“Los Angeles Times” on The Daily Caller

Last year, after being the dominant horror franchise for four consecutive years, “Saw” was upended by “Paranormal Activity.” (more)

The Internet revolutionized political fundraising, but when it comes to spending those dollars, media strategists are voting old school. (more)

Steve Goldstein knows where all the famous bodies are buried. (more)

Democratic candidates in California have extended their leads over Republican challengers in the races for Senate and the governor’s mansion, a new Fox News poll shows. (more)

Reporting from New York — To tell the big-screen tale of Valerie Plame, a real-life CIA spy whose covert identity was blown by the White House, director Doug Liman needed a special kind of actress: someone who could build an emotional wall around herself and still convey “a sense that there’s a good person inside her.” (more)

How would you like to see an honest-to-goodness witch flying by your place at midnight this Halloween? Just put your clothes on inside out, start walking around backward, and it’ll happen. (more)

Reporting from Paris — The French Senate passed a hotly contested pension revision Friday night, providing a victory for President Nicolas Sarkozy and setting the stage for expected final passage by both houses of Parliament next week. (more)

Tom Bosley, who died in Palm Springs on Tuesday at the age of 83, was a character actor, and as with most character actors, his many roles resolve themselves in memory toward a hum, an affect: He was round, we remember, and dark and funny. And as with most actors who have the luck, good or ill, to be cast in a long-running television show, the particulars of a lengthy and varied career tend to be absorbed into a single, blinding overwhelming fact. That Bosley won a 1960 Tony Award for the musical “Fiorello!” will be mentioned in many of his obituaries, but nearly all will lead with “Happy Days,” the candy-colored situation comedy in which he starred from 1974 to 1984 — and likely will star, in reruns, long after the rest of us have followed him into the aether. (more)

Welcome back, Big Ben. (more)

Former Republican presidential contender John McCain reunited with his onetime advisor Carly Fiorina on the campaign trail Saturday in San Diego, offering a blistering indictment of Barbara Boxer’s record on military issues and calling her the “most bitterly partisan, most anti-defense senator in the United States Senate today” — an assessment he said he’d made while having “the unpleasant experience” of serving with her. (more)

Reporting from Pittsburgh — It took only one play for the Pittsburgh Steelers to realize Ben Roethlisberger hadn’t changed a bit. (more)

Reporting from Chicago — NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said Tuesday the league is “aggressively gathering data” on the accusations against Brett Favre but declined to define a time frame for the investigation or say whether suspending the Minnesota Vikings quarterback is an option. (more)

The Kennedy Center Honors have celebrated lifetime achievements in the performing arts for 32 years, and for 32 years there have been popular telecasts, White House receptions for the winners and the occasional critic scanning the list of honorees and saying, “Huh?” (more)

The good news for President Obama is his popular support among blacks is holding steady at 91%. (more)

Positioning itself for a strong box-office run so long as audiences keep on pressing the ‘like’ button, Facebook drama “The Social Network” opened to $23 million at the box office this weekend. (more)

The longest — and most painful — run of the year against the Indianapolis Colts wasn’t reflected in the statistics Sunday and came after the game clock had expired. (more)

Fourteen years after Pete Townshend dismissed the very idea of growing up when he wrote “Hope I die before I get old,” a 40-year-old John Lennon sang a very different tune. (more)

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The couple who tried to restore the Los Angeles Dodgers as a family franchise walked out of a divorce court Wednesday, placing the team’s future in the hands of a judge. (more)

Someone please throw this guy a bone — the hits just kept on coming for singer-songwriter Michael Bolton. After being chopped up like a bowl full of kibble the night before, the guy was unceremoniously booted from “Dancing With the Stars” during its second week of competition. (more)

Much of Hollywood is a sucker for a furry face, so it was only natural that a herd of celebs would turn out for the 30th-anniversary gala of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals at the Hollywood Palladium on Saturday night. (more)