Movies

Although the film has never been screened in Nablus, many residents here have viewed several clips widely broadcast on satellite television, and some are not happy with what they have seen. Those giving the film thumbs down feel it portrays the bombers as less than heroic and godless.

"This movie doesn't help the Palestinian cause," said an armed Palestinian militant who would not give his name because he's on the run. "People who go to carry out bombings do not hesitate so much."

The film tells the story of two Nablus car mechanics who are sent to carry out a double suicide-bombing in Tel Aviv. They shave their beards to blend into Israeli crowds more easily, pray and prepare farewell videos.

The movie has generally been praised around the world and has been played in about 60 countries, according to director Hany Abu-Assad, an Arab born in Israel -- currently living in Holland -- who considers himself Palestinian.

Could an Oscar be around the corner? "It's a great moment," says Santaolalla, 54, "because I think everything that I loved, that I grew up interested in, now I'm doing."

Beyond recording music, Santaolalla has been clocking his share of stage time at award shows the past year, being named producer of the year at the Latin Grammys in November and lauded for his film scoring on "21 Grams" and "Motorcycle Diaries" on the film festival circuit.

But it was the ballad "A Love That Will Never Grow Old," which he wrote with longtime Elton John lyricist Bernie Taupin for "Brokeback Mountain" that landed him his first Golden Globe and, the next day, a congratulatory message from the president of Argentina.

And Hollywood's much-maligned system of rating movies stars in its own film.

The Sundance Film Festival, the country's foremost showcase for independent cinema, gets under way Thursday with an intriguing mix of role reversals among its cast.

Gore and Nader lead what's shaping up as a powerhouse year for documentaries, always a strong suit at Sundance. Director Davis Guggenheim's "An Inconvenient Truth" chronicles former Vice President Gore's dogged campaign to convince a reluctant society of fossil-fuel profiteers and consumers about the dangers of global warming.

The country's largest theater chains are snubbing the film because they object to it being sold on DVD and shown on cable TV the same day it debuts in a handful of theaters owned by the same company that produced the movie.

"Bubble" isn't the first film to be released this way. But the combination of a high-profile director and the backing of maverick billionaires Todd Wagner and Mark Cuban have studios and theater owners paying close attention this time.

"It's the biggest threat to the viability of the cinema industry today," John Fithian, president of the National Association of Theater Owners, said of the so-called "day and date" release strategy.

The move comes as new technology is giving consumers faster access to music, movies, TV shows and other content via multiple devices, including laptop computers, portable video screens, even cell phones. Theater owners have faced challenges from technology before, most notably television and the VCR. But this is the first time major studios have contemplated releasing films in competing formats at the same time.

Some people, like Joe Solmonese, president of the gay-rights group Human Rights Campaign, thinks so since six awards went to movies with gay or transsexual central characters.

"It was a historic night," he told The Associated Press on Tuesday. "I think it says a lot about where we're going as a country."

"The more people live out and openly and honestly, the more we are simply part of the everyday fabric of Americans' lives," he added. "I think that's what not just the release of these movies demonstrates, but the fact that they won the awards that they did."

But Janice Shaw Crouse of Concerned Women for America, a women's group that applies Biblical principles to public policy, maintained: "Once again, the media elites are proving that their pet projects are more important than profit."

The girls, aged 13 to 16, were trying out for the part of trainee wizard Luna Lovegood in "Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix."

In the book, Luna is described as being an unusual character who is considered somewhat of an outsider by her classmates. With her wand tucked behind her ear for safekeeping and a necklace of corks, the 14-year-old wizard often appears somewhat detached from what is going on around her.

The successful auditioner will join cast members Daniel Radcliffe, who plays Harry; Emma Watson, who is Hermione Granger; and Rupert Grint, who plays Ron Weasley. First in line outside Westminster Central Hall in London was Kim Allen, 15, who said she had been waiting in line since 11 p.m. Friday.

"I desperately want the part. I check the Harry Potter Web site every day and saw the auditions advertised on there."

From vampires and killer hostels to freaky grandmas and Steven Spielberg, there is something for everyone opening in theaters this weekend. But most notably -- it's the return of Hollywood's classic horror genre.

Arguably the most-anticipated release is director Eli Roth's slasher flick 'Hostel.' Advance buzz has been off the hook for this gut-cringing and eye-scrunching film about two American college buddies who get more than they bargained for while backpacking in Eastern Europe. They check into a cheap hostel looking for sex and drugs and soon discover a horrific scene of violence and gore reminiscent of the grisly horror films of the early '70s.

