The International Movie

The conspiracy thriller "The International" features a special attraction for New York's Guggenheim Museum: an all-out gun battle. But rather than having star Clive Owen pulling off some super-slick Bondian derring-do, the filmmakers wanted him to look . . . bad. "He's not a professional; he doesn't know what he's doing," stunt coordinator Glenn Boswell said of Owen's character, an Interpol detective. "You can tell by the way he fired the weapons, he wasn't a weapons man."

The conspiracy thriller "The International" features a special attraction for New York's Guggenheim Museum: an all-out gun battle. But rather than having star Clive Owen pulling off some super-slick Bondian derring-do, the filmmakers wanted him to look . . . bad. "He's not a professional; he doesn't know what he's doing," stunt coordinator Glenn Boswell said of Owen's character, an Interpol detective. "You can tell by the way he fired the weapons, he wasn't a weapons man."

TEHRAN -- Since the news from Hollywood flashed early Monday in Iran, text messages have been passing the word: A film widely denounced here as a stereotyped, anti-Iranian caricature won the coveted Oscar for best picture. "I am secular, atheist and not pro-regime but I think the film 'Argo' has distorted history and insulted Iranians," said Hossain, a cafe owner worried about business because of customers' lack of cash in a sanctions-battered economy. "For me, it wasn't even a good thriller.

Even as domestic ticket sales stalled last year, the international movie business climbed to new heights. A report released Thursday by the Motion Picture Assn. of America states that global box-office receipts for all films released around the world in 2011 reached $32.6 billion, up 3% over 2010 and 35% higher than five years ago. The rise in global ticket sales reflects the rapid growth in overseas markets, particularly in China, where the box office grew by a whopping 35% to $2 billion in 2011 alone, according to the MPAA.

The San Diego World Film Festival opens today with David Mackay's thriller "A Lesser Evil," starring Tony Goldwyn and David Paymer, and closes June 11 with Des McAnuff's film-directing debut, "Cousin Bette," a comedy starring Jessica Lange and Elisabeth Shue. The international movie festival will present some 80 domestic and foreign films over the course of 300 screenings, festival artistic director and co-organizer Herbert Margolis said Monday.

"There is no terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it," Alfred Hitchcock once said of the essence of suspense. A master nerve-jangler, he considered "Psycho" to be "a big comedy." And while Fellini called "The Birds" "a filmic poem," most everyone agrees that Hitchcock (who celebrates--from beyond the grave--his 100th birthday Aug. 13) is a name synonymous with stylish suspense.

At a chic restaurant in this lovely and very wealthy suburb of Tunis, two international bankers lunched quietly. There was Frans Afman, the affable Dutchman who is senior vice president of Credit Lyonnais, consistently ranked as one of the world's 10 largest banks in terms of assets by Fortune magazine, and Moncef Chiekh Rouhou, a young Tunisian economist, trained at Berkeley and pegged as a future government minister. Chiekh Rouhou is vice president and general manager of the Saudi-owned B.E.S.

Despite its provocative title, "Movies and Money" is not the delicious tell-all about David Puttnam's 15-month reign as chairman of Columbia Pictures in the late 1980s. Rather than offering salacious details about that turbulent time, Putnam instead has assumed the weighty mantle of historian.

Oliver Stone's "JFK" explores one of the defining events in American history, the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. But as it heads into the best picture race at tonight's Academy Awards, the controversial film is drawing its biggest crowds outside the United States. Its success--"JFK" has raked in more than half of its $150 million in ticket sales overseas--has something to do with affection for Kennedy abroad.

For the 50th time, the lights will go out in Cannes this week and out of the darkness will come surprise, delight, joy and sorrow. And perhaps a hit or two. Cannes calls itself an "international film festival," but "film frenzy" would now seem closer to the mark. For a dozen days, a strip of Mediterranean beachfront property 300 yards wide and a mile long will become the most photographed, most videotaped, most recorded patch of real estate in the world.

In Mel Brooks' 1968 film comedy "The Producers," a couple of con men intentionally try to produce a Broadway flop. Producer Max Bialystock, making his pitch to the world's worst author, says, "That's exactly why we want to produce this play, to show the world the true Hitler--the Hitler you loved, the Hitler you knew, the Hitler with a song in his heart!" Thirty-two years later, it's springtime for Hitler--and original book musicals.