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J.J. Abrams, the director tasked with bringing Star Wars back to the top of the crowded franchise heap, has always been happy to borrow. When he set out to make a new Star Trek and drag that moribund cinematic franchise back into blockbuster territory, he cheerfully swapped in some very familiar visual language to help it over the hill. Early on in the film, James Kirk (Chris Pine), nursing a desire to transcend his farmboy life, rides a motorcycle to see the U.S.S. Enterprise being built at a shipyard, and gazes up at it longingly. Star Wars fans would connect...

As one executive puts it, if Star Wars: The Force Awakens doesn't score the biggest debut ever when it hits theaters Dec. 18, he'll "run up and down Sunset Boulevard naked." So how high could J.J. Abrams' reboot fly? The top U.S. opening is The Avengers, which launched to $207.4 million in May 2012 from 4,349 theaters. Disney's sequel, Avengers: Age of Ultron (May 1), could become the new champ, but many believe Force Awakens has every chance of outrunning them both, even with the distraction of Christmas. Globally it could rake in nearly $540 million, topping the three-day record...

Jonathan Crombie, a Canadian actor who was known to a generation of fans as Gilbert Blythe in the mini-series “Anne of Green Gables,” died on Wednesday in New York City. He was 48. The cause was a brain hemorrhage, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation said. Mr. Crombie rose to fame as a teenager when he was cast as the handsome and confident love interest in the 1985 Canadian television adaptation of “Anne of Green Gables,” Lucy Maud Montgomery’s 1908 novel about an orphan (played by Megan Follows) growing up on Prince Edward Island. It was shown in the United States on...

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the comic store... Archie Comics announced Friday that it would pit its freckled, red-headed boy next door against a maelstrom of toothy proportions in time for the July 22 release of "Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No!" The forecast for the single-issue "Archie vs. Sharknado" mash-up calls for the fearsome fish to rain down just as the students of Riverdale High start summer break. "It's Sharknado, people will die," "Sharknado 3" director Anthony C. Ferrante, who penned the comic, told The Daily News, "And if we tell the story really...

Good Times actor Ben Powers has died, according to The Hollywood Reporter. He was 64. While a cause of death has yet to be revealed, an obituary created by his loved ones has surfaced that reveals the actor passed away April 6 in New Bedford, Mass. Powers was best known for his role as Keith Anderson on the '70s sitcom Good Times. His character was married to Thelma Evans played by BerNadette Stanis.

CBS, which has aired colorized episodes of I Love Lucy during the Christmas holiday period, is expanding the scheduling strategy to May. That’s when broadcast networks celebrate the end-of-TV-season holes in their schedules because their regular series have completed their runs. The network said today it will air two newly colorized episodes of its popular 1950s series from 8-9 PM Sunday, May 17. William Holden guest stars in “L.A. At Last!” (1955), and George Reeves — who was starring on TV’s Adventures Of Superman at the time — reprises his role as the Man of Steel in “Lucy and Superman”...

JOHANNESBURG — Years before he was chosen to succeed Jon Stewart on “The Daily Show,” before he made his debut on that Comedy Central news satire or appeared on any American television program, a rising stand-up named Trevor Noah explained why his racial background was both empowering and confining. Speaking from his native South Africa in 2008, Mr. Noah, the son of a black Xhosa mother and a white Swiss father, said that his countrymen had variously accepted and rejected him as being black, and embraced and denied him as being mixed race. Never fitting in anywhere, Mr. Noah said...

Ben Affleck insisted on censoring the fact that one of his ancestors owned slaves from PBS show “Finding Your Roots,” the Sony email hack has revealed. In a hacked Sony email from July 22, 2014, now available on WikiLeaks, the show’s host, Henry Louis Gates Jr., writes to Sony USA chief Michael Lynton asking for advice: “One of our guests has asked us to edit out something about one of his ancestors–the fact that he owned slaves. Now, four or five of our guests this season descend from slave owners, including Ken Burns. We’ve never had anyone ever try to...

Art Bell and Keith Rowland have made it official: There will be July fireworks in 2015 .. the talk show legend is going to go his own way.. A podcasting style as opposed to the terrestrial or even satellite radio he did previously. This time he is greeting the 21st century with open arms, working out private deals to play music, hoping that fans sign up in big numbers to help his return, and beaming himself to every smart phone that wants him. The show will be called MIDNIGHT IN THE DESERT.

American Idol ratings hit a series low last week, dropping to a 1.4 in the desirable 18-49 demographic. Even when head to head competition with The Voice was no longer a threat (the rival show aired a special results show at 8 pm) the numbers stayed flat this week. Once the highly rated FOX show, Empire left the Wednesday night lineup, the show began to falter. The Wrap notes, however, that Idol is still ahead of the final season of the cancelled X Factor. Heading into this week the two regular editions of “Idol” were averaging a combined 2.9 rating...

The first efforts of TV star LeVar Burton’s attempt to re-envision “Reading Rainbow” for the digital age go live at the end of this month. The cellphone. The tablet computer. E-Readers. Decades ago, technologies that today feel second-nature were nothing but nebulous concepts in the imaginations of science fiction authors and screenplay writers. When those ideas were broadcast into the homes of America’s children via television, however, generations worked to bring them into reality. “That which we focus our imaginations on is what we tend to manifest in this realm,” said television star LeVar Burton at a Friday evening speech...

The trailer was taken down minutes after being leaked on multiple sites. A trailer for Zack Snyder's upcoming Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice leaked online on Thursday before being taken down minutes later. A YouTube user uploaded the handheld camera or camera phone capture of the trailer, which has Portuguese subtitles.

One of the definitive (some would say THE definitive) films noir tonight.

NOVATO (CBS SF) — After George Lucas ran into a buzzsaw of opposition from his wealthy Marin County neighbors when he tried to expand his Skywalker Ranch studio, the filmmaker might be getting some payback with plans for one of the largest affordable housing projects in the Bay Area.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngElkyQ6Rhs

Voiceover by Luke Skywalker? Cameo by gray-haired Han Solo? Another cameo by the black Stormtrooper? Not gonna lie. I plotzed.

It has been years since audiences have been given a horror movie that wasn't a carbon copy of another film—big-budget film producers aren't exactly flowing with ideas. Thankfully, the Horror Showcase at the Newport Beach Film Festival, running April 23-30, aims to counter that fatigue with a new crop of filmmakers outside of the Hollywood milieu, presenting seven short films and one feature film that not only break the mold of clichés, but also eat their brains . . . or something. Because if there's one thing we can be mindful of, it's that some of the best, most memorable...

Producers of the new thriller "Beyond The Reach" needed a villain. Specifically, they needed a bad guy to costar with Michael Douglas, who plays the murderous multimillionaire out to kill an innocent hunting guide played by Jeremy Irvine. Requirements for the role included beauty, speed, agility and toughness, and the ability to withstand long shooting days in New Mexico desert near Four Corners. The casting call led them to a most unusual candidate. Douglas' evil partner in crime is played by a Mercedes 6x6.

1. Orson Welles was born on May 6, 1915. 2. As a filmmaker, his three greatest pictures, in order, are Touch of Evil (1958), Citizen Kane (1941) and The Magnificent Ambersons (1942). 3. Ah, yes, but Citizen Kane tops many lists as the greatest film of all time (with Welles filling the top slot on many directing lists). The fictional story of a megalomaniac newspaper magnate (loosely based on William Randolph Hearst) and innocence lost is indeed a masterpiece . . . albeit a dated one. Newspaper magnates? Not in this century, bub. 4. John Houseman wrote in his 1972...