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  • Saturday, Feb. 1, 2014
Jesse Eisenberg cast as Lex Luthor
NEW YORK (AP) -- 

Warner Bros. has announced that Jesse Eisenberg will play Lex Luthor in the studio's planned Superman-Batman film.

The casting of the 30-year-old Eisenberg was met with a wave of surprise on social media Friday. Eisenberg is a widely respected actor but isn't known for the kind of villainous gravitas that Gene Hackman brought to the role.

The Superman-Batman film is to be directed by Zac Snyder and many also questioned the choice of Ben Affleck for Batman. Reprising the role of Superman is Henry Cavill.

Snyder says Eisenberg allows the film to take Luthor in "some new and unexpected directions."

Jeremy Irons was also cast as Alfred, Bruce Wayne's loyal guardian. Alfred was played by Michael Caine in the "Dark Knight" trilogy.

The film is set to open in May 2016.

  • Saturday, Feb. 1, 2014
Oscar-winning actor Maximilian Schell dies at 83
In this Nov. 20, 2008 file picture, actor Maximilian Schell poses for photographers during the opening of the Christmas market on Gut Aiderbichel in Henndorf, Austrian province of Salzburg. (AP Photo/Kerstin Joensson,File)
VIENNA (AP) -- 

Austrian-born actor Maximilian Schell, a fugitive from Adolf Hitler who became a Hollywood favorite and won an Oscar for his role as a defense attorney in "Judgment at Nuremberg," has died. He was 83.

Schell's agent, Patricia Baumbauer, said Saturday he died overnight at a hospital in Innsbruck following a "sudden and serious illness," the Austria Press Agency reported.

It was only his second Hollywood role, as defense attorney Hans Rolfe in Stanley Kramer's classic "Judgment at Nuremberg," that earned him wide international acclaim. Schell's impassioned but unsuccessful defense of four Nazi judges on trial for sentencing innocent victims to death won him the 1961 Academy Award for best actor. Schell had first played Rolfe in a 1959 episode of the television program "Playhouse 90."

Despite being type-cast for numerous Nazi-era films, Schell's acting performances in the mid-1970s also won him More

  • Friday, Jan. 31, 2014
Hungarian film director Miklos Jancso dies at 92
By Pablo Gorondi
BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) -- 

Hungarian filmmaker Miklos Jancso, winner of the best director award at the 1972 Cannes Film Festival, died Friday. He was 92.

Jancso's death after a long illness was announced by the Association of Hungarian Film Artists.

Known for his long takes and for depicting the passage of time in his historical epics merely by changes of costume, Jancso won his Cannes award for "Red Psalm," about a 19th-century peasant revolt.

In the 1960s, critics ranked Jancso alongside great directors such as Michelangelo Antonioni and Ingmar Bergman. However, it was his use of scantily clad women, symbolizing defenselessness, which drew big audiences in prudish communist Hungary.

Jancso was born Sept. 27, 1921, in Vac, a small town north of Budapest. His parents were refugees from Transylvania, once a part of Hungary.

"My mother was Romanian. In civilian life, the family members were friends, but More

  • Thursday, Jan. 30, 2014
NFL to tap more deeply into mobile ad market
NEW YORK (AP) -- 

The NFL, already a more than $9 billion a year business, is seeking new revenues from the expanding mobile advertising market.

The league will launch a digital video service called "NFL Now" this summer, which will offer game highlights, archived NFL Films footage and original news and analysis programs.

Brian Rolapp, the league's executive vice president of media, called mobile advertising the "fastest-growing revenue stream" out there.

"What you hear from advertisers and sponsors is: 'We want mobile and we want video,' which is one of the reasons we've done this on top of the fan demand," Rolapp said Thursday. "There's a reason there's advertiser demand — there's consumption."

Rolapp expects the advertising inventory to be sold out when the service debuts at a yet-to-be-determined date. But the real value is having a platform already established as the market increases.

"To use More

  • Thursday, Jan. 30, 2014
Oscars' green room gets an Oscar-winner's touch
HOLLYWOOD, Calif. (AP) -- 

Who better than a five-time Oscar nominee and best-actress winner to help decorate the backstage green room at the Academy Awards?

Susan Sarandon is collaborating with designer David Rockwell on a photo installation for the Architectural Digest Greenroom at the Oscars on March 2. They're planning a digital display encompassing 86 screens — smartphones, tablets and TVs — one for each year of the Academy Awards. Images honoring movie heroes and Oscar history will show individually and collectively across the tableau.

The 67-year-old actress and the veteran architect and designer are also selecting black-and-white film stills for the stars-only space, where nominees and presenters hang out before taking the stage.

