Hot Pursuit, Review: Cool comic caper A go-by-the-book cop from San Antonio, Rose Cooper (Reese Witherspoon), who has a reputation for inefficiency and low intelligence, is assigned by Captain Emmett (John Carroll Lynch) to escort a murderous drug baron, Vicente Cortez (Joaquín Cosio)’s lieutenant, Felipe Riva (Vincent Caresca), and his wife Daniella (Sofia Vergara) to a court in Texas, where they are to testify against him. As soon as she arrives at the house, with her police co...

Wild, Review: On your hike to happiness, leave everything behind Personal to the point of being alien, Wild is a well-intentioned film that picks incidents from a true story, brings the occasional tear to the eye, yet remains foggy and distant. Haunted by memories of her mother Bobbi who succumbed to cancer at a relatively young age, Cheryl gets into reckless behavior, a heroin addiction, several casual sexual relations and a divorce. Then, in what seems a hurried and unconsidered decision, ...

SPOTLIGHT MEDIA PRODUCTIONS   The 87th OSCAR® Nominees to be Honored at Academy Luncheon, By Adrienne Papp   By Adrienne Papp         More than 150 Oscar nominees, along with 87th Oscars® host Neil Patrick Harris, will come together at noon on Monday, February 2, at the Beverly Hilton when the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences honors this year&r...

SPOTLIGHT MEDIA PRODUCTIONS   87TH OSCARS® NOMINATIONS ANNOUNCED   By Adrienne Papp   Directors Alfonso Cuarón and J.J. Abrams, actor Chris Pine and Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs announced the nominations for the 87th Academy Awards® today (January 15).  For the first time, nominees in all 24 categories were announced live. Cuarón and Abrams announced the nominees in 11 categories at 5:30 a.m. ...

Child of indie American cinema, Anderson keeps a sweet tone of bewilderment in his new hors d’oeuvre, which although took time to prepare, is served cold, raw - pleasing, but leaving a mouthwatering effect for a no-show main.      Remembering Anderson’s previous moments with The Master or Magnolia, where a constant flow and amusing disconnection from reality progress with every scene, Inherent Vice is more of a sharp staccato-like nostalgic manifesto for an era of...

Wild, dir. Jean-Marc Vallée, 2014, US      It is rather a common thing to push ourselves beyond the borderline in an attempt to see what it takes to confront our fears. This challenge now has potentially evolved into the journey of encountering our dreams and testing our capability to either pursue or quit them; but is it easy to define a dream as a ‘to quit’ or ‘to live’, before knowing the cost?    Wild is about dreams. Or, to be m...

The photo here is said to be Anjelica Huston's favorite shot of their glory days together as featured from her collection. by Quendrith Johnson, Los Angeles Correspondent   When the legend turns 77 on April 22, Jack Nicholson will mark it in his new-found low-key way. But Nicholson's path from New York to Hollywood has been a wild ride. In fact, The Wild Ride (1960), the "B" exploitation racing movie with Georgianna Carter, still holds up. With the dark-haired lothari...

by Quendrith Johnson, Los Angeles Correspondent There are many reasons to wonder silently about the HFPA and their Golden Globe Awards, uhm, maybe the NSA knows more than some of us. (But not likely.) Last year Theo Kingma took the helm, and most of us hoped for the best after the sale to Peter Guber and friends.  What if the HFPA, founded in 1947, came back to its core directive as a charitable institution and gathering place for international journalists in Hollywood? Once w...

Water for Elephants enjoyed its Sydney premier tonight, with the 300m red carpet running down Pitt St Mall. Reese Witherspoon and her co-star Robert Pattinson (Twilight) were mobbed by thousands of fans and hundreds of media types. Earlier in the day they did Sydney's famous Luna Park, running with the circus theme. "I think all I can do is stand back and sort of watch it happen because I'm not used to seeing somebody have so many fans," Witherspoon told the press. ...