Hollywood Moviemaking 101: Fuck The Critics, Give The People The Shit They Crave

Normally, we'd be content to allow you to take the crash course in crowd-pleasing moviemaking offered by CNN.com's always edifying Story Highlights box, then send you on your way to get started on an incredibly lucrative career producing the kind of sure-fire hits that result from the combination of big-name stars, latex fat-suits, and middle-aged men falling off of motorcycles. But we thought that producer/director Brian Robbins' stirring defense of Norbit earner Eddie Murphy's talents bears a moment of your time, if for no other reason than it provides something of a bonus lesson in how to defend your talent against snobbish accusations that farting through a pair of grotesquely dimpled rubber buttocks isn't a valid demonstration of craft: More »

Trade Round-Up: 26 Million Americans Officially Dumber Than A Fifth Grader

· But how did yesterday's 416 point stock market bed-shitting affect the faceless multimedia corporations behind your favorite entertainment products, you ask? Disney was hit the hardest with a 6% fall, followed by Time Warner at 4%, and 2-4% drops by News Corp., CBS, Viacom, and Sony. [Variety] More »

Trade Round-Up: All Oscar, All The Time Edition

· Oscar Recap Mania! Var and THR remind you about the Oscar moments you were too drunk to remember this morning. [Variety, THR] More »

Alan Arkin: Hollywood's Voice Of Reason

One of the last things we saw before we collapsed head-first into our laptop mere moments after the final credits rolled on the Oscar telecast was this press release from Access Hollywood, concerning the virtue-protecting jinx eventual Best Supporting Actor usurper Alan Arkin put on precocious co-star Abigail Breslin: More »