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Saw Avatar tonight in 3D at the 4:20 showing. I was split between disgust with the "message" and curiosity about the CGI and 3D, and the latter won out. ( SPOILERS BELOW ) The 3D works very well, with only occasional funky edges to it in some of the busier scenes. I had read about people getting sick from it, and I did feel a little funny after just a few minutes of watching some of the 3D previews, but I got used to it after that. In the beginning of the movie I felt a lot of "Gee, this...

Hollywood actress Brittany Murphy has died in Los Angeles. PHOTOS: Life and times of Brittany MurphyMurphy died at 10.04am on Sunday, Cedars-Sinai Medical Centre Spokeswoman Sally Stewart said. She would not provide a cause of death, or any other information. Los Angeles Fire Department spokesman Devon Gale says crews responded to a call at 8am on Sunday from a home in Los Angeles that is listed as belonging to British screenwriter Simon Monjack, who is married to Murphy. TMZ claims Murphy's mother discovered the actress unconscious in the shower. She was rushed to the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center but pronounced dead...

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Heroes actress Ali Larter seems set to join Joshua Jackson in the new $130 million adaptation of Gerry Anderson's 1970s UK sci-fi series UFO, announced last July. In an exclusive interview with forbiddenplanet.com, UFO director Matthew Gratzner discussed the casting of Col. Virginia Lake, played in the original series by British actress Wanda Ventham.

I really enjoyed the responses from last week's "What Are Your Favorite Movies Made Before 1950?" thread (http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2406295/posts). So here's another movie topic - favorite foreign language films of any era. (Hey, we need a pleasant distraction from the debacle going on in DC!) If you know the date or even decade of the film and the language, please include it. Thank you and enjoy!

Sandra Bullock has beaten TV's favorite vampires to top Entertainment Weekly's Entertainers of the Year list. The star of hit 2009 films The Proposal and The Blind Side beat the cast of True Blood to the top spot, while Lady Gaga came in third. Also making the top 10: Taylor Swift, Alec Baldwin, Meryl Streep, Ryan Reynolds, American Idol star Adam Lambert and moviemaker James Cameron.

It seemed like a good idea to hire Conan O'Brien to host "The Tonight Show" as Jay Leno's replacement. But O'Brien's huge ratings didn't follow him to his new home, and now, PopEater is reporting that NBC executives are already having conversations about replacing him.

When Fox News executives went looking to replace Brit Hume last year, they had to find someone to take over for their franchise newsman, the staid and steady Washington hand whose arrival in 1996 had conferred instant legitimacy on the upstart network. But the network turned not to another Hume, not a traditional anchor-desk presence or deep-voiced TV vet, but to Bret Baier — sunny, serious, self-deprecating and approachable. Eight years ago, he was holding down the network’s bureau in Atlanta. Today, he steps before the camera every weekday to anchor Fox News’s “Special Report” one-hour news program. Count Hume...

ames Cameron decade long production of Avatar finally came to the big screen on Friday. With the cutting edge technology and 3D special effects, Cameron tried to bring the alien world of Pandora from his mind's eye to the movie theater.

LOS ANGELES--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) today announced the finalization and release of the “Blu-ray 3DTM” specification. The specification, which represents the work of the leading Hollywood studios and consumer electronic and computer manufacturers, will enable the home entertainment industry to bring the 3D experience into consumers’ living rooms on Blu-ray Disc, the most capable high definition home entertainment platform. “Throughout this year, movie goers have shown an overwhelming preference for 3D when presented with the option to see a theatrical release in either 3D or 2D,” said Victor Matsuda, chairman, BDA Global Promotions Committee. “We believe this demand...

Battle Royale: When Movie Robots Fight TV Robots BY Sam Ashurst Jun 1st 2009 11:11AM To celebrate Terminator Salvation rolling into cinemas, we've decided to bring together the baddest and saddest 'bots in movie and telly history for a big metal scrap. These bad-ass bags of bolts can't wait to brawl - so we're going to step out of the way and toss the terrible twosomes into the ring, and see which metallic maniac makes it out operational.

