LOS ANGELES Jim Carrey's Scrooge collected holiday donations from movie fans with his new take on "A Christmas Carol," which took in $31 million to open as the weekend's top movie.

LOS ANGELES Nick Counter, a longtime negotiator for Hollywood producers who led the studios through two grueling writers' strikes last year and in 1988, has died. He was 69.

WARWICK, R.I. Two-time Oscar-nominated actor James Woods has sued a Rhode Island hospital over the 2006 death of his younger brother.

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. Matthew Broderick says he's puzzled by the bashing he's received for his actions during the first New York preview of "The Starry Messenger," a new play by good friend Kenneth Lonergan.

NEW YORK First it was books. Now it's DVDs.

Opening Nov. 13:

Roland Emmerich has an ongoing project: destroying the world. In 1996's "Independence Day," the German director sent aliens to wipe out the White House. In 1998, he unleashed "Godzilla" to wreak havoc on the streets of New York. In 2004's "The Day After Tomorrow," he froze the planet in a new ice age.

How do you pad out a six-page short story that strives to be nothing more than a clever little morality tale into a feature-length film? By throwing in lots and lots of stuff - practically everything but zombies. Check that: We've got two hours to fill here. Bring on the zombies, too!

You cannot ruin the essence of "A Christmas Carol." The example of a man who learns that wealth is not happiness, but happiness is wealth, is surely eternal.

You've heard about close encounters of the third kind, of course, the extraterrestrial meetings that involve contact, presumably of a benign nature. The fourth kind involves a more invasive sort of contact: alien abduction, possibly including those uncomfortable probes about which the true UFO believers are always so nervous.

A title card at the beginning of "The Men Who Stare at Goats" announces, "More of this is true than you would believe." Less of it is entertaining than you would wish.

"More of this is true than you would believe," warns a title card at the start of "The Men Who Stare at Goats," although the ever-reliable "I know this sounds crazy, but ..." would have worked just as well.

As Ebenezer Scrooge (not to mention The Grinch), Jim Carrey aims to put a lump of coal in the Christmas stocking and a lump of emotion in the throat. That he fails is not for lack of effort.

1. The original version of "The Box" was a short story by Richard Matheson that was published as "Button, Button" in the June 1970 issue of Playboy.

CHICAGO - You'd never guess it from meeting her on the street, but Gabourey Sidibe makes an incredibly convincing troubled, abused teenager.

NEW ORLEANS Actors Tom Hanks, Patricia Clarkson and James Cromwell walked the red carpet Thursday before a private screening of the Hanks-produced war film "Beyond All Boundaries" held at the World War II Museum in New Orleans.

JACKSON, Miss. Morgan Freeman has settled a lawsuit related to a 2008 car accident that seriously injured him and a passenger, according to court records posted Thursday. Terms of the settlement were not released.

MIAMI - Like his old pal Ferris Bueller, Matthew Broderick may need a day off. The former teen star, 47, is getting slammed for his performance in Broadway's "The Starry Messenger."

Nearly 20 years ago Grant Heslov met fellow struggling actor George Clooney at an audition.

NEW YORK Mo'Nique likes to laugh. A lot.

The Fourth Kind" is a "found footage" horror movie with a few new tweaks, though not enough to escape a certain clunkiness.

Filmmaker Richard Kelly's initial encounter with Richard Matheson's fiendish little short story "Button, Button" - about a cash-strapped couple offered a million dollars to push a button on a box that will instantly cause someone they don't know to drop dead - came not on the page, but on TV.

TORONTO - In "The Men Who Stare at Goats," Jeff Bridges plays Bill Django, a military man who returns from Vietnam to embrace the '60s counterculture headlong - the whole Aquarian Age, flower power, altered states of consciousness thing.

DETROIT - It's a quiet afternoon in downtown Detroit as an invasion is in progress.

