By Iain Blair
After talking to Steve Coogan, I caught him in the big new hit Tropic Thunder and some of the funniest stuff is the section of faux trailers  - especially Scorcher for Ben Stiller, which is a real hoot.  CIS Hollywood handled the production of the Scorcher sequence, a 90 second entirely CG spoof […]

By Iain Blair
I’ve always been a huge fan of Jonathan Demme’s work, and thanks to such films as The Silence of the Lambs, which won five Academy Awards including Best Picture and Best Director, Philadelphia, Married to the Mob, Something Wild and Beloved, he long ago cemented his reputation as one of the most talented […]

 By Iain Blair
Was chatting with British comedian Steve Coogan whose career is going great guns these days.  He’s currently starring opposite Ben Stiller, Robert Downey Jr. and Jack Black in the satirical war comedy Tropic Thunder where he plays a Brit movie director dealing with a bunch of spoiled Hollywood actors.
The comedy is full of […]

 By Iain Blair
Was invited to the red-carpet premiere of the quirky new film  Henry Poole Is Here at the Arclight. Starring Luke Wilson (The Royal Tenenbaums, Old School), Adriana Barraza (Babel), Radha Mitchell (Finding Neverland), George Lopez and Cheryl Hines.
It’s a funny, poignant and uplifting story of a disillusioned man who attempts to hide from […]

By James Thompson
It’s absolutely amazing to see NBC take on the monumental task of broadcasting the 2008 Summer Olympics in high definition from Beijing, China. This is, without a doubt, the most ambitious live-event coverage in the history of broadcasting.
For those of you who tuned in over the weekend, I’m sure you were as amazed […]

By Dyana Carmella
The Duke City Shootout has begun preparation for next year’s event. Before I received this information about the event, I had no recollection of even hearing anything about this so-called “shootout.” I thought it was just another press event. Looking deeper I came to realize this is quite the idea and a good […]

By Iain Blair 
Saw an early screening of the taut new political thriller Traitor about an elite FBI investigator (Guy Pearce of Memento, L.A. Confidential, Fame) who crosses three continents in search of a renegade U.S. military operative (Don Cheadle, Hotel Rwanda, Crash) who holds the secret to a shocking terrorist conspiracy. As the credits rolled, […]

 By Iain Blair
Movies have been around for a century or so now, and for most of that time, women directors were MIA. Times have changed in the last few decades, but women directors are still an endangered species. So hopefully audiences will appreciate the lyrical and sexy new film Elegy from Spanish director Isabel Coixet, […]

By Iain Blair
I was chatting with Alicia Keys a few months ago– and it’s proving to be quite a year for the singer-songwriter who was in the middle of her hugely successful  worldwide “As I Am” tour, which is also her first arena tour. Her new album, also titled “As I Am,” which debuted at […]

By Iain Blair
Brendan Fraser seems to be everywhere these days. He was just hurtling to our planet’s core on his Journey to the Center of the Earth, and now he’s taken a detour to fight his way through the latest Universal Pictures’ installment of its Mummy blockbuster franchise, The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor. […]