'Hostel' is reportedly so scary that some people ran out of an advance screening in horror. That reaction could be expected considering Oscar-winner Quentin Tarantino is one of the film's executive producers. If movie-goers flock to 'Hostel' like they did Tarantino's 'Pulp Fiction,' success is guaranteed.

Jay Hernandez ('Friday Night Lights') and Derek Richardson ('Reeker') co-star in the R-rated film which opens in wide release today.

Horror fanatics looking for more blood and guts might also want to check out the gory vampire flick 'BloodRayne.' However, be forewarned: The reviews have not been great. Kristanna Loken ('Mortal Kombat: Conquest') stars as a half-human vampire bent on avenging the rape of her mother. Oscar-winner Sir Ben Kingsley ('Gandhi'), Meatloaf ('Fight Club') and Michelle Rodriguez (TV's 'Lost') co-star in this R-rated film. But, apparently, even their acting chops couldn't save this bloody mess.

One online reviewer summed up 'BloodRayne' as "bloody horrible." Another wrote, "if you want to shell out $10 to see a $25 million dollar student film, this is the time to do it."

We'll have to wait and see which horror film slashes its way to the top of the box office chart.

The weekend competition also includes director Steven Spielberg's latest historical drama 'Munich.' Set in the tragic aftermath of the 1972 Munich Olympics, a secret agent (Eric Bana) is sent to track down the Palestinian terrorists who assassinated 11 Israeli athletes.

Critics are hailing the R-rated thriller as one of the year's best. 'Munich' has already nabbed two Golden Globe award nominations. Oscar-winner Geoffrey Rush ('Shine') and Daniel Craig ('The Jacket') co-star.

For comedy fans who are just looking to sit back and laugh out loud, 'Grandma's Boy' is just what the laugh doctor ordered. Hollywood's new golden girls Doris Roberts ('Everybody Loves Raymond'), Shirley Jones ('The Partridge Family') and Shirley Knight ('Dutchman') co-star as three grannies who have an accidental run-in with some special green 'tea.' Hilarity ensues as the golden trio gets jiggy with a group of young freaks. With Adam Sandler ('The Water Boy') on board as executive producer, you know it has to be funny. This raunchy comedy is rated R.

Oscar buzz continues to swirl around the gay cowboy drama 'Brokeback Mountain.' Director Ang Lee's ode to male bonding has lassoed a truckload of awards and nominations so far, but many moviegoers have not been able to see it. It has played in fewer than 500 theaters. That is, until now. The R-rated film expands to more cities worldwide today.

Also opening to wider audiences is the buddy action comedy 'The Matador.' The R-rated film stars Pierce Brosnan ('Die Another Day') as a lonely hitman who strikes up an unexpected friendship with a traveling salesman (Greg Kinnear) at a Mexico City bar. Brosnan is getting good reviews for this comedic turn away from his James Bond character.

With the Golden Globes just around the corner, now's the time to catch one of the other critical favorites still in theaters. Worth a second (or third) look this weekend: 'King Kong,' 'The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,' 'Memoirs of a Geisha,' 'The Producers,' 'Capote,' 'The Squid and The Whale,' 'Transamerica,' and 'Good Night, and Good Luck.'

For detailed movie information

Cash's Jan. 13, 1968, performance in a prison yard cemented his image as working-class hero and became a popular live album. About 54 inmates watched the movie in the Sacramento suburb as the actor and his entourage, including musician Shooter Jennings, son of Waylon Jennings, and a host of prison officials toured the facility.

Phoenix was also expected to perform several songs for the inmates.

The event was organized by Prison Fellowship, a group that runs Bible studies and other educational programs in prisons. Fellowship spokesman Joe Avila said the movie's message would be good for inmates because Cash's "whole life was a message of redemption."

"The movie is about how he screwed it up really bad, and he turned to Jesus Christ to help him change," Avila said.

On Friday, Foxx mingled with friends and family at the Delano Hotel, supervising as a crew set up the stage and songs from his album "Unpredictable" blasted from speakers.

For New Year's Eve, partygoers will pay $500 just to attend the New Year's Eve event. If they want to eat dinner, which includes jumbo shrimp, lobster and caviar, they will need to shell out $1,200.

The main event will be a performance by Foxx with Ludacris and Snoop Dogg, Foxx said.

"I'm going to take the mike and go into the crowd and ask someone 'What was something great that happened to you this year?'" Foxx said.

Without further ado, the top five censored moments of 2005:

Robin Williams at the Academy Awards

The blockbuster comedy 'Wedding Crashers' put the spotlight on a longtime underground practice: people showing up uninvited at weddings. Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn made the fun so convincing, the movie just may have influenced the rise in people crashing weddings.

