ELIZABETH BANKS

It’s during the commercial breaks that the audience inside the Dolby Theatre really comes to life on Oscar night.

Sunday’s Academy Awards show was surprising for its warmth and sincere, unpolished emotions that blossomed in a stultifying format.

Banks presented the award for best visual effects alongside a co-presenter in a head-to-toe bear costume.

Sunday studio estimates say the gonzo R-rated horror comedy “Cocaine Bear” sniffed up $23.1 million in its opening weekend, while Marvel's “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” shrank unusually quickly in its second weekend.

It's like a parody of a parody that director Elizabeth Banks has turned limp and pointless. If you think it's hysterical to see a bear do a bump off a severed leg stump, by all means, the movie theater is this way. The best thing to say is that, even at an efficient 95 minutes, “Cocaine Bear” just snorts along.

Elizabeth Banks has promised her viewers no more than a bear on drugs, and a bear on drugs is what they get.

Yes, “Cocaine Bear” is a real movie.

Actress and filmmaker Elizabeth Banks defended the controversial drug scene depicting minors doing cocaine in her upcoming action-comedy film "Cocaine Bear."

The announcement was made Friday, a few days before Ernie Banks’ eighth death anniversary on Jan. 23. Banks, known worldwide as “Mr. Cub,” passed away in 2015 at the age of 83.

The real Cocaine Bear featured in the horror movie died near 40 bags of cocaine that dropped from the sky and is allegedly stuffed and on display in Kentucky.

Four standing ovations in one night might seem a little over-the-top, even by Hollywood standards, but at the Governors Awards Saturday night, where Michael J.

Elizabeth Banks plays a woman seeking an underground abortion in the topical yet slapdash 1960s-set drama about the Jane Collective.

The 44th annual Sundance Film Festival is back, and entirely online once more.

The Sundance Film Festival is returning to the Utah mountains in January armed with documentaries about Bill Cosby, Princess Diana, Kanye West and Lucille Ball as well as the directorial debuts of Eva Longoria, Tig Notaro and Jesse Eisenberg.

Viola Davis has been named Woman of the Year by Harvard University’s Hasty Pudding Theatricals.

Cole, whose "Magic School Bus" books transported millions of young people on extraordinary and educational adventures, has died at age 75. (Annabelle Helms/Scholastic via AP)NEW YORK Author Joanna Cole, whose Magic School Bus books transported millions of young people on extraordinary and educational adventures, has died at age 75. The idea for "The Magic School Bus" came in the mid-1980s. And with The Magic School Bus it was how to explain it so that it is accurate and in a form that a kid can understand and use. She had a rare sense of what could be humorous.Cole and Degen recently completed The Magic School Bus Explores Human Evolution, scheduled to come out next spring.

NEW YORK The Magic School Bus has traveled everywhere from Pluto to inside the human body. Scholastic Entertainment said Thursday that it will make a feature-length, live-action hybrid film based on the animated TV show that ran from 1994 to 1997. Elizabeth Banks will play the manic science teacher Ms. Frizzle. The Magic School Bus, adapted from a series of books written by Joanna Cole and illustrated by Bruce Degen, centers on a group of school children who board a yellow school bus for field trips to such unlikely places as outer space or the human digestive system. Lilly Tomlin supplied the voice for Ms. Frizzle in the original cartoon series and Kate McKinnon voiced her sister in a recent Netflix reboot, The Magic School Bus Rides Again.The film version will be led by Scholastic Entertainment, Brownstone Productions, Marc Platt Productions and Universal Pictures.