"Anything's possible in this storm!" says the man with the badge in Werner Herzog's delirious "Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans," a true feat of daring and one of the craziest films of the year.

ST. CLAIRSVILLE, Ohio The jury in the trial of an Ohio police chief accused of breaking into the home of a woman who carried twins for Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick ended five hours of deliberations Friday without a verdict.

NEW YORK "The Twilight Saga: New Moon" has set a box-office record for midnight screenings.

HONG KONG A prominent mainland Chinese director banned by Beijing from making movies brought his new gay romance film to Hong Kong on Friday for what is likely the last of a handful of screenings on his home soil.

In Japan, where the blades are shiny and sharp and if the fake blood isn't staining the lens, you're not trying hard enough, there' s a rich tradition of sword-and-splatter pictures. That's the tradition Quentin Tarantino's "Kill Bill" leaned on, and it's the foundation of "Ninja Assassin," a more run-of-the-mill Hollywood ninja movie with "Matrix" ties.

Opening Wednesday:

ATLANTA Wesley Snipes' attorneys asked a federal appeals court Friday to review an "unreasonable" three-year prison sentence for the film star, who was convicted a year ago on federal tax charges.

"Quirky." "Eccentric." "Whimsical." Critics trot out the synonyms for "playful" and "odd" when talking about Wes Anderson. A 40-year-old director of wistful character comedies peopled with lovable screwballs - "Rushmore," "The Royal Tenenbaums" - he brings it all on himself, inviting the label "patron saint of moody hipster comedies" that Newsweek hangs on him.

He swaggered, an outsize personality who filled a room figuratively decades before he did it literally.

BEIJING When the apocalypse comes, China will save the world.

"The Twilight Saga: New Moon," also known as "Twilight: The Squeakquel," is actually pretty good - a tick better than the first "Twilight," which wasn't bad either. These are hardly superlatives on the order of "shattering" and "beautiful," but compared to the film versions of "The Da Vinci Code" and "Angels & Demons," the only two movies ever made with less sex than the first two "Twilights," they're matchless.

Uplifting. Heartwarming. Schmaltzy but effective. Watching "The Blind Side," I felt my emotions being stage-managed, but once or twice I got something in my eye. It's inspired by a feel-good true story of interracial adoption and gridiron glory. The project could have been designed by scientists synthesizing the crowd-pleasing-movie genome. Bullock + football + Kumbaya = Ka-ching!

In a sense, the soldiers at the center of "The Messenger" are engaged in house-to-house combat. Capt. Tony Stone (Woody Harrelson) and Sgt. Will Montgomery (Ben Foster) are unwelcome visitors, wary of what might detonate behind the next door.

Even by the sadistic standards of Lars von Trier ("Breaking the Waves," "Dogville"), "Antichrist" is a unique form of cruel and unusual punishment: an unrelenting orgy of graphic sex, violence and cynicism that also manages to be wildly pretentious.

LOS ANGELES James Caan is seeking a divorce from his wife of 14 years.

PARIS The wife and two children of Roman Polanski are bearing the brunt of the director's imprisonment in Switzerland as he awaits a decision on his extradition, his lawyer said in an interview to be published Friday.

The end, when it comes, may look a lot like this - grey skies shrouding the ash-covered ruins of civilization.

NEW YORK Sex. Drugs. Prostitution. Pedophilia. Rape. Pedro Almodovar has been able to translate some of the most delicate subjects to the big screen with grace and humor.

WASHINGTON As moviegoers across the nation watched the end of the world with the opening of "2012" last week, news of Earth's demise spread quickly across the Web. Scientists, fed up with the misleading prophecies, quickly set the record straight with their own series of articles and a YouTube video.

NEW ORLEANS Wearing a floor-length pastel striped evening gown, Sandra Bullock walked the red carpet in New Orleans Thursday for a special premiere of her latest film, "The Blind Side."

There are loads of references to other sci-fi movies in "Planet 51": "E.T.," "The Day the Earth Stood Still," "Star Wars," even to a cute little mutt with a head shaped like the monster from "Alien" that squirts acid urine. The movie, about a far-flung planet of green aliens whose civilization resembles 1950s malt-shop and doo-wop America, is also crammed with subtexts about the era's paranoias, from UFO invaders to McCarthyism.