A family spends Christmas Eve in jail. First broadcast on Monday December 19, 1960 on CBS. "Christmas Story" is the eleventh episode in season one. Features Elinor Donahue singing: "Away in a Manger" Will Wright as Ben Weaver. "Christmas Story" is scheduled on TVLand 8:30PM December 24 and 11AM December 25 (Eastern time) Part OnePart TwoPart Three

On Her Majesty’s Secret Service in 2 minutes and 44 seconds. Pretitle Sequence “This Never Happened to the other Fellar” Maurice Binder’s Title Sequence The Real James Bond, George Lazenby (Born 09-05-1939) Diana Rigg (born 07-30-1938) as the Contessa Teresa di Vicenzo Telly Savalas (01-21-1922 – 01-22-1994) as Ernst Starvo Blofeld Rest of the Cast Gabriele Ferzetti as Marc-Ange Draco - Head of the Union Corse, a major crime syndicate and Tracy's father Ilse Steppat as Irma Bunt - Blofeld's henchwoman who takes part in his quest to try and eliminate Bond. Bernard Lee as M - Head of...

Simon Cowell could be leaving "American Idol" at the end of the season and starring in an American version of his British hit music show, "X Factor," starting in 2011, according to reports. Cowell, whose "Idol" contract expires in May and who has been in talks with Fox since last summer, is preparing to announce the new arrangement with Fox early next year, the Times Of London reports. The future of "Idol" would be thrown into serious doubt if the show's indisputable star leaves, it would appear. Officials from Fox, "Idol" and Cowell's own company yesterday refused comment. "X Factor"...

Click here for the new trailer!

I used to watch Good Morning America. I switched to Today. For two days. (7 minutes or each hour on TV those shows, then entrainment, celebrity, a boo hoo story, and a consumer scare, eh alert). No thanks. Now I search out mt own news

On this day in 1969 , Tiny Tim marries Victoria Mae Budinger on the tonight show.

Red carpet veteran, Nicole Kidman usually looks immaculate. But as she walked into the New York premiere of her latest film Nine last night, it appeared the Australian actress had suffered a 'make-up malfunction'. It seemed the 42-year-old's make-up artist hadn't blended her cosmetics perfectly as loose white face powder was clearly visible on her nose and under her eyes

TOKYO—Toshiba Corporation (TOKYO: 6502) today announced the launch of a 64 gigabyte (GB) embedded NAND flash memory module, the highest capacity yet achieved in the industry. The chip is the flagship device in a new line-up of six embedded NAND flash memory modules that offer full compliance with the latest  e•MMCTM standard, and that are designed for application in a wide range of digital consumer products, including smartphones, mobile phones, netbooks and digital video cameras. Samples of the 64GB module are available from today, and mass production will start in the first quarter of 2010. The new 64GB embedded device...

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Both of the new NCIS episodes tonight featured Muslim Marines victimized by bigoted Christian Marines (or ex-Marines). Is it mere coincidence these two plot-lines come 5-6 weeks after Ft. Hood? I can't help but wonder what an average TV drama's time-span is between the script begin written and the airing date.

The show is only half over tonight so there's still hope this will turn around. So far, a poor innocent Muslim (US Military Solider) was killed in cold blood, the reason will of course be because he was muslim. When Ducky gave his diversity speech about "perhaps we should spend more time seeing what we have in common rather than killing each other" I nearly puked. Let's look at reality, a muslim walked in and opened up on his fellow soldiers. They are doing all the cold blooded killing, not us. I think Navy NCIS is off my list. Let's...

I used my pc to record this program and then cut this part out to share with everyone.There may be folks who are offended by this but it is not my intention to do so.Some of you may not know who Andrea Bocelli is and for them .. Be prepared to be "WOWED"!Merry Christmas EveryoneTurn up the volume BOCELLI

Gone With The Wind was the only novel written by southern authoress Margaret Mitchell, who based the novel on a compilation of Civil War stories and imagination. The book swept readers’ interest, and soon the story became one of the most anticipated movie adaptations. After months of production, hundreds of rewrites, direction changes, and yards of dress material and film reels, the completed film premiered in Atlanta on December 15, 1939. While many anticipated films fizzle, and many hits are eventually forgotten, Gone With The Wind remains as beloved a film as book, but what has caused the movie to...

Long before the film was in the can, there were worrying signs. Early reports suggested that the re-imagined Sherlock Holmes would not be wearing a deerstalker, nor would he be sucking pensively on a Meerschaum Calabash. We already knew that this most quintessential of English characters was to be played by an American – and that the director had not made a great film for almost a decade. ................................ Ritchie has turned Holmes into a rock-and-roll roué resembling a young Keith Richards. He is an inveterate drug abuser and lives in decadent squalor; yet he is also a master of...

The nominations for the 67th annual Golden Globes were announced on Tuesday morning (December 15), bringing recognition to both newcomers and long-established Hollywood talents. "Up in the Air" received six total nods, followed by "Nine" with five and "Avatar" and "Inglourious Basterds" with four each. In the television categories, "Glee" topped all others with four nominations, followed by several programs with three nods, including "30 Rock," "Big Love" and "Dexter." In the Motion Picture - Drama category, James Cameron's "Avatar" and Jason Reitman's "Up in the Air" will face off against Iraq war drama "The Hurt Locker" and "Precious," a...

