The average movie ticket price in the U.S. climbed to an annual record of $7.93 in 2011, up from $7.89 the year before, the National Association of Theatre Owners said Thursday.

The new romantic drama "The Vow" is poised to steal the hearts of moviegoers this weekend.

When a movie calls itself "The Vow," you know it takes its love and its relationships seriously. And that's certainly the case with the new romantically and medically challenged weepie starring Rachel McAdams and Channing Tatum.

Can a $70 business loan change the life of someone long entrenched in poverty with little education and less hope? And would that loan ever be repaid?

Is any place less safe than a safe house? In the entire lexicon of movie locations, is any setting more likely to be visited by chaos and destruction on a biblical scale? Not very likely.

ST. LOUIS - Recently, 3-D has begun to shake off its reputation for gimmickry and be taken seriously as a means of cinematic expression by esteemed filmmakers from Martin Scorsese ("Hugo") to Werner Herzog ("Cave of Forgotten Dreams"). Still, "Pina" is something special.

ADDICTION INCORPORATED 2 stars. A documentary that recounts the legal battles against American Big Tobacco. It's a long, studious film. 1 hr. 42 PG-13 (adult themes) - David Hiltbrand

Producers say Naomi Watts will play Princess Diana in a film about the last years of the royal's life.

Rachel McAdams can't remember. She can't remember the car wreck involving a Meat Loaf song, she can't remember her hottie husband and she can't remember making "The Notebook."

PHILADELPHIA - Wim Wenders was two weeks away from the start date for his new film when his star - Philippina "Pina" Bausch, the German choreographer - died. She had cancer, and had been diagnosed only five days earlier.

LOS ANGELES - Visual effects visionary, director and producer Douglas Trumbull has a "broad" philosophy of film. He believes that everything in a movie is, in essence, a special effect.

LOS ANGELES - Although they're just co-stars in the new tear-jerker romance "The Vow," if you didn't know any better it'd be easy to think Channing Tatum and Rachel McAdams are an old married couple.

Top 10 movies downloaded from the iTunes Store for Feb. 8:

"The Vow" is like a Nicholas Sparks novel with a dash of wit, a hint of edge and a smidgen less sap. It's a romance in "The Notebook" tradition - "inspired by true events" and scripted by committee. But as such concoctions go, it's not half bad.

Paintings, jewelry and fashions belonging to the late Elizabeth Taylor have sold for more than $183 million, with all of the more than 1,800 items on offer snapped up, Christie's auction house said Thursday.

A costume drama set during the French revolution and starring Diane Kruger as Marie Antoinette kicked off the annual Berlin film festival Thursday - the first of the year's major European film festivals.

The moon is made of tinkling gold stars - and you can reach it by climbing a ladder.

Where feature films conform to the three-act structure of drama, movie short subjects are more like short stories.

He must have joined "The Agency" with an eye toward excitement, exotic locales and danger. But in Capetown, a backwater as far as foreign intrigue goes, agency newcomer Matt Weston is stuck - a one-man show, running a never-used "safe house" in the C.I.A.'s real-estate portfolio.

Cast and crew err on the side of silly in "Journey 2: The Mysterious Island," the amusingly childish sequel to that unlikely 2008 hit "Journey to the Center of the Earth." They've rendered Jules Verne's novel into a jokey lark, with broad, corny wisecracks, comic sidekicks and everybody riffing on the ginormous lizards, humungous spiders and the like.

Ayuko Babu, cofounder and executive director of the Pan African Film & Arts Festival, which kicks off its 20th anniversary Thursday, peppers his conversation with the word "explosion."

It's an action superstar reunion: Arnold Schwarzenegger is joining Sylvester Stallone for the thriller "The Tomb."

Court records show Gary Busey has filed for bankruptcy and is listing more than $500,000 in estimated personal debts.

LOS ANGELES - Last weekend I hosted a panel at the Santa Barbara Film Festival that featured five producers whose films were Oscar best picture nominees.

JOURNEY 2: THE MYSTERIOUS ISLAND

LOS ANGELES - When Universal Pictures hired Daniel Espinosa to direct its rogue CIA agent thriller "Safe House," the studio knew it was rolling the dice. The Swedish filmmaker had never made an English-language feature, he hadn't worked with stars near the magnitude of "Safe House" leads Denzel Washington and Ryan Reynolds, and he was graduating from a $4-million Nordic drug drama to an $85-million production.

LOS ANGELES - In an unusual move, 20th Century Fox is pushing back the official opening of the romantic action-comedy "This Means War" from Tuesday, Feb. 14, to Friday, Feb. 17. The move may be designed to let the studio avoid reporting what probably would have been weak box-office receipts on Valentine's Day.

Ratings by the Motion Picture Association of America are: (G) for general audiences; (PG) parental guidance urged because of material possibly unsuitable for children; (PG-13) parents are strongly cautioned to give guidance for attendance of children younger than 13; (R) restricted, younger than 17 admitted only with parent or adult guardian; (NC-17) no one younger than 17 admitted.

At night after she finished the day's shooting of "The Iron Lady" in London, Meryl Streep would undergo a kind of ritual. Makeup artists painstakingly removed the prosthetics that enabled Streep to play the former British prime minister in her senescent 80s, and the actress unbent her dowager's body and returned to her upright, lighthearted self.

Ratings by the Motion Picture Association of America are: (G) for general audiences; (PG) parental guidance urged because of material possibly unsuitable for children; (PG-13) parents are strongly cautioned to give guidance for attendance of children younger than 13; (R) restricted, younger than 17 admitted only with parent or adult guardian; (NC-17) no one younger than 17 admitted.

Taiwan and China may be drawing ever closer after decades of estrangement, but a pair of star-crossed lovers from opposite sides of the Taiwan Strait encounter huge difficulties in communicating with each other in a new Taiwanese film.

The Lorax, perhaps the most famous anti-industrial crusader from children's literature, is getting support from companies that are willing to go green.

Disney officials say a new area called Cars Land will open in June at Disney's California Adventure in Anaheim.

The plot seemed familiar: A hotshot Hollywood filmmaker shills for a bailed-out car industry, yet another limousine liberal going to bat for big government.