May 6, 2011
Hallmark film on royal couple to shoot in Romania
BUCHAREST, Romania (AP) – A Romanian film production company says a film on the love story between Prince William and Kate Middleton will be shot in Romania.
MediaPro Studios say Friday the TV film based on the royal love story will be produced by the Motion Picture Corp. of America for the Hallmark television channel.
Linda Yellen will direct “William & Kate: A Royal Love Story.” She directed CBS’s “The Royal Romance of Charles and Diana” in 1982.
Actor Dan Amboyer, who made his debut in the “Law & Order” series will play Prince William, while British actress Alice St. Clair will portray Middleton. Oscar-nominated Jane Alexander will play Queen Elizabeth II.
Shooting starts this month and the world premiere is expected in August.
Kelly Preston cast with Travolta in Gotti film
NEW YORK (AP) – Kelly Preston will co-star alongside her husband, John Travolta, in a planned film on John Gotti.
Production company Fiore Films announced Wednesday that Preston will play John Gotti Sr.’s wife, Victoria. Travolta is to play Gotti.
Making it even more of a family affair, the couple’s daughter Ella Bleu Travolta, will play daughter, Angel Gotti.
Production of “Gotti: Three Generations” is expected to begin later this year, with a theatrical release coming in late 2012. To be directed by Barry Levinson, it also stars Lindsay Lohan and Joe Pesci.
Networks, Emmys, reach 8-year, $66 million deal
Lynn Elber, Television Writer
LOS ANGELES (AP) – The Emmy Awards and the four major TV networks agreed to an eight-year, $66 million deal that allows for changes in the ceremony marking its 63rd year in September.
After protracted negotiations, the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences’ board of governors approved the deal Wednesday night with ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC.
Reality kingpin Mark Burnett, whose credits include “Survivor,” “Celebrity Apprentice” and newcomer “The Voice,” will produce the ceremony airing Sept. 18, according to an academy-network statement.
“We are excited about the continued collaboration with our broadcast partners, and look forward to working with Fox and, for the first time, with Mark Burnett on this year’s telecast,” said John Shaffner, academy chairman and CEO.
The major broadcasters will continue airing the awards in a “wheel rotation,” with Fox kicking off the new cycle.
The academy earned a small increase in its license fee f rom the networks, which agreed to pay at least $8.25 million for the ceremony each year for a guaranteed $66 million over the life of the agreement.
The previous deal, which was reached in 1992 and expired this year, provided for license fees of $7.5 million per year for the past four years.
In a move aimed at boosting viewership, the agreement calls for each year’s designated network and the academy to consider reviewing the number of awards and how they’re presented.
Previous efforts to trim the show’s roster of two-dozen-plus categories to create a sleeker, more audience-friendly show have run into industry resistance from writers and others. The agreement notes that the interests of “various constituencies” will be taken into account.
That review doesn’t kick in until after the first year of the contact, which was concluded with too little time left for Fox to attempt changes.
While the Grammys and some other awards show have managed to incr ease their ratings in recent years, the Emmys have struggled for attention.
In 2008, the Emmy telecast hit an all-time viewership low of 12.3 million. In 2009, the show rebounded when an additional 1 million people tuned in for a total audience of 13.3 million, but last year’s ceremony rose only slightly, to 13.47 million.
Shadowing the Emmys talks were a New York-based competitor that’s been in the planning stages. The proposed Paley Center for Media honors were aiming for a 2012 launch, possibly in spring when the networks present the following season’s programs to Manhattan ad buyers.
An exploratory committee with high-profile studio, network and other industry executives was weighing options for categories and the selection process. One proposal was to give the public a voting role with an eye toward popularizing the winners.
Such an approach would appeal to the networks, which have seen their top-rated programs such as CBS’ “NCIS” and “The Mental ist” snubbed on Emmy night, while lower-rated but acclaimed cable shows including AMC’s “Mad Men” and “Breaking Bad” collect trophies and free promotion.
