer and KFI's Bill Handel are on the list to get their stars installed on the Hollywood walk of fame next year. Among the others are Cameron...
Anita Busch, the journalist who was famously threatened by associates of jailed Hollywood snoop Anthony Pellicano while reporting for the L.A. Times, has a letter in Saturday's LAT co-signed by...
Two of the lawyers featured prominently in the HBO documentary on Roman Polanski that debuted this week have issued a statement disputing the Superior Court's allegation that the film was...
The public information office at the Los Angeles County Superior Court has a bone to pick with tonight's Roman Polanski documentary on HBO. The court sent out this media advisory:...
Journalists attending the junket for "Love Guru" were required to sign a detailed contract about how they would treat...Justin Timberlake? Sharon Waxman verbally flails his handlers, appropriately: Has Justin Timberlake...
Perhaps hundreds of classic 35-millimeter film prints burned up in the weekend fire, causing an immediate impact on films available to theaters, museums and other places that use the old...
Turns out that irreplaceable master recordings from top artists may not have been lost in the destroyed video vault at Universal Studios. Nikki Finke was the first to report there...
The courthouse facade on Courthouse Square was saved, and no sound stages were burned. The statement that follows sheds no light on the fate of original master recordings said to...
The former E! Channel host, Elite model and daughter-in-law to Ed Asner (she's now married to Steven Soderbergh) has a new novel landing tomorrow. "Whacked" is set in Hollywood, of...
First, some raw Associated Press video from this morning. AP's Mike Meadows on the ground, via L.A. Times gallery: Aftermath, from Andrew Gombert / EPA via L.A. Times gallery:...
Thousands of original Decca, MCA, and ABC master recordings belonging to Universal Music were lost in today's fire at Universal Studios, Nikki Finke says, quoting an unidentified source. Artists such...
Universal's New York and New England sets, Courthouse Square, the King Kong stage, at least one soundstage and a video vault have been destroyed by a fire that began...
"Moguls, Millionaires & Movie Stars: Hollywood Between the Wars, 1920-1940" will be at the Huntington Library in San Marino on Friday and Saturday. Panels will explore the rise of the...
Andy Fiscella owns industry bars the Dime and Winston's, recently added Crown Bar, and is known for banning Britney Spears at one of his clubs. In today's Hollywood, that all...
Nikki Finke points a chiding finger at Defamer, Variety columnist Anne Thompson, LAT columnist Patrick Goldstein and Slate's Kim Masters for posting an erroneous item that she says began...
Cancer claimed Oscar winning director, producer and actor Sydney Pollack Monday at his home in Pacific Palisades. Pollack won his Academy Awards for best director and best picture for "Out...
Jennifer Lerew, an animation artist who blogs at The Blackwing Diaries, has posted some photos of women who worked during the Depression at Disney's old Hyperion studio. in what I...
Verdicts are still being read, but former Hollywood private eye and muscle Anthony Pellicano has been convicted of all but one count of racketeering and conspiracy. (So much for being...
Variety calls Cowan the "father of Hollywood press agents" and his firm, Rogers and Cowan, at one time "the biggest entertainment PR firm in the world, with a list of...
Film financier Ryan Kavanaugh's company, Relativity Media, backed Columbia Pictures Catch and Release. Today's NYT uses that connection to lead into a story about Kavanaugh's lawyer trying to use connections...
He actually sounds pretty forgiving about that whole Tupac Shakur business, while talking to Associated Press about getting his star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame and house-hunting in Los Angeles:...
The Huffington Post's Allison Hope Weiner means it sarcastically: Jettisoning the whole John Adams "fact is a stubborn thing" quote used by Mr. Saunders yesterday, Mr. Pellicano went with his...
The trade paper unveiled "a wholesale overhaul of its iconic brand," and it goes beyond just the design. Here's how The Hollywood Reporter itself explains it: "...a redesigned look and...
Ex-private eye to the stars Anthony Pellicano told the judge at his trial that he won't be testifying after all. And the accused got a little testy when the judge...
Actor Charles Durning landed on Normandy's Omaha Beach as a 17-year-old Army Ranger in June 1944. Before leaving Europe, he was wounded three times and awarded three Purple Hearts and...
Animation specialist Charles Solomon writes in the LAT obituary: Oliver Martin "Ollie" Johnston Jr., the last living member of the celebrated "Nine Old Men" of Disney animation whose work set...
Former New York Times Hollywood correspondent Bernard Weinraub, who had teamed with Anita Busch at one point, also took the stand today in the Anthony Pellicano trial. Allison Hope Weiner's...
The reporter who started it all — by being threatend via Pellicano and associates to lay off a story about Steven Seagal — took the stand this afternoon. She recounted...
Allison Hope Weiner has more exclusive audio clips from the Anthony Pellicano case, of Michael Ovitz on the phone asking for a meeting with the felonious private investigator and Hollywood...
It's hard not to notice that the periodic recaps of web performance at LATimes.com don't dwell on writing or reporting quality, impact of the journalism or connecting with Los Angeles....
Charlton Heston wrote a lot of letters to the editor. Today's L.A. Times excerpts some the paper received. Sample: Spike Lee's threat IN a fit of pique at the Cannes...
Real name: John Charles Carter. Passing: Saturday at home in Beverly Hills. Previous diagnosis: Neurological symptoms "consistent with Alzheimers disease." IMDb credits: 1941-2007. Selected films: Ben-Hur, The Ten Commandments, The...
Deadline Hollywood Daily blogger Nikki Finke didn't disclose that a law firm she wrote about is representing her in a lawsuit against E-Trade over surreptitious recording, the New York Observer...
Remember a few weeks back when LAO posted the news on Associated Press muscling up its entertainment and celebrity overage out of the Los Angeles bureau? That announcement, a month...
What did they charge to see a silent movie in 1923, a quarter? At UCLA's Royce Hall this afternoon, many in the nearly full house paid $25 to see Harold...
The Anthony Pellicano trial jury was seated today. The government's opening statement is set to begin tomorrow at 8 am. The prosecution's official witness list, unsealed today, has 127 names...
Would you believe 93.6 percent of 4,060 votes cast by Writers Guild of America members in Los Angeles and New York OK'd the new contracts, which runs through May 1,...
Initial numbers from Nielsen look like a 20% drop in TV viewers from last year. About two-thirds of the people watching TV during the show watched something else in Nielsen's...
Heather and Jessica got a gig live-blogging the red carpet for New York magazine's website, starting at 3 pm Hollywood and Highland time....
Crisis PR executive Michael Sitrick tried to collect a $7.7 million judgment from Ryan Kavanuagh, but a judge Friday said no. The reason is that Sitrick apparently agreed previously not...
Dan Becker, the Los Angeles-based director of entertainment content for Associated Press, announced a couple of moves as part of the wire service turning up its entertainment coverage: The Los...
A mini-profile of L.A. Times publisher David Hiller in tomorrow's New York Times leads with the idea that he's star-struck by the glamour of his adopted hometown. It's pegged to...
Today is when Hollywood and Highland really starts to feel the pain of hosting the Academy Awards for another year. Hollywood Boulevard is set to close to traffic at 10...
Of the 3,775 votes cast by members of the Writers Guild of America, 92% were for going back to work. "The strike is over," union president Patric Verrone said last...
Mark Lisanti has posted, by his estimate, 9,000 to 10,000 posts since he began as the original, and anonymous, Defamer. This one today was the hardest:...
William Booth, resident feature writer in L.A. for the Washington Post, lurked at Saturday night's Scientific and Technical Awards given out by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences...
If the members vote to lift the strike as Writers Guild leaders expect they will, some writers could go back to work on Wednesday. As it is, show runners are...
As Mark Lacter posted this afternoon, several media sources are reporting progress in the Hollywood writers strike. "Informal talks between representatives of Hollywoods striking writers and production companies have eliminated...
Prompted by the $25,000 spent by the LAPD to escort Britney Spears to the hospital, Councilman Dennis Zine said today he'll push for an ordinance that would create a "personal...
Former L.A. Times movie critic Jack Mathews says he'll retire from the New York Daily News at the end of February. He and his wife are moving to the Oregon...
Channel 5 will remain at the Sunset Boulevard location indefinitely. The sale to Hudson Capital has been pending since last year and went through at $125 million. The familiar landmark...
Los Angeles does its annual movie issue for February, with Philip Seymour Hoffman and Julie Christie on the cover and a lineup inside that includes LA Observed's Mark Lacter challenging...
Author Samantha Dunn writes in today's Calendar section, "We should thank our lucky stars Mary McNamara's debut novel, 'Oscar Season,' arrives when it does, because if the writers strike goes...
In the story the New York Times will run in the paper tomorrow, Heath Ledger was found naked on the floor (not on the bed) and there were no illegal...
The two sides agree to talk about talking, but not to talk publicly: The Writers Guild of America, West (WGAW) and the Writers Guild of America, East (WGAE) have issued...
The 28-year-old actor may have overdosed in his Mary-Kate Olsen's a SoHo apartment. He reportedly was discovered by a masseuse arriving for an appointment this afternoon. The body was face...
Defamer got a look at allegations against Hollywood payroll firm Axium filed in court documents, and teases "We're talking multiple identities, cash payments to former supermodels for 'consulting' and all...
Here's a sure sign that things aren't going well for you. Associated Press began writing Britney Spears' obituary last month, just in case it's needed unexpectedly. The wire service prepares...
The actor Brad Renfro was found dead at home on South Ogden Drive this morning by his girlfriend. Police said there was no suspicion of foul play, but a cause...
To follow up an item from the Morning Buzz, screenwriter and producer Roger Avary released this statement regarding the weekend crash in Ojai that led to Avary's arrest, the injury...
Nikki Finke has declared a week-long break in her frenzy of posting about the writers' strike. Says the LA Weekly columnist and Deadline Hollywood Daily blogger: Im exhausted. I'm not...
W does its version of A-list Hollywood for February, with Keira Knightley and James McAvoy on the cover (and in an online slide show) and stories inside such as Gabriel...
Eric Estrin, a striking WGA member, is a moderator at Writer Action, the message board where Writers Guild members hang out to float conspiracy theories, skewer the producers and rip...
It's the end of an era in Hollywood. Johnny Grant, the last of the "honorary mayors" for whom the ceremonial title still meant something, was found dead tonight in his...
Three L.A. Times editors go online to defend the paper's use of three reporters to cover Ms. Spears' latest public meltdown. "If we had wanted simply to report the facts...
John Rabe of KPCC's "Off-Ramp," inspired by Frank Baker's memo to the Los Angeles bureau, ponders how the AP might incorporate more Britney news on the wire. Guess which dispatch...
Tina Daunt posits in her Cause Celebre column in today's Calendar that Hollywood's Hillary contingent is on the verge of buying tickets on the Barack Obama bus. On desks all...
