Celebrity Gossip: October 2009

This Is It Destined To Win The Weekend

Michael Jackson is really the only one who can take on Halloween weekend and win.
The annual holiday is known for being a box office killer, especially when it falls on a Saturday night, so it’s no wonder Sony Pictures slotted This is It for a Wednesday bow. No other major release was scheduled for the weekend, so uber-fans will come out early and perhaps often considering Jackson’s favorite holiday, big shocker, was All Hallow’s Eve. The studio has been working overtime to tamp down expectations for the concert film they spent $60 million for the right to release. Wednesday’s gross of $20 million worldwide ($7.4 domestically, $12.7 internationally) proves that this film will be a worldwide phenomenon with its international receipts far out-grossing what it makes in the U.S. If Jackson isn’t your bag, this weekend there will be more horror on display with Paranormal Activity continuing its impressive run while Saw VI tries to eek out a profit after getting slayed last weekend in theaters. Read on for predictions.

1. This is It: $21 million
Even non-Michael Jackson fans are coming back from this film exuberant over what director Kenny Ortega has done with the 120 hours of rehearsal footage of Jackson’s final days. So now it’s up to the fans to show up in theaters and make this film a success. There’s no doubt that Sony will recoup its investment on This is It but what the movie becomes is a complete wild card. I think the film will get close to $35 million for its first five days domestically. But again there’s Halloween and two World Series games competing for attention.

2. Paranormal Activity: $13 million
This low-budget wonder has already grossed $65 million, becoming the most profitable movie of all time. What Paranormal Activity does from now on really doesn’t matter. A sequel is underway, stars Micah Sloat and Katie Featherston have already received the huge jump start on their career, and director Oren Peli is already making his second movie. Paranormal has out-Blair-Witched Blair Witch. Reaching $100 million shouldn’t be bad for this $11,000 film.

3. Law Abiding Citizen: $7 million
Gerard Butler and Jamie Foxx have already pulled in $42 million for this film. Another 40% drop is likely this weekend, giving this inexpensive actioner a solid $50 million gross.

4. Where the Wild Things Are: $6 million
Spike Jonze’s meditation on childhood has made $55 million, not enough for this expensive film. Parents seem to be leaving their children at home, which isn’t a bad thing but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t see it themselves. It’s worth the two hours of their time.

5. Couples Retreat: $6 million
It doesn’t matter that critics hate this film. The Vince Vaughn-starrer has already grossed $79 million and comes as a well-needed hit for the struggling Universal Pictures. Last weekend it fell only 38%, proving that audiences want a good comedy right now. This weekend expect another 40% drop off, which would put the movie in striking distance of $100 million

Michael Jackson's This Is It

Michael Jackson always said that he wished he could live on stage, and in Michael Jackson's This Is It, there isn't a moment when he looks less than comfortably and pleasurably at home there. On the vast, half-empty, often darkened proscenium of the Staples Center in Los Angeles, where we see him in bare-bones videotaped rehearsals for the 50 London concerts that he never lived to perform, Jackson moves lightly and easily, with his herky-jerky demon-marionette grace. On the rare occasions when he's not focused on dance moves and has nothing to do but sing, as in a soaring interlude of ''Human Nature'' or a version of ''I Want You Back'' that he tosses off with affection for his child-superstar pluck, the music pours out of him like sunlight.

This Is It is not in any way ghoulish. It has now been established that when Jackson died, he was, physically speaking, a relatively healthy man. And so we're spared the macabre spectacle of combing the movie for any literal signs that he was knocking at death's door. It should also be said, though, that in This Is It, Jackson shows no telltale signs of a broken spirit, either. From the moment he takes the stage, he's loose, robust, and in control. Maybe a little too in control. In the relative privacy of these rehearsal sessions, which took place from March of this year until his death on June 25, Jackson comes off as his friends have often described him — as a gentle, sweet, but very shrewd soul who was also a painful perfectionist. Coaching his keyboardist and musical director, Michael Bearden, on how to play ''The Way You Make Me Feel'' with the exact right syncopated pull, Jackson says that he wants the song to sound ''like you're dragging yourself out of bed,'' but Bearden can't seem to get it. Though they banter a bit about the word ''booty,'' we get a hint of what a frosty taskmaster Jackson could be. When he's displeased, it stings.

As the last set of images we'll ever have of Michael Jackson, This Is It offers a raw and endearing sketch of a genius at work. The movie was directed, by Kenny Ortega, with enough liveliness to make up for its home-movie scruffiness, and I had a good time reveling in what amounts to a soft-edged vérité scrapbook for Michael-maniacs. By the end, though, This Is It feels like the half-complete experience that it is — a mere diagram of the excitement that Michael, for his comeback, had planned to unleash upon the world.

It's clear from the movie that the London concerts were conceived as a very grand series of onstage music videos, each with a huge, intricate set that at times involved digital projections, and each choreographed as a disco-inferno Broadway showstopper. (''Thriller,'' one of the few songs we watch as it was meant to be, had a full earth-packed graveyard.) The dancers were going to pop out from beneath the stage and crawl over skyscrapers, as Michael shimmied and boogied and got lifted into the air. Watching this without most of the sets, with the gears and pulleys still showing, and from two functional camera angles in front of the stage, we get the flavor of the songs but not the majesty.

And that's not just due to the lack of trappings. Jackson, it's clear, held back in rehearsal. In This Is It, he's singing and dancing, but he's also watching himself sing and dance, stepping out of his performance. What's missing — what the film gives you only a tantalizing glimpse of — is his ferocity. When he does a tamped-down version of his solo whirligig in ''Billie Jean,'' playing air guitar on his crotch (a gesture that elicits a round of cheers from the dancers in the Staples Center), you feel him sketching in the heat without quite committing himself. ''At least we get a feel of it,'' he says.

This Is It is fun, but it's a slightly airless experience. If the movie allows you to bask in Michael Jackson's aura, it also uses his image to foster ''nostalgia'' for a concert epiphany that never quite was. Maybe it was Michael's destiny to leave us all wanting more. Would those concerts have returned him to his magical pedestal? We'll never know the answer, of course. But watching this movie, at least we get a feel of it.

Gentlemen Broncos

Badly homemade popcorn balls figure in Gentlemen Broncos. So do badly homemade garments and, especially, badly homemade science fiction written by Benjamin (Michael Angarano), a fantasy-obsessed, home-schooled Utah teen who titles his proudest manuscript Yeast Lords: The Bronco Years. Yet even as filmmakers Jared and Jerusha Hess wallow in the comedic possibilities of kitsch, the husband-and-wife duo dare their audience to pass judgment on the worth of those balls, those clothes, and those really bad stories. As they did in Napoleon Dynamite and Nacho Libre, the Hesses claim to celebrate the amusing qualities of misshapen people and their misshapen dreams, insisting that amateurism and bad taste (both in filmmaking and in life) are intentional artistic choices. The audience may have bought the act in Napoleon Dynamite. But this time, the act bombs.

