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Often film sequels are slam dunks at the box office, a seamless continuation from where a previous hit left off. But as the new installment of the 15-year-old franchise "Men in Black" proves, getting to the big screen isn't always a cakewalk. One of the most troubled productions in recent Hollywood memory, Sony Pictures' latest movie in the Will Smith-Tommy Lee Jones sci-fi-comedy franchise encountered multiple script rewrites, a discontented star and a three-month production shutdown as writers and studio executives scrambled to fix a project that nearly fell apart . By the time it was over, the studio had run up a tab of nearly $250 million - making "Men in Black 3" one of the most expensive releases of the summer.

There's consternation in Palin Nation. The former Alaska governor surprised many supporters this week when she endorsed Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch, a political fixture who would seem to represent everything that Palinistas loathe, which can be conveyed in a simple phrase: “the entrenched Washington elite.” Though she has taken herself out of contention for office, Palin continues to keep herself in the political game as a kind of would-be kingmaker,...

When Pink Floyd first took its concept album "The Wall" to the concert stage more than three decades ago, even lead singer and chief songwriter Roger Waters couldn't imagine a day when rock music might get any bigger. But 32 years later, his magnum opus about the battle between individual freedoms and authoritarian oppression has magnified beyond Waters' own expectations of yore. Now the man who once excoriated the voluminous expansion of the rock concert experience has helped institutionalize it. "I famously hated playing to large numbers of people and playing in stadiums," Waters, 68, said from a tour stop in Austin, Texas, earlier this month.

*Full audio of Josh McRoberts' interview Josh McRoberts, who is known as the guy with the highest vertical on the Lakers, had his exit interview on Wednesday. In his first season with the team, he averaged 2.8 points and 3.4 rebounds in 14.4 minutes a game. Below are the highlights from what he had to say about his experience as a Laker. On whether he would like to remain with the team : "I have another year left on my contract... I'd love to be back. I think that's the plan.

The Grammy Award-winning singer Glen Campbell announced this week that he is suffering from Alzheimer's disease. And then he said he'd be going on the road for a farewell tour. It's not unusual for a public figure to reveal a diagnosis of the insidious disease. Former President Reagan told the world of his battle with Alzheimer's in a poignant letter in 1994. Actor Charlton Heston disclosed, via a taped statement, that he was suffering from symptoms similar to those of Alzheimer's.

On summer nights in the mid-1960s, while black-and-white television crackled elsewhere in his Staten Island home with news of Southern violence and Vietnam, Bobby Lasnik would stretch out in his bedroom to let the righteous soundtrack of the civil rights movement waft into his impressionable teenage soul. Tuned in to WBAI-FM, coming across the water from Manhattan, he heard baleful laments about injustice that he would carry with him for a lifetime. "Suddenly there was someone speaking a certain kind of truth to you. You'd say, 'Wow!

Teas from across the globe are becoming more and more popular in the U.S. One relative newcomer, yerba mate, is attracting fans for its allegedly jitter-free caffeine boost and high antioxidant content. Lab research suggests some potential health benefits from drinking yerba mate, but studies of lifelong yerba mate drinkers in the tea's native South America suggest the brew increases the risk of some cancers -- a fact most marketing campaigns omit.

Bob Baffert and Wayne Lukas were sitting next to each other at a recent racing function when Baffert said to Lukas, "Everyone used to hate you. Now they hate me." It's as clear as a giant flowered hat, and just as ugly. At rowdy Churchill Downs today, the only thing more quietly despised than Bob Baffert will be a Breathalyzer. The 128th Kentucky Derby will feature 19 horses, 150,000 fans, and one villain. Baffert will saddle longshot War Emblem.

Hard-core Harry Potter fans who devoured the books, camped out for the movies and trekked through the theme park now have a new way to relive the boy wizard's adventures. PHOTOS: Making of Harry Potter studio tour Debuting Saturday, the Making of Harry Potter behind-the-scenes tour at theWarner Bros.studios in England will let wizards, mudbloods and muggles pull back the curtain on the movie-making secrets of the most successful film series of all time. Located 20 miles outside of London, the three-hour self-guided tour will take visitors past sets, props, costumes, models and special effects exhibits from the eight "Harry Potter" movies.

Staples Center is home to four professional sports franchises, the Lakers, Clippers, Kings and Sparks. Each team has a different set-up on the arena floor. It is up to the crew overseen by the Staples Center operations department to reconfigure the floor for each game. Several times a year they must make the changeover twice or more over one weekend in between games. Last Saturday afternoon, while fans were still heading for the exits after the Clippers' 103-100 loss to the San Antonio Spurs, 65 workers began transforming the arena for the Kings' game against the Calgary Flames that night.

Hint No. 1 that this was something big. Text messages. "It's one of those signs you've done something unusual," he said. Hint No. 2 that this was something extra big. An outpouring of fan support, post-midnight, adjacent to LAX after the Kings' flight had landed. "It was like driving down a hallway lined with human flesh," he said. "You couldn't see anything except people screaming and Kings jerseys. It was a feeling that not anyone will forget ever, I think on the Kings team.