Memo on coverage of faded pop tart Britney Spears from Associated Press' Los Angeles assistant bureau chief: From: Baker, Frank S. Sent: Tue 1/8/2008 11:58 AM To: News - Southern...
Dianne Ogden, a longtime music talent coordinator, was one of four women who testified in Phil Spector's murder trial (which ended in a mistrial) that he had threatened her with...
The New York Observer writes of Nikki Finke, calling her The Media Mensch of the Year: The biggest entertainment story of the year has also turned into the biggest story...
Times Hollywood columnist Patrick Goldstein got off some good observations about the waning quality, originality and relevance of Oscar race analyzing and gossip. The award announcements make a nice one-day...
In 1957 the mayor of Los Angeles helped install a plaque at 7th and Main streets downtown commemorating the birth of the local film industry at that spot. (It's where,...
The one-time vaudeville booker who became the agent for Judy Garland, Henry Fonda, Barbra Streisand and other stars died of lung cancer Tuesday at home in Beverly Hills. Fields was...
OK technically it was an editor's note. And the day was Sunday. But it was just pointed out to me. The subject is architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne's piece in Sunday's...
There Will Be Blood was voted the best picture of 2007. Here are the other awards that local critics went for, picked up from the LAFCA website. DIRECTOR: Paul Thomas...
Nice photo from yesterday's writers guild street rally in Hollywood by Barbara Davidson at the L.A. Times. Strike coverage is pulled together at a compilation page on the LAT website...
Writers Guild strikers and their brethren are planning to converge Tuesday afternoon for a rally, accompanied by Alicia Keys. The guild is hoping for a turnout of thousands. Here's the...
Brian Grazer was "deeply upset by the episode" in which the L.A. Times asked him to guest-edit the opinion section on Sunday, then refused to publish it — and he...
OK, just kidding about that. But who knew her older sister is a rabbi on a kibbutz in Israel? I guess you would if you remember Sarah's debut joke on...
The writers strike has inspired a frenzy of non-stop posting by Nikki Finke at Deadline Hollywood Daily. (I shudder to think of the condition of her office.) Since Friday morning...
Axel Koester grabbed this scene (for the New York Times) of photographers swarming actress Mandy Moore's arrival at a Beverly Hills restaurant. The term paparazzi increasingly encompasses not only the...
"Dancing with the Stars" didn't work out for Leeza Gibbons, so the former celebrity gossip monger has time to take a new gig — Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's appointee to the...
Monday was bring your family to the picket line day. The Tuesday target for Writers Guild media attention is Universal. The talent scheduled to appear outside the main gates on...
Sure, Allan Mayer is a veteran Hollywood crisis flack with many successes on his resume — but he's not the only one. So what explains this slobbery treatment in Elizabeth...
Brian Grazer (that's him on the left, pre-big hair) and his younger brother Gavin, who has nepotistic roles in several of Brian's movies, have a complicated relationship. Complicated enough that...
Remember that episode back in March when Andrs Martinez resigned as editor of the Times editorial pages after the publisher, David Hiller, didn't back him in the Brian Grazer...
This reorganization was announced Friday, but since I wasn't paying attention then — and I want to have the moves noted in the archives — here it is a couple...
Variety deputy editor Anne Thompson says the season for newspapers to crank up their Oscars-Globes-etc blogs is fast approaching. She gives a rundown on who's doing what at the big...
Daily News television blogger David Kronke had a bad run-in with some nuts (he's allergic) at this weekend's pre-Emmy tea thrown by BAFTA and the BBC. Kronke refers to himself...
Ratings for last year's Oscars with Jon Stewart hosting were abysmal, but the New York Times' Michael Cieply reports that he's the choice again. An announcement is expected Wednesday. I...
PeopleJam, a self-help website due to launch this month by Hollywood execs Robert Tercek and Matt Edelman, has already been dinged for the lame name and "sickly sweet" approach. Now...
The Oscar-winning actress and former Mrs. Ronald Reagan (when he was a SAG Democrat) never let her true age be pinned down. Katie Harris reports at Bloomberg that Wyman died...
The Hollywood Reporter's legal site gives up the ghost as a standalone publication effective, well, immediately. Coverage of Hollywood's legal movers and issues will become a "dedicated channel" on THR.com,...
Since the U.S. government appears to be sharing his email with journalists, the Times' Chuck Philips figures it's only fitting to get out the rest of the story. It begins...
In Friday's story about actor Steven Seagal feeling burned by the Pellicano scandal, Chuck Philips of the Times reported that U.S. Attorney spokesman Thom Mrozek "declined to comment" on questions...
Elizabeth Guider, the new editor of The Hollywood Reporter, is out of state but ordered the trade's website to take down this morning's story by Ray Richmond about Merv Griffin's...
He did not pay anyone to threaten reporter Anita Busch and pretty much loathes PI Anthony Pellicano, says the actor whose name was prominently mentioned when the feds first began...
Former ICM co-president Ed Limato is moving back to the William Morris Agency, as Nikki Finke reported earlier in the week. LImato spent ten years at WMA between stints at...
Alex Ben Block reports at Hollywood Today that production of "Desperate Housewives" has been kicked out of Stage One at Universal Studios and that talks are underway for "The Tonight...
Jim Bates, the deputy editor on the entertainment-tech desk in the Times' Business section, is jumping into the crisis PR game at Sitrick and Company. He has the second-longest tenure...
Jacob Adams, the man thought to have been mauled to death by dogs at the Brentwood home of Ving Rhames, is listed as the screenwriter of a current Rhames film...
Tim Swanson will leave Portfolio to take over as film editor in the Times' Calendar section. He's formerly of Premiere and Variety. Memo below:...
Elizabeth Guider, a 18-year vet at Variety who has been sliding down the masthead lately, has jumped to The Hollywood Reporter as Editor. Most recently she was an editor at...
Former LA Weekly publisher Michael Sigman has optioned the film rights to that piece about Washington lobbyists in Harper's by reporter Ken Silverstein, who posed as a customer to nab...
I'm guessing she won't get any rehab endorsement deals any time soon....
Lindsay Lohan, fresh off a second stint in rehab, was booked in Santa Monica this morning on suspicion of drunken driving and felony possession of cocaine. She also got nabbed...
I'm told that Women's Wear Daily confirms in today's paper that editors pulled a recent story on Hollywood journo Nikki Finke off the paper's website. (It's not on Lexis/Nexis or...
Jacob Bernstein, offspring of Nora Ephron and Carl Bernstein, tried in the July 6 Women's Wear Daily to comprehend the Nikki Finke phenomenon. He writes that "Finke has vaulted to...
Ross Johnson of Sitrick and Company did such a good job promoting Tuesday night's premiere party for Captivity that he had bloggers falling over themselves to pre-hype the event, got...
The actor whose familiar face graced these pages last year died Monday night at home in Brentwood. He was 102 years old. In January 2006, we and a couple of...
Marlise Kast is a former Hollywood production assistant who began digging up dirt for The Globe at age 21. She now dishes about her three years on the tabloid beat...
The actress uses her second contribution to the Huffington Post fray to decry the proliferation of "elimination-based" shows. "I understand there is a good side, a jubilant winner getting their...
I'll be part of a "poolside chat" at the Los Angeles Film Festival tomorrow night called "Who Let The Blogs Out?" The panel and schmooze session will be held around...
Anderson Jones, a freelance film critic who formerly reviewed for E! Online and made appearances on the "E! True Hollywood Story," died after suffering a heart attack at a promotional...
BBC correspondent David Willis' attempt to break into Hollywood as an actor has finally come to an end. But not before his ambitions crested with a call to be an...
Melissa Grego, managing editor at TelevisionWeek, posts to a blog-driven column reporting on her lunches with Hollywood figures. She started it up in January and most recently has dished on...
The mogul's backing of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is called "the political equivalent of the Oscar" in the Cause Celebre column by Tina Daunt that plays on this morning's LAT...
Paris Hilton was fitted with an ankle bracelet and released to house arrest after serving the four-plus days in county that are more typical for her kind of offense. The...
Thursday night's benefit concert for the Academy of Music at Hamilton High will feature David Foster as emcee, Kenny G, trumpeter Chris Botti, the horns of Blood Sweat and Tears...
Gawker says that New York Times Hollywood writer Sharon Waxman will go on book leave this summer then be reassigned off the beat and probably out of the L.A. bureau....
Paris Hilton turned herself in at the Men's Central Jail downtown on Sunday night — after attending the MTV Movie Awards — and was driven to her temporary new digs...
Brooks Barnes is leaving the Wall Street Journal's television beat to cover the business of Hollywood in the New York Times bureau here. He is replacing New York-bound Laura Holson....
Author Clive Cussler owes Crusader Entertainment $5 million in damages over the film Sahara, but the jury also ruled that Crusader owes Cussler about $8.5 million for the rights to...
Nikki Finke, apparently a main generator of traffic to LA Weekly's website, seems a mite upset that today's issue credits David Poland's Movie City News with a million visitors a...
Although Paris Hilton might be going to jail, Elliot Mintz is now a free man. He announced last night that he has resigned as the tabloid fodder's harried mouthpiece. He...
Paris Hilton will get no work release, furloughs, cushy suburban jail or electronic monitoring and instead must spend a month and a half locked up at the Century Regional Detention...
Just before jurors returned a verdict yesterday in a breach-of-contract case involving the creators of the NBC sitcom "Will & Grace," lawyers for the network revealed that the jury foreman...
Snakeskin Shamesin, third in the series of Naomi Hirahara's novels set in Southern California that feature Japanese-American gardener Mas Arai, won the Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America...
Publicist and friend Warren Cowan made the announcement that Jack Valenti, the former head of the Motion Picture Association of America, died this afternoon. He had been in ill...
The Center for Responsive Politics broke out the by-state contributions to the '08 presidential candidates: Sen. Hillary Clinton leads the way in mining California for bucks so far. Here are...
Don LaFontaine, whose voice has been heard on movie trailers for decades, has gone public on a Geico commercial. That was reason enough for Radar Online to chat up the...
In the new W, former Variety scribe Gabriel Snyder explains the role of Hollywood political consultants and updates the roster of who works with whom. Noah Mamet, for instance, wrangled...
What I think was the last single-screen movie house to open in Westwood Village, the Mann National, will close at the end of this week. It's where The Exorcist opened...
Back in 2003, the Daily Mail paid a financial settlement and retracted its report that producer Steve Bing had hired PI to the stars Anthony Pellicano to spy on and...
"Original blogger" Army Archerd compares the recent "Entourage" premiere party in the dome at the Arclight to the theater's 1963 unveiling as the Cinerama Dome. The Cinerama's super-wide curved screen...
Film director Bob Clark and his son Ariel were killed in the crash that kept Pacific Coast Highway closed through the Palisades during today's morning rush hours. Clark directed A...