The one saving grace of such a relentlessly unappealing movie may be that the emperor's-new-clothes moment has arrived: Bad taste is sometimes just a vice, and amateurism in filmmaking is no virtue. In Broncos, Benjamin is sent to a teen writers' camp by his warmhearted but tasteless mother (Jennifer Coolidge even she looks depressed by the role). And there his manuscript winds up in the hands of competing plagiarists. A pompous, formerly best-selling fantasy novelist (Flight of the Conchords' Jemaine Clement) steals the plot for his own book, while blithely untalented young artistes (Halley Feiffer and Nacho Libre's rubbery Hector Jimenez) cannibalize Yeast Lords as a movie. Gentlemen Broncos then degenerates into an aggressively crappy dramatization of Benjamin's original, dorky tale with Sam Rockwell as the hero. It's hard to distinguish between the awfulness of the character and the crudeness of the performance. So why bother?

Britney Spears has sparked fresh reports that she’s set to tie the knot for the third time after being spotted wearing a twinkling ring on her wedding finger.The singer, who is presently dating agent-turned-boyfriend Jason Trawick, was said to be “unlucky-in-love” over a string of failed relationships.A source said: "Britney and Jason have really hit it off. Britney is saying how this is the first 'proper' relationship she has ever had."Advertisement"They actually talk about real stuff and he's genuinely interested in what she has to say.""He's so sharp and intelligent and Britney feels their relationship is so much deeper than any one she has had before.""She really feels like Jason is the kind of man who might tempt her to marry again."Her mother Lynne was also said to be keeping her fingers crossed for her daughter.Lynne said, "He is the kind of man you would dream of your daughter marrying. "The kids love him, and he's stable."

A pretty college girl (fresh-scrubbed newcomer Jocelin Donahue) takes a babysitting job she sooo should have turned down — in a creepy house with rooms she sooo shouldn't enter. The resulting film, The House of the Devil includes a lunar eclipse, Satan worship, and cult actors Mary Woronov and Tom Noonan. Writer-director Ti West's crisp, economical, satisfying little horror pic reclaims the pleasures of the kind of old-school formula that the jokey Scream franchise deconstructed into satire. There's wit but never a wink in this smartly shot production, which pays homage to the 1980s without fetishizing the era.

In Nazi-occupied Tunis in 1942, a young Muslim woman (Olympe Borval) and her Jewish best friend (Lizzie Brocheré), each with marriage ahead, try to make sense of a world in which male-dominated occupation extends even to the girls' own bodies. Writer-director Karin Albou (who plays the mother of the Jewish bride) has a sensuous, intimate filmmaking style that overrides The Wedding Song's more precariously loaded plot parallels. And her authoritative depiction of culturally precise, sexually charged feminine rituals (including pleasurable bathing in the hammam and more painful wedding prep) opens a door otherwise locked to outsiders.

Katie Price aka Jordan hates sex and refused to make love to her former husband Peter Andre for four months during the last two years of their marriage, her best friend has alleged.Jordan’s closest friend for 15 years, Michelle Clack, who was also her chief bridesmaid, made the revelation just days after the glamour girl’s divorce from the singer was finalised."Jordan was my best friend but I can't stand by and watch how she's treated Pete. After everything she's been saying I believe the truth about their marriage has to come out,” the News of the World quoted Michelle as saying.Michelle revealed, "Even though Kate has built her reputation on sex and being sexy, it's all an act for work. She doesn't actually like sex and will usually do anything she can to avoid having it."Over the last two years their relationship had become almost entirely sexless. Her excuse would always be that she was working hard and had three kids. She'd always say to me, ''Oh no, I'm always too tired, I can't be bothered''."But it didn't sit right with Pete because this all happened at the same time she started to go out on the town much more and dress up very sexily. Jordan was back."Kate uses sex to get things she needs. When she first met Pete she said her sex life was awesome - just what she's saying at the moment about her new boyfriend Alex Reid."

For New York strippers, Carmen Electra tops the list of celebrities they would like to have "join them on the pole," according to a survey.

The girls of Scores NYC were recently surveyed on the 10 celebrities they would like to accompany during their gigs.

Playboy pin-up Electra was their topmost choice, followed by Megan Fox and Kim Kardashian.

Lindsay Lohan stood at the fourth spot in the list, with Paris Hilton at fifth place and then Denise Richards and Jenny McCarthy.

Then came Martha Stewart, followed by Pam Anderson and Madonna at number 10, reports The New York Post.

The complete list of beauties strippers would like to join on pole are:

1. Carmen Electra
2. Megan Fox
3. Kim Kardashian
4. Lindsay Lohan
5. Paris Hilton
6. Denise Richards
7. Jenny McCarthy
8. Martha Stewart
9. Pam Anderson
10. Madonna

Hollywood actress Angelina Jolie slept with her mother's boyfriend when she was 16 years old, claims a biography.According to the book being written by Andrew Morton, the star had intimate relations with her mother Marcheline's live-in lover."Marcheline had a live-in boyfriend whom she was very much in love with, but Angelina slept with him when she was 16 and barely out of school," thesun.co.uk quoted a source as saying.It took years for Jolie, 34, to make amends with her mom, Marcheline Bertrand, after she learned of the shocking tryst. Bertrand was in love with the unidentified man, but dumped him after she found out about the affair, sources told.Jolie has claimed that she had a close relationship with her mother, who died of cancer in 2007 at the age of 56. But the two women struggled to rebuild their relationship after Jolie confessed to her mother about the incident.

Dannii Minogue has revealed that she decided to bare all for Playboy mag when she found herself in the midst of a financial crisis after her split with ex-hubby Julian McMahon in 1995. The singer then decided to strip her way to money in order to pay her 150,000-pound debt rather then asking her superstar sis Kylie for help.

"My parents didn't want me to do it. My dad was saying, ''Doing this is forever - you can never, ever change it''," the Daily Express quoted Dannii, as saying.

"Kylie knew why I was doing it - I could have asked her for the money, but it wasn't in my nature. I never wanted to admit the trouble I was in. I should have been looking at my finances,” she said.

She added, "I would never disclose how much - but it had to be a lot to look at my parents'' faces and see the anguish in my dad's eyes.

"I don't regret it, but I feel relieved that people know why I did it - it''s a huge weight off my shoulders. It was actually fun and I did feel liberated. I looked at the pictures and thought, ''I look alright!''

"The magazine was the biggest selling title they''d ever had and they had to reprint. My girlfriends went out to buy it and told me I looked beautiful. It then felt like a celebration of me."

GOLDEN GLOBES 2009 - ALL RED CARPET DRESSES

Charlize Theron kisses woman for $ 140 thousand in charity auction

Hollywood star Eva Longoria has gone topless for a photoshoot for a fashion label. Her husband, footballer Tony Parker, too features with her in it.The "Desperate Housewives" actress sits topless with her hand across her chest, while Tony looks down at her with a smile, reports dailymail.co.uk.The photoshoot, the couple's first official together, was done for a new advertising campaign for fashion label London Fog. They are said to have thoroughly enjoyed the shoot."It was a big love fest. The creative concept was a romantic intimate moment, so it was a lot of Eva and Tony standing really close and nuzzling," said Dari Marder of London Fog."They were like, 'This is the easiest job we've ever done'," he added.Longoria apparently requested the photographer to click a few portraits of the two. She wants to put the photographs up in her home.

