NEW YORK (Reuters) – A low-budget movie about a lesbian couple raising two children might have once seemed a long shot for packing theaters and claiming Oscar glory.

But “The Kids Are All Right,” a modern take on the comic family drama starring Annette Bening and Julianne Moore, has sparked a lot of talk heading into Hollywood’s awards season and is widely being mentioned as an Oscar contender.

The film, which hits DVD shelves this week in the United States and is about to open in theaters in Germany, Brazil, Austria, Portugal, South Africa and the Netherlands, currently averages a 94 percent positive rating among the top critics on review website rottentomatoes.com.

Bening is hearing the loudest Oscar buzz in the best actress category playing a caring, but at times acerbic, mother trying to maintain control of her unraveling household after her and her lesbian partner’s (Moore) teenage kids meet their sperm donor dad, portrayed by Mark Ruffalo.

“Kids” also is gathering steam as a possible best film Oscar contender, while Moore, Ruffalo and director Lisa Cholodenko are considered in the running for supporting actor and director categories, respectively.

Cholodenko, 46, who in real life shares a child from a sperm donor with her female partner, said it was “a long haul” from starting the script in 2004 to seeing it premiere at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. But after “Kids” first screened, she knew it had the potential to please audiences.

“It was one of those astonishing moments when I thought, ‘Wow, this is working,” she recalled of the initial reaction. “I don’t know if I ever went, ‘Wow, this is going to win an Oscar, but I did go, ‘Wow this translated. I am so relieved’.”

NEW YORK, Nov 12 (Reuters) – Rolling Stone writer Matt Taibbi famously compared investment bank Goldman Sachs to a giant money-sucking vampire squid a year and a half ago. Now his new book “Griftopia” apportions more blame for the financial crisis and fallout.

The new “grifter class” of America who have successfully defrauded the average Joe are the major players on Wall Street propped up by willing politicians, Taibbi says in his recently published, “Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids and the Long Con That is Breaking America.”

The 250-page book employs the colloquial style of Rolling Stone magazine to detail the roles of major players such as former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan in the destabilization of the economy in the lead up to the 2008 crisis, and why Goldman Sachs got a $10 billion federal bailout while other banks were allowed to fail.

Taibbi says “a concentrated group of connected financial companies that are growing bigger and bigger all the time,” now wield “enormous political influence.” He compared them to powerful interests in developing countries who “write the rules of the game so that they can’t lose.”

“They are the dominant political powers in the country now,” he told Reuters in an interview. “When you get so much political influence that you can’t not make money, it’s just like a license to steal and that is what the book is about.”

Goldman Sachs, he added, became a favored target of his partly because former Goldman officials crossed over to government positions. Hank Paulson, a former Goldman CEO, was U.S. Treasury Secretary when he decided to bailout Goldman Sachs while rival Lehman Brothers was allowed to fail.

“I don’t think there is a parallel in American history that is worse than that,” he said. “There is a particular culture at that bank that is different from other banks, they cultivate this air of superiority.”

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Former “Tonight Show” host Conan O’Brien’s return to television with a new late night program drew strong viewership but mixed reviews from critics on Tuesday who said its same old late-night talk format failed to inspire them.

O’Brien’s new show “Conan,” which premiered on Monday on cable network TBS, marked the once-embattled talk show host’s return to U.S. TV after he was ousted from the coveted hosting duties on NBC’s “The Tonight Show” in January and was replaced with its former star, comedian Jay Leno.

Sporting a trimmed beard, O’Brien drew some praise for his opening monologue, even though critics noted the 47-year-old predictably focused on his departure from NBC.

The move from broadcaster NBC which reaches a wide audience to TBS that caters to a more narrow group of viewers is widely seen as a step down in audience size, and O’Brien sarcastically joked that he had always dreamed of being a talk show host on cable TV “ever since I was 46.”

Still, O’Brien’s fans turned out in solid numbers. “Conan” was watched by 4.1 million total viewers, TBS said. Some 2.4 million were 18-34 years-old, confirming his appeal to younger viewers. Leno, by contrast, has been averaging 3.6 million total viewers this season so far, according to NBC.

“Conan delivered an extraordinary audience and stands out as the youngest late-night talk show on television,” said Steve Koonin, president of TBS parent Turner Entertainment Networks.