Halle Berry seems pretty pleased that the studio paid up for her to receive a star this morning outside the Kodak Theatre at Hollywood and Highland. Via Defamer. Photo: AP...
Brian Grazer's thoughts on the big issues won't be in Sunday's Los Angeles Times Current section, if there even is a Current stuffed deep into papers this weekend. But here...
The L.A. Times has announced that Current, the paper's Sunday (for now) commentary and ideas section, will have a guest editor every quarter to bring a little outside intellectual...
Standup comedian Richard Jeni was found gravely injured from a gunshot wound Saturday morning inside his West Hollywood apartment. He died soon after at the hospital. His girlfriend told police...
Cynthia Littleton was the recently named (well, last March) editor of The Hollywood Reporter and Anne Thompson was deputy film editor. They join Variety as deputy editor for news development...
Men, that's who. Only 36 percent of the broadcast viewers on ABC were male, tying the shows all-time lowest popularity among men, Alex Ben Block reports at Hollywood Today. Block...
Chris Ayres, Los Angeles correspondent of the Times of London, liveblogged the Oscars and found Her Majesty Gwyneth Paltrow's vocal stylings a tad odd. For a Crossroads girl, anyway: "My...
In emails flitting around Hollywood today, Charlie Sheen and Emilio Estevez take offense at a passage in yesterday's Times by Susan King. It ran in The Envelope and read: "Demander...
Hollywood location meister Harry Medved, co-author of Hollywood Escapes, has a piece on MSN about the locations used in this year's Oscar-nominated movies. If the beach in Letters from Iwo...
Pasadena keeps the Rose Parade route open to the public pretty much until show time. Ditto for the Los Angeles Marathon. But for some reason, busy Hollywood Boulevard has to...
When the March issue of Los Angeles hits in a few days, media columnist RJ Smith will offer his suggestions for saving the Times after talking with publisher David Hiller...
Five Grammys for the trio that Bushies love to hate, including best album, record and song of the year. Online coverage: The Envelope, Red Carpet blog, Variety. Photo: Anne Cusack...
Forest Whitaker picked up the British Academy of Film and Television Arts' best actor award tonight at the Royal Opera House in London, for portraying Idi Amin in Last King...
Her lawyer says that the TV celebrity and former model has died. AP moved a news alert, and TMZ reports that she was found collapsed in her room at the...
Variety buries the lede: the trade's paywall has been dropped, so now "every story, article or item is available for free." Well not quite everything. The news is tucked onto...
Sasha Stone has run OscarWatch.com for seven years, but suddenly the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has hit her with a cease-and-desist letter over the name. She posts...
Lawyers for Phil Anschutz say the stinker of a movie lost $105 million because Clive Cussler lied about his book sales. Cussler says that's, uh, ridiculous. All I want to...
Sidney Sheldon had won a screenwriting Oscar (The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer), a Tony ("Redhead") and created TV sitcoms ("I Dream of Jeannie" and "Patty Duke") before beginning to write...
Bob Carroll Jr. worked with writing partner Madelyn Pugh Davis for more than 60 years, including on all the television series that Lucille Ball starred in. Carroll and and Pugh...
Govindi Murty, co-founder of the Liberty Film Festival, sits in the guest chair this weekend on "Ebert and Roeper." She joins a lineup that has included Jay Leno, director Kevin...
Borat has been out since November and has grossed more than $100 million. The DVD release must be in sight. So some attendees at Wednesday night's members-only screening for the...
In a recent interview with FilmStew, Aaron Sorkin complained about the less-than-cheerleading coverage of "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip" by writers at the Times' Calendar section. He named Maria...
PI Anthony Pellicano's client isn't as much a fool as he seemed. A week after receiving court permission to represent himself against charges of racketeering and wiretapping, the Daily Journal...
Full list of winners and nominees at the Hollywood Foreign Press Association website....
How times have changed. The FBI filled a room at the Westwood federal building yesterday with screenwriters invited in for a seminar on how to realistically portray anti-terrorist efforts. Special...
Mogul Kirk Kerkorian got briefings from his high-powered attorney on what P.I. Anthony Pellicano was learning from illegal wiretaps of Kerkorian's ex-wife in their child-custody and support case, the New...
They're billing it as the First Annual L.A. Weekly Film Critics Poll, gathering votes from 72 critics "who span the spectrum of print, broadcast and online journalism." They include all...
Judith Regan's upcoming fight for her honor with Rupert Murdoch's empire inspires the NYT's Sharon Waxman to muse on Hollywood court battles of yore: think Bette Davis meets Joan Crawford...
James Mee, the Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy who arrested Mel Gibson in Malibu, claims through his lawyer that he's being harassed by supervisors. Mee's arrest report, you might remember,...
One thing I can add to the Times' appreciation today of It's a Wonderful Life, the film classic starring James Stewart and Donna Reed: all that fake snow was created...
Warner Bros sends word that animation legend Joseph Barbera died today at home in Studio City. He and partner William Hanna, who died in 2001, had worked together at MGM,...
Hollywood Today calls itself a "newsmagazine, with attitude...we cover the world of entertainment in all its multimedia glory, from screens and stages large and small." The site has been active...
The founder of Atlantic Records died today in New York. Ertegun fell at an Oct. 29 concert by the Rolling Stones and later slipped into a coma. He will be...
AmericanLife TV is a "network for baby boomers" showing up on the new channel alignment for Time Warner Cable. Its selling point is old series' like "The Honeymooners, The Man...
Readers of The Envelope in yesterday's Times might have thought that Calendar staffer in New York Paul Lieberman's interview with Martin Scorsese was timely. It was all framed around the...
This is kind of fun: Bonhams and Butterfields' big auction Sunday of Hollywood materials includes papers that Warren Beatty apparently abandoned in a New York hotel suite in the late...
The author and screenwriter contributed a blog entry on Condoleezza Rice to the Huffington Post over the weekend that begins: I met Condoleezza Rice last weekend. She was much prettier...
A quartet of Hollywood old hands — Patrick Goldstein and John Horn of the LAT and Sharon Waxman and Laura Holson of the NYT — agreed last night at Zcalo's...
The New York Film Critics Circle today voted United 93 their best film of the year. Martin Scorsese was deemed best director for The Departed. Anne Thompson has more at...
If you saw the SUV barreling the wrong way in the carpool lane on the 134 early this morning, first, congratulations for not getting killed. Second, the SUV driver who's...
They are refining the masthead titles at Variety. The winner seems to be Michael Speier (pictured), who has been named executive editor of news for Variety and Daily Variety. He...
Variety editor-in-chief Peter Bart uses today's column to say he doesn't think much of The Envelope, the L.A. Times' effort to take Oscar campaign ads away from the trades. He...
Hollywood Reporter lays off five more, including executive editor Peter Pryor, Fishbowl LA and Nikki Finke say. Earlier in the week editorial director Howard Burns got the axe. (I'm...
Tuba players came from all over to play at USC's Bovard Auditorium in tribute to the member of their club whose deep notes you have heard the most. Tommy Johnson,...
Amy Pascal, promoted this year to co-chairman of Sony Pictures Entertainment, tops the latest edition of The Hollywood Reporter's Women in Entertainment Power 100. She also holds the title of...
William Morris has sent along the press release on former Villaraigosa deputy Cecile Ablack, who we told you Friday was going Hollywood. The flackage — which notes that Chris Petrikin,...
Reports in the newsroom are that Howard Burns, editorial director of The Hollywood Reporter, will leave the job tomorrow. A call to him was transferred to spokeswoman Linda Miller, who...
Lippin had co-managed Brian Wilson and had been a PR rep for, among others, Prince, Eric Clapton and Stephen Stills. The Lippin Group, where she was president, said that she...
Bobby is getting mixed reviews as a piece of drama, but this Los Angeles history buff liked it. Where the story line lagged, the sound track (even Demi Moore crooning...
Inventing Lonelygirl15: Wired's December issue goes inside the Los Angeles apartment where the wildly popular web tale of Bree and Danny was hatched and taped. Writer Joshua Davis met creator...
Times Hollywood columnist Patrick Goldstein is given a page in today's print version of The Envelope to deliver his take on four of the bloggers who occupy his space in...
Andrew Gumbel is The Independent's man in Los Angeles and a Huffington Post blogger. He's been watching the response to Michael Richards' outburst and finds "there's something about the sheer...
After presumably watching Michael Richards' halting, disjointed and not terribly convincing mea culpa on David Letterman last night, Blair H. Taylor — president and CEO of the Los Angeles Urban...
The director died last night in an undisclosed Los Angeles hospital. His production company hasn't yet released the cause of death. Altman directed critical favorites such as M-A-S-H, Nashville, The...
TMZ.com is getting a lot of attention (again) — managing editor Harvey Levin is live on CNN right now — for video of comedian Michael Richards throwing around the n-word...
They bill Anthony Pellicano's scribbles as a Web exclusive guest column, but it's really a pick-up from a book of legal writing on the concept of reasonable doubt. The imprisoned...
If you want to be technical, The Knife is "a blog about restaurants favored by the entertainment industry. Monday through Thursday, The Knife is where to eat and drink in...
Former L.A Times and New York Times reporter Anita Busch, in an amendment this week to a civil suit, names onetime Hollywood power Michael Ovitz as one of the figures...
TMZ.com went down to the Los Angeles County courthouse, pulled the papers and has them posted exclusively. Spears is using celebrity divorce lawyer Laura Wasser, whose clients have included Angelina...
David Willis returns this week to his day job as a reporter in the BBC bureau in Los Angeles, after a six-month sabbatical to try his hand at Hollywood. He...
Sharon Stone's appearance last week at the International Women's Media Foundation banquet in Beverly Hills. Stone presented the group's Courage in Journalism award to the mother of Christian Science Monitor...
Tom Cruise and his producing partner Paula Wagner have inked a deal to take over MGM's dormant United Artists film label, Anne Thompson reports at the Hollywood Reporter's Risky Biz...
Filming for Live Free or Die Hard has been postponed a couple of days, so the production won't be shutting down Imperial Highway beside LAX until the weekend. Previously: Vengeance...
Wilshire & Washington is designed to "highlight the enduring relationship between entertainment and politics. More than a mere curiosity, the intersection of these worlds play out daily in fund raising,...
Rob Reiner's California Children and Families Commission, also known as the First 5 Commission, is the target of a stinging state audit. The commission "failed to properly award millions of...
Paparazzi agency X-17 is making plans to go after celebrity gossip blogger Perez Hilton for profiting from the company's photos. Radar Online says the agency is talking to other creators...
Live Free or Die Hard received the permits it wanted and will be disrupting traffic in El Segundo and the south side of LAX starting Thursday. And not just a...
TMZ says that a camera crew working for E! Entertainment Television entered an open gate at Brad Pitt's Hollywood Hills compound on Oct. 19 and was caught on videotape. The...