Spielberg’s Lincoln movie to film in Va. this fallSteve Szkotak
HRICHMOND, Va. (AP) – Steven Spielberg has selected Virginia to film a biography of Abraham Lincoln starring Daniel Day-Lewis, elated state and local officials announced Wednesday. Principal filming is scheduled to begin this fall at various historical locations in Petersburg and Richmond, the former capital of the Confederacy. The film is scheduled for release in 2012. Sally Field will play Mary Todd Lincoln. The Virginia Film Office said Spielberg, who has filmed twice before in Virginia, selected those two cities because of the abundance of historic properties that date to the period. The state also offered financial incentives totaling nearly $5 million. “Virginia is just teeming with historic heritage,” said Mary Nelson, a spokeswoman for the film office. “We just have wonderful architecture.” The film is based on the Doris Kearns Goodwin book “Team of Rivals,” a 2005 best-seller that examines Lincoln’s presidency and the Civil War . Tony Kushner will write the screenplay. “Virginia’s rich historic legacy, coupled with the remarkable period architecture found in Richmond and Petersburg, make central Virginia the ideal location for this production,” Spielberg said in a statement released through the governor’s office. Gov. Bob McDonnell said the state is honored to be selected for Spielberg’s highly anticipated film. “It is especially notable coming during the commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the Civil War and emancipation,” McDonnell said in a statement. Spielberg had been scouting locations in Richmond and Petersburg over the past year or more. He has made at least one trip to the Museum of the Confederacy in downtown Richmond, also home to the former Confederate White House, and has been seen in an area restaurant. Lincoln visited the former White House after Richmond’s fall. Spielberg filmed portions of the “War of the Worlds” and “Minority Report” in Virginia. HBO’s series “John Adams” used locations in Williamsburg and Richmond, and “Cold Mountain” also included a Richmond scene. Asked to size up the Spielberg production, Nelson said, “Is it the most important? I don’t know, but it certainly is going to be one of the most remarkable.” The Virginia Film Office developed an incentive package that includes $1 million from the Governor’s Motion Picture Opportunity Fund, $2.5 million from the Virginia Motion Picture Tax Credit program, and $1.2 million in in-kind contributions.
A new offer: ‘Godfather’ prequel being writtenNEW YORK (AP) – The world has not seen the last of the Corleones. “The Family Corleone,” an authorized prequel to the late Mario Puzo’s classic “The Godfather,” is scheduled for 2012. Grand Central Publishing announced Wednesday that the novel would be written by Ed Falco, an award-winning author and poet. The book will be set in New York in the 1930s and is based on an unproduced screenplay by Puzo. Puzo’s novel has sold more than 20 million copies and was the basis for the Oscar-winning movie of the same name. Puzo died in 1999. In recent years, two sequels have been released: “The Godfather’s Return” and “The Godfather’s Revenge,” both by Mark Winegardner.
Director Lauds Christian Bale for China film Work
Min Lee, Entertainment Writer
HONG KONG (AP) – The director of the Chinese war epic “Nanjing Heroes” was impressed by Christian Bale’s professionalism and willingness to forego Hollywood comforts on the film shoot. Bale arrived in Nanjing alone Feb. 2 and insisted on the same accommodations as the director and crew, director Zhang Yimou was quoted as saying in a statement by his production company. Bale also attended an extra’s birthday party, “playing around with everyone, playing hard, without the pretense of a big star at all.” The Oscar winner for “The Fighter” and star of “The Dark Knight” portrays an American priest in the World War II movie. He finished filming recently and returned to England, the statement sent to The Associated Press said. “An A-list Hollywood actor traveling alone to an alien country and an alien set, working and living for several months with several hundred foreigners he doesn’t know well – that is very incredible and very impressive to me,” Zhang was quoted as saying. The director best known in the West for “Raise the Red Lantern” and “To Live” called Bale a generous performer. “When I asked him for a certain kind of performance, he gave me three approaches. When I asked for three approaches, he gave me five,” he said. “He always wanted to give me more, so I have a wider range of choices. His professionalism often touched me. He is a great role model for Chinese actors.” The film is an adaptation of a Chinese-language novel by contemporary writer Yan Geling about 13 sex workers in Nanjing who volunteered to replace university students as escorts for invading Japanese soldiers. In the novel, the American priest leads a church that shelters prostitutes and young female students during the invasion. One of China’s best-known modern directors, Zhang’s recent releases include “A Simple Noodle Story,” an adaptation of the Coen brothers’ 1984 movie “Blood Simple,” and “Under the Hawthorn Tree,” a love story set in China’s decade-long ultra-leftist Cultural Revolution. “Nanjing Heroes,” a $90 million production, is scheduled to finish shooting in June and will be released in China on Dec. 16.
