John Powers

DEEP INTO THE SARDONIC GULF WAR THRILLER Three Kings, an American sergeant played by Mark Wahlberg is captured by an Iraqi soldier. The scene is grippingly tense until his captor suddenly turns to him and asks in very good English, "What is the problem with Michael Jackson?" It's a question......

EARLY SATURDAY MORNING, CNN FEATURED A face-off between grumpy Janeane Garofalo and cocky Ben Ferguson, a syndicated talk-show host from Memphis. The topic was Hollywood anti-war activism, and while Garofalo fended off the inevitable questions about "Hanoi Jane" (oddly, her haircut actually did make her look a bit like Fonda),......

Illustration by Peter Bennett I'M NOT SURE OF THE PRECISE MOMENT — IT WAS after Lara Flynn Boyle turned up as an Arbeit Macht Frei ballerina yet before Richard Gere praised Harvey Weinstein's "heart of gold" (presumably forged from the fillings of his victims) — but at one point during......

Illustration by Peter Bennett NEAR THE END OF THE REAGAN ERA, I ONCE found myself at a cocktail party talking with Norman Mailer, who couldn't stop talking about his dislike of yuppie culture. "Do you know the worst thing about it?" he asked, rattling off words like a Brooklyn bookie......

1. Lose Yourself (Geriatric Remix) In a series of triumphs that may actually mean he's over, 2002 belonged to Eminem — a hit movie, a hit CD, the year's best song ("Lose Yourself") and the year's cleverest video, "Without Me," which has him frying Dick Cheney and dancing as Osama......

IN AN ERA WHEN UNPRODUCED SCRIPTS wash ashore like so much flotsam, a rare handful take on the stature of legends. They're passed around like runic texts, called brilliant by people who've never actually read them, and offered as further proof that Hollywood prefers dreck to genius. For the last......

DOES STEVEN SPIELBERG EVER GET TIRED of being Steven Spielberg? It must be exhausting to be the world's most successful filmmaker, whose every project becomes an Event — a commercial blockbuster starring run-amok dinosaurs, or a big-statement picture about World War II or about our alienated future. I'll bet he'd......