Directors Round Table: Steve McQueen reveals his secret to casting

Regardless of their success level, many actors seem to dread auditions, which sometimes replicate the "pick me!" anxiety of a schoolyard basketball game, only on a much grander scale. But as it turns out, plenty of directors find the process stressful...

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Kolkata is fertile ground for Indian ghost stories

KOLKATA, India — Rumors swept Kolkata this year that a runaway boy spent the night beside a 4,000-year-old Egyptian mummy in the Indian Museum, a building with a reputation for being haunted. The local media wrote it up, and a crowd, including some...

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Baddie role in 'Peter and the Starcatcher' hooked John Sanders

During his working hours, John Sanders sports a Groucho Marx mustache that looks like it has been applied with an extra wide black marker. The actor portrays the dashing, malaprop-dropping, always-hopping villain Black Stache in "Peter and the Starcatcher,"...

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'The Returned' breathes new life into foreign programming

One suspects the world is out of kilter when a French girl utters cultural sacrilege: "Love is stronger than death? What a load of bull." The girl in question, Camille, has returned from the dead, unbruised and unbloodied and looking just as she did...

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Female suicide bomber kills 14 at Russian rail station

MOSCOW — At least 14 people were killed and 43 injured in a suicide bombing Sunday afternoon at the railway station in Volgograd, an industrial city in southern Russia, officials said. Shortly after 1 p.m. local time, a woman approached a metal detector...

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Palm Springs festival a showcase for foreign-language films

It makes for an unlikely combination: some of Hollywood's biggest stars rubbing up against relative obscurities from the international festival circuit. Yet that's exactly what happens each year at the Palm Springs International Film Festival, which...

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Art review: Adam Silverman's 'Clay and Space' is vessel for inquiry

Before he became a potter, setting aside a longtime hobby for full-time engagement, Adam Silverman trained and practiced as an architect. Clay vessels and buildings are significantly different, in myriad obvious ways. But Silverman sometimes collapses...

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Palm Springs festival a showcase for foreign-language films

It makes for an unlikely combination: some of Hollywood's biggest stars rubbing up against relative obscurities from the international festival circuit. Yet that's exactly what happens each year at the Palm Springs International Film Festival, which...

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For 10 days, Palm Springs is the movie capital of the world

A small article in the Jan. 10, 1990, Los Angeles Times heralded the opening of the first Palm Springs International Film Festival, founded by then-mayor and former pop star Sonny Bono. "The mayor's first event is a modest beginning, with no world premieres,...

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For 10 days, Palm Springs is the movie capital of the world

A small article in the Jan. 10, 1990, Los Angeles Times heralded the opening of the first Palm Springs International Film Festival, founded by then-mayor and former pop star Sonny Bono. "The mayor's first event is a modest beginning, with no world premieres,...

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China rejects shipments of genetically modified corn

China rejected two shipments -- almost 546,000 tons -- of U.S. dried distillers' grain, a corn byproduct, because it contained genetically modified material, state media reported Friday.  China's top food-quality watchdog rejected the two...

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Faces to Watch 2014: Dance

The Times asked its reporters and critics to highlight figures in entertainment and the arts who will be making news in 2014. From teen actors to media moguls, rappers to classical cellists, here's who they picked: Josie Walsh and Melissa Barak | Artistic...

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What's the most overrated movie of 2013? [Poll]

Sandra Bullock in a scene from the film, "Gravity." (Warner Bros. Pictures / September 13, 2013) By Steven Zeitchik December 27, 2013, 7:40 a.m. On Thursday we asked which movie released this year deserved a lot more love than it received....

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Faces to Watch 2014: Pop music & jazz

The Times asked its reporters and critics to highlight figures in entertainment and the arts who will be making news in 2014. From teen actors to media moguls, rappers to classical cellists, here's who they picked: Kelela | Singer-songwriter With its...

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Afghanistan: Three NATO troops dead in Kabul suicide attack

KABUL, Afghanistan--Three international service members were killed Friday and at least seven civilians were wounded in a suicide car bomb attack in eastern Kabul, authorities said. In an email sent to journalists, the Taliban claimed responsibility...

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Brian Dennehy to do benefit show for L.A. County Arts High School

Brian Dennehy will be extending his current L.A. run by one performance -- not in Sebastian Barry's "The Steward of Christendom" at the Mark Taper Forum, which closes Jan. 5, but in a Jan. 6 benefit for the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts,...

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Hollywood is losing the race for ethnic and gender inclusion

If you're among the small number of directors or actors who isn't white, there is finally some cause to be excited about what's happening in Hollywood. For the first time in Academy Awards history, a black man — British filmmaker Steve McQueen — may...

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Stocks open higher on good jobs, consumer confidence news

Stocks opened higher on Wall Street as traders return from the Christmas holiday.Good news about the U.S. job market encouraged investors to bid up stock prices.The number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits dropped last week by the most...

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With 'Duck Dynasty' flap, reality TV gets a little too real

The A&E cable channel has a huge hit show in "Duck Dynasty" and a huge PR problem with the star of the show, Phil Robertson, who will not back down from comments he has made disparaging homosexuals and questioning whether blacks really had it so...

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‘Doctor Who’ fans talk Matt Smith, Peter Capaldi on Twitter

"Times change, and so must I." Thus spoke the 11th Doctor, as played by Matt Smith, moments before the time-traveling extraterrestrial shed his appearance and regenerated in a new form — this time played by Peter Capaldi. (Fans who missed the Christmas...

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Troubled '47 Ronin' may be headed for a box office reckoning

In "47 Ronin," Keanu Reeves portrays the leader of a band of ronin — masterless samurai in 18th-century Japan who must suffer the indignity of having no one to lead them in battle. Turns out that plot line provides an apt metaphor for the period 3-D...

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Piñata district in L.A. produces hit after hit

With her papier-mache cowhide pants and bright red hat, the piñata replica of cowgirl Jessie from "Toy Story" was nearly perfect. Except it was too small. The next store didn't have Jessie's companion, Woody, so Jovanny Beltran walked out. Despite having...

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Egypt's Coptic Christians feel vulnerable amid nation's upheaval

KERDASA, Egypt — Three times a week without fail, the sound of ancient chants reverberates from the blackened walls of the Church of the Archangel Michael. Once aglow with precious icons and flickering candlelight, the Coptic church outside Cairo now...

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Al Qaeda-linked group says it bombed Egypt police headquarters

An Egyptian policeman guards the scene of an explosion at a police headquarters in the Nile Delta city of Mansoura. At least 15 people were killed. (Ahmed Ashraf / Associated Press / December 24, 2013) By Laura King and Amro Hassan December...

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