NEW YORK (Hollywood Reporter) - Depicting an awkward romance between two young misfits set in the backdrop of a traveling carnival, "Splinterheads" mainly comes across as a low-rent version of "Adventureland." Although Brant Sersen's comedy, which opened Friday (November 6), has amusing moments, they come too far between to elevate the film above the standard indie level of quirkiness for its own sake. Full Story »
Reuters
ARTIST: JOHN MAYER
ALBUM: BATTLE STUDIES
NEW YORK (Billboard) - With all of his recent tweeting and tabloid coverage, it's a wonder John Mayer had time to write new music -- much less the best and most adventurous of his four studio albums. Full Story »
ARTIST: RASCAL FLATTS
SINGLE: WHY
NEW YORK (Billboard) - Rascal Flatts' third single from the album "Unstoppable" tackles what might be the group's darkest subject yet: the loss of a friend to suicide. Full Story »
AP
"Loot the Moon" (Minotaur), 276 pages, $24.99, by Mark Arsenault: Billy Povich, former investigative reporter, has been reassigned to write obituaries — his newspaper's way of encouraging him to quit. Full Story »
AP
"Woodrow Wilson" (Knopf, 704 pages, $35), By John Milton Cooper Jr.: Soon after he was elected president in 1912, Woodrow Wilson told a former colleague at Princeton University that all of his preparation for office was in the domestic sphere and it would be "an irony of fate" if his administration were to be consumed by concerns over foreign policy. Full Story »
TOKYO (Hollywood Reporter) - A priest's son embarks on a path of sin and panty photography motivated by confession-compulsion in "Love Exposure." Full Story »
Capsule reviews of films opening this week: Full Story »
NEW YORK (Hollywood Reporter) - Some true-life tales are better suited to documentaries than fictionalized feature films. Full Story »
LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Maybe the movie should be called "The Chinese Box." Full Story »
LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Frederick Wiseman has been making documentaries for the last 40 years, turning a sharp eye on a huge number of social and cultural institutions. Full Story »
AP
Cameron Diaz and James Marsden have a terrible moral dilemma in Richard Kelly's "The Box": Press a button on a mysterious container, they'll get $1 million, and someone they don't know will die. Full Story »
AP
The flat-lining, alien-abduction thriller "The Fourth Kind" offers a close encounter that buries an interesting idea under a barrage of gimmicky, carnivallike hokum. The movie's unwieldy mix of degraded pseudo-documentary footage and "Unsolved Mystery"-style re-enactments is as unconvincing as it its distancing, making the small charms of "Paranormal Activity" all the more apparent by comparison. Full Story »
Reuters
LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - There isn't much that's fine in "Everybody's Fine," an embarrassing misfire for Kirk Jones, who once gave us the exhilarating comedy "Waking Ned Devine," and for Miramax, a storied company now reduced to little more than a film library. Full Story »
AP
NEW YORK - The Idiot Savant asks Marie, "Am I no longer capable of saving us from magic words?" In turn, she asks him, "What makes chosen words — magic?" Full Story »
AP
Lionel Barrymore. Alastair Sim. Laurence Olivier. Albert Finney. George C. Scott. Bill Murray. Michael Caine. Mr. Magoo. Scrooge McDuck. Full Story »
LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Landing very closely on the sleeper heels of "Paranormal Activity" comes "The Fourth Kind," an alien-abduction thriller that combines purported raw case study footage with dramatic "recreations" to unsuccessful effect. Full Story »
AP
"The Road Out of Hell: Sanford Clark and the True Story of the Wineville Murders" (Union Square Press, 304 pages, $24.95), by Anthony Flacco, with Jerry Clark: This is a darkly disturbing true account of a 13-year-old boy, Sanford Clark, sent to live with his uncle on an isolated chicken farm in California in 1926. Full Story »
LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Anyone who believes that directorial self-indulgence is a new phenomenon will find Serge Bromberg's documentary, "Henri-Georges Clouzot's Inferno," to be a revelation. Full Story »
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