Catherine Zeta-Jones has stripped down to her bra and hopped into bed with a hunk nine years her junior – for a new film.The Welsh actress and co-star Justin Bartha have been paired opposite each other in The Rebound, reports The Sun.The new flick follows a 25-year-old bloke who starts dating a mum-of-two after she hires him as a babysitter.In the romantic comedy, Zeta-Jones plays newly-single mother Sandy, who moves with her two children Frank Jr. and Sadie to New York to start a new life after finding out her husband is having an affair.As a string of disastrous dates with men her own age, Sandy finds herself attracted to Aram, her children's 25-year-old babysitter, played by The Hangover star Bartha. The film is written and directed by Bart Freundlich.

South African-born actress Charlize Theron auctioned off a kiss for $140,000, and the winning bidder was a woman, US magazine reported Friday.Theron, 34, took part in a live auction during a gala for the charity OneXOne Thursday in San Francisco. She was initially selling a 2010 trip to South Africa that included World Cup tickets, a safari and a meet-and-greet with Nelson Mandela.But she raised the stakes after bidding stalled at $37,000, far less than actor Jeremy Piven had just raised.To sweeten the deal, she offered up a seven-second kiss for $130,000 to a male bidder, but a woman in the audience quickly bettered the deal with a $140,000 bid.Theron is in a long-term relationship with actor Stuart Townsend, 36."My boyfriend is not here tonight," she joked before a smooch that lasted 20 seconds.

The 'Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant' actress, who married French businessman Francois-Henry Pinault earlier this year, was shocked to discover her spouse feasts on luxury shellfish rather than turkey over the festive season in December but she has agreed to sample his menu.

The 43-year-old star said: "Eating oysters for Christmas is a weird one I didn't know about. I had no idea that would be happening. I'm used to turkey. Its going to take some getting used to." Salma and the French billionaire tied the knot in a romantic civil ceremony in Paris, France, on Valentine's Day (14.02.09).
The couple wed for the second time in a star-studded ceremony in Venice, Italy, in April.

Salma and Francois-Henri - who began dating in 2006 - called off their engagement in July 2008, but eventually decided to get back together after taking two romantic trips to the French capital.
They have a two-year-old daughter, Valentina Paloma, together.

The Saw series long ago cannibalized its cleverest bloodbath gimmicks, but now it's figured out a new way to torture us: by taking a barb-wire stab at political relevance. In the opening sequence of Saw VI, two parasitical bureaucrats of the pre-crash American economy — the implication is that they're subprime mortgage vendors — pay for their sins, and compete for survival, by seeing which one can lop off a weightier portion of body parts before a timer runs out. The pudgy white guy saws away at his belly fat, but the fierce black woman is way ahead of him — she grabs a butcher knife and hacks, hacks, hacks off her forearm, easily outdoing his measly pound of flesh. The fact that each one makes the choice to suffer (rather than die) is the key to the sadomasochistic appeal of the Saw films. The characters' effective collaboration in the series' pain games plays as a metaphor for those of us in the audience, who have all made the choice to get off on these mutilation-porn theatrics.

John Cramer (Tobin Bell), the Jigsaw puppeteer and twinkly-eyed sadist-mechanic-ringleader of the Saw series, was killed off several installments ago, but thanks to the miracle of pre-taped torture-play instructions, he seems busier in death than he ever was in life. His mission in Saw VI is to teach a lesson to William (Peter Outerbridge), the CEO of a health-insurance company who hides his lust for profit behind a welter of fake smiles and byzantine actuarial data. It's fine that the producers of the series have come up with some topical bad guys, but I'd be remiss in my duty as a critic if I didn’t write the following sentence: The trouble with Saw VI is that it never devises cool enough ways to torture people. Where are the baroquely jaw-dropping (if not jaw-snapping) De Sadean Rube Goldberg contraptions? At one point, the CEO has to decide which of his six underlings, all strapped to a carousel, will live or die (the game is supposed to reveal to him that in his insurance work, he's really playing God), but since we don't give a hoot about any of them, and the method of death is unremarkable, the sequence is a dud.

So is the rest of the movie. Saw VI is the thinnest, draggiest, and most tediously preachy of the Saw films. It's the first one that's more or less consumed by backstory — which is to say, it's one of those hollow franchise placeholders in which far too many fragments from the previous sequels keep popping up in flashbacks. If your goal is to do a quick study for a round of Saw Trivial Pursuit, then this may be the movie for you. If you're looking to be jolted into fear or queasy laughter, skip this sequel and hope that the producers get their sick act together next time.

Exactly 10 years ago, The Blair Witch Project divided audiences every bit as much as it unsettled them. So when I say that Oren Peli's Paranormal Activity, a haunted-house thriller shot for $11,000, was made very much in the peekaboo-vérité spirit of Blair Witch — and that, in fact, it may be an even scarier film — you could find that frightening in one of two ways. You might say, ''Cool, I've got to see that,'' or you may think, ''No, I won't get fooled again!'' What I can tell the Blair Witch skeptics is that in that movie, you never really did get to see very much, but in Paranormal Activity you do, you honestly do — though in a slow-build way that's freaky and terrifying.
The entire film takes place in the two-story San Diego home of sweet but spiky Katie (Katie Featherston), who claims to be plagued by demons, and Micah (Micah Sloat), her obnoxious boyfriend, who totes around a video camera to record evidence that those spirits are real. The two joke and bicker, but at night we see them asleep, the camera at a fixed angle in their dankly lit bedroom. The shot keeps skipping ahead, hour by time-coded hour, until stuff starts to...spook. With   its this-is-really-happening vibe, Paranormal Activity scrapes away 30 years of encrusted nightmare clichés. The fear is real, all right, because the fear is really in you.

When asked which one of her fellow 'X Factor' judges she would lock lips with, the 26-year-old beauty says she would choose sexy Dannii every time.

Cheryl - who is also joined on the show by Louis Walsh and Simon Cowell - said: "I'd have to snog Dannii. I'd kind of like to avoid the other two."

And if the Girls Aloud star had to marry one of her other judges she would have to tie the knot with Louis because she could handle being Simon's wife.

Speaking on a live webchat with social networking site MySpace, Cheryl - who is married to England soccer player Ashley Cole - said: "I couldn't bear to be married to Simon, he'd always have to be right and you'd have to sit next to him all weekend. I'd prefer to marry Louis he'd make you feel comfortable and he'd make you a nice cup of tea!"

The 'Forrest Gump' actress - who filed for divorce from the Oscar-winning actor in August citing "irreconcilable differences" - is keen to focus on acting now she is single and the couple's children, Dylan, 18, and 16-year-old Hopper, are older.
She told Redbook magazine: "I turned down so many films because I wanted to be a mom that they stopped offering. I gave up a lot for my kids, but I didn't give up... I'm very content with the way it all turned out.
"I have no regrets for my life that has been lived. New beginnings, definitely. For me, my career too. My kids are older now."
Robin, 43, also spoke about her anger over her marriage split becoming public news.
She said: "It never feels good. Yes, it's divorce; it's a given that it will be public. But... it's so disrespectful. It's like, 'You're an actress, you owe us this?' 'F**k you' is what I say."
In April, Sean filed for separation from Robin but a month later asked California's Marin County Superior Court to dismiss the case claiming it was an "arrogant mistake".
It was not the first time the couple had announced they were divorcing only to change their minds.
Sean, 49, first filed for divorce in December 2007, but his petition was dismissed. Three days later Robin filed her own paperwork.
However, in April 2008, they made a request to have their divorce petition dismissed as they wanted to give their relationship another chance.

