NEWS
By From staff and Sun news services | April 4, 2009
Madonna adoption request rejected On Friday, a judge rejected Madonna's request to adopt a second child from Malawi and said it would set a dangerous precedent to bend rules requiring that prospective parents live there for some period. Madonna's lawyer, Alan Chinula, said he has "filed notice for appeal in the Supreme Court of Appeal." The country's child welfare minister had come out Thursday in support of the pop superstar's application to adopt a 3-year-old. But in a lengthy ruling Friday, Judge Esme Chombo sided with critics who have said exceptions should not be made for the star, who has set up a major development project for the impoverished African country.
NEWS
By Michael Sragow | October 17, 2008
Ben (Robert De Niro), the producer in the middle of the Hollywood comedy What Just Happened?, always has to push ahead, even when he's not sure where he's going and even when he regrets leaving something behind. Enormous projects such as Hollywood movies or American political campaigns require a propulsive, never-say-die attitude just to cross the finish line. At the moment this movie picks up Ben's life story, he's not sure he's going to make it there on any front. He's still in love with his second wife (Robin Wright Penn)
NEWS
By Michael Sragow | September 12, 2008
What a difference a director makes. When Al Pacino and Robert De Niro shared a scene together in Heat, with Pacino as the L.A. cop par excellence and De Niro as the master criminal, the wide-awake and super-skilled Michael Mann orchestrated it, aptly enough, as a meeting of street legends, and the legendary actors pulled it off. When Pacino said "I don't know how to do anything else" and "I don't much want to, either" and De Niro replied, twice, "Neither...
NEWS
By Michael Sragow | December 22, 2006
There's a great, taut, jet-black satire hidden at the center of The Good Shepherd, Robert De Niro's anemic epic about the founding of the Office of Strategic Services before the Second World War and the OSS' postwar transformation into the Central Intelligence Agency. The government and military gamble that men with old school backgrounds will have a deeper emotional investment in their country and fewer conflicts about protecting it than more recent immigrants. They want the reliability of a rock-ribbed bank.
NEWS
May 5, 2006
THE QUESTION A dysfunctional group hops in a vehicle and heads off across America, with wacky comedy in hot pursuit. Where have we heard that before? Oh, wait ... Johnson Family Vacation. Oh, and Flirting with Disaster, and Lost in America, and National Lampoon's Vacation. Oh, and ... you get the idea. Anyway, Robin Williams is the latest to take his turn behind the wheel in the new RV. It makes us wonder, what do you consider the greatest "road trip" comedy? WHAT YOU SAY The best road movie in my mind is Midnight Run [1988]
NEWS
By Michael Sragow | February 6, 2005
In mid-December, Kermit the Frog carried Robert De Niro on Saturday Night Live. When the two sang "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas," the plucky green amphibian did everything he could to make the duet work. Focusing his golf-ball eyes on the lethargic superstar's barely open ones, opening his mouth wide to put over each lyric while the big mug next to him mumbled through the words, Kermit kept De Niro in the scene. At one point, he even placed his long green hand on the actor's forearm just to steady him. When Kermit wasn't around, De Niro sank without a trace.
NEWS
By Craig Outhier | December 13, 2004
The story, like an old VHS tape, has undoubtedly been distorted by years of repeated use, but here goes: It's 1975. Dustin Hoffman is on the set of John Schlesinger's Marathon Man, running wind sprints to prepare for a scene that calls for his character to appear flushed and out of breath. Seeing his young co-star jog up and down the street for no apparent reason, Laurence Olivier - the wizened Pharaoh of British theater - haughtily asks Hoffman to explain himself. When Hoffman obliges, Olivier shakes his head and clucks, "Why don't you try acting, my boy?"
NEWS
By Kevin E. Washington | April 15, 2004
I'm a big fan of surround sound, ever since I saw the movie Midway in the 1970s. I'll never forget bugging my dad about taking me to see the movie because of the booming guns of the warships and such. So getting that feeling at home - I have Midway on DVD - excites me. I'm not much of a regular television viewer, but movies on DVD hold a special place in my heart as solid, enjoyable entertainment. But getting the guns to boom on the tube requires adding some firepower to my television's sound system.
NEWS
By Joe Neumaier | June 13, 2003
NEW YORK - Curled on a chair in her hotel room, Eliza Dushku is multitasking while a hair stylist and a makeup artist primp her for a late-night talk show spot. The actress finishes a salmon salad, takes a drag on a cigarette and chats about Wrong Turn, her new movie. "It's really scary, isn't it?" she says, with a mischievous look. It is, but Dushku, 22, isn't worried about becoming her generation's Jamie Lee Curtis. Dushku (rhymes with "push-koo") won fans as the dangerously sexy Faith on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and its spinoff, Angel.
NEWS
By Chris Kaltenbach | December 6, 2002
Analyze This was a pleasant surprise, an unlikely comedy hit that both proved Robert De Niro could do comedy - who knew? - and provided him with the perfect partner, the genially wisecracking Billy Crystal. Analyze That is no surprise, and pleasant is about the most you can say for it. Reprising their roles as emotionally fragile mob boss Frank Vitti (De Niro) and his reluctant psychiatrist Ben Sobel (Crystal), the pair once again gives us The Godfather with laughing gas, or maybe it's The Sopranos without the pathos (but with the salty language perfectly intact)