LOS ANGELES - Cartoon fish still have audiences hooked as the undersea adventure "Finding Nemo" regained the top spot at the weekend box office with $29.2 million.

Pixar's "Finding Nemo" is the splashiest, happiest, most positively blissful family movie of the year. Adults will love it. Kids will love it. Ironic Gen Xers will love it because they can take their dates out for sushi afterward. Perfect.

"Finding Nemo," ''The Little Mermaid" and two other animated Walt Disney tales are following "The Lion King" into 3-D mode on the big-screen.

Need something to do this weekend? Try this event in Chandler. The Mesquite Groves Aquatic Center, 5901 S. Hillcrest Drive, will host a dive-in movie and show “Finding Nemo” 8 p.m. Saturday, Sept. Doors open at 7:30 p.m. Everyone is invited to come and enjoy a movie under the stars with your family. Bring your own floatation device and relax in the cool waters, or just sit nearby on the pool deck.

Yes, it's hot. But Saturday, the Arizona Museum for Youth in downtown Mesa is providing families respite from all that.

August 24, 2004

Complete list of the 76th annual Oscar nominations announced Tuesday in Beverly Hills, Calif., by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences:

LOS ANGELES - The street-racing sequel "2 Fast 2 Furious" won the pole position at the box office, taking in an estimated $52.1 million in its opening weekend.

LOS ANGELES - The gang from "The Matrix" got a lesson in virtual reality, Hollywood style, from a cartoon fish and a jaunty pirate in a year that left many sequels to tried-and-true franchises trailing in the wake of original movies.

LOS ANGELES - This year's movie superheroes are getting licked by last year's.

LOS ANGELES - Arnold Schwarzenegger's "Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines" annihilated the competition, grossing $44 million in its first weekend and $72.5 million since opening Wednesday.

LOS ANGELES - Disney was rolling in doubloons as "Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl" plundered the box office for $46.4 million in its first weekend, according to studio estimates Sunday.

September 17, 2004

Sixty-five characters from 18 memorable stories come to life in Disney on Ice’s “100 Years of Magic,” opening Thursday at U.S. Airways Center.

LOS ANGELES - Hollywood's most famous trash compactor continued his journey from the dump to the Oscars.

A Chandler man who gunned down his children and killed himself on Nov. 15 left a suicide note in his car and another in a pair of jeans on the floor near his body, according to a search warrant inventory.

Dr. Brian Dolberg held the instrument, carefully nearing it to his patient, who squirmed with fear. Dolberg tried to steady the patient as he turned on the drill, which whined with a spine-tingling hum.

Pixar Animation Studios got great reviews from movie critics for its newest release, ‘‘The Incredibles.’’ But the company was perhaps even more pleased by the word on Wall Street: Buy.

List of winners at the 76th annual Academy Awards, presented Sunday night at the Kodak Theatre in Los Angeles:

They’re wanding and patting down people going into movie theaters now.