Free Republic

The marvel of Katharine Hepburn's enduring stardom is how secure it is now, two decades after her death and three after her last film performance – especially compared to her early years in Hollywood, when audiences were having a hard time figuring out if they liked her at all. From her first role in George Cukor's A Bill of Divorcement (1932), Hepburn's appeal with the moviegoing public had a one step forward, two steps back momentum. She'd go from a hit like Alice Adams (1935) to a string of flops like Sylvia Scarlett (1935), Mary of Scotland (1936) and Quality...

Michael Cohen, in Recorded Phone Call, Walks Back Parts of Guilty Plea Michael Rothfeld 8-10 minutes Michael Cohen has disavowed responsibility for some of the crimes to which he has pleaded guilty, privately contending in a recent recorded phone call that he hadn’t evaded taxes and that a criminal charge related to his home-equity line of credit was “a lie.” As he prepares to begin a three-year prison term on May 6, Mr. Cohen, President Trump’s former lawyer, expressed dismay during the conversation that after testifying for more than 100 hours to federal and congressional investigators about his work for...

The Smallville actress Allison Mack is understood to be the next person in line to be arrested as part of the alleged Nxivm sex cult sting. A woman understood to be the Hollywood actress, according to Art Voice, was seen chasing a police car carrying accused cult leader Keith Raniere after he was arrested, officers said. Officials believe both the woman thought to be Mack and fellow actress Nicki Clyne were brainwashed by the head of the secret society called DOS or The Vow. But it is now thought Mack herself could be the next person detained in the probe...

(CNN)Actor Anthony Rapp has accused Kevin Spacey of making a sexual advance at him when Rapp was 14, Buzzfeed reported Sunday.

Michael Moore appeared on CNN’s State of the Union Sunday and suggested it was time for Democrats to think about running beloved non-politicians like Oprah Winfrey and Tom Hanks for president. CNN’s Jake Tapper played a clip in which Oprah expressed her renewed hope based on what she saw last week during Donald Trump’s meeting with President Obama. “To hear president-elect Trump say that he had respect for President Obama—it felt that he had reached a moment where he was actually humbled by that experience…I think everybody can take a deep breath,” Oprah said. Michael Moore replied, “Well, that’s why...

The entertainment industry is too big and powerful, but that will change. What will not change is that the nation is losing its values. The last election has brought on essays bemoaning the conservative disconnect from popular culture and the need to somehow reconnect with it. The means of this reconnection are hardly ever stated, though there is the implication that conservatives would need to “evolve” on certain social issues in the hopes that its economic viewpoint will be taken seriously by a population whose social way of life doom it to be dependent on government support. As plans go,...

Too many of us so called “Christians” today buy into the perversion that is prevalent in entertainment, simply because it’s there, it’s being promoted and we read or hear good reviews. The popularity of such genre does not make it acceptable for us, as Christians, to take part in it. If anything, we should be speaking out against it.

Consumer group Public Knowledge on Friday accused the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and its head, former Sen. Chris Dodd, of trying to intimidate lawmakers into supporting a pair of controversial anti-piracy bills. In recent days, Dodd and other top Hollywood figures have threatened to cut off campaign donations to politicians who do not support their effort to crackdown on online copyright infringement. "Those who count on quote 'Hollywood' for support need to understand that this industry is watching very carefully who's going to stand up for them when their job is at stake. Don't ask me to write...

ACTOR Mickey Rourke sympathises with U.S. President George W Bush - insisting he doesn't know how any politician could have successfully navigated America after the 9/11 attacks on New York.

VENICE (Reuters) - Taiwanese director Ang Lee's sexually explicit "Lust, Caution" was the surprise winner of the Golden Lion for best picture at the Venice film festival on Saturday, just two years after he won with "Brokeback Mountain." The movie is a World War Two thriller set in Shanghai featuring long and sometimes violent sex scenes which Lee has hinted were real. "It is overwhelming, because this movie has taken me to some very difficult places," Lee told the red carpet award ceremony on the Lido waterfront. "I have invited you to come along with me and in the end...

Over an anarchic lunch, Mel Brooks wisecracks about everything from the new-found success of The Producers to his wartime high jinks. But the recent death of his wife, Anne Bancroft, has left him bereft. To slip briefly into luvvie parlance, Mel Brooks is what is known as a trouper. This means he always gets on with the job, come sleet or snow, a goonish smile slathered across his face (even if, in some lights, the smile does look more like a grimace). His old-fashioned trouper qualities manifest themselves in all sorts of ways. At one end of the scale, there...

LOS ANGELES, Feb. 25 — Mel Gibson's provocative new film, "The Passion of the Christ," is making some of Hollywood's most prominent executives uncomfortable in ways that may damage Mr. Gibson's career. Hollywood is a close-knit world, and friendships and social contact are critical in the making of deals and the casting of movies. Many of Hollywood's most prominent figures are also Jewish. So with a furor arising around the film, along with Mr. Gibson's reluctance to distance himself from his father, who calls the Holocaust mostly fiction, it is no surprise that Hollywood — Jewish and non-Jewish — has...