Two men charged in state court in connection with the brutal beating of San Francisco Giants fan Bryan Stow will each face federal charges of being a felon in possession of a firearm, authorities said Tuesday. Marvin Norwood and Louie Sanchez were arrested last year and charged with felony assault and mayhem in the attack on Stow in one of the parking lots at Dodger Stadium on March 31, 2011. The U.S. attorney's office added the weapons charges in a 14-page indictment. If convicted of the charge of being a felon in possession of a firearm, each man faces up to 10 years in federal prison.

Tens of thousands of cycling, hockey and basketball fans will converge at Staples Center in a weekend packed with post-season games and the final stage of the 2012 Amgen Tour of California - events that authorities are warning will close streets and delay traffic in the downtown Los Angeles area. The biggest wrench in traffic will be crowds overlapping for the Kings game and the bike race Sunday. Street closures were scheduled to begin after the Lakers game Saturday night - along Figueroa Street from Pico to Olympic boulevards and on Chick Hearn Court/11th Street from Flower Avenue to Georgia Street - when two pedestrian bridges will be erected so Kings fans can cross the bike route Sunday morning for Game 4 of the NHL Western conference finals.

MIAMI - The Carnival Destiny cruise ship hasn't even left port, and half the ship's guests are already wasted. Passengers pack the lobby bar, balancing luggage with buckets of ice-soaked beer bottles, and flashing room keys that double as charge cards to keep the drinks flowing. When it's time for a mandatory safety drill, the life-saving instructions playing over the vessel's intercom can barely be heard over sounds of drunken guests stumbling over one another, spewing obscenities, cheering, slapping high-fives and yelling chants like "Ain't no party like a … Kid Rock party.

Placing surreal moment atop surreal moment - on Sunday at Staples, they were piling up like pancakes - the sun starts to vanish about 5:30 p.m. at L.A. Live. What they call an annular solar eclipse has begun, a cockeyed celestial event that looks as if it were penciled out by Picasso. First thought: They've assigned me to cover the Apocalypse. Second thought: Wow, the 110 is really gonna be a mess. Sunday was just another Sunday here in the City of Playoffs, except that you had this cosmic convergence of a major bike race, a hockey playoff game, a basketball playoff game and a playoff eclipse, all within hours of each other at L.A. Live, the softest spot in our city's stuccoed soul.

Every fan base needs a villain in a playoff series. Kings fans seem to be befuddled by which Phoenix Coyote to pick. There was Shane Doan , who scored two goals Sunday and continued his seek-and-hit ways in a 2-0 victory Sunday at Staples Center. There was goaltender Mike Smith , who made 36 saves to help the Coyotes avoid elimination in the Western Conference finals. Whom do you hate? "How about Dustin Brown ?" Coyotes backup goaltender Jason LaBarbera said.

In ABC's new thriller "Missing," a former CIA agent whose child has been kidnapped springs out of retirement with guns, martial-arts skills and primal parental passion blazing. If that sounds familiar, well, it was also the plot of the 2008 film "Taken," which had Liam Neeson tearing through Paris to extricate his daughter from the clutches of a sex-trafficking ring. In "Missing," the gender roles are reversed. When Michael (Nick Eversman), a student studying abroad in Rome, goes missing, his mother, Becca Winstone (Ashley Judd)

A small wooden cabinet went up for auction on EBay. Inside were two locks of hair, one granite slab, one dried rosebud, one goblet, two wheat pennies, one candlestick and, allegedly, one "dibbuk," a kind of spirit popular in Yiddish folklore. The seller, a Missouri college student named Iosif Nietzke, described the container as a "haunted Jewish wine cabinet box" that had plagued several owners with rotten luck and a spate of bizarre paranormal stunts.

So Dave Tippett, the classless coach of a bankrupt team, claims the Coyotes are losing to the Kings because the referees are letting them away with "embellishing. " What mind-bending chutzpah, just two days after Dustin Brown was given an inexplicable penalty for just that in Game 2, after he understandably collapsed on the ice in agony due to goalie Mike Smith's brutal (and cowardly) slash of the back of Brown's legs. Any objective observer would conclude that the Coyotes are losing this series because they have been outplayed by the Kings in every way. During the last five minutes of Game 3, the Kings' forechecking so smothered the Coyotes that PETA considered protesting.

The battle for the soul of Dodger Stadium is about to be joined. It is a battle for your eyes, for your ears, for your wallets. It is a battle over what it means to attend a baseball game in the new millennium. It is a battle sanitized by jargon: This is about the "fan experience. " The Dodgers' new owners all but canonizedPeter O'Malley during their introductory news conference, so this would be a good time to recall that O'Malley did not employ mission statements or talking points or the term "fan experience.