A melodramatic story line is given an admirable but ultimately detrimental low-key treatment in "The Favor".
This tale of a lonely middle-age man becoming a foster father to the son of the woman who broke his heart 25 years ago is told in such a muted fashion that it barely registers.
The Seventh Art Releasing film's central character is Lawrence (Tony-winning stage veteran Frank Wood), who lives a solitary existence in suburban New Jersey. A photographer who divides his time between doing portraits of pets and shooting mug shots at the local police station, his sole company is his dog.
One day he receives a phone call out of the blue from his former high-school girlfriend Caroline (Paige Turco), now a recently divorced single mother to a rebellious teenage son, Johnny Ryan Donowho). They soon go on a promising date, but soon afterward she dies in a freak accident.
Since Johnny's sole living relative is his wheelchair-bound, Alzheimer's suffering grandfather, Lawrence manages to assume guardianship. The two quickly come into conflict, as the decent, long-suffering bachelor struggles to break down Johnny's emotional barriers.
Director-screenwriter Eva Aridjis seems so intent on avoiding histrionics that almost nothing makes an impact. Lawrence's reactions, both to the sudden reappearance of his old flame and then her immediate demise, are barely discernible, and his motivations, other than obvious loneliness, remain unexplored. Although Wood attempts to compensate for the emotional gaps with his soulful facial expressions, he's ultimately unable to compensate for the filmmaker's too laid-back approach.
This tale of a lonely middle-age man becoming a foster father to the son of the woman who broke his heart 25 years ago is told in such a muted fashion that it barely registers.
The Seventh Art Releasing film's central character is Lawrence (Tony-winning stage veteran Frank Wood), who lives a solitary existence in suburban New Jersey. A photographer who divides his time between doing portraits of pets and shooting mug shots at the local police station, his sole company is his dog.
One day he receives a phone call out of the blue from his former high-school girlfriend Caroline (Paige Turco), now a recently divorced single mother to a rebellious teenage son, Johnny Ryan Donowho). They soon go on a promising date, but soon afterward she dies in a freak accident.
Since Johnny's sole living relative is his wheelchair-bound, Alzheimer's suffering grandfather, Lawrence manages to assume guardianship. The two quickly come into conflict, as the decent, long-suffering bachelor struggles to break down Johnny's emotional barriers.
Director-screenwriter Eva Aridjis seems so intent on avoiding histrionics that almost nothing makes an impact. Lawrence's reactions, both to the sudden reappearance of his old flame and then her immediate demise, are barely discernible, and his motivations, other than obvious loneliness, remain unexplored. Although Wood attempts to compensate for the emotional gaps with his soulful facial expressions, he's ultimately unable to compensate for the filmmaker's too laid-back approach.
- 6/17/2008
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
nm0000638 autoWilliam Shatner[/link] was mistaken for the real nm1169080 autoCaptain Kirk[/link] by a young boy who stumbled upon him at his lowest point, living on the road in a truck.
After Star Trek ended in the 1970s, Shatner was broke and divorced and reduced to living in the hard shell of his truck, driving from theatre to theatre.
When a six-year-old fan discovered him and was convinced he was the real captain of the U.S.S. Enterprise - he couldn't resist the temptation to play along.
Shatner says, "I was living in what looked like a lunar module.
"One morning, a six-year-old boy knocks on the door, and says, 'Are you nm1169080 autoCaptain Kirk[/link]?' I said, 'Yes.' He said, 'Can I see your space ship?' I said, 'Sure come in. Here's the shower, this is where I beam up.
"There's some middle age guy, who can remember being in a space ship in Secaucus New Jersey, but can't explain it."...
After Star Trek ended in the 1970s, Shatner was broke and divorced and reduced to living in the hard shell of his truck, driving from theatre to theatre.
When a six-year-old fan discovered him and was convinced he was the real captain of the U.S.S. Enterprise - he couldn't resist the temptation to play along.
Shatner says, "I was living in what looked like a lunar module.
"One morning, a six-year-old boy knocks on the door, and says, 'Are you nm1169080 autoCaptain Kirk[/link]?' I said, 'Yes.' He said, 'Can I see your space ship?' I said, 'Sure come in. Here's the shower, this is where I beam up.
"There's some middle age guy, who can remember being in a space ship in Secaucus New Jersey, but can't explain it."...
- 4/14/2008
- WENN
New Jersey's Motion Picture and Television Commission could shutter as early as June 30 if funding is not restored to the proposed state budget.
Currently, Gov. John Corzine's proposed 2008-09 budget for New Jersey does not include provision for the Motion Picture and Television Commission, though the Garden State's tax credit system remains unaffected.
"There is a serious budget problem in the state, and the governor and legislators are trying to address that situation," associate director Steve Gorelick said. "We can't minimize it, but we think we have a very good story to tell."
Filmmakers spend "upward of $100 million" in the state every year, and "that can only work to solve our budget problems, not create more," he said.
"It always surprises me when commissions are fighting for their budgets," said David Declerque, line producer for NBC's "Law & Order: SVU," which has housed stages in North Bergen, N.J., for nine years. "They attract money into the state and bring in more than (the state) spends on having a commission.
Currently, Gov. John Corzine's proposed 2008-09 budget for New Jersey does not include provision for the Motion Picture and Television Commission, though the Garden State's tax credit system remains unaffected.
"There is a serious budget problem in the state, and the governor and legislators are trying to address that situation," associate director Steve Gorelick said. "We can't minimize it, but we think we have a very good story to tell."
Filmmakers spend "upward of $100 million" in the state every year, and "that can only work to solve our budget problems, not create more," he said.
"It always surprises me when commissions are fighting for their budgets," said David Declerque, line producer for NBC's "Law & Order: SVU," which has housed stages in North Bergen, N.J., for nine years. "They attract money into the state and bring in more than (the state) spends on having a commission.
- 4/10/2008
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Nashville -- North American-based companies will spend an estimated $1.04 billion to sponsor music venues, festivals, tours and concerts this year, a 4% increase over 2007, according to a new study.
"The 4% growth rate is down from the double-digit increases seen in previous years, due in large part to the slowing economy," said William Chipps, senior editor of IEG Sponsorship Report, which tracks sponsorship spending. "But, by and large, corporate spending on live music remains healthy."
Trends include multifaceted "bundled" deals for companies as opposed to sponsorship of one event, tour or venue. An example of this strategy is Live Nation's estimated $100 million deal with Citi Cards, which includes tour sponsorships, ticketing, venues and one-off events like Billy Joel's summer concerts at Shea Stadium in New York.
Also benefiting from sponsor dollars are national, regional and touring festivals, including new additions to the live scene such as Michigan's Rothbury Festival, New Jersey's All Points West Music & Arts Festival and the touring Rockstar Energy Mayhem Festival.
"The 4% growth rate is down from the double-digit increases seen in previous years, due in large part to the slowing economy," said William Chipps, senior editor of IEG Sponsorship Report, which tracks sponsorship spending. "But, by and large, corporate spending on live music remains healthy."
Trends include multifaceted "bundled" deals for companies as opposed to sponsorship of one event, tour or venue. An example of this strategy is Live Nation's estimated $100 million deal with Citi Cards, which includes tour sponsorships, ticketing, venues and one-off events like Billy Joel's summer concerts at Shea Stadium in New York.
Also benefiting from sponsor dollars are national, regional and touring festivals, including new additions to the live scene such as Michigan's Rothbury Festival, New Jersey's All Points West Music & Arts Festival and the touring Rockstar Energy Mayhem Festival.
Rapper/actor Mos Def will play legendary rock n' roller Chuck Berry in Sony BMG's Cadillac Records, currently filming in New Jersey.
Also joining the cast of is Gabrielle Union, who plays Geneva Wade, a girlfriend of Muddy Waters.
Written and directed by Darnell Martin (Their Eyes Were Watching God), the film is set in 1950s Chicago and follows the turbulent but exciting lives of Leonard Chess, who founded Chess Records, and the label's artists, including Waters, Little Walter and Howlin' Wolf.
Chess started the label with his younger brother, Phil, started the record company by traveling the south selling records out of the trunk of their Cadillac.
The two join a cast that includes Adrien Brody (Chess), Jeffrey Wright (Waters), and Beyonce Knowles (Etta James).
Sony BMG's Andrew Lack and Sofia Sondervan are producing. Knowles is an executive producer.
Def's film credits include the comedy Be Kind Rewind and the crime thriller 16 Blocks. He was nominated for an Emmy and Golden Globe for his role in the HBO film, Something the Lord Made. His upcoming projects include Keep Coming Back, helmed by William H.
Also joining the cast of is Gabrielle Union, who plays Geneva Wade, a girlfriend of Muddy Waters.
Written and directed by Darnell Martin (Their Eyes Were Watching God), the film is set in 1950s Chicago and follows the turbulent but exciting lives of Leonard Chess, who founded Chess Records, and the label's artists, including Waters, Little Walter and Howlin' Wolf.
Chess started the label with his younger brother, Phil, started the record company by traveling the south selling records out of the trunk of their Cadillac.
The two join a cast that includes Adrien Brody (Chess), Jeffrey Wright (Waters), and Beyonce Knowles (Etta James).
Sony BMG's Andrew Lack and Sofia Sondervan are producing. Knowles is an executive producer.
Def's film credits include the comedy Be Kind Rewind and the crime thriller 16 Blocks. He was nominated for an Emmy and Golden Globe for his role in the HBO film, Something the Lord Made. His upcoming projects include Keep Coming Back, helmed by William H.
- 3/28/2008
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
NEW YORK -- Warner Independent Pictures is set to bring Tom Perrotta's offbeat romantic comedy novel "The Wishbones" to the screen with "Little Miss Sunshine" producers Albert Berger and Ron Yerxa.
WIP optioned the rights to Perrotta's script, which follows a 30-year-old failed musician living with his parents in New Jersey. On the eve of marrying a longtime girlfriend, he begins an affair with a bohemian poet from Manhattan who makes him question his life and future.
ChickFlicks' Sara Risher will executive produce, and WIP vp production Lauren Craniotes will oversee for the studio.
Berger and Yerxa heard Perrotta do a reading of his 1997 debut novel "Wishbones" more than a decade ago, but when he wasn't ready to pass along the work-in-progress, he handed them what would become Alexander Payne's "Election". The pair later hired Perrotta to adapt his novel "Little Children" with Todd Field, which landed them an Oscar nom.
"Wishbones" initially was sold to Fox, then brought to New Line in 2000, where Perrotta adapted it before it was put into turnaround.
WIP optioned the rights to Perrotta's script, which follows a 30-year-old failed musician living with his parents in New Jersey. On the eve of marrying a longtime girlfriend, he begins an affair with a bohemian poet from Manhattan who makes him question his life and future.
ChickFlicks' Sara Risher will executive produce, and WIP vp production Lauren Craniotes will oversee for the studio.
Berger and Yerxa heard Perrotta do a reading of his 1997 debut novel "Wishbones" more than a decade ago, but when he wasn't ready to pass along the work-in-progress, he handed them what would become Alexander Payne's "Election". The pair later hired Perrotta to adapt his novel "Little Children" with Todd Field, which landed them an Oscar nom.
"Wishbones" initially was sold to Fox, then brought to New Line in 2000, where Perrotta adapted it before it was put into turnaround.
- 3/13/2008
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
This review was written for the festival screening of "Harold & Kumar: Escape From Guantanamo Bay."South by Southwest
AUSTIN -- Innumerable sharks lurk in the ocean between New Jersey and Cuba, and Harold and Kumar just jumped every one of them.
The stoner duo's second film, "Harold & Kumar: Escape From Guantanamo Bay," lacks the fresh charm that made their first such an unexpected (if guilty) pleasure. Word-of-mouth likely will be bad, so producers should pray that their bong-hitting target audience is alert enough to get out on opening weekend. "Escape" bows April 25. It screened over the weekend at the South by Southwest film festival.
The odd-couple protagonists are drawn more broadly here than in their debut, an approach that Harold (John Cho) survives better than his co-star, Kumar (Kal Penn).
After the funny plot-starting sequence, in which Kumar brings a high-tech bong on an international flight and gets them both mistaken for would-be bombers, the character's string of stupid moves plays out less like endearing haplessness than like willful, inexplicable attempts to wreck his buddy's life.
The boys get sent to Gitmo, depicted not with any political edge but as a generic house of squalor and sodomy. They quickly escape on a raft -- going on the lam in the direction of Texas via Miami. There, a well-connected acquaintance (who's about to marry Kumar's ex-girlfriend) might help get the Feds off their backs. Those G-men are led by Rob Corddry, a gifted comedian who, even after years of studied cluelessness on "The Daily Show", can't make the script's one-note Patriot Act-enabled incompetence entertaining for more than a few minutes.
The ensuing road trip has a bright spot or two (a fantasy menage a trois with a bag of pot and an earnest love poem built around a nerdy math conceit) but seems intentionally dumbed-down.
By the time a George Bush look-alike arrives to offer unlikely assistance, the audience will rightly expect the script to fumble that comic opportunity as well.
HAROLD & KUMAR ESCAPE FROM GUANTANAMO BAY
New Line
New Line, Kingsgate Films, Mandate Pictures
Credits:
Directors: Jon Hurwitz, Hayden Schlossberg
Screenwriters: Jon Hurwitz, Hayden Schlossberg
Producers: Nathan Kahane, Greg Shapiro
Executive producers: Joseph Drake, Carsten H.W. Lorenz
Director of photography: Daryn Okada
Production designer: Tony Fanning
Music: George S. Clinton
Co-producers: Nicole Brown, Jon Hurwitz, Kelli Konop, Hayden Schlossberg
Costume designer: Shawn Holly Cookson
Editor: Jeff Freeman
Cast:
Harold Lee: John Cho
Kumar Patel: Kal Penn
Himself: Neil Patrick Harris
Maria: Paula Garces
Ron Fox: Rob Corddry
Dr. Beecher: Roger Bart
Running time -- 100 minutes
MPAA rating: R...
AUSTIN -- Innumerable sharks lurk in the ocean between New Jersey and Cuba, and Harold and Kumar just jumped every one of them.
The stoner duo's second film, "Harold & Kumar: Escape From Guantanamo Bay," lacks the fresh charm that made their first such an unexpected (if guilty) pleasure. Word-of-mouth likely will be bad, so producers should pray that their bong-hitting target audience is alert enough to get out on opening weekend. "Escape" bows April 25. It screened over the weekend at the South by Southwest film festival.
The odd-couple protagonists are drawn more broadly here than in their debut, an approach that Harold (John Cho) survives better than his co-star, Kumar (Kal Penn).
After the funny plot-starting sequence, in which Kumar brings a high-tech bong on an international flight and gets them both mistaken for would-be bombers, the character's string of stupid moves plays out less like endearing haplessness than like willful, inexplicable attempts to wreck his buddy's life.
The boys get sent to Gitmo, depicted not with any political edge but as a generic house of squalor and sodomy. They quickly escape on a raft -- going on the lam in the direction of Texas via Miami. There, a well-connected acquaintance (who's about to marry Kumar's ex-girlfriend) might help get the Feds off their backs. Those G-men are led by Rob Corddry, a gifted comedian who, even after years of studied cluelessness on "The Daily Show", can't make the script's one-note Patriot Act-enabled incompetence entertaining for more than a few minutes.
The ensuing road trip has a bright spot or two (a fantasy menage a trois with a bag of pot and an earnest love poem built around a nerdy math conceit) but seems intentionally dumbed-down.
By the time a George Bush look-alike arrives to offer unlikely assistance, the audience will rightly expect the script to fumble that comic opportunity as well.
HAROLD & KUMAR ESCAPE FROM GUANTANAMO BAY
New Line
New Line, Kingsgate Films, Mandate Pictures
Credits:
Directors: Jon Hurwitz, Hayden Schlossberg
Screenwriters: Jon Hurwitz, Hayden Schlossberg
Producers: Nathan Kahane, Greg Shapiro
Executive producers: Joseph Drake, Carsten H.W. Lorenz
Director of photography: Daryn Okada
Production designer: Tony Fanning
Music: George S. Clinton
Co-producers: Nicole Brown, Jon Hurwitz, Kelli Konop, Hayden Schlossberg
Costume designer: Shawn Holly Cookson
Editor: Jeff Freeman
Cast:
Harold Lee: John Cho
Kumar Patel: Kal Penn
Himself: Neil Patrick Harris
Maria: Paula Garces
Ron Fox: Rob Corddry
Dr. Beecher: Roger Bart
Running time -- 100 minutes
MPAA rating: R...
- 3/10/2008
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
South by Southwest
AUSTIN -- Innumerable sharks lurk in the ocean between New Jersey and Cuba, and Harold and Kumar just jumped every one of them.
The stoner duo's second film, Harold & Kumar: Escape From Guantanamo Bay, lacks the fresh charm that made their first such an unexpected (if guilty) pleasure. Word-of-mouth likely will be bad, so producers should pray that their bong-hitting target audience is alert enough to get out on opening weekend. Escape bows April 25. It screened over the weekend at the South by Southwest film festival.
The odd-couple protagonists are drawn more broadly here than in their debut, an approach that Harold (John Cho) survives better than his co-star, Kumar (Kal Penn).
After the funny plot-starting sequence, in which Kumar brings a high-tech bong on an international flight and gets them both mistaken for would-be bombers, the character's string of stupid moves plays out less like endearing haplessness than like willful, inexplicable attempts to wreck his buddy's life.
The boys get sent to Gitmo, depicted not with any political edge but as a generic house of squalor and sodomy. They quickly escape on a raft -- going on the lam in the direction of Texas via Miami. There, a well-connected acquaintance (who's about to marry Kumar's ex-girlfriend) might help get the Feds off their backs. Those G-men are led by Rob Corddry, a gifted comedian who, even after years of studied cluelessness on The Daily Show, can't make the script's one-note Patriot Act-enabled incompetence entertaining for more than a few minutes.
The ensuing road trip has a bright spot or two (a fantasy menage a trois with a bag of pot and an earnest love poem built around a nerdy math conceit) but seems intentionally dumbed-down.
By the time a George Bush look-alike arrives to offer unlikely assistance, the audience will rightly expect the script to fumble that comic opportunity as well.
HAROLD & KUMAR ESCAPE FROM GUANTANAMO BAY
New Line
New Line, Kingsgate Films, Mandate Pictures
Credits:
Directors: Jon Hurwitz, Hayden Schlossberg
Screenwriters: Jon Hurwitz, Hayden Schlossberg
Producers: Nathan Kahane, Greg Shapiro
Executive producers: Joseph Drake, Carsten H.W. Lorenz
Director of photography: Daryn Okada
Production designer: Tony Fanning
Music: George S. Clinton
Co-producers: Nicole Brown, Jon Hurwitz, Kelli Konop, Hayden Schlossberg
Costume designer: Shawn Holly Cookson
Editor: Jeff Freeman
Cast:
Harold Lee: John Cho
Kumar Patel: Kal Penn
Himself: Neil Patrick Harris
Maria: Paula Garces
Ron Fox: Rob Corddry
Dr. Beecher: Roger Bart
Running time -- 100 minutes
No MPAA rating...
AUSTIN -- Innumerable sharks lurk in the ocean between New Jersey and Cuba, and Harold and Kumar just jumped every one of them.
The stoner duo's second film, Harold & Kumar: Escape From Guantanamo Bay, lacks the fresh charm that made their first such an unexpected (if guilty) pleasure. Word-of-mouth likely will be bad, so producers should pray that their bong-hitting target audience is alert enough to get out on opening weekend. Escape bows April 25. It screened over the weekend at the South by Southwest film festival.
The odd-couple protagonists are drawn more broadly here than in their debut, an approach that Harold (John Cho) survives better than his co-star, Kumar (Kal Penn).