Astro Boy (2009)

In an origin story that's like Pinocchio meets Frankenstein, Dr. Tenma (voiced by Nicolas Cage), a robotics professor, loses his son, Toby, in a freak energy accident and builds a new kid from scratch: a robot boy with rocket flames that shoot out of his feet and hair molded into a Dennis the Menace cowlick. Astro, as he comes to be known, doesn't just look like Toby; he has the exact same personality (they're both voiced by Freddie Highmore). You could chalk this up to the miracle of robotics — or, perhaps, to the thinness of characterization that marks this jet-propelled update of the Japanese cartoon series, which in 1963 was an early milestone of anime.

If you're pining for the richness of a Pixar film, or even for the crackerjack comedy of, say, Kung Fu Panda, look elsewhere. Yet the new Astro Boy is a marvelously designed piece of cartoon kinetics, with the pleasing soft colors and rounded-metal tactility of an atomic- age daydream. Astro gets kicked off Metro City, a spaceship that hovers above Earth, and he lands in a scrap heap of robots and meets some wild-child friends. There's a little too much lost-boys-and-girls mopiness, but when Astro becomes a robot gladiator, the movie turns happy demolition derby, and the virtuoso collisions just keep on coming.

Three books from Darren Shan's popular vampire-centric 12-book saga Cirque du Freak have been smooshed together to make Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant. The carnage from that smooshing litters this hectic yet dull tale about a high school kid named Darren (Holes' Chris Massoglia, all too generic) who — long story — becomes a half vampire and hangs out with a traveling freak show, much to the anger of his best friend (Josh Hutcherson). Darren's mentor is a rather droll full vampire dubbed Larten Crepsley (John C. Reilly, working heroically to keep the movie aloft with his laid-back charm). Crepsley's nemesis is the angry bloodsucker Murlaugh (Ray Stevenson). Don't bother to take notes, because subplots go nowhere, and characters — many played by well-known actors — barely get screen time. Willem Dafoe, Salma Hayek, and Jane Krakowski are among those who are there and gone. (Hayek is an entertaining eyeful as a lady with both full boobs and full beard.)

Cross my heart with a stake through it, this Cirque du Freak newbie could barely distinguish between the vampires (the ''good'' guys, who have learned how to coexist with humans) and their hungrier, less tolerant rivals, the Vampaneze. But Freak cognoscenti sitting near me were equally underwhelmed, even as a violent showdown had the whole bloody cast flying around and whomping one another

The pop star - who was warned off men by Cheryl Cole, her mentor on UK TV talent show 'The X Factor', which she won in 2008 - has been spotted out with Zalon Thompson in London.
The 21-year-old beauty was seen with the hunky musician - who has been signed by Amy to her new label Lioness Records - after her single 'Bad Boys' reached number one in the charts last week, and the pair were also seen going out for a romantic dinner and a trip to the cinema.
A source told Britain's The Sun newspaper: "Alexandra is very fond of Zalon. They've struck up a close relationship over recent months and really enjoy each other's company."
The 'Hallelujah' singer recently revealed she is "looking for a boyfriend".
Alexandra said: "I've only ever had two serious relationships and they were both bad boys.
"I was 16 when I had my first relationship. It lasted about two years. Then I dated another guy for six months last year. But he was a bit of a nutcase."
In July, there were rumours she was dating American singer Cameron Quincy Jagher, but she later denied the claims.
Alexandra previously revealed Cheryl told her to be careful who she dated while she established herself as a music star.
She said: "Cheryl warned me. She said, 'You're not allowed to date dancers, Alex, and you're not allowed to date boys full stop!' "

Amelia is a frustratingly old-school, Hollywood-style, inspirational biopic about Amelia Earhart that doesn't trust a viewer's independent assessment of the famous woman pictured on the screen. The mystery we ought to be paying attention to is: What really happened on the legendary American aviator's final, fatal flight in 1937? But the question audiences are left with is this: How could so tradition-busting a role model have resulted in so square, stiff, and earthbound a movie? Why present such a modern woman in such a fusty format? Dressed for the title role in a wardrobe of jumpsuits, leather jackets, scarves, and slinky evening wear dashing enough to stop air traffic, Hilary Swank's Earhart doesn't so much talk as make stump speeches even when she's at her own breakfast table. And director Mira Nair (The Namesake), working from an overexplanatory script by Ron Bass and Anna Hamilton Phelan (based on dual biographies by Susan Butler and Mary S. Lovell), overloads the picture with a cargo of messages, so much so that she deadens her subject's spirit. Some of these talking points are aimed at today's teenage girls who might admire the subject's highly personal fashion sense; others go out to older women who cherish her feminist cred. All of them add up to banners that might as well be flown from an aircraft tail over a beach: Amelia Earhart lived free in life and love! And Fly! She! Must!

Of course, she did, setting records as the first woman to fly across the Atlantic in 1928 (she was a passenger, but still, ladies of the day generally didn't wear leather helmets and zoom through the air). Earhart was the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic in 1932. She went on to launch her own brand-name fashion line. In 1935, she became the first pilot to fly solo from Hawaii to California. Sometimes the press dubbed her Lady Lindy, linking her fame to that of pioneering pilot Charles Lindbergh. Most famously, she vanished (along with her navigator, Fred Noonan) in the middle of the Pacific while on an around-the-world flight in 1937; her plane was never found, and she was declared legally dead in 1939.

Along the way, the celebrity married George Putnam, the publisher and tireless promoter who shaped her public image. (Richard Gere does the honors as Putnam with all the dated, silver-head-in-hands poses required of him as a worried businessman/spouse whose wife is also his client.) For a time, the freethinking woman also conducted a love affair with aeronautics pioneer Gene Vidal (Ewan McGregor), now best known as the father of writer Gore Vidal. Swank delivers long, carefully composed explications of Earhart's unorthodox attitude toward marriage and feminine autonomy, taken from her journal entries, in studied accents somewhere between those of the Kansas plains of Earhart's birth and those of Katharine Hepburn in her most famous trouser-wearing, gumption-gal roles.

Amelia dutifully conveys the salient biographical info with a trusty cinematic device: As Earhart and Noonan embark on their doomed flight, flashbacks catch the audience up on the events that got her there. (Christopher Eccleston, as Noonan, is the one understated player in this endeavor.) Those last 10 minutes or so of radio-communications loss, concurrent instrument failure, and dawning awareness of disaster are honestly gripping. But just in case the point isn't clear enough (She! Must! Fly!), throughout the drama composer Gabriel Yared lays on blasts of musical exclamations that are as distracting as sirens. Sometimes that music says, ''It's great to be in the sky and surfing the clouds!'' Sometimes it says, ''Look how pretty the landscape looks below — kind of makes you miss the music in Out of Africa, right?'' Sometimes the rumble of violins and horns hints, ''Uh-oh, we're getting to the tragic part of the story!''