America’s most famous dysfunctional cartoon family, The Simpsons, this week marks two decades of making the world laugh while offering alternative television therapy to millions of fans. The now distinctive yellow characters of Homer, Maggie and their children, the intellectually-challenged Bart, his smart sister Lisa and pacifier-sucking baby Maggie first burst onto American TV screens on December 17, 1989. Over the past 20 years, they have entered into the national and global consciousness as an icon of television entertainment. The Fox network show’s influence on popular American culture was highlighted when The Simpsons were idolized on US postage stamps earlier...

Hollywood actor and director Mel Gibson's next directing project will be an as-yet untitled film about Vikings, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, "Variety" reported on Monday. Gibson is to direct DiCaprio in an untitled period drama set during Viking times, according to the film industry bible, which reported that veteran script writer William Monahan also has signed on to the project.

Well, I think I’ve been fairly calm and forgiving of Law and Order for about fifteen years. Living outside of the U.S. has certainly helped in more ways than one. Out of sight, out of mind. Law and Order has, for years, been just a press of the remote away from non-existence.owever, recent events have Law and Order just begging for my reassessment. I hardly expected my old television series to be the clown act that leads the American viewing audience into an increasingly predictable pile of hard left propaganda. Why?Dick WolfDick Wolf is basically a follower of usually high-level...

Friday nights might not be too hot when it comes to network television, but it might be because viewers are heading to cable instead. Syfy's fall one-two Friday punch of "Stargate: Universe" and "Sanctuary" earned season renewals late Sunday, confirming what many observers had predicted would happen all along thanks to strong ratings from both shows. In fact, both SGU and "Sanctuary" even beat out network programming more than once, including the Joss Whedon series "Dollhouse" on Fox, which has since been cancelled.

Nine months after bringing the pilot episode to DVD, and just weeks from its highly-anticipated debut, Syfy president Dave Howe told reporters Monday the network was going to release a censored version of the pilot online so that anyone with an Internet connection can watch it for free. The move is a bold one for Syfy, and Howe admitted to Airlock Alpha that it could make the audience tuning in for the same episode in January smaller than reality.

Close your eyes and make a Christmas wish. What's the best present you can imagine a network could put in your virtual Christmas TV stocking? How about the final original episodes of Dollhouse and Sanctuary for the year, a Vampire Diaries marathon, 20 Pixar Short Films and ... something many of us have been waiting for ... one of the final Doctor Who specials starring David Tenn

“Invictus” means “unconquered.” The poem of that name, by 19th century Scotsman William Ernest Hensley, is said to be Nelson Mandela’s favorite. As the title of Clint Eastwood’s new film, which opened last week in the U.S., the word has a dual significance. Mandela, played to perfection by Morgan Freeman, claims that it helped carry him through his 27 years of incarceration at the hands of the Apartheid. When Mandela writes out the verses and gives them to Springbok team captain Francois Pienaar --- another perfect portrayal, this by Matt Damon--- they become the symbol and inspiration for the South...

One of my favorite TV shows is "House" but on the last episode, I started to feel a little uneasy the way the show may be developing. The relationship between Wilson and House seems to be getting a little TOO intimate for me. When Wilson underwent liver surgery to save the life of one of patients, House tried to talk him out of it because it may kill him. Wilson wanted House to be there when he was operated on. House said he didn't want be there because he didn't want to see him die..."I'd be all alone" Now, I...

ABC is admitting that "Good Morning America" is going to change to accommodate the wonky Washington insider George Stephanopoulos -- and not the other way around. Stephanopoulos starts today as co-host of the morning TV show replacing Diane Sawyer and his arrival is going to mean that "GMA" will buck the last 20 years of happy-talk, wake-up TV and become a more serious program, officials now say. "We have been talking for months about how light and kooky morning news has become at a time when people are struggling with a million different things, from the economy to two wars...

Sorry for the vanity, but the few minutes that I have seen is disgusting!

Absent from the big screen for over a decade now, Oscar-winning director James Cameron returns armed with a reported half-billion dollars, a story he’s been desperate to tell for 15 years, and the very latest in cutting-edge visual technology. The result is “Avatar,” a sanctimonious thud of a movie so infested with one-dimensional characters and PC clichés that not a single plot turn – small or large – surprises. I call it the “liberal tell,” where the early and obvious politics of the film gives away the entire story before the second act begins, and “Avatar” might be the sorriest...

