Movie News & Gossip

- "The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond" was made from a screenplay written by Tennessee Williams in 1957. Unfortunately, the film does little to suggest the script's decades of neglect was unwarranted.

When Williams wrote "Teardrop Diamond," his "Streetcar Named Desire" had already been turned from play to film and his "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" would be transferred to the big screen in 1958, and "Suddenly, Last Summer" the year after.

BEVERLY HILLS, California - For 81 years, she has amassed movie memorabilia. Her collection now includes more than 10 million photographs, 80,000 screenplays and 35,000 movie posters dating back to when the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was founded in 1927.

So it's fitting that the Margaret Herrick Library played host to the future of the film industry when it welcomed this year's crop of Oscar voters at a private reception honoring the newest members of the academy.

NEW YORK - On a weekend that shattered box-office records, "Avatar," in its second week of release, trumped the debuts of "Sherlock Holmes," "Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel" and "It's Complicated."

"Avatar" earned $75.6 million, barely dropping from its opening weekend haul of $77.4 million. In its first 10 days of release, it's made $212.7 million for 20th Century Fox.

RALEIGH, N.C. - The beachfront house featured in the movie "Nights in Rodanthe" will soon have a new home itself, thanks to a bail bondsman who fell in love with the surf-threatened house after his wife bought the movie for him as a Christmas present last year.

Ben Huss of Newton said Monday he hopes to close Jan. 4 on the house and have it moved and ready to rent by Easter weekend. Huss described himself as someone who saves everything and said "this is just on a bigger scale. We can't let this house go down. It's not a piece of history and it's not an antique, but it's a nostalgia piece and I'm a nostalgic guy."

- As they did during the Depression and World War II, movie audiences today have found a respite from hard times with light, fanciful tales that help them forget their troubles for a couple of hours.

Michael Haneke's "The White Ribbon" isn't one of those films.

HONG KONG - A second Hollywood movie has shattered the Chinese box office record in a year, as Beijing faces increased pressure to ease its annual quota of 20 foreign blockbusters.

The American disaster film "2012" has made 460 million Chinese yuan ($67.3 million) as of Dec. 23, eclipsing the previous of mark of 450 million yuan set by another Hollywood blockbuster, "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" earlier this year, Weng Li, spokesman for the state-owned film importer, China Film Group, told The Associated Press in a phone interview from Beijing on Monday.

LOS ANGELES - Tom Waits has given the devil his due with wry song lyrics, asking if the devil made the "world while God was sleeping" or musing "don't you know there ain't no devil, there's just God when he's drunk."

Now Waits is the devil incarnate in Terry Gilliam's "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus," playing a dapper demon with a bowler hat, trim suit and pencil-thin mustache who loves nothing better than gambling with people's souls.

PARIS - Filmmaker Roman Polanski says letters from supporters that he received in a Swiss prison and while under house arrest at his Alpine chalet have been "full of comfort and reason to hope."

Polanski's first public comments since his Sept. 26 arrest at Zurich airport came in a letter transmitted to French philosopher and friend Bernard-Henri Levy, who put them online Sunday at the director's request.