December 23, 2011
Dialect coach Robert Easton dies at 81
LOS ANGELES (AP) – Character actor and Hollywood dialect coach Robert Easton, whose successes include teaching Forest Whitaker to speak like Idi Amin in the 2006 movie “The Last King of Scotland,” has died in Los Angeles. He was 81.
Daughter Heather Woodruff Perry tells the Los Angeles Times (http://lat.ms/rEfhAQ ) that Easton died of natural causes on Monday at his home in the San Fernando Valley.
His movie credits include “Paint Your Wagon,” ”Pete’s Dragon,” ”Pet Sematary II” and “Primary Colors.”
When he was younger, he mainly played country bumpkins on TV shows because of his Southern drawl.
He feared being typecast so he worked on different accents and learned he could mimic regional speech patterns.
As a dialect coach, he worked Arnold Schwarzenegger, Charlton Heston, Liam Neeson, Anne Hathaway and Robert Duvall.
Lionsgate, Saban team with Celestial in Asian JVKelvin Chan, Business Writer
HONG KONG (AP) – Hollywood independent studio Lionsgate and U.S. media investment firm Saban Capital said Thursday they’re teaming up with a Malaysian-owned company in a pay TV joint venture to tap the expanding Asian entertainment market.
Lionsgate, Saban and Malaysia film and TV company Celestial Pictures said the new venture, Celestial Tiger Entertainment, will get a “significant capital investment” from Saban. The amount wasn’t disclosed.
The new company will be headquartered in Hong Kong. It will offer three pay TV channels from Tiger Gate Entertainment, an existing Asian partnership set up by Lionsgate-Saban in 2010. Celestial Pictures will contribute three Chinese-language pay TV channels.
Celestial Tiger also plans to expand by adding new channels or buying other operators. It will also be the sole sales agent for Lionsgate movies and TV shows in Southeast Asia and China.
The joint venture is the latest in a string of partnerships with Asian entertainment companies formed recently by Hollywood studios looking for growth in Asia, where a burgeoning middle class is driving demand.
Earlier this year, Relativity Media and Legendary Entertainment announced partnerships with Chinese companies.
The Asia-Pacific region is already the world’s biggest pay TV market, with 57 percent of global subscriptions, which were forecast to exceed 745 million in 2011, according to an ABI Research report earlier this year.
Lionsgate productions include the hit TV series “Mad Men” and recent films such as “Margin Call” and “The Expendables.”
Media mogul Haim Saban’s Saban Capital is best known for licensing the Power Rangers from Japan in the 1990s.
Hong Kong-based Celestial Pictures is owned by Malaysian pay-television operator Astro Holdings.
Kodak Fellowship in Film Preservation Awarded to NYU Grad Student
HOLLYWOOD – Benedict Salazar Olgado has been named the recipient of the 2011 Kodak Fellowship in Film Preservation, an award established to foster and support the next generation of preservationists and archivists in the industry.
Olgado receives a cash scholarship from Kodak that is administered by AMIA (Association of Moving Image Archivists), in addition to a four-week summer internship next year, organized by PRO-TEK, a Kodak company that operates world-renowned film and video preservation vaults, and provides inspection and restoration management consultation services. The internship will include a comprehensive agenda with training at PRO-TEK, Chace Audio by Deluxe, and FotoKem’s digital and photochemical lab.
Kodak initiated this successful program 12 years ago, and 11 of the past recipients are now working in the field at such organizations as the Library of Congress, NARA (National Archives and Records Administration), and Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences.
A native of the Philippines, Olgado will receive a master’s degree in Moving Image Archiving and Preservation from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts in May 2012. His long-term goal is to become an active part of the international preservation community, and work to safeguard audio-visual legacies across the globe.
Olgado has gained experience as a senior administrator at the Southeast Asia Pacific Audiovisual Archive Association. He simultaneously worked on projects with UNESCO and did film programming in Southeast Asia. He’s worked on the Maya Deren collection at the Anthology Film Archives and in the mixed media collections of Appalshop, among others. Olgado earned his bachelor’s degree at Ateneo de Manila University with a double major in communications and social sciences prior to enrolling at NYU. He is an active member of AMIA and SOFIA (Society of Filipino Archivists for Film).
Welles’ Oscar for ‘Citizen Kane’ sells for $861K
LOS ANGELES (AP) — The Academy Award statuette that Orson Welles won for the original screenplay of “Citizen Kane” was auctioned for more than $861,000 Tuesday in Los Angeles.
Nate D. Sanders Auctions spokesman Sam Heller said bidders from around the world, including David Copperfield, vied for the Oscar.
The 1942 Oscar was thought to be lost for decades. It surfaced in 1994 when cinematographer Gary Graver tried to sell it. The sale was stopped by Beatrice Welles, Orson’s youngest daughter and sole heir.
Copperfield, who was outbid in the auction, said he admires Welles not only for his cinematic successes, but because he, too, was a magician. Welles hosted Copperfield’s first television special.
The auction house declined to release the highest bidder’s name. It said only a handful of Academy Awards have sold for nearly a million dollars.
