Stone directing star Michael Douglas

In a harsh review, New York Times film critic Joe Nocera takes on director Oliver Stone for bunting when he could have swung for a home run with Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps. Nocera says the mercurial director missed an opporunity to take on the financial crisis head-on and instead concentrated on personal dramas with the crisis only serving as a backdrop. Stone says he had to compromise or else alienate his audience by making the film too tecnhical for mass audiences. Click here to read

By Lee Pfeiffer

Singer Eddie Fisher has died from complications from hip surgery. He was 82. Fisher was once a national singing sensation in the 1950s. He wed Debbie Reynolds and seemed poised for a successful acting career as well. However, the storybook marriage fell apart. Henceforth, Fisher would be known primarily for the more scandalous aspects of his love life. When his best friend Mike Todd was killed in a plane crash in 1958, Fisher not only comforted his widow Elizabeth Taylor, but ended up marrying her shortly thereafter- much to the horror of an outraged public that was then used to sanitized stories about the purity of entertainer's lives.In an instance of bitter irony, Fisher lost Taylor to actor Richard Burton, when the two co-starred in the 1963 epic Cleopatra. The romantic scandal was so torrid that it became front page news all over the world and made Fisher the butt of comic's jokes as the unwitting cuckolded husband. Fisher later married another sex symbol, Connie Stevens, but that marriage also ended in divorce. Fisher would remarry two more times. He attempted a comeback in the 1980s but the effort failed. He wrote two autobiographies that outraged his family and children by painting his ex-wives in unflattering ways and divulging embarrassing pillow talk. He is the father of actresses Carrie and Joely Fisher. For more click here

Screenwriter Irving Ravetch, who worked in partnership with his wife Harriet Frank Jr, has died at age 89. The couple were Oscar nominated and their screenplays included such gems as The Long Hot Summer, Hud, Hombre, and Norma Rae . Click here for NY Times obituary