Critics, however, were less than enthusiastic. Showbiz newspaper Daily Variety said while the opening jab at his former network was “funny stuff,” O’Brien would do well in the future to “avoid looking like an object of self-pity.”

NEW YORK (Reuters) – A musical adaptation of Spanish film director Pedro Almodovar’s 1988 comedy movie, “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown” received a poor response by critics in reviews posted on Friday.

The new Broadway musical, which opened on Thursday in New York, adapted the tale of women who deal with men who abandon and cheat on them at a cost of about $5 million.

Almodovar consulted with the show’s creators and was on hand in New York this week for the show’s opening after it had been delayed. But critics said the musical that aimed to bring Almodovar’s signature splashy colors, quirky characters and offbeat humor fell short.

“Take a delectable screen property, add a masterful director, gifted designers and a formidable assembly of stage talent, and what do you get? Sadly, a flavorless gazpacho,” said The Hollywood Reporter, playing on one character’s penchant for making the cold Spanish soup.

The New York Times said “this tale of mad love in swinging 1980s Madrid feels hopelessly distracted from beginning to end.”

Some critics praised the performances of the cast, including theater stars Patti LuPone and Laura Benanti, but said the score and story let the musical down and the characters didn’t live up to what Almodovar delivered in his Oscar-nominated movie.

Director Bartlett Sher said in an interview this week that Almodovar made a “substantial” contribution to the musical, extensively consulting with the show’s creators.

NEW YORK, Nov 3 (Reuters) – Filmmaker Tyler Perry has had no trouble claiming financial success when audiences flock to his comedies, but this week his box office pull will be tested with the dark drama, “For Colored Girls.”

Currently America’s most successful African American film director who often attaches his name to movies adapted from his own stage plays, Perry has raked in more than $450 million at box offices, mostly in the United States.

But his new movie, “For Colored Girls,” opening on Friday, is far removed from the comedic fare for which he first gained fame, including “Diary of a Mad Black Woman” and “Madea’s Family Reunion.

“For Colored Girls” tackles issues such as abuse and abortion, and is adapted from poet and playwright Ntozake Shange’s, “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf.”

“This was the most intimidating work I have ever taken on,” Perry told reporters in a recent news conference. “I walked away from it many times.”

Yet the intertwining stories of nine women facing trials in their everyday lives kept pulling him back, and for his adaptation, Perry has updated the 1970s-era play with a film presentation of modern black women living in New York City who face troubling dilemmas and decisions.

Helping the movie’s box office potential is its long roster of high-profile female actors and performers, including Janet Jackson, Whoopi Goldberg, Phylicia Rashad, Kerry Washington, Thandie Newton and Macy Gray.

NEW YORK, Oct 28 (Reuters) – In a darkly-lit cheap motel, photographer Jonathan Leder encourages a young female model posing semi-naked in a hot tub to lean toward the camera.

If that image of a nude young woman seems a tired cliche and cheap way to sell magazines, the makers of “Jacques” would beg to differ. For rival publishers it might pay to listen because “Jacques” is breaking a downward trend in periodical publishing where cost-cutting is the norm.

And publishers might be surprised to hear “Jacques” is not the latest high-end fashion magazine, but an adult publication that aims to be a kitschy vintage throwback to pin-up magazines of the 1960s and ’70s with centerfolds of models such as a recent, topless woman posing on a vintage motorcycle.

“It’s a question of quality,” Leder, the magazine’s creative director told Reuters about the reason “Jacques” had increased in popularity while other magazines were failing.

“Unfortunately, publishers, like many other people in this day and age, seem to think, ‘why not, if we can do it cheaper, let’s just do it cheaper and sell it for less.’”

The “Jacques” mantra: spend a little on quality, and your book will sell for more — to more people.

In a frantic publishing climate where many magazines have struggled with the rise of the Internet, “Jacques” launched in May 2009, a year that would see some 282 magazines fold in the first nine months, according to Marketingcharts.com.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – A music video for Afrikaans rap group Die Antwoord from South Africa was among the winners of the worldwide video art competition “You Tube Play” unveiled on Thursday at the Guggenheim museum.

The top 25 videos from emerging video artists around the world were shown for the first time Thursday night on a large screen at New York’s Guggenheim, which created the contest with video-sharing website YouTube. It was aimed at showcasing innovative online video artists.

