The Band Perry, “Pioneer” (Republic Nashville) Like film director Tim Burton, the Band Perry puts an entertaining spin on the darker aspects of life and love. With their second album “Pioneer,” singer Kimberly Perry and [...]

By Alonso Duralde LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Here we go again: No sooner did the “Twilight” franchise pack up and head to that shiny coffin in the sky that we get another Stephenie Meyer story about the Special-est [...]

LOS ANGELES (AP) — There’s something about novelist Stephenie Meyer that induces formerly interesting directors to suddenly make films that are slow, silly and soporific. It happened consistently on “The Twilight Saga,” and [...]

By Leah Rozen LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Better to have a film with a reach that exceeds its grasp than a movie with no ambition in its pretty little empty head beyond regurgitating the same tired old pabulum. [...]

By Alonso Duralde LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – If you thought “The Shining” was simply Stanley Kubrick‘s film version of Stephen King‘s novel, you are apparently wrong, at least according to the never-seen [...]

By Billy Cheung NEW YORK (Reuters) – Best-selling adventure author Clive Cussler, who published his first book 40 years ago, is still entertaining fans. His newest novel, “The Striker,” released this month, has [...]

By Alonso Duralde LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Studio marketers love to call action movies “thrill rides,” but here’s the thing about thrill rides – they work because they occasionally stop to let you [...]

If a big, dumb action movie knows it’s a big, dumb action movie and revels in that fact, is that preferable to a big, dumb action movie making the mistake of thinking it’s significant, relevant art? That’s the question to ponder [...]

The first image you see in “The Place Beyond the Pines” is of Ryan Gosling‘s shirtless torso, ripped and tatted atop a skin-tight pair of leather pants. Don’t get too excited. The long tracking shot that comes next is [...]

No one in video games likes taking on big political ideas more than Ken Levine. In 2007′s “BioShock,” Levine and his team at Irrational Games tackled objectivism, building an undersea utopia-gone-bad from the theories of Ayn [...]

The Strokes, “Comedown Machine” (RCA) The Strokes spent the past six years burning through all the leeway earned with once being declared saviors of rock ‘n’ roll. The synth-heavy “Comedown Machine” is hardly [...]

NEW YORK (AP) — Romance can be as elusive as it is enchanting, which might explain the odd choice of title for the lighthearted rock musical “F—- Up Everything,” which opened Sunday at the Elektra Theatre. The opening number [...]

Depeche Mode, “Delta Machine” (Columbia Records) If you haven’t caught up with Depeche Mode since “Catching up With Depeche Mode” or other collections from the band’s 1980s and early ’90s heyday of synthesizer-drenched, [...]

OneRepublic, “Native” (Mosley Music Group/Interscope Records) OneRepublic continues to show that the group’s musical rapport is as strong as ever on their third album, “Native.” Frontman Ryan Tedder‘s falsetto [...]

Lil Wayne, “I Am Not a Human Being II” (Cash Money/Young Money/Universal Republic) Lil Wayne’s “I Am Not a Human Being II” album opens with a familiar sound — someone’s flicking a lighter. It’s Weezy’s [...]

Thompson Square, “Just Feels Good” (Stoney Creek) The husband-wife duo Thompson Square celebrates its success and its upbeat love story on second album, “Just Feels Good.” Keifer and Shawna Thompson instantly drew attention [...]

“The Burgess Boys” (Random House), by Elizabeth Strout Jim and Bob Burgess, the brothers who are the title characters of Elizabeth Strout’s new novel, “The Burgess Boys,” grew up fatherless in a small Maine town [...]

“The Paradise Guest House” (Ballantine Books), by Ellen Sussman The tranquil beauty of beachside Bali is the alluring backdrop for “The Paradise Guest House,” and Jamie Hyde, a plucky and passionate adventure guide, is [...]

Milk Carton Kids, “The Ash and Clay” (ANTI) The singer-guitarists Kenneth Pattengale and Joey Ryan form the duo Milk Carton Kids — a name that conjures up a brash and rowdy hardcore band. Instead, these two dulcet-voiced Californians [...]

Blake Shelton, “Based On A True Story” (Warner Bros.) The more Blake Shelton rises in stature, the more he parades his swaggering, mischievous personality. His high-profile role as a judge on NBC’s “The Voice” has [...]

“Ice Cold Kill” (Minotaur), by Dana Haynes Dana Haynes departs from his previous thrillers involving the aeronautics industry and takes on the alphabet agencies in “Ice Cold Kill,” a surprising and intriguing page turner. Daria [...]

Tomasz Stanko New York Quartet, “Wislawa” (ECM) Polish trumpeter Tomasz Stanko has long been one of Europe’s leading jazz improvisers, known for his original ballads influenced by Miles Davis‘ 1960s acoustic quintet but [...]

NEW YORK (AP) — Near the end of Shakespeare’s “Othello,” the hero speaks of the “unlucky deeds” that have brought about his downfall. The same phrase might well apply to the ill fortune the Metropolitan Opera [...]

By Brent Lang LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – After the failure of “Rise of the Guardians,” DreamWorks Animation desperately needs a hit, so the studio has a lot riding on “The Croods.” The [...]

NEW YORK (AP) — Going on a public bender doesn’t generally end well for single ladies, even in a friendly local watering hole, but Anita Loos wrote a light-hearted comedy on the subject that appears to steer a safe course for her inebriated [...]

By Alonso Duralde LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – There’s no shortage of magic in “From Up on Poppy Hill,” although it’s not the kind people usually associate with the work of master animator Hayao Miyazaki. [...]

NEW YORK (AP) — It’s one of the enduring truths of American pop culture: Superman is indestructible. Bullets can’t bring him down, and nor can a less-than-successful Broadway run. So while the 1966 Broadway musical “It’s [...]

NEW YORK (AP) — If sales of Nissan pickup trucks tick up in the next few months, there may be an unlikely source: a Broadway musical. “Hands on a Hardbody,” a seemingly far-fetched stage show based on a documentary that features [...]

By Brent Lang LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – “Game of Thrones” star Emilia Clarke couldn’t banish the ghost of Audrey Hepburn and “Moon River” in the new Broadway production of “Breakfast [...]

By Leah Rozen LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – It is extraordinary how smoothly the Aussies do American accents. Liam Hemsworth (“The Hunger Games“) and Teresa Palmer (“Warm Bodies”), two [...]