Latest Coen Brothers Movie at Rome Fest
ROME (AP) – The Coen brothers aren’t sure whether their latest movie is a comedy or a tragedy – that is for the viewers to figure out.
“We don’t even think about it in those terms,” Ethan Coen said Thursday, as he and his brother Joel were presenting “A Serious Man” at the Rome Film Festival.
The Coen brothers have a history of making quirky, genre-defying movies, from the acclaimed surreal Hollywood tale “Barton Fink” to the darkly funny “Fargo.”
Their latest release is a look back at their own roots. In the film, the life of physics professor Larry Gopnik in a Jewish suburb of Minneapolis is unraveling, both at home and professionally.
“Once you get past a certain point you’re just thinking how to be true to the story,” Ethan Coen said, “what seems appropriate for the story as opposed to what will make people laugh or whether people will take it as a tragedy or a comedy.”
“I’m kind of pleased that there are different reactions in terms of people laughing or not,” he said. “What they sort of make of it is up to them.”
The movie was shown out of competition at the festival.
News Corp. COO Sees Hulu Charging Fees For Access
By Deborah Yao
NEW YORK(AP)-Hulu, the free online video site that runs many television shows and movies in their entirety, will start charging fees at some point, one of its owners said.
Hulu has struggled to make money despite its popularity as an ad-supported site. News Corp., which co-owns the site with NBC Universal, Walt Disney Co. and Providence Equity Partners, said it hasn’t decided what form the subscription model would take and is concentrating for now on delivering a good experience for users.
Chase Carey, News Corp.’s president and chief operating officer, said at a conference in New York on Wednesday that subscription fees could come as early as 2010.
News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch said last month that the company was considering charging for Hulu, but hadn’t made a final decision.
“Are we looking at it with a view of adding subscription services in there and pay-per-view movies? Yes, we are looking at that. No decision has been taken yet,” he sa id then at an analysts’ conference.
It was not clear how a potential purchase by Comcast Corp. of a controlling stake in General Electric Co.’s NBC Universal will affect Hulu. Talks are ongoing.
Hulu isn’t the only site planning fees as online operations struggle to make enough money from advertising alone.
Earlier Thursday, Cablevision Systems Corp.’s Newsday newspaper said it would start charging $5 a week for access to online content. Subscribers of Newsday’s print edition or Cablevision’s Internet access service would be exempted from fees.
Judge Refuses to Block Chris Rock Film
LOS ANGELES (AP) – A federal judge has refused to halt the release of the Chris Rock film “Good Hair.”
Rock and the film’s producers were sued in Los Angeles by documentary filmmaker Regina Kimbell, who claimed the comedian stole several ideas for his film from her work.
Kimbell produced the documentary “My Nappy Roots” earlier this decade and says she screened her film for Rock in 2007. U.S. District Judge Dale S. Fischer watched both films and says she didn’t see substantial similarities.
Kimbell had been seeking an order blocking the film’s release.
“Good Hair” has been in limited release and will open nationwide Oct. 23.
Kimbell and her attorney say they will continue to pursue the case to a trial.
‘Toy Story’ Maker Lasseter Earns Producer Prize
LOS ANGELES (AP) – Animation pioneer and “Toy Story” creator John Lasseter is getting a career honor from the Producers Guild of America.
Lasseter is receiving the David O. Selznick Achievement Award at the guild’s awards show Jan. 24. He’s the first producer of animated films to receive the award.
Past recipients include Clint Eastwood, Jerry Bruckheimer, Stanley Kramer and Billy Wilder.
The Producers Guild says Lasseter’s work with Pixar Animation and parent company Disney has raised the bar for animated and live-action filmmakers alike.
Lasseter directed 1995’s “Toy Story,” the first feature-length computer-animated movie, and “Toy Story 2,” along with “A Bug’s Life” and “Cars.” He oversees animation at both Pixar and Disney.
Top Lobbyist for Hollywood Movie Industry Leaving
By Alan Fram
WASHINGTON (AP) – The top lobbyist for Hollywood’s movie industry will leave his job next year.
Dan Glickman, chairman of the Motion Picture Association of America, will step down next September when his contract expires, says association spokeswoman Angela Belden Martinez.
The job representing movie studios is one of Washington’s most coveted lobbying posts, but mixes the glamour of hobnobbing with Hollywood celebrities with the nitty gritty of issues important to studios like taxes and protecting films from unauthorized distribution on the Internet. Glickman, 64, earned more than $1.2 million in 2007, the latest year for which tax documents are available.
“It’s more nuts and bolts and hard work than it’s glamour,” Glickman said Monday in an interview.
“To be honest with you, people have come up to me since I’ve gotten the job and said, ‘You have the greatest job in the world.’ And I think they think that Angelina Jolie goes home with me every night. Which she doesn’t, by the way. I mean, I would like it if she did,” he joked.
Glickman took the post in 2004, succeeding the colorful Jack Valenti, who had the job since 1966. Glickman, a low-key former Agriculture Department secretary and Democratic congressman from Kansas, has been lower profile than Valenti, who has his own star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame and died in 2007.
Glickman said he has no future employment lined up, but is interested in global hunger and agriculture issues. He said he does not know who his successor might be.
Another person familiar with the movie industry’s work in Washington said possible successors include Bob Pisano, the association’s chief operating officer; Richard Bates, a lobbyist for The Walt Disney Co.; and Matthew Gerson, lobbyist for the Universal Music Group. The person spoke on condition of anonymity to reveal the information, which had come from confidential conversations.