So TMZ took an an informal survey of wedding-reception halls around New York City and Los Angeles, and found that there actually have been an increase in wedding crashers, especially since the movie's July 15 release.

"Most wedding crashers are between the ages of 16 to 21," reports Lorin Kalin, director of Belmont Shore Chalet, a popular wedding-reception hall in Long Beach, Calif. "Because it's young people who want to sneak in to get alcohol. The movie may be the reason for why more people are crashing weddings, but the people who crash weddings usually aren't going to say that it's because of the movie."

'Wedding Crashers' was the top-grossing comedy of the year, taking in $209 million at the U.S. box office. New Line Cinema will release the movie Jan. 3 on DVD in the original R-rated version, along with an unrated version.

The movie, which stars Wilson and Vaughn as the title characters, highlights the romantic complications that can occur when people show up uninvited to a wedding.

Those awkward wedding-crasher situations also happen in real life, says Kalin. "At one wedding reception, there was a teenage couple: a girl and her date. But the girl's boyfriend was also at the wedding and didn't know she was going to be there with another guy. It got really testy and it looked like there was going to be a fight, but security calmed everyone down."

Teenagers may be the easiest wedding crashers to spot, but Kalin says that older professionals -- like the ones portrayed in the movie by Wilson and Vaughn -- may get away with more if they fit in with the crowd.

And what happens when wedding crashers are outed at the event?

Kalin continues, "If there's security, they usually ask the bride and groom if they'll allow the uninvited person to stay. If the wedding crasher isn't causing any problems, they usually get to stay."

'Wedding Crashers' may be considered the copycat movie of the year. (Thank goodness it wasn't 'Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous'.) So we started wondering about which upcoming 2006 flick could inspire a bunch of copycats?

Some possible contenders:

'John Tucker Must Die,' starring Jesse Metcalfe (the hot gardener on 'Desperate Housewives'), is about a high-school stud who's unknowingly set up by three of his girlfriends who join forces to find another girl to break his heart.

'The Benchwarmers' stars Rob Schneider, David Spade and Jon Heder as three guys who try to relive their childhoods by starting their own baseball team and taking on the best elementary school baseball players in the state. Wow! Talk about arrested development!

'You, Me and Dupree' tells the story of a newlywed couple (played by Matt Dillon and Kate Hudson) and how they deal with a house guest (Owen Wilson) who's overstaying his welcome ... really seriously overstaying his welcome.

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"It's a different role for me," laughs Jones, the star of "Oklahoma!," "Carousel," "Music Man" and other squeaky-clean movies.

"People ask me, 'Why would you want to do a role like this?' I say, 'Look, I've been Mrs. Partridge for many years. Let's face it: I won an Academy Award for playing a prostitute in 'Elmer Gantry.' This is the kind of role that at my age (71) it's fun to play."

The fun starts, she related, when three housemates -- played by herself, Shirley Knight and Doris Roberts -- find a jar left in the kitchen by a previous tenant. The contents look like tea, so they heat up a brew. What they're actually sipping is hashish. That's when things get wild with a group of fun-loving young men.

A possible antidote to "Grandma's Boy," which opens Jan. 6, could be "Hidden Places," which airs on the Hallmark Channel on Jan. 28 at 9 p.m. Being a Hallmark production, it's gotta have heart and nothing to upset the family.

So appropriately enough, Jones plays an old lady with glasses, long gray wig and men's clothes who has been banished to a back bedroom by her Depression-era farm family. When the father dies, his daughter and two children face losing the farm. Aunt Betty, called Aunt Batty by her relatives, comes to the rescue.

From horny grandma to goofy aunt in the same month -- just another chapter in an amazing, unending career that has seen every form of show business except the circus.

But who knows -- that could be next.

Shirley Jones lives in a rambling, hillside house in suburban Encino with her husband and manager, former comic Marty Ingels, and three dogs.

The pets bark noisily at an arriving visitor, then turn downright friendly. When the noise dies down, Jones settles onto a soft divan for an interview. She'll be 72 on March 31 but shows little evidence of her calendar age except for the snow-white hair, close-cut with stylish bangs.

She demonstrated her resilience last summer when she starred on Broadway in "42nd Street," playing opposite her son Patrick Cassidy. "I hadn't done a show in 38 years, and I had four songs and five costume changes," she remarked. "I'm no kid, and I said to Patrick, 'I'm not sure I can make 8-9 shows a week. I'm not sure I can sing that much, even though I'm still doing concerts.' Patrick said, 'I'll take care of you,' and he did."

Jones started her career in her hometown of Smithton, Pa., where at age 6 she was the youngest member of the church choir. She played leads in high school musicals and appeared summers at the Pittsburgh Playhouse. She won the beauty contest for Miss Pittsburgh and barely missed becoming Miss Pennsylvania.