The Hollywood Reporter has joined the website redesign parade, giving the site a thorough remake. Flackage: New features include site-wide integration of The Reporters database, streamlined video, easier navigation and...
James Mee, the Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy in Malibu who booked Mel Gibson in July, had his home computer confiscated and other records seized last month, TMZ reported this...
A newsroom source says the staff will be gathered shortly to be told that The Hollywood Reporter publisher Tony Uphoff is out and will be replaced by someone from Billboard....
In order to shoot scenes for Live Free or Die Hard with Bruce Willis, 20th Century Fox wants to close Imperial Highway beside LAX — and some lanes of the...
In an essay that ran in the Los Angeles Review, novelist Tara Ison writes about her six-month relationship with an actor who has worked enough to be familiar — and...
Nikki Finke adds some meat to Monday's Allan Mayer-exits-Sitrick stories, saying that Mayer wanted to move from crisis PR into "a more strategic kind of communications." She reports the split...
Allan Mayer, who developed the entertainment practice for Sitrick and Company after writing a book with the boss, is leaving to start his own firm, Anne Thompson reports at her...
In today's story about Republican congressman Mark Foley's suggestive emails to congressional pages of the underage male variety, The Hollywood Reporter grabbed the wrong photo. After an urgent call for...
Shortly after Michael Ovitz launched his post-Disney comeback through Artists Management Group, the agency began amassing a noteworthy photography collection. Of course, comebacks don't always live up to their advance...
Laemmle Theatres has pulled out of the Fairfax 3 discount house at 7907 Beverly Boulevard. No word on what the future holds for the site, just off the corner at...
By the way, the memo went out Monday that Sallie Hofmeister is the Times' new Business section poobah for entertainment and technology coverage. It follows after the jump:...
Tony Bill is a regular around Santa Monica Airport and the Spitfire Grill, which is one of LA Observed's unofficial remote bureaus. He's been flying since he was a teenager...
You might think of director Sydney Pollack as a New Yorker, but he has been here for thirty years. He answered questions for the blog of the 92nd Street Y...
John Meroney writes at the National Review Online that Brewer, who died Saturday, "never ran a movie studio or directed a picture, [but] for about a decade he had as...
Celebrity gossip Marc Malkin is taking his act from The Insider to E! Online. He will write the daily Planet Gossip column to launch in October and co-host a weekly...
Scriptland is billed as a weekly-on-Wednesday addition to Calendar by freelancer Jay A. Fernandez. For the first installment, he reads from James Vanderbilt's 200-page screenplay adaptation of Against All Enemies:...
Kitson, the Robertson Boulevard shop with an owner who is backing a tabloid photo agency, isn't getting mentioned in US Weekly as much as it did before. So now the...
The Black Dahlia opened the Venice Film Festival yesterday, with James Ellroy and the stars in attendance. (Variety covers and reviews: "...literally ripping good yarn is undercut by some lackluster...
Hollywood lost another stalwart today. Actor Glenn Ford was found dead by paramedics called to his Beverly Hills home about 4 pm. Ford lived with his son Peter and his...
Kirk Douglas says that Let's Face It will be the last of his nine books. The announcement at Publishers Lunch calls it a "humorous and poignant examination of moments in...
It was forty years ago this month that Peter Bart wrote a positive story in the New York Times about a young Hollywood producer, Robert Evans. Bart later went to...
TMZ reports that Mel Gibson's lawyer dropped in on Malibu's courthouse today and revealed a deal with prosecutors. He pleads no contest to misdemeanor drunk driving, but counts of driving...
You get pretty far into Mary McNamara's LAT piece on Mary-Louise Parker (pegged to tonight's return of "Weeds" on Showtime) before you learn that she is not a happy faux...
Actor-screenwriter Dan Futterman will play the part of Daniel Pearl in the upcoming movie based on Mariane Pearl's book, according to the Washington Post's Reliable Source column. When it became...
Tomorrow's Jewish Journal compiles the invitations extended to Mel Gibson by groups that apparently hope to be part of whatever mea culpa tour the actor-producer decides will cleanse the taint...
It's not as surprising as, say, usually reliable Hollywood Democrats Spielberg, Katzenberg and Saban endorsing Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger, as they did last week. Mel Gibson has well-known religio-conservative leanings. Still,...
Bruce Feirstein jumps into the pool at Native Intelligence with a post that labels Arianna Huffington's "defining Hollywood moment" spin on the Mel Gibson affair ridiculous and dismisses Ari Emanuel's...
In a column tomorrow motivated by Mel Gibson's anti-Jewish recidivism, Times Calendar columnist Patrick Goldstein chides Hollywood executives for not distancing themselves from the actor-producer. Amy Pascal is my hero....
Morning Buzz Mel: "I am not a bigot" Mel Gibson's people have a released a statement in which the actor denies having anti-Semitic beliefs and apologizes for his Jewish-conspiracy...
So much for Mel Gibson wrapping himself in God. When he was arrested Friday on suspicion of DUI in Malibu, a very un-pious Gibson resisted the deputy and threatened repeatedly...
TMZ.com says that Mel Gibson was arrested this morning on suspicion of DUI by the Malibu sheriff's. He made the mistake of speeding in the dark on Pacific Coast Highway....
Those instructions on how aides are supposed to "staff" Mayor Villaraigosa are still being passed around. The demand for unlimited Listerine breath strips and room temperature water, as reported by...
Aquaman the movie? John Horn reports on the Times website that the real Ari Emanuel is at the center of real "informal talks" on a movie deal that parallels the...
Writer, producer, novelist (and significant other of Helen Hunt) Matthew Carnahan had his personal home page taken hostage by pro-Palestinian hackers. Ray Richmond blogs that Carnahan hasn't written or done...
Today's Wall Street Journal cranks out a piece on GOOD, the magazine for young people who do good things (get it?) that is being pulled together in West Hollywood by...
At gunpoint, no less. Channel 2 News says the actor's Thunderbird jumped the curb, sped into the parking lot of Nina's Kitchen Bath and Hardware at Wilshire and Saltair in...
In this week's New Yorker, Ken Auletta focuses on the Hollywood presence and Pellicano-tainting of powerhouse lawyer Bertram Fields. Auletta congratulates himself on getting "the most feared lawyer in Hollywood"...
Jim Benning, who edits the travel website World Hum, wrote about lucha libre wrestling in Tijuana for last Sunday's Washington Post. Its Friday night in a small Tijuana arena, the...
Buttons began in burlesque, had his own TV show in the early 1950s and won a supporting actor Academy Award for the 1957 film Sayonara, which starred Marlon Brando. His...
I knew that the threatened Nickelodeon Theatre had a lengthy history in Hollywood, but I had rushed out Tuesday's Morning Buzz item without researching all of the past. Several readers...
Movie City News has added rough, uncut video interviews to its mix of blogs. Up currently is a three-part chat with Vinessa Shaw, who strolls self-consciously through Palisades Park in...
Hilary Swank has been an LA Observed fave since she took her Oscar entourage (and newly won statuette) to Astro Burger. In the August issue of Vanity Fair, though, she...
Yesterday's almost entirely positive media story on Nikki Finke gets another day in the news, thanks to her insistence that the piece by Jon Friedman of Marketwatch was "misogynist" and...
Marketwatch media columnist Jon Friedman got columnist-blogger Nikki Finke to come out to lunchdinner with him in Santa Monica and calls her "a rarity at a time when many entertainment...
Legendary television producer Aaron Spelling died this evening, five days after suffering a stroke. His wife Candy and son Randy were at his side, according to publicist Kevin Sasaki. Spelling's...
Sharon Waxman in the New York Times looks for, and mostly doesn't find, larger meaning in the move of Creative Artists Agency and International Creative Management out of Beverly Hills...
Claude Brodesser, who has been flying solo at FishbowlLA since Michael Sonnenschein exited the scene in early April, posts that he is leaving to write the industry column for TMZ.com,...
Speaking to the Guardian about Ask the Dust, John Fante and our fair city: Robert Towne, the writer of Chinatown, grew up in San Pedro, the so-called port of Los...
Paul Gleason became an actor after watching Splendor in the Grass with Jack Kerouac. Sixty-some films later, plus Broadway and roles on "Seinfeld," "Friends" and dozens of other TV shows,...
From BillboardBiz.com via the Hollywood Reporter: One of the most colorful careers in music came to a close today as pioneering booking agent Ian Copeland died in Los Angeles of...
Franklin Avenue caught Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's appearance on "American Idol" last night, telling finalist Katherine McPhee that she was to sing "Somewhere Over the Rainbow." She's the first Angeleno to...
In his latest blog letter from Los Angeles, Times of London correspondent Chris Ayres goes off on Tom Cruise and Mission: Impossible III: Like a sucker, I believed the advance...
By now most people have probably heard of the Times' promotion-gone-wrong for Mission: Impossible III. Devices placed in newsracks to play theme music when the box is opened apparently look...
Nikki Finke [and lots of others] got advance leaks of the upcoming Vanity Fair story on the Anthony Pellicano case. She compiles a series of links to highlights. Among them:...
Talk about a career. Ernest Borgnine's first film credit came in 1951 as Hu Chang in China Corsair. He has portrayed J. Edgar Hoover, Angelo Dundee, Vince Lombardi, Marty Piletti...
Wednesday's Daily Journal will report that the Justice Department and the FBI may launch investigations into who gave the New York Times memos on government interviews in the Pellicano case...
Look behind just about any big story in Los Angeles and crisis PR guy Michael Sitrick is usually there, quietly working the media on behalf of, say, Cardinal Roger Mahony...
OK, bear with me. Los Angeles billionaire Ron Burkle has been in the news a lot lately for 1) His divorce, 2) His interest in buying the new McClatchy newspapers,...
The photo shows longtime Los Angeles journalist Frank Swertlow, on the case for People outside the Tom Cruise home recently—as reported at Gawker. The New York gossip site explains: "Sent...
Die Hard director John McTiernan, the top Hollywood name to be charged in the Pellicano wiretapping case, appeared in court today on the charge of lying to the government and...
Both the Sunday New York Times and the current LA Weekly devote column inches to understanding the phenomenon that is (or at least was, until recently) Amanda Scheer-Demme. They might...
Reacting to the scandal about extortion, horse trading and freebies at Page Six, former Variety columist Army Archerd—whose marketing slogan is "Hollywood's first blogger"—blogs a tale out of his past....
According to the BBC's David Willis, Claude the security guard at the gate of The Prospect Studios in Hollywood was nice to the right casting director enough times for it...
♦ David Poland of Movie City News takes 1,400 words to explain why his column The Hot Button is going down to three days a week. It's all about the...
