Entertainment [4]

Writer-director Billy Wilder, whose films' cynical worldview was often at odds with their rousing humor, died of pneumonia Wednesday night in his Beverly Hills home. He was 95.

Imagine the following: You're a working-class boy in small-town Ireland, with some talent as a singer and actor but most likely the dead-end life of an office worker (or worse) ahead of you.

After a heated election, actress Melissa Gilbert won the much-contested presidency of the Screen Actors Guild, a SAG spokesperson announced in the early hours of Saturday.

The audacity of In Search Of..., the first album by N.E.R.D., the production team otherwise known as the Neptunes, begins before the music does.

Day 2 of our cross-country sojourn to check the pulse of regular moviegoers on this year's Oscar race takes us to the birthplace of one of this year's leading contenders for best actress.

Editor's note: In our Behind the Scenes series, CNN correspondents share their experiences in covering news around the world.

Editor's note: In our Behind the Scenes series, CNN correspondents share their experiences in covering news around the world.

Editor's note: In our Behind the Scenes series, CNN correspondents share their experiences in covering news around the world.

Editor's note: In our Behind the Scenes series, CNN correspondents share their experiences in covering news around the world.

Come Sunday night around midnight, Nicole Kidman, Jennifer Connelly, and the other Oscar nominees may or may not be carrying around little golden statuettes.

After several roles in which she was often dismissed as more pretty face than actress, Halle Berry is finally gaining respect for her craft. Indeed, she's up for a best actress Oscar for her role in Monster's Ball.

Paul Newman, Elizabeth Taylor and Al Pacino learned the hard way that winning an Oscar isn't quite as simple as delivering a dead-on performance in a critically acclaimed film.

When it comes to picking the great movies of all time, you have your choice of lists.

Powerful TV producer Chase Renzi (Rene Russo) is a woman who knows how to get what she wants.

Michael Lehmann's 40 Days and 40 Nights is described in Miramax's press kit as being America's first sex comedy without sex, but it comes dangerously close to being America's first sex comedy without comedy.

With its intricate backward fairy tales, its deliciously stagy scenes, its telescoped time scheme, its forest of allusions, its narrative once-overs and doublings-back, its sharp questions about the experience of fiction, Ian McEwan's Atonement seems less a story than a soulful game.

In 1998 Wesley Snipes walked the walk and talked the talk as Blade, a half-man, half-vampire walking arsenal of high-tech weapons. The character had one all-consuming mission: to save the human race from blood-hungry vampires. (Apparently vampires are everywhere, killing us silly humans left and right -- who knew?) Blade made more than $70 million at the box office and both Snipes and New Line ...

Death to Smoochy comes to you from two people who've mastered the art of edgy comedy:

For 17 months, from October 1919 to March 1921, the United States had no functioning president. Eighty years later, the true of story what happened in the White House during those months is largely unknown. Journalist Phyllis Lee Levin is trying to change all that.

I still remember the line of people, stretching from the box office out into the mall parking lot, as I arrived on a balmy May evening in 1982 to attend a sneak preview of Steven Spielberg's E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial.

More than six months after the attacks on New York City, tourists wait hours to see Ground Zero. Thirty-nine million TV viewers tune in to watch CBS' heartbreaking inside-the-towers footage from Jules and Gedeon Naudet. Publishers churn out books about bin Laden and bioterrorism.

The golden ring for an animated film is the knack of appealing equally to kids and adults. Few films achieve that feat to the degree of The Lion King and, more recently, Shrek.

There are rock stars and then there are rock stars -- excessive, larger-than-your-life personalities who transcend being mere musicians and singers. With unrelenting zeal, Andrew W.K. is determined to be the latter.

Panic Room, starring the indomitable Jodie Foster, is a true nail-biter of a thriller. Not since Wait Until Dark (1967), The Lady In A Cage (1964) and Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window (1954) has a movie captured a murderous game of cat-and-mouse with this much directorial command and heart-stopping success.

We Were Soldiers follows the leads of Saving Private Ryan and Black Hawk Down, in that it's an exceedingly graphic and horrifying look at the realities of war.