Varying from animated line drawings to cartoons, the top 25 videos were created by 39 artists from 14 countries.

Rising hip-hop group Die Antwoord’s “Zef Side,” by video artist Sean Metelerkamp, was among those picked. It features slow-motion shots and deadpan interviews of the group that is made up of frontman Ninja, blonde singer Yo-Landi Vi$$er and DJ Hi-Tek, who only started performing more than a year ago.

Other winning videos included “Birds on the Wires” from Jarbas Agnelli of Sao Paulo, Brazil, featuring instrumental music and shots of birds perched on wires resembling a bar of music, and the brief “Seaweed,” showing a man stretching his arms, from London-based Remi Weekes and Luke White.

The exhibition serves as a sign of older art institutions such as The Guggenheim giving a nod to the growing power of the Internet and YouTube to distribute art globally, as well as the growing influence of video in all forms of entertainment, from the art world to theater and books.

“In the last two decades, the moving image has been fully absorbed into critical contemporary-art practices,” Richard Armstrong, the museum’s director, said in a statement.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Sleepwalking out of a second-story window and living to joke about it became a surprising climax of comedian Mike Birbiglia’s monologue.

That unlikely true story has been transferred, among other funny tales, to his first memoir, “Sleepwalk with Me and Other Painfully True Stories,” which was recently released as the rising star embarked on a U.S. book tour in October and November.

Birbiglia, best known as a stand-up comic whose off-Broadway show — also called “Sleepwalk With Me” — received raves from critics, said he initially never wanted to tell anyone about his best sleepwalking tale.

“I was completely reluctant to say it on stage,” he told Reuters. “It really was this thing that I was uncomfortable talking about because I thought people would think I was crazy.”

As he explains in the book, going bonkers doesn’t seem too far from the truth. After dreaming he was about to be hit by a missile, he jumped out the window of an inn, landed on the front lawn and got up to keep running, only to then wake up from his dream in his underwear, bleeding.

“And I am like, Oh nooo,” he writes in the book. “But at that moment, the only thing I can think is that I’m relieved that I haven’t been hit by a missile.”

Nurses and doctors raised eyebrows at his story at a nearby hospital, where he had glass shards removed that were sticking out from his legs.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Sleepwalking out of a second-story window and living to joke about it became a surprising climax of comedian Mike Birbiglia’s monologue.

That unlikely true story has been transferred, among other funny tales, to his first memoir, “Sleepwalk with Me and Other Painfully True Stories,” which was recently released as the rising star embarked on a U.S. book tour in October and November.

Birbiglia, best known as a stand-up comic whose off-Broadway show — also called “Sleepwalk With Me” — received raves from critics, said he initially never wanted to tell anyone about his best sleepwalking tale.

“I was completely reluctant to say it on stage,” he told Reuters. “It really was this thing that I was uncomfortable talking about because I thought people would think I was crazy.”

As he explains in the book, going bonkers doesn’t seem too far from the truth. After dreaming he was about to be hit by a missile, he jumped out the window of an inn, landed on the front lawn and got up to keep running, only to then wake up from his dream in his underwear, bleeding.

“And I am like, Oh nooo,” he writes in the book. “But at that moment, the only thing I can think is that I’m relieved that I haven’t been hit by a missile.”

Nurses and doctors raised eyebrows at his story at a nearby hospital, where he had glass shards removed that were sticking out from his legs.

By Christine Kearney

NEW YORK (Reuters Life!) – American author Nicole Krauss has no doubt she will keep writing novels even if her latest, the solemn and weighty “Great House,” is not adored around the world as much as her last effort.

But chances are, she may not have to deal with failure on any level because her third novel hit U.S. bookstores this week to critical acclaim and already delivered her a National Book Award nomination for fiction.

The Brooklyn-based writer, now 36, was hailed years ago as one of America’s young literary stars after the success of her 2005 novel, “The History of Love,” which was translated into dozens of languages.

Yet, having any readers comes as a surprise for Krauss.

“It was so completely unexpected that people would like ‘The History of Love’ … I was absolutely sure that no great number of readers would have the patience or desire to finish or get through that book,” she said, “if I don’t have it again, I can live with that.”

In order to write “Great House,” which captures loneliness and solitude similarly to “The History of Love” but is less playful in tone, Krauss eventually escaped the public sphere to return to the anxiety of writing a novel again.