♦ Deputy City Controller Ruben Gonzalez is leaving Laura Chick's staff after four years to be a vice president at Englander and Associates, the lobbying firm headed by Harvey Englander. Gonzalez...
Reporters on the Pellicano story for Vanity Fair, the Daily Journal and other publications have been beating a path to the door of Hollywood talent manager Seth Ersoff, says The...
Press release this morning from the mayor's office, verbatim: Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, the Los Angeles City Council and Police Chief William Bratton will honor Lionsgate, Paul Haggis, the producers, cast...
Andy Spahn, the head of corporate affairs at DreamWorks and political consigliere to Messrs. Geffen, Spielberg and Katzenberg, is heading out on his own. Well, he won't exactly be alone....
NBC Universal hired Thomas Properties Group to re-start the process of developing the studio's backlot into homes, offices, stores and production facilities. "Sooner or later, it's going to get developed,"...
RAND, the Santa Monica think tank, debuted a new Foreign Policy Roundtable series targeting leaders of the entertainment and media communities. Friday night's gathering at the Bel-Air home of Kenneth...
Comments by George Clooney on the Huffington Post about being a proud and unabashed liberal created a small blogosphere boomlet this week, but the aftermath may prove more entertaining. Clooney's...
David Willis is the BBC's West Coast correspondent, based here. He has reported on several continents, and returned to L.A. in 2004 after completing a fellowship at Oxford. For six...
LAPD crime maps go interactive (left)...It's going to be cold and windy today...Praising Brokeback despite the Oscar upset...blocking traffic for the mayor...questions but few answers about Herb Wesson Jr....reviews of...
First reviews of the Oscars and Jon Stewart: not good. Also, Arnie Berghoff's diabetes roast gets some scrutiny, the Times finds waste in the local bioterrorism budget, Villaraigosa promises to...
The LA Weekly has created another new blog, "Nikki Finke's Deadline Hollywood Daily." The kickoff post announces that she will be live-blogging the Oscars on Sunday: Come for the Cynicism...
Variety has hired Monica Corcoran away from In Style's Los Angeles bureau to replace Ginny Chien as style editor, today's Women's Wear Daily says. Corcoran becomes part of the lifestyle...
The longtime comic actor, who lived here in West Los Angeles, died of lung cancer yesterday at UCLA. Knotts was best known as Deputy Barney Fife on "The Andy Griffith...
In case you didn't catch enough premature Oscar buzz the first time around, the LAT is publishing the best of The Envelope and other Times coverage as a special tab...
* Newest shorts at the bottom... ⇒ More subplots in the Anthony Pellicano affair, a thirteenth defendant and Leslie Abramson joins the case. Also, the Times says anonymous witness 'Johnny...
A federal grand jury charges that Terry Christensen, 65, paid private eye Anthony Pellicano at least $100,000 to wiretap Lisa Bonder Kerkorian, the wife of billionaire investor Kirk Kerkorian, during...
Quick, name the highest-grossing actor of all time.... Turn the page for the answer:...
You know it's been a tough location shoot when you get stabbed in the forehead on set and the producers get in a brawl. Second item under Studio City Tales....
Vanity Fair's Hollywood issue out Tuesday has more than Scarlett and Keira nude on the cover (though that's a pretty decent jump-start on newsstand sales.) There's a Vicki Ward piece...
A guy named Darnell Riley was sentenced today to ten years in prison after pleading guilty to robbing "Girls Gone Wild" creator Joe Francis in his Bel Air home. What...
Dateline: Hollywood's spoof of the week headlines the news that "automobile fatalities in Los Angeles are up 85% in the past month as residents seeking meaning in their lives intentionally...
The Rev. Cecil Murray, who stepped down in 2004 as pastor at First AME Church, is co-producer on Color of the Cross, a new film that will feature a black...
The Smoking Gun has posted sixty pages of government allegations that private investigator Anthony Pellicano "illegally recorded Sylvester Stallone's telephone calls and accessed confidential law enforcement records pertaining to other...
Eyewitness News goes hi-def, James Frey has a few words for the LAT, the Downtown News loses patience with Villaraigosa and a former mayor goes in for a tuneup—plus a...
The first eight pages of this morning's Calendar section in the Times—including six full opens plus most of the cover—are devoted to coverage of the Oscar nominations. The State of...
In the news this morning, the FBI looks at that videotaped shooting by a deputy in Chino...misreading Los Angeles...quitting James Frey...buying off Stuckey...and Hollywood's gay thing analyzed from a couple...
Character actor Charles Lane turned 101 last week. Jon Weisman counts 322 roles on his Imdb credits, including more than two hundred movies before he became a familiar face on...
Looks like Brokeback Mountain's year. Variety, THR, LAT, Movie City News....
Chief Bratton makes a finding in the Devin Brown killing, Guerdon Stuckey gets an offer, Richard Meruelo didn't lay a million on the Center for Law in the Public Interest,...
Fayard Nicholas, the Tony Award winner and Kennedy Center honoree who was half of the groundbreaking Nicholas Brothers tap dance team, died Tuesday at home in Burbank. Fayard and his...
The Santa Monica Daily Press interviewed neighbors outside Chris Penn's condo on Ocean Avenue yesterday who claimed (not for attribution, apparently) that they weren't surprised by the actor's death. Prior...
The actor and younger brother of Sean Penn was discovered about 4 pm in his Ocean Avenue condo. Police aren't making any suggestions of foul play. Chris Penn's film credits...
After the two entertainment companies complete their $7.4-billion acquisition deal, Pixar CEO Steve Jobs will be the single largest shareholder in the Walt Disney Co....
Just catching up to last Friday's Variety story on the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences deciding where it wants to build a movie museum. Steve Rosen reports the...
Gawker has the news that the Golden Groundhog award will honor the best underground movie of 2005, chosen from among "genuinely outstanding films from the previous year that lacked the...
The Colin Campbell Network blog has some details: According to sources close to the production, a team of ESPN executives from the East Coast informed the staff of ESPN Hollywood...
My choice is Defamer. The scene, the parties and the gossip viewed from slightly askew. They also anoint Isaac Mizrahi as the new king of red carpet dish. I didn't...
Smelly beaches in the South Bay, no new Wal-Mart in the Valley, horny females on Channel 2 and the winners of the Golden Globes—plus where Alex Padilla will eat breakfast...
The House that Jack Kent Cooke Built might be no more, air rights are hot again downtown (and so is Richard Meruelo), Tad Friend expounds on Los Angeles car chases...plus...
Updated all weekend, with the newest at the bottom: ⇒ KCRW music host Chris Douridas is free on $1 million bail after being arrested Jan. 6 on suspicion that he...
While I may seem to pile on the Times for taking a boosterish approach to awards shows in its hunger to attract new readers and website visitors, The Envelope is...
Today's LA Weekly cover story by Paul Cullum reconstructs what happened near Wilshire and Bundy in 2001 when screenwriter Eric Red plowed his Jeep Cherokee into a stopped Honda, careened...
Another Pellicano case guilty plea, Arnold's illegal problem, Patterico and Hiltzik go mainstream, DA Cooley wants to reform three strikes—plus the end of the UFW series, Michael Eisner, Mack Reed,...
Los Angeles under siege is a timeless Hollywood conceit. In Wednesday's New York Times, Chris Gorak's first film Right at Your Door, starring Rory Cochrane and Mary McCormack, is summarized...
Back in 2001, former Clinton Administration official-turned-D.C. lobbyist Jarvis Stewart mused that he might someday open an L.A. office to help celebrities "learn how to get their messages across in...
We're number two! USC lost the Rose Bowl and the national championship to Texas 41-38. Thirty-two of those points came in the last quarter. Today's front pagesNew York Times See/Read...
⇒ City Controller Laura Chick turned up the heat today on schools Supt. Roy Romer, making a public records act request for all federal, state, county, and internal audits of...
If I promised not to post again until after Christmas, some news would surely come along to make a liar out of me. So let's just say the pace will...
Variety's review today of the Fun with Dick and Jane remake coulda and probably shoulda said that one of the executive producers is none other than reviewer Justin Chang's boss,...
Colleagues of longtime LAT film reviewer Kevin Thomas have been unhappy that he was nudged to take the buyout and upset that after four decades the paper did not plan...
At the Hollywood crew blog Totally Unauthorized, "Peggy Archer" tells the story of a mean-looking power juicer who got drafted into a scene as a security guard because the guy...
More than 2,000 people (LAT; AP says "hundreds") viewed the body of executed murderer Tookie Williams Monday at a mortuary on South Vermont. Jesse Jackson, Louis Farrakhan and Snoop Dog...
With lots of buzz around today about Tom Cruise and Scientology, various sources emailed to remind me of some seminal local reporting in addition to the 1990 Sappell-Welkos series in...
⇒ The Daily News' Beth Barrett takes off from last week's nugget (and follow-up) about City Council time off to compare the L.A. council's pay and perks to other cities....
In 1990, L.A. Times reporters Joel Sappell and Robert Welkos ran a six-part series on Scientology that took them most of five years to report, vet, re-report, write, re-write, lawyer...
Danny DeVito and Rhea Perlman's party to raise campaign cash for Senate Democrats was supposed to be the last big Hollywood political event of the season. Melissa Etheridge came to...
A bunch of movies and actors got Golden Globe nominations today. If you care, Variety has the lineup. It's at all the other new awards-hyping sites too since today is...
Don't miss posts from the weekend on the DreamWorks sale, the QM2, Richard Pryor's passing and a little media roundup. On to today: ♦ The state Supremes nixed a stay of...
Variety's latest celebration of its centennial is a weekly countdown of the Top 100 awards ceremony fashions. They've reached the final ten on Variety.com. In order, they are worn by:...
Paramount today confirmed the huge Hollywood shocker that it will pay $1.6 billion for DreamWorks. The story began to get out Friday in the Wall Street Journal, and on Saturday...
Barbra Streisand wanted to make sure we all got to read the full text of her letter to the editor that ran—edited—in the L.A. Times on Nov. 28, protesting the...
No sooner did the Hollywood Reporter gets its annual Power 100 of most important women into print than Publisher and Editor-in-chief Robert Dowling announced he is leaving at the end...
She hasn't posted since the Kings began their annual fade in the standings, but actress Elisha Cuthbert is on board as the L.A. hockey team's blondest, most exclamation-pointed official blogger....
Might this billboard pop up in Hollywood around Oscar time? It's a freshened up version of a billboard spotted during the 2002 Oscar season. The protest group Guerrilla Girls showed...
Today's Hollywood Reporter is out with the who-makes-what piece of the trade's annual Women in Entertainment issue. Julia Roberts stands atop the actress salary Top 10, able to command a...
Hollywood will add jobs this year and next, but the overall picture is still cloudy says a report to be released today by the L.A. Economic Development Corp. Advancers in...
