By Mark Mix
Home day care providers would be forced into unions
Biblical drama isn’t the only entertainment genre with a stealth market invisible to Hollywood. Here’e another: patriotic action thriller. “Olympus Has Fallen,” an unapologetically flag-waving action spectacle centered around a North Korean plot to seize the White House and take the president hostage, took in $30.5 million at the box office over the weekend, beating consensus prerelease expectations in Hollywood by about 50 percent.
There’s no missing the patriotic imagery in “Olympus Has Fallen,” a high-octane action thriller about a splinter group of North Korean terrorists who invade the White House and hold the president hostage.
“Olympus Has Fallen,” opening Friday, is a high-concept, patriotic action picture starring the rugged Gerard Butler (“300”), who also produced. At the movie’s center is an act of theatrical political terror — the siege of the White House and the hostage-taking of the President — perpetrated by North Korea.
The idea of working with director Antoine Fuqua was enough for Angela Bassett to appear in the action flick, "Olympus Has Fallen." But things got better for the Oscar-nominated actress when she found out she'd share most of her scenes with Morgan Freeman.
In a week when North Korea posted a homemade video showing the U.S. Capitol building being destroyed by a missile, what more logical response could Hollywood offer than a macho thriller about a Secret Service agent who takes on North Korean terrorists who attack the White House? The first of two similarly themed action dramas set for this year ("White House Down" arrives in June), "Olympus Has Fallen" will put to the test the question of whether American audiences are ready, 12 years after 9-11, to watch, strictly as disposable popcorn entertainment, a film in which the United States and some of its most prominent landmarks are devastated by foreign terrorists.
The gaming world's most-famous, bald-headed curmudgeon returns to smite all mythical evildoers across Ancient Greece in his new third-person adventure.
Show Bits brings you the 85th annual Academy Awards in Los Angeles through the eyes of Associated Press journalists. Follow them on Twitter where available with the handles listed after each item.
For a moment, it looked the Oscar stage had turned into the Mount Olympus of acting.
After stops in the ancient worlds of Egypt and Greece, Rick Riordan's ever-traveling mind has booked a flight North.
As Fullerton police Officer Manuel Ramos approached a homeless man at a bus stop in July, he did what members of his department have been doing for a decade. He clicked on an audio recorder normally used to capture witness statements and exonerate officers accused of misconduct.
Prosecutors in the federal case against Barry Bonds say a key witness has rediscovered the tape of a secretly recorded 15-minute conversation with the slugger's doctor, sparking a fight between the government and defense lawyers over whether the new material can be included at a trial years in the making.
Blu-ray reviews of Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightening Thief from Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment and Green Zone from Universal Studios Home Video.
