Sam Raimi

After all the debate, the questions and the cage-rattling about whether Marc Webb's "The Amazing Spider-Man" was a good idea, audiences this holiday weekend spoke. People (a lot of people, $140 million worth of people) bought tickets to "The Amazing Spider-Man. " And the great majority of them enjoyed it. Like, A- CinemaScore enjoyed it. None of that will be enough to move most skeptics from their position that the Sony movie should never have been made in the first place.

Sometimes sweet, sometimes scary, sometimes sour, "Oz the Great and Powerful" is a film that doesn't know its own mind. A partially effective jumble whose elements clash rather than cohere, this solid but not spectacular effort stubbornly refuses to catch fire until it's almost too late. As directed by Sam Raimi, who departed from his horror film roots ("The Evil Dead") to turn out the high-grossing, family-friendly "Spider-Man" trilogy, "Oz" exhibits some of the same tonal duality that marks its maker's career.

Ash (Bruce Campbell) is a straight-arrow, square-jawed department store employee--housewares division--who gets hurtled back into the Dark Ages in "Army of Darkness," the new Sam Raimi fantasy fest. It's the kind of concoction we've come to expect from Raimi ("Evil Dead," "Darkman"): Goofball riffs crossed with cheesy/sophisticated horror effects. He's a gifted knockabout movie maniac who works on his own pop comic wavelength.

The newest trailer for Sam Raimi's upcoming "Oz: The Great and Powerful" has just debuted, promising viewers a journey down the yellow brick road that will include a breathtaking array of dazzling visual effects. The Disney film stars James Franco as the man who will become the Wizard of Oz, and takes place well before Dorothy arrives in the faraway fantasy land somewhere over the rainbow. The clip opens in black-and-white, a homage to the 1939 classic, with Franco's Oscar Diggs wishing for greatness, just before he's blown into the eye of a storm that sends him into another world.

Sam Raimi does not seem like a gleeful sadist. During a recent morning interview in the sparsely populated Culver City production offices of "Spider-Man 4," he's exceedingly polite and far more modest than the average A-list director whose blockbuster comic book movie franchise has grossed almost $2.5 billion around the world.

Most of the furnishings in Sam Raimi's office on the Columbia lot seem accidental -- things that have survived the siege of finishing "Spider-Man 2." There's the big monitor on a cart stuffed with playback devices, the tinfoil taped to the windows to keep sunlight (and inquiring eyes?) out, the well-worn couch and coffee table. But what fills the wall behind his desk is clearly no accident -- an American flag that's about as long as Raimi, at 5 feet 9 inches, is tall.

A VETERAN of stage, screen and television, David Paymer has appeared in more than 90 films in his career. This reliable character actor may be best known for playing smarmy businessmen and wretched criminals in "Quiz Show" and "Get Shorty." In 1993 he received an Academy Award nomination for supporting actor in "Mr. Saturday Night." He's hot off a monthlong run of David Mamet's "Two Unrelated Plays" at the Kirk Douglas Theater.

Actor Bruce Campbell and director Sam Raimi have been friends for more than 30 years, since they attended Wylie E. Groves High School in Beverly Hills, Mich. "We met in drama class," Campbell recalls. "He was doing what I thought was a bad pantomime. I thought he was way overdoing it, and I think he felt my pantomime kind of blew because I wasn't doing much of anything."

Filmmaker Sam Raimi has been in the news recently, talking about the coming remake of his classic cult horror film "The Evil Dead," but the man best known to mass audiences as the maestro behind the three "Spider-Man" movies starring Tobey Maguire is also talking up a spooky new thriller, "The Possession. " Opening Friday, the film stars Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Kyra Sedgwick as a recently divorced couple grappling with the increasingly erratic behavior of their youngest daughter after she purchases an ornate cabinet box at a yard sale.

