Elyse Knox was one of the most popular and prolific leading ladies of 1940s B-movies, the heroine of such diverse fare as the spine-tingler The Mummy's Tomb; the slapstick comedy Hit the Ice, and the film noir I Wouldn't Be in Your Shoes. A beautiful blonde, she usually epitomised all-American wholesomeness, as in Sheriff of Tombstone, co-starring the singing cowboy Roy Rogers. But she also could be seductively sultry, as demonstrated by her voluptuous harem girl in Arabian Nights (1942). A fashion designer and Vogue model before entering films, she was a popular pin-up during the Second World War.

The protectors of Marilyn Monroe's image say a collector who wants $500,000 for a short 1940s stag film is committing fraud and violating the actress's intellectual property rights by claiming it shows her having sex when she was under age.

Fox Searchlight has marked a comedy spec script from Easy A writer Bert Royal with a gold star.

This is an evocative, lyrical adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro's acclaimed novel, with a subtly sinister atmosphere, and sensitive performances from Carey Mulligan, Andrew Garfield and Keira Knightley.

Danny (Slumdog Millionaire) Boyle directs the true story of Aron Ralston (James Franco) – a peppy climber who was pinned to the bottom of a canyon by a boulder – with all of his usual hyperactive verve. And that's the problem.

Hilary Swank stars in this true-life drama as Betty Anne Waters, a high-school dropout and a mother of two who decides to qualify as a lawyer, just so that she can overturn her brother's murder conviction.

Darren Aronofsky's exotic mix of backstage soap opera and gothic horror movie is tosh, really: being cast as the lead in Swan Lake wouldn't turn anyone into a gibbering psycho, even someone as highly strung as Natalie Portman's fledgling ballerina.

Hubert Schlafly, an Emmy Award-winning engineer, was the co-inventor of the teleprompter, or autocue, and executed the first satellite transmission of a cable programme, both of which helped shape modern television. He also engineered the HBO satellite transmission of the "Thrilla in Manila" between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier.

Most movie stars wait for either an invitation to park their bottom on Oprah's sofa or the publication of a warts-and-all autobiography to share the details of their abusive childhood. But Tai is no ordinary movie star. For starters, she is an elephant.

Cinema chains could refuse to show major films in a showdown with two leading studios over home viewing.

Directed by Sylvain Chomet, from a screenplay written by Jacques Tati in 1959, this gorgeously hand-drawn cartoon sees an ageing French conjurer trying his luck in Edinburgh, where he shares a boarding house with a young girl.

Twenty-two years in the making, Oliver Stone's Wall Street sequel starts as a meaty, grown-up drama in which wealth and testosterone waft intoxicatingly from the screen.

After a confusing year, marked by uncertainty about both the financial and creative futures of their industry, Hollywood’s great and good must choose between the forces of tradition and modernity when they sit down to cast their votes for next month’s Academy Awards.

A limp romantic comedy that copies The Bourne Identity might sound like an ideal vehicle for, say, Gerard Butler and Kate Hudson.