Deluxe Entertainment Services Group, which started in Hollywood 90 years ago (under the William Fox Studio film lab banner) and became an industry mainstay in Southern California, has now added to that heritage with the new Bud Stone Building at the company’s Hollywood campus. A dedication/ribbon cutting ceremony was held this week (7/20) for the building which is named after Burton “Bud” Stone, who served as president of Deluxe from 1976 until his retirement in 1994. Stone passed away in April 2008 at the age of 80, leaving behind a storied legacy, which included not only contributing to the growth of Deluxe but also mentoring assorted people, and taking a proactive role in support of the filmmaking community.
The Bud Stone Building increases the Deluxe Hollywood campus to 152,000 square feet. The expansion includes the installation of new, higher capacity film processing and printing machines that will create greater efficiency in handling theatrical release schedules for studio customers in the U.S. Furthermore, updated technology enables Deluxe to decrease use of electricity by an estimated 20 percent and to realize some 25 percent savings on water as part of the company’s programs to cut back utility and chemical usage while also reducing, reusing and recycling raw materials during production of motion picture film prints.
The dedication ceremony for Deluxe’s Bud Stone Building drew a turnout that included Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, filmmakers such as Brett Ratner and Julie Taymor, American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) president Michael Goi, International Cinematographers Guild president Steven Poster, lauded cinematographer Owen Roizman, and Stone’s family, including his children, grandchildren and wife Judy Stone.
Deluxe chairman Ronald O. Perelman and Deluxe president/CEO Cyril Drabinsky joined Mayor Villaraigosa and Judy Stone on stage for the formal ribbon-cutting ceremony.
Perelman offered his reflections on Bud Stone, first from the perspective of a competitor. Perelman noted that in the mid-1980s he became owner of Technicolor, an arch business rival of Deluxe. “We faced Bud Stone as a worthy competitor,” said Perelman, citing Stone’s “integrity, spirit, generosity and loyalty” as making him beloved throughout the marketplace.
Those qualities, continued Perelman, made it clear that Deluxe’s Hollywood expansion should be dedicated to Stone.
Drabinsky cited Stone’s close-knit professional relationships with artists, including filmmakers and cinematographers, as being a major part of Deluxe’s success.
Stone received the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ John A. Boner Medal of Commendation for outstanding service and dedication to the industry and was conferred honorary membership in the ASC, a tribute that has been reserved for a select group outside the ranks of cinematographers, including Thomas Edison, George Eastman and astronaut “Buzz” Aldrin.
Stone also played a key role in the creation of the ASC Outstanding Achievement Awards. And fittingly the 2009 ASC Heritage Award was dedicated to Bud Stone. Inaugurated in 1999, the ASC Heritage Award–which recognizes the talent of undergraduate, graduate and recently graduated film school students–has been dedicated to the memory of a different cinematographer each year. This year was the first that the award was dedicated to the memory of an extraordinary individual in the film industry who was not a DP.
While Deluxe has expanded over the years with facilities in New York and internationally, Perelman noted that the company’s roots are in Los Angeles. He credited Mayor Villaraigosa’s support as helping to make Deluxe’s Hollywood expansion a reality.
Villaraigosa said that the Bud Stone Building reflects what has been building momentum for Hollywood. The Mayor said there’s been “a renaissance” of restaurants, tourism and investments in Hollywood recently. He noted that Deluxe maintains a staff of 500 in Hollywood, contributing to a total of more than 2,100 skilled workers employed by the company in Southern California. “The fact that Deluxe has decided to grow and invest here for another generation is an acknowledgement that Hollywood is on the right track,” said Villaraigosa.
Deluxe Entertainment Services Group, a wholly owned subsidiary of MacAndrews & Forbes Holdings Inc. is a leading provider of a wide range of entertainment industry services and technologies, including motion picture film processing, printing and distribution; EFILM digital intermediates; postproduction and subtitling services; titles design; digital VFX; DVD compression, encoding and authoring; digital cinema services, digital asset management, digital distribution; and marketing fulfillment services.
Deluxe maintains facilities in Greater Los Angeles, New York, Toronto, London, Rome, Barcelona, Madrid, Vancouver, B.C., Melbourne and Sydney.
Review: Director Bong Joon Ho’s “Mickey 17” Starring Robert Pattinson
So you think YOUR job is bad?
Sorry if we seem to be lacking empathy here. But however crummy you think your 9-5 routine is, it'll never be as bad as Robert Pattinson's in Bong Joon Ho's "Mickey 17" — nor will any job, on Earth or any planet, approach this level of misery.
Mickey, you see, is an "Expendable," and by this we don't mean he's a cast member in yet another sequel to Sylvester Stallone's tired band of mercenaries ("Expend17ables"?). No, even worse! He's literally expendable, in that his job description requires that he die, over and over, in the worst possible ways, only to be "reprinted" once again as the next Mickey.
And from here stems the good news, besides the excellent Pattinson, whom we hope got hazard pay, about Bong's hotly anticipated follow-up to "Parasite." There's creativity to spare, and much of it surrounds the ways he finds for his lead character to expire — again and again.
The bad news, besides, well, all the death, is that much of this film devolves into narrative chaos, bloat and excess. In so many ways, the always inventive Bong just doesn't know where to stop. It hardly seems a surprise that the sci-fi novel, by Edward Ashton, he's adapting here is called "Mickey7" — Bong decided to add 10 more Mickeys.
The first act, though, is crackling. We begin with Mickey lying alone at the bottom of a crevasse, having barely survived a fall. It is the year 2058, and he's part of a colonizing expedition from Earth to a far-off planet. He's surely about to die. In fact, the outcome is so expected that his friend Timo (Steven Yeun), staring down the crevasse, asks casually: "Haven't you died yet?"
How did Mickey get here? We flash back to Earth, where Mickey and Timo ran afoul of a villainous loan... Read More