March 11, 2011
‘Limitless’? Not Hollywood, says Robert De Niro
By Lauri Neff
NEW YORK (AP) – Despite his years in film, Robert De Niro says he still can’t do anything he wants in Hollywood.
He notes the troubles and delays he experienced with “The Good Shepherd,” the 2006 CIA tale that he directed and starred in. De Niro doubts he could make a similar film now. He says people don’t really want to do “those kind of movies” nowadays.
Still, De Niro says he does have a choice of roles that other actors would envy and that he “can’t complain.”
The actor’s latest film, “Limitless,” debuts in theaters March 18.
In it, De Niro plays a mega-mogul. Co-star Bradley Cooper plays an unsuccessful writer whose life is transformed after he discovers a secret drug that allows him to use 100 percent of his brain.
Hit documentary back on Mexico screens amid battle
Peter Orsi
MEXICO CITY (AP) – An acclaimed documentary that shines an unflattering light on Mexico’s secretive legal system was back in the country’s theaters Wednesday after an appeals court overturned a judge’s order blocking screenings.
A day after the ruling, theater chain Cinepolis said it would resume showing the film immediately.
Cinepolis, which is also acting as distributor for the movie, said it was notifying other chains of its decision and they also would resume screenings.
“We invite the general public to see ‘Presumed Guilty’ starting at this moment,” a company statement said.
“Presumed Guilty” – or “Presunto Culpable” in its original Spanish – won the audience award for best international feature at the 2010 Los Angeles Film Festival.
It centers on 26-year-old Antonio Zuniga, who was convicted of a 2005 murder on scant evidence. The process was documented by his lawyers, who filmed the hearings with the permission of the trial judge.
The film opened across Mexico on Feb. 18 and was the second-most viewed film in the country over the weekend.
However, it has been caught up in a legal battle after the chief prosecution witness – Victor Manuel Reyes Bravo, a relative of the murder victim – filed a complaint charging the movie violates his right to privacy.
A judge in Mexico City ordered authorities last week to halt showings pending hearings on the complaint, and Cinepolis pulled “Presumed Guilty” on Monday.
The following day a Mexico City appeals court ruled that suspending the film violated freedom of information guarantees.
Cinepolis also said in its statement that it would defend the film in court Friday.
“Cinepolis appreciates the result of the court’s ruling and hopes that the (upcoming) hearing develops in a favorable way to maintain the showing of ‘Presunto Culpable,'” the company said.
Sony adds extra features to iTunes movies
LOS ANGELES (AP) – Some of Sony Corp.’s movies sold through Apple Inc.’s iTunes store are now available with extra features that enable people to search scenes for actors and bits of dialogue by typing terms into a computer.
Other features allow viewers to choose clips to share on Facebook and Twitter and check where songs from a soundtrack appear. A link to the iTunes store makes music purchases easy.
All three features are available now on “Burlesque” and “The Others Guys.” The non-music features are available on “Salt” and “Resident Evil: Afterlife” and will be available on “The Tourist,” when it is released March 22.
Studio Senior Vice President Rich Berger said in a statement that adding the features boosts the value of Sony’s digital movies and makes them more collectable.
‘Conversations with Scorsese’ well worth a listen
By Douglass K. Daniel
“Conversations with Scorsese” (Knopf), by Richard Schickel: Whether you agree that Martin Scorsese is the greatest filmmaker of his generation, there can be little argument that he’s the most loquacious. His presence in documentaries and on video commentaries about movies, his own and those of others, can seem as ubiquitous as that of film critic and historian Richard Schickel.
Putting them together is a perfect pairing for an epic discourse about the movies.
Schickel’s “Conversations with Scorsese” offers nearly 400 pages of Q-and-A between the two, covering not only Scorsese’s career but, more broadly, the art of making movies and the joy they share in watching them. It’s likely to stand as the definitive source for Scorsese’s views because he is so engaged – and because Schickel knows just the questions to ask.
Scorsese, now 68, reflects on how his upbringing in a Sicilian neighborhood in New York’s Lower East Side influenced films such as “Mean Streets,” ”Taxi Driver,” ”Goodfellas” and “The Departed.” The emotions he felt – anger and rage, loneliness and fear – were muted in life but memorably expressed in the violent confrontations that mark his best-known work.
The young Scorsese found refuge from the drama playing out on the streets and at home in the movie theater and in church. As a child he drew pictures after seeing “High Noon” and other movies. (To this day, Scorsese draws nearly every shot he plans for his films.) Later, as the one-time altar boy took college courses in film, he asked a priest if it would be sinful to watch movies condemned by the Catholic Church (not if it was for his studies, he was told).
The films of Hollywood director John Ford influenced Scorsese, but New York maverick John Cassavetes inspired him when he began directing features. Schickel gives each of Scorsese’s two dozen films their own chapters. Other topics – color and music, for example – merit separate sections, too, making the book reader-friendly without taking away the pleasure of discovering what lies behind Scorsese’s cinematic obsessions.