Michael Jackson paid $1.54 million in 1999 for the best picture Oscar awarded to David O. Selznick for “Gone With The Wind.”
265 Feature Films in Contention for 2011 Best Picture OscarBeverly Hills, CA — Two hundred sixty-five feature films are eligible for the 2011 Academy Awards®, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced today.
To be eligible for 84th Academy Awards® consideration, feature films must open in a commercial motion picture theater in Los Angeles County by midnight, December 31, and begin a minimum run of seven consecutive days.
Under Academy rules, a feature-length motion picture must have a running time of more than 40 minutes and must have been exhibited theatrically on 35mm or 70mm film, or in a qualifying digital format.
Feature films that receive their first public exhibition or distribution in any manner other than as a theatrical motion picture release are not eligible for Academy Awards in any category.
The “Reminder List of Productions Eligible for the 84th Academy Awards” is available at http://www.oscars.org/awards/academyawards/rules/reminderlist.html.
The 84th Academy Awards nominations will be announced live on Tuesday, January 24, 2012, at 5:30 a.m. PT in the Academy’s Samuel Goldwyn Theater.
Academy Awards for outstanding film achievements of 2011 will be presented on Sunday, February 26, 2012, at the Kodak Theatre at Hollywood & Highland Center®, and televised live by the ABC Television Network. The Oscar presentation also will be televised live in more than 225 countries worldwide.
FCC rules for Tennis Channel in Comcast disputeWASHINGTON (AP) — The Federal Communications Commission has ruled in favor of Tennis Channel in its dispute with Comcast.
Tennis Channel filed a complaint against the cable operator in 2010, accusing it of discriminating against the network in violation of FCC rules. Tennis Channel argued that Comcast gave preferential treatment to two similar sports cable networks it owned — Versus and Golf Channel — by placing them on more broadly distributed tiers.
The FCC ruling released Tuesday fined Comcast $375,000 and ordered it to treat Tennis Channel the same as Versus and Golf Channel.
NY man gets 1 year in prison for ‘X-Men’ piracy
LOS ANGELES (AP) — A New York man has been sentenced to a year in federal prison for illegally uploading and distributing a copy of “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” before the movie’s premiere.
Forty-nine-year-old Gilberto Sanchez was sentenced Monday in Los Angeles federal court. The judge also imposed a year of supervised release and numerous computer restrictions.
Sanchez pleaded guilty in March to one count of uploading a copyrighted work being prepared for commercial distribution. Prosecutors say he admitted uploading a “workprint” copy of the 2009 film about one month before it was released in theaters, then publicizing the upload on two websites.
Prosecutors said in court documents that the film proliferated like wildfire throughout the Internet, resulting in up to millions of infringements.
Sanchez has a prior conviction for a similar offense.
Penn, McDormand, Giamatti join Sundance cast listLOS ANGELES (AP) — Films featuring Sean Penn, Frances McDormand, Paul Giamatti, Jesse Eisenberg, Tracy Morgan and Melissa
Leo are among late additions to next month’s Sundance Film Festival.
Organizers for Robert Redford’s independent-film showcase said Monday they have added four titles to the previously announced lineup of more than 100 movies.
The new films are: director Paolo Sorrentino’s rock-star-on-a-road-trip tale “This Must Be the Place,” with Penn and McDormand; Philip Dorling and Ron Nyswaner’s “Predisposed,” with Eisenberg, Leo and Morgan in a comic romp about a piano prodigy, his troubled mom and a drug dealer; Don Coscarelli’s horror comedy “John Dies at the End,” featuring Giamatti; and Joachim Trier’s “Oslo, August 31st,” a drama about a Norwegian man in crisis.
The festival runs Jan. 19-29 in Park City, Utah.
NFL launches player program on movie industryNEW YORK (AP) — John Singleton, Robert Townsend and Keenen Ivory Wayans are among the Hollywood veterans who will lead sessions in a new NFL program for players interested in the movie industry.
The first NFL Pro Hollywood Boot Camp will run April 2-5 at California’s Universal Studios. The league said Monday that 20 current and former NFL players will take part.
The four-day event will offer an overview of creative disciplines in the film industry, including screen writing, directing, producing and film financing. The players will have the opportunity to shoot and edit a short film.
The program is being run by NFL Player Engagement, which assist players in preparing for their post-football careers, and Film Life Inc., a New York-based film production company.
More than 700 NFL players have participated in the NFL Business Management and Entrepreneurial Program since 2005, and 106 players have taken part in the five NFL Broadcast Boot Camps. The Business of Music Boot Camp debuts in February 2012.
Oscar academy plans outdoor theater in HollywoodLOS ANGELES (AP) — The overseers of the Academy Awards are building an outdoor theater and event space on a piece of land in Hollywood that had been intended for a film museum.
The Los Angeles Times reported Sunday that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences plans to open the 17,000-square-foot amphitheater next May as a venue to show classic films.
The academy bought the land in 2005 with plans to build a world-class film museum there. Planners abandoned that idea after the economy went sour, making it impossible to raise the funds needed to build a whole new facility.
In October, the academy announced plans to lease a former May Co. department store now owned by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and put the movie museum there.
