I’m told Sony’s Da Vinci Code will hit the magic $500 million mark worldwide later this week. To date, the religious thriller has racked up over $465 mil worldwide since opening a little more than a week ago, $320 mil of it from international. The foreign front was bolstered by huge holds in Europe and Japan…

Jeez, the Sony corporate flacks are working overtime. But don’t bother reading The New Yorker‘s just published profile of Sir Howard Stringer in the June 5th issue. Or The New York Times’ profile of Sir Howard in Sunday’s edition. Egads, haven’t there already been enough puff jobs penned about this guy that we don’t…

PALMARÈS DU 59e FESTIVAL DE CANNES – 59TH FESTIVAL DE CANNES AWARDS May 17th – May 28th 2006 LONGS MÉ TRAGES/FEATURE FILMS PALME D’OR: THE WIND THAT SHAKES THE BARLEY réalisé par Ken LOACH GRAND PRIX: FLANDRES réalisé par Bruno DUMONT PRIX DU SCÉNARIO/BEST SCREENPLAY: Pedro ALMODÓVAR pour VOLVER PRIX DE LA MISE EN SC…

3rd Update: *So here’s one for the record books! The superhero movie X-Men 3: The Last Stand had a superheroic gross of $120.1 million for the biggest opening ever for a U.S. Memorial Weekend. The comic book franchise also posted the 4th best three-day opening ever and second-biggest one-day gross ever on Friday…

The terms “fiscal responsibility” and “movie biz” rarely appear in the same sentence. That’s why I’m thinking there might still be hope for Hollywood after reading Sharon Waxman’s story in Friday’s New York Times. It’s all about how 20th Century Fox and Sony Pictures pulled the plug on the movie Used Guys because the…

As everyone expected, that CBS vs Howard Stern lawsuit officially ended today. Now the clock’s ticking: how long before Howard does a deal to get himself back on FM as well as Sirius satellite radio? God, how I miss him in Los Angeles. For seemingly forever, we'd heard about him here. Occasionally, we'd see him – that…

Today, Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette screened for the world press this morning and for the VIPs tonight at the Cannes Film Festival, then opened big in France today. (It doesn’t open wide in the U.S. until the fall.) Frankly, I always thought the idea of debuting this film in the country that helped invent the…

Please, someone, anyone, stop them before they whore themselves yet again. CBS on June 14th will air AFI’s latest b.s. list, this time the 100 “most inspiring” films. And, again, the “jury” composed of VIP moviemakers and movie critics and movie academics only got to pick from a short list of 300 films weighted…

Here’s my latest column,  The Passion of the Cash: Da Vinci Cannes the World, about how I’ve seen the future of Hollywood, and it is foreign, as demonstrated by the craptastic Da Vinci Code. This time, I’ll tease you with the ending (and, by the way, if we can have a Gay Vito, why not a Gay Superman?): “So what can…

There was a surprise at the Cannes Film Festival screening of Al Gore’s ecodoc An Inconvenient Truth. No, it wasn’t the packed Salle Bunuel on the fifth floor of the Palais des Festivals giving Gore a standing ovation before and after the screening. (“In all my years of politics,” Gore modestly told the crowd, “I’ve…

Today, DHD passed 1,250,000 page views in 9 weeks of operation. And, this past weekend, DHD had a 24-hr traffic ranking of 2,590th among all Internet sites.

As I promised you, The New York Times has a new Pellicano scandal story, this time focusing on the Hollywood lawyers. Frankly, it’s not even worth your time reading; it’s all dated stuff, wrapped around an old premise. Without naming names, reporters David Halbfinger and Allison Hope Weiner claim that the fraternity…