‘Rain Man’ filmmaker Levinson takes on Gotti story
LOS ANGELES (AP) – “Rain Man” director Barry Levinson has signed on to tell a big-screen story about the John Gotti crime family.
Academy Award winner Levinson is directing “Gotti: Three Generations,” which stars John Travolta as John Gotti Sr. and co-stars Lindsay Lohan and Joe Pesci. Production starts this fall in New York, with the film expected in theaters late in 2012.
In an announcement Tuesday, Levinson said he was attracted to the project because it provides an insider’s view. The film is told from the perspective of John Gotti Jr., whose life story was acquired by Fiore Films, which is producing the movie. Gotti Sr. died in prison in 2002.
“Rain Man” earned four Oscars in 1988, including best picture and director. Levinson’s other credits include “Diner,” “Bugsy” and “Good Morning, Vietnam.”
Judge clears ‘Housewives’ firing lawsuit for trial
Anthony McCartney, Entertainment Writer
LOS ANGELES (AP) – A jury should decide whether Nicollette Sheridan’s character was unfairly written out of the hit show “Desperate Housewives,” a judge ruled Tuesday.
With the actress looking on, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Elizabeth Allen White tossed a couple of Sheridan’s claims but said there was enough of a dispute about what led to her ouster for the case to go to trial next month.
Sheridan sued ABC and “Housewives” creator and executive producer Marc Cherry in April 2010, claiming he struck her during a fight in September 2008 and subjected her to sexual and other harassment.
Adam Levin, an attorney for the network and Cherry, argued Tuesday that the decision to kill off Sheridan’s character, Edie Britt, was made months before her argument with the show executive. He said the decision was made by Cherry and a small group in May 2008 and kept from others on the show to avoid ruining the surprise.
Sheridan’s attorney, Mark B aute, disagreed and said the network’s justification that it was a cost-cutting move didn’t make sense since Sheridan’s character was killed off in a car accident in the middle of the season and she was still owed hundreds of thousands of dollars on her contract.
After listening to several minutes of arguments about disputed facts in the case, White said, “It’s clear to the court that this is something that needs to go to a jury.”
Her ruling threw out sexual harassment and assault claims, but Sheridan’s attorneys will be able to seek damages on wrongful termination, battery and unlawful retaliation claims and can still seek punitive damages.
“I’m very happy that I’m being treated fairly,” Sheridan said after the hearing.
Levin said many of the Sheridan’s claims have been thrown out since the actress filed her lawsuit last year, seeking $20 million.
“We’re confident that a jury looking at all of the evidence and the numerous witnesses will conclu de the character Edie Britt was killed off of ‘Desperate Housewives’ for lawful reasons and Ms. Sheridan was never battered,” Levin said after the hearing.
The trial is scheduled to begin June 8.
Hollywood, fashion elite recall McQueen at NY gala
Alicia Rancilio
New York (AP) – A who’s who of Hollywood’s elite and fashion’s most coveted hit the red carpet in New York City on Monday night for the annual Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute Gala Benefit.
This year’s event, “Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty,” honored the work of the late designer, who committed suicide in February 2010 at age 40.
“I miss him terribly, not only as a person but as a designer,” said a visibly emotional Madonna, who was wearing a gown by Stella McCartney.
“I think the fashion business is a little bit dull without him and I loved his provocative punk rock attitude. I think his designs were brilliant. I think he was brilliant. And I hope he’s having fun wherever he is right now.”