The newest trailer for Sam Raimi's upcoming "Oz: The Great and Powerful" has just debuted, promising viewers a journey down the yellow brick road that will include a breathtaking array of dazzling visual effects. The Disney film stars James Franco as the man who will become the Wizard of Oz, and takes place well before Dorothy arrives in the faraway fantasy land somewhere over the rainbow. The clip opens in black-and-white, a homage to the 1939 classic, with Franco's Oscar Diggs wishing for greatness, just before he's blown into the eye of a storm that sends him into another world.

Moving into a creepy unfinished subdivision, then bringing home a spooky religious relic seem like not the smartest decisions, but no one ever makes horror movies about the best way to raise your credit score or get along with the new boss at work. A better-than-most fright-time tale, the new supernatural thriller "The Possession" begins with the recently divorced Clyde (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) and Stephanie (Kyra Sedgwick) trying to get along to lessen the strain on their two daughters.

Filmmaker Sam Raimi has been in the news recently, talking about the coming remake of his classic cult horror film "The Evil Dead," but the man best known to mass audiences as the maestro behind the three "Spider-Man" movies starring Tobey Maguire is also talking up a spooky new thriller, "The Possession. " Opening Friday, the film stars Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Kyra Sedgwick as a recently divorced couple grappling with the increasingly erratic behavior of their youngest daughter after she purchases an ornate cabinet box at a yard sale.

After all the debate, the questions and the cage-rattling about whether Marc Webb's "The Amazing Spider-Man" was a good idea, audiences this holiday weekend spoke. People (a lot of people, $140 million worth of people) bought tickets to "The Amazing Spider-Man. " And the great majority of them enjoyed it. Like, A- CinemaScore enjoyed it. None of that will be enough to move most skeptics from their position that the Sony movie should never have been made in the first place.

Peter Parker can catch all sorts of villains in his webs, but the one thing Spider-Man couldn't bring to Sony Pictures was a workable script -- and budget -- for the $2.5-billion franchise's fourth installment, derailing one of the most lucrative movie series in Hollywood history. Less than a week after the studio said it was postponing production on the fourth web-slinger movie over story problems, Sony on Monday pulled the plug on the project as it was being conceived with director Sam Raimi after he told the studio he wasn't comfortable moving forward with the sequel, originally scheduled for release in May 2011.

Sam Mendes compares the experience of making a small film to that of driving a small car. "It's more maneuverable and more fun.

If a one-eyed gypsy with very bad teeth asks you for anything, and really, I cannot emphasize this enough, say yes. Don't waver, don't bargain; anything short of yes could put you on a fast track to damnation as surely as a broken mirror will bring you seven years of bad luck. Look at what happens to Christine, a very good egg boiled to perfection by circumstance and a lot of good work by Alison Lohman.

Most fledgling actors dream of seeking fame and fortune in New York or Los Angeles. That wasn't the case with versatile character actor J.K. Simmons, currently in "Spider-Man 2" as the gruff, fast-talking newspaper editor J. Jonah Jameson. "The possibility of going to New York or Los Angeles didn't occur to me," says the 49-year-old father of two. So after graduating from the University of Montana, he decided to test the theatrical waters in Seattle.

Moving into a creepy unfinished subdivision, then bringing home a spooky religious relic seem like not the smartest decisions, but no one ever makes horror movies about the best way to raise your credit score or get along with the new boss at work. A better-than-most fright-time tale, the new supernatural thriller "The Possession" begins with the recently divorced Clyde (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) and Stephanie (Kyra Sedgwick) trying to get along to lessen the strain on their two daughters.

Sam Raimi does not seem like a gleeful sadist. During a recent morning interview in the sparsely populated Culver City production offices of "Spider-Man 4," he's exceedingly polite and far more modest than the average A-list director whose blockbuster comic book movie franchise has grossed almost $2.5 billion around the world.

The CW, known for its stable of prissy fashionista reality programming, is looking to broaden its brand with primal fear. The network's latest reality show is called "13: Fear Is Real," which premieres at 8 p.m. Wednesday. The show, created by Sam Raimi (the "Spider-Man" and "Evil Dead" film series), pits 13 contestants against one another in a series of challenges inspired by frightening situations from horror movies.