Remember the first time you saw a TV commercial advertising Sorority Boys, a new comedy in which three college buddies put on dresses and talk in high-pitched voices, then take up residence with a bunch of co-eds in a sorority house? In all likelihood, you froze with a potato chip halfway to your mouth and thought, My God, that looks awful.

Contrary to F. Scott Fitzgerald's famous dictum, there are plenty of second acts in American lives -- most often in American movies about middle-aged men and the redemptive power of sports.

An unspeakable horror is prowling Brockwell Park. The South London police have no clue who terrorized the family living near the haphazard expanse, but the neighborhood children do. They call him the troll. They say he snatches children from their homes and does atrocious things to them.

The Time Machine, the newest screen adaptation of H.G. Wells' classic sci-fi novel, is surprisingly inert for a movie in which the main character travels back and forth between epochs.

By now, everyone knows what happened to James Byrd Jr. on a summer's night in 1998. He was beaten, chained to a pickup truck and dragged along a country road near Jasper, Texas, because he was black. Even now, his death seems to defy understanding.

Joe Klein possesses the gift of pithiness. His White House bio -- The Natural: The Misunderstood Presidency of Bill Clinton -- weighs in at less than 300 pages, but it's packed with revealing details.

So many well-hyped young jazz singers seem lost in time, faintly imitating another era's stars. But at 22, Norah Jones is no one's retread. On her Blue Note debut, Come Away With Me, she turns Hank Williams' Cold Cold Heart into a weary meditation and Hoagy Carmichael's The Nearness of You into a whispered promise, without sounding derivative.

You'd think people can't define satire anymore, based on the evidence of Showtime, an empty cop movie spoof that could have been a momentous first-time teaming of Eddie Murphy and Robert De Niro.

As a hip young cat in the '80s, Jamel Shabazz trolled the streets of New York, snapping photos of B-boys and -girls striking classic poses and showing off their fresh threads.

A solitary figure, abandoned on a tiny speck of land surrounded by the sea. It's one of the most compelling and enduring images in all of fiction.

An eclectic mix of punk rock, country, and soul music legends were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Monday night at a ceremony at New York's Waldorf-Astoria hotel.

British DJ duo Sasha and John Digweed launched their North American arena tour in Miami Beach -- kicking off two months of the biggest shows they've ever done.

At the risk of sounding all Carrie Bradshaw, we ask: When a man takes a sabbatical from sex, does he gain clarity of thought or a dirty mind? The answer is both in the case of Web designer Matt (Josh Hartnett).

When most people think of Louisville, Kentucky, probably a few things come to mind: Louisville Slugger baseball bats. Churchill Downs and the Kentucky Derby. College basketball. Maybe, if you really know your geography, nearby Fort Knox.

Two words on the shrink-wrap sticker on Nuggets II, a Rhino Records box set, say it all: The collection, four CDs each running more than an hour, contains no hits.

It's Oscar time again, and you can walk away with our pick of the red carpet-worthy goodies.

Let's face it, 2001 was an exceptionally weak year for movies. Not a single picture or performance flattened everyone who saw it, so several awards are up for grabs.

Once again, Hollywood has set an all-time record for box office revenue, with more than $8 billion in ticket sales for 2001. Unfortunately, this does not necessarily translate into great films that will stand the test of time.

Scene, not herd.

A Beautiful Mind won four Oscars, including best picture, at the 74th Academy Awards Sunday night.

A Beautiful Mind won four Oscars, including best picture, at the 74th Academy Awards Sunday night.

Comedian Milton Berle, one of the pioneering legends of television known to a generation of devoted fans as Uncle Miltie, died Wednesday at his home in Beverly Hills, his publicist said. He was 93.

British comedian and actor Dudley Moore has died at age 66 at his home in the United States after a long illness.

Denzel or Russell? Halle or Sissy? Rings, Mind or Moulin Rouge?

John Lennon wanted to play the grasping, thieving creature Gollum in a 1960s Beatles version of the Lord of the Rings, New Zealand movie director Peter Jackson told Wellington's Evening Post newspaper.