After the funny plot-starting sequence, in which Kumar brings a high-tech bong on an international flight and gets them both mistaken for would-be bombers, the character's string of stupid moves plays out less like endearing haplessness than like willful, inexplicable attempts to wreck his buddy's life.
The boys get sent to Gitmo, depicted not with any political edge but as a generic house of squalor and sodomy. They quickly escape on a raft -- going on the lam in the direction of Texas via Miami. There, a well-connected acquaintance (who's about to marry Kumar's ex-girlfriend) might help get the Feds off their backs. Those G-men are led by Rob Corddry, a gifted comedian who, even after years of studied cluelessness on The Daily Show, can't make the script's one-note Patriot Act-enabled incompetence entertaining for more than a few minutes.
The ensuing road trip has a bright spot or two (a fantasy menage a trois with a bag of pot and an earnest love poem built around a nerdy math conceit) but seems intentionally dumbed-down.
By the time a George Bush look-alike arrives to offer unlikely assistance, the audience will rightly expect the script to fumble that comic opportunity as well.
HAROLD & KUMAR ESCAPE FROM GUANTANAMO BAY
New Line
New Line, Kingsgate Films, Mandate Pictures
Credits:
Directors: Jon Hurwitz, Hayden Schlossberg
Screenwriters: Jon Hurwitz, Hayden Schlossberg
Producers: Nathan Kahane, Greg Shapiro
Executive producers: Joseph Drake, Carsten H.W. Lorenz
Director of photography: Daryn Okada
Production designer: Tony Fanning
Music: George S. Clinton
Co-producers: Nicole Brown, Jon Hurwitz, Kelli Konop, Hayden Schlossberg
Costume designer: Shawn Holly Cookson
Editor: Jeff Freeman
Cast:
Harold Lee: John Cho
Kumar Patel: Kal Penn
Himself: Neil Patrick Harris
Maria: Paula Garces
Ron Fox: Rob Corddry
Dr. Beecher: Roger Bart
Running time -- 100 minutes
No MPAA rating...
- 3/10/2008
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
NEW YORK -- MSG Network leads the way with 50 nominations for the 51st annual New York Emmy Awards, announced Thursday.
NYC TV is close behind with 48 noms, while Tribune-owned station WPIX leads broadcasters with 30.
Also receiving double-digit nominations were News 12 Long Island (29), WNBC (27), News 12 Connecticut (25), YES Network (25, including seven shared with MLB Prods.), WNYW Fox 5 (24), WCBS (22), Thirteen/WNET (19), WNJU Telemundo 47 (18), SportsNet New York (16), WABC (16), WXTV/Univision 41 (14), My 9 News WWOR (12) and News 12 New Jersey (12).
WNBC, the Peacock's owned-and-operated station in the city, dominated the morning newscast category with three entries, while WNYW and WXTV each received one. WNJU received four nominations in the evening newscast under-35 minutes category, with WCBS receiving one nom in that field. The longer newscast category was more evenly distributed with nominations for WCBS, WPIX, WABC, WNYW and WWOR.
Two of the city's biggest stories in the past year and a half were the subject of several entries.
NYC TV is close behind with 48 noms, while Tribune-owned station WPIX leads broadcasters with 30.
Also receiving double-digit nominations were News 12 Long Island (29), WNBC (27), News 12 Connecticut (25), YES Network (25, including seven shared with MLB Prods.), WNYW Fox 5 (24), WCBS (22), Thirteen/WNET (19), WNJU Telemundo 47 (18), SportsNet New York (16), WABC (16), WXTV/Univision 41 (14), My 9 News WWOR (12) and News 12 New Jersey (12).
WNBC, the Peacock's owned-and-operated station in the city, dominated the morning newscast category with three entries, while WNYW and WXTV each received one. WNJU received four nominations in the evening newscast under-35 minutes category, with WCBS receiving one nom in that field. The longer newscast category was more evenly distributed with nominations for WCBS, WPIX, WABC, WNYW and WWOR.
Two of the city's biggest stories in the past year and a half were the subject of several entries.
NEW YORK -- Beyond perhaps adding a greater clarity to the presidential campaign and being the first essentially national primary in U.S. history, Super Tuesday did one more thing: It gave the networks a dry run for the November election.
That was in evidence the whole night at CNN election headquarters at Time Warner Center in Manhattan. Many of the elements were in full force Tuesday: The cable newsers had wall-to-wall coverage, while the Big Three devoted a significant amount of airtime to the results. The men and women who will report and analyze the results Nov. 4 all were on the job, and in several cases, the processes and technologies that the networks will use to deliver the news played a prominent role.
At CNN election headquarters, that technology was everywhere -- from the 34-foot-long video stream (bigger than in 2006) that showed the results and projections at a glance to the smaller screen that correspondent John King used to break down state-by-state balloting. With so many races in so many places, it's all about the data and how to bring the sometimes overwhelming raft of information to the TV audience.
"This is the most important thing we can do for our viewers," CNN political director Sam Feist said in the control room, while upstairs King took viewers through the results county by county in New Jersey.
That was in evidence the whole night at CNN election headquarters at Time Warner Center in Manhattan. Many of the elements were in full force Tuesday: The cable newsers had wall-to-wall coverage, while the Big Three devoted a significant amount of airtime to the results. The men and women who will report and analyze the results Nov. 4 all were on the job, and in several cases, the processes and technologies that the networks will use to deliver the news played a prominent role.
At CNN election headquarters, that technology was everywhere -- from the 34-foot-long video stream (bigger than in 2006) that showed the results and projections at a glance to the smaller screen that correspondent John King used to break down state-by-state balloting. With so many races in so many places, it's all about the data and how to bring the sometimes overwhelming raft of information to the TV audience.
"This is the most important thing we can do for our viewers," CNN political director Sam Feist said in the control room, while upstairs King took viewers through the results county by county in New Jersey.
If New York ever needed to make its case for being the center of the media universe, Tuesday is one of those days.
For the first time in recent history, each state in the tristate area -- Connecticut, New York and New Jersey -- is holding a primary that will matter, thanks to the wide-open nature of both parties' races and an expanded Super Tuesday. The media industry is gearing up to cover the races from the New York-based news divisions.
If that wasn't enough, Sunday night's heroes the New York Giants will be feted with a ticker-tape parade in downtown Manhattan and a giant celebration across the Hudson River at their Meadowlands home. Add in Fashion Week and a big convention at the Javits Center, and it's all shaping up to be a huge news day.
"It's one of our busiest days since Sept. 11," said Dan Forman, senior vp and news manager at WNBC-TV, NBC's O&O in New York. "It's a big undertaking".
The local stations are spreading out to cover New Jersey and tony southwest Connecticut for Super Tuesday, which also will be heavily covered by the broadcast network news divisions and the cable news stations. ABC, for instance, is devoting its entire primetime to Super Tuesday coverage.
While voting will go on all day and into the early evening, all eyes will be on Lower Manhattan for the Giants' ticker-tape parade in the so-called Canyon of Heroes.
For the first time in recent history, each state in the tristate area -- Connecticut, New York and New Jersey -- is holding a primary that will matter, thanks to the wide-open nature of both parties' races and an expanded Super Tuesday. The media industry is gearing up to cover the races from the New York-based news divisions.
If that wasn't enough, Sunday night's heroes the New York Giants will be feted with a ticker-tape parade in downtown Manhattan and a giant celebration across the Hudson River at their Meadowlands home. Add in Fashion Week and a big convention at the Javits Center, and it's all shaping up to be a huge news day.
"It's one of our busiest days since Sept. 11," said Dan Forman, senior vp and news manager at WNBC-TV, NBC's O&O in New York. "It's a big undertaking".
The local stations are spreading out to cover New Jersey and tony southwest Connecticut for Super Tuesday, which also will be heavily covered by the broadcast network news divisions and the cable news stations. ABC, for instance, is devoting its entire primetime to Super Tuesday coverage.
While voting will go on all day and into the early evening, all eyes will be on Lower Manhattan for the Giants' ticker-tape parade in the so-called Canyon of Heroes.
Sundance Film Festival
PARK CITY -- Is there anything new to say about high school torments? Probably there is, but Assassination of a High School President doesn't find enough novel insights to make for essential viewing. It has echoes of a lot of other movies about adolescent angst and cruelty, from Election to Thumbsucker, Rocket Science and Charlie Bartlett, but it doesn't live up to the best of those.
Alexander Payne's Election might still be the definitive word on the cutthroat atmosphere of high school. Assassination, which had its premiere here, won't achieve the same classic stature.
It will, however, be remembered for confirming the talent of the leading man, Reece Daniel Thompson, who starred as the stuttering teen hero of last year's Sundance prize-winner, Rocket Science and here demonstrates the same ease and charm, minus the stuttering. Not many young actors convey intelligence, but Thompson is completely convincing and immensely likable as an aspiring journalist who wants to expose the truth about the school's top jock.
As the prom queen who takes him under her wing, Mischa Barton also gives a captivating performance. These two actors make the movie worth seeing, even though the script by Tim Caplan and Kevin Jakubowski veers from genuine wit to more routine high jinks.
At his Catholic school in New Jersey, Bobby Funke (Thompson) is beset by a lot of the typical teen perils -- school bullies, an overbearing Spanish teacher (amusingly played by Josh Pais), a tyrannical principal (Bruce Willis) and, of course, the first stirrings of love and lust. The opening scenes have a lot of raunchy interchanges that make us feel we might be in a Judd Apatow high school movie. But Assassination turns out to be more of a high school detective story. When a bunch of SAT exams are stolen from the principal's office, Bobby determines that the school president, Paul Moore (Patrick James Taylor), must be the thief and exposes him in the school paper. He ruins Moore's life, but as he gets to know Moore's girlfriend, Francesca (Barton), he begins to have second thoughts and sets out to rectify matters and find the true culprit.
A high school mystery with a teenage sleuth is an appealing concept, but even this isn't a new notion. A couple of years ago, another Sundance entry, Brick, mined the same territory with a tad more style and originality. The mystery story in Assassination is fun and would be even more fun if the denouement weren't so transparent. Anyone who has a passing familiarity with Hollywood murder mysteries will be able to guess the ending long before Bobby nails the villain. At least the film doesn't take itself too seriously. The last line is a tongue-in-cheek homage to the ending of Chinatown.
Director Brett Simon must be credited with an energetic spin on a lot of tired tropes, but he also misses certain opportunities. In a delightful scene where Bobby cuts loose and dances at a party, the director keeps cutting away from his star and so minimizes the impact of Thompson's performance.
In addition to Thompson and Barton, the other young actors also are very skillful. Willis seems to be having fun with his role, and Kathryn Morris is entertaining as the addled school nurse. On the other hand, Michael Rapaport has little to do as the basketball coach; his part might have been left on the cutting-room floor.
The film runs a tight 90 minutes, so at least it doesn't wear out its welcome. The song selections are smart. All in all, the film is a likable goof that evaporates as soon as the lights come on.
ASSASSINATION OF A HIGH SCHOOL PRESIDENT
Yari Film Group
Credits:
Director: Brett Simon
Screenwriters: Tim Caplan, Kevin Jakubowski
Producers: Bob Yari, Roy Lee, Doug Davison
Director of photography: M. David Mullen
Production designer: Sharon Lomofsky
Co-producers: Elsie Choi, Suzanne Smith
Costume designer: Amy Westcott
Editors: William Anderson, Thomas J. Nordberg
Cast:
Bobby Funke: Reece Daniel Thompson
Francesca Fachini: Mischa Barton
Principal Kirkpatrick: Bruce Willis
Clara Diaz: Melonie Diaz
Paul Moore: Patrick James Taylor
Marlon Piazza: Luke Grimes
Coach Z: Michael Rapaport
Padre Newell: Josh Pais
Nurse Platt: Kathryn Morris
Running time -- 90 minutes
No MPAA rating...
PARK CITY -- Is there anything new to say about high school torments? Probably there is, but Assassination of a High School President doesn't find enough novel insights to make for essential viewing. It has echoes of a lot of other movies about adolescent angst and cruelty, from Election to Thumbsucker, Rocket Science and Charlie Bartlett, but it doesn't live up to the best of those.
Alexander Payne's Election might still be the definitive word on the cutthroat atmosphere of high school. Assassination, which had its premiere here, won't achieve the same classic stature.
It will, however, be remembered for confirming the talent of the leading man, Reece Daniel Thompson, who starred as the stuttering teen hero of last year's Sundance prize-winner, Rocket Science and here demonstrates the same ease and charm, minus the stuttering. Not many young actors convey intelligence, but Thompson is completely convincing and immensely likable as an aspiring journalist who wants to expose the truth about the school's top jock.
As the prom queen who takes him under her wing, Mischa Barton also gives a captivating performance. These two actors make the movie worth seeing, even though the script by Tim Caplan and Kevin Jakubowski veers from genuine wit to more routine high jinks.
At his Catholic school in New Jersey, Bobby Funke (Thompson) is beset by a lot of the typical teen perils -- school bullies, an overbearing Spanish teacher (amusingly played by Josh Pais), a tyrannical principal (Bruce Willis) and, of course, the first stirrings of love and lust. The opening scenes have a lot of raunchy interchanges that make us feel we might be in a Judd Apatow high school movie. But Assassination turns out to be more of a high school detective story. When a bunch of SAT exams are stolen from the principal's office, Bobby determines that the school president, Paul Moore (Patrick James Taylor), must be the thief and exposes him in the school paper. He ruins Moore's life, but as he gets to know Moore's girlfriend, Francesca (Barton), he begins to have second thoughts and sets out to rectify matters and find the true culprit.
A high school mystery with a teenage sleuth is an appealing concept, but even this isn't a new notion. A couple of years ago, another Sundance entry, Brick, mined the same territory with a tad more style and originality. The mystery story in Assassination is fun and would be even more fun if the denouement weren't so transparent. Anyone who has a passing familiarity with Hollywood murder mysteries will be able to guess the ending long before Bobby nails the villain. At least the film doesn't take itself too seriously. The last line is a tongue-in-cheek homage to the ending of Chinatown.
Director Brett Simon must be credited with an energetic spin on a lot of tired tropes, but he also misses certain opportunities. In a delightful scene where Bobby cuts loose and dances at a party, the director keeps cutting away from his star and so minimizes the impact of Thompson's performance.
In addition to Thompson and Barton, the other young actors also are very skillful. Willis seems to be having fun with his role, and Kathryn Morris is entertaining as the addled school nurse. On the other hand, Michael Rapaport has little to do as the basketball coach; his part might have been left on the cutting-room floor.
The film runs a tight 90 minutes, so at least it doesn't wear out its welcome. The song selections are smart. All in all, the film is a likable goof that evaporates as soon as the lights come on.
ASSASSINATION OF A HIGH SCHOOL PRESIDENT
Yari Film Group
Credits:
Director: Brett Simon
Screenwriters: Tim Caplan, Kevin Jakubowski
Producers: Bob Yari, Roy Lee, Doug Davison
Director of photography: M. David Mullen
Production designer: Sharon Lomofsky
Co-producers: Elsie Choi, Suzanne Smith
Costume designer: Amy Westcott
Editors: William Anderson, Thomas J. Nordberg
Cast:
Bobby Funke: Reece Daniel Thompson
Francesca Fachini: Mischa Barton
Principal Kirkpatrick: Bruce Willis
Clara Diaz: Melonie Diaz
Paul Moore: Patrick James Taylor
Marlon Piazza: Luke Grimes
Coach Z: Michael Rapaport
Padre Newell: Josh Pais
Nurse Platt: Kathryn Morris
Running time -- 90 minutes
No MPAA rating...
- 1/25/2008
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Sundance Film Festival
PARK CITY -- Twelve years in the making, Patti Smith: Dream of Life is a unique record of an artist's journey.
The first film by fashion photographer Steven Sebring, it stitches together layer upon layer of human experience to paint a portrait of the artist as a tireless and dynamic worker for music, poetry, peace, family and friends.
A knowledge of Smith's landmark contribution as a rock 'n' roll pioneer is not essential, and the film should be a joy for anyone interested in pop culture of the past 40 years.
Sebring does not take a conventional route here, which is fitting for his subject. The long gestation period for the film has afforded an intimacy and ease that allows him to penetrate Smith's inner and outer worlds, weaving back and forth in time from her arrival in New York in the late 1960s to raising her two children in Detroit with husband Fred Sonic Smith to her triumphant return to performing in the mid-'90s. Structure is anchored in the bedroom of Smith's cluttered New York apartment and jumps around from there as she reflects on her life and art.
First stop is a poignant visit to the lived-in house she shared with her husband and kids in Detroit until his death in 1994. In fact, much of the film deals with friends who are no longer alive, but the tone is elegiac, not morbid. So when she pulls out a vial of Robert Mapplethorpe's ashes or talks about William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, she is just honoring their influence. When she visits the graves of her mentors, William Blake and Arthur Rimbaud, she sees herself as part of a living tradition of poetry.
"We all have a voice", she says, "and the responsibility to use it."
New York is central to her life and the film, and there is some wonderful archival footage from the early '70s, where she talks about how she had to leave her childhood home, across from a square dance hall in South Jersey, and venture to the big city to discover her voice. Later she reads her poem, Prayer for New York.
Although there are some classic scenes of her onstage in the heyday of the Manhattan punk club CBGB, this is not a performance film; it's more meditative and musing than about her music. There are no big, show-stopping moments, but there are some lovely, smaller ones.
In one scene, she and her old friend and lover Sam Shepard sit in the corner of her apartment playing vintage guitars, singing the blues tune Sitting on Top of the World as Sebring focuses on their feet tapping time in unison. Later, when Smith visits her elderly and entertaining parents in New Jersey, there is a shot held for several seconds of the couple holding hands, and in the background we hear the sound of a ticking clock as if it's counting off their time together.
Sebring follows Smith around the world as she visits the Middle East and listens to the music of Muslims and Jews praying, Buddhist monks chanting in Japan and speeches at a peace rally in Washington. He shot most of the footage himself in 16 millimeter, some in color, some in black and white, and the varied looks and textures help give the film character. Skillful editing by Angelo Corrao and Lin Polito pull the divergent threads together from what was obviously a massive amount of material.
Throughout, Smith's approachability keeps it real. When a fan steps onto an elevator with her, she laughs when she's called a rock icon. That's for Mount Rushmore. She's a working artist, and like another one of her heroes, Walt Whitman, she's writing for young poets who years from now may be inspired by this beautiful record of her life's work.
PATTI SMITH: DREAM OF LIFE
Clean Socks and Thirteen/WNET New York
Credits:
Director: Steven Sebring
Producers: Steven Sebring, Martha Smilow, Scott Vogel
Director of cinematography: Phillip Hunt, Steven Sebring
Editor: Angelo Corrao, Lin Polito
Running time -- 109 minutes
No MPAA rating...
PARK CITY -- Twelve years in the making, Patti Smith: Dream of Life is a unique record of an artist's journey.
The first film by fashion photographer Steven Sebring, it stitches together layer upon layer of human experience to paint a portrait of the artist as a tireless and dynamic worker for music, poetry, peace, family and friends.
A knowledge of Smith's landmark contribution as a rock 'n' roll pioneer is not essential, and the film should be a joy for anyone interested in pop culture of the past 40 years.
Sebring does not take a conventional route here, which is fitting for his subject. The long gestation period for the film has afforded an intimacy and ease that allows him to penetrate Smith's inner and outer worlds, weaving back and forth in time from her arrival in New York in the late 1960s to raising her two children in Detroit with husband Fred Sonic Smith to her triumphant return to performing in the mid-'90s. Structure is anchored in the bedroom of Smith's cluttered New York apartment and jumps around from there as she reflects on her life and art.