Designer Rachel Roy chose her own gown for the event with McQueen in mind. She said she picked a more refined design to showcase that part of his personality.
“I wanted to show his more ethereal side,” she said.
Many cele brities who attend the Met Gala are escorted by the designer who dressed them.
Francois-Henri Pinault, chief executive of luxury conglomerate PPR, and his wife, Salma Hayek, served as the event’s honorary chairs. Colin Firth, designer Stella McCartney and Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour were vice chairs.
Others who walked the red carpet included Jennifer Lopez and husband Marc Anthony, “American Idol” host Ryan Seacrest with girlfriend Julianne Hough, Gwyneth Paltrow, Penelope Cruz, Jessica Alba, Fergie and Sarah Jessica Parker, who wore McQueen.
Also in attendance was the successor to McQueen at his fashion house, Sarah Burton, who also designed Kate Middleton’s wedding dress,
The “Savage Beauty” exhibit will be on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art from May 4 to July 31.
‘Hurt Locker’ team plans film on bin Laden hunt
David Germain, Movie Writer
LOS ANGELES (AP) – The filmmakers behind the war-on-terror drama “The Hurt Locker” are moving forward with an action thriller about the hunt for Osama bin Laden.
Director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal have had the bin Laden project in the works, and now that the al-Qaeda leader has been killed, a person close to the filmmakers said Monday that the film is more relevant than ever.
The as-yet-untitled film will center on the Black Ops pursuit of bin Laden, said the person, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to talk about the project’s status.
U.S. forces have hunted bin Laden since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks nearly 10 years ago. A team of Navy SEALs shot and killed bin Laden early Monday at a compound in Pakistan.
Bigelow declined to comment about the project, according to Susan Ciccone, a spokeswoman for the director.
“The Hurt Locker,” which centered on a U.S. bomb-disposal unit in Iraq, won best picture at the Academy Awards last year and earned the best-directing Oscar for Bigelow, the first woman to receive that honor.
The film won a total of six Oscars, including the prize for original screenplay for Boal.
Hollywood’s Andy Vajna leads Hungary film industry
BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) – Hollywood film producer Andy Vajna has been named head of Hungary’s Motion Picture Public Foundation, in an effort to improve box office success.
Budapest-born Vajna, whose credits as executive producer include the “Rambo” series and some of the “Terminator” movies, said Monday he looking forward to a “new era in Hungarian film-making.”
The foundation has 2 billion forints ($11.2 million, $7.6 million) to help finance about four local productions this year, while up to 10 Hungarian films could be subsidized annually from 2012.
Vajna’s appointment has been criticized by Hungarian filmmakers who fear the concentration of too much power in the hands of a single person.
Las Vegas teacher charged with firing at TV crew
LAS VEGAS (AP) – A North Las Vegas teacher faces attempted murder and other charges after police say he fired shots at a television crew for the Spike TV reality show “Repo Games.”
The Las Vegas Review-Journal reports that 40-year-old Carlos Enrique Barron has been suspended with pay from his job as a special education teacher at Smith Middle School while the investigation continues.
“Repo Games” allows debtors a chance to win back their repossessed cars.
The Review-Journal reports a crew from the show was looking for a vehicle belonging to one of Barron’s neighbors Tuesday night.
A police report says Barron got upset that the crew’s security van was parked in front of his home on Vigilante Court. It says Barron confronted the crew with a gun, slapped one of the crew’s security officers and fired at least three shots. No one was hurt.
Police say Barron admitted brandishing the gun but denied firing any shots.
Director Julie Taymor honored at NY film festival
ROCHESTER, N.Y. (AP) – Despite the troubles with Broadway’s “Spider-Man,” for director Julie Taymor, “Failure is Impossible.”
That’s the name of the award she received Friday at the George Eastman House Film Festival in Rochester, N.Y.
Past winners of its Susan B. Anthony “Failure is Impossible” award have included Lynn Redgrave and Angela Bassett.