Mostly, the busy orchestra backs up the starry cinematography to remind us, ''This slim, androgynous beauty, with her unusual love life and her driving need to take to the skies, sure was something, huh?!'' Whatever the message, there's no navigating around such intrusive messengers.

Antichrist (2009)

Lars von Trier, once a gravely exciting artist (Breaking the Waves), has reduced himself to the status of a quixotically perverse publicity freak. Antichrist, his latest fake outrage, is an art-house couples-therapy torture-porn horror film. It opens with a slow-motion black-and-white prologue, scored to a Handel aria, in which two parents (Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg) make graphic love in the shower as their toddler steps out a window and falls to his death. The scene is shot like a music video, which suggests its underlying message: Von Trier now sees tragedy as cool.

The husband, a professional therapist, tries to ease his wife's grief with too much smuglydetached calm, and so it doesn't take us long to see where their healing is headed: to a war of patriarchal control and ''unreasonable'' feminine rage. For half an hour or so, the movie casts a Bergmanesque psychodramatic spell. But then the two go to a cabin in the woods, at which point Antichrist doesn't deepen so much as it unravels. Von Trier throws in many devices (symbolic falling acorns, half-butchered talking animals), but the one real dramatic trick he has up his sleeve is pain. As in torture. As in... mutilation as marital catharsis. The trouble is, it's all too exhibitionistic to ring true. The impotent folly of Antichrist is that von Trier has made it his mission to shock the bourgeoisie in an era when they can no longer be shocked.

The socialite claims her high-pitched girly voice is all an act designed to make herself laugh, and is adamant she speaks "normally" when she's hanging out with her friends or attending business meetings.
The 28-year-old hotel heiress explained: "I would do the baby voice and it's kind of like this character I made up, but in real life I'm completely different, I'm very down to earth, I'm smart, I know what's going on.
"It's kind of like I almost play to the image and kind of have a laugh at myself about it. I think a lot of people will assume that I'm just like an airhead.
"But in my everyday life, when I'm hanging out with my friends or if I'm in a business meeting I'll talk in my normal voice."
The blonde beauty made the admissions in new TV show 'Fearne And Paris Hilton', which is due to air in the UK tonight (22.10.09).
In the programme, Paris also showed presenter Fearne around her Hollywood mansion, which includes vast colour-coded wardrobes, secret passages and a private nightclub.

Director Katherine Dieckmann's comedy is about the messy everyday hysteria that too many odes to parenthood leave out. As Eliza, a former bohemian trying to hold on to her ''creative'' side even as she's become a frazzled mother of two, Uma Thurman turns every task — shopping for a birthday party, retaining a parking space — into an operatic fit of neurosis. She's quite funny, but her performance is at once winning and overstated. Parenthood seems only half aware of Eliza's real problem: that she thinks she's superior to the choices she's made.

Lily Allen was caught topless on the balcony of her hotel suite in Venice and by the look on her face it seemed like she hadn't realized she was half naked.

The incident took place yesterday and her boyfriend Sam Cooper had to come to her rescue, covering the singers' boobs and dragging her back into the room.

This is not the first time that a topless Lily Allen has been photographed by the paparazzi, although so far all the other occurrences had been either non-accidental nipple slips or topless sunbathing, and just a few days ago the British singer was spotted in this same city airing out all her assets. There must be something in the Venice air!

Shauna Sand has a sex tape. A very explicit one, according to the previews we've seen so far. And she does it all in it.

The former playmate admitted she is indeed the big boobed woman performing all kinds of sex tricks in this tape, and she told TMZ: "Yes I did make a sex tape with my boyfriend earlier this year. In fact I've made several sex tapes, but I certainly didn't sign off on this and [the company offering it for sale] has no right to put it out. I am trying to get a hold of my attorney now."

On the tape Shauna is seen having sex, dripping melted ice cream all over her nude body and even playing with some generously sized dildos.

Like a talented gallerist, filmmaker Jonathan Parker (Bartleby) curates a collection of fictional artists, composers, and assorted New York scenesters in (Untitled), his very funny, tolerant satire of contemporary art and its discontents. Adam Goldberg glowers effectively as a serious composer of maddeningly difficult music; the wonderful Marley Shelton glows with hilariously cool composure as a gallery owner who exhibits unendurable art pieces. Indeed, the whole cast is museum quality, and the ''music'' performances are pitch-perfect in their dissonance.

''Beginning'' stretches the truth: Star Tony Jaa's splashily violent fightfest follow-up to his 2003 breakthrough martial-arts saga, Ong-Bak: The Thai Warrior, qualifies as a prequel. Unlike the original, which was set in modern times, Ong Bak 2: The Beginning takes place in ancient Thailand. Other than that, don't look for continuity of story line — just enjoy the extravagant fight stunts, the restless camera work, and the sluicing rivers of blood and mud. (That's why you're here, right?) Jaa, mesmerizing as ever to behold with his pinwheel moves, also (co)directs for the first time.

Where The Wild Things Are (2009)

Profoundly beautiful and affecting, Where the Wild Things Are is a breath-taking act of artistic transubstantiation. From Maurice Sendak's beloved picture book about a rambunctious little boy named Max and the kingdom of untamed creatures who adopt him as their like-minded king, filmmaker Spike Jonze has made a movie that is true to Sendak's unique sensibilities and simultaneously true to Jonze's own colorful instincts for anarchy. This is, to quote the 1963 children's classic, ''the most wild thing of all.'' It's also personal movie-making, with corporate backing, at its best. Whatever the (well-documented) struggles it took to create this gem, the result is worth every monster growl.

''Let the wild rumpus start!'' Max declares in Sendak's pages, and Jonze, working from a just-right screenplay he co-wrote with simpatico spirit Dave Eggers, begins the boy-centric hullabaloo from the very first frame. Max Records, a Botticelli-faced discovery, plays the fictional Max with a lovely purity of energy and freedom — he has a rare kid-aged talent for concentration in the midst of brouhaha. When we first meet him careening around the home he shares with his patient mom (huggable Catherine Keener), Max is a boy on a tear, all motor and no brakes. Whether roughhousing with his dog, devising snowball-warfare strategies, shrieking with a power surge of energy, or collapsing in a child's heap of spent emotion, Max is a dervish of mixed instincts. And Jonze's astute longtime cinematographer, Lance Acord, captures the jumble naturally, chasing after the kid with the nimbleness of a monkey-cam.

It's when Max pushes Mom's tolerance to the limit — Mark Ruffalo has a sweet, small bit as a visiting boyfriend who wears the glazed smile of ''Do I really need this crap?'' — that the hero's adventure really begins. In Sendak's spare book (fewer than 350 words in all!), Max, outfitted in a really cool wildcat costume with whiskers, travels to unknown territory without leaving his room. In Jonze's seamlessly expanded view, he runs outside, whiskers erect, then boards a boat and heads to sea, and on and on ''in and out of weeks and almost over a year'' (to quote the book) to the place where the Wild Things are. The dark colors of nightmares break into golden hues. The music, by Karen O and Carter Burwell, haunts.