Clint Eastwood’s Invictus: A Colossal Bore South Africa is plagued with astonishing levels of crime and poverty, its peoples segregated and suspicious of one another. But the new Clint Eastwood-directed movie Invictus says that’s all okay, because the country’s rugby team won a few games in 1995. Coming off last winter’s excellent and far more challenging Gran Torino, Invictus is shockingly pedestrian and cliché-ridden. Its level of racial naivety makes it a sort of Driving Mr. Damon, with Morgan Freeman accepting a demotion from his usual roles as God or the president of the United States. This time he merely...

is there a way to watch Fox News on the internet?

Watching "Avatar," I felt sort of the same as when I saw "Star Wars" in 1977. That was another movie I walked into with uncertain expectations. James Cameron's film has been the subject of relentlessly dubious advance buzz, just as his "Titanic" was. Once again, he has silenced the doubters by simply delivering an extraordinary film. There is still at least one man in Hollywood who knows how to spend $250 million, or was it $300 million, wisely. "Avatar" is not simply a sensational entertainment, although it is that. It's a technical breakthrough. It has a flat-out Green and anti-war...

There is something quite special about the new Levi's campaign from Wieden & Kennedy. It is an exquisitely wrought example of design, language, mood and spirit (indomitable spirit, to be precise). It is also visually and tonally consistent across all media platforms. And it is obviously grounded in research that discovered a romantic and idealistic tug among the target audience for the good ol' American pioneering imperative. The flawless integration of design, strategy and theme, however, isn't what makes the campaign so special. What makes it special is that, more likely than not -- at least in the U.S. --...

Absent from the big screen for over a decade now, Oscar-winning director James Cameron returns armed with a reported half-billion dollars, a story he’s been desperate to tell for 15 years, and the very latest in cutting-edge visual technology. The result is “Avatar,” a sanctimonious thud of a movie so infested with one-dimensional characters and PC clichés that not a single plot turn – small or large – surprises. I call it the “liberal tell,” where the early and obvious politics of the film gives away the entire story before the second act begins, and “Avatar” might be the sorriest...

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) - An Arkansas couple featured on the reality TV show "18 Kids and Counting" now has 19. Cable network TLC says 43-year-old Michelle Duggar gave birth to a 1-pound, 6-ounce daughter Thursday night during an emergency cesarean section. She had been due March 18.

Movie events don’t get bigger than this. James Cameron’s long-awaited follow-up to Titanic, the most successful film to date, is immense in every way: from the ambition and scope of its vision, to the ground-breaking technological wizardry, to the staggering size of its budget. ...................................... It’s a world that takes a little getting used to. Cameron’s vision owes something to Hayao Miyazaki’s meticulous fantasies and something to the 1992 Australian animation FernGully: The Last Rainforest. ................................................... Sully finds himself a pawn, caught between two camps: the empathetic scientists led by Sigourney Weaver and the corporate guns for hire who want...

Not reported by any news outlets yet, but The Washington Post has confirmed the death of actor Gene Barry Dec. 9 in Woodland Hills, Calif., at age 90.

Too crude? Too absurd? Too biased and racist against white people? Not if you are NBC and Law & Order. In the past, the writers of Law & Order and their "sister" shows like SVU have gone out on the PC limb. If you are of the white race and believe in God, then you too can be the target of Law & Order. If you believe in the right to own a firearm or say that you do not believe in homosexuality, Law & Order writers are aiming a bull's eye at you.

What would everyone consider the best 5 movies of this last decade?

If the data devoured in the United States last year were converted to text there would be enough books to bury the country under a pile seven feet (two meters) deep, according to a study released Wednesday. US residents consumed about 1.3 trillion hours worth of information from radios, televisions, computers, newspapers, mobile telephones, and other sources, according to researchers at the University of California, San Diego.That translated into an average of nearly 12 hours spent daily by each US resident watching television, listening to MP3 players, scouring the Internet or tapped into other sources of data. The information tally...

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Children's favourite Thomas the Tank Engine has been attacked by a Canadian academic for its "conservative political ideology" and failure to adequately represent women. The show's right-wing politics shows the colourful steam engines punished if they show initiative or oppose change, the researcher found. She also highlighted the class divide which sees the downtrodden workers in the form of Thomas and his friends at the bottom of the social ladder and the wealthy Fat Controller, Sir Topham Hatt, at the top. The criticism, by Shauna Wilton, a professor of political sciences at the University of Alberta, is likely to anger...