"I've been to the green room several times, and the idea of putting something in there that really makes you feel part of a tradition, it's really lovely," Sarandon said by phone More

  • Thursday, Jan. 30, 2014
TCM doc shows conditional love for Oscar
In this Friday, Jan. 24, 2014 photo, Directors Jeffrey Friedman, left, and Rob Epstein pose for a portrait during an interview in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Richard Vogel)
HOLLYWOOD, Calif. (AP) -- 

At first flicker, the Turner Classic Movies documentary "And the Oscar Goes To ..." appears to be little more than a promotional film for the Academy Awards.

It is, after all, an inside job: co-directed by Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences members Jeffrey Friedman and Robert Epstein, who is also a two-time Oscar winner and an Academy governor.

And the work, which debuts Saturday at 8 p.m. EST on TCM, was produced with cooperation from its subject, the Academy itself.

But just when the film starts to be too reverential or overly celebratory, along comes a chapter about the academy's sometimes embarrassing past, followed by additional scattered criticism to offset the cheers.

While the academy and TCM were partners on the Oscar documentary, "We had final cut on the film," explained Epstein ("The Times of Harvey Milk") in a recent interview. "We wanted to tell the history as More

  • Thursday, Jan. 30, 2014
Google's 4Q earnings rise 17% but ad rates fall
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- 

Google's fourth-quarter earnings rose 17 percent even though a long-running slump in its online ad prices deepened.

The performance announced Thursday indicates that Google is still struggling to close the gap between the rates for ads shown on mobile devices and those on personal computers.

Advertisers haven't been willing to pay as much to reach prospective customers on the smaller screens of smartphones and tablets, but Google Inc. has been tweaking its digital marketing system so mobile and PC ad campaigns are bundled together. In doing so, Google Inc. is hoping advertisers eventually will recognize the advantages of reaching people on the go and gradually begin to pay higher prices for mobile marketing pitches.

But Google's average ad price during the fourth quarter fell 11 percent from the previous year. That was the steepest quarterly drop in 2013. It marked the ninth consecutive quarter More

  • Thursday, Jan. 30, 2014
Elton John, "Dallas Buyers Club" get GLAAD Media Award bids
Actors Jared Leto and Matthew McConaughey pose for photographers at Dallas Buyers Club's UK Premiere at the Washington Mayfair Hotel, on Wednesday Jan. 29, 2014, in London. (Photo by Jon Furniss Photography/Invision/AP Images)
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- 

Elton John, Lady Gaga and the movie "Dallas Buyers Club" are among the nominees for awards presented by the gay advocacy group GLAAD.

The 25th annual GLAAD Media Awards honor outstanding images of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community in areas including music, movies, TV and journalism.

On Thursday, GLAAD announced 93 nominees in the English-language categories, with cable channels earning 28 bids and broadcast networks receiving 11. Netflix earned its first nomination for the series "Orange Is the New Black."

There are 37 Spanish-language nominees, including a stand-alone bid in the novella category for Univision's "Amores Verdaderos," which included the wedding of a gay couple.

The GLAAD Media Awards will be presented in Los Angeles and New York this spring.

  • Wednesday, Jan. 29, 2014
Oscar nomination for "Alone Yet Not Alone" song rescinded
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- 

The motion picture academy says it's rescinding the Academy Awards original song nomination for "Alone Yet Not Alone" from the film of the same name after it discovered composer Bruce Broughton emailed members of the group's music branch to make them aware of his submission during the nominations voting period.

Broughton serves as a member of the music branch's executive committee and is a former governor for the academy.

Academy president Cheryl Boone Isaacs said Wednesday using a position within the organization to personally promote one's own Oscar submission creates the appearance of an unfair advantage.

An additional nominee will not be named. The other nominees are "Happy" from "Despicable Me 2"; "Let It Go" from "Frozen"; "The Moon Song" from "Her"; and "Ordinary Love" from "Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom."

More
  • Tuesday, Jan. 28, 2014
Viacom, Fox want to run anti-smoking ads too
By Michael Felberbaum, Tobacco Writer
RICHMOND, Va. -- 

More TV networks want to gain from tobacco companies' mandate to run anti-smoking ads that will cost tens of millions of dollars.

Fox Broadcasting and the company behind MTV, Comedy Central and BET argue that a court-ordered plan to air anti-tobacco ads on ABC, CBS and NBC won't do a good job reaching young adult and black viewers. Those populations were aggressively targeted by the tobacco industry and are areas of concern for the public health community.

Fox, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch's Twenty-First Century Fox Inc., and Viacom Inc. are asking the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., to include its channels in the anti-smoking ad purchase.

The required ads stem from a 2006 ruling that the nation's largest cigarette makers concealed the dangers of smoking for decades. A judge ordered the tobacco companies to pay for corrective statements related to issues such as the adverse health More

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