Features

The Church of Scientology -- more famous for attracting celebrities than for its actual beliefs -- has experienced a bit of a publicity nightmare as of late. After 35 years, two-time Oscar winner Paul Haggis ('Crash') exited the group due to its anti-homosexuality stance. France declared the organization guilty of organized fraud. And Will Smith and wife Jada Pinkett Smith -- who have donated money but say they are not Scientologists -- recently came under fire for instituting the Study Tech teaching methodology (developed by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard) in the New Village Leadership Academy they founded.

So who among Hollywood's A-list can wield their celebrity clout in the church's time of need? Here we track Scientology's biggest devotees.

Method actor. Big-budget action star. Manic weirdo. Prolific worker. Nicolas Cage has been called so many things over the years, and admittedly starred in a lot of misfires, that it's easy to forget his incredibly diverse and creative body of work. Over 53 films, the 45-year old actor has done virtually every genre imaginable with his wholly unique stylistic mix of hyper-realism and over-the-top absurdity. With Cage's 'Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans' just opening (in a role he already has many critics swooning over), we thought it'd be a good time to look back at the actor's 10 best performances.

Inspirational sports stories have always been a popular subject for movies, but there's a special subset of this genre – true life underdog stories – that can be the most awe-inspiring of all. The latest such film, 'The Blind Side,' is the tale of Michael Oher, the formerly homeless son of a crack addict who overcomes seemingly impossible odds to play for the NFL. (He was the Baltimore Ravens' first-round draft pick this year).

Narrowing this field down to the 10 greatest films is no easy feat, and obviously open to argument, but we gave it a go. Just about all of them are guaranteed to choke up even the most hard-boiled jock.

Those Twihards mean business. Despite the fact that there are still four more days till its release on Nov. 20, 'New Moon,' the second movie in Stephenie Meyer's 'Twilight' saga, has already surpassed 'Star Wars: Episode III -- Revenge of the Sith,' 'Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,' and 'The Dark Knight' as Fandango's top-selling advance ticket seller.

According to the online site, the 'New Moon' tickets, which have been available for advance purchase since August 31, had recently been making up 86 percent of Fandango's weekly sales.

As of Monday at 11 a. m. PST, that figure has surged to 92 percent.

For the past 10 years, the movie studios have been overly focused on star power. The indie film movement of the '90s petered out with the end of the century and the industry began to focus on actors who could open movies with only their names.

The hopes of young filmmakers who had been inspired by 'Clerks' or 'El Mariachi' were dashed by dozens of cookie-cutter blockbusters. However, this year the tide has turned. 'Paranormal Activity' just broke the $100 million mark at the box office, earning it a spot among a very elite group.

Only seven other movies without star power have earned more in the past 10 years; three of them are from the past two years. It's time for young believers to start those cameras rolling again.

Angie, Kevin, Patricia and Tommy ponder: How is '2012' different from all of Roland Emmerich's other disaster movies (or is it)? Does Wes Anderson's 'Fantastic Mr. Fox' prove that 2009 is the year of kids' movies meant for adults? Or is 2009 instead the year of Woody Harrelson?

Plus, speed round! with this weekend's other releases.

What is it about ballet that captures our imagination? There's something exhilarating about dancers pushing the bounds of physical perfection in order to create ethereal forms of beauty and light.

The dramatic juxtaposition of the demanding, relentless discipline needed to create graceful artistic illusions seems a natural fit for the big screen, and over the years ballet has, in fact, enjoyed many charmed and storied turns on the celluloid stage.

In honor of the newly restored edition of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressberger's 1948 dance masterpiece 'The Red Shoes' and the release of Frederick Wiseman's acclaimed documentary 'La Danse: The Paris Opera Ballet,' we present our own ballet movie hall of fame. Because while the following films may not all be cinematic masterworks, they all succeed in raising the barre with their love of the dance.

Whether Gothic and grisly, horrible and hilarious or flat-out romantic, vampires have been the stock-in-trade of scary films since the dawn of moviedom. Naturally, depictions of neck-nibbling and bloody chug-a-lugging is more eye-dazzling today than in the days of the silents, but what hasn't changed is audiences' thirst for more and more of the same. So beyond the physical beauty of, say, the stars of 'New Moon,' at the very essence is our fang-cination with the dark side. Here's 10 of our favorite film vampires. Did we bite off more than we could swallow?

Lately you can't walk into a theater or turn on the TV without seeing the major-league destruction of the '2012' trailer. Roland Emmerich's feature is the ultimate in disaster porn: fire, explosions, bridges and highways collapsing, and our hero John Cusack flying through all the carnage in a small plane.

St. Peter's Basilica is turning into Vatican rubble, the Eiffel Tower's going horizontal -- it's the visual equivalent of a pot of espresso with a Red Bull chaser. Of course, this is nothing new; destroying national landmarks and infrastructure is a Hollywood tradition, and the producers of '2012' have these films to thank for paving the way -- or at least blowing it up.