Updated every Friday 12:00 PM
January 2 - January 8

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Michael J. Fox has made his Shrinking debut. On Tuesday, Apple TV released the trailer for the third season of Shrinking, which stars Jason Segel and Harrison Ford. In the trailer, Fox meets Dr. Paul Rhoades (Ford) in a waiting room. "What are you in for?" Fox asks Paul. "Parkinson's. You?" Paul responds, to which Fox jokes, "Just a haircut," and they both start laughing. The guest role marks Fox's return to acting after stepping away in 2020 due to memory and speech issues from Parkinson's disease...

Roma is secretly a special effects masterpiece, VFX artists discover seven years after its release. The 2018 Netflix film, written and directed by Alfonso Cuarón, follows the rather simple story of a live-in housekeeper in Mexico during the early 1970s. Roma received a number of accolades, including winning three Academy Awards, which broke several records at the time. Now, seven years later, Roma's visual effects supervisor, Sheldon Stopsack, appeared on a recent episode of Corridor Crew's "VFX Arists React" series. He revealed that in the movie "everything but maybe three shots is visual effects," much to the amazement of hosts Wren Weichman and Jordan Allen. However, most of them are "invisible effects" used to enhance lighting and augment physical sets. Roma broke records by becoming the first Mexican movie to win the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, and the first non-English-language film to win both Best Director and Best Cinematography for the same person, Alfonso Cuarón. Roma received a total of ten Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, Best Actress for Yalitza Aparicio, Best Supporting Actress for Marina de Tavira, and Best Original Screenplay for Alfonso Cuarón...

Ken Kramer: A Wall Street Journal article forecasted the curtain call for movie theaters within 10 years and cited declining attendance trends. Essentially, the current building footprints no longer generate the revenue per square foot needed for a reasonable return on investment. What are two things you would recommend to prevent the demise of the neighborhood multiplex? Mick LaSalle response: I don't have two things. I got nothing. It used to be that the real experience of a movie was in the theater. If you saw a movie on TV, it was on a small screen, with commercials, and sometimes the movies were even cut short to fit the time slot the station needed to fill. Even after the arrival of VHS, the home video experience was still just a blurry, small-scale replica of the real thing. But that's no longer the case. Today, the home video experience rivals the theater experience. Screens are big — if you have a video projector it can be 9- or 10-feet wide — and the clarity and sound are remarkable.So why leave your living room to go to a movie theater? Why park your car and pay $18 for a ticket to watch 40 minutes of commercials and trailers before the movie even starts — just to be in an empty theater or, even worse, a packed house with people behind you coughing into your popcorn? (Courtesy Mick LaSalle, Movie critic)...

The past 12 months were supposed to turn things around for struggling cinemas. But instead of heralding a dramatic return to moviegoing, 2025 is running neck-and-neck with the middling 2024 box office, and will fall far short of the $9 billion in domestic ticket sales that most analysts expected the theatrical movie business to easily eclipse. Prior to the pandemic, North American revenues would regularly hit between $10 billion to $11 billion. The 2025 results are a massive disappointment that no amount of spin can change. (Already there's talk of how much better 2026 will be.) "There's an unfortunate trend, which that we just can't get the industry to $9 billion at the domestic box office," says Mike Sherrill, the chief operating officer of dine-in cinema chain Alamo Drafthouse. "It looks like it's going to be two years in a row that the industry flatlined."...

It is now widely believed that Amazon will finally reveal who will play the next James Bond in 2026, lining things up nicely with the next mission being the 26th installment in the long-running franchise. With this in mind, a firm 007 favorite has emerged once again as the top contender to take over following Daniel Craig's explosive exit in 2021's No Time to Die. And he'd kick ass...Four years on from Craig's fatal departure from the iconic series and following all manner of rumors and speculation regarding who will take on the coveted role, 28 Years Later star Aaron Taylor-Johnson is back at #1 in the bookies' rankings, according to Betway. The Kraven the Hunter and Kick-Ass actor now stands at an impressive 2/1, making him the clear odds-on favorite to be the man slipping into the iconic tuxedo and sipping on a shaken-not-stirred martini in director Denis Villeneuve's Bond reboot. Turning to the rest of the top-ranked 007 choices, The Gentlemen's Theo James and MCU star Idris Elba trail behind Taylor-Johnson with odds of 5/1, while Rebel Ridge star Aaron Pierre and Fantastic Beasts' Callum Turner, the latter of whom has been called a "red-hot favorite" in the past, follow just behind at 6/1. Other names in contention include Slow Horses star Jack Lowden, former Superman and long-time fan favorite Henry Cavill, King and Conqueror's James Norton, and Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery star John O'Connor...

Look at the biggest recent mergers and acquisitions in the worlds of entertainment, media and sports, from the record-setting $55 billion buyout of Electronic Arts to the Skydance-Paramount merger and the dueling offers for Warner Bros. Discovery, and you'll notice the same handful of names showing up again and again, often together in the same deal. They're investment firms with names like RedBird Capital Partners, the Raine Group, LionTree Advisors and Silver Lake. Most provide financing for these huge transactions, while others, like Moelis &s; Company, are pure advisors who help structure and execute capital raises. "When you're dealing with artists and film and music, it is as relationship-driven as I've ever seen," explains Angelo Rufino, who, as head of special situations at the 41-year-old Bain Capital, works in the same sectors and spirit as those younger companies. "It is really important who you are, what you can add and bring to the table. I think at times that can be lost with the bigger firms." ..