Taken Movie

In his 30-year career as an actor, Liam Neeson has played his share of priests, rogue Irishmen and sexy professors. He earned an Oscar nomination in 1994 for his portrayal of Oskar Schindler in Steven Spielberg's "Schindler's List" and, more recently, loaned his unmistakable baritone to Aslan the lion in "The Chronicles of Narnia" series. Though he's played killers and sea captains, Neeson always seemed to underplay his formidable physicality.

If you're an agent who represents the hottest new director in Hollywood, it's never quiet in your office because your phone never stops ringing. Just ask Robert Newman, the veteran Endeavor agent who represents a host of top directors, including "Slumdog Millionaire's" Danny Boyle. With Boyle poised to collect an Oscar statuette or two Sunday, you'd think Newman would be basking in the Boyle spotlight.

The brawls in the Liam Neeson actioner "Taken" are downright Hobbesian: nasty, brutish and short. "In real life, fights are very short," said fight choreographer Olivier Schneider. "What I wanted was not to show something beautiful but something realistic and very powerful. You don't have time to pose." Neeson's character, a former spy, employs a mix of Chinese and Indonesian martial arts in an ultra-aggressive, no-nonsense approach to conflict resolution.

The brawls in the Liam Neeson actioner "Taken" are downright Hobbesian: nasty, brutish and short. "In real life, fights are very short," said fight choreographer Olivier Schneider. "What I wanted was not to show something beautiful but something realistic and very powerful. You don't have time to pose." Neeson's character, a former spy, employs a mix of Chinese and Indonesian martial arts in an ultra-aggressive, no-nonsense approach to conflict resolution.

If you're an agent who represents the hottest new director in Hollywood, it's never quiet in your office because your phone never stops ringing. Just ask Robert Newman, the veteran Endeavor agent who represents a host of top directors, including "Slumdog Millionaire's" Danny Boyle. With Boyle poised to collect an Oscar statuette or two Sunday, you'd think Newman would be basking in the Boyle spotlight.

Hollywood, in its brilliant state of creativity, is on a wave of producing vast numbers of big-screen versions of popular TV series. Much to critics' dismay (and filmgoers' delight) everything from "The Addams Family" to "The Brady Bunch" has invaded multiplexes in new incarnations, while the likes of "Sgt. Bilko" and "Mission: Impossible" are waiting in the wings.

A city task force studying ways to stem the tide of "runaway" film and television production is recommending creation of a film commission to sell Los Angeles as an ideal location for shooting movies.

Exhibited simultaneously at Los Angeles Center for Photographic Studies and Track 16 Gallery, Christopher Doyle's photographs and photo-collages provide a sensual feast for the eyes, or little more than eye-candy, depending on how you look at them. Doyle, an Australian-born, Hong Kong-based cinematographer, has been lauded for his envelope-pushing work on films like "Days of Being Wild," "Chungking Express," "Temptress Moon" and Gus Van Sant's new "Psycho" remake.

Several years ago at a party, Prof. Tony Delap, an amateur magician who is a professional sculptor and member of UC Irvine's fine arts faculty, momentarily astonished patrons by levitating a woman outside Newport Harbor Art Museum. In the darkness, with a spotlight trained upon the "floating" woman, the wires extending down from an overhead crane were not visible. But seconds later, party-goers could glimpse the glitter of metal--exposing Delap's secret.

This was supposed to be the Christmas season when adult films took center stage. But along came Kevin, an 8-year-old who screams "Holy cow!" and karate chops his way across movie screens shouting "Yes!" Suddenly everything changed. Kevin is the kid in 20th Century Fox's raging hit, "Home Alone," which has taken the movie industry by surprise and upstaged some of the season's biggest pictures, starting with "Rocky V."

In his 30-year career as an actor, Liam Neeson has played his share of priests, rogue Irishmen and sexy professors. He earned an Oscar nomination in 1994 for his portrayal of Oskar Schindler in Steven Spielberg's "Schindler's List" and, more recently, loaned his unmistakable baritone to Aslan the lion in "The Chronicles of Narnia" series. Though he's played killers and sea captains, Neeson always seemed to underplay his formidable physicality.

Hollywood, in its brilliant state of creativity, is on a wave of producing vast numbers of big-screen versions of popular TV series. Much to critics' dismay (and filmgoers' delight) everything from "The Addams Family" to "The Brady Bunch" has invaded multiplexes in new incarnations, while the likes of "Sgt. Bilko" and "Mission: Impossible" are waiting in the wings.

Former hostage Jerry Levin can testify that terrorism is cruel and ugly no matter the cause. However, it's nice to see a television drama--in this case "Held Hostage: The Sis and Jerry Levin Story"--suggesting for once that, far from occurring in a vacuum, terrorist acts are usually the extremist's way of dramatizing a grievance. The best-case scenario: Address the grievance, and perhaps the terrorism will stop. Perhaps .

As they left one premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, a producer and screenwriter critiqued the film, intent on avoiding its flaws in a movie they hope to make. * "For one thing," screenwriter Brendan Wolfe said, "there was no continuity." And sub-themes were brought up, producer Josh Gray-Emmer noted, but never addressed again.