First stop is a poignant visit to the lived-in house she shared with her husband and kids in Detroit until his death in 1994. In fact, much of the film deals with friends who are no longer alive, but the tone is elegiac, not morbid. So when she pulls out a vial of Robert Mapplethorpe's ashes or talks about William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, she is just honoring their influence. When she visits the graves of her mentors, William Blake and Arthur Rimbaud, she sees herself as part of a living tradition of poetry.
"We all have a voice", she says, "and the responsibility to use it."
New York is central to her life and the film, and there is some wonderful archival footage from the early '70s, where she talks about how she had to leave her childhood home, across from a square dance hall in South Jersey, and venture to the big city to discover her voice. Later she reads her poem, Prayer for New York.
Although there are some classic scenes of her onstage in the heyday of the Manhattan punk club CBGB, this is not a performance film; it's more meditative and musing than about her music. There are no big, show-stopping moments, but there are some lovely, smaller ones.
In one scene, she and her old friend and lover Sam Shepard sit in the corner of her apartment playing vintage guitars, singing the blues tune Sitting on Top of the World as Sebring focuses on their feet tapping time in unison. Later, when Smith visits her elderly and entertaining parents in New Jersey, there is a shot held for several seconds of the couple holding hands, and in the background we hear the sound of a ticking clock as if it's counting off their time together.
Sebring follows Smith around the world as she visits the Middle East and listens to the music of Muslims and Jews praying, Buddhist monks chanting in Japan and speeches at a peace rally in Washington. He shot most of the footage himself in 16 millimeter, some in color, some in black and white, and the varied looks and textures help give the film character. Skillful editing by Angelo Corrao and Lin Polito pull the divergent threads together from what was obviously a massive amount of material.
Throughout, Smith's approachability keeps it real. When a fan steps onto an elevator with her, she laughs when she's called a rock icon. That's for Mount Rushmore. She's a working artist, and like another one of her heroes, Walt Whitman, she's writing for young poets who years from now may be inspired by this beautiful record of her life's work.
PATTI SMITH: DREAM OF LIFE
Clean Socks and Thirteen/WNET New York
Credits:
Director: Steven Sebring
Producers: Steven Sebring, Martha Smilow, Scott Vogel
Director of cinematography: Phillip Hunt, Steven Sebring
Editor: Angelo Corrao, Lin Polito
Running time -- 109 minutes
No MPAA rating...
- 1/23/2008
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Sundance Film Festival
PARK CITY -- After highly imaginative explorations of man's natural instincts (Human Nature) and the interplay of memory, dreams and personal relationships ("Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" and The Science of Sleep), Michel Gondry has turned his playful gaze to film itself.
Be Kind Rewind wants to probe the interplay among films, their audience and the people who make them. It's an exuberant, fanciful fable set amid the scruffy outskirts of American society, where people's need for escapism coincides with their desire to participate in its creation.
For all of Gondry's undeniable talent, it would be hard to imagine him pulling off this delicate and even cornball conceit without his star, Jack Black. With irrepressible exuberance and going-in-five-directions energy, Black is the embodiment of Gondry's whimsical notion that a small-town Ed Wood could infect an entire downtrodden neighborhood with the filmmaking fever.
As with most Gondry films, Rewind is not for all tastes. Its good-natured sweetness will appeal to many; others may shun the fractured fairy tale altogether. Yet this French filmmaker has developed enough of an international fan base for his fanciful films to fully support this modestly budgeted effort. New Line releases the film Feb. 22.
Certain that microwaves from the power plant he lives near are killing him, Jerry (Black), a mechanic in the struggling New Jersey town of Passaic, tries to sabotage the plant. Only he gets caught in an electromagnetic field that leaves him dazed, confused and magnetized. He thus inadvertently erases every videotape in a rental store run by his childhood pal Mike (Mos Def) while its owner, Mr. Fletcher (Danny Glover), is away.
When customer Miss Falewicz (Mia Farrow) wants to check out Ghostbusters, Jerry and Mike stall her until the end of the day. They spend that time making their own version of that film using a video camera, homemade props and playing all the roles themselves. Miss Falewicz, who has never seen the film, actually likes their version. So the two continue the ruse by making crude versions of Rush Hour, Robocop, Boyz N the Hood and The Lion King for loyal customers. Jerry calls the process of re-enacting these popular movies "sweding," though the reason for that term is a bit hazy.
Soon the customers themselves are participating in these "swedes." Productions get a bit more lavish for King Kong, 2001: A Space Odyssey and Carrie through the use of "special effects" and camera tricks. Then a Hollywood lawyer (a nicely imperious Sigourney Weaver) shows up with charges of intellectual property theft. She demands the tapes' destruction.
Gondry, who also wrote the script, keeps the focus on pop cinema. No one swedes a Bergman movie or Citizen Kane. (Which might have taken the humor in a very different yet interesting direction.) Consequently, the film doesn't go very far in its examination of film culture. Rewind can be read as a lampoon of indie filmmaking or the preposterousness of much of popular cinema or simply a gentle fable about the YouTube/MySpace generation's fascination with ego-centric creativity.
The climax -- in which the store's dilapidated building is threatened with demolition and everyone including Mr. Fletcher makes one final film supporting Fletcher's long-held claim that jazz legend Fats Waller was born in the location of the video store -- pretty much squeezes all the comic action that's left in this whimsy about sweding. The film may overstay its welcome by a good 10 minutes. But everyone has been such good company, it feels churlish to say so.
The real film crew, in this film about bad filmmaking, performs very well indeed.
BE KIND REWIND
New Line
Partizan Films
Credits:
Screenwriter-director: Michel Gondry
Producers: Georges Bermann, Michel Gondry, Julie Fong
Executive producers: Toby Emmerich, Guy Stodel
Director of photography: Ellen Kuras
Production designer: Dan Leigh
Music: Jean-Michel Bernard
Co-producer: Ann Ruark
Costume designers: Rachel Afiley, Kishu Chand
Editor: Jeff Buchanan
Cast:
Jerry: Jack Black
Mike: Mos Def
Mr. Fletcher: Danny Glover
Miss Falewicz: Mia Farrow
Alma: Melonie Diaz
Running time -- 100 minutes
MPAA rating: PG-13...
PARK CITY -- After highly imaginative explorations of man's natural instincts (Human Nature) and the interplay of memory, dreams and personal relationships ("Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" and The Science of Sleep), Michel Gondry has turned his playful gaze to film itself.
Be Kind Rewind wants to probe the interplay among films, their audience and the people who make them. It's an exuberant, fanciful fable set amid the scruffy outskirts of American society, where people's need for escapism coincides with their desire to participate in its creation.
For all of Gondry's undeniable talent, it would be hard to imagine him pulling off this delicate and even cornball conceit without his star, Jack Black. With irrepressible exuberance and going-in-five-directions energy, Black is the embodiment of Gondry's whimsical notion that a small-town Ed Wood could infect an entire downtrodden neighborhood with the filmmaking fever.
As with most Gondry films, Rewind is not for all tastes. Its good-natured sweetness will appeal to many; others may shun the fractured fairy tale altogether. Yet this French filmmaker has developed enough of an international fan base for his fanciful films to fully support this modestly budgeted effort. New Line releases the film Feb. 22.
Certain that microwaves from the power plant he lives near are killing him, Jerry (Black), a mechanic in the struggling New Jersey town of Passaic, tries to sabotage the plant. Only he gets caught in an electromagnetic field that leaves him dazed, confused and magnetized. He thus inadvertently erases every videotape in a rental store run by his childhood pal Mike (Mos Def) while its owner, Mr. Fletcher (Danny Glover), is away.
When customer Miss Falewicz (Mia Farrow) wants to check out Ghostbusters, Jerry and Mike stall her until the end of the day. They spend that time making their own version of that film using a video camera, homemade props and playing all the roles themselves. Miss Falewicz, who has never seen the film, actually likes their version. So the two continue the ruse by making crude versions of Rush Hour, Robocop, Boyz N the Hood and The Lion King for loyal customers. Jerry calls the process of re-enacting these popular movies "sweding," though the reason for that term is a bit hazy.
Soon the customers themselves are participating in these "swedes." Productions get a bit more lavish for King Kong, 2001: A Space Odyssey and Carrie through the use of "special effects" and camera tricks. Then a Hollywood lawyer (a nicely imperious Sigourney Weaver) shows up with charges of intellectual property theft. She demands the tapes' destruction.
Gondry, who also wrote the script, keeps the focus on pop cinema. No one swedes a Bergman movie or Citizen Kane. (Which might have taken the humor in a very different yet interesting direction.) Consequently, the film doesn't go very far in its examination of film culture. Rewind can be read as a lampoon of indie filmmaking or the preposterousness of much of popular cinema or simply a gentle fable about the YouTube/MySpace generation's fascination with ego-centric creativity.
The climax -- in which the store's dilapidated building is threatened with demolition and everyone including Mr. Fletcher makes one final film supporting Fletcher's long-held claim that jazz legend Fats Waller was born in the location of the video store -- pretty much squeezes all the comic action that's left in this whimsy about sweding. The film may overstay its welcome by a good 10 minutes. But everyone has been such good company, it feels churlish to say so.
The real film crew, in this film about bad filmmaking, performs very well indeed.
BE KIND REWIND
New Line
Partizan Films
Credits:
Screenwriter-director: Michel Gondry
Producers: Georges Bermann, Michel Gondry, Julie Fong
Executive producers: Toby Emmerich, Guy Stodel
Director of photography: Ellen Kuras
Production designer: Dan Leigh
Music: Jean-Michel Bernard
Co-producer: Ann Ruark
Costume designers: Rachel Afiley, Kishu Chand
Editor: Jeff Buchanan
Cast:
Jerry: Jack Black
Mike: Mos Def
Mr. Fletcher: Danny Glover
Miss Falewicz: Mia Farrow
Alma: Melonie Diaz
Running time -- 100 minutes
MPAA rating: PG-13...
- 1/21/2008
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
CHENNAI, India -- Loins of Punjab Presents is an honest and amusing though somewhat shoddily produce look at expatiate Indians in America. It gushes witty, one-liners and there is no background musical score that is often so intrusive in Indian cinema, nudging, nay pushing, a viewer into a mood the director sets. And for his first movie, helmer Manish Acharya -- who also plays the part of Vikram Tejwani, whose job is about to be outsourced to India -- shows restraint in steering clear of the obsession among international Indian moviemakers for stereotyping desi -- or first generation immigrant -- characters.
Despite its humor, which at times is bawdy, the film may not score with commercial audiences seeking as a matter of habit Bollywood formulas, but it can get into festivals thanks to the well cast actors and careful characterizations.
During a music competition sponsored by a big pork manufacturer in the U.S. called Loins of Punjab, a motley group of contestants parks itself in a New Jersey hotel. Among them is Rita Kapoor (Shabana Azmi), a social butterfly who controls judges and contenders through sexual or other favors. While she takes one of the judges for a romp, she tempts a couple of participants with lucrative assignments in return for them quitting the contest.
Young Preeti Patel (Ishitta Sharma) -- in tow with her entire family bent on seeing her win the huge prize money of $25,000 -- plays tough, not easily swallowing Kapoor's bait of a fabulous modeling offer. Meanwhile, Kapoor does get Bollywood aspirant Sania Rehman (Seema Rahmani) disqualified on a flimsy ground.
Even the smallest parts have been diligently written by Acharya and Anuvab Patel, capturing the finer nuances of each. These include the gay Sikh participant, Turbanotorious B.D.G. (Ajay Naidu), a bundle of aggression; Opama Menon (Ayesha Dharker), whose American boyfriend, Josh Cohen (Michael Raimondi), is the only foreign competitor in the group and places ambition ahead of relationship; and Sharma's Patel, caught between her own dream and parental shove.
However, the movie leaves one with a sneaking suspicion that Acharya was more than a little inspired by Little Miss Sunshine.
LOINS OF PUNJAB PRESENTS
Horn OK Please Entertainment
Credits:
Director/producer: Manish Acharya
Writers: Manish Acharya, Anuvab Pal
Director of photography: Arvind Kannabiran
Production designer: Ayesha Punvani
Music: Michael Cohen
Costume designer: Rabiah Troncelliti
Editor: Christopher Dillon
Cast:
Rita Kapoor: Shabana Azmi
Vikram Tejwani: Manish Acharya
Opama Menon: Ayesha Dharker
Sania Rehman: Seema Rahmani
Preeti Patel: Ishitta Sharma
Josh Cohen: Michael Raimondi
Turbanotorious B.D.G.: Ajay Naidu
Running time -- 88 minutes
No MPAA rating...
Despite its humor, which at times is bawdy, the film may not score with commercial audiences seeking as a matter of habit Bollywood formulas, but it can get into festivals thanks to the well cast actors and careful characterizations.
During a music competition sponsored by a big pork manufacturer in the U.S. called Loins of Punjab, a motley group of contestants parks itself in a New Jersey hotel. Among them is Rita Kapoor (Shabana Azmi), a social butterfly who controls judges and contenders through sexual or other favors. While she takes one of the judges for a romp, she tempts a couple of participants with lucrative assignments in return for them quitting the contest.
Young Preeti Patel (Ishitta Sharma) -- in tow with her entire family bent on seeing her win the huge prize money of $25,000 -- plays tough, not easily swallowing Kapoor's bait of a fabulous modeling offer. Meanwhile, Kapoor does get Bollywood aspirant Sania Rehman (Seema Rahmani) disqualified on a flimsy ground.
Even the smallest parts have been diligently written by Acharya and Anuvab Patel, capturing the finer nuances of each. These include the gay Sikh participant, Turbanotorious B.D.G. (Ajay Naidu), a bundle of aggression; Opama Menon (Ayesha Dharker), whose American boyfriend, Josh Cohen (Michael Raimondi), is the only foreign competitor in the group and places ambition ahead of relationship; and Sharma's Patel, caught between her own dream and parental shove.
However, the movie leaves one with a sneaking suspicion that Acharya was more than a little inspired by Little Miss Sunshine.
LOINS OF PUNJAB PRESENTS
Horn OK Please Entertainment
Credits:
Director/producer: Manish Acharya
Writers: Manish Acharya, Anuvab Pal
Director of photography: Arvind Kannabiran
Production designer: Ayesha Punvani
Music: Michael Cohen
Costume designer: Rabiah Troncelliti
Editor: Christopher Dillon
Cast:
Rita Kapoor: Shabana Azmi
Vikram Tejwani: Manish Acharya
Opama Menon: Ayesha Dharker
Sania Rehman: Seema Rahmani
Preeti Patel: Ishitta Sharma
Josh Cohen: Michael Raimondi
Turbanotorious B.D.G.: Ajay Naidu
Running time -- 88 minutes
No MPAA rating...
- 11/27/2007
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
BERLIN -- One-time media mogul Leo Kirch is getting backing from New Jersey hedge fund MarCap in his bid to make another comeback.
According to a report in German business daily Handelsblatt, MarCap has boosted its stake in EM.Sport Media and Highlight Communications, two sports rights groups in which Kirch holds a significant stake. According to MarCap president and CEO David Marcus, the company now holds just over 9% of Highlight and more than 5% of EM.Sport Media.
That cash injection should help Kirch as he tries to refinance the 3 billion euros ($4.4 billion) deal he recently signed to market rights to Germany's top soccer league, the Bundesliga. Kirch and his Sirus rights company will act as middlemen, selling on the Bundesliga rights for the 2009-2015 seasons.
"In the communications industry there is a huge demand for soccer, which allows for many creative possibilities in rights exploitation," Marcus is quoted in the Handelsblatt, explaining the reason for MarCap's betting on Kirch.
According to a report in German business daily Handelsblatt, MarCap has boosted its stake in EM.Sport Media and Highlight Communications, two sports rights groups in which Kirch holds a significant stake. According to MarCap president and CEO David Marcus, the company now holds just over 9% of Highlight and more than 5% of EM.Sport Media.
That cash injection should help Kirch as he tries to refinance the 3 billion euros ($4.4 billion) deal he recently signed to market rights to Germany's top soccer league, the Bundesliga. Kirch and his Sirus rights company will act as middlemen, selling on the Bundesliga rights for the 2009-2015 seasons.
"In the communications industry there is a huge demand for soccer, which allows for many creative possibilities in rights exploitation," Marcus is quoted in the Handelsblatt, explaining the reason for MarCap's betting on Kirch.
- 11/24/2007
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Don Imus and his "Imus in the Morning" radio show will return next month to Greater Media radio station 96.9 FM Talk in Boston after having been yanked as part of his firing by CBS Radio this year.
The deal, unveiled Friday, marks one of the first big syndication arrangements for "Imus in the Morning" since a recent deal with Citadel Broadcasting. Under the deal, Imus broadcasts his show out of WABC New York, with ABC Radio Network syndicating it.
Imus, who was dumped by CBS after controversial on-air remarks, will return Dec. 3 to his former Boston station, which also is known as WTKK. His show will air in morning drive time.
"We welcome Don Imus back to WTKK and look forward to his high-profile interviews and incisive political commentary as we enter a very competitive election year," said Greater Media vp and market manager Phil Redo. "We have talked to Don about what happened last April, and we know that he is truly sorry for what he said."
Redo also predicted that the new show will be "an open and inclusive forum for discussion of issues that are important to the communities in which he broadcasts."
Greater Media owns 20 AM and FM radio stations in the Boston, Detroit, New Jersey and Philadelphia markets.
The deal, unveiled Friday, marks one of the first big syndication arrangements for "Imus in the Morning" since a recent deal with Citadel Broadcasting. Under the deal, Imus broadcasts his show out of WABC New York, with ABC Radio Network syndicating it.
Imus, who was dumped by CBS after controversial on-air remarks, will return Dec. 3 to his former Boston station, which also is known as WTKK. His show will air in morning drive time.
"We welcome Don Imus back to WTKK and look forward to his high-profile interviews and incisive political commentary as we enter a very competitive election year," said Greater Media vp and market manager Phil Redo. "We have talked to Don about what happened last April, and we know that he is truly sorry for what he said."
Redo also predicted that the new show will be "an open and inclusive forum for discussion of issues that are important to the communities in which he broadcasts."
Greater Media owns 20 AM and FM radio stations in the Boston, Detroit, New Jersey and Philadelphia markets.
- 11/17/2007
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
This review was written for the theatrical release of "American Gangster".The title is catchy but misleading. Frank Lucas was less an "American Gangster" than an original Old Gangster in sable, a caricature in the tradition of '70s blaxploitation flicks.
He is in fact a real-life character, an apparently highly attractive person -- likable even -- who made millions by killing people and ruining lives with the powdered death of heroin. Going up against this all-powerful yet ghostly figure who operates outside the old Mafia networks, is Richie Roberts, an incorruptible cop from the street who is determined put him in prison. Director Ridley Scott takes on these familiar subjects, themes and characters with a keen eye for the social fabric, false assumptions, suffocating corruption and vivid personalities that make such a story worth retelling.
So this is a gangster movie focused on character rather than action and on the intricacies of people's backgrounds, strategies and motivations. Whether it means to, the film plays off a clutch of old movies, from "The Godfather" and "Serpico" to "Superfly" and "Shaft". But Scott and writer Steven Zaillian make certain their Old Gangster is original and true to himself and his times rather than a concoction of movie fiction. Consequently, the movie is smooth and smart enough to attract a significant audience beyond the considerable fan base of its stars, Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe.
You do sense in this movie that its principals are returning to safe harbor. After a discouraging foray into feeble comedy by Scott and Crowe ("A Good Year") and Gothic Southern melodrama for Zaillian ("All the King's Men"), these artists scramble back to an emotional naturalism more aligned to their sensibilities. Even for Washington, who seldom makes a false step careerwise, the film represents a welcome return to the larger-than-life villainy he performed so well in 2001's "Training Day".
