The protests and petitions over Jimmy Kimmel reflected Hollywood's politicized mood this week but also raised this question: Will this '70s-type zeal impact policy, or even color content? Hollywood veterans see a sad irony in the passing of Robert R…

Robert Redford, who died Tuesday at age 89, was a major movie star with the soul of a '60s rebel but the appetites of a Hollywood celebrity. He loved movies but distrusted studios and disliked Hollywood and Los Angeles as places to live or…

The three news stories ran back to back last week but only one stirred much attention. One story warned that both NPR and PBS are facing a dire squeeze, even extinction, due to funding cutbacks. A second disclosed new data revealing YouTube's more…

"Tell me everything," Barbara Walters used to urge her TV guests. She believed she could coax the truth out of anyone, whether revered or disgraced, and so did her viewers. Her confidence would be challenged today when every fragment of news, even…

Tom Cruise and George Clooney may seem to have little in common except for this: Pushing through their mid-60s, the two stars proved this year that it's possible to defy the odds and create strong third acts for their acting careers. And to relish the…

The Cannes Film Festival proved itself to be strong on resilience this year, but short on big surprises. Dial back to 1985: "What am I doing here?" asked Clint Eastwood, whose French hosts seemed puzzled that the cowboy star was also becoming an…

Don Hewitt, the brilliantly contentious founder of 60 Minutes, saw to it that the most impactful characters in key segments turned out to be the “heavies.” Hewitt wanted his audience to understand the threat posed by “bad guys” — hence an ambush interview or some other dramatic…

The two shows represent a blast of contrast: Adolescence is gritty and minimalist. The Studio is noisily over the top. Yet both are dominating the conversation among critics and cinephiles and are impacting viewers worldwide. Adolescence is topping…

These aren't fun times for billionaires, even though their number keeps proliferating along with their numbers — there are now at least 17 documented "super billionaires" with assets of more than $100 billion. Still, Elon Musk's Tesla dealerships are being torched, Jeff Bezos' newspaper is under…

Will filmgoers rally behind space travelers who “hate dying” but keep courting death? The director who gave us Parasite, a cool, curmudgeonly social comedy, is challenging filmgoers with a big-budget, genre-bending epic titled Mickey 17 that will…

I've always avoided New Year's resolutions, but this week I happened to recall one that was brief but resolute: I resolved to quit Hollywood. And I did. Almost. That decision seems relevant today for reasons that require a bit of history…

David O. Selznick was a demanding producer who often interrupted pitches and then bullied filmmakers once their movies started shooting. I wonder how impresarios of his era — Selznick, Sam Goldwyn or Darryl F. Zanuck — would have coped with the unruly…