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This weekend’s top new releases each reprised increasingly recycled genres with varying degrees of success. Insurgent, in which Shailene Woodley plays an exceptionally gifted teenager who is forced to take the weight of the world on her shoulders in order to save her dystopian society from further misery, opened in the United States to a comfortable $54 million.

As happens every March, there is no missing the fact that the film festival has come to town – Las Palmas, that is the capital city of the Canary Islands. The billboards are ubiquitous and the local newspapers follow every screening in the 10-day event with the same coverage that any Hollywood movie would get.

From New York to Nuremburg, Tallinn to Tianjin, Cuzco to Kuala Lumpur and throughout the towns and cities of 32 nations between them, Cinderella took center stage. Combined domestic and international revenues reached an outstanding $132.

In a slow weekend at the U. S.

Con-artist comedy Focus starring Will Smith finally managed to unseat Fifty Shades of Grey, though its $19. 2 opening is less then stellar for a film led by a star of Smith’s caliber.

A natural drop in last weekend’s spectacular numbers for Fifty Shades of Grey wasn’t unexpected, but the fall-off was steeper than expected: minus 73%.  Commentators are claiming that the film based on the erotic thriller by E.

Neil Patrick Harris hosted the 87th Annual Academy Awards live from Hollywood California January 22 where the best films of 2014 battled for Oscar gold.   “Birdman” won for Best Picture, beating out main rival “Boyhood.

It may be just an award show in the middle of the day held in a big circus tent as co-host Kristen Bell joked in the opening montage of the Film Independent Spirit Awards, but this casual star-studded affair is the premier awards show for the independent film community. Arriving at the big top on Santa Monica Beach, stars were happy to take selfies and sign autographs to the cluster of fans lined up before making their way down the magenta carpet.

The surprisingly strong sounds of a gospel song sung acappella washed over a small group of luminaries gathered at SoHo House Friday, at the invitation of Jaka Bizilj, Chairman of the Board of Cinema for Peace. The scene was fitting for an event organized to promote peace and human rights through socially conscious cinema – a welcome counterpoint to the frivolity that can permeate awards season.

The suave French actor Luis Jourdan, who appeared in movies both in Hollywood and in his native France, passed away February 14, 2015, aged 93. His most notable and popular role was in the musical comedy Gigi, (1958) the last major musical out of MGM.