Zaillian, working from Mark Jacobson's magazine portrait of Lucas -- a heroin kingpin of Harlem in the late '60s and early '70s -- sets two men on a collision course. Lucas (Washington), a country lad from North Carolina, is the nearly invisible driver and right-hand man to Ellsworth "Bumpy" Johnson, the most famous of Harlem gangsters. (So famous that this is his fourth movie reincarnation. Moses Gunn played him in "Shaft", and Lawrence Fishburne twice in "The Cotton Club" and "Hoodlum".) When Bumpy dies in his arms, Frank moves into the vacuum caused by his death with ruthless guile and a friendly personality.
Meanwhile, Richie Roberts (Crowe), a street-smart drug cop in New Jersey, is Frank's opposite: He can't help alienating everyone who crosses his path. His wife wants a divorce, insisting he leads a life entirely unsuitable to the welfare of their only child. Fellow cops shun him from the moment he brings in nearly a million dollars of recovered drug money. No one can understand why he didn't keep it, which says a lot about the state of policing in the New York/New Jersey area in 1968.
Frank's stroke of genius in the drug trade is to cut out the middleman. He flies to Thailand, takes a boat up the river in the Golden Triangle, makes a deal with a Chinese general, then arranges through an in-law to ship the kilos to New York in military planes coming back from Vietnam. His heroin, branded Blue Magic, hits the street twice as good and half as much as the competition.
It is so pure that dead junkies turn up all over New York. The police are baffled but look in all the wrong places. It never occurs to them that a black man is behind the scheme. Richie, whose whacked-out partner is one of Blue Magic's victims, is given his own task force. He finally targets Frank, but no one will believe him.
Frank flies under the radar. He hires only relatives -- a veritable army of brothers like Huey Lucas (Chiwetel Ejiofor) as well as cousins -- whom he sets up with storefront businesses that function as drug-distribution centers. He maintains a low profile and adheres to a rigid code of conduct. His major weekly outings are to church with his mother (the inestimable Ruby Dee) or to his nightclub with wife Eva (Lymari Nadal), a former Miss Puerto Rico.
Richie's major opposition comes from within. New York's anti-drug task force, the Special Investigations Unit, is rife with corruption. As personified by Detective Trupo (a strutting Josh Brolin), the SIU takes its cut right off the top.
In a story that ranges from the jungles of Harlem and Thailand to North Carolina backwoods, Scott is both hurried and leisurely. He covers a lot of territory, often in low-light levels and with the Vietnam War playing on background TV sets, soaking up the sordid atmosphere, including naked, surgically masked women cutting the dope -- so no one will steal anything -- and celebrities like Joe Lewis cheerfully slumming with the gangsters. The scruffiness of Richie's world makes a brilliant contrast to Frank's penthouse. Yet both worlds teem with moral ambiguity.
If there are no false steps here, there are few highlights either. Such films as "The Godfather" and "Serpico" contain iconic scenes and sequences. "American Gangster" contributes little. It's workmanlike and engrossing, but what sticks in the mind are Frank and Richie, not what anybody does.
The film concocts a final sequence in which the two finally meet and do a deal, the deal that apparently sprung Frank from prison to enjoy his old age: Frank rats out the SIU cops who shook him down, resulting in most of the unit going to prison. Richie ends up leaving the force to become a lawyer and eventually represents Frank. So "American Gangster" finally shows its true colors: It's really a buddy movie.
AMERICAN GANGSTER
Universal
Imagine Entertainment presents a Relativity Media/Scott Free Prods. production
Credits:
Director: Ridley Scott
Screenwriter: Steven Zaillian
Based on an article by: Mark Jacobson
Producers: Brian Grazer, Ridley Scott
Executive producers: Nicholas Pileggi, Steven Zaillian, Branko Lustig, Jim Whitaker, Michael Costigan
Director of photography: Harris Savides
Production designer: Arthur Max
Music: Marc Streitenfeld
Costume designer: Janty Yates
Editor: Pietro Scalia
Cast:
Frank Lucas: Denzel Washington
Richie Roberts: Russell Crowe
Huey Lucas: Chiwetel Ejiofor
Detective Trupo: Josh Brolin
Eva: Lymari Nadal
Lou: Ted Levine
Nate: Roger Guenveur Smith
Freddie Spearman: John Hawkes
Moses Jones: RZA
Nickey Barnes: Cuba Gooding Jr.
Dominic: Armand Assante
Mama Lucas: Rudy Dee
Running time -- 157 minutes
MPAA rating: R...
He is in fact a real-life character, an apparently highly attractive person -- likable even -- who made millions by killing people and ruining lives with the powdered death of heroin. Going up against this all-powerful yet ghostly figure who operates outside the old Mafia networks, is Richie Roberts, an incorruptible cop from the street who is determined put him in prison. Director Ridley Scott takes on these familiar subjects, themes and characters with a keen eye for the social fabric, false assumptions, suffocating corruption and vivid personalities that make such a story worth retelling.
So this is a gangster movie focused on character rather than action and on the intricacies of people's backgrounds, strategies and motivations. Whether it means to, the film plays off a clutch of old movies, from "The Godfather" and "Serpico" to "Superfly" and "Shaft". But Scott and writer Steven Zaillian make certain their Old Gangster is original and true to himself and his times rather than a concoction of movie fiction. Consequently, the movie is smooth and smart enough to attract a significant audience beyond the considerable fan base of its stars, Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe.
You do sense in this movie that its principals are returning to safe harbor. After a discouraging foray into feeble comedy by Scott and Crowe ("A Good Year") and Gothic Southern melodrama for Zaillian ("All the King's Men"), these artists scramble back to an emotional naturalism more aligned to their sensibilities. Even for Washington, who seldom makes a false step careerwise, the film represents a welcome return to the larger-than-life villainy he performed so well in 2001's "Training Day".
Zaillian, working from Mark Jacobson's magazine portrait of Lucas -- a heroin kingpin of Harlem in the late '60s and early '70s -- sets two men on a collision course. Lucas (Washington), a country lad from North Carolina, is the nearly invisible driver and right-hand man to Ellsworth "Bumpy" Johnson, the most famous of Harlem gangsters. (So famous that this is his fourth movie reincarnation. Moses Gunn played him in "Shaft", and Lawrence Fishburne twice in "The Cotton Club" and "Hoodlum".) When Bumpy dies in his arms, Frank moves into the vacuum caused by his death with ruthless guile and a friendly personality.
Meanwhile, Richie Roberts (Crowe), a street-smart drug cop in New Jersey, is Frank's opposite: He can't help alienating everyone who crosses his path. His wife wants a divorce, insisting he leads a life entirely unsuitable to the welfare of their only child. Fellow cops shun him from the moment he brings in nearly a million dollars of recovered drug money. No one can understand why he didn't keep it, which says a lot about the state of policing in the New York/New Jersey area in 1968.
Frank's stroke of genius in the drug trade is to cut out the middleman. He flies to Thailand, takes a boat up the river in the Golden Triangle, makes a deal with a Chinese general, then arranges through an in-law to ship the kilos to New York in military planes coming back from Vietnam. His heroin, branded Blue Magic, hits the street twice as good and half as much as the competition.
It is so pure that dead junkies turn up all over New York. The police are baffled but look in all the wrong places. It never occurs to them that a black man is behind the scheme. Richie, whose whacked-out partner is one of Blue Magic's victims, is given his own task force. He finally targets Frank, but no one will believe him.
Frank flies under the radar. He hires only relatives -- a veritable army of brothers like Huey Lucas (Chiwetel Ejiofor) as well as cousins -- whom he sets up with storefront businesses that function as drug-distribution centers. He maintains a low profile and adheres to a rigid code of conduct. His major weekly outings are to church with his mother (the inestimable Ruby Dee) or to his nightclub with wife Eva (Lymari Nadal), a former Miss Puerto Rico.
Richie's major opposition comes from within. New York's anti-drug task force, the Special Investigations Unit, is rife with corruption. As personified by Detective Trupo (a strutting Josh Brolin), the SIU takes its cut right off the top.
In a story that ranges from the jungles of Harlem and Thailand to North Carolina backwoods, Scott is both hurried and leisurely. He covers a lot of territory, often in low-light levels and with the Vietnam War playing on background TV sets, soaking up the sordid atmosphere, including naked, surgically masked women cutting the dope -- so no one will steal anything -- and celebrities like Joe Lewis cheerfully slumming with the gangsters. The scruffiness of Richie's world makes a brilliant contrast to Frank's penthouse. Yet both worlds teem with moral ambiguity.
If there are no false steps here, there are few highlights either. Such films as "The Godfather" and "Serpico" contain iconic scenes and sequences. "American Gangster" contributes little. It's workmanlike and engrossing, but what sticks in the mind are Frank and Richie, not what anybody does.
The film concocts a final sequence in which the two finally meet and do a deal, the deal that apparently sprung Frank from prison to enjoy his old age: Frank rats out the SIU cops who shook him down, resulting in most of the unit going to prison. Richie ends up leaving the force to become a lawyer and eventually represents Frank. So "American Gangster" finally shows its true colors: It's really a buddy movie.
AMERICAN GANGSTER
Universal
Imagine Entertainment presents a Relativity Media/Scott Free Prods. production
Credits:
Director: Ridley Scott
Screenwriter: Steven Zaillian
Based on an article by: Mark Jacobson
Producers: Brian Grazer, Ridley Scott
Executive producers: Nicholas Pileggi, Steven Zaillian, Branko Lustig, Jim Whitaker, Michael Costigan
Director of photography: Harris Savides
Production designer: Arthur Max
Music: Marc Streitenfeld
Costume designer: Janty Yates
Editor: Pietro Scalia
Cast:
Frank Lucas: Denzel Washington
Richie Roberts: Russell Crowe
Huey Lucas: Chiwetel Ejiofor
Detective Trupo: Josh Brolin
Eva: Lymari Nadal
Lou: Ted Levine
Nate: Roger Guenveur Smith
Freddie Spearman: John Hawkes
Moses Jones: RZA
Nickey Barnes: Cuba Gooding Jr.
Dominic: Armand Assante
Mama Lucas: Rudy Dee
Running time -- 157 minutes
MPAA rating: R...
- 10/22/2007
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
The title is catchy but misleading. Frank Lucas was less an American Gangster than an original Old Gangster in sable, a caricature in the tradition of '70s blaxploitation flicks.
He is in fact a real-life character, an apparently highly attractive person -- likable even -- who made millions by killing people and ruining lives with the powdered death of heroin. Going up against this all-powerful yet ghostly figure who operates outside the old Mafia networks, is Richie Roberts, an incorruptible cop from the street who is determined put him in prison. Director Ridley Scott takes on these familiar subjects, themes and characters with a keen eye for the social fabric, false assumptions, suffocating corruption and vivid personalities that make such a story worth retelling.
So this is a gangster movie focused on character rather than action and on the intricacies of people's backgrounds, strategies and motivations. Whether it means to, the film plays off a clutch of old movies, from The Godfather and Serpico to Superfly and Shaft. But Scott and writer Steven Zaillian make certain their Old Gangster is original and true to himself and his times rather than a concoction of movie fiction. Consequently, the movie is smooth and smart enough to attract a significant audience beyond the considerable fan base of its stars, Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe.
You do sense in this movie that its principals are returning to safe harbor. After a discouraging foray into feeble comedy by Scott and Crowe (A Good Year) and Gothic Southern melodrama for Zaillian ("All the King's Men"), these artists scramble back to an emotional naturalism more aligned to their sensibilities. Even for Washington, who seldom makes a false step careerwise, the film represents a welcome return to the larger-than-life villainy he performed so well in 2001's Training Day.
Zaillian, working from Mark Jacobson's magazine portrait of Lucas -- a heroin kingpin of Harlem in the late '60s and early '70s -- sets two men on a collision course. Lucas (Washington), a country lad from North Carolina, is the nearly invisible driver and right-hand man to Ellsworth Bumpy Johnson, the most famous of Harlem gangsters. (So famous that this is his fourth movie reincarnation. Moses Gunn played him in Shaft, and Lawrence Fishburne twice in The Cotton Club and Hoodlum.) When Bumpy dies in his arms, Frank moves into the vacuum caused by his death with ruthless guile and a friendly personality.
Meanwhile, Richie Roberts (Crowe), a street-smart drug cop in New Jersey, is Frank's opposite: He can't help alienating everyone who crosses his path. His wife wants a divorce, insisting he leads a life entirely unsuitable to the welfare of their only child. Fellow cops shun him from the moment he brings in nearly a million dollars of recovered drug money. No one can understand why he didn't keep it, which says a lot about the state of policing in the New York/New Jersey area in 1968.
Frank's stroke of genius in the drug trade is to cut out the middleman. He flies to Thailand, takes a boat up the river in the Golden Triangle, makes a deal with a Chinese general, then arranges through an in-law to ship the kilos to New York in military planes coming back from Vietnam. His heroin, branded Blue Magic, hits the street twice as good and half as much as the competition.
It is so pure that dead junkies turn up all over New York. The police are baffled but look in all the wrong places. It never occurs to them that a black man is behind the scheme. Richie, whose whacked-out partner is one of Blue Magic's victims, is given his own task force. He finally targets Frank, but no one will believe him.
Frank flies under the radar. He hires only relatives -- a veritable army of brothers like Huey Lucas (Chiwetel Ejiofor) as well as cousins -- whom he sets up with storefront businesses that function as drug-distribution centers. He maintains a low profile and adheres to a rigid code of conduct. His major weekly outings are to church with his mother (the inestimable Ruby Dee) or to his nightclub with wife Eva (Lymari Nadal), a former Miss Puerto Rico.
Richie's major opposition comes from within. New York's anti-drug task force, the Special Investigations Unit, is rife with corruption. As personified by Detective Trupo (a strutting Josh Brolin), the SIU takes its cut right off the top.
In a story that ranges from the jungles of Harlem and Thailand to North Carolina backwoods, Scott is both hurried and leisurely. He covers a lot of territory, often in low-light levels and with the Vietnam War playing on background TV sets, soaking up the sordid atmosphere, including naked, surgically masked women cutting the dope -- so no one will steal anything -- and celebrities like Joe Lewis cheerfully slumming with the gangsters. The scruffiness of Richie's world makes a brilliant contrast to Frank's penthouse. Yet both worlds teem with moral ambiguity.
If there are no false steps here, there are few highlights either. Such films as The Godfather and Serpico contain iconic scenes and sequences. American Gangster contributes little. It's workmanlike and engrossing, but what sticks in the mind are Frank and Richie, not what anybody does.
The film concocts a final sequence in which the two finally meet and do a deal, the deal that apparently sprung Frank from prison to enjoy his old age: Frank rats out the SIU cops who shook him down, resulting in most of the unit going to prison. Richie ends up leaving the force to become a lawyer and eventually represents Frank. So American Gangster finally shows its true colors: It's really a buddy movie.
AMERICAN GANGSTER
Universal
Imagine Entertainment presents a Relativity Media/Scott Free Prods. production
Credits:
Director: Ridley Scott
Screenwriter: Steven Zaillian
Based on an article by: Mark Jacobson
Producers: Brian Grazer, Ridley Scott
Executive producers: Nicholas Pileggi, Steven Zaillian, Branko Lustig, Jim Whitaker, Michael Costigan
Director of photography: Harris Savides
Production designer: Arthur Max
Music: Marc Streitenfeld
Costume designer: Janty Yates
Editor: Pietro Scalia
Cast:
Frank Lucas: Denzel Washington
Richie Roberts: Russell Crowe
Huey Lucas: Chiwetel Ejiofor
Detective Trupo: Josh Brolin
Eva: Lymari Nadal
Lou: Ted Levine
Nate: Roger Guenveur Smith
Freddie Spearman: John Hawkes
Moses Jones: RZA
Nickey Barnes: Cuba Gooding Jr.
Dominic: Armand Assante
Mama Lucas: Rudy Dee
Running time -- 157 minutes
MPAA rating: R...
He is in fact a real-life character, an apparently highly attractive person -- likable even -- who made millions by killing people and ruining lives with the powdered death of heroin. Going up against this all-powerful yet ghostly figure who operates outside the old Mafia networks, is Richie Roberts, an incorruptible cop from the street who is determined put him in prison. Director Ridley Scott takes on these familiar subjects, themes and characters with a keen eye for the social fabric, false assumptions, suffocating corruption and vivid personalities that make such a story worth retelling.
So this is a gangster movie focused on character rather than action and on the intricacies of people's backgrounds, strategies and motivations. Whether it means to, the film plays off a clutch of old movies, from The Godfather and Serpico to Superfly and Shaft. But Scott and writer Steven Zaillian make certain their Old Gangster is original and true to himself and his times rather than a concoction of movie fiction. Consequently, the movie is smooth and smart enough to attract a significant audience beyond the considerable fan base of its stars, Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe.
You do sense in this movie that its principals are returning to safe harbor. After a discouraging foray into feeble comedy by Scott and Crowe (A Good Year) and Gothic Southern melodrama for Zaillian ("All the King's Men"), these artists scramble back to an emotional naturalism more aligned to their sensibilities. Even for Washington, who seldom makes a false step careerwise, the film represents a welcome return to the larger-than-life villainy he performed so well in 2001's Training Day.
Zaillian, working from Mark Jacobson's magazine portrait of Lucas -- a heroin kingpin of Harlem in the late '60s and early '70s -- sets two men on a collision course. Lucas (Washington), a country lad from North Carolina, is the nearly invisible driver and right-hand man to Ellsworth Bumpy Johnson, the most famous of Harlem gangsters. (So famous that this is his fourth movie reincarnation. Moses Gunn played him in Shaft, and Lawrence Fishburne twice in The Cotton Club and Hoodlum.) When Bumpy dies in his arms, Frank moves into the vacuum caused by his death with ruthless guile and a friendly personality.
Meanwhile, Richie Roberts (Crowe), a street-smart drug cop in New Jersey, is Frank's opposite: He can't help alienating everyone who crosses his path. His wife wants a divorce, insisting he leads a life entirely unsuitable to the welfare of their only child. Fellow cops shun him from the moment he brings in nearly a million dollars of recovered drug money. No one can understand why he didn't keep it, which says a lot about the state of policing in the New York/New Jersey area in 1968.
Frank's stroke of genius in the drug trade is to cut out the middleman. He flies to Thailand, takes a boat up the river in the Golden Triangle, makes a deal with a Chinese general, then arranges through an in-law to ship the kilos to New York in military planes coming back from Vietnam. His heroin, branded Blue Magic, hits the street twice as good and half as much as the competition.
It is so pure that dead junkies turn up all over New York. The police are baffled but look in all the wrong places. It never occurs to them that a black man is behind the scheme. Richie, whose whacked-out partner is one of Blue Magic's victims, is given his own task force. He finally targets Frank, but no one will believe him.
Frank flies under the radar. He hires only relatives -- a veritable army of brothers like Huey Lucas (Chiwetel Ejiofor) as well as cousins -- whom he sets up with storefront businesses that function as drug-distribution centers. He maintains a low profile and adheres to a rigid code of conduct. His major weekly outings are to church with his mother (the inestimable Ruby Dee) or to his nightclub with wife Eva (Lymari Nadal), a former Miss Puerto Rico.
Richie's major opposition comes from within. New York's anti-drug task force, the Special Investigations Unit, is rife with corruption. As personified by Detective Trupo (a strutting Josh Brolin), the SIU takes its cut right off the top.