Wife-and-husband team Elizabeth Snead and Joel Stratte-McClure used to jointly byline their celebrity gossip dispatches for the Daily News and the other LANG papers. Then Snead started dispatching her side...
In the December issue of The Atlantic, Hanna Rosin is the latest writer to take a look at the Jesus-ization of Hollywood. They sit in a semicircle on the homey...
♦ Alex Padilla on Monday endorsed Eric Garcetti as his successor in the City Council president's chair. Let the record show that on May 27, LAObserved posted: "Alex Padilla will remain...
When the Times chose to stake its biggest website initiative on the dicey notion that Hollywood awards are a year-round obsession of its readers, my main fear was that the...
♦ More cuts are coming within weeks, Times Editor Dean Baquet confirms in a staff story about his shutdown of the Outdoors section (reported here yesterday) for financial reasons. "I made...
Catching up with a longer-than-usual helping of Monday morsels... ♦ The Times' powerful package on conservator scams was three years in the making: among other things, a prime example of the...
♦ Today's Jewish Journal cover features a large noose and the question: Should Tookie Die? Today's front pages New York Times See/Read Washington Post See/Read LA Times See/Read Daily News See/Read...
The venerable and recently retired Variety columnist began posting yesterday and says that Michael Hiltzik's blog in the L.A. Times inspired him to take the plunge. "I'll avoid the obvious,...
Facing a Monday with more bad circulation news and head scratching about the Times' outsized devotion to Hollywood awards hype, Associate Editor John Montorio dispatched an email to the Calendar...
In addition to the newsy posts below about Nissan and Chief Bratton, here are some morning nuggets... ♦ The City Council approved an unusual tax-exempt bond scheme that could be worth...
If you go to the movies at CityWalk, Beverly Center or the Magic Johnson Theatres, you'll soon get some new entertainment for those nineteen minutes [seems awfully high!] that on...
When AFI Fest comes to Hollywood next month, the Times will host a day of interviews and panel discussions with prominent filmmakers, journalists and actor George Clooney at the Arclight....
In his latest LA Notebook, Times of London correspondent Chris Ayres tells U.K. readers that he has decided to become a Los Angeles bicycle rider, despite his loathing of that...
Actor and director Joan Chen tells Filmstew.com that her on-screen career stalled after The Last Emperor "because people don't know how to write for me, that's just the way it...
♦ City Hall lobbyists now have to disclose online their clients, the issues they advocated and how much they got paid every three months. Daily News ♦ Hollywood waits and worries over...
Matt Haber at the New York Observer compiles the recent media attention paid to Jennifer (J.J.) Philbin, a writer for "The O.C" who is the daughter of Regis Philbin. It...
♦ Robert Iger and Steve Jobs make nice, and will start making ABC shows available on the new video Ipod. ♦ Add a new pro to the ranks of local bloggers about...
Remember last week's ungrammatical smooch that the L.A. Times gave Harvey Weinstein in the form of a free full-page ad, the same day that the Weinstein Co. paid for ads...
♦ Mayor Villaraigosa nearly filled the Tom Bradley Room on the top of the City Hall tower with media there to hear him recite the accomplishments of his first 98 days...
♦ Marc Weingarten reports in today's New York Times on a bitter lawsuit here in L.A. between singer Leonard Cohen and the manager he says looted millions from his accounts while...
♦ Adelphia blames equipment failure related to the Topanga fire for depriving thousands of their "Desperate Housewives" fix. ♦ Mayor Villaraigosa's plan for improving schools falls into the hands of the Times'...
This morning's Variety and Hollywood Reporter had stories on the new WGA board, at its first meeting, dumping executive director John McLean. The interim replacement is David Young, the guild's...
Claude Brodesser did indeed join FishbowlLA this morning, as reported last week. The former Variety reporter looks like a nice addition to the lineup. He will help out regular fisheye...
♦ Rachel Uranga reports in the Daily News on the phenomenon of L.A. immigrants skipping English to learn whatever is spoken in their neighborhood: "Peruvian immigrant Miguel Aliaga always knew that...
For the second time this week, a Hollywood guild elected a new president who is expected to take a harder line in union negotiations. Alan Rosenberg won the leadership of...
Mickey Kaus still can't get the LAT to let him de-subscribe...Anthony York at the Capitol Weekly, and The Roundup, report on Gov. Schwarzenegger excluding the Times from a series of...
Members of the Writers Guild of America/west threw out the old and voted in the entire "Writers United" slate of new board members, plus new president Patric M. Verrone. Turnout...
♦ In today's New York Times, Dennis McDougal reports that the Writers Guild is sitting on millions of dollars owed to writers it can't find—no-names like Tom Clancy, Mira Nair and...
Question: Who did VLIfe put on its cover, following Jennifer Connelly and Halle Berry? Remember, they're trying to sell on newsstands these days. The October issue does contain an inspired...
• Looks like Gov. Schwarzenegger announces Friday that he will run for reelection, the Times says. Also, La Opinin says its reporter was denied entry to the governor's recent community meeting...
Southern California writers dominate the books section in the current issue of The Nation. In fact, they write the whole thing. David L. Ulin, recently named Book Editor of the...
Local website Cinemocracy has redesigned and launched a cool new service: video-on-demand of selected classic (or at least old) "politically relevant" films, free of charge in MPEG2 format. The first...
• Screenwriter Tom Benedek shoots his own unproduced scripts—literally, with a .45-caliber pistol—and mounts them as art. His exhibition "Shot by the Writer - Works on Paper: 1982-2004" opens this month...
Matthew Fox, or more particularly his "Lost" character Jack, is the prototype of the new L.A. Hunk, Shane Watson heavy-breathes in Sunday's Times of London. "Jack is the modern womans...
The Times' Robin Abcarian sends Variety's Army Archerd into columnist retirement with a piece in today's Calendar. It opens during the Friday lunch scene on the patio at Spago. Robert...
In this case, the competition was to see which of the trades would be first to get a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. James Nash reports in the...
Welcome to September... • Seems like every gas station between Hollywood and Santa Monica went to $3-plus a gallon overnight. The 76 station at Olympic and Beverly Drive in Beverly Hills...
I just caught up with the new blog of screenwriter Josh Friedman (War of the Worlds, Black Dahlia), and now I can't get any work done. He calls it I...
I'm told that the Writers Guild of America, West board tonight rescinded its decision to give the group's prestigious Valentine Davies Award to defrocked ex-prez Victoria Riskin. She resigned...
The Times is getting credit from Defamer and elsewhere for today's story on Scarlett Johanssons 911 call, placed after she had a fender-bender near Disneyland perhaps trying to elude paparazzi....
This is the month that Variety's glossy VLife hits newsstands and begins to find out if there's any (v)life separate from the trade's subscriber list. Halle Berry decorates the cover...
• That's Daily News sports columnist Tom Hoffarth in the photo, taking a parachute jump with an instructor at Lake Perris. It's front and center on the DN website this morning....
Blogger Steve Smith posts his astonishment that longtime baseball figure Bobby Bragan just became, at age 87, the oldest pro baseball manager—and the oldest to be tossed from a game....
Roger Ebert's Chicago Sun-Times review gives zero stars to Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo and also recounts last February's little spat between Rob Schneider, the film's "star" (if that's the right...
Timothy M. Gray is the new Editor of Variety and Daily Variety. In a shuffle of positions at the trades last year, he became executive editor. In the moves just...
Sounds like there are a ton of insider references in Hollywood Hussein, the new novel by Ken Baker, West Coast editor for Us Weekly. Monday's Page Six says that the...
Hollywood's sound stages and location crews are swamped these days. At her blog Totally Unauthorized, Peggy Archer regularly posts about what it's like from the working stiff vantage point. In...
• The last radio station to be located in Hollywood leaves Friday at 11:05 p.m., Bob Pool says in the LAT. • All the high-profile ankling from The Firm, the once-hot Hollywood...
Can't let it go unmentioned that Army Archerd will write his last regular column for Variety on Sept. 1. He will still file occasional reports. Archerd has been at it...
This week's light posting has been due to me being out and around on assignment. It's likely to continue today. Late shorties will be tacked on to the tail end....
The author of Inside Daisy Clover, The Slide Area: Scenes of Hollywood Life and a biography of Natalie Wood died Sunday at age 80. His death was announced by "The...
Geez, you try to skate by for a few hours and stuff starts to pile up in the in-box... • Former Burbank mayor and current city councilwoman Stacey Jo Murphy was...
The comedian performed here at the Laugh Factory on Saturday night and was found dead the next morning at a friend's place. He was 35. Soto moved to Los Angeles...
The only screenwriter to receive an honorary Oscar died on Saturday at age 89. The news didn't get out until today. The Writers Guild website's obituary calls Lehman "one of...
Hollywood freelancer (for the New York Times and others) Ross Johnson has fallen into the blogging web. And for his first meaty entry at The Ross Files, he names names...
Nikki Finke says in the LA Weekly that Anita Busch, the former Hollywood Reporter editor and writer for the LAT and NYT who was threatened over pursuing a story on...
Anne Bancroft, an actress for fifty years, has died of uterine cancer in New York. She was 73. Of her many roles, she might be best known today for playing...
An evolving post, with the newest items at the bottom: • If true, this will open up some movement in local politics. According to email from a senior staffer at City...
A Defamer operative files a report from last night's $125-a-head Hillary Clinton fundraiser: The beer and wine flowed freely, for those guests brave enough to cross Emmerichs mud-filled lawn to...
Sharon Waxman reports in Thursday's New York Times that, with his star Tom Cruise increasingly pushing Scientology and acting oddly while promoting War of the Worlds, Paramount chief Brad Grey...
Guests at Wednesday night's fundraiser for Sen. Hillary Clinton at the Hollywood Hills home of producer Roland Emmerich are being warned not to speak with any reporters. It's part of...
When aspiring screenwriter Jeffrey L. Clemens sent threatening letters to a couple of federal judges in 2003 and 2004, he was (amazingly enough) given a warning. But after his lawsuit...
The Times is throwing Pulitzers at the Disney company beat in the Business section, hiring two-time winner (and ex-Register reporter) Kim Christensen. Most recently he has been an associate managing...
Screenwriter Eric Heisserer set up a website called The Dionaea House last year and posted a series of correspondence between characters in his horror screenplay. After all, if the Internet...
PR Week quizzed the LA Weekly's Deadline Hollywood columnist about how she landed at an alternative weekly, what she thinks of other reporters on the entertainment beat, and how she...
Today's New York Times revisits the death on Oscar weekend in February of R. Gregory Stevens, the gay Republican operative who had been staying with actress (and active Democrat) Carrie...
The comedian who played a bit part in the Los Angeles mayor's race, as a friend and campaigner alongside State Sen. Richard Alarcon, underwent a kidney transplant last week, his...
Buried on page 28 of today's Calendar section in the Times, Universal runs an unusual message in plain serif type, with no art or adornment: Last week, Universal Pictures and...