In the summer of 1953, on her way to college with plans for a veterinarian degree, something "incredible" happened.

"I was 17, and I went to an open audition for Rodgers and Hammerstein, who had three shows on Broadway and needed replacements," she recalled. "I sang for the casting director, and he asked me what I had done, and I said nothing, really. He said Richard Rodgers was across the street, and he'd like Mr. Rodgers to hear me personally."

Rodgers liked what he heard, and he sent for Oscar Hammerstein. By this time the accompanist had left, and the pair took Jones across the street to sing with the City Center Symphony, which was preparing for another company of "Oklahoma!" The girl, who had never heard a symphony orchestra, much less sing with one, did three songs from the show and was offered a contract and a role in the long-running "South Pacific."

"I thought I should go on to college," she said, "but my parents told me, 'This might be the chance of a lifetime; you can always go to college."'

After six months with a minor role in "South Pacific," Jones learned R&H had a grander plan for her: the female lead in the movie version of "Oklahoma!" She did well in an audition but was considered too young and inexperienced.

She was assigned the lead of another R&H show, "Me and Juliet." After six months, during which scores of girls tried out for the role of "Oklahoma's" Laurie, Jones was brought back to the production, sailed through a screen test and was chosen for the part.

She followed with the film version of "Carousel" and "April Love," a youth musical with Pat Boone. Then Hollywood stopped making musicals; they performed well in the U.S. but bombed in the all-important European market.

Jones turned to drama, stunning the film trade with her 1960 performance for "Elmer Gantry." Later, she turned to television, where she was embraced by a whole new generation of fans as the mother of "The Partridge Family" (1970-1974), in which she starred with her stepson, David Cassidy.

She has pleasant memories of the series and keeps in touch with most of her "family." "It was a wonderful almost five years," she said glowingly. "I got to stay home, raise my kids." She has three sons from her marriage to Broadway singer Jack Cassidy, and now she has seven grandchildren.

Shirley Jones gives no sign of quitting. She is booked for four concerts in early 2006, some with symphony orchestras, some with piano accompaniment and clips of her movies. She has regular sessions with a voice coach and pedals several miles daily on her stationary bicycle.

A Sunday night surge gave Universal's "King Kong" the needed push for the No. 1 spot over the Friday-through-Monday period with $31.4 million (euro 26.48 million), edging Buena Vista's "Chronicles of Narnia" estimated $30.1 million (euro 25.38 million) take.

The box office lead shifted back and forth all last week as new releases cropped up Wednesday, Friday and still more Christmas Day.

"It's a battle of the holiday blockbusters. It was very close for the No. 1 position," said Paul Dergarabedian, president of box office tracker Exhibitor Relations Co. Inc.

"There's only so much room. I think crowded is the fair term to describe the marketplace right now," Universal Pictures vice chairman Marc Shmuger said Monday, noting overall box office was up 20 percent over the weekend compared to the previous weekend.

The movie tells the life story of Hector Lavoe (played by Anthony) who popularized the Puerto Rican salsa movement in 1975 in the United States. After lifelong battles with booze and narcotics, Lavoe died in 1993. In a case of art imitating life, Lopez will play his wife -- and serve as a producer of the film.

We can all only hope that this project goes better for J.Lo than 'Gigli' and 'Jersey Girl' went with her previous beau, Ben Affleck.

'Postal' is based on Running With Scissors' violent video game of the same name. The game follows a killer who goes on a murderous rampage through a small town. Coleman made a cameo in the video game 'Postal 2'; one of the player's objectives is to get the star's autograph.

Uwe Boll, who's currently directing another video game movie 'Name of the King -- A Dungeon Siege Tale,' told SKNR.net that he will direct. The movie is slated for release in 2007. So far, Gary Coleman is the only star on board.

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Gary Coleman Arrivals

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Gary Coleman

'Munich' tells the tale of a group of undercover agents sent by the Israeli government to kill the Palestinian terrorists who themselves assassinated 11 Israeli athletes during the 1972 Olympics in Munich. The film's screenplay was adapted by playwright Tony Kushner from the George Jonas book 'Vengeance,' which told the story from the point of view of the Israeli agents' leader, played by in the movie by Bana.

Spielberg has mostly avoided making public statements about the 'Munich' controversy. So far, he's only granted one interview about the movie, to Time magazine, in which Spielberg said he wanted the film to be 'a prayer for peace.'

'Munich' is a joint venture from DreamWorks and Universal. A DreamWorks representative for the film did not return calls by TMZ's deadline. A Universal spokesperson tells TMZ that neither the studio nor Spielberg had any comment.