Significantly, the book is a reminder that Scorsese’s range is wide and deep: comedies (“After Hours,” ”The King of Comedy”), biopics (“Raging Bull,” ”The Aviator”), thrillers (“Cape Fear,” ”Shutter Island”) and documentaries (“The Last Waltz,” ”Shine a Light”).
This isn’t meant to be a biography. Most personal matters, such as Scorsese’s five marriages, are passed over and their influence on his films unexplored. Not so the drug use and emotional and physical meltdowns that affected his work.
Schickel makes no secret that he is a fan and a friend. Still, he challenges the director, presses a point and states outright whether a particular film works for him. He also manages to keep Scorsese on topic without missing an opportunity to explore an interesting tangent.
And there are plenty of tangents – just what you would expect in a spirited back-and-forth between two cinephiles at the top of their game.
Douglass K. Daniel is the author of “Tough as Nails: The Life and Films of Richard Brooks” (University of Wisconsin Press).
Film rights sold to NYT article on Gulf oil spill
LOS ANGELES (AP) – The New York Times’ dramatic 8,500-word story about the April 20, 2010, oil rig explosion off Louisiana’s Gulf Coast, which killed 11 people and led to the worst spill in U.S. history, is being made into a movie.
Summit Entertainment, Participant Media and Imagenation Abu Dhabi said Tuesday that they have acquired the film rights to the article, “Deepwater Horizon’s Final Hour,” published on Dec. 25 and written by David Barstow, David Rohde and Stephanie Saul.
Matthew Sand will write the screenplay. Talks are ongoing to have “Transformers” producer Lorenzo Di Bonaventura produce the project under his Di Bonaventura Pictures banner.
Summit, the studio behind the “Twilight” franchise, said the film will portray the heroism of Deepwater’s crew and evoke the raw emotion depicted in the newspaper piece.
Case over Golden Globes rights headed to trial
By Anthony McCartney
LOS ANGELES (AP) – A federal judge on Monday refused to dismiss a lawsuit by the organizers of the Golden Globe Awards, setting up a trial later this year to decide who will broadcast the star-studded show for most of the remainder of the decade.
U.S. District Judge Valerie Baker Fairbank issued a tentative ruling Monday denying a bid by show producer Dick Clark Productions to dismiss the case. She will now decide who owns the broadcast rights during a trial scheduled to begin on Sept. 6 in Los Angeles.
The Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which organizes the Globes awards, sued DCP and its new owners last year, claiming they sold broadcast rights to NBC through 2018 without proper permission.
They claim the rights to the show were sold for less than they were worth, and that DCP and Red Zone Capital Partners only had rights to produce the show through 2011. The judge will have to review several contracts entered into over the years betw een the HFPA and DCP to decide who owns the broadcast rights.
The organization had sought a trial date this summer that it can negotiate a new television deal and possibly find a new producer if it wins.
Other claims of copyright infringement and seeking an accounting of profits will be decided later.
“We will continue the fight to reclaim all of our rights” said Philip Berk, president of the roughly 90-member HFPA.
“Now that their attempt to evade responsibility for their bad-faith conduct has been rejected, we look forward to presenting our evidence at trial – and to establishing once and for all that no sale of any rights connected to the Globes is possible without the HFPA’s participation and consent,” the association’s attorney Linda J. Smith said in a statement.
Dick Clark Productions said it would wait until the judge’s final written ruling is issued before commenting.
Clooney film finishes Cincinnati-area scenes
CINCINNATI (AP) – Hometown hero George Clooney and the cast and crew of “Ides of March” have finished filming in the Cincinnati and northern Kentucky areas and are moving on to Detroit.
The Cincinnati Enquirer reports that, over three-and-a-half weeks ending Friday, as many as 20 sites were filmed, including Xavier University and Fountain Square in Cincinnati and Miami University in Oxford, where students were extras in a scene depicting a presidential primary debate
Clooney acts in and directs the film about a presidential campaign. It’s his first movie to have filming in the area where he grew up.
The Oscar-winning actor was born in Lexington, Ky., and grew up in Cincinnati area communities.
Film publicist Tracey Schaefer says about 90 percent of the story is set in Cincinnati, northern Kentucky and Oxford.
British director Charles Jarrott dies in LA at 83
LOS ANGELES (AP) – British director Charles Jarrott, whose career of nearly 50 years in film and television included the acclaimed British royalty dramas “Anne of the Thousand Days” and “Mary, Queen of Scots,” has died, a spokeswoman said Saturday. He was 83.
Jarrott, who had been suffering from prostate cancer, died Friday night at the Woodland Hills retirement community operated by the Motion Picture & Television Fund, the organization’s spokeswoman Jaime Larkin said.
The London-born Jarrott served in the Royal Navy during World War II and was an actor before taking up directing in 1954. He worked mostly in television, then went on to direct a prominent string of feature films in the 1960s and 1970s.