Tokyo Film Festival Opens with ‘Green’ Carpet
TOKYO (AP) – The Tokyo International Film Festival opened with stars including Hollywood actress Sigourney Weaver strolling a “green” carpet made of recycled plastic bottles.
The theme of the nine-day festival, which started Saturday and will feature more than 100 movies, is ecology. Films include “The Cove,” a documentary that depicts an annual hunt of dolphins in Japan. Festival organizers added it at the last minute in part because of pressure from overseas.
While the movie has won more than a dozen awards worldwide, it is not among the 15 Japanese and foreign films competing for the festival’s top prize of $50,000.
“The Cove” has provoked outrage over the dolphin hunt in the seaside town of Taiji in southwestern Japan, where 2,000 dolphins are killed every year, mostly for meat.
The film shows fishermen banging on poles to frighten the dolphins into a cove, where they are killed with spears. The cove is closed off by barbed wire, and the movie crew had to film most footage covertly.
Japanese police say the film’s American director, Louie Psihoyos, and other members of his crew violated trespassing laws.
“The Cove” will be screened Wednesday. Advance tickets for the film were already sold out, festival spokeswoman Haruna Koike said.
Psihoyos has said he plans to attend the screening, even though he could be arrested for the alleged trespassing.
Weaver’s “Avatar” will also be screened. It is one of the first major Hollywood 3-D releases that’s not animation. Directed by James Cameron, creator of “Titanic” and “The Terminator,” the sci-fi epic centers on humans placed inside alien skins to survive on a distant world.
Weaver waved and blew kisses to fans at the opening ceremony. Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama joined starlets walking the green carpet.
“Many great films have been made in Japan. Movies may be more influential than politics to develop relations based on love and friendship,” Hatoyama said.
The festival opened with “Oceans,” a documentary on sea life. “Babel” director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu will head the competition jury at the festival. The 2006 film starring Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett earned the Mexican director the best director award at Cannes Film Festival that year.
“Japan’s culture and film traditions have had a personal impact on me and inspire in me respect and admiration,” he said at the opening ceremony.
Screen Actors Guild Makes White Permanent DirectorLOS ANGELES (AP) – The Screen Actors Guild has made permanent the status of interim national executive director David White.
The guild said in a news release Sunday that White has also been named the union’s chief negotiator.
White got the interim director job after a boardroom coup by moderates in January ousted previous executive director and chief negotiator Doug Allen during the union’s long labor struggle with Hollywood studios.
John McGuire – who had been serving as chief negotiator for the guild – will remain as a senior adviser.
White was managing principal of the Los Angeles consulting firm Entertainment Strategies Group before joining SAG earlier this year.
Film, TV Producer Daniel Melnick Dies at 77LOS ANGELES (AP) – Daniel Melnick, the producer who brought gutsy, smart movies like “Straw Dogs,” ”Network” and “Midnight Express” to the big screen, has died at his home in Los Angeles. He was 77.
His son, Peter, tells the Los Angeles Times that Melnick died Tuesday of multiple ailments. He had recently undergone surgery for lung cancer.
Melnick was head of production at MGM and Columbia, where he helped develop the divorce drama “Kramer vs. Kramer” and the nuclear suspense thriller “The China Syndrome.”
Melnick also produced the 1960s spy-spoof television series “Get Smart” that starred Don Adams as bumbling secret agent Maxwell Smart.
In addition to his son, Melnick is survived by his daughter, Gabrielle Wilkerson-Melnick, and two grandchildren.
Services will be private.
New Book Examines Black Women’s Film Stardom
By Verena Dobnik
NEW YORK (AP) – Dorothy Dandridge was the first black woman nominated for a Best Actress Oscar. Almost a half century passed before another black woman – Halle Berry – won the award.
They and three others – Pam Grier, Whoopi Goldberg and Oprah Winfrey – are subjects of the new book “Divas on Screen: Black Women in American Film.”
“These women have pushed the racial boundaries for audiences, setting new standards for beauty and body type,” said author Mia Mask.
She took on the book because, while black male stars are now enjoying huge success, little has been written about their female counterparts – as performers who can headline a film, said Mask, who teaches film and drama at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y.
Dandridge was nominated for her lead role as the hedonistic factory worker in the 1954 classic “Carmen Jones,” alongside Harry Belafonte.
Berry won an Oscar in 2000 for playing the wife of an executed murderer in “Monst er’s Ball.” She also had portrayed Dandridge as a stunning femme fatale in a 1999 HBO film about Dandridge’s life.
When Dandridge became a star, “she was working in an environment in which there were almost no women of color (in leading roles),” said Mask, and Dandridge “had to fit into the mold of shapely and svelte.”
By the time the statuesque Grier arrived on the Hollywood scene, she could break that mold with her forceful but hip physical presence as an action heroine.
As for Winfrey, Mask said she chose her because the talk-show host’s television presence catapulted her film appearances to the level of global stardom, transcending any category.
In spite of vast changes, Mask said, sore points persist in casting black women for star roles: a paucity of quality parts, and a new trend of pairing black lead actors with female leads who are not.
“Studio heads don’t think two black characters will appeal to general audiences,” said Mask.
She chose Dandridge and Berry “as bookends” for the time span that transformed black women in commercial films.
“We’ve gone from the trope of the tragic mulatta to biracial beauty,” said Mask, who is taping a five-part series for National Public Radio to air in late October – each on one of the women in the book.
