Nicolas Cage

In Claudia Puig's profile of Nicolas Cage ("He's Up. He's Down. He's Up. He's Down. He's Up for Good?" Feb. 4), she refers to his fee of $300,000" for "Leaving Las Vegas" as nominal. She goes on to say, referring to his fee for "The Rock," ". . . it must feel nice to be . . . taking home a paycheck this time around." Surely, she jests. Perhaps, by industry standards, $300,000 was a pitifully low wage for Cage's wonderful performance in "Vegas." But that only reflects the ever-escalating, insanely high sums paid to entertainers these days.

It has the makings of a trash-film lover's idea of heaven. In this corner, the filmmaking team of Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, credited as Neveldine/Taylor, purveyors of willful, gleefully disreputable movies like "Crank" and "Crank 2: High Voltage. " They are smart enough to know better and self-consciously shameless enough to go there anyway. And in this corner is Nicolas Cage, who has over time transformed into a performer of such ridiculous earnestness that it is impossible to unravel whether he gets it or not. Cage is the opposite of irony.

Nicolas Cage is leaving Bel-Air. And not by choice. The fate of the sprawling Tudor mansion owned by the actor, who won an Oscar for his role in "Leaving Las Vegas," was decided Wednesday far from the baronial estate. It was up for auction Wednesday morning -- along with a handful of other foreclosed properties -- on the steps of the county courthouse in Pomona. After a rapid-fire spiel by the auctioneer, the bidding was opened at $10.4 million, far less than the $35 million that Cage had tried unsuccessfully to sell the house for. To put it mildly, the house, though impressive, was not to everyone's taste.

Nicolas Cage plays with fire in "Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance," but it's the competition at the box office that is likely to get burned this weekend. The 3-D sequel, featuring Cage as a demonic motorcycle-riding superhero, is expected to be the No. 1 film over Presidents Day weekend. According to those who have seen pre-release audience surveys, the movie will debut with around $30 million in sales from Friday through Monday. The tear-jerker "The Vow" and the action film "Safe House," which each opened to more than $40 million last weekend, probably will fight for the runner-up position with around $20 million in sales.

Nicolas Cage is mad as hell -- maybe because he just escaped from there. In Summit's upcoming thriller "Drive Angry 3D," Cage plays a father who returns from the dead to wreak vengeance on the man who killed his daughter and kidnapped her baby. (The film's title came during a brainstorming session director Patrick Lussier held on Groundhog Day several years ago -- he recalled one of the many memorable lines from the holiday-themed Bill Murray comedy: "Don't drive angry.") At a Friday morning Comic-Con panel in Hall H, Cage compared the role to "abstract art" or "improvisational jazz."

Actor Nicolas Cage announced Wednesday that he's donating $2 million to support Amnesty International's efforts to rehabilitate child soldiers. The donation was announced in New York at a United Nations meeting on the issue. In a videotaped statement, Cage said he was making the contribution "to raise awareness" about the estimated 300,000 young soldiers who are recruited to fight in countries around the world, often on behalf of arms traffickers.

"Eccentric" can be a coded insult when it comes to Hollywood leading men unless they happen to be named Johnny Depp. Take Nicolas Cage, whose bellowing, wild-eyed performances can make him seem as measured as a man with his head on fire -- and not just in "Ghost Rider." This Friday though, a different Cage is in theaters in the eerie Alex Proyas thriller "Knowing."

"I feel like there's a big, wet fish slapping itself against the inside of my head right now," confesses Nicolas Cage, the 24-year-old actor who's become an overnight heartthrob playing a brooding, working-class dreamer in the hit film "Moonstruck." "Things have changed quite a bit in the past three weeks and I don't know what to make of all the attention the film is receiving," he said, anxiously running his fingers through his hair.

August Coppola, a former literature professor who was the father of actor Nicolas Cage and brother of filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola and actress Talia Shire, has died. He was 75. Coppola died Tuesday in Los Angeles after suffering a heart attack, Cage's publicist, Annett Wolf, said Thursday. Often described as flamboyant and eccentric, Coppola taught comparative literature at Cal State Long Beach in the 1960s and '70s and served as a trustee of the California State University system before moving to San Francisco State in 1984.

