February 18, 2011
Oscar’s winners’ envelope made over with new look
Sandy Cohen, Entertainment Writer
LOS ANGELES (AP) – Like many a star attending the Academy Awards, Oscar’s winners’ envelope is getting a makeover.
For 70 years, the envelope – as in “the envelope, please” – was nothing more than a plain, white paper envelope, the kind available at any office supply store.
This year, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is glamming up the way it unveils the names of those winning the industry’s highest honor: It’s replacing the plain white envelope with a custom-designed keepsake envelope and announcement card that looks great on TV.
“The idea of the envelope was created by the Oscars, so this really is THE envelope,” says Steve Bass, the production designer for this year’s show who helped usher in a new envelope era. “It made so much sense to heighten the visual experience of what the envelope is.”
The new envelope, designed by Marc Friedland, is made of iridescent gold paper watermarked with little images of Oscar. It’s lined with shiny red paper embossed with gold Oscars. The winner’s name appears on a heavy piece of lacquered red paper inside, with the category listed on the back. The envelope will be sealed with a shiny red sticker adorned with two strips of red ribbon.
It was also designed for ease of use: It opens quickly and the card inside slides out smoothly, so no precious papers will be torn or mangled during the award announcement.
“There’s no more significant moment than the anticipation that comes with opening the envelope. It’s the most iconic, symbolic envelope in the world,” says Friedland, whose company produces invitations for celebrities and corporate events. “Using a store-bought envelope is like showing up to the Academy Awards in shorts and flip-flops.”
Friedland says he had long been frustrated with the look of Oscar’s envelope. It was “more functional than iconic,” he says, explaining that the envelope was first introduced to the Oscar ceremony after a winner’s name had leaked out early.
Oscar producers Bruce Cohen and Don Mischer decided this was the year they’d upgrade the envelope. They turned to Friedland, who calls himself “the stationer to the stars,” about two weeks ago. He says took design cues from the look of this year’s Oscar set.
Academy officials haven’t decided if they will redesign the Oscar envelope each year or stick with Friedland’s red-and-gold design for future shows.
The stationer called it “the most important envelope in the world” and says designing it has been the highlight of his 25-year career. He will also be attending the Feb. 27 ceremony.
But he still won’t learn the winners’ names early.
His deadline for the finished envelopes is the same day Oscar ballots are due: Feb. 22.
Since the only people on Earth who know the Oscar winners in advance are two accountants at PricewaterhouseCoopers, Friedland prepared insert cards for each of the nominees. It’s up to the accountants to stuff and seal the envelopes properly and shred any leftovers.
He said he hopes the new envelopes become “a keepsake to accompany Oscars wherever they go.”
Bass, a two-time Emmy winner, says, “You keep the envelope. It’s a huge part of the memory as well as the actual statue.”
The attention to the envelope on this year’s Oscars is indicative of the producers’ overall approach to the telecast, Bass says: “The envelope is just the tip of the iceberg for what people are going to experience on the show this year in a new, fresh way.”
ABC to revive annual Billboard Music Awards in MayNEW YORK (AP) – Billboard is reviving its annual music awards show with the first broadcast scheduled for May 22.
The music trade publication ran its own awards show from 1989 to 2006. Billboard is now under new ownership, and the top executive of Prometheus Global Media said Thursday he wants to make more music programming for television.
The Billboard Music Awards, telecast live from Las Vegas on ABC, will honor artists with the most sales in various musical genres. That contrasts with the just-concluded Grammy Awards, a more subjective honor based on the votes of industry professionals.
The Grammys have proven popular with viewers the past couple of years. Billboard says its plans have been in the works for more than a year.
Director Hooper: Oscar would be fantasticBERLIN (AP) – The director of Academy Award best-picture favorite “The King’s Speech” says taking home an Oscar would be “fantastic.”
Director Tom Hooper presented the made-in-England picture on Wednesday at this year’s Berlin Film Festival, along with fellow oscar nominees Colin Firth, who plays England’s King George VI, and Helena Bonham Carter, who stars as Queen Elizabeth.
“It would be fantastic,” Hooper said of a win. “But, I think the tradition of the Academy Awards is a wonderful tradition to be part of and, frankly, I’m incredibly happy to be part of it through the nomination.”
Firth said he relied on recordings of the king and advice from scriptwriter David Seidler, who, like King George VI, also suffered from a stammer, in learning his part.
Bonham Carter also stars in another film at the festival, “Toast,” based on British food writer Nigel Slater’s memoirs. She told reporters earlier Wednesday the film gave her a handy new dessert recipe – and a chance to explore a working-class role.
Bonham Carter said she’d “never been asked to play a cleaner before” and “never been asked to do (British) Midlands working class.”
She has, however, starred as several queens, most recently as the giant-craniumed Red Queen in husband Tim Burton’s “Alice in Wonderland.”
“I like doing queens,” Bonham Carter said.
Lady Gaga gets the HBO concert treatment
NEW YORK (AP) – Lady Gaga is bringing her spectacle to HBO.