Such a place — so playful and mysterious! So liberating and scary! (Yes, some littler kids might be frightened during this PG-rated film, but probably no more so than they already are in their dreams, the kind that come with no rating system to guide a parent; besides, to face one's demons is to tame them, right?) Jonze and Eggers make a smooth storytelling leap by giving each Wild Thing a name and a personality, joyously inspired by Sendak's own illustrations of the creatures' bodies, balloon-big heads, and little V-shaped shark teeth. (Jonze regular Casey Storm designed the ebullient costumes.) I'll leave the discussion of personality integration to shrinks and online discussion groups. Any kid — or adult, for that matter — can identify with the anxieties of Carol (James Gandolfini, more delightfully vulnerable than we've ever heard him); the peace brokering of Judith (Catherine O'Hara, funny to her marrow); and the squabbles, preferences, vanities, and insecurities of Ira (Forest Whitaker), Alexander (Paul Dano), and Douglas (Chris Cooper). I especially like the measured feminine wisdom of KW (Lauren Ambrose). In their gorgeous landscape of dunes, jungle, and enigmatic structures that are as graceful as Noguchi sculptures (the production designer is K.K. Barrett), Max's new friends show him the way home to a self he can live with. On the way, I found myself bowled over with emotion.

Sendak's great gift to readers, old as well as young, is the seriousness with which he presents even the wildest mayhem, the deepest contradictions in human (and Wild Thing) behavior; the author empathizes with fantasists but has no time for cuteness. In his transcendent movie adaptation of Where the Wild Things Are, Spike Jonze not only respects the original text but also honors movie lovers with the same clarity of vision. This is one of the year's best. To paraphrase the Wild Thing named KW, I could eat it up, I love it so.

Troubled actress Mischa Barton has decided to quit TV after the cancellation of her latest small-screen series "The Beautiful Life" because she wants to focus on "more serious roles".

The 23-year-old rose to fame starring in teen show "The O.C." and signed on to Ashton Kutcher's modelling drama "The Beautiful Life" earlier this year which was scrapped due to poor ratings after just two episodes. Barton is now reconsidering her acting future and realises the small screen might not be for her, reports People . "I think I need to back away from the whole TV approach. That whole world of network television, probably isn't, for me, a good idea now. I need to start reading for more serious roles," she said. Barton insists she will take her time to decide her next project. "It's too early to tell yet. I'm passing on all the (early) offers, because that's not the stuff you want to do. I want to go fight for interesting things and look for something that's going to be interesting for me... as a role," she said. "(I'm) reading scripts and enjoying living in New York. Now that I'm not doing the TV show, I've got lots of time to work out," she added.

Hollywood actress Cameron Diaz has revealed she has no idea what she wants from her life.

The 37-year-old star isn't sure how long she will continue acting or if she will eventually settle down and have a family, reports Contact Music.

"I'm not 40 yet and I don't know what I am going to want. I'm certainly not sitting here worrying about where I am going to be at, I am just making the most out of the life I am living as I have been doing all along," she said. "As long as I am happy making movies, I will keep making movies. If I'm not, then I will do something else," she added.

Hayek blasts ‘freaky’ paparazzi

Actress Salma Hayek has blasted the paparazzi for constantly following her while she carries out her daily chores with daughter Valentina.

The Frida star has branded them "freaks" for tailing her and taking photographs. Hayek said she finds it creepy when grown men get excited at taking her picture and admits she hates having to deal with the attention.

"What''s freaky is the guy behind the camera who is desperate and so excited because he''s seeing you walk into a supermarket,” Contactmusic quoted her as saying. “I think that''s freaky. They''re the freaks. I''m not the freak. I''m attacked by the freaks. That''s the strange part. I hate it," she added.

John Travolta and Kelly Preston were the surprise guests at a Scientology event in England.
The Hollywood couple - who are still mourning the death of their 16-year-old son Jett, who tragically died in January - made a rare public appearance at the 25th anniversary of the International Association of Scientologists at Saint Hill Manor in East Grinstead, West Sussex, last weekend.
John and Kelly were joined at the event by fellow followers Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes and their three-year-old daughter Suri.
While John and Kelly remained quiet throughout the event, Tom - who is one of the sci-fi cult's most famous supporters - was very involved, especially when a choir took to the stage.
An onlooker told Us Weekly magazine: "Tom was swaying and looked like he was in heaven. He was really, really into it. Katie was next to him doing her best to look as enthusiastic. She was clapping along with the song, but was totally out of sync. Suri was standing by, looking a little bemused in a cute little party dress.
"John and Kelly were holding hands throughout the performance. They look like a very united couple."
Tom also gave a speech to the 4,000 guests, praising them for being part of the controversial religion.
He told the crowd: "Because we never took our eyes off the ultimate prize, we stand where we are today. We are in this together!"

Miss California officials have slapped former title-holder Carrie Prejean with a lawsuit, seeking cash given to her for “breast enhancement surgery”.K2 Productions turned to court against the 22-year-old claiming the return of 5,200 dollars paid for her boob job amongst other several demands.Prejean was stripped off her title after landing in hot water with her open admission of anti-gay marriage activism and a nude photo shoot.The suit further accuses the beauty of lying over the set of her topless pictures, saying Prejean told Miss California director Keith Lewis that the snaps were shot when she was a minor and that there were “no other photos.”“If that were not enough, K2 is informed and believes that there are additional photos of Ms Prejean, yet to be published (and which K2 has not yet seen), that are even more graphic than the photos described that have been published in the news media,” the Daily Telegraph quoted the suit as saying.

Jennifer Aniston recently had a war of words with Angelina Jolie over the phone, when she rang her ex-husband Brad Pitt after getting drunk, sources say.The Break-Up actress apparently got sentimental after boozing and wanted to have an intimate chat with her former flame.“When Jen drinks she tends to get sentimental. She was feeling a little loose from the alcohol, so she called Brad’s cell, never imagining anyone but him would pick up,” the Daily Telegraph quoted a source as telling the National Enquirer.However, Jolie picked up the call instead of Pitt and gave Aniston a piece of her mind.The insider added: “When Jen heard Angie’s voice, she freaked out. Jennifer was hoping for an intimate chat with Brad, and ended up tangling with Hurricane Angelina!“Jen basically told Angie that she hated her, but Angelina fired back!”

Rakhi Sawant is appalled and angry by the way her mother is being treated on Bigg Boss.She wants revenge. “How dare the Channel use my mother as a pawn? Last year it was Rakhi Sawant. So this year it’s her mother? I could take on the whole house. Let them send me into the house once. I’ll show all these English-speaking snobs what a daughter can do when her mother is insulted. No one can fool around with me. But my mother is a simple housewife. That poor woman is being completely isolated by the other contestants.”And Rakhi, though not on talking terms with her mom, won’t take any slight to her lying down. “How can they isolate her because she can’t speak English?We come from the chawls. My grandfather never sent my mother to school. She is a poor uneducated housewife. I wonder how she put those two signatures on the Bigg Boss deal because she can barely sign her name.”Rakhi is specially upset with Tenaaz Currim. “Tenaaz is behaving extra-smart. When the housemates did the Mummy- Daddy act, Tenaaz completely ignored my mother. And do you know, when I meet Tenaaz mother I’m very polite and respectful?”Rakhi blames the channel for using her mother as bait. “They thought Rakhi is comig on Pati Patni Aur Woh, so let’s put her mother on another show. I had no idea my mother was invited to Bigg Boss. Whatever our personal differences I don’t want my mother to be put in a compromising position, ” says Rakhi and accuses the other housemates for discriminating against her mother. “There’s definitely bhed-bhav against my mother. Nine contestants voted against her out on the second day. I’m frantically calling up all my friends and fans to vote for my mother, ” says Rakhi who has just bought herself an office in Lokhandwala.“It’s in the Kamdhenu complex. I’m very proud of it. From there I’ll start my production house. Whatever money I’ll make on the reality shows I’ll use to produce my serial on the Bible. As it is I’ve realized movies don’t pay.I got only a token amount from Yashraj Films for Dil Bole Hadippa. And on top of that, my role and my dances were cut drastically. So why should I not do television where I’m the queen?”