In the ongoing feud between the two Writers Guild of America spheres, score one for the New Yorkers. Walter Bernstein, who sits on the WGA-East council, got a piece onto...
Disney's board today named Bob Iger as the successor to Michael Eisner. Here's the Disney press release, reaction from dissidents Roy Disney and Stanley Gold, and staff coverage in the...
LAT investigative reporter Gary Cohn emerges from the Schwarzenegger-groping beat to chip in a piece in today's paper about KTLA entertainment reporter Zorianna Kit grazing up against an ethical line....
Madeleine Brand did a good scene piece this morning on Day to Day about how soft the backstage press is with the Oscar winners. Transcripts of the Q-A with best...
Nikki Finke reports in the LA Weekly that host Chris Rock will tone it down a little for the Oscars on Sunday, but still intends to tick off Bush voters:...
The New York Observer phones up David Halbfinger for a chat about his new job sharing the Hollywood beat for the New York Times with Sharon Waxman. "Its a great...
Other projects and a stubborn cold have slowed me down the last day or so. Here's some things I missed: • Estrich vs. Kinsley: USC law professor and columnist Susan Estrich...
The New York Times' former film critic is following the occasionally-beaten path—again—and going to work for Hollywood. Back in 1992, Mitchell took a post at Paramount and lasted six months....
The New York Times bureau had its "So long!" party for the departing Bernard Weinraub last night. Someone who was there said the cocktail soiree, held at bureau chief John...
Franklin Avenue links to a Variety story on L.A. Times Opinion columnist Joel Stein scoring a second TV pilot with ABC. He'll be co-executive producer, which causes the blog (written...
Three days after the Times' Tim Rutten castigated movie reviewers, Patrick Goldstein writes in his Calendar column that conservative commentators attacking the treatment of euthanasia in Million Dollar Baby are...
Business Week's L.A. bureau chief Ron Grover posted his latest Power Lunch column on the success of Ray and what it says about the Hollywood play of Phil Anschutz. His...
Hilary Swank picked up another trophy last night at the SAG Awards for her performance as Maggie Fitzgerald in Million Dollar Baby. Earlier in the day, Tim Rutten's Regarding Media...
Updated through the weekend Lesbian chic: Screenwriter and "L Word" creator Ilene Chaiken is profiled in Sunday's NYT Arts section. "In 1999, after writing a magazine article about same-sex couples...
The New York Times Hollywood correspondent fills in the blanks for The Forward. Some snippets: Waxman was born into an Orthodox family in the Cleveland suburb of University Heights, Ohio,...
That Los Angeles magazine story generally praising Michael Kinsley that I mentioned awhile back is now online. Also up on the Los Angeles website from the February issue are the...
Rob Schneider bought a full-page ad in today's Variety (pg. 39) to reply to Times columnist Patrick Goldstein's Jan. 26 dig at the studios for making sequels like the upcoming...
Tanya Gold of The Guardian looks at this month's Vanity Fair cover—another triptych of young actresses—and sees "a desperate sight to make all feminists tremble. This is Disempowerment as she...
You knew this was coming. The LA Weekly's Nikki Finke turns her Deadline Hollywood column this week to an examination of last Sunday's farewell piece by New York Times Hollywood...
Bumble Ward is getting out of the Hollywood publicity wars to write novels because, basically, life is too short to hold the hands of celebrity clients. Kim Masters writes in...
In Sunday's New York Times, retiring L.A. bureau stalwart Bernard Weinraub pens a personal farewell to Hollywood and admits to his fallability. He was star-struck, had money envy, and agrees...
Bumble Ward, who represents Quentin Tarantino, Sofia Coppola, Tim Burton and others, is quitting the business to write novels. Michael Fleming writes in Variety that "Ward's decision is a stunner:...
Journalist Doug Ireland calls The Aviator a mendacious film that "glorifies the odious Howard Hughes. Scorcese [sic], of all people, ought to know better than to have done so." His...
The deck on the cover story by Brendan Bernhard in the LA Weekly observes that "Bruce Wagner infects his novels with madness, celebrity, name-dropping, drugs and sex. And that's just...
In a New York Observer diary that begins with a riff on the Hollywood swag season that is upon us and ends with a personal tribute to Johnny Carson, Bruce...
Johnny Carson: No shortage of appreciations and retrospectives online and on the air for the late-night pioneer who died Sunday at home in Malibu (of emphysema at age 79). David...
Sherry Lansing chats with Newsweek's Sean Smith about leaving Paramount after 12 years as chairman and being the first woman to run a major studio. She insists, of course, that...
• The L.A. Times has an obit today on Marcus Arnold, who rocketed to Internet stardom as a 15-year-old legal expert on AskMe.com. Turns out Arnold died back on May 1,...
Presenters at the Golden Globes will receive a wicker ottoman stuffed with gifts that total out at $38,390. That is if you count the full $16,000 value for the wine...
Defamer spots a casting call that offers a day of SAG work on the new NBC series "Medium." It's nude if you can meet the punctuation-challenged requirements, and especially nice-looking...
The actress donated $1 million to the American Red Cross for tsunami relief efforts in Asia and Africa. She had previously sent a million to the Red Cross after the...
Forbes calls this story "Flack Attack." The piece by Los Angeles bureau chief Seth Lubove details a legal dispute over $6 million in investments that Michael Sitrick of crisis PR...
The WGA board voted unanimously Monday night to let Written By go ahead and publish a roundtable discussion of guild politics—but only after a committee of non-editors removes "personally defamatory"...
Regular readers of New York's Gawker and its L.A. spinoff Defamer may have noticed a certain fascination with gossip about teenager Lindsay Lohan on both blogs (and with her nipples...
The Writers Guild board is under fire for playing thin-skinned publisher and yanking a roundtable discussion of guild politics from Written By, the organization's magazine. Variety's Dave McNary reports that...
Variety editor Peter Bart turned this month's issue of Vlife (not online) over to guest editor Brett Ratner, director of After the Sunset. Ratner took full advantage, getting stories on...
Michael Kinsley's latest East Coast addition to the Times pundit lineup runs today at the bottom of the Sunday Opinion cover, without introduction or bio blurb, under the label "Laptop...
Eric Spiegelman at Cinemocracy treks to the wilderness of Beverly Hills—"or, as I usually refer to it, across the street"—to check out the odd monument to film celebrities that rises...
The holiday cheer-spoiling piece about Los Angeles I read over the weekend was Mary McNamara's profile in the Times Sunday Calendar of character actor Michael O'Neill. You know him: he's...
Carmine Caridi, the ex-Academy member who lent his complimentary VHS film screeners to a friend who copied and pirated them, has been fined the maximum $300,000 by a federal judge....
It's been more than 24 hours since the last post involving Fleishman-Hillard—so here goes. Actually, this news comes from the shop of crisis PR hotshot Michael Sitrick. Today he promoted...
Once again the LA Weekly posts Nikki Finke's Hollywood column online ahead of the print paper. In this one, she writes about her long-ago New York Observer story on the...
Hollywood PR power Pat Kingsley of PMK/HBH fired the president of the New York office, Leslee Dart, in a power struggle over control of the firm. Dart's clients include Martin...
Michael Eisner began his testimony in the Disney shareholder lawsuit in Delaware, prompting recollections of his calling Jeffrey Katzenberg "the little midget" under questioning five years ago. This time, Eisner...
In the new Classic Hollywood issue of Los Angeles magazine (not yet online), Steve Erickson nominates ten classic films that don't belong in the pantheon, and ten that aren't regarded...
Howard Blume at the LA Weekly asked Kerry voter Michael Kinsley why his L.A. Times editorial page didn't take a stand on the presidential race. Kinsley is up-front about his...
On Radford just north of Ventura in Studio City, the offices near CBS where John Wayne hung out when the studio was Republic Pictures, where MTM writers turned out sitcoms...
It's going to be on the op-ed page or in whatever the reinvented Sunday Opinion section is to be called, written by Time (and ex-Entertaiment Weekly) columnist Joel Stein. In...
The New York Post's Page Six got hold of an email from Sharon Waxman, the New York Times' Hollywood reporter, to I ♥ Huckabees director David O. Russell. The pair...
The Writers Guild of America (both coasts) has announced a tentative agreement on a new three-year contract. The official view: "It's been a long five months since we walked away...
Anne Thompson in the New York Times weighs in on the case of ex-magazine writer Jeff Grosso, who sued Miramax for allegedly stealing his screenplay idea about a high-stakes poker...
Los Angeles filmmaker, playwright and web presence Brian Flemming, who created the Slumdance film festival in 1997 to promote his Hang Your Dog in the Wind, (and who has scored...
• In the Downtown News, Anschutz Entertainment Group president Tim Leiweke suggests that more upheaval is coming in the local sports scene. With the Clippers' lease to play at Staples Center...
Ross Johnson profiles Scott Greenstein, the ex-Miramax exec and Barry Diller protg who brokered Howard Stern's lucrative deal to move onto pay radio, in today's New York Times. Greenstein sounds...
LA Weekly columnist Nikki Finke bypassed the paper (which shutters on the weekend) and broke the news of actor Christopher Reeve's death of cardiac arrest in an email blast to...
The nasty fight between Hollywood lawyer/celeb wedding presider Barry L. Hirsch and his ex-partners made today's New York Times. The piece by Ross Johnson details the hurt feelings, mean words...
Scott at The Juxtaposition reports on his trip up to attend the Liberty Film Festival and gives a few reviews. Being conservative in Hollywood is like having your first day...
WriterAction.com is where about 400 members of the Writers Guild go for their daily fix of of dish, dirt and grousing, behind a firewall open only to other guild members....
Hollywood A-listers and assorted other liberals turned out at David Geffen's Beverly Hills manse last night to celebrate New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd's visit to tout her new book,...
The Hollywood Reporter is taking over the Hollywood Creative Directory line of guides and Lone Eagle Publishing. "We are thrilled to add such strong brands to our entertainment portfolio," THR's...
Daniel Petrie Jr. remains president of WGA West in a landslide vote. He got 71.3% of the 2,110 votes cast by guild members, swamping dissident Eric Hughes, who received 25.6%....
Remember Steve Webster, the TV publicity exec who imploded his career by eavesdropping on high-level conference calls at FX long after he was fired? He pleaded no contest yesterday to...
The lineup for what organizers advertise as "America's first conservative film festival...and there's nothing Michael Moore can do about it" is firming up. From today's press release: HOLLYWOOD, Calif., Sept....
Adam Moss continues to reinvent New York magazine. His latest addition is Ken Tucker, the ex-Herald Examiner rock critic and longtime critic-at-large for Entertainment Weekly. He becomes the magazine's film...
At FilmStew.com, Richard Horgan's "Hollywood Spin" says today's tabloids would have gone gaga when Greta Garbo walked out of her 1927 wedding to actor John Gilbert, as the guests were...
Yes, blook. Ian Williams in the LA Weekly uses the term to describe the recent books by Arianna Huffington and the sister-brother team of Amy and David Goodman. He calls...
In today's LAT Business section, Claudia Eller checks the progress of Phil Anschutz' crusade to remake Hollywood. Around the World in 80 Days bombed in June, apparently to the boss's...
Don Mischer apologizes for and explains his unexpected starring role on CNN the last night of the Democratic convention. He is the convention producer whose plaintive, then exasperated f-word pleas...
Randolph Steven Webster used to be vice president for publicity at FX until he was fired in 2001, then went on to be VP for corporate communications and marketing planning...
Local music writer Kate Sullivan writes on her blog about trying to interview Pamela Anderson and David LaChapelle recently. It didn't go well. The interview was probably the most emotionally...
Lawyers for Cameron Diaz want the Gawker Media websites to stop reporting on and having fun with that for-sale video showing the actress topless in S&M scenarios when she was...
The top 50 box office grosses for Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ tended to be at more suburban theaters dispersed from Texas and Florida to Orange County, while the...
The federal Dept. of Labor will be monitoring the upcoming vote for president of the Writers Guild. A Variety story (shorter free version at Yahoo) today spells out the terms...
In today's New York Observer, Bruce Feirstein considers the evidence and sees a perfect storm of unavoidable change headed at the entertainment business. The piece is long and hard to...
This year the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is publicizing the names of actors, directors, writers and others who have been invited to join up and become Oscars...
Nikki Finke sounds rightfully horrified at the prospect of an "un-sequel" to The Graduate that begins filming next month. It is, she writes in the current LA Weekly, "certain to...
How's this for runaway production. Robert Towne is shooting Ask the Dust, based on John Fante's classic Los Angeles novel of the 1930s, in Cape Town, South Africa. He explains...
Zzzzzzz....
The former Hollywood Reporter editor and (sometimes) L.A. Times Calendar writer filed suit late last week against jailed private eye Anthony Pellicano, LAPD detective Mark Arneson and others over that...
Mel Karmarzin resigned today as the number two executve to Sumner Redstone at Viacom, to be replaced by Tom Freston, the CEO of MTV Networks, and Leslie Moonves, CEO of...
The all-but-gone E! Networks CEO explains her sudden resignation to TV Week, but claims she didn't read the Times scoop that foretold her removal -- and insists she was not...
An emailer says that publisher John Salazar is out and that the paper may not publish this week for the first time in 37 years. Stay tuned....
Sallie Hofmeister reports in today's Times that Mindy Herman, CEO of E! Networks, could be dumped as soon as today (with a $20 million severance package), "accused of abusing her...
Suspect Entertainment, the Los Angeles talent and production company that provides gangbanger actors and street thug atmosphere for Hollywood movies, videos and TV commercials, is profiled on the front page...
The Wolfesden Actor Exchange was a bulletin board run by actor Sterling Wolfe where actors could post complaints and questions about casting directors and Hollywood practices. Wolfe closed the site...
Nikki Finke reports in the LA Weekly that Wall Street Journal media editor Rich Turner decided not to bother chasing the L.A. Times and New York Times on the Graydon...
Business Week L.A. bureau chief Ron Grover interviewed Disney dissident Stanley Gold on Friday for BW Online. Gold predicts that, even with Disney's recent 71% jump in earnings, Eisner will...
LA Weekly "Deadline Hollywood" columnist Nikki Finke predicts via email that the New York Times will publish a first story on Graydon Carter and his supposed Hollywood conflicts Friday or...
Mike Hiltzik's "Golden State" column in today's LAT skeptically analyzes the media ripples that followed Reuters' April 21 report that Sony was close to buying MGM. The report created a...
Hollywood sees journalists and our ilk as the next great comedy foils, the Boston Globe writes. Lawrence O'Donnell ("West Wing") is doing a half-hour comedy for HBO set in a...
After 13 years of litigation, an L.A. judge threw out a lawsuit seeking royalties on Winnie the Pooh after ruling that the plaintiffs' investigator broke into Disney offices and stole...
In a settlement with the U.S. Department of Labor, the Writers Guild has set an election for president a year early on September 20. The feds will oversee the balloting...
The L.A. Times' Michael Cieply profiles Disney communications chief Zenia B. Mucha, a former aide to New York Gov. George Pataki nicknamed the "Director of Revenge." Razor-sharp and acid-tongued, Mucha,...
The Writers Guild's embattled stand-in president Charles Holland resigned today. The email to WGA members follows, forwarded from several members while I've been out and around (thanks to you all):...
Walter Chaw lives in Littleton, Colorado, likes movies and reviews a ton of them for Film Freak Central.net and Rotten Tomatoes. To his surprise, Chaw found himself invited to the...
This time from Diane Disney, Walt's last surviving child. She tells Jim Bates of the L.A. Times that it's time for Michael Eisner to step down. Tick, tick, tick......
The former editor and publisher of The Hollywood Reporter died Monday morning at Cedars-Sinai after complications from intestinal surgery, the paper reports today. She had suffered from Parkinson's disease for...
Michael Hiltzik, in today's LAT Business section: Speaking as someone who lived and worked for years in a string of petty Third World dictatorships, I believe I'm well qualified to...
This week in the L.A. Business Journal, Editor Mark Lacter moves his weekly commentary out to the cover and calls for Michael Eisner's departure from Disney. Over the years, theres...
Attention West Side writers: screenwriter Aleks Horvat, founder of the Hollywood Creative Directory, has opened a private rental work space on 26th Street in upper Santa Monica (across from the...
Elizabeth Guider has been named deputy editor of Variety and Daily Variety and Timothy M. Gray has been named executive editor. From the published story: Guider, who grew up in...
Steven Mikulan in the LA Weekly sets the scene for the upcoming contract talks between Hollywood screenwriters and producers. With the Writers Guild's president under siege, financial pressures and the...
The humiliation of Michael Eisner. Top right on the New York Times front by Laura Holson, with sidebars. Lead story in the LAT, mainbar by Richard Verrier and James Bates,...
Screenwriter Chuck Pfarrer, who really did serve as a Navy SEAL, has sent an open email to members of the Writers Guild calling out guild president Charles Holland, who has...
In his weekly column, Variety Editor Peter Bart faults last week's New York Times story by Sharon Waxman in which studio heads say (not for attribution) that many won't work...
David Freeman, the author and screenwriter whose latest Hollywood novel It's All True is about to be published, puts the Oscars into a little local perspective in Sunday's LAT Calendar...
Lead story on "Marketplace" today: We don't want to say that Michael Eisner's days are numbered, but......
Juicy stuff in Michael Cieply's LAT story today about a letter from Michael Eisner to Michael Ovitz firing him from his ill-conceived Disney post back in 1996. The seven-page letter...
Aaron Tonken, the Hollywood scammer due to be sentenced soon after pleading guilty to federal fraud charges, is circulating a book proposal, says New York Post gossiper Cindy Adams. She...
Gary Dretzka at Movie City News examines the Bernie Weinraub question and the new Los Angeles magazine piece -- as well as journalism about Hollywood -- in a column that...
He is profiled at home in Toluca Lake in this Sunday's New York Times Magazine. The piece is by Deborah Solomon. Roy E. Disney, who has long been derided as...
The top story at the Hollywood Reporter is the mixed message surrounding Saturday's Writers Guild of America awards at the Century Plaza. While writers are being feted, dissident members upset...
L.A. writer Christopher Noxon has more than passing interest in Mel Gibson and the Passion of the Christ. He wrote about the movie and its maker (and its maker's wacky...
Patt Morrison notes in the Times today that while the Capitol stayed open until 5:30 p.m. on the day of the State of the Union speech, Hollywood Boulevard in front...
Richard Horgan at FilmStew tracks down Rona Barrett, once a fixture on Los Angeles television, now a lavender farmer near Michael Jackson's Neverland Ranch in the Santa Ynez area. When...
Comcast went around Disney chairman Michael Eisner today with a public bid to buy the company for $54 billion. Breaking web-only stories are up at the LAT, NYT, Variety, and...
Sharon Waxman in the NYT pokes around at the news that 69-year-old director William Friedkin is going to make yet another movie for Paramount, where his wife Sherry Lansing is...
That's Variety headline-ese for the repercussions from the Janet Jackson show at the Super Bowl. The latest: Janet confirms she won't perform at the Grammy's, and the SAG Awards will...
Roger L. Simon signs a petiton calling for the recall of newly installed but embattled Writers Guild of America (West) president Charles Holland and urges others to do the same....
Despite having CBS atop the ratings, Nikki Finke writes in the LA Weekly that Les Moonves should resign in the wake of several embarrassing incidents. Yes, resign, even though the...
Page Six claims that unnamed members of the Disney board have reached out to National Basketball Association Commissioner David Stern about taking over if Michael Eisner is ousted. A rep...
Film critic Henry Sheehan is promising to post daily reports from the Berlin Film Festival on his website at henrysheehan.com, beginning Friday....
It's time, apparently, for another movie set in the San Fernando Valley. This time, Paul Thomas Anderson (who made Boogie Nights, Magnolia and Punch-Drunk Love, but not Two Days in...
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences thinks so, and they've got the cash -- a $134 million (and growing) nest egg, thanks to the annual Oscar show --...
John Markoff in the NYT ("Hollywood Mogul Plays by Technology's Rules") and Richard Verrier and Claudia Eller in the LAT ("Clash of CEO Egos Gets Blame in Disney-Pixar Split")....
Now that Pixar has broken with Disney, studios are getting in line to propose marriage to Steve Jobs. All he's done is bring in $2.5 billion in box office and...
The Writers Guild board kept Charles Holland in place as president, despite questions about the stories he tells about his background. I especially like that when the Times could not...
The Writers Guild board meets today to figure out the latest mess it has itself in, involving the credentials of the new guild president, Charles Holland. A quick recap: Holland...
Rep. Billy Tauzin has turned down the MPAA's offer to take over for Jack Valenti. Instead, he'll apparently become the highest paid trade association lobbyist in the country. Wash Post,...
The first time Nikki Finke met Ray Stark, the producer-agent-publicist threatened her. She calls him the Most Vindictive Man in Hollywood, but still wept upon his death over the weekend....
The L.A. Film Critics awards for 2003, via Movie City News. The site's Leonard Klady opens the door a little on the selection process....
Movie City News has unveiled the MCN 100, a panel of critics, reviewers and film watchers who will vote periodically for Best Picture and other awards. The voters listed include...
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Clinton fundraises in LA
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The natural gas leak above Porter Ranch now qualifies for various government actions. Story
Performing arts with cheer
Donna Perlmutter closes out 2015 with productions downtown and on the Westside.