In a story that ranges from the jungles of Harlem and Thailand to North Carolina backwoods, Scott is both hurried and leisurely. He covers a lot of territory, often in low-light levels and with the Vietnam War playing on background TV sets, soaking up the sordid atmosphere, including naked, surgically masked women cutting the dope -- so no one will steal anything -- and celebrities like Joe Lewis cheerfully slumming with the gangsters. The scruffiness of Richie's world makes a brilliant contrast to Frank's penthouse. Yet both worlds teem with moral ambiguity.
If there are no false steps here, there are few highlights either. Such films as The Godfather and Serpico contain iconic scenes and sequences. American Gangster contributes little. It's workmanlike and engrossing, but what sticks in the mind are Frank and Richie, not what anybody does.
The film concocts a final sequence in which the two finally meet and do a deal, the deal that apparently sprung Frank from prison to enjoy his old age: Frank rats out the SIU cops who shook him down, resulting in most of the unit going to prison. Richie ends up leaving the force to become a lawyer and eventually represents Frank. So American Gangster finally shows its true colors: It's really a buddy movie.
AMERICAN GANGSTER
Universal
Imagine Entertainment presents a Relativity Media/Scott Free Prods. production
Credits:
Director: Ridley Scott
Screenwriter: Steven Zaillian
Based on an article by: Mark Jacobson
Producers: Brian Grazer, Ridley Scott
Executive producers: Nicholas Pileggi, Steven Zaillian, Branko Lustig, Jim Whitaker, Michael Costigan
Director of photography: Harris Savides
Production designer: Arthur Max
Music: Marc Streitenfeld
Costume designer: Janty Yates
Editor: Pietro Scalia
Cast:
Frank Lucas: Denzel Washington
Richie Roberts: Russell Crowe
Huey Lucas: Chiwetel Ejiofor
Detective Trupo: Josh Brolin
Eva: Lymari Nadal
Lou: Ted Levine
Nate: Roger Guenveur Smith
Freddie Spearman: John Hawkes
Moses Jones: RZA
Nickey Barnes: Cuba Gooding Jr.
Dominic: Armand Assante
Mama Lucas: Rudy Dee
Running time -- 157 minutes
MPAA rating: R...
- 10/22/2007
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Matt Dillon has the blues.
The You, Me and Dupree star is in final negotiations to play Leonard Chess, the legendary founder of the South Side Chicago blues label Chess Records, in Sony/BMG Film's Cadillac Records.
Darnell Martin (Their Eyes Were Watching God) penned the script and is directing. Sony/BMG's Sofia Sondervan and Andrew Lack are producing.
The period piece follows the rise and fall of Chess Records, which launched the careers of such R&B greats as Muddy Waters, Etta James and Chuck Berry. Chess, who was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987, scoured the South, checking out the various blues scenes and selling records from the back of his Cadillac.
Filming is set to begin in January in New Jersey and Chicago.
Dillon's other upcoming projects include Nothing but the Truth, with Kate Beckinsale, Vera Farmiga and Angela Bassett, and Old Dogs, with Robin Williams and John Travolta.
Dillon is repped by CAA and Vic Ramos Management.
The You, Me and Dupree star is in final negotiations to play Leonard Chess, the legendary founder of the South Side Chicago blues label Chess Records, in Sony/BMG Film's Cadillac Records.
Darnell Martin (Their Eyes Were Watching God) penned the script and is directing. Sony/BMG's Sofia Sondervan and Andrew Lack are producing.
The period piece follows the rise and fall of Chess Records, which launched the careers of such R&B greats as Muddy Waters, Etta James and Chuck Berry. Chess, who was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987, scoured the South, checking out the various blues scenes and selling records from the back of his Cadillac.
Filming is set to begin in January in New Jersey and Chicago.
Dillon's other upcoming projects include Nothing but the Truth, with Kate Beckinsale, Vera Farmiga and Angela Bassett, and Old Dogs, with Robin Williams and John Travolta.
Dillon is repped by CAA and Vic Ramos Management.
- 10/15/2007
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
NEW YORK -- When NBC News' planned facility at Universal City becomes operational in 2011, it will have as its model the NBC News World Headquarters that was unveiled Thursday at 30 Rockefeller Center.
Six months in construction, the facility on the third and fourth floors of the Manhattan landmark will provide the latest in digital and high-definition production facilities and unite the East Coast operations of NBC News. MSNBC, for a decade based across the Hudson River in New Jersey, is moving to 30 Rock.
"We wanted to have everybody under one roof, sharing technical services and again, being greater than the individual parts," NBC News president Steve Capus said.
NBC Uni chief Jeff Zucker, a veteran of the news division, said at a ceremony Thursday night that the new third-floor studio is a giant leap forward from the space he knew 20 years ago.
"NBC News has always been a world-class news organization, and now it has a world-class facility," Zucker said.
Also speaking were Capus, anchor Brian Williams, MSNBC host Keith Olbermann and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Bloomberg pitched Zucker on a primetime show starring himself and said that he was happy that MSNBC was leaving New Jersey, though he still has respect for the state.
"There are a lot of electoral votes in New Jersey," he joked, alluding to rumors that he would jump into the 2008 presidential race.
Six months in construction, the facility on the third and fourth floors of the Manhattan landmark will provide the latest in digital and high-definition production facilities and unite the East Coast operations of NBC News. MSNBC, for a decade based across the Hudson River in New Jersey, is moving to 30 Rock.
"We wanted to have everybody under one roof, sharing technical services and again, being greater than the individual parts," NBC News president Steve Capus said.
NBC Uni chief Jeff Zucker, a veteran of the news division, said at a ceremony Thursday night that the new third-floor studio is a giant leap forward from the space he knew 20 years ago.
"NBC News has always been a world-class news organization, and now it has a world-class facility," Zucker said.
Also speaking were Capus, anchor Brian Williams, MSNBC host Keith Olbermann and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Bloomberg pitched Zucker on a primetime show starring himself and said that he was happy that MSNBC was leaving New Jersey, though he still has respect for the state.
"There are a lot of electoral votes in New Jersey," he joked, alluding to rumors that he would jump into the 2008 presidential race.
- 10/12/2007
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
"The Nanny Diaries" is the second feature film by Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini, the writing-directing team who created the memorable grunge-comic epic "American Splendor". The comedy has several inspired moments and a genuine flair for the satiric, but overall the film leaves you cold. Maybe it's the subject matter -- the woes and tribulations of a nanny working for a narcissistic and entitled Upper East Side family. Naturally, you scorn the family and would sympathize with a poor nanny from, say, Guatemala who desperately needs this job. But the film's nanny is glamorous Scarlett Johansson, a college grad who uses the job to drop out of life for a while to sort out her goals and identity despite having no skills as a nanny.
The Weinstein Co. film has kicked around the release schedule for a while, and it's easy to see why. Satire is hard to market. But at this point, you wonder why no one wanted to wait for September and school to begin. Friday's release might be good counterprogramming, but the film isn't likely to develop legs to carry it much beyond Labor Day.
The movie starts off well. Berman and Pulcini's screenplay, derived from the 2002 satirical novel by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus, imagines that its nanny, Annie Braddock, is an anthropology major from New Jersey. Thus, she scrutinizes her new environment as if she were studying the strange culture and tribal rituals of these overprivileged Manhattan natives. She even envisions them in diorama cases in the Museum of Natural History -- species of an exotic world with only a vague connection to what most people would consider real life.
Another image and constant reference throughout the movie is Mary Poppins. This iconic nanny is everyone's movie connection to the world of nannies, yet she is of course a children's fairy tale heroine. A real nanny, Annie soon discovers, is a baby sitter, maid, dresser, dishwasher, delivery person and dog walker.
Many of these anthropological observations are sharp and comic, yet you can't build a movie around them. Somewhere along the line, the family has to emerge from the world of caricature or it will possess no dramatic life. Unfortunately, it never does.
Annoyingly but tellingly, no one has a real name here. The family consists of Mr. and Mrs. X. The handsome and wealthy university grad upstairs is Harvard Hottie (Chris Evans). Even Annie soon becomes, simply, Nanny. Anyway, Mrs. X (Laura Linney, all-too-deadly accurate) is smug, selfish, snotty and entirely self-possessed yet blind to her husband's indifference to her. Mr. X (Paul Giamatti, excellent yet wasted) is a total bastard, too consumed with mergers of the corporate and extramarital kind to play the role of paterfamilias.
Nicholas Reese Art plays the young son with adorable precociousness, but he has no real character. He's a brat for a while and then, in a remarkable transformation a real-life nanny can only dream about, becomes a little angel. Nanny's secret? She lets him eat peanut butter from a jar, apparently something no one on the Upper East Side would ever do.
Things heat up with Harvard Hottie, yet this feels like a tacked-on relationship having little to do with the movie, unless the filmmakers are suggesting that Annie's best option is to become a trophy wife. Ditto her relationship with a best girl pal -- played well by songstress Alicia Keys -- that goes nowhere.
Johansson is game. There's nothing to criticize in this performance, but there's nothing to get excited about, either. It's solid though uninspired work.
The same can be applied to this film. Unlike "American Splendor", "Nanny" feels formulaic with a few cute touches but unmarked by the fierce wit of "Splendor".
Production credits are smooth as silk as befit its haughty milieu.
THE NANNY DIARIES
MGM/the Weinstein Co.
FilmColony
Credits:
Screenwriters-directors: Shari Springer Berman, Robert Pulcini
Producer: Richard N. Gladstein
Executive producers: Harvey Weinstein, Bob Weinstein, Kelly Carnichael, Dany Wolf
Director of photography: Terry Stacey
Production designer: Mark Ricker
Music: Mark Suozzo
Costume designer: Michaeal Wilkinson
Editor: Robert Pulcini
Cast:
Annie Braddock: Scarlett Johansson
Mrs. X: Laura Linney
Mr. X: Paul Giamatti
Grayer: Nicholas Reese Art
Lynette: Alicia Keys
Harvard Hottie: Chris Evans
Running time -- 105 minutes
MPAA rating: PG-13...
The Weinstein Co. film has kicked around the release schedule for a while, and it's easy to see why. Satire is hard to market. But at this point, you wonder why no one wanted to wait for September and school to begin. Friday's release might be good counterprogramming, but the film isn't likely to develop legs to carry it much beyond Labor Day.
The movie starts off well. Berman and Pulcini's screenplay, derived from the 2002 satirical novel by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus, imagines that its nanny, Annie Braddock, is an anthropology major from New Jersey. Thus, she scrutinizes her new environment as if she were studying the strange culture and tribal rituals of these overprivileged Manhattan natives. She even envisions them in diorama cases in the Museum of Natural History -- species of an exotic world with only a vague connection to what most people would consider real life.
Another image and constant reference throughout the movie is Mary Poppins. This iconic nanny is everyone's movie connection to the world of nannies, yet she is of course a children's fairy tale heroine. A real nanny, Annie soon discovers, is a baby sitter, maid, dresser, dishwasher, delivery person and dog walker.
Many of these anthropological observations are sharp and comic, yet you can't build a movie around them. Somewhere along the line, the family has to emerge from the world of caricature or it will possess no dramatic life. Unfortunately, it never does.
Annoyingly but tellingly, no one has a real name here. The family consists of Mr. and Mrs. X. The handsome and wealthy university grad upstairs is Harvard Hottie (Chris Evans). Even Annie soon becomes, simply, Nanny. Anyway, Mrs. X (Laura Linney, all-too-deadly accurate) is smug, selfish, snotty and entirely self-possessed yet blind to her husband's indifference to her. Mr. X (Paul Giamatti, excellent yet wasted) is a total bastard, too consumed with mergers of the corporate and extramarital kind to play the role of paterfamilias.
Nicholas Reese Art plays the young son with adorable precociousness, but he has no real character. He's a brat for a while and then, in a remarkable transformation a real-life nanny can only dream about, becomes a little angel. Nanny's secret? She lets him eat peanut butter from a jar, apparently something no one on the Upper East Side would ever do.
Things heat up with Harvard Hottie, yet this feels like a tacked-on relationship having little to do with the movie, unless the filmmakers are suggesting that Annie's best option is to become a trophy wife. Ditto her relationship with a best girl pal -- played well by songstress Alicia Keys -- that goes nowhere.
Johansson is game. There's nothing to criticize in this performance, but there's nothing to get excited about, either. It's solid though uninspired work.
The same can be applied to this film. Unlike "American Splendor", "Nanny" feels formulaic with a few cute touches but unmarked by the fierce wit of "Splendor".
Production credits are smooth as silk as befit its haughty milieu.
THE NANNY DIARIES
MGM/the Weinstein Co.
FilmColony
Credits:
Screenwriters-directors: Shari Springer Berman, Robert Pulcini
Producer: Richard N. Gladstein
Executive producers: Harvey Weinstein, Bob Weinstein, Kelly Carnichael, Dany Wolf
Director of photography: Terry Stacey
Production designer: Mark Ricker
Music: Mark Suozzo
Costume designer: Michaeal Wilkinson
Editor: Robert Pulcini
Cast:
Annie Braddock: Scarlett Johansson
Mrs. X: Laura Linney
Mr. X: Paul Giamatti
Grayer: Nicholas Reese Art
Lynette: Alicia Keys
Harvard Hottie: Chris Evans
Running time -- 105 minutes
MPAA rating: PG-13...
This review was written for the festival screening of "The Nanny Diaries"."The Nanny Diaries" is the second feature film by Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini, the writing-directing team who created the memorable grunge-comic epic "American Splendor". The comedy has several inspired moments and a genuine flair for the satiric, but overall the film leaves you cold. Maybe it's the subject matter -- the woes and tribulations of a nanny working for a narcissistic and entitled Upper East Side family. Naturally, you scorn the family and would sympathize with a poor nanny from, say, Guatemala who desperately needs this job. But the film's nanny is glamorous Scarlett Johansson, a college grad who uses the job to drop out of life for a while to sort out her goals and identity despite having no skills as a nanny.
The Weinstein Co. film has kicked around the release schedule for a while, and it's easy to see why. Satire is hard to market. But at this point, you wonder why no one wanted to wait for September and school to begin. Friday's release might be good counterprogramming, but the film isn't likely to develop legs to carry it much beyond Labor Day.
The movie starts off well. Berman and Pulcini's screenplay, derived from the 2002 satirical novel by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus, imagines that its nanny, Annie Braddock, is an anthropology major from New Jersey. Thus, she scrutinizes her new environment as if she were studying the strange culture and tribal rituals of these overprivileged Manhattan natives. She even envisions them in diorama cases in the Museum of Natural History -- species of an exotic world with only a vague connection to what most people would consider real life.
Another image and constant reference throughout the movie is Mary Poppins. This iconic nanny is everyone's movie connection to the world of nannies, yet she is of course a children's fairy tale heroine. A real nanny, Annie soon discovers, is a baby sitter, maid, dresser, dishwasher, delivery person and dog walker.
Many of these anthropological observations are sharp and comic, yet you can't build a movie around them. Somewhere along the line, the family has to emerge from the world of caricature or it will possess no dramatic life. Unfortunately, it never does.
Annoyingly but tellingly, no one has a real name here. The family consists of Mr. and Mrs. X. The handsome and wealthy university grad upstairs is Harvard Hottie (Chris Evans). Even Annie soon becomes, simply, Nanny. Anyway, Mrs. X (Laura Linney, all-too-deadly accurate) is smug, selfish, snotty and entirely self-possessed yet blind to her husband's indifference to her. Mr. X (Paul Giamatti, excellent yet wasted) is a total bastard, too consumed with mergers of the corporate and extramarital kind to play the role of paterfamilias.
Nicholas Reese Art plays the young son with adorable precociousness, but he has no real character. He's a brat for a while and then, in a remarkable transformation a real-life nanny can only dream about, becomes a little angel. Nanny's secret? She lets him eat peanut butter from a jar, apparently something no one on the Upper East Side would ever do.
Things heat up with Harvard Hottie, yet this feels like a tacked-on relationship having little to do with the movie, unless the filmmakers are suggesting that Annie's best option is to become a trophy wife. Ditto her relationship with a best girl pal -- played well by songstress Alicia Keys -- that goes nowhere.
Johansson is game. There's nothing to criticize in this performance, but there's nothing to get excited about, either. It's solid though uninspired work.
The same can be applied to this film. Unlike "American Splendor", "Nanny" feels formulaic with a few cute touches but unmarked by the fierce wit of "Splendor".
Production credits are smooth as silk as befit its haughty milieu.
THE NANNY DIARIES
MGM/the Weinstein Co.
FilmColony
Credits:
Screenwriters-directors: Shari Springer Berman, Robert Pulcini
Producer: Richard N. Gladstein
Executive producers: Harvey Weinstein, Bob Weinstein, Kelly Carnichael, Dany Wolf
Director of photography: Terry Stacey
Production designer: Mark Ricker
Music: Mark Suozzo
Costume designer: Michaeal Wilkinson
Editor: Robert Pulcini
Cast:
Annie Braddock: Scarlett Johansson
Mrs. X: Laura Linney
Mr. X: Paul Giamatti
Grayer: Nicholas Reese Art
Lynette: Alicia Keys
Harvard Hottie: Chris Evans
Running time -- 105 minutes
MPAA rating: PG-13...
The Weinstein Co. film has kicked around the release schedule for a while, and it's easy to see why. Satire is hard to market. But at this point, you wonder why no one wanted to wait for September and school to begin. Friday's release might be good counterprogramming, but the film isn't likely to develop legs to carry it much beyond Labor Day.
The movie starts off well. Berman and Pulcini's screenplay, derived from the 2002 satirical novel by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus, imagines that its nanny, Annie Braddock, is an anthropology major from New Jersey. Thus, she scrutinizes her new environment as if she were studying the strange culture and tribal rituals of these overprivileged Manhattan natives. She even envisions them in diorama cases in the Museum of Natural History -- species of an exotic world with only a vague connection to what most people would consider real life.
Another image and constant reference throughout the movie is Mary Poppins. This iconic nanny is everyone's movie connection to the world of nannies, yet she is of course a children's fairy tale heroine. A real nanny, Annie soon discovers, is a baby sitter, maid, dresser, dishwasher, delivery person and dog walker.
Many of these anthropological observations are sharp and comic, yet you can't build a movie around them. Somewhere along the line, the family has to emerge from the world of caricature or it will possess no dramatic life. Unfortunately, it never does.
Annoyingly but tellingly, no one has a real name here. The family consists of Mr. and Mrs. X. The handsome and wealthy university grad upstairs is Harvard Hottie (Chris Evans). Even Annie soon becomes, simply, Nanny. Anyway, Mrs. X (Laura Linney, all-too-deadly accurate) is smug, selfish, snotty and entirely self-possessed yet blind to her husband's indifference to her. Mr. X (Paul Giamatti, excellent yet wasted) is a total bastard, too consumed with mergers of the corporate and extramarital kind to play the role of paterfamilias.
Nicholas Reese Art plays the young son with adorable precociousness, but he has no real character. He's a brat for a while and then, in a remarkable transformation a real-life nanny can only dream about, becomes a little angel. Nanny's secret? She lets him eat peanut butter from a jar, apparently something no one on the Upper East Side would ever do.
Things heat up with Harvard Hottie, yet this feels like a tacked-on relationship having little to do with the movie, unless the filmmakers are suggesting that Annie's best option is to become a trophy wife. Ditto her relationship with a best girl pal -- played well by songstress Alicia Keys -- that goes nowhere.
Johansson is game. There's nothing to criticize in this performance, but there's nothing to get excited about, either. It's solid though uninspired work.
The same can be applied to this film. Unlike "American Splendor", "Nanny" feels formulaic with a few cute touches but unmarked by the fierce wit of "Splendor".
Production credits are smooth as silk as befit its haughty milieu.
THE NANNY DIARIES
MGM/the Weinstein Co.
