If British comedian Rowan Atkinson had any doubts about his international appeal, they’ve been put to rest by stories he keeps hearing from English aid workers returning from trips to Africa. “They go to these African villages where there are four thatched huts,” said Atkinson, 56. “There is nobody in any of them except one, where the entire village is crammed in there. There’s a tiny black-and-...

Anne Enright doesn’t believe in leading readers gently into anything ― certainly not an affair. In “The Forgotten Waltz,” the Irish writer plunges us headlong into the world of Gina Moynihan, young IT consultant and adulteress at large. Gina is not so much an unreliable narrator as someone obsessed with her own unreliability. Dissecting her love affair with married man Sean Vallely, she constant...

Veteran stage actress Yoon Seok-hwa is returning to the big screen after 24 years for director Kim Tae-gyun’s debut film. According to Pan Cinema, the production house of the upcoming movie, it only took a day for Yoon to decide to take the role. The actress was instantly moved by the script, the company said. Based on director Kim’s personal story, the film, titled “Spring Snow,” is about a fa...

LONDON (AP) ― The beautiful, terrifying domestic drama “We Need to Talk About Kevin” has won the London Film Festival’s best-picture prize. Lynne Ramsay’s film stars Tilda Swinton as a mother grappling with grief and guilt after her teenage son carries out a high-school massacre. “Shakespeare in Love” director John Madden, who chaired the judging panel, on Wednesday called it “a sublime, uncomp...

BIFF award-winning ‘The King of Pigs’ first of its kind in Korea After this year’s huge box office hit “Leafie,” Korea’s animation scene sees the arrival of a highly controversial work sure to leave an impact long after its theater run. A low-budget feature debut by director Yeun Sang-ho, “The King of Pigs” claims to be “the first animated vicious thriller in Korea.” Unlike “Leafie,” which sold...

LOS ANGELES (AP) ― Only Hollywood could assemble a holiday guest list that ranges from the Muppets, Alvin and the Chipmunks, Puss in Boots and dancing penguins to J. Edgar Hoover, Margaret Thatcher, Marilyn Monroe and a steed in the trenches of World War I. The latter are among a batch of potential Academy Awards contenders from past winners and nominees: Leonardo DiCaprio as the FBI boss in dir...

LOS ANGELES, Oct 25, 2011 (AFP) - Troubled actress Lindsay Lohan has posed nude for Playboy in a deal worth nearly $1 million dollars, the TMZ celebrity news website reported Tuesday. The actress, who has faced a string of legal problems and is currently on probation, had wanted $1 million dollars and balked at an initial offer of $750,000, TMZ reported. But Playboy boss Hugh Hefner recently ca...

LONDON (AFP) ― Protesters in William Shakespeare’s home county were on Tuesday to temporarily remove the writer’s name from street signs in support of a campaign against a new film which suggests the Bard was “a fraud.” Shakespeare Birthplace Trust was to tape over nine road signs bearing the writer’s name in Warwickshire, central England, in protest at “Anonymous,” a new movie which alleges Sha...

Centuries before the bride of Frankenstein first screamed and hissed on the big screen in 1935, the legend of the wailing woman who drowned her children was already terrifying kids throughout Latin America. But only now, with Latinos constituting the largest minority group in the nation, has the tale of La Llorona started to creep into the nation’s Halloween festivities. And she’s not the only ...

Restless (U.S.) Opening Oct. 27 Drama. Directed by Gus Van Sant. Young boy Enoch (Henry Hopper), who dropped out of school after his parents’ untimely deaths, only hangs out with his imaginary friend Hiroshi (Ryo Kase), while spending most of his time attending strangers’ funerals. Things change when he falls for Annabel (Mia Wasikowska), a boyish girl with a pixie haircut. Turns out, she is a ...

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Lindsay Lohan sported a new accessory Wednesday after a judge revoked her probation: Handcuffs. The actress was taken into custody and escorted from a hearing after Superior Court Judge Stephanie Sautner revoked her probation because she was ousted from a community service assignment at a women's shelter. "There has been violation after violation," Sautner said. Bail was set...