Because the early screening of Precious came with a warning from the publicist to bring tissues, I fully expected to be a goner. Yet there I sat dry-eyed through all of Lee Daniels' screen adaptation of Sapphire's celebrated 1997 novel Push. The movie has the kind of authenticity and ugly immediacy that make the tears of a viewer sitting in the dark safety of a movie theater seem a little silly — indulgent even. That's not to say ...

"Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever" had few fans upon its release in 2002. The $70 million movie, starring Antonio Banderas and Lucy Liu, was a box office failure, making just $14.3 million domestically and less than $6 million overseas. And critics were scathing. "A career low for both Liu and Banderas," said Empire magazine. "Ecks this one off your must-see list," wrote the New York Post's Lou Lumenick. But, seven years after its release, "Ecks" can now claim one ...

A hoax video purporting to show Michael Jackson hopping out of a coroner's van alive was produced by a German television station as an experiment, the broadcaster told CNN Monday. It was made to show how easy it is to spread rumors online, said Heike Schultz, a spokeswoman for RTL, the leading private broadcaster in Germany. "We sent out a press release before we did the video to alert everyone that it was fake, but once posted it spread really ...

When David Whitney traveled to Pakistan to shoot his film about a man forced to flee Afghanistan after falling foul of the Taliban he didn't expect fiction to turn into reality. But that's exactly what happened three weeks into shooting political thriller "Kandahar Break" in late 2008. Gunmen attacked the first-time director and his crew near the Afghan border. Four Pakistani crew members were shot and wounded in the incident and the entire crew was forced to flee the ...

I'm going on down to Yasgur's farm I'm going to join in a rock 'n' roll band I'm going to get back to the land And get my soul free... —Joni Mitchell, "Woodstock" On July 20, 1969, a man walked on the moon. Three weekends later, about a half-million people attended, or tried to attend, the Woodstock music festival — three days of peace, love and music that still stand as an emblem for all that was groovy and messy about the ...

Going into The September Issue, a documentary chronicling the production of a single, record-breakingly huge issue of Vogue in 2007, we already knew that the magazine's editor, Anna Wintour, wears Prada, drinks Starbucks and favors sunglasses indoors and that her weapon of choice is more frosty glare than flaming pitchfork. In the course of the documentary, she reveals her eyes , her teeth and what she believes to be her greatest vulnerability: her children. The last is ...

The patriarch, Joseph P. Kennedy, spent a big part of his life in the movie business, so it's fitting, perhaps, to quote from a film as we reflect on the family he built. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance opened in 1962, when John F. and Robert F. Kennedy ruled Washington and young Edward M. Kennedy was winning his first of nine U.S. Senate elections. It is the story of a decent, but entirely human, fellow whose fame doesn't ...

They are some of the biggest names in Hollywood, but even Susan Sarandon, Ethan Hawke and Dustin Hoffman have had their fair share of casting calamities they would rather forget. CNN's The Screening Room has managed to persuade the cream of Hollywood to confess their tales of audition woe. The stars shudder at the memory of waiting in line, frantically trying to memorize lines handed to them moments before, all the while being assessed by critical strangers. Benicio ...

It's official: LeAnn Rimes and Eddie Cibrian are no longer hiding their relationship. On Saturday night, the couple stepped out to the Kings of Leon concert in Los Angeles, just two days after they hit the links -- and openly flirted with each other -- at Valencia Country Club. The couple's decision to go public prompted Cibrian's estranged wife Brandi Glanville to tell PEOPLE: "He's just somebody I don't know." In March, she had stood by her ...

There has been a big fuss this week because Michelle Obama wore shorts. She has worn shorts before — to walk the dog, do stuff around the White House. But the photos of her wearing them in that iconic descending-from-Air-Force-One-onto-the-tarmac setting proved too much for the media. Obamas? Check. Summer news doldrums? Check. Controversy? Close enough. It was a story. And people reacted. The Today Show's poll on whether she should have shone that much thigh got ...