Box Office Weekend: District 9 Shows Prawn Power

Sometimes bad breaks can bring great fortune. A few years ago, Peter Jackson, the Lord of the Rings movies, planned a big-screen version of the Halo video-game universe and tapped Neill Blomkamp to direct it. When that project collapsed after a few months, Jackson proposed that Blomkamp turn his science-fiction short Alive in Joburg into his first feature film

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‘The Proposal’ celebrates box office win

Sandra Bullock will surely be popping open the champagne as her new romantic comedy, "The Proposal," accepted the top spot at the box office this weekend by grossing $34.1 million, according to early estimates by Hollywood.com Box Office. Not only did “The Proposal” win the weekend, but it was by far the best opening of Bullock’s career, nearly doubling the opening of her previous best, “Premonition,” which debuted to $17.6 million in 2007

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Nigerian group says British hostage freed

A Nigerian militant group said Friday that it has freed a British hostage. It could be the description of almost any young girl growing up in Europe. But this is how Eva Schloss remembers her childhood friend Anne Frank, who had not died in a Nazi concentration camp, would have celebrated her 80th birthday this week.

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Christians in Gaza Make Their Appeal to the Pope

The sign outside the door read “Cinema Club”, but inside, a Catholic priest was conducting Friday mass in Arabic for Gaza’s furtive Christians. Many of those Christians bowing their heads before a statue of the Virgin Mary were hoping that the power of prayer might nudge along the Israeli security bureaucracy. Six weeks ago, 250 Christians applied for permission from the Israelis to exit the locked down Palestinian enclave of Gaza for a day to see Pope Benedict XVI as he visits in Israel on his tour of the Middle East

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