Steven Spielberg

"Schindler's List" has won the best picture award from all three major film critics' societies, so it's not surprising a backlash should set in. Highly acclaimed movies usually inspire counterinsurgencies, and sometimes the back talk is even justified: Critics groups, along with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, have a way of favoring the safe and respectable over the innovative and the disreputable.

Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson don't hear "no" very often. But after they submitted a final budget of $130 million for their 3-D animated movie "Tintin," based on the Belgian comic strip, to Universal Pictures, the studio balked. The decision has left the two powerful filmmakers scrambling to find another financial partner.

A 31-year-old man charged with stalking Steven Spielberg was so sexually obsessed with the film director that he made several attempts to enter Spielberg's Pacific Palisades estate before being arrested in July with handcuffs, duct tape and a box cutter knife, according to county grand jury transcripts made public Wednesday.

When Peter Nydrle got his first job directing a rock video, he only had one clip on his show reel--a video he had made of a designer remodeling Elizabeth Taylor's kitchen. It gave him a valuable lesson in accommodating star whims. "I filmed the designer tearing up the carpet and running around the poodles and then I put some Prince songs on the video," the 35-year-old Czech emigre said. "But Liz only liked Michael Jackson, so I had to change all the music and use him instead."

When Steven Spielberg first heard the name of the African slave whose shipboard uprising his current film, "Amistad," is based upon, the director's association was with a more recent episode in U.S. history. "The last time I heard the name Cinque," Spielberg says, sounding out the African name Sengbe as it was pronounced by Spanish slave traders (sin-KAY), "it was not in relation to the man who led the revolt on the Amistad and found himself redefining American civil liberties.

"Here we are again," says Tom Hanks, beaming broadly, "back in the place that has everything." Hanks has his tongue planted firmly in his cheek as he says this. Hatfield is an unlovely, medium-sized town 20 miles north of London with a faintly depressed air and few distinguishing characteristics. But what it does have is a disused aerodrome, a stretch of land that constitutes a dream back lot: On its 1,100 acres there's room to create several distinctly different sets.

She WAS Boone's girl Katy in "Animal House," and this was enough to cement her in the collective conscience of a certain kind of male. This male was 13 when the National Lampoon comedy was released, in 1978; what he has retained in his mind's eye about Karen Allen are the freckles and long brown hair and big eyes, at once inviting and a little cool. So what happened to her? It as much to ask: What is the trajectory of a culture that has gone from Karen Allen to Jessica Alba?

Nearly a year after embarking on plans to relaunch DreamWorks as an independent studio, Steven Spielberg finally has the financial means to greenlight his own movies. DreamWorks said Monday that it had finalized the first phase of a long-in-the-works funding deal that paves the way for the production company to be fully operational. The funds, which will enable DreamWorks to make 18 to 20 films over the next three years, include $325 million in bank debt and a matching equity investment from Spielberg's 50% partner, India's Reliance Big Entertainment.

It's the summer's most anticipated film, the latest in a beloved series that's earned $1.2 billion in worldwide ticket sales. Add in a premiere at the most prestigious of international film festivals, and the wonder of "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" is that it avoids being an anticlimax and is entertaining in its own right.

Steven Spielberg has finally landed "The Lovely Bones." After years of pursuing the movie rights to Alice Sebold's 2004 bestseller, the DreamWorks SKG co-founder won a bidding war Friday to finance the movie, to be directed by Peter Jackson of "The Lord of the Rings" fame. This ends a weeklong negotiation. Three other major studios -- Sony Pictures, Universal Pictures and Warner Bros. -- also vied for the right to bankroll Jackson's next movie.

In a move that spares Universal Orlando theme parks from a potential financial jam next year, Steven Spielberg has agreed to delay by seven years his option to demand a payout worth hundreds of millions of dollars under the terms of his long-standing consulting agreement. The amended deal will make it easier for the company to renegotiate a heavy debt load that comes due in April and could ultimately net the director more money than he otherwise would have received. As part of the agreement signed in 1987 with Universal Orlando, a joint venture between General Electric Co.'s NBC Universal and private equity firm Blackstone Group, Spielberg in perpetuity receives 2% of ticket sales and a portion of gross revenue from concession sales at the two Florida theme parks.

More than 20 Norman Rockwell paintings belonging to Steven Spielberg have until next July to get ready for their close-up, which will come when they're hung in a special exhibition at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington -- along with more than 30 other Rockwells from the collection of his fellow filmmaker-to-the-masses, George Lucas. Then there's the one sitting in climate-controlled sequestration, somewhere in Las Vegas, and there's no telling when it'll be seen again.

Nearly a year after embarking on plans to relaunch DreamWorks as an independent studio, Steven Spielberg finally has the financial means to greenlight his own movies. DreamWorks said Monday that it had finalized the first phase of a long-in-the-works funding deal that paves the way for the production company to be fully operational. The funds, which will enable DreamWorks to make 18 to 20 films over the next three years, include $325 million in bank debt and a matching equity investment from Spielberg's 50% partner, India's Reliance Big Entertainment.

The USC School of Cinematic Arts celebrated its 80th birthday Sunday with a dedication ceremony of its new $175-million campus home. Oh, and George Lucas and Steven Spielberg were there too. The veteran filmmakers both made brief remarks and were joined by university officials, alumni and hundreds of supporters at the celebration, which also featured a performance by the USC Trojan Marching Band. "We're now officially a legitimate school . . .

Everyone in Hollywood knows that one of the world's wealthiest filmmakers, Steven Spielberg, hates to spend his own money making movies. But Spielberg and India's Reliance Big Entertainment -- his equity partner-in-waiting -- are expected to write a hefty check to Paramount Pictures next month to buy 17 projects to jump-start their new independent studio. Facing a due date of Jan.

In a move that brings Steven Spielberg closer to reestablishing his independence, Universal Pictures will distribute the movies produced by the filmmaker's new DreamWorks studio. However, Spielberg and partner Stacey Snider's ambitious plans to fund their venture have been slowed by the global credit crisis. The new DreamWorks is seeking to raise about $1.2 billion in equity and debt to operate the company and fund movie production.

Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson don't hear "no" very often. But after they submitted a final budget of $130 million for their 3-D animated movie "Tintin," based on the Belgian comic strip, to Universal Pictures, the studio balked. The decision has left the two powerful filmmakers scrambling to find another financial partner.

DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc. agreed to buy back $21.8 million in stock from a charity established by film director Steven Spielberg. DreamWorks Animation will repurchase 706,330 shares for $30.86 each from the Wunderkinder Foundation, the Glendale company said.

RE: "The Director's Craft" by Peter Rainer [May 18]: As executive story consultant for the TV series "Night Gallery," I was in executive producer Jack Laird's office in 1971 when a young director came in to tell Jack that he wouldn't be able to direct the next episode, which started prepping the very next day. He was simply too worn out from directing a "Movie of the Week" he had just wrapped about a truck chasing a car ["Duel"]. Jack, of course, was furious, but the young director remained adamant, and when he left, I asked Jack what he thought would happen to him after he just walked out on an assignment at the last minute.

It's the summer's most anticipated film, the latest in a beloved series that's earned $1.2 billion in worldwide ticket sales. Add in a premiere at the most prestigious of international film festivals, and the wonder of "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" is that it avoids being an anticlimax and is entertaining in its own right.