Move over Adhyayan Suman, our pretty lady from the hills, Kanagan Ranut has found her new prince charming, Kintaro Mori. Incidentally Kangana's new man is Barbara Mori's brother who is making debut in Bollywood opposite Hrithik Roshan in Kites.According to a source, Kintaro is the reason behind Kangana and Adhyayan’s break-up. Confirming the news, a source adds, “Kangana began bonding with Kintaro even when she was dating Adhyayan Suman. Her close friendship to Kintaro is said to be one of the major reasons for her and Suman`s breakup. The duo has been spotted all around the town - be it at dinner or at nightclubs." The duo was noticed for the first time after they were seen flirting at Hrithik Roshan's residence on his birthday. Mori is an aspiring singer and wanted to make his career in singing. He has shifted his base to Mumbai and Kangana is helping him out.We hear that after her recent break-up with Adhyayan and a disastrous past with Aditya Panscholi, Kangana wants to take this relationship slow and doesn't want to rush into any kind of commitment.

Samir (Salman) and Raina (Kareena) are married and settled in Melbourne, Australia. What started of as a loving relationship which lead to a quick marriage between the two has now turned into a complicated situation what with Samir facing major hurdles in his career to some wrong work decisions that he had taken.

Raina is working as a waitress to support their house.
Jobless Samir gets an opportunity to work in Singapore and make a new beginning. He takes Raina along with him but only to tell her at the airport that he has booked her ticket for India to go back to his parents and that he will come back to her once things fall in place in his career.

After Samir catches his flight for Singapore, a dejected and sad, Raina keeps waiting at the airport lounge right till the final boarding announcement for her flight to India comes in.

A bar tender at the cafeteria in the departure lounge, Akash (Sohail) sees her plight and offers help. He falls for her instantly but only to realize she is married.

Raina gets confused whether to go to India or stay back in Australia. Just then, help comes in form of her friend Nina (Nauheed) who arranges for a job through a friend (Mahek Chahal) and Raina decides to stay back.
Incidentally, Raina gets a job at the jewellery shop situated bang opposite of that of Akash’s café. Gradually friendship grows between the two. But what happens after Samir arrives back to take Raina along with him to Singapore forms the rest of the film.

Debutante writer-director Prem Soni must be called truly lucky to get a top line lead pair of Salman – Kareena and a reasonably good budget basing his film completely in Melbourne.
While his film begins well, establishing his main characters and their issues without much deviation to sub plots, he fumbles in the second half.

While there are a few extremely well handled and well penned sequences in the second half, but the points that the film downhill are – unconvincing situations, lack of depth in emotional issues, too simplistic solutions and most importantly you feel zero sympathy for Mr. Khanna (Salman) or Mrs Khanna (Kareena) or even Akash (Sohail).

The drama is just not engaging towards the climax. The actors however have risen above the script and have pitched in wonderful performances.

Salman looks smashing and shows he can play a serious romantic role extremely well too. Kareena looks WOW and acts superbly, especially in the emotional scenes.

Sohail in what one may call one of his career best roles does complete justice to his character and rises much above his written role. Yash Tonk aids him perfectly. He is hilarious in the second half especially in his scenes with Salman.

Nauheed and Mahek Chahal (last seen as the gangster’s moll in Wanted) add glam quotient and act ably. Bappi Lahiri is hilarious as the jewellery shop owner. Deepika Padukone in a special appearance has nothing much to do.

Sajid Wajid’s music is very good and has been well incorporated in the film. Also, the use of RD Burman’s song sung by Amit Kumar – Bade Achche Lagte Hai has been made smartly use of two times in the film.

As you come out of the film, you do keep feeling that film could have been much better had the second half been handled well. But overall its not a bad film and you won’t regret your time wasted watching it.

The 32-year-old singer took a break from making music and enrolled on a history course after releasing 2006 album 'Oral Fixation Vol. 2' in 2006 because she wanted to step out of the public spotlight for a while.
During her time as a student at UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles), the Columbian-born beauty dressed in disguise and changed her name to prevent people finding out her true identity.

She told The Guardian newspaper: "I needed a break from me. The universe is so broad, I cannot be at the centre of it. So I decided to go to the university and study history for a summer course, just to kind of switch gears, taste the student life.
"I used to wear a cap and a big backpack, I looked like a boy. I didn't get recognised. Some people looked at me very suspiciously, a few people asked me, but I told them my name was Isabelle.

"I would go to university over and over again if I could."
Shakira - who has an estimated fortune of £26 million after selling over 50 million albums worldwide - has also revealed she can't understand why she still loves making music after so many years.

The 'She Wolf' star explained: "I should care less. It has been 20 years, but I still care about my career. I care about the music. I'm not normal."

Katherine Heigl used to dress like a "sex-bomb" to attract men.
The 30-year-old actress loved showing off her toned curves on dates before she decided to settle down and marry Josh Kelley.

She said: "I tried it all in my 20s. I wore short skirts, shirts with plunging neckline, push-up bras and high heels.

"I find a sexy outfit OK on the first date - even on the second and third. But if you've the fourth date and it's still only about appearance and being a sex-bomb something must be wrong."
Although Katherine loves dressing up and making an effort for her musician spouse, the blonde beauty insists Josh loves her just as much when she is wearing workout clothes.
The '27 Dresses' star explained to German magazine Joy: "I thought to myself, 'How long do I want to play this game?' You shouldn't pretend to be someone else because you fear losing a guy.
"I don't want a partner who finds me unattractive in a jogging suit and ponytail. Either he likes me just as I am or not!"

Depp will be there with his singer wife Vanessa Paradis and the four of them will be joining others for a winter escape to the "Pirates of Caribbean" star's private 45-acre island which he bought in 2004 for more than 2 million pounds. One gets there on Depp's 156ft steam-powered boat called Vajoliroja, reports thesun.Hince, who usually keeps his cards very close to his chest, let slip about the forthcoming vacation to a pal. Hanging out with Depp would be a great laugh for Hince despite the awkwardness of having dated the same woman.

Depp's holiday hobbies include painting and playing guitar. There are five beaches on the private island, which only has solar power, named after Depp's favourite people. One's called Gonzo after the style of journalism used by writer Hunter S. Thompson who Johnny famously played in the 1998 film "Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas".

