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The 66th London BFI Film Festival is now open. Kicking off the proceedings was the eagerly anticipated Roald Dahl’s Matilda the Musical – starring Alisha Weir as Matilda, who makes her debut in the titular role, and Emma Thompson as the dastardly Miss Trunchbull.

ROMANOFF’S In 1945, Time magazine ran a story on restaurateur Mike Romanoff entitled “Life Goes to Mike Romanoff’s restaurant – A Fantastic Ex-Fraud Turned Honest Man Runs a Profitable, Celebrity-Filled Eating Place in Hollywood. ”   The article began: “The man who was the most wonderful liar of the 20th-Century US, and certainly its most successful imposter, turned respectable, almost against his will.

Two debuting films, a comedy-drama by Christian Bale and David O. Russell and an animated/live-action hybrid were no match to Smile, the horror flick which smiled its way to stay on top at the North American charts.

Sensational animals are the new rulers of the German charts. The ticket to paradise flew audiences to a close second place.

The horror movie Smile did just that in the U. S.

Golden Globe nominee Pierce Brosnan, who took over the iconic role of James Bond created by Ian Fleming, after Sean Connery, Roger Moore and Timothy Dalton had played him, spoke to the journalists of the Hollywood Foreign Press about his interpretation of Secret Agent 007 in Goldeneye (1995) directed by Martin Campbell, the timely topics of Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) by Roger Spottiswood, and The World is Not Enough (1999) by Michael Apted. He would reprise the role a fourth and last time in Die Another Day (2002) by Lee Tamahori.

China’s answer to Top Gun is a movie called Born to Fly which was to open on September 30, in time for the week-long National Day holiday celebrations starting October 1. However, it was pulled from release with no reason given aside from a vague announcement that it needed to “improve special effects,” according to radii.

On November 4, the Bolivian film Utama, directed by Alejandro Loayza, will be released commercially in New York at the famed Film Forum theater. Later, it will also open in Los Angeles, Chicago and other cities.

Avatar is still going strong and remains number 1.  The Avatar re-release, directed by James Cameron with Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldaña, and Sigourney Weaver, shows the franchise's overseas strength.

Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin have long established themselves as an appealing comedy duo, as evidenced by their seven-year run in the titular roles in the hit series Grace and Frankie. Theirs is an onscreen relationship which dates to 1980, with their starring roles in the three-time Golden Globe nominated movie, 9 to 5.