Written by Stephen Sondheim, the original "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street" is a classic. The most recent Tim Burton screen adaptation of Edward Sissorhands the musical was "meh." And last night's Los Angeles premiere under John Doyle's direction was, simply put, purely amazing. more ›

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Image credit: Nature abhors a vacuum more ›

was a hair behind at $16M ($176.7M). more ›

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the worst opening weekend of the year! Granted, it's only the first weekend of the year but with a mere one movie opening--. It's your typical, 'let's trick bored teenagers into seeing another bad re-make of a better Japanese horror film.' I thought that trend had run its course, but sadly that's not the case. more ›

After playing Signor Adolfo Pirelli in the recent movie release of "Sweeney Todd", it looks as Sacha Baron Cohen (of Borat fame) might be becoming a choice pick for directors, or maybe just the soup du jour. more ›

In a crowded weekend of new movies, it was zeroed in on $100 million ($4.1M/$98.3M). more ›

Actor and comedian-chameleon Sasha Baron Cohen admitted in an interview yesterday that the characters that made him famous, Ali G and Borat, will be retired from his repetoire. Borat, the improbably cuddly anti-Semitic Kazakhstani innocent abroad, whose antics and exploits were made famous in a highly successful 2006 film, transformed Baron Cohen from a popular British comedian to a world-wide phenomenon. But he broke the news in a Daily Telegraph interview that Borat, he not-a coming back:

"When I was being Ali G and Borat I was in character sometimes 14 hours a day and I came to love them, so admitting I am never going to play them again is quite a sad thing," he said. "It is like saying goodbye to a loved one. It is hard, and the problem with success, although it's fantastic, is that every new person who sees the Borat movie is one less person I 'get' with Borat again, so it's a kind of self-defeating form, really."

One day the golden touch of Judd Apatow will fade and one of his films will bomb (--but I'll be piling into the theater along with everyone else this weekend to marvel at the daring of John C. Reilly. more ›

Having never seen the stage version of , I can't speak to the fidelity the film shares with the play. That said, let there be no doubt that Tim Burton has crafted a true piece of musical cinema from Stephen Sondheim's bloody masterpiece. To their discredit, early previews have hedged a bit regarding the singing in the film. In them we only see Johnny Depp canting some recitative as he prowls the streets of London. While this scene is certainly in the movie, it's barely representative of the actual film which contains at least a dozen fully-staged numbers and only intermittent dialogue. more ›

Helena Bonham Carter and her boyfriend, director Tim Burton, both Golden Globe nominees for Sweeney Todd welcomed their second baby together, a girl, in London this weekend - People more ›

Does Depp's Sweeney Todd rip off Dave Vanian? more ›

"Atonement" leads the pack of nominees for the 2008 Golden Globe Awards with seven nods, including top actor nominations for both leads, Keira Knightly and James McAvoy. "American Gangster," "No Country for Old Men," and "Sweeney Todd" also garnered nominations; you can read a partial list of the nominees here at the Hollywood Foreign Press Association website. Hayden Panettiere, Dane Cook, Ryan Reynolds and Quentin Tarantino read the list at the Beverly Hilton at... more ›

MUSIC: The Los Angeles Master Chorale performs Handel's Messiah tonight at the Walt Disney Concert Hall. But the audience has a part in this fun sing-along. So get your "hallelujah" ready. 7:30 pm // Walt Disney Concert Hall // 111 South Grand Avenue, Los Angeles // $16-$69 (Cheaper tickets are getting scarce). OUTDOORS: Santa Monica pretends its Pershing Square with an ice rink of its own. It’s a stone’s throw away from the Third Street... more ›