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Former media mogul Ted Turner will decide soon whether to proceed with plans to complete his planned Civil War trilogy after "Gods and Generals" debuted with only $4.7 million. The nearly four-hour film, which has no major stars and cost Turner $90 million to produce and market, is the "prequel" to 1993's "Gettysburg." Turner has said "Gods and Generals" must be a financial success before he decides whether to complete the trilogy with "The Last Full Measure."

A studio press release promoting "Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country" makes passing note that Nicholas Meyer, the director and co-writer of the hit sequel, "unabashedly considers himself a Trekker." This is not an unreasonable assumption, given that the three "Trek" films Meyer has worked on are considered by many series devotees to be the better of the six produced. Talk to Meyer, though, and you get a different story.

"T he Americans are certainly great hero worshipers, and always take their heroes from the criminal classes. " Oscar Wilde made that observation while on a lecture tour that brought him to St. Joseph, Mo., during the frenzied aftermath of the April 3, 1882, slaying there of famed bank robber and killer Jesse James.

Golf is a democracy. That's one of its principal difficulties. Like many democracies, it doesn't seem to work. No one is in charge. Boxing has a heavyweight champion. Football has a Heisman Trophy winner. Baseball had a player known as The Man. Everyone knows who rules tennis. Hollywood always had a person known as The Star. Golf is the sports version of a car pool. Golf is ruled by committee. Golf is the sports equivalent of an Italian movie.

Tom Selleck, whose $4.8-million salary makes him television's best-paid actor--according to a celebrity salary survey released last week--has put some of his earnings into a new office building in Pasadena. It's the Pasadena Financial Center at 35 N. Lake Ave., estimated to be worth about $30 million, but Selleck didn't buy it all himself.

After wrapping production on his 1986 Emmy-winning television movie about a middle-aged bachelor and his schizophrenic brother at 6:30 a.m. in a small town on an Oregon lake, James Garner wound down by eating breakfast in the local diner and discussing his next project with his partner, Peter Duchow. Two booths away, James Woods, one of Hollywood's hottest actors and Garner's co-star in "Promise," overheard that Garner-Duchow Productions was making plans to produce "My Name is Bill W.," a TV biography of Bill Wilson, the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Benicio Del Toro asks a lot of questions. Some might even say he's a handful. But directors who don't mind being challenged are happy to put the 33-year-old Method man atop this year's character actor It List. Recent films directed by Steven Soderbergh, Sean Penn, Guy Ritchie and Christopher McQuarrie have all benefited from the Del Toro touch, characterized by a nearly obsessive attention to detail and a conviction that pictures often tell the tale more effectively than words.

When Democratic Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts needed money for his 1990 reelection campaign, a friend asked Studio City, Calif., garment manufacturer Stanley Hirsh to put on a fund-raiser. When Republican George Bush met with a small group of Los Angeles movers and shakers at the Four Seasons Hotel during his 1988 presidential campaign, Hirsh was there.

First published on Dec. 25, 2011. Revised and expanded in early 2012. Pity the rubes. Those wayward tourists who dawdle in their cars and tour buses along Beachwood Drive, enraging the locals as they haltingly seek that perfect Hollywood sign photo op - they know not what they do. Maybe you're not from this neighborhood either, but you have savvier Hollywood plans. They involve horse trails, hidden hotels, a magic castle, a monastery - and that's just a start. Here are 10 Hollywood micro-itineraries suitable for visitors from across town or across the planet.