"The Box"

Capsule reviews of films opening this week:

TORONTO - Oprah Winfrey did not write "The Bluest Eye" or "Middlesex" or "Love in the Time of Cholera." But her formidably influential book club has helped many an author - alive or dead, famous or no - reach a wider audience. (Sample thank-you note from the beyond: "Oprah, thanks for your support of 'Anna Karenina.' Leo.") Now the multinational corporation disguised, cunningly, as a cultural arbiter and television personality hopes she can do a similar favor for a film she "really, really, really loves."

LOS ANGELES Robert Redford's Sundance Film Festival is going on the road for one night next winter.

Lionel Barrymore. Alastair Sim. Laurence Olivier. Albert Finney. George C. Scott. Bill Murray. Michael Caine. Mr. Magoo. Scrooge McDuck.

"I am actress Milla Jovovich," the star says, directly to the audience as she introduces her new movie, "The Fourth Kind."

Some upcoming holiday releases seem like deja vu all over again, either because of the talent involved or themes that evoke the ghosts of crowd-pleasers past.

Although the Halloween candy is still fresh, the holiday movie season is just around the corner.

NEW ORLEANS Actor Tom Hanks says viewers are in for a realistic "wartime experience" when the new film he produced, "Beyond All Boundaries," opens at the National World War II Museum in New Orleans on Friday.

HONG KONG Zhang Yimou says his first movie in three years has shades of comedian Stephen Chow's outlandish humor and marks the first time the "Raise the Red Lantern" director shot in digital format.

TOKYO Brad Pitt says he is in the market for a new motorcycle.

LOS ANGELES Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin are taking on the Oscars.

Capsule reviews of films opening this week:

A fun tone is undermined by disjointed storytelling in George Clooney's "The Men Who Stare at Goats," and it all starts with the disclaimer that opens the movie: "More of this is true than what you might imagine."

LONDON Jim Carrey, Colin Firth and Bob Hoskins switched on London's Christmas lights on Tuesday and attended the world premiere of the 3-D film "A Christmas Carol."

LOS ANGELES Hollywood loves money. So does Ebenezer Scrooge. So what better way to launch the holiday season than putting the old money-grubber at the head of the line to separate movie-goers from their cash?

The new Disney "A Christmas Carol" is another epic achievement in motion-capture animation, advancing the art form closer to photo-realism than "The Polar Express" or "Beowulf." Dazzling, ornate visuals take us to the snowy London of 1837, swooping over its digital rooftops and down its digital chimneys. Faces take on musculature, expression and detail.

The new Disney "A Christmas Carol" is another epic achievement in motion-capture animation, advancing the art form closer to photo-realism than "The Polar Express" or "Beowulf." Dazzling, ornate visuals take us to the snowy London of 1837, swooping over its digital rooftops and down its digital chimneys. Faces take on musculature, expression and detail.

LONDON The George Lucas empire struck back Tuesday against a British prop designer who sold replicas of the iconic Stormtrooper uniforms from the "Star Wars" movies.

The reviews are so gushy that they'd have to go straight to your head. For the comic actress Mo'Nique, "Precious," opening in theaters across the country in November, has become the classic "big break," that once-in-a-lifetime star turn that changes a career.

GENEVA Roman Polanski has re-appealed to the Swiss courts to be released from prison on bail, officials said Tuesday, the latest step in the director's protracted legal battle to avoid extradition to the United States.

LONDON Lawyers for Kate Winslet say the actress has accepted 25,000 pounds (more than $40,000) in damages after the Daily Mail falsely reported in January she lied about her exercise regime.

LOS ANGELES Technology finally has caught up with Charles Dickens' imagination.

As Hollywood closed specialty divisions that aimed for quality and personal stories, as studios focus more and more on superhero sagas and action blockbusters, cinema fans have rightly wondered, who's left to make great American movies?

Run! Run! RUN! Go! Go! GO! Don't look back! NOW!

HONG KONG A third leading Chinese movie studio is aiming for a listing - this time on the New York Stock Exchange - as the country's entertainment companies turn to the capital markets to raise funds.