Taymor won a Tony for her work in “The Lion King.”
She wasn’t as lucky with “Spider-Man: Turn off the Dark,” a $65 million musical with aerial stunts dogged by accidents that injured five cast members. The producers have ousted Taymor. Previews for an altered show are scheduled to start on May 12.
The 58-year-old Taymor told the Rochester audience that “anyone who gets anything done in this world forgets about failure … and sticks to their heart and vision.”
Deadline looms for ‘Two and a Half Men’ decision
Lynn Elber, Television Writer
LOS ANGELES (AP) – There are 2½ weeks left for Warner Bros. Television and CBS to decide the fate of “Two and a Half Men.”
With CBS unveiling its fall schedule for advertisers in New York on May 18, deadline pressure is on the network, Warner and “Men” executive producer Chuck Lorre to develop a post-Charlie Sheen version of the sitcom or kill what’s been a highly lucrative property for all.
Whether the show is returning, who’s in the cast and whether a revamped format would be ready for a fall debut or be delayed until midseason will be resolved before the “upfront” sales presentation to Madison Avenue, according to an executive close to the situation.
The executive spoke on condition of anonymity Friday because Warner and CBS would not authorize public comment on the show’s status.
Speculation has swirled about who might fill the void left by Sheen, joining Jon Cryer and Angus T. Jones in the cast that also features Holland Taylor. Some actors seen as potential candidates, including John Stamos and Rob Lowe, have indicated their interests are elsewhere.
Jay Mohr says he’d jump at the chance. The actor-comedian, whose credits include the sitcoms “Action!” and “Gary Unmarried,” is playing what was described to him as a “Charlie Sheen-esque” type in Sunday’s season debut of USA’s “Law & Order: Criminal Intent.”
Stepping in to the sitcom for Sheen is far different than trying to fill the shoes of a “beloved man” like John Ritter, who died while starring in “8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter,” he said.
“This is a guy who lit a match, lit the fuse, and it took off,” Mohr said of the former “Two and a Half Men” star.
It’s been nearly two months since Warner fired Sheen in the show’s eighth season, a move that followed the hard-living actor’s bouts of wild partying, repeated hospitalizations and a bitter media campaign against his studio bosses who shut down production.
When Warner announced its decision to can him on March 7, it took pains to note that the show itself had not been canceled and its future was undecided.
Since then, Sheen’s offbeat stage tour has consumed attention. So has the actor’s $100 million lawsuit against Warner and Lorre, and Sheen’s custody fight with Brooke Mueller over their twin sons.
Despite the turmoil Sheen has suggested that he might return to the show, a prospect the studio has flatly rejected. The actor had been among TV’s highest-paid at a reported $1.8 million per episode for “Men.”
The show itself is not easily dismissed, consistently ranked as TV’s No. 1 sitcom and the sitcom leader in syndication.
Neither is Lorre, an increasingly powerful force with CBS as the creative mind behind “The Big Bang Theory” and “Mike & Molly.” CBS and Warner have reason to keep Lorre happy, whether that means keeping “Men” alive or not.
Teen’s film looks at 9/11 through youths’ memories
Jennifer Peltz
NEW YORK (AP) – What Brook Peters saw and heard in lower Manhattan on Sept. 11, 2001, is recorded in his mind in flashes and fragments, a set of visceral memories that weighed on him for years. He was 4 years old. It was his second day of kindergarten.
At age 11½, he started shooting a documentary about the catastrophe. The 38-minute movie, an eighth-grader’s look at the 9/11 he and fellow students experienced, gets its debut screening Saturday at the Tribeca Film Festival’s Family Festival.
Whittled from 18 hours of interviews Brook conducted in his spare time, “The Second Day” aims to view the disaster from a vantage point not often seen, and indeed often guarded: that of the children in its midst. As the attacks’ 10th anniversary approaches, the film also sheds light on the complex, highly individual nature of memories, particularly for young children.