Another is named Paradis after his wife. Then there's Lily Rose and Jack as a tribute to his kids and Brando after Hollywood legend Marlon. "I don't think I'd ever seen any place so pure and beautiful. You can feel your pulse rate drop about 20 beats. It's instant freedom," Depp said about his island. Moss and Depp had a very intense relationship from 1994 to 1998. They lost touch but Depp got back in contact after publicly speaking out for her when she became embroiled in her cocaine scandal in 2005.

TOKYO — The Tokyo International Film Festival opened with stars including Hollywood actress Sigourney Weaver strolling a "green" carpet made of recycled plastic bottles.
The theme of the nine-day festival, which started Saturday and will feature more than 100 movies, is ecology. Films include "The Cove," a documentary that depicts an annual hunt of dolphins in Japan. Festival organizers added it at the last minute in part because of pressure from overseas.
While the movie has won more than a dozen awards worldwide, it is not among the 15 Japanese and foreign films competing for the festival's top prize of $50,000.
"The Cove" has provoked outrage over the dolphin hunt in the seaside town of Taiji in southwestern Japan, where 2,000 dolphins are killed every year, mostly for meat.
The film shows fishermen banging on poles to frighten the dolphins into a cove, where they are killed with spears. The cove is closed off by barbed wire, and the movie crew had to film most footage covertly.
Japanese police say the film's American director, Louie Psihoyos, and other members of his crew violated trespassing laws.
"The Cove" will be screened Wednesday. Advance tickets for the film were already sold out, festival spokeswoman Haruna Koike said.
Psihoyos has said he plans to attend the screening, even though he could be arrested for the alleged trespassing.
Weaver's "Avatar" will also be screened. It is one of the first major Hollywood 3-D releases that's not animation. Directed by James Cameron, creator of "Titanic" and "The Terminator," the sci-fi epic centers on humans placed inside alien skins to survive on a distant world.
Weaver waved and blew kisses to fans at the opening ceremony. Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama joined starlets walking the green carpet.
"Many great films have been made in Japan. Movies may be more influential than politics to develop relations based on love and friendship," Hatoyama said.
The festival opened with "Oceans," a documentary on sea life. "Babel" director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu will head the competition jury at the festival. The 2006 film starring Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett earned the Mexican director the best director award at Cannes Film Festival that year.
"Japan's culture and film traditions have had a personal impact on me and inspire in me respect and admiration," he said at the opening ceremony.

The 28-year-old actress has revealed playing a girl who died in 1995 gangster movie "Heat" had a profound effect on her, resulting in her harming herself after an argument with her mother.
She told the Los Angeles Times newspaper: "Just as what you are feeling in your life affects your acting, what you act in definitely affects what you are feeling in your life.
"I made 'Heat' when I was 14 and played a girl who died. A year later, I got into a fight with my mother and cut myself. I had never done it before and I never did it after that, but I think having my wrists bloody in a movie definitely affected my psyche."
Portman revealed acting has always scared her as she is constantly worried people won't find her performances believable.
She is planning to focus on directing films in the future, but admits the prospect is equally as terrifying.
The star explained: "I really love directing. Fear is intrinsic to everything you do as a creative person. You're constantly putting yourself up there to be trashed. If I thought about it too much, I'd just be crippled. I'd rather create."

Actress Lindsay Lohan has had her probation for a drink driving conviction extended for one more year.

Lohan was ordered to appear in court after probation officials said she had missed some alcohol education classes.

The actress was told to complete an 18-month alcohol awareness programme in August 2007 after being convicted of drink driving and other charges.

Lohan's lawyer, Shawn Chapman Holley, said there was confusion over when she would attend some sessions.

Mr Holley said his client had told officials she was leaving Los Angeles to work on a film in Texas but there was a misunderstanding about when she would return.

Prison time
Los Angeles Superior Court judge Marsha Revel accepted the explanation but added one year to Lohan's three-year probation sentence so that she could finish the programme, suggesting the actress complete it as soon as possible.

"This has to be a top priority," she told Lohan in court.

"I would love to congratulate you rather than admonish you," she added.

Lohan was arrested for driving under the influence in May 2007 and two months later was arrested again, this time for drink driving and cocaine possession.

She was sentenced to one day in jail, community service and three years probation to include the alcohol awareness sessions.

Many thronged temples, distributed sweets and sent "Happy Diwali" greetings to friends and relatives, with SMS messages going to and fro all the time. After people had cleaned and decorated their homes with colourful rangolis and flowers on doorsteps, prayers floated in the morning air. Goddess of prosperity Lakshmi was invoked in many homes. Radhika Mishra, a marketing professional, said: "I got up early and went to the temple with my family. We also picked flowers and like every year my sister and I will decorate the courtyard with rangolis and diyas." Boxes of sweets were exchanged, and firecrackers and diyas (earthen lamps) were readied for the evening festival of lights. In the evening, millions of lights from tiny earthen diyas to dazzling strings of electric bulbs will light up homes, factories and offices. Homemaker Shuchi was busy cooking up a storm. She said: "I like to make the sweets myself and don't buy from the market. After the sweets are ready we will visit our relatives and friends, carrying gifts." Sanjay Singh said he "didn't want to miss out on the festivities and fun" and purchased firecrackers worth Rs.2,000. Expecting brisk business from last-minute buyers, confectioners opened early. Many people have extended their Diwali weekend and taken a small vacation. "I took the opportunity to go to Jodhpur with my wife. She was eager to see how the festival is celebrated in Rajasthan," Prateek Shah, an engineer, told IANS. Delhi Police beefed up security in all major markets on the occasion of the popular festival. Additional police personnel have been deployed to keep vigil. The fire service department too has geared up by mobilising its entire fleet. Festive mood gripped Bangaloreans as the three-day Diwali celebrations began with lights, colours and a bit of caution. Hundreds of homes across the city were decorated with strings of small bulbs of various colours while over the next three nights, traditional diyas will add a touch of tradition to the festival of lights. "I am going to enjoy Diwali fully. I know the state has been stuck by tragedy as floods have ravaged north Karnataka, but I want to forget all the sad incidents of past and want to welcome a new beginning for all by celebrating Diwali," Santosh Nair, a techie, told IANS. Echoing Santosh, BPO employee Soma Saha said Diwali is a festival of lights when one prayed for happiness of all. "Let us pray for a better future for all," said Soma during her last minute shopping for Diwali at Brigade Road, Bangalore's popular shopping hub. As people, particularly youth look forward to bursting crackers in the evenings, experts have advised the revellers to stay away from firecrackers as much as possible. The advice is not only because of possible burn injuries but also due to the high levels of pollution the city is suffering from. According to Karnataka State Pollution Control Board, Diwali celebrations in Bangalore during 2008 led to a high level of Respiratory Suspended Particulate Matter (RSPM). Bangalore generally has RSPM level of 73 mg/m3. However, Diwali 2008 saw it rise to 159 mg/m3. In order to deal with any emergency health related cases, several helplines have been opened by various hospitals in the city. As eye-related cases see a rise in the city during Diwali, Narayana Nethralaya, a leading eye hospital, will remain open 24 hours for the next three days. Bengalis in the city are adding to the cultural scene by bringing in wandering minstrels - the Baul-Fakir singers - to enthrall Bangaloreans Saturday evening.