Roy Rogers Will Ride Back Onto Movie Screens

Movies are driven by ideas now, not people: Peter Bart

(NEWSER) - The Hollywood Boulevard premiere for Larry Crowne felt like a time warp—here was a red carpet event for a simple romance selling itself on genuine starpower. There’s just one problem: The movie was pretty lame. “Oops, here we go again,” writes Variety exec Peter Bart in the Wall Street Journal . “Star-driven movies seem to be an extinct species as young audiences world-wide obsess over big-concept action movies and digital extravaganzas.” More»

Details of Django Unchained , western starring Christoph Waltz, revealed

(NEWSER) - An image of what appeared to be the cover of Quentin Tarantino’s latest script popped up on Twitter yesterday, and his agent confirmed it: The film is called Django Unchained, and it will star Christoph Waltz. “It's a western whose lead character is a former slave who is in league with Waltz to save his wife from an evil plantation owner,” said the director's agency. Tarantino was inspired by a pair of earlier movies: 1966’s Django, and a 2007 Japanese remake of that picture, which he had a cameo in, reports the Daily Mail . Click through for an image of the Tarantino script , penned in childlike handwriting. More»

Summit, Participant grab film rights to 'New York Times' article

(NEWSER) - It’s not every day that a Hollywood studio buys the rights to a New York Times article, but that’s what Summit Entertainment—the studio best known for the Twilight films—has just done. Summit, along with Participant Media and Imagenation Abu Dhabi, has just picked up the rights to Deepwater Horizon’s Final Hour , an epic, 8,500-word story that examines in excruciating detail the explosion that sparked last year’s Gulf oil spill disaster, according to the Hollywood Reporter . More»

Remake features a star turn by 13-year-old Hailee Steinfeld

(NEWSER) - True Grit, the Coen brothers’ latest, updates a John Wayne classic—though it may stick closer to the original novel than the first film. Critics are impressed, with the Rotten Tomatoes score currently at 95%:

• In the New York Times , Manohla Dargis applauds the film’s 13-year-old star, Hailee Steinfeld, who gives a “memorably ferocious performance” as a “character whose single-minded pursuit of vengeance has unmistakable resonance.”

Roy Rogers' stuffed horse has new home in Nebraska

(NEWSER) - The smartest horse in show business has fetched $266,000 for his master's heirs. Trigger's preserved remains sold for well over the presale estimate at an auction of Roy Rogers' belongings yesterday, the AP reports. The singing cowboy's faithful companion was bought by the owners of Nebraska cable network RFD-TV, who plan to open a Rogers museum. More»