Funny People: Uneasy Mix of Humor and Heart

A 40-year-old needs to retire his record as America’s oldest male virgin. A schlub gets drunk and impregnates a woman he just met. The two films that Judd Apatow has written and directed, not including the 493 other comedies he’s produced in the past two years, are relationship pictures.

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Michael Jackson’s legal woes likely to live on

Michael Jackson was a one-man cottage industry for the legal profession. Two child-molestation investigations (no convictions), two divorces, myriad civil lawsuits over concerts, special performances and soured business deals, near-bankruptcy and the threatened foreclosure of his Neverland ranch kept teams of lawyers busy. Jackson’s legal stable included the elite of Los Angeles, California, litigators — Thomas Mesereau Jr., Mark Geragos and the late Johnnie L.

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Saro-Wiwa’s son welcomes Shell payout

A $15.5 million payout made by oil giant Shell to settle a lawsuit brought against it by relations of executed Nigerian writer Ken Saro-Wiwa and other activists will allow the families of the victims to move on with their lives, Saro-Wiwa’s son has told CNN. The New York lawsuit — brought to court by the Center for Constitutional Rights on behalf of Saro-Wiwa’s family and others in 1996 — accused Shell’s Nigerian subsidiary of complicity in the writer’s 1995 hanging and the killings or persecution of other environmental activists in the Niger Delta. Nigeria’s Ogoni people have complained for years that Shell was allowed to pollute its land without consequences

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A Brain Wider Than the Sky by Andrew Levy

I have only once in my life had a headache that might qualify as a migraine. It was in Palm Beach, Fla., in 2005. I was interviewing the writer James Patterson and simultaneously withdrawing cold turkey from a prescription antidepressant when suddenly I had the sensation of an airbag trying to inflate inside the tight confines of my cranium

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Cracking Hollywood’s celluloid ceiling

When it comes to bagging the best jobs behind the camera, Hollywood A-lister Charlize Theron says that women have to make their own luck. Indeed, the 33 year-old’s career could be seen as a template for what women can achieve in the industry. As an actress, Theron is famous for roles in films as diverse as serial killer biopic “Monster” and Will Smith superhero movie “Hancock,” switching with apparent ease between small independent movies and big-budget blockbusters.

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Review: Why some films go straight to DVD

It seemed like a good idea at the time: Skip the "Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience" — the only major wide release this weekend and more or less review-proof — and check out the new releases down at the local DVD store instead. I was up for this assignment. We all know how close “Slumdog Millionaire” came to bypassing theatres

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