FilmColony
Credits:
Screenwriters-directors: Shari Springer Berman, Robert Pulcini
Producer: Richard N. Gladstein
Executive producers: Harvey Weinstein, Bob Weinstein, Kelly Carnichael, Dany Wolf
Director of photography: Terry Stacey
Production designer: Mark Ricker
Music: Mark Suozzo
Costume designer: Michaeal Wilkinson
Editor: Robert Pulcini
Cast:
Annie Braddock: Scarlett Johansson
Mrs. X: Laura Linney
Mr. X: Paul Giamatti
Grayer: Nicholas Reese Art
Lynette: Alicia Keys
Harvard Hottie: Chris Evans
Running time -- 105 minutes
MPAA rating: PG-13...
- 8/20/2007
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
NEW YORK -- Reece Thompson has landed the title role in the Yari Film Group's dark comedy The Sophomore opposite Mischa Barton and Bruce Willis.
Thompson -- who can be seen today in Picturehouse's Rocket Science -- will play a bullied Catholic high school newspaper reporter who is persuaded to investigate the theft of SAT exams by the most popular student (Barton). But after he reveals that the school's president and top jock are responsible, a more sinister conspiracy emerges.
Willis will play the school's twisted principal, a Desert Storm veteran who can't let go of his glory days in Kuwait. Willis' daughter, Rumer, will play the sidekick to Barton's character.
First-time feature director Brett Simon is now filming Sophomore in New Jersey through mid-September.
Thompson was nominated for a Grand Jury Prize at January's Sundance Film Festival for his role in Science. He will appear in the upcoming indie drama Afterwards.
Thompson is repped by WMA and Vickie Petronio at Play Management.
Thompson -- who can be seen today in Picturehouse's Rocket Science -- will play a bullied Catholic high school newspaper reporter who is persuaded to investigate the theft of SAT exams by the most popular student (Barton). But after he reveals that the school's president and top jock are responsible, a more sinister conspiracy emerges.
Willis will play the school's twisted principal, a Desert Storm veteran who can't let go of his glory days in Kuwait. Willis' daughter, Rumer, will play the sidekick to Barton's character.
First-time feature director Brett Simon is now filming Sophomore in New Jersey through mid-September.
Thompson was nominated for a Grand Jury Prize at January's Sundance Film Festival for his role in Science. He will appear in the upcoming indie drama Afterwards.
Thompson is repped by WMA and Vickie Petronio at Play Management.
- 8/10/2007
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
FX's new series Damages was down in its second week.
The legal drama, starring Glenn Close, averaged 2.9 million total viewers at 10 p.m. Tuesday, down 20% from last week's premiere episode (3.7 million), according to Nielsen Media Research.
However, the dropoff was likely due in part to a technical problem in New York and parts of New Jersey that caused blackouts during Tuesday night's episode for Time Warner Cable customers. Damages' household ratings were down 47% week-to-week in New York (from a 6.3 to a 3.3).
Damages nevertheless managed to improve upon its adults 18-49 viewership, jumping 17% from a 1.2 million average to 1.4 million, and built on its lead-in, theatrical The Day After Tomorrow, which averaged 1.9 million total viewers and 981,000 viewers in the demo. Damages also was the most-watched basic cable program of the night in the demo and in total viewers.
Elsewhere in cable ratings news, Travel Channel's "Bizarre Foods With Andrew Zimmern" had its most-watched episode at 9 p.m.
The legal drama, starring Glenn Close, averaged 2.9 million total viewers at 10 p.m. Tuesday, down 20% from last week's premiere episode (3.7 million), according to Nielsen Media Research.
However, the dropoff was likely due in part to a technical problem in New York and parts of New Jersey that caused blackouts during Tuesday night's episode for Time Warner Cable customers. Damages' household ratings were down 47% week-to-week in New York (from a 6.3 to a 3.3).
Damages nevertheless managed to improve upon its adults 18-49 viewership, jumping 17% from a 1.2 million average to 1.4 million, and built on its lead-in, theatrical The Day After Tomorrow, which averaged 1.9 million total viewers and 981,000 viewers in the demo. Damages also was the most-watched basic cable program of the night in the demo and in total viewers.
Elsewhere in cable ratings news, Travel Channel's "Bizarre Foods With Andrew Zimmern" had its most-watched episode at 9 p.m.
Seventh Art Releasing
NEW YORK -- Filmmaker Nick Gaglia has based this debut feature on his own hellish experiences in a New Jersey rehab center that subsequently was shut down by the authorities. But while one can readily sympathize with what he must have gone through, it's not enough to excuse "Over the GW", which he wrote, directed, edited and photographed. As has been proved so many times before, good intentions don't excuse amateurish execution. The film recently received its U.S. theatrical premiere at the Two Boots Pioneer Theater in New York.
George Gallagher plays the role of the filmmaker's alter ego Tony Serra, a troubled Bronx teen who is shuttled off to a rehab center in Jersey (the title refers to the George Washington Bridge) by his concerned parents because of his drug and alcohol dependencies. His sister (Kether Donohue) is soon consigned to the same fate.
But what was supposed to be a 30-day stay stretches into 2 1/2 years. The siblings are subjected to brutal treatment at the hands of the center's clearly psychotic director (Albert Insinnia) and his cultlike employees, who deliver physical and emotional abuse in a variety of ways that the film depicts in harrowing fashion.
Unfortunately, the innate power of the story is dampened by a mainly incoherent script, lackluster direction, annoying cinematography that alternates between black-and-white and garish color and ineffective performances. Running a mere 76 minutes, the film seems to depict its characters' incarceration in all-too-real time.
NEW YORK -- Filmmaker Nick Gaglia has based this debut feature on his own hellish experiences in a New Jersey rehab center that subsequently was shut down by the authorities. But while one can readily sympathize with what he must have gone through, it's not enough to excuse "Over the GW", which he wrote, directed, edited and photographed. As has been proved so many times before, good intentions don't excuse amateurish execution. The film recently received its U.S. theatrical premiere at the Two Boots Pioneer Theater in New York.
George Gallagher plays the role of the filmmaker's alter ego Tony Serra, a troubled Bronx teen who is shuttled off to a rehab center in Jersey (the title refers to the George Washington Bridge) by his concerned parents because of his drug and alcohol dependencies. His sister (Kether Donohue) is soon consigned to the same fate.
But what was supposed to be a 30-day stay stretches into 2 1/2 years. The siblings are subjected to brutal treatment at the hands of the center's clearly psychotic director (Albert Insinnia) and his cultlike employees, who deliver physical and emotional abuse in a variety of ways that the film depicts in harrowing fashion.
Unfortunately, the innate power of the story is dampened by a mainly incoherent script, lackluster direction, annoying cinematography that alternates between black-and-white and garish color and ineffective performances. Running a mere 76 minutes, the film seems to depict its characters' incarceration in all-too-real time.
- 7/20/2007
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
This review was written for the theatrical screening of "Live Free or Die Hard".
The "analog" world strikes back in "Live Free or Die Hard". In his return to the signature character he originated in 1988's "Die Hard" and continued in two '90s sequels, Bruce Willis and his everyman hero, John McClane, use bare-knuckles brawn and brain to take on a computer-age villain bent on "virtual terrorism."
Meanwhile, the movie itself insists on keeping its almost nonstop stunts and action real with very little assistance from CGI. So when a car gets launched into the air to destroy a helicopter, or another car slams down an elevator shaft with McClane and the movie's bad girl clinging to its debris to duke it out to the death, it's all real. Well, maybe real isn't the right word: It's simply old-school stunts and movie magic.
Arriving with heavy marketing via outdoor ads and TV spots, this fourth "Die Hard" will light up the pre-July Fourth weekend and continue for many weeks more. Its broad appeal should make this one of summer's most certain hits.
There is scarcely a quiet moment in this movie's two-hour-plus running time as the filmmakers seem to have made a vow to up the ante in physical action with each passing minute. The early stunts involving gunfire and escape get the pulse racing. Then come flying cars, huge fireballs, collapsing freeways, leaping actors, a Harrier jet taking on a big rig and assorted hand-to-hand fights of increasing originality if not implausibility until one can only respond by laughing.
And to think it all begins with a routine if not mundane assignment for the NYPD detective: pick up a young computer hacker in New Jersey and bring him to the FBI in Washington for questioning. You do notice that McClane is not the same perky fellow he once was. His wife has divorced him, his daughter Mary Elizabeth Winstead) won't talk to him, and he's none too thrilled with police work anymore.
The hacker, Matt Farrell (Justin Long), starts to give him a hard time, which further exasperates McClane. Then a strange thing happens: Several heavy-duty assassins hit the hacker's apartment with all they've got. Somebody wants Matt dead real badly.
McClane and Matt barely escape, thus setting the pattern for a movie that now becomes a continual chase -- though who is chasing whom sometimes changes. It seems a mysterious cyber-geek is attacking the country's entire computer infrastructure with the intent of shutting everything down -- from traffic signals to Wall Street and from utilities to cell phones. Gradually, McClane realizes that the virtual terrorists want Matt dead because Matt might have unwittingly helped them in this task.
The figure behind the high-tech scheme is Thomas Gabriel (an immaculate and menacing Timothy Olyphant), a disgruntled former government security employee aided by various BWAs -- baddies with accents -- ranging from a cool Asian beauty (Hong Kong action star Maggie Q) to a Eurotrash muscleman (French action star Cyril Raffaelli). En route, McClane's daughter gets kidnapped, and the FBI's head honcho (Cliff Curtis) gets sidelined because all mobile phones cease to work.
Director Len Wiseman ("Underworld: Evolution") firmly establishes an atmosphere of chaos and confusion with a graceful camera and superior location work in dark alleys, building basements, fire escapes, elevator shafts, underground tunnels, freeway overpasses, jammed streets, smoldering piles, wrecked cars and any other place where humans can chase, shoot and kill each other.
Willis and Long make a great odd couple as they rumble from city to country and state to state in an odyssey of sheer endurance and survival. Willis supplies the muscle and wit -- his lines are always funny but never really mock the action -- while Long is alternatively scared and determined as the geek turns into a force of vengeance. Their on-the-run character byplay gives each scene an added oomph.
All actors playing bad guys have that evil spark that turn villainy into delicious malevolence. The most amusing casting belongs to filmmaker/Web site proprietor Kevin Smith, who turns up as a master hacker who never leaves his basement but might possess a key to taking Gabriel down.
Stunt work is among the best ever committed to film. There is something very satisfying in this digital age about an action film where CGI doesn't overwhelm, actors are in great physical shape and huge spaces are actual sets rather than virtual environments.
LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD
20th Century Fox
Dune Entertainment in association with Ingenious Film Partners
Credits:
Director: Len Wiseman
Screenwriter: Mark Bomback
Story by: Mark Bomback, David Marconi
Original characters created by: Roderick Thorp
Based on an article by: John Carlin
Producer: Michael Fottrell
Executive producers: Arnold Rifkin, William Wisher
Director of photography: Simon Duggan
Production designer: Patrick Tatopoulos
Music: Marco Beltrami
Co-producer: Stephen James Eads
Costume designer: Denise Wingate
Editor: Nicolas de Toth
Cast:
John McClane: Bruce Willis
Thomas Gabriel: Timothy Olyphant
Matt Farrell: Justin Long
Mai: Maggie Q
Bowman: Cliff Curtis
Trey: Jonathan Sadowski
Casper: Andrew Friedman
Warlock: Kevin Smith
Running time -- 128 minutes
MPAA rating: PG-13...
The "analog" world strikes back in "Live Free or Die Hard". In his return to the signature character he originated in 1988's "Die Hard" and continued in two '90s sequels, Bruce Willis and his everyman hero, John McClane, use bare-knuckles brawn and brain to take on a computer-age villain bent on "virtual terrorism."
Meanwhile, the movie itself insists on keeping its almost nonstop stunts and action real with very little assistance from CGI. So when a car gets launched into the air to destroy a helicopter, or another car slams down an elevator shaft with McClane and the movie's bad girl clinging to its debris to duke it out to the death, it's all real. Well, maybe real isn't the right word: It's simply old-school stunts and movie magic.
Arriving with heavy marketing via outdoor ads and TV spots, this fourth "Die Hard" will light up the pre-July Fourth weekend and continue for many weeks more. Its broad appeal should make this one of summer's most certain hits.
There is scarcely a quiet moment in this movie's two-hour-plus running time as the filmmakers seem to have made a vow to up the ante in physical action with each passing minute. The early stunts involving gunfire and escape get the pulse racing. Then come flying cars, huge fireballs, collapsing freeways, leaping actors, a Harrier jet taking on a big rig and assorted hand-to-hand fights of increasing originality if not implausibility until one can only respond by laughing.
And to think it all begins with a routine if not mundane assignment for the NYPD detective: pick up a young computer hacker in New Jersey and bring him to the FBI in Washington for questioning. You do notice that McClane is not the same perky fellow he once was. His wife has divorced him, his daughter Mary Elizabeth Winstead) won't talk to him, and he's none too thrilled with police work anymore.
The hacker, Matt Farrell (Justin Long), starts to give him a hard time, which further exasperates McClane. Then a strange thing happens: Several heavy-duty assassins hit the hacker's apartment with all they've got. Somebody wants Matt dead real badly.
McClane and Matt barely escape, thus setting the pattern for a movie that now becomes a continual chase -- though who is chasing whom sometimes changes. It seems a mysterious cyber-geek is attacking the country's entire computer infrastructure with the intent of shutting everything down -- from traffic signals to Wall Street and from utilities to cell phones. Gradually, McClane realizes that the virtual terrorists want Matt dead because Matt might have unwittingly helped them in this task.
The figure behind the high-tech scheme is Thomas Gabriel (an immaculate and menacing Timothy Olyphant), a disgruntled former government security employee aided by various BWAs -- baddies with accents -- ranging from a cool Asian beauty (Hong Kong action star Maggie Q) to a Eurotrash muscleman (French action star Cyril Raffaelli). En route, McClane's daughter gets kidnapped, and the FBI's head honcho (Cliff Curtis) gets sidelined because all mobile phones cease to work.
Director Len Wiseman ("Underworld: Evolution") firmly establishes an atmosphere of chaos and confusion with a graceful camera and superior location work in dark alleys, building basements, fire escapes, elevator shafts, underground tunnels, freeway overpasses, jammed streets, smoldering piles, wrecked cars and any other place where humans can chase, shoot and kill each other.
Willis and Long make a great odd couple as they rumble from city to country and state to state in an odyssey of sheer endurance and survival. Willis supplies the muscle and wit -- his lines are always funny but never really mock the action -- while Long is alternatively scared and determined as the geek turns into a force of vengeance. Their on-the-run character byplay gives each scene an added oomph.
All actors playing bad guys have that evil spark that turn villainy into delicious malevolence. The most amusing casting belongs to filmmaker/Web site proprietor Kevin Smith, who turns up as a master hacker who never leaves his basement but might possess a key to taking Gabriel down.
Stunt work is among the best ever committed to film. There is something very satisfying in this digital age about an action film where CGI doesn't overwhelm, actors are in great physical shape and huge spaces are actual sets rather than virtual environments.
LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD
20th Century Fox
Dune Entertainment in association with Ingenious Film Partners
Credits:
Director: Len Wiseman
Screenwriter: Mark Bomback
Story by: Mark Bomback, David Marconi
Original characters created by: Roderick Thorp
Based on an article by: John Carlin
Producer: Michael Fottrell
Executive producers: Arnold Rifkin, William Wisher
Director of photography: Simon Duggan
Production designer: Patrick Tatopoulos
Music: Marco Beltrami
Co-producer: Stephen James Eads
Costume designer: Denise Wingate
Editor: Nicolas de Toth
Cast:
John McClane: Bruce Willis
Thomas Gabriel: Timothy Olyphant
Matt Farrell: Justin Long
Mai: Maggie Q
Bowman: Cliff Curtis
Trey: Jonathan Sadowski
Casper: Andrew Friedman
Warlock: Kevin Smith
Running time -- 128 minutes
MPAA rating: PG-13...
- 6/27/2007
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Tribeca Film Festival
NEW YORK -- Representing the feature directorial debut of "Entourage" star Kevin Connolly, "The Gardener of Eden" plays like a slacker cross between "Death Wish" and "Taxi Driver". While its resolute strangeness and darkness are to be admired, the film never quite achieves a satisfying or coherent tone, with the result being that it lacks the necessary dramatic urgency or black humor to connect with audiences. Still, it demonstrates impressive risk taking, both by its neophyte director and star Lukas Haas, the latter delivering a memorably quirky performance.
Haas plays Adam Harris, a 25-year-old still living at home with his parents in New Jersey and working at the local deli. Lacking any direction in his life other than the elaborate bartering system he's working out with his similarly ambitionless friends, Adam finds himself sinking even further when he loses his job and gets cut off by his buddies.
His life changes dramatically when he lashes out at a stranger during a drunken range and accidentally winds up being responsible for the capture of a serial rapist who has just attacked a local girl (Erika Christensen). Celebrated by the community, he begins an awkward romantic relationship with the victim and decides to continue his crime-fighting ways. Rebuffed by the police when he shows up at the local stationhouse and demands a uniform, he becomes a sort of vigilante, with predictably disastrous results.
Adam "Tex" Davis' screenplay often goes out of its way to be outrageous, as evidenced by moments like the lead character's scooping out human brain matter from a tire tread after an unfortunate accident. Much of it feels forced, as with the character of a bike-riding drug dealer (an entertaining Giovanni Ribisi) who bears more than a slight resemblance to Harvey Keitel's "Taxi Driver" pimp.
But the film does have its resonant aspects, including the relationship between the young anti-hero and his bizarrely supportive father David Patrick Kelly). Director Connolly often makes the most of them in moments including a slow-motion, bare-chested instructive boxing match between the two characters.
He also has elicited fine work from the talented Haas, who provides complex shadings to his performance that give the film the illusion of a greater depth than it actually possesses.
THE GARDENER OF EDEN
Initial Entertainment Group
An Appian Way/The 7th Floor production
Credits:
Director: Kevin Connolly
Screenwriter: Adam "Tex" Davis
Producers: Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Simpson, Allen Bain
Executive producers: Graham King, Jesse Scolaro
Darren Goldberg, Lemore Syvan
Editors: Pete Beaudreau, Michael Berenbaum
Cinematographer: Lisa Rinzler
Production designer: Happy Massee
Composer: Paul Haslinger
Cast:
Adam Harris: Lukas Haas
Mona Hubley: Erika Christensen
Vic: Giovanni Ribisi
George the Greek: Jerry Ferrara
Don: Jon Abrahams
Spim: Jim Parsons
John Harris: David Patrick Kelly
Mom Harris: Ann Dowd
Bob Huxley: Tim Hopper
Uri: Ori Pfeffer
Running time -- 88 minutes
No MPAA rating...
NEW YORK -- Representing the feature directorial debut of "Entourage" star Kevin Connolly, "The Gardener of Eden" plays like a slacker cross between "Death Wish" and "Taxi Driver". While its resolute strangeness and darkness are to be admired, the film never quite achieves a satisfying or coherent tone, with the result being that it lacks the necessary dramatic urgency or black humor to connect with audiences. Still, it demonstrates impressive risk taking, both by its neophyte director and star Lukas Haas, the latter delivering a memorably quirky performance.
Haas plays Adam Harris, a 25-year-old still living at home with his parents in New Jersey and working at the local deli. Lacking any direction in his life other than the elaborate bartering system he's working out with his similarly ambitionless friends, Adam finds himself sinking even further when he loses his job and gets cut off by his buddies.
His life changes dramatically when he lashes out at a stranger during a drunken range and accidentally winds up being responsible for the capture of a serial rapist who has just attacked a local girl (Erika Christensen). Celebrated by the community, he begins an awkward romantic relationship with the victim and decides to continue his crime-fighting ways. Rebuffed by the police when he shows up at the local stationhouse and demands a uniform, he becomes a sort of vigilante, with predictably disastrous results.
