Hollywood never had a chance to make a movie out of J.D. Salinger’s delightful “The Catcher in the Rye,” though it wasn’t for lack of trying. Over the years, everyone gave it a shot — Sam Goldwyn, Billy Wilder, even…

Talk about karmic connections. I had just started reading Roger Ebert’s wonderful essay about Ron Galella, the notoriously relentless paparazzo, who is profiled in the new documentary “Smash His Camera,” when I heard the news about the death of J.D….

Everyone in the world in the past couple of days has been writing about how “Avatar” has now surpassed “Titanic” to become the highest-grossing film of all time. But most of the stories have left out the tricky part: You…

Normally I take time out in January to offer up my Studio Report Card, which grades the major studios on the performance of their films, both in terms of commerce and quality. But I took a break this year, since…

America’s fiery hordes of Tea Party conservatives seem to have the hapless Democratic Party on the run, but one right-wing congressional candidate in Illinois may have met his match this week when he was caught appropriating (or should we say…

Andrew Klavan is a gifted thriller novelist who happens to be a political conservative. And because he’s a right-winger, he happens to think that Hollywood is chock-full of leftist dilettantes who disrespect all sorts of important cultural icons, from the…

One of the most fascinating films up at Sundance this week is “Catfish,” a documentary that has wowed audiences and critics alike with its portrait of Nev Schulman, a bright-eyed young New York photographer who becomes involved, via Facebook, with…

Here’s the dirty little secret about the motion picture academy’s controversial scheme to expand this year’s best picture nominees from five to 10 movies. It isn’t going to make the slightest bit of difference in the Oscar race. Coming on…

“Extraordinary Measures” opened with a thud this weekend, barely earning an anemic $7 million, according to my colleague Ben Fritz, an especially poor showing for the debut release from CBS’ new film division. Although the syrupy Harrison Ford-starring medical drama…

Even though he’s best known as a sportswriter, Bill Simmons is so ridiculously whip-smart about so many things that I guess I shouldn’t be surprised to discover that he probably has the savviest take on NBC’s Leno-Conan late-night debacle. After…