Double Indemnity (movie)

Before Raymond Chandler's hard-boiled L.A. detective Philip Marlowe and his vivid literary prose caught the public's attention, before Billy Wilder's towering position as one of Hollywood's greatest writer-directors, there was a James M. Cain novel...

So many of life's soupy uncertainties can be settled in or near tiny Toluca Lake, a neighborhood named for a body of water we never see. Ever water-skied on Toluca Lake? Ever caught a bass there, or lay idle on the toasty summer sand? Toluca Lake. An...

While it's true that there's only so much anyone can say about the Oscars, remember it can be said again and again. As a reader (and writer), I know by now that there are 10 abiding Oscar stories. Here they are, all in a single article: The history...

"Hushpuppy grabs a baby chick and puts it to her ear. A TINY HEARTBEAT. She listens with focused wonder and intensity." —from the "Beasts of the Southern Wild" screenplay Can we please drive a stake through the heart of the Screenwriting 101...

Andy Griffith, one of the stars who put CBS on top of the TV world in the 1960s with an easy-going but culturally-packed sitcom that ran for eight seasons during that stormy decade in American life, died Tuesday at 86 at his North Carolina home in Roanoke...

In his Oscar acceptance speech, "The Artist" director Michel Hazanavicius said he wanted to thank three people: "Billy Wilder, Billy Wilder and Billy Wilder." Backstage, Hazanavicius was asked why he felt compelled to thank Wilder, the Oscar-winning...

There's something about the frozen Northern Plains, filled with folksy, trusting and righteous Dakotans, Minnesotans and Wisconsinites, that screams "insurance fraud" to screenwriters. The notion that there's nowhere in America quite so honest makes...

For nearly five decades, J. Edgar Hoover was the face of law enforcement in the U.S., but to most Americans, the longtime Federal Bureau of Investigations director remains an enigma. "J. Edgar," directed by Clint Eastwood and starring Leonardo DiCaprio as...