The problem with success is in trying to keep it, especially when your pricetag is so high and the sands of time are slipping through the hourglass.

Robert Downey Jr. has had a triumph in the Iron Man films, and part 3 is such a blockbuster it's expected to surpass $400 million dollars--that's a lot of tuna sandwiches for the Paltrow family.

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Image by Courtney Nicholas for Vice magazine

James Franco the film star also turns out to be a pretty good film critic, suggesting that the old adage should be amended to "Those who can, teach."

For Vice, Franco took a look at The Great Gatsby and decided it was an engaging adaptation and he didn't even mind the 3D. That's good because a major film star writing a pissy review of someone else's film would come of like sour grapes, which as you know tend to make for very flat champagne.

But here's the really interesting part. In discussing the plot developments, Franco writes:

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Tyler Perry Presents Peeples hasn't been bringing in the peeples to buy tickets, but let's not celebrate about that. The fact is, it's actually a challenging work that breaks new ground for Perry in that it doesn't pander to conservative church values.

Writes Stephen Schaefer in the Boston Herald:

"Boxofficemojo.com, which tracks and predicts movies, was surprised at the spectacular failure this past weekend of Tyler Perry Presents Peeples, a well reviewed comedy that teamed Craig Robinson of The Office in his first starring role and red-hot Kerry Washington of Scandal in a dysfunctional family comedy.

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A friend and I wanted to catch up with 42, the well received Jackie Robinson movie I'd missed the screening of.

I called Moviefone and entered the first three letters of the movie title: F-O-R.

But 42 didn't come up. What did pop up was a head-spinningly bizarre assortment of films, which surely can't still be playing anymore (and in the case of some of them, I'm not sure they ever did). The voice of Moviefone listed:

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Photo Credit: Ture Lillegraven

Let's get all Tiger Beat-ish and dive inside the mind of Chris Pine, the costar of Star Trek Into Darkness, with the help of his sound bites from the June issue of Men's Health.

God, I could just grab onto those Vulcan ears and...No, wait, that's the other guy. But still, Chris Pine is super hot and any time he wants to beam me up to his place for a little...I'm kidding. His utterances will suffice, from afar--as long as they're not from another galaxy. Anyway, here goes:

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August: Osage County is the Pulitzer winning play by Tracy Letts (see above) about the disappearance of a father and how it further spirals one of the more dysfunctional families in American literature.

It was a powerful experience on Broadway, and now, inevitably, it's become a Meryl Streep movie. And I'm intrigued.

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At an autograph show, I recently met Scott Schwartz, who played the kid whose tongue got stuck to the pole in 1983's A Christmas Story and who now owns a memorabilia store.

I asked him if filming that scene was at all tedious, and he replied, "No, but it was cold. The film was underdeveloped, so we had to shoot it again a second day."

And this was way before Dumb and Dumber, right? "They ripped us off!" said Scott, correctly.

I also asked him how it feels to be in one of the top Christmas movies of all time. "It comes in at #1 a lot," he said. "Sometimes they say It's a Wonderful Life, but that's not really a Christmas movie--only at the end." Point taken. Sorry, Jimmy.

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He's been burned before, like when his Liberace film--directed by his Oscar winning self and starring two Oscar winners--couldn't manage to green lit from a single studio because it was too gay or something! So it'll be on TV!

So Steven Soderbergh has every right to be pissed.

And he's laid out just what's wrong with the industry in 10 very well reasoned steps.

They include:

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Only in Hollywood could the year's highest-grossing feature also be the biggest flop, but that's what happened with Cleopatra, the 1963 Joseph Mankiewicz-directed epic of Egyptian headdresses, cleavage, and makeup, all done with a distinctly 1960s American slant.

The main attractions were Richard Burton's voice, Liz Taylor's tits, and able turns by Rex Harrison (who was Oscar nominated) and Roddy McDowall (who would have been, but they forgot to submit him for consideration. True story.)

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At her Surviving Mommie Dearest show last night, Christina Crawford took questions from the audience, so I raised my little hand and said, "Faye Dunaway was always embarrassed by Mommie Dearest..."

"She should," interjected Christina, sharply.

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