I just saw "Avatar." And for the first time in a very long time, a movie that made a great, big promise delivered.

It's been more than a year since I've been hearing that James Cameron would reinvent moviemaking with "Avatar." That he was marking a milestone with this film...

She left home today.

In actual fact, I still can't believe it. I'm used to being the one who leaves all the time. Today I was left. By my little girl.

Why is that so damn hard?

It's a ritual every parent goes through if they're fortunate enough...

In death, Michael Jackson is suddenly some kind of a saint. A humanitarian. A philanthropist. A civil rights leader.

"Like our father Martin," said Martin Luther King III before a live television audience of millions around the world at the memorial. "He was indeed a shining light."

What a difference...

Michael Jackson's life is a modern day tragedy.

A star at 11, a teen idol as an adolescent and the King of Pop before he hit 30, Jackson spent what should have been the best years of his life confused, hounded and haunted, an Alice in Wonderland...

The cognoscenti of new media were gathered not-terribly-early beneath the soaring, molded plaster ceilings of Balthazar's, a famous, French-style bistro with heavenly croissants and great big masses of flowers in vases, perched at the corner of Spring and Broadway.

It was 9:30, and the vibe was laid-back-about-to-inherit-the-power-from-those-big-money media-moguls-uptown-we-can-wait-a-month.

I saw The Soloist in a packed Santa Monica theater, and I left the movie oddly depressed. The movie, set in contemporary times, is an anachronism.

It's about a city I never see, Los Angeles, and a newspaper that is disappearing before our very eyes, the L.A. Times. Steve...

By all accounts, the leadership at DreamWorks has left a trail of fury and resentment behind them at Universal, their partners for a distribution deal who were unceremoniously dumped when DreamWorks started negotiating with Disney for a better deal. (That deal was concluded today.)

In the course of family...

Sharon Waxman is Editor in Chief of TheWrap.Com, which launches today

LOS ANGELES - The ground has shifted beneath the foundations of what for the better part of the century has been one of America's most reliable and desirable products: movies and television shows.

Mac MacGuff: And this, of course, is Juno.
Mark Loring: Like the city in Alaska?
Juno MacGuff: No.

-- from Juno, directed by Jason Reitman

Honest to Blog. What were the odds that commie-lefty-Obama-loving Hollywood would create the real-life template for the shenanigans playing out at the...

My husband refused to watch Barack Obama.

He stayed in the bedroom, clicking on French television while the first African-American to seriously contest the U.S. presidency accepted the nomination of the Democratic Party before a throbbing wall of humanity in Invesco Field.

"This moment, this election, is our chance...

Will anyone notice Ian Austen's story today, buried in the New York Times' Foreign section, about Canada formally apologizing to the country's Native Americans, for forcing them into residential schools where they were physically and sexually abused? This is major news. Canada has apologized, and agreed to pay nearly...

You can read the dominance of the cult of American Idol and the demise of the American music business in the cool quotient of performers at the results finale at the Nokia theater last night. Once upon a time, ZZ Top would've been too cool to come on this show....

Forget the Pellicano trial. The documents emerging in another case in downtown L.A. raise serious questions of dubious dealings between Hollywood's labor unions and the studios, on the eve of negotiations over a new contract.

A lawsuit brought last fall against the Screen Actors Guild by actor Ken Osmond, a...

Thanks to the writers strike, NBC canceled this weekend's Golden Globe Awards ceremony. And as far as I'm concerned, it's about time.

As everyone in Hollywood knows, the glitzy annual ceremony watched by millions of people is a con on the viewing public. The decision to cancel it offers a...

A sad sight. I went to the Getty Villa in Malibu today to see the last of the 40 objects that are in the process of being returned to Italy over the next few weeks. It was a quiet day, and a sunny one. Pieces have been quietly disappearing from...

It takes a lot to interrupt my writing silence, but today's article by Kim Murphy in the L.A. Times makes it necessary. Kim managed to gain access to the basement of Iran's contemporary art museum where, she informs us, the most important collection of impressionist...

As I reported here over a week ago, Marion True's woes are about to subside, because of the agreement between Italy and the Getty for the museum to return 40 objects that Italy says were looted. Bloomberg News reports today that both Culture Minister Francesco Rutelli and state prosecutor...

ROME -- You might think that it is difficult to meet a bona fide antiquities smuggler. It is not.

Giacomo Medici, convicted here of smuggling and sentenced to 10 years in prison and a 10 million Euro fine, was perfectly happy to meet me and explain his view of...

ROME - Marion True's trial may soon be over, I was told yesterday by Maurizio Fiorilli, one of two state prosecutors leading the case, who is also the man negotiating bilateral accords on restitution with American museums. The two issues are linked. He said he is close to...

Here's a very good example of the difficulties posed when you start trying to reset the historical clock, and right old wrongs. This is the famed Piazza Navona in Italy, home of Bernini's sculpted masterpieces. The central monument, the Four...