In a way, Nicolas Cage has become crown prince of the darker realms of absurdity--at least in the movies. Think of his wildly contrasting roles in recent years: face pulled into a gawky pompadoured Bobby Rydell cartoon in "Peggy Sue Got Married"; lanky body hunched into the vision of a demented Manhattan blood-sucker in "Vampire's Kiss"; torso covered in gangster finery and bad vibes as psycho Mad Dog Dwyer in "Cotton Club."

Winston Chung came to Southern California two years ago like a standard-bearer for the new China, a wealthy Hong Kong entrepreneur with visions of creating an electric vehicle industry by reviving struggling manufacturing firms. Some dreams rolled out as planned. The battery scientist and clean-energy promoter bought control of four Southland specialty vehicle makers. UC Riverside renamed a building as Winston Chung Hall, saying that the $13 million he provided for green power research was the biggest donation in campus history.

Popcorn journeyman Joel Schumacher's home-invasion flick "Trespass" does an efficient enough job setting up screenwriter Karl Gajdusek's scenario: Four masked robbers barge into the sumptuous, secluded home of high-end diamond dealer Kyle Miller (Nicolas Cage), his architect-wife, Sarah (Nicole Kidman), and their teenage daughter (Liana Liberato), and immediately a war of bluffs begins over which party is more desperate. Then the film takes a hyper-drive pill — side effects include excessive yelling, strained twists and ludicrous action logic — and a potentially claustrophobic B-movie nail-biter suddenly becomes tediously overworked.

A roundup of entertainment headlines for Monday. Nicolas Cage got himself arrested in New Orleans over the weekend. Luckily for him, Dog the Bounty Hunter was there to bail him out. ( Los Angeles Times ) With a full lineup of 21st century bands, Coachella was no nostalgia fest this year. ( Los Angeles Times ) The TV Land Awards, however, were a total nostalgia fest. ( Los Angeles Times ) After seven straight weeks of depressed box office, movie grosses appear back on track.

Maybe the Man of Steel should step in and help police unravel the mystery of the Man of Steal. An original copy of the first Superman comic book that was stolen a decade ago from actor Nicolas Cage has been recovered, and Los Angeles authorities are searching for the thief. Action Comics No. 1 — a 1938 comic book now worth as much as $1.5 million — was taken from Cage's West Los Angeles home in 2000 and discovered last month in a San Fernando Valley storage locker. The highly sought-after first edition is now in an LAPD evidence safe as the department's art detail detectives try to bring the thieves to justice.

It is sort of required these days when discussing Nicolas Cage to make some mention of his ever-evolving hairstyles and personal quirks ? the castle and the tax problems ? but there are much more immediate issues at hand regarding Cage in "Season of the Witch. " In his latest film, the actor displays only the briefest flashes of the deep commitment to chaos he brings to his best work, as in his recent turns in the delightfully wacked-out "Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans" or even the watchable junk of "Ghost Rider.

The sale of Nicolas Cage's onetime Bel-Air estate, which the actor lost to foreclosure this year, has all the makings of a Hollywood blockbuster. There was hubris, bad taste and a dizzying fall from financial grace. The closing scene played out this week when a new owner picked up the sprawling mansion for $10.5 million, a relative bargain for a trophy home that had been listed several years ago at more than three times that amount. The buyer was identified only as a limited liability company, a common cloaking device in high-profile real estate transactions.

Nicolas Cage's 1933 Ford hot rod fetched $77,500 at the 29th Barrett-Jackson Classic Car Auction & Exposition (Highway 1, Jan. 19)--and it's heading back to the actor's hometown. Publishing magnate Robert E. Petersen bought the car at the four-day auction, which ended Sunday, and plans to display it at the county-run Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles.

Nicolas Cage is mad as hell -- maybe because he just escaped from there. In Summit's upcoming thriller "Drive Angry 3D," Cage plays a father who returns from the dead to wreak vengeance on the man who killed his daughter and kidnapped her baby. (The film's title came during a brainstorming session director Patrick Lussier held on Groundhog Day several years ago -- he recalled one of the many memorable lines from the holiday-themed Bill Murray comedy: "Don't drive angry.") At a Friday morning Comic-Con panel in Hall H, Cage compared the role to "abstract art" or "improvisational jazz."