Apparently few things are as entertaining as watching the Earth shake itself to pieces.

"(Untitled)" is a funny movie set in New York City's fashionable art galleries and experimental music scene. Its characters are erudite and foolish, not always likable, but fun to observe.

Don't get on their bad side. This powerful coven enforces the laws of the vampire world.

The title of Adam Goldberg's new movie is intriguing: "(Untitled)" really doesn't have one.

"The Blind Side" flirts with terminal cuteness but wins us over, thanks to a lump-in-the-throat real-life story of selflessness and triumph.

The "Twilight" soap opera continues with a lighter, goofier and far less erotically charged sequel, "New Moon," a movie directed by a man and not a woman.

VIENNA Tom Cruise has arrived in the Austrian city of Salzburg to shoot scenes for the new action comedy "Knight & Day."

"Planet 51" takes off like a rocket with its glitzy and alien look, but it never achieves orbit because of a sputtering plot and lackluster performances.

A marginal improvement on last year's "Twilight," "New Moon" is a bit like being locked in a room for two hours with a very moody teenager.

LOS ANGELES - Despite her lofty Hollywood status, Sandra Bullock's ready to take a break from acting.

Nicolas Cage received his marching orders for "Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans" several years ago in a phone call from the filmmaker, Werner Herzog.

NEW YORK The publicity for a Hollywood movie is a machine to behold, especially from the inside.

"The Twilight Saga: New Moon" is a dead-on adaptation of the Stephenie Meyer book. That's not necessarily a good thing, because the second novel in the romantic vampire series is considered by some fans to be the weakest of the four stories.

Where would Hollywood be without that old standby, the vampire-werewolf-schoolgirl love triangle?

LOS ANGELES Of the 89 documentary films eligible for Oscar consideration this year, 15 were selected for a short list of potential nominees. And Michael Moore's "Capitalism: A Love Story" wasn't one of them.

LOS ANGELES The "Twilight" series may have changed the lives of fans worldwide, but perhaps no one has been more affected by its success than the three stars of the film: Robert Pattinson, Kristen Stewart and Taylor Lautner.

LOS ANGELES - A hallway at the Four Seasons Hotel room lined with shoes of various shapes and colors leads to Ashley Greene, who's become a fashion plate in film and in her own life.

MOMBASA, Kenya Film star Nicolas Cage has visited a Kenyan prison holding suspected Somali pirates awaiting trial to highlight the problem of piracy in the Indian Ocean.

LOS ANGELES - Kellan Lutz felt far less pressure making "The Twilight Saga: New Moon" than he did making "Twilight."

LOS ANGELES - Chris Weitz wasn't looking to make a vampire movie when he got the call to direct "The Twilight Saga: New Moon."

John Lee Hancock has made three feature films, each based on real people and events.

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. Actress Kristen Stewart wanted to make the right fashion statement when attending a screening of "The Twilight Saga: New Moon" in Knoxville.

NEW YORK Get lost, Hugh Jackman. This year's "Sexiest Man Alive" is once again Johnny Depp.

TORONTO Nicolas Cage figures he owes no apologies when critics gripe about all the Hollywood action flicks he's done.

HONG KONG Looking for a new project after finishing a comedy, Zhang Yimou is considering adaptations of novels set against China's Cultural Revolution and the Japanese invasion in World War II, his assistant said Wednesday.

SAN FRANCISCO A spokeswoman for Jaycee Dugard says only Dugard and her family should decide when and if a film is made based on the 18 years she spent with the man charged with kidnapping her.

LOS ANGELES Nicolas Cage is being sued by his former business manager, who claims lavish spending, not his advice, is to blame for the actor's financial problems.

BILOXI, Miss. Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy know the Michael Oher story better than anyone, at least better than anyone other than Michael Oher himself.

ST. CLAIRSVILLE, Ohio A paparazzo testified Tuesday that an Ohio police chief told him he had access to ultrasound photographs belonging to the woman who carried twins for Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick.