Can the New Year live up to what was a rotten old year for everybody but the movie business? There are never any guarantees that films will perform, and movies usually look best sight unseen.
January: The four-day Martin Luther King holiday weekend (January 15-18) is the New Years first shot at beefy box office business.
In the eyes of U.S. movie theater owners, Sandra Bullock shined as 2009s top Hollywood star at the box office, as the actress nicknamed “Americas Sweetheart” scored with audiences after a two-year absence from screens.
Romantic comedy “The Proposal” made 315 million at worldwide box offices following its June release, and football drama “The Blind Side” has made 193 million only in the U.
Hugh Jackman, Taylor Lautner, Mariah Carey and Sandra Bullock are among the stars expected at next week’s People’s Choice Awards.
Executive producer Mark Burnett says the stars “are coming out in droves to thank the fans for their love and support.”
Steve Carell, Carrie Underwood, Ellen DeGeneres and LL Cool J are also set to attend the celebrity-filled ceremony on Jan.
Capsule reviews of films opening this week:
Jake Coyle, AP Entertainment Writer
“Avatar” - James Cameron’s 3-D epic has all the smack of a Film Not To Miss - a movie whose effects are clearly revolutionary, a spectacle that millions will find adventure in. But it nevertheless feels unsatisfying and somehow lacks the pulse of a truly alive film.
Title-wise, the musical “Nine” registers half a digit higher than “8 1/2,” the Federico Fellini masterpiece that inspired the stage show that was the source for this new movie version.
Yeah, comparing the two is unfair, but “Nine” is the same story at its core. And despite stars with enough Academy Awards hardware to start their own metal works, Rob Marshall’s musical ends up as an amiable but muddled music-video rehash of Fellini’s study of a filmmaker adrift in personal and creative turmoil.
Quirky TV musical “Glee” struck a chord at the Golden Globe awards on Tuesday in its first season with a leading four nominations in a television field packed with fresh shows and new stars.
Morrison put the success of “Glee” down to its joyful spirit. “I think people need optimism. It is an uplifting show.
Jerry OConnell is set to co-star in NBCs comedic drama pilot “Rex Is Not Your Lawyer,” replacing Sendhil Ramamurthy days after the “Heroes” regular was cast in the role.
“Rex” stars David Tennant as Rex Alexander, a top Chicago litigator who begins suffering panic attacks and starts to coach clients to represent themselves in court.
Ben Affleck, Katie Holmes, rapper 50 Cent and “The Twilight Saga: New Moon” co-stars Kristen Stewart and Dakota Fanning are taking their acts to the Sundance Film Festival.
Stewart and Fanning team up for director Floria Sigismondi’s “The Runaways,” a portrait of rocker Joan Jett as she forms her band in the 1970s.
Hollywood came to Havana on Thursday as Cuban writers and artists gave an award to Benicio del Toro, star of the 2008 movie “Che,” in a ceremony attended by fellow actors Bill Murray, Robert Duvall and James Caan.
Their presence lent a bit of Hollywood glitz to warming U.S.-Cuba relations, and may have been the precursor for the making of a film in Cuba.
Havanas famous seaside avenue, the Malecon, could be mistaken for Hollywood Boulevard this week as four high profile film stars come to the Cuban capital in the splashiest sign yet of warming U.S.-Cuba relations.
The spokesman, who asked not to be identified, said the stars were accompanied by other people in the movie industry, including producers he would not name.