He won a Golden Globe for directing Richard Burton as Henry VIII in 1969’s “Anne of the Thousand Days,” which told the story of the Tudor monarch and Anne Boleyn.
Two years later, he returned with the similarly themed “Mary, Queen of Scots,” with Vanessa Redgrave in the title role.
The two films, produced by Hollywood legend and “Casablanca” producer Hal Wallis, were nominated for a combined 15 Academy Awards.
He went on to direct 1974’s “The Doves,” 1976’s “The Littlest Horse Thieves,” and 1977’s “The Other Side of Midnight,” starring John Beck and Susan Sarandon.
He returned to television in his career’s final decades, winning an Emmy for the 1995 made-for-TV movie “A Promise Kept: The Oksana Baiul Story.”
He directed one final feature film, “Turn of Faith” with Charles Durning in 2002.
Weinsteins’ Oscar mastery resurfaces post-‘Avatar’
Ryan Nakashima, Business Writer
LOS ANGELES (AP) – Without the colossus “Avatar” in the mix, the Weinstein brothers resumed weaving their spell over the Oscar awards season and spinning critical acclaim into box office gold.
“The King’s Speech” reaped the biggest benefit from ticket sales among the 10 contenders for best picture – $57 million – since it garnered 12 nominations a month ago.
Bob and Harvey Weinstein, the backers of the movie through The Weinstein Co., previously rode nominations for “The English Patient” to a global gross of $232 million in 1997 as the heads of Miramax, where they pulled in 17 best picture nominations and four wins.
This year, the tale of a stuttering English monarch became the first best picture they have won as heads of The Weinstein Co. since starting it in 2005, but it fit a pattern they have well helped establish.
The Oscars proved again that good taste has its rewards.
Released in just four theater locations in late November, “The King’s Speech” grew through critical acclaim and smaller awards to play in 1,680 locations in the U.S. and Canada on Jan. 21, four days before the Oscar nominations. The studio bumped the count to 2,557 immediately after.
The movie’s take nearly doubled, rising from $58 million in ticket sales to $115 million through the weekend of the Oscars over a period in a movie’s life that usually finds box office receipts dwindling quickly. It’s now made $221 million in theaters worldwide.
“You’ve got to give them credit,” said Tom Sherak, president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. “Once something catches on with both the critics and word of mouth, it starts to morph. … They’re good at it.”
The Weinsteins’ campaign got another boost on Friday, when the Motion Picture Association of America’s ratings board granted a more tame PG-13 rating to an alternate version of “The King’s Speech,” in which many of the F-bombs have been muted. The original got an R rating for the multiple swears unleashed by King George VI, played by Colin Firth, while he struggles to overcome his speech problem.
The rating means more families will consider taking their children to see it, substantially widening the audience. The decision was unprecedented in the ratings system’s 43-year history because the board granted a waiver of a 90-day waiting period meant to prevent confusion in the marketplace.
The ruling allows the studio to immediately replace the R-rated version with the PG-13 version as long as it does so in one fell swoop.
Oddly, some viewers will end up seeing a movie that is slightly different from the one the Academy members voted on.
The edit irked Firth, who told reporters backstage he didn’t support the change – even for the sake of children.
“You know, it does distress me to hear that language bawled in the ears of my kids. So I don’t take that stuff lightly. But the context of this film could not be more edifying, more appropriate,” he said. “It’s about a man trying to free himself through the use of forbidden words … So I think the film should stand as it is.”
Overall, the Oscar bump this year was in line with recent years.
The 10 nominees for best picture this year hauled in $131 million between the nominations and the weekend of the broadcast this year, compared to $156 million last year, when “Avatar” was nominated for best picture, although it didn’t win. (All but $32 million of last year’s bump fed the James Cameron spectacle.)
In 2008, when “Slumdog Millionaire” won, the five best picture nominees pulled in $106 million from the nominations to the weekend of the show.
This year’s bounty was more balanced.
“True Grit” from Viacom Inc.’s Paramount Pictures brought in an additional $29 million on its way to $167 million, “Black Swan” from News Corp.’s Fox Searchlight brought in another $20 million to hit $104 million and Paramount’s “The Fighter” roped in $17 million more for $90 million so far, according to Hollywood.com.
Smaller winners included Fox Searchlight’s “127 Hours,” which gained an extra $7 million for $18 million total, Sony Corp.’s “The Social Network,” which added $1 million to its $97 million gross, and Roadside Attractions’ “Winter’s Bone,” which scraped in $228,330 more for almost $7 million.
Other movies, including “Inception” from Time Warner Inc.’s Warner Bros., “The Kids Are All Right” from Comcast Corp.’s Focus Features and “Toy Story 3” from The Walt Disney Co., were already out of theaters by the time the nominations were announced, although they are likely to help DVD sales.
“There was not an overriding, overshadowing blockbuster like there was last year with ‘Avatar,’ ” said Hollywood.com’s box office division president, Paul Dergarabedian. “That gave the opportunity for these Oscar contenders to become blockbusters.”
