For a young imagination, there is something uniquely captivating about a stowaway story on the high seas. The stakes are great, but the adventure is so far removed from any reality most kids know that it becomes a purely transportive experience. It is a fantasy you can get wrapped up in and put away when it's over.

Disney veteran Chris Williams ("Big Hero 6") said it was the rollicking adventures he grew up watching, "King Kong," "Raiders of the Lost Ark," "Treasure Island" and "Lawrence of Arabia" among them, that made him want to make movies. And with " The Sea Beast," an animated fantasy adventure which debuts on Netflix on Friday, Williams, who directed and co-wrote, has made something quite winning for all ages.

Families went bananas for Minions this weekend at the movie theater. " Minions: The Rise of Gru " brought in an estimated $108.5 million in ticket sales from 4,391 screens in North America, Universal Pictures said Sunday. By the end of the Monday's July Fourth holiday, it will likely have earned over $127.9 million.

The film is on track to become one of the biggest openings ever for a July Fourth holiday weekend, a record previously held by "Transformers: Dark of the Moon" which made $115.9 million in its first four days in 2011. Including international showings, where "Minions: The Rise of Gru" is playing in 61 markets, its worldwide gross is sitting at $202.2 million through Sunday.

An international film festival in the Czech spa town of Karlovy Vary kicked off Friday amid controversy following a protest by Ukraine over the screening of a Russian film alongside Ukrainian-made movies.

Prior to the start of the 56th edition of the festival, several leading Ukrainian filmmakers along with Ukraine's ambassador to Prague protested the scheduled screening of "Captain Volkonogov Escaped."

"Mercury — Act 2," Imagine Dragons (Interscope)

If you were hiding under your bed after listening to the last album by Imagine Dragons, it's time to come out. The second volume of "Mercury" is upbeat, often Caribbean-spiced and throbbing. It's the sound of a band getting its arena groove back.

Young musicians, dancers, actors and comedians from across the Arab world took to the stage in Tunisia to express their visions of freedom, more than a decade after the Arab Spring uprisings.

The show, performed under the stars at a seaside theatre in the resort of Hammamet and broadcast across the region, featured winners of an online video competition to complete the phrase: "I will only be free when..."

For the first major collection of Paris Fashion Week's menswear season, Givenchy's models walked on water.

A giant font filled with milky-white water and frothing mist in the courtyard of the Ecole Militaire served as a fluid runway where models, often bare-chested and in waterproof footwear, stomped and splashed toward a blinding set light.

Colombian actress and judge Sofia Vergara has hit her Golden Buzzer for the Lebanese dance group Mayyas in season 17 of America’s Got Talent.

The golden buzz will send the all-female group straight on to the live show.

Two Florida deputies have each been suspended for about two weeks for leaking news about actor and comedian Bob Saget's death before his family was alerted, officials said.

The Orange County Sheriff's Office confirmed Monday that the two deputies were each suspended for 81 hours without pay.

One, two, three, stop. Five, six, seven, stop: A group of young Syrian men and women step, sway and twirl to the backdrop of salsa music, dancing their worries away.

For an hour a week in a Damascus studio, their instructor Adnan Mohammed, 42, teaches a class the basics of Latin dancing, helping his students forget the troubles of war — if even briefly.

After two days of deliberations in which they reached verdicts on nearly all of the questions put before them, jurors in a civil trial who were deciding on sexual abuse allegations against Bill Cosby will have to start from scratch on Monday.

By the end of the court day Friday, the Los Angeles County jury had come to agreement on whether Cosby had sexually assaulted plaintiff Judy Huth at the Playboy Mansion when she was 16 in 1975, and whether Huth deserved any damages. In all they had answered eight of nine questions on their verdict form, all but one that asked whether Cosby acted in a way that should require punitive damages.