By Jake Coyle, Entertainment Writer
HOLLYWOOD --In presenting Martin Scorsese with the Cecil B. DeMille Award for lifetime achievement at the Golden Globes, his longtime friend and collaborator Robert De Niro found a new way to describe the director’s famous, obsessive love of cinema.
“Marty sleeps, drinks and eats film,” De Niro said. “I hear there are videos on the Internet of Marty having sex with film.”
He continued the joke in a husky voice: “A hot reel of 35 mm stock …”
Such honors have become somewhat old hat for Scorsese and De Niro. De Niro — who has apparently learned a thing or two from the plethora of comedies he’s made in recent years — joked that after 20 years making movies together, they’ve spent the last 10 “presenting each other with awards.”
“We’re like an old married couple,” said De Niro. “We built a life together, we have great memories — we just don’t sleep together anymore.”
But De Niro’s finest line might have been wondering if the award was perhaps lesser than the man: “I can’t help thinking if times were a bit different, how proud Cecil B. DeMille would have been to be honored with the Martin Scorsese Award.”
Taking the stage to a standing ovation at the International Ballroom of the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., the veteran director acknowledged that “Goodfellas” didn’t seemingly have much in common with DeMille’s “The Greatest Show on Earth.”
“When I got to make my own films, no matter what they looked like, the overall intention was always to tap into the powerful cinematic experience that characterized a DeMille picture,” said Scorsese.
He applauded “the big show, the spectacular” of DeMille’s extravagant films, saying they were “the shared landscape of our childhood.”
Only Scorsese would turn such an award into a tribute to its namesake.
Scorsese is a well-known film preservationist and he helped release an acclaimed new copy of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s 1948 classic “The Red Shoes” this year. He founded the Film Foundation in 1990 as a nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving films.
He thanked the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which puts on the Globes, for its continued support and contributions to film preservation.
“As William Faulkner said, ‘The past is never dead, it is not even past,'” said Scorsese. “As far as I’m concerned, making films and preserving them are the same thing.”
Leonardo DiCaprio, who joined De Niro in the introduction, called Scorsese “a master filmmaker and a generous, patient teacher,” whose name defines cinema.
Though Scorsese’s 2007 Oscar win for directing “The Departed” was a long time coming, he has had better success at the Globes, previously winning two Globes for best director, for “The Departed” and 2001’s “Gangs of New York.” He was nominated six other times.
While the 67-year-old Scorsese was being honored for a lifetime of work in cinema, he’s as active as ever. His latest film, “Shutter Island,” a thriller starring DiCaprio, will be released Feb. 19.
He is also executive producer of the HBO series “Boardwalk Empire” with “Sopranos” writer Terence Winter. The series, out later this year, stars Steve Buscemi and chronicles the 1920s gangland of Atlantic City.
Recent winners of the Cecil B. DeMille Award include Steven Spielberg in 2009, Warren Beatty in 2007 and Anthony Hopkins in 2006.
Google Opens Its Defense In Antitrust Case Alleging Monopoly Over Online Ad Technology
Google opened its defense against allegations that it holds an illegal monopoly on online advertising technology Friday with witness testimony saying the industry is vastly more complex and competitive than portrayed by the federal government.
"The industry has been exceptionally fluid over the last 18 years," said Scott Sheffer, a vice president for global partnerships at Google, the company's first witness at its antitrust trial in federal court in Alexandria.
The Justice Department and a coalition of states contend that Google built and maintained an illegal monopoly over the technology that facilitates the buying and selling of online ads seen by consumers.
Google counters that the government's case improperly focuses on a narrow type of online ads — essentially the rectangular ones that appear on the top and on the right-hand side of a webpage. In its opening statement, Google's lawyers said the Supreme Court has warned judges against taking action when dealing with rapidly emerging technology like what Sheffer described because of the risk of error or unintended consequences.
Google says defining the market so narrowly ignores the competition it faces from social media companies, Amazon, streaming TV providers and others who offer advertisers the means to reach online consumers.
Justice Department lawyers called witnesses to testify for two weeks before resting their case Friday afternoon, detailing the ways that automated ad exchanges conduct auctions in a matter of milliseconds to determine which ads are placed in front of which consumers and how much they cost.
The department contends the auctions are finessed in subtle ways that benefit Google to the exclusion of would-be competitors and in ways that prevent... Read More