Movie News & Gossip

BALTIMORE - Filmmaker Tyler Perry has donated $1 million to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the civil rights organization.

The NAACP says the gift announced Monday is the largest donation from an individual in the organization's history. It will be distributed over four years, according to The Washington Post.

NEW YORK - Gael Garcia Bernal calls his latest film "provocative."

The Mexican actor says he knew what he was getting into when he chose to work on "Mammoth" with Swedish filmmaker Lukas Moodysson, whose previous films have covered such subjects as forced prostitution and amateur porn.

LONDON - The tiny King Kong figurine that helped launch the career of one of cinema's biggest monsters has sold for about 121,000 pounds ($200,000) at a London auction.

Auctioneer Christie's says the 22-inch (56-centimeter) skeleton was the one used in the climactic scene of the 1933 movie in which the giant ape climbs New York's Empire State Building.

- The last time we heard from the hand-drawn animators at Disney, they offered up the barnyard tale "Home on the Range." The 2004 'toon was so forgettable it seemed as though it really might be the last time we ever heard from the hand-drawn animators at the studio where the art form was pioneered.

Thankfully, the spirit of animation maestro Walt Disney lives on. The studio has gone back to its roots with a fresh, funny retelling of a classic fairy tale in "The Princess and the Frog," Disney's return to hand-drawn animation after a five-year hiatus.

- When considering the meager merits of the bone-snapping, blood-splattered "Ninja Assassin," it's best to remember the words of John Goodman's PC-challenged character in "The Big Lebowski": "The man in the black pajamas, Dude. Worthy ... adversary."

The makers of "Ninja Assassin" want to make those words real and rescue the ninja from the province of turtles. They want you to revere the ninja. A frightened old man at the beginning of the movie can't even bring himself to utter the word "ninja." That's how much respect the old-timer has for "the man in the black pajamas."

LOS ANGELES - The vampire romance "The Twilight Saga: New Moon" put the box office into orbit with a $142.8 million opening weekend. The sequel took in twice as much as "Twilight" in its first three days a year ago.

It was the third-best opening weekend ever.

ATHENS, Greece - The chief executive of Fox Filmed Entertainment said Monday the U.S. should join France in cutting off the Internet connection of users who repeatedly download copyright-protected films.

CEO Jim Gianopulos said Internet piracy is the single biggest threat to the film industry worldwide, and independent films are the hardest hit.

- In Cormac McCarthy's post-apocalyptic novel "The Road," no word is repeated so often and with such steady emphasis as "ash."

The stuff is everywhere. It clogs the air, blocking the sun. It blankets the ground. It infiltrates the lungs of the protagonist we know only as The Man, who is shepherding his young son (The Boy) across a doomed landscape where most of the earth's few survivors are marauding cannibals.