US-ENTERTAINMENT Summary

Jim Carrey's new comedy "Yes Man" got the nod from moviegoers across North America, but brutal weather in key markets combined with holiday shopping distractions to hit overall ticket sales. According to studio estimates issued on Sunday, "Yes Man" earned $18.2 million during its first three days, winning a closely watched duel with the Will Smith drama "Seven Pounds." The decidedly downbeat film opened to a lightweight $16 million, Smith's worst performance in seven years.

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Film composers aren't exactly the most social creatures in Hollywood. But when five of this year's Oscar front-runners -- A.R. Rahman ("Slumdog Millionaire"), Howard Shore ("Doubt"), Danny Elfman ("Milk"), Alexandre Desplat ("The Curious Case of Benjamin Button") and Jan Kaczmarek ("The Visitor") -- sat down recently with The Hollywood Reporter, they seized the opportunity for a frank, passionate discussion of the past, present and future of film music.

Adam Sandler turns on charm in "Bedtime Stories"

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Has Adam Sandler been defanged? "Bedtime Stories" is his first family-friendly comedy, not to mention his first for Walt Disney Pictures. But if Sander can startle us in a dark, obsessive role like "Punch-Drunk Love," he can surprise us here, too. In a modern-day fairy tale about hopes, aspirations and family, Sander displays a winning form under the light and mischievous direction of Adam Shankman("Bringing Down the House").

Fifty years since "Greatest Game Ever Played"

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Fifty years ago the New York Giants and Baltimore Colts took the NFL title game to sudden death and launched pro football on a ride to the top of U.S. sports with what came to be known as "The Greatest Game Ever Played." The golden anniversary of that 23-17 upset win on December 28, 1958 by a Colts team led by young quarterback Johnny Unitas has inspired a passel of books this holiday season, a television retrospective and musings on how far football has come.

Ailing shows travel from TV land to limbo

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Most TV shows exit the airwaves with a flurry of headlines memorializing their demise. Sometimes, though, a program fades from the spotlight into a scheduling twilight zone: neither declared dead nor returning. Here's the lowdown on some missing-in-action titles from this year that most expected to see again but which have no airdates on the horizon:

White Zombie laid to rest on boxed set

DETROIT (Billboard) - Assembling the White Zombie boxed set "Let Sleeping Corpses Lie" was "weird" and somewhat bittersweet for Rob Zombie, the frontman for the defunct metal group that broke up in 1996. "The funny thing was when I was putting it together, it seemed so long ago," Zombie told Billboard.com. "It felt like I was putting together a box set of someone else's band. It just seemed like forever ago, and some of the early songs are, like, 20 years ago or something. It just seemed weird."

Quirky werewolf tale unleashed at Fox Broadcasting

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Talk about a hairy "Sex and the City." The Fox network has ordered a script for "Bitches," a comedy-drama about a quartet of female friends in New York who are werewolves.

Warner Music pulls videos from YouTube

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Warner Music Group ordered YouTube on Saturday to remove all music videos by its artists from the popular online video-sharing site after contract negotiations broke down. The order could affect hundreds of thousands of videos clips, as it covers Warner Music's recorded artists as well as the rights for songs published by its Warner/Chappell unit, which includes many artists not signed to Warner Music record labels.