“I’m sure not everybody remembers the full day so vividly, but we all have our flashes and our things that truly stay with us for life,” the 14-year-old filmmaker said as he and his mother, Michelle Peters, squeezed in a meal Thursday between school, homework and a film festival event. However different the recollections, he found, there “was always stuff that people will never forget.”
Brook had just started school at P.S. 150, eight blocks from the World Trade Center, when the hijacked jetliners flew over his public school toward the twin towers. He says he remembered the loud roar of a plane going over his school. Later, when he was near the trade center, “I remember seeing … it looked like a stick figure, but it was holding a briefcase, falling.”
In clips of the film released before the screening, a student who was in prekindergarten at P.S. 150 on that day also recalls the sound of a low-flying jet. Another, then in fourth grade, describes the hubbub later on as displaced students crowded into other schools. A principal recalls being on the ground, praying and feeling glass cut at her neck, while she was washed over by the mammoth wave of dust created by a collapsed tower.
Compiled from 20 interviews with students, teachers, firefighters and others, the movie is a personal project that has become part of the public narrative of documenting and memorializing the attacks.
“Brook Peters and his film are part of how we New Yorkers remember, how we open up about our own experiences and how we recover,” said City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who honored him with a proclamation this week.
On the surface, the experiences recounted in “The Second Day” might seem like memories anyone would yearn to forget.
But both children and adults can benefit from revisiting and exploring traumatic memories to make sense of them, said Dr. Glenn N. Saxe, chairman of the New York University Child Study Center. That can be especially true of memories formed before the age of about 5 or 6, when people generally acquire the ability to put recollections of individual instants into a sequence and context, the psychiatrist said.
“There’s a strong motivation people have … to make meaning” and help both themselves and others understand what they experienced, said Saxe. His center worked extensively with children in downtown Manhattan schools after 9/11, but he doesn’t know Brook.
For Brook, who grew up knowing the local firefighters and struggled later with memories of them on Sept. 11, the movie began as a way of furthering his longtime interest in filmmaking. But it ended up being therapeutic, he said.
“It’s been healing, for myself as well as others, in getting stuff off not only my chest – without having to really say anything – but also helping other people,” he said. Some of his young interviewees had never really talked about it before, he said. He had been reluctant, too.
“I definitely had a very bad experience that day,” he said.
His mother, an actress who had done volunteer work on fundraisers for firefighters, was on her way to a firehouse for a meeting when the first plane hit the trade center’s north tower. She was quickly drawn into helping relay messages among firefighters as they began to organize the massive response, she recalls.
After the south tower was hit, she dashed to Brook’s school to collect him and brought him back with her to the area where she had been helping. After the dust cloud enveloped the area, they ran into a firehouse.
“For a little kid, he had a horrible look on his face,” Capt. Anthony Varriale remembered this week. Varriale was interviewed for Brook’s documentary and was struck by how deep the teen’s memories were.
“I knew exactly why this kid wanted to do this, because it’s probably been on his mind since he was 4 years old,” Varriale said.
Brook grappled for years afterward with his memories of the burning towers, the falling people the young boy initially described as “asteroids” and the firefighters who told him to take care of his mom and expressing messages for their own families.
The movie gave Brook new insights into the vagaries of even such sharp memories. He realized he had recalled some events out of sequence. Some older students remembered being displaced from their schools for a shorter period than they actually were, his mother said.
Some teens were loath to talk about Sept. 11. But others were “very ready to talk about it because they haven’t really gotten the opportunity to before” and were willing to open up to a peer, Brook said.
Many parents tried to shield their children from the horror of the attacks, and “ultimately, a lot of them never really asked their kids how they felt about that day, even years later,” his mother noted.
Brook shot “The Second Day” on a basic camcorder, editing it on family friends’ computers because the Peters’ own couldn’t handle video. Thanks to his mom’s acting contacts, it boasts as narrators Charles Durning and Dan Lauria, who is currently starring in Broadway’s “Lombardi.”
Now at an arts-focused public middle school, Brook has made some other films, including animated pieces shown at a children’s film festival.
He wants to be a filmmaker – and a firefighter, too.