Adam "Tex" Davis' screenplay often goes out of its way to be outrageous, as evidenced by moments like the lead character's scooping out human brain matter from a tire tread after an unfortunate accident. Much of it feels forced, as with the character of a bike-riding drug dealer (an entertaining Giovanni Ribisi) who bears more than a slight resemblance to Harvey Keitel's "Taxi Driver" pimp.
But the film does have its resonant aspects, including the relationship between the young anti-hero and his bizarrely supportive father David Patrick Kelly). Director Connolly often makes the most of them in moments including a slow-motion, bare-chested instructive boxing match between the two characters.
He also has elicited fine work from the talented Haas, who provides complex shadings to his performance that give the film the illusion of a greater depth than it actually possesses.
THE GARDENER OF EDEN
Initial Entertainment Group
An Appian Way/The 7th Floor production
Credits:
Director: Kevin Connolly
Screenwriter: Adam "Tex" Davis
Producers: Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Simpson, Allen Bain
Executive producers: Graham King, Jesse Scolaro
Darren Goldberg, Lemore Syvan
Editors: Pete Beaudreau, Michael Berenbaum
Cinematographer: Lisa Rinzler
Production designer: Happy Massee
Composer: Paul Haslinger
Cast:
Adam Harris: Lukas Haas
Mona Hubley: Erika Christensen
Vic: Giovanni Ribisi
George the Greek: Jerry Ferrara
Don: Jon Abrahams
Spim: Jim Parsons
John Harris: David Patrick Kelly
Mom Harris: Ann Dowd
Bob Huxley: Tim Hopper
Uri: Ori Pfeffer
Running time -- 88 minutes
No MPAA rating...
- 4/27/2007
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
TORONTO -- Giant-screen exhibitor Imax Corp. on Tuesday- unveiled its second profit-sharing joint venture theater deal in as many months, this time with Fort Lauderdale-based Muvico Theaters Inc.
Toronto-based Imax said Muvico will install three super-sized screens this year and next, the first two in St. Petersburg and West Palm Beach, Florida multiplexes, with the third going into the planned Xanadu project at the Meadowlands in East Rutherford, New Jersey.
In March, Imax announced its first multiple joint-venture theater deal (for five screens) with Regal Cinemas. The joint-venture deals are designed to give Imax a larger slice of the boxoffice and other theater revenues as Imax and the cinema operator share boxoffice revenues after both partners recover their startup costs.
"A big part of our strategy is to offer a premium movie experience that people can't get at home or in any other type of theater, and Imax furthers that objective," Muvico president and CEO Michael Whalen said in a statement.
Toronto-based Imax said Muvico will install three super-sized screens this year and next, the first two in St. Petersburg and West Palm Beach, Florida multiplexes, with the third going into the planned Xanadu project at the Meadowlands in East Rutherford, New Jersey.
In March, Imax announced its first multiple joint-venture theater deal (for five screens) with Regal Cinemas. The joint-venture deals are designed to give Imax a larger slice of the boxoffice and other theater revenues as Imax and the cinema operator share boxoffice revenues after both partners recover their startup costs.
"A big part of our strategy is to offer a premium movie experience that people can't get at home or in any other type of theater, and Imax furthers that objective," Muvico president and CEO Michael Whalen said in a statement.
- 4/18/2007
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Fashion entrepreneur and author Kimora Lee Simmons will add reality TV star to her resume when her unscripted sitcom debuts on the Style Network in the summer.
Tentatively titled Kimora, the series chronicles the professional life of the former model, who juggles a business team of publicists, managers, creative directors and fashion designers while dealing with her two daughters at their home in New Jersey, where they are surrounded by nannies, chefs, drivers and stylists.
"(Simmons) is refreshingly blunt, absolutely honest and outrageously entertaining," said Salaam Coleman Smith, executive vp at the Style Network. "This series is going to open a lot of women's eyes to the possibilities life has to offer."
Kimora was developed for the Style Network by Elaine Brooks. Steve Cantor and Carmen Mitcho will executive produce.
The St. Louis native began modeling as a teenager and has since written a book, "Fabulosity: What It Is and How to Get It," and developed a successful clothing line, Baby Phat.
Tentatively titled Kimora, the series chronicles the professional life of the former model, who juggles a business team of publicists, managers, creative directors and fashion designers while dealing with her two daughters at their home in New Jersey, where they are surrounded by nannies, chefs, drivers and stylists.
"(Simmons) is refreshingly blunt, absolutely honest and outrageously entertaining," said Salaam Coleman Smith, executive vp at the Style Network. "This series is going to open a lot of women's eyes to the possibilities life has to offer."
Kimora was developed for the Style Network by Elaine Brooks. Steve Cantor and Carmen Mitcho will executive produce.
The St. Louis native began modeling as a teenager and has since written a book, "Fabulosity: What It Is and How to Get It," and developed a successful clothing line, Baby Phat.
- 4/12/2007
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
NEW YORK -- Comcast Corp. has agreed to acquire the cable systems of privately held Patriot Media & Communications, which serves about 81,000 video subscribers, for about $483 million in cash.
Cable veteran Steven Simmons, Spectrum Equity Investors and Spire Capital own the company.
In the deal, Comcast will acquire cable systems in central New Jersey including Princeton, which are contiguous to Comcast markets.
The companies expect the transaction to close in the third quarter.
"Patriot Media systems are fully upgraded, have superior demographics, strong penetration of advanced products and best of all they geographically complement our systems in New Jersey," said Stephen Burke, Comcast COO and Comcast Cable president.
"We are very proud of the many things we have accomplished allowing our Central New Jersey customers to receive a superior television, high speed modem and digital telephone service," said Patriot chairman and CEO Simmons.
Cable veteran Steven Simmons, Spectrum Equity Investors and Spire Capital own the company.
In the deal, Comcast will acquire cable systems in central New Jersey including Princeton, which are contiguous to Comcast markets.
The companies expect the transaction to close in the third quarter.
"Patriot Media systems are fully upgraded, have superior demographics, strong penetration of advanced products and best of all they geographically complement our systems in New Jersey," said Stephen Burke, Comcast COO and Comcast Cable president.
"We are very proud of the many things we have accomplished allowing our Central New Jersey customers to receive a superior television, high speed modem and digital telephone service," said Patriot chairman and CEO Simmons.
NEW YORK -- Thirteen was a very lucky number Sunday night for WNBC-TV, with the NBC O&O taking home the most awards of any station in the 50th Annual New York Emmy Awards.
WNBC-TV won three of the best newscast honors including morning for "Today in New York", daytime for "Live at Five" and evening for "News Channel 4 at 11". WPIX-TV won the best hourlong newscast for "WB 11 News at 10", one of eight awards for the Tribune-owned station. Seven Emmys each went to WABC-TV, NYC TV and Thirteen/WNET.
Others winning multiple awards were WNYW Fox 5 (six); My 9 News WWOR (five); News 12 Connecticut (four); MLB Productions for YES Network (three); MSG Network (three); News 12 Long Island (three); WSKG (three). Bronxnet, R News (Rochester, N.Y.), SportsNet New York, WCBS, WGRZ and YES Network each won two awards.
Winning one local Emmy each were Comcast-MagRack, FSN New York, News 12 Interactive, News 12 New Jersey, News 12 Westchester, NJN Public Television, WIVB, WNJU Telemundo 47, WROC, WRNN, WXTV Univision 41, TBS and Time Warner Cable.
WWOR 9 investigative reporter Barbara Nevins Taylor won four awards, including for investigative series for "The Informant". WNYW Fox 5's Arnold Diaz won for his "Shame, Shame, Shame" series and won later in the night for on-camera talent and investigative series.
WNBC-TV won three of the best newscast honors including morning for "Today in New York", daytime for "Live at Five" and evening for "News Channel 4 at 11". WPIX-TV won the best hourlong newscast for "WB 11 News at 10", one of eight awards for the Tribune-owned station. Seven Emmys each went to WABC-TV, NYC TV and Thirteen/WNET.
Others winning multiple awards were WNYW Fox 5 (six); My 9 News WWOR (five); News 12 Connecticut (four); MLB Productions for YES Network (three); MSG Network (three); News 12 Long Island (three); WSKG (three). Bronxnet, R News (Rochester, N.Y.), SportsNet New York, WCBS, WGRZ and YES Network each won two awards.
Winning one local Emmy each were Comcast-MagRack, FSN New York, News 12 Interactive, News 12 New Jersey, News 12 Westchester, NJN Public Television, WIVB, WNJU Telemundo 47, WROC, WRNN, WXTV Univision 41, TBS and Time Warner Cable.
WWOR 9 investigative reporter Barbara Nevins Taylor won four awards, including for investigative series for "The Informant". WNYW Fox 5's Arnold Diaz won for his "Shame, Shame, Shame" series and won later in the night for on-camera talent and investigative series.
WASHINGTON -- Senate Democrats on Thursday pressured the five FCC commissioners to set programming requirements for broadcasters as part of the industry's mandate to operate in the public interest.
In the FCC's first appearance before the Senate Commerce Committee since the Democrats took control of Congress, the lawmakers weren't shy about voicing their objections to what appears on TV.
Sen. John Rockefeller, D-W.Va., called television a menu filled with "junk, sex and scandals." Rockefeller and other Democrats -- most notably Sens. Byron Dorgan of North Dakota and Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey -- complained that the FCC was abdicating its obligation to police the airwaves.
"I think TV is in the worst state it's ever been in," Rockefeller said. "I'm convinced the FCC has abandoned its core responsibility."
The lawmakers pushed FCC chairman Kevin Martin, a Republican, to commence a rule that would define exactly what programming constitutes the "public interest."
"It seems to me (that) the public-interest standards have been completely emasculated, and I'm hoping you will start a notice of proposed rulemaking on public-interest standards," Dorgan said.
In the FCC's first appearance before the Senate Commerce Committee since the Democrats took control of Congress, the lawmakers weren't shy about voicing their objections to what appears on TV.
Sen. John Rockefeller, D-W.Va., called television a menu filled with "junk, sex and scandals." Rockefeller and other Democrats -- most notably Sens. Byron Dorgan of North Dakota and Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey -- complained that the FCC was abdicating its obligation to police the airwaves.
"I think TV is in the worst state it's ever been in," Rockefeller said. "I'm convinced the FCC has abandoned its core responsibility."
The lawmakers pushed FCC chairman Kevin Martin, a Republican, to commence a rule that would define exactly what programming constitutes the "public interest."
"It seems to me (that) the public-interest standards have been completely emasculated, and I'm hoping you will start a notice of proposed rulemaking on public-interest standards," Dorgan said.
WASHINGTON -- Senate Democrats on Thursday pressured the five FCC commissioners to set programming requirements for broadcasters as part of the industry's mandate to operate in the public interest.
In the FCC's first appearance before the Senate Commerce Committee since the Democrats took control of Congress, the lawmakers weren't shy about voicing their objections to what appears on TV.
Sen. John Rockefeller, D-W.Va., called television a menu filled with "junk, sex and scandals." Rockefeller and other Democrats -- most notably Sens. Byron Dorgan of North Dakota and Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey -- complained that the FCC was abdicating its obligation to police the airwaves.
"I think TV is in the worst state it's ever been in," Rockefeller said. "I'm convinced the FCC has abandoned its core responsibility."
The lawmakers pushed FCC chairman Kevin Martin, a Republican, to commence a rule that would define exactly what programming constitutes the "public interest."
"It seems to me (that) the public-interest standards have been completely emasculated, and I'm hoping you will start a notice of proposed rulemaking on public-interest standards," Dorgan said.
In the FCC's first appearance before the Senate Commerce Committee since the Democrats took control of Congress, the lawmakers weren't shy about voicing their objections to what appears on TV.
Sen. John Rockefeller, D-W.Va., called television a menu filled with "junk, sex and scandals." Rockefeller and other Democrats -- most notably Sens. Byron Dorgan of North Dakota and Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey -- complained that the FCC was abdicating its obligation to police the airwaves.
"I think TV is in the worst state it's ever been in," Rockefeller said. "I'm convinced the FCC has abandoned its core responsibility."
The lawmakers pushed FCC chairman Kevin Martin, a Republican, to commence a rule that would define exactly what programming constitutes the "public interest."
"It seems to me (that) the public-interest standards have been completely emasculated, and I'm hoping you will start a notice of proposed rulemaking on public-interest standards," Dorgan said.
WASHINGTON -- Senate Democrats on Thursday pressured the five FCC commissioners to set programming requirements for broadcasters as part of the industry's mandate to operate in the public interest.
In the FCC's first appearance before the Senate Commerce Committee since the Democrats took control of Congress, the lawmakers weren't shy about voicing their objections to what appears on TV.
Sen. John Rockefeller, D-W.Va., called television a menu filled with "junk, sex and scandals." Rockefeller and other Democrats -- most notably Sens. Byron Dorgan of North Dakota and Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey -- complained that the FCC was abdicating its obligation to police the airwaves.
"I think TV is in the worst state it's ever been in," Rockefeller said. "I'm convinced the FCC has abandoned its core responsibility."
The lawmakers pushed FCC chairman Kevin Martin, a Republican, to commence a rule that would define exactly what programming constitutes the "public interest."
"It seems to me (that) the public-interest standards have been completely emasculated, and I'm hoping you will start a notice of proposed rulemaking on public-interest standards," Dorgan said.
In the FCC's first appearance before the Senate Commerce Committee since the Democrats took control of Congress, the lawmakers weren't shy about voicing their objections to what appears on TV.
Sen. John Rockefeller, D-W.Va., called television a menu filled with "junk, sex and scandals." Rockefeller and other Democrats -- most notably Sens. Byron Dorgan of North Dakota and Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey -- complained that the FCC was abdicating its obligation to police the airwaves.
"I think TV is in the worst state it's ever been in," Rockefeller said. "I'm convinced the FCC has abandoned its core responsibility."
The lawmakers pushed FCC chairman Kevin Martin, a Republican, to commence a rule that would define exactly what programming constitutes the "public interest."
"It seems to me (that) the public-interest standards have been completely emasculated, and I'm hoping you will start a notice of proposed rulemaking on public-interest standards," Dorgan said.
WASHINGTON -- Senate Democrats on Thursday pressured the five FCC commissioners to set programming requirements for broadcasters as part of the industry's mandate to operate in the public interest.
In the FCC's first appearance before the Senate Commerce Committee since the Democrats took control of Congress, the lawmakers weren't shy about voicing their objections to what appears on TV.
Sen. John Rockefeller, D-W.Va., called television a menu filled with "junk, sex and scandals." Rockefeller and other Democrats -- most notably Sens. Byron Dorgan of North Dakota and Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey -- complained that the FCC was abdicating its obligation to police the airwaves.
"I think TV is in the worst state it's ever been in," Rockefeller said. "I'm convinced the FCC has abandoned its core responsibility."
The lawmakers pushed FCC chairman Kevin Martin, a Republican, to commence a rule that would define exactly what programming constitutes the "public interest."
"It seems to me (that) the public-interest standards have been completely emasculated, and I'm hoping you will start a notice of proposed rulemaking on public-interest standards," Dorgan said.
In the FCC's first appearance before the Senate Commerce Committee since the Democrats took control of Congress, the lawmakers weren't shy about voicing their objections to what appears on TV.
Sen. John Rockefeller, D-W.Va., called television a menu filled with "junk, sex and scandals." Rockefeller and other Democrats -- most notably Sens. Byron Dorgan of North Dakota and Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey -- complained that the FCC was abdicating its obligation to police the airwaves.
"I think TV is in the worst state it's ever been in," Rockefeller said. "I'm convinced the FCC has abandoned its core responsibility."
The lawmakers pushed FCC chairman Kevin Martin, a Republican, to commence a rule that would define exactly what programming constitutes the "public interest."
"It seems to me (that) the public-interest standards have been completely emasculated, and I'm hoping you will start a notice of proposed rulemaking on public-interest standards," Dorgan said.
PARK CITY -- Based on a horrific expose of an international sex slave network, "Trade" is an earnest attempt to dramatize the network of Internet sex "tunnels." Unfortunately, the film's horrific and important subject matter is distilled into a lackluster lump of generic buddy-movie/road-picture components. "Trade" certainly will incite early boxoffice based on its provocative subject matter, but this humdrum film does little justice to the young girls who are prey to these bands of international slime.
Plotting along from the squalor of Mexico City, where brigands capture girls for delivery to New Jersey where they will be auctioned off on an Internet site, "Trade" lumbers along a plot course that, basically, explicates what a good documentary filmmaker could do in half the time and with considerably more of an emotional wallop.
The narrative centers on the cruel abduction of a Polish girl (Alicja Bachleda)and a 13-year-old Mexican girl (Paulina Gaitan) whose combative brother, Jorge (Cesar Ramos), sets off on a trans-America trail to find his younger sister. Careening into the U.S., Jorge runs smack dab into a U.S. lawman, Ray (Kevin Kline), who is on some sort of "insurance" case. Further down the road a piece, we learn Ray is an emotionally wounded cop on a personal mission.
While Kline bravely undertakes the role of lawman with a vendetta, walking as stiff as Dirty Harry and emoting as minimally as Chuck Norris, he never gets a handle on the role. Bathetic phone calls to his wife about their cat convince Jorge that he's dealing with a candy-ass gringo. At this juncture, "Trade" careens into battling-buddy territory as the macho Jorge and the stoic lawman trade barbs, complain about the other's music and eventually bond.
Unfortunately, screenwriter Jose Rivera's banter and dialogue is as leaden as his drab expositional structuring. The dialogue is so uninspired it's as if listening to someone reading subtitles. Similarly, Marco Kreuzpaintner's slow-footed direction never puts the pedal to the metal; in essence, this "important" road picture/chase/buddy movie is devoid of visual accelerants. It is further slowed by editor Hansjorg Weissbrich's tentative braking -- car driving and other padding consistently defuse the story line.
The musical score by Jacobo Lieberman and Leonardo Heiblum is in sync with the film's overall lackluster aesthetics: The music is dreary and listless, more apt as a midwinter Scandinavian overture to the tundra than a torrid expose of international sex slavery.
On the plus side, Ramos' charismatic and charged portrayal of the avenging brother is the film's highlight: Ramos packs energy and fire, combustions that this subject matter deserves. Plaudits also to Gaitan as the waifish Mexican girl who endures unspeakable degradations, as well as Bachleda for her sympathetic and steely performance as the abducted Polish beauty.
Unfortunately, Ray's cat cannot overcome the filmmaker's sloppy cutesiness, and we're left with a final, comic fillip that seems writ from "Walker, Texas Ranger".
TRADE
Lionsgate
A Centropolis Entertainment and VIP Medienfonds 4 production
Credits:
Producers: Roland Emmerich, Rosilyn Heller
Director: Marco Kreuzpaintner
Screenwriter: Jose Rivera
Story: Peter Landesman, Jose Rivera
Based on the New York Times Magazine article "The Girls Next Door" by: Peter Landesman
Executive producers: Ashok Amritraj, Robert Leger, Tom Ortenberg, Michael Wimer, Nick Hamson, Peter Landesman, Lars Sylvest
Director of photography: Daniel Gottschalk
Production designer: Bernt Capra
Editor: Hansjorg Weissbrich
Music: Jacobo Lieberman, Leonardo Heiblum
Costume designer: Carol Oditz
Cast:
Ray: Kevin Kline
Jorge: Cesar Ramos
Veronica: Alicja Bachleda
Adriana: Paulina Gaitan
Manuelo: Marco Perez
Laura: Kate del Castillo
Hank Jefferson: Tim Reid
Vadim Youchenko: Pasha Lynchnikoff
Running time -- 120 minutes
MPAA rating: R...
