In the March issue of LA magazine, RJ Smith takes the New York Times to task for leaving Weinraub in place as their Hollywood correspondent, even though he’s married to Amy Pascal, chairman of Columbia Pictures.
“If a White House correspondent married a member of the administration, would the Times leave that person in?” writes Smith. “It’s hard to believe they would.” Weinraub says he thinks he can still do the job

Charlene Theron dreams of winning an Oscar

Charlize Theron won top honours at the Screen Actors Guild awards on Sunday, but Johnny Depp stole the show in an upset Best Actor victory.
Theron was not the only Oscar front-runner to emerge victorious. Tim Robbins won in the category of Best Supporting Actor for the dark murder thriller Mystic River, and Renée Zellweger took home the honours as Best Supporting Actress for the Civil War epic Cold Mountain.
With final ballots due from Oscar voters by Tuesday, the guild’s movie winners gained a last-minute push for Hollywood’s biggest awards. The Academy Awards ceremony take place next Sunday, February 29th.

Spanish director Pedro Almodovar’s “La Mala Educacion” (Bad Education) will kick off the prestigious Festival de Cannes in May, the first time a Spanish movie has opened the event, organizers said Friday. The film concerns a friendship between two boys and a priest, which starts in the 1960s and runs over three decades.

Some weekends, Hollywood aims for the whole pie as Sony Pictures did last week when it launched 50 First Dates in 3,591 theaters, taking home a record haul of $45.1 million. But other weekends, the studio distribution chiefs consider themselves lucky if they manage to walk away with a slice.
And that was the case this weekend as four wide releases — each of which appeals to a separate sector of the market — jostled for attention. None was in a position to knock “Dates” out of the top slot, and none did.
Still and all, Everybody Loves Raymond star Ray Romano has to be a little worried about his prospects for big screen stardom.
MovieCityNews’ Leonard Klady offers his weekend box-office analysis here.