Plotting along from the squalor of Mexico City, where brigands capture girls for delivery to New Jersey where they will be auctioned off on an Internet site, "Trade" lumbers along a plot course that, basically, explicates what a good documentary filmmaker could do in half the time and with considerably more of an emotional wallop.
The narrative centers on the cruel abduction of a Polish girl (Alicja Bachleda)and a 13-year-old Mexican girl (Paulina Gaitan) whose combative brother, Jorge (Cesar Ramos), sets off on a trans-America trail to find his younger sister. Careening into the U.S., Jorge runs smack dab into a U.S. lawman, Ray (Kevin Kline), who is on some sort of "insurance" case. Further down the road a piece, we learn Ray is an emotionally wounded cop on a personal mission.
While Kline bravely undertakes the role of lawman with a vendetta, walking as stiff as Dirty Harry and emoting as minimally as Chuck Norris, he never gets a handle on the role. Bathetic phone calls to his wife about their cat convince Jorge that he's dealing with a candy-ass gringo. At this juncture, "Trade" careens into battling-buddy territory as the macho Jorge and the stoic lawman trade barbs, complain about the other's music and eventually bond.
Unfortunately, screenwriter Jose Rivera's banter and dialogue is as leaden as his drab expositional structuring. The dialogue is so uninspired it's as if listening to someone reading subtitles. Similarly, Marco Kreuzpaintner's slow-footed direction never puts the pedal to the metal; in essence, this "important" road picture/chase/buddy movie is devoid of visual accelerants. It is further slowed by editor Hansjorg Weissbrich's tentative braking -- car driving and other padding consistently defuse the story line.
The musical score by Jacobo Lieberman and Leonardo Heiblum is in sync with the film's overall lackluster aesthetics: The music is dreary and listless, more apt as a midwinter Scandinavian overture to the tundra than a torrid expose of international sex slavery.
On the plus side, Ramos' charismatic and charged portrayal of the avenging brother is the film's highlight: Ramos packs energy and fire, combustions that this subject matter deserves. Plaudits also to Gaitan as the waifish Mexican girl who endures unspeakable degradations, as well as Bachleda for her sympathetic and steely performance as the abducted Polish beauty.
Unfortunately, Ray's cat cannot overcome the filmmaker's sloppy cutesiness, and we're left with a final, comic fillip that seems writ from "Walker, Texas Ranger".
TRADE
Lionsgate
A Centropolis Entertainment and VIP Medienfonds 4 production
Credits:
Producers: Roland Emmerich, Rosilyn Heller
Director: Marco Kreuzpaintner
Screenwriter: Jose Rivera
Story: Peter Landesman, Jose Rivera
Based on the New York Times Magazine article "The Girls Next Door" by: Peter Landesman
Executive producers: Ashok Amritraj, Robert Leger, Tom Ortenberg, Michael Wimer, Nick Hamson, Peter Landesman, Lars Sylvest
Director of photography: Daniel Gottschalk
Production designer: Bernt Capra
Editor: Hansjorg Weissbrich
Music: Jacobo Lieberman, Leonardo Heiblum
Costume designer: Carol Oditz
Cast:
Ray: Kevin Kline
Jorge: Cesar Ramos
Veronica: Alicja Bachleda
Adriana: Paulina Gaitan
Manuelo: Marco Perez
Laura: Kate del Castillo
Hank Jefferson: Tim Reid
Vadim Youchenko: Pasha Lynchnikoff
Running time -- 120 minutes
MPAA rating: R...
- 1/25/2007
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
IndieVest Inc. CEO and founder Wade H. Bradley on Thursday announced the formation of IndieVest Pictures, an independent feature film company dedicated to bringing midlevel budget films to the marketplace.
Mark Burton, who executive produced Deepa Mehta's Water, has been tapped president of production. Matt Wall has been named vp development. A president of distribution will be announced soon.
IndieVest Pictures is launching its film slate by acquiring Tanuja Desai Hidier's novel Born Confused, a coming-of-age story about a 16-year-old New Jersey teen who is an only child to loving East Indian parents. Reggie Miller and Gail D'Agostino will produce.
Burton's producing credits include Chad Lowe's Beautiful Ohio and Santosh Sivan's The Terrorist.
Wall segues to IndieVest with more than 10 years of experience working in the acquisitions and co-production departments at New Line Cinema and Universal Pictures. He co-founded Rogue Pictures, which at the time was a genre production and releasing division of October Films. He also was a development and acquisitions executive at USA Films, which released several Academy Award-winning and -nominated films including Traffic and Gosford Park.
Mark Burton, who executive produced Deepa Mehta's Water, has been tapped president of production. Matt Wall has been named vp development. A president of distribution will be announced soon.
IndieVest Pictures is launching its film slate by acquiring Tanuja Desai Hidier's novel Born Confused, a coming-of-age story about a 16-year-old New Jersey teen who is an only child to loving East Indian parents. Reggie Miller and Gail D'Agostino will produce.
Burton's producing credits include Chad Lowe's Beautiful Ohio and Santosh Sivan's The Terrorist.
Wall segues to IndieVest with more than 10 years of experience working in the acquisitions and co-production departments at New Line Cinema and Universal Pictures. He co-founded Rogue Pictures, which at the time was a genre production and releasing division of October Films. He also was a development and acquisitions executive at USA Films, which released several Academy Award-winning and -nominated films including Traffic and Gosford Park.
- 1/19/2007
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
IndieVest Inc. CEO and founder Wade H. Bradley on Thursday announced the formation of IndieVest Pictures, an independent feature film company dedicated to bringing midlevel budget films to the marketplace.
Mark Burton, who executive produced Deepa Mehta's "Water", has been tapped president of production. Matt Wall has been named vp development. A president of distribution will be announced soon.
IndieVest Pictures is launching its film slate by acquiring Tanuja Desai Hidier's novel "Born Confused", a coming-of-age story about a 16-year-old New Jersey teen who is an only child to loving East Indian parents. Reggie Miller and Gail D'Agostino will produce.
Burton's producing credits include Chad Lowe's "Beautiful Ohio" and Santosh Sivan's "The Terrorist".
Wall segues to IndieVest with more than 10 years of experience working in the acquisitions and co-production departments at New Line Cinema and Universal Pictures. He co-founded Rogue Pictures, which at the time was a genre production and releasing division of October Films. He also was a development and acquisitions executive at USA Films, which released several Academy Award-winning and -nominated films including "Traffic" and "Gosford Park".
Mark Burton, who executive produced Deepa Mehta's "Water", has been tapped president of production. Matt Wall has been named vp development. A president of distribution will be announced soon.
IndieVest Pictures is launching its film slate by acquiring Tanuja Desai Hidier's novel "Born Confused", a coming-of-age story about a 16-year-old New Jersey teen who is an only child to loving East Indian parents. Reggie Miller and Gail D'Agostino will produce.
Burton's producing credits include Chad Lowe's "Beautiful Ohio" and Santosh Sivan's "The Terrorist".
Wall segues to IndieVest with more than 10 years of experience working in the acquisitions and co-production departments at New Line Cinema and Universal Pictures. He co-founded Rogue Pictures, which at the time was a genre production and releasing division of October Films. He also was a development and acquisitions executive at USA Films, which released several Academy Award-winning and -nominated films including "Traffic" and "Gosford Park".
- 1/18/2007
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
NEW YORK -- The NFL Network and Cablevision agreed Friday to carry the channel for a weeklong free preview beginning Christmas Eve that will include the Texas Bowl featuring Rutgers.
Cablevision will carry the Texas Bowl on its basic cable channel 14, which is available to every one of its customers, on the evening of Dec. 28. And it will carry the originally offered free preview Dec. 24-30 on a digital basic tier similar to the one that the NFL Network will carry the channel on at the same time.
The deal comes after two days of harsh words between Cablevision and the NFL Network, which don't have a regular carriage agreement. Without a temporary one, Cablevision's customers in New York and New Jersey wouldn't be able to watch the Texas Bowl featuring the New Jersey college Rutgers.
"In the spirit of the season, let's do both," wrote Cablevision COO Thomas Rutledge in response to the NFL Network's Friday deadline to decide whether to carry the channel as a free preview from Dec.
Cablevision will carry the Texas Bowl on its basic cable channel 14, which is available to every one of its customers, on the evening of Dec. 28. And it will carry the originally offered free preview Dec. 24-30 on a digital basic tier similar to the one that the NFL Network will carry the channel on at the same time.
The deal comes after two days of harsh words between Cablevision and the NFL Network, which don't have a regular carriage agreement. Without a temporary one, Cablevision's customers in New York and New Jersey wouldn't be able to watch the Texas Bowl featuring the New Jersey college Rutgers.
"In the spirit of the season, let's do both," wrote Cablevision COO Thomas Rutledge in response to the NFL Network's Friday deadline to decide whether to carry the channel as a free preview from Dec.
- 12/22/2006
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
NEW YORK -- The NFL Network and Cablevision agreed Friday to carry the channel for a weeklong free preview beginning Christmas Eve that will include the Texas Bowl featuring Rutgers.
Cablevision will carry the Texas Bowl on its basic cable channel 14, which is available to every one of its customers, on the evening of Dec. 28. And it will carry the originally offered free preview Dec. 24-30 on a digital basic tier similar to the one that the NFL Network will carry the channel on at the same time.
The deal comes after two days of harsh words between Cablevision and the NFL Network, which don't have a regular carriage agreement. Without a temporary one, Cablevision's customers in New York and New Jersey wouldn't be able to watch the Texas Bowl featuring the New Jersey college Rutgers.
"In the spirit of the season, let's do both," wrote Cablevision COO Thomas Rutledge in response to the NFL Network's Friday deadline to decide whether to carry the channel as a free preview from Dec.
Cablevision will carry the Texas Bowl on its basic cable channel 14, which is available to every one of its customers, on the evening of Dec. 28. And it will carry the originally offered free preview Dec. 24-30 on a digital basic tier similar to the one that the NFL Network will carry the channel on at the same time.
The deal comes after two days of harsh words between Cablevision and the NFL Network, which don't have a regular carriage agreement. Without a temporary one, Cablevision's customers in New York and New Jersey wouldn't be able to watch the Texas Bowl featuring the New Jersey college Rutgers.
"In the spirit of the season, let's do both," wrote Cablevision COO Thomas Rutledge in response to the NFL Network's Friday deadline to decide whether to carry the channel as a free preview from Dec.
- 12/22/2006
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
NEW YORK -- A&E wants to score points with an innovative online game aimed at attracting viewers to the The Sopranos, which begins its syndicated run on the cable channel Jan. 10.
The Sopranos A&E Connection, which will be played at SuitcaseOfCash.com in synch with A&E's broadcast of the HBO series, is equal parts interactive promotion, fantasy league and scavenger hunt. Designed to let the cable network put its own stamp on the New Jersey mob clan, the game will coincide with an aggressive campaign to promote a cleaned-up version of Sopranos, for which A&E will pay $2.5 million per episode.
In the promotion, which began Friday, consumers can collect virtual game pieces, 36 in all, by clicking on them online or snapping photos of Sopranos print, outdoor and TV ads with digital and mobile-phone cameras and uploading them to the Web. The pieces include characters, locations and objects connected to the show, as well as the titular family's favorite food, beverages, clothes and accessories.
"It's the first clickable real-world ad campaign," A&E vp advertising and consumer marketing Lori Peterzell said. "It extends the meaning of paid communications. I don't know anyone who's done this type of engagement before."
Before the 9 p.m. Wednesday airing of the episodes, players -- who also can compete in teams -- will arrange their pieces on an Internet game board.
The Sopranos A&E Connection, which will be played at SuitcaseOfCash.com in synch with A&E's broadcast of the HBO series, is equal parts interactive promotion, fantasy league and scavenger hunt. Designed to let the cable network put its own stamp on the New Jersey mob clan, the game will coincide with an aggressive campaign to promote a cleaned-up version of Sopranos, for which A&E will pay $2.5 million per episode.
In the promotion, which began Friday, consumers can collect virtual game pieces, 36 in all, by clicking on them online or snapping photos of Sopranos print, outdoor and TV ads with digital and mobile-phone cameras and uploading them to the Web. The pieces include characters, locations and objects connected to the show, as well as the titular family's favorite food, beverages, clothes and accessories.
"It's the first clickable real-world ad campaign," A&E vp advertising and consumer marketing Lori Peterzell said. "It extends the meaning of paid communications. I don't know anyone who's done this type of engagement before."
Before the 9 p.m. Wednesday airing of the episodes, players -- who also can compete in teams -- will arrange their pieces on an Internet game board.
- 12/15/2006
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
NEW YORK -- A&E wants to score points with an innovative online game aimed at attracting viewers to the The Sopranos, which begins its syndicated run on the cable channel Jan. 10.
The Sopranos A&E Connection, which will be played at SuitcaseOfCash.com in synch with A&E's broadcast of the HBO series, is equal parts interactive promotion, fantasy league and scavenger hunt. Designed to let the cable network put its own stamp on the New Jersey mob clan, the game will coincide with an aggressive campaign to promote a cleaned-up version of Sopranos, for which A&E will pay $2.5 million per episode.
In the promotion, which began Friday, consumers can collect virtual game pieces, 36 in all, by clicking on them online or snapping photos of Sopranos print, outdoor and TV ads with digital and mobile-phone cameras and uploading them to the Web. The pieces include characters, locations and objects connected to the show, as well as the titular family's favorite food, beverages, clothes and accessories.
"It's the first clickable real-world ad campaign," A&E vp advertising and consumer marketing Lori Peterzell said. "It extends the meaning of paid communications. I don't know anyone who's done this type of engagement before."
Before the 9 p.m. Wednesday airing of the episodes, players -- who also can compete in teams -- will arrange their pieces on an Internet game board.
The Sopranos A&E Connection, which will be played at SuitcaseOfCash.com in synch with A&E's broadcast of the HBO series, is equal parts interactive promotion, fantasy league and scavenger hunt. Designed to let the cable network put its own stamp on the New Jersey mob clan, the game will coincide with an aggressive campaign to promote a cleaned-up version of Sopranos, for which A&E will pay $2.5 million per episode.
In the promotion, which began Friday, consumers can collect virtual game pieces, 36 in all, by clicking on them online or snapping photos of Sopranos print, outdoor and TV ads with digital and mobile-phone cameras and uploading them to the Web. The pieces include characters, locations and objects connected to the show, as well as the titular family's favorite food, beverages, clothes and accessories.
"It's the first clickable real-world ad campaign," A&E vp advertising and consumer marketing Lori Peterzell said. "It extends the meaning of paid communications. I don't know anyone who's done this type of engagement before."
Before the 9 p.m. Wednesday airing of the episodes, players -- who also can compete in teams -- will arrange their pieces on an Internet game board.
- 12/10/2006
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Echo Bridge Entertainment
NEW YORK -- Arriving just a few weeks after the similarly sloshed "Beerfest", "Artie Lange's Beer League" is yet another ode to the pleasures of overindulgence. The experience of watching this loosely plotted comedy set in the suburbs of New Jersey is somewhat akin to spending a nice Summer Day playing softball with your friends. Only without the sun, the fresh air, the exercise or the fun.
Well, the last is not entirely true. "Beer League", for all its ramshackle qualities, actually does offer a few lowbrow laughs along the way. Lange (best known these days as Howard Stern's on-air sidekick), who produced, co-wrote and stars, displays an amiably relaxed screen presence that makes the film not entirely unpleasant to sit through.
Here he plays a character clearly not too far from his own persona. A heavy drinker, smoker and heavyweight in general, the unemployed Lange is the sort of guy who pronounces the word "whore" with two syllables.
The plot, such as it is, has to do with Lange's rivalry with a sleazy, Speedo-wearing gym-owner (Anthony De Sando) who heads an opposing softball league and his burgeoning romance with Linda (Cara Buono), a woman who has been around the block a few times and is willing to sleep with him after she has had a few drinks.
Directed by co-writer Frank Sebastiano as if he was doing it on weekends in his spare time, the film trafficks in the expected vulgarity, with one lengthy sequence devoted to a prostitute's ability to propel pingpong balls in a particularly intimate fashion.
Among the familiar names and faces on display who were clearly paying off some kind of debt are: Laurie Metcalf, as Lange's rather too close mother; Seymour Cassel, no doubt sadly remembering that he used to work with the likes of John Cassavetes; Ralph Macchio, still maintaining his "Karate Kid" wholesomeness; and Louis Lombardi, best known as the late, lamented Edgar Stiles on "24."...
NEW YORK -- Arriving just a few weeks after the similarly sloshed "Beerfest", "Artie Lange's Beer League" is yet another ode to the pleasures of overindulgence. The experience of watching this loosely plotted comedy set in the suburbs of New Jersey is somewhat akin to spending a nice Summer Day playing softball with your friends. Only without the sun, the fresh air, the exercise or the fun.
Well, the last is not entirely true. "Beer League", for all its ramshackle qualities, actually does offer a few lowbrow laughs along the way. Lange (best known these days as Howard Stern's on-air sidekick), who produced, co-wrote and stars, displays an amiably relaxed screen presence that makes the film not entirely unpleasant to sit through.
Here he plays a character clearly not too far from his own persona. A heavy drinker, smoker and heavyweight in general, the unemployed Lange is the sort of guy who pronounces the word "whore" with two syllables.
The plot, such as it is, has to do with Lange's rivalry with a sleazy, Speedo-wearing gym-owner (Anthony De Sando) who heads an opposing softball league and his burgeoning romance with Linda (Cara Buono), a woman who has been around the block a few times and is willing to sleep with him after she has had a few drinks.
Directed by co-writer Frank Sebastiano as if he was doing it on weekends in his spare time, the film trafficks in the expected vulgarity, with one lengthy sequence devoted to a prostitute's ability to propel pingpong balls in a particularly intimate fashion.
Among the familiar names and faces on display who were clearly paying off some kind of debt are: Laurie Metcalf, as Lange's rather too close mother; Seymour Cassel, no doubt sadly remembering that he used to work with the likes of John Cassavetes; Ralph Macchio, still maintaining his "Karate Kid" wholesomeness; and Louis Lombardi, best known as the late, lamented Edgar Stiles on "24."...
- 9/19/2006
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
NEW YORK -- R. Anthony Cort launched a martial arts channel called MAC Experience last month via his media firm Breakthrough Interactive Group, but he didn't do it in a deal with big cable or satellite TV operators. Instead, with his channel stuck in limbo because of a lack of major distribution agreements, he struck a deal with Narrowstep Inc., a 4-year-old IPTV and Internet video technology firm based in London with offices in New York and New Jersey. "We looked at (EchoStar) and DirecTV, and they thought we might work together as well," Cort said. "There are 28,000 martial arts schools in 4,400 cities in the U.S. alone, so the potential interest (in martial arts programming) is huge. But the costs associated with building a traditional network without the support of a major media company behind us became daunting."...
NEW YORK -- R. Anthony Cort launched a martial arts channel called MAC Experience last month via his media firm Breakthrough Interactive Group, but he didn't do it in a deal with big cable or satellite TV operators. Instead, with his channel stuck in limbo because of a lack of major distribution agreements, he struck a deal with Narrowstep Inc., a 4-year-old IPTV and Internet video technology firm based in London with offices in New York and New Jersey. "We looked at (EchoStar) and DirecTV, and they thought we might work together as well," Cort said. "There are 28,000 martial arts schools in 4,400 cities in the U.S. alone, so the potential interest (in martial arts programming) is huge. But the costs associated with building a traditional network without the support of a major media company behind us became daunting."...
- 8/31/2006
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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