The network said Tuesday that it is taping two Lady Gaga shows in New York’s Madison Square Garden later this month for a concert special. The document of Gaga’s “Monster Ball” tour will be televised on May 7, two weeks before the singer is releasing a new disc.
The woman who choreographed most of Lady Gaga’s videos, Lauriann Gibson, will direct the concert special.
Iranian director portrays disintegrating marriage
By Geir Moulson
BERLIN (AP) – An Iranian director is competing at the Berlin film festival with a portrayal of a disintegrating marriage that highlights a clash between traditional and modern ways of living and thinking.
Asghar Farhadi’s “Nader and Simin, A Separation” screened on Tuesday. Farhadi was honored as best director in Berlin two years ago for his previous movie, “About Elly.”
The new film chronicles the events that follow a wife’s unsuccessful petition for a divorce, which she seeks when her husband refuses to leave Iran with her and her daughter. He worries about leaving behind his father, who suffers from Alzheimer’s.
The wife then moves out and the man hires a pregnant, pious young woman who agrees to take care of his father, without telling her husband. One afternoon, a blazing argument is followed by the woman suffering a miscarriage – setting in motion a chain of events that shakes the family and sees the characters repeatedly dragged into court.
“One of the aspects of this film is the struggle between those who are led by tradition and those who are led by a more modern aspect of life,” said Farhadi, speaking through an interpreter.
That can be seen both in the wife’s struggle with her husband over the family’s future and in the worries of the care giver, who is seen seeking religious advice on whether she can change a male patient’s clothes.
Farhadi said a high divorce rate in Iran is one side-effect of a “great wish to be more modern.” But he insisted his film is as much more universal than an Iranian story.
“It’s about the human being and his weaknesses and faults,” said actress Leila Hatami, who plays the wife in the film.
“Nader and Simin” is one of 16 movies competing for the festival’s top Golden Bear award, which will be awarded on Saturday.
Iran has been in the spotlight at this year’s event due to the absence of one of the jury’s official members, Iranian director Jafar Panahi, who was sentenced last year to six years in jail on charges of working against the ruling system. He is also banned from leaving Iran, shooting films or scriptwriting for 20 years.
“I think no director anywhere in the world has not felt sorrow and sadness,” Farhadi said of Panahi’s plight.
Farhadi’s film was followed by a contrasting competition entry: American actress-filmmaker Miranda July’s second movie as a director, “The Future.”
The quirky relationship tale follows a month in the life of a couple who are about to adopt a sick cat and it’s narrated by the cat.
“It’s hard to talk about longing and love in a new way,” July said of that decision.
China limits smoking in films, TV shows
BEIJING (AP) – China is ordering makers of films and TV shows to limit the amount of smoking depicted on-screen, the latest effort to curb rampant tobacco use in the country with the largest number of smokers in the world.
The order from the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television viewed Tuesday on its website orders producers to minimize plot lines and scenes involving tobacco and show smoking only when necessary for artistic purposes or character development.
Minors under age 18 cannot be shown smoking or buying cigarettes, and characters may not smoke in public buildings or other places where smoking is banned.
Where possible, actors and directors are encouraged to leave smoking out of their productions, the circular said, adding images of smoking in movies and television shows were out of sync with government efforts to control tobacco use.
The order does not mention entertainment imported from other nations. Hollywood blockbusters have had success in the Chinese market despite revenue quotas that effectively limit how many foreign productions are released in China.
China has been tightening up restrictions on smoking over the past decade, banning tobacco advertising and sponsorships of major sporting events
That’s part of a slow realization of the massive toll heavy tobacco use is taking on an aging, increasingly urbanized population. Tobacco use is linked to the deaths of at least 1 million people every year in China, where 300 million people, or nearly 30 percent of adults, smoke.
While numbers of smokers have remained flat for the past decade, mortality rates among them are rising fast. If trends continue, by 2030 an estimated 3.5 million Chinese will die from smoking each year, according to a report issued last month by a group of prominent Chinese public health experts and economists.
The report cited China’s failure to take basic measures such as passing a national law to ban smoking in indoor public places and raising the price of cigarettes.
Spidey film gets a title: ‘The Amazing Spider-Man’LOS ANGELES (AP) – Web-slinger Peter Parker has a name for his next big-screen adventure: “The Amazing Spider-Man.”
Distributor Sony Pictures announced the title Monday for the film due in theaters July 3, 2012. Now in production and being shot in 3-D, the film stars Andrew Garfield as Peter, the ordinary youth who gains superpowers from a bite by a mutant spider.
“The Amazing Spider-Man” co-stars Emma Stone, Rhys Ifans, Denis Leary, Campbell Scott, Irrfan Khan, Martin Sheen and Sally Field.
Directed by Marc Webb (“(500) Days of Summer”), the film is a re-launch of the franchise after the 2002 blockbuster “Spider-Man” and its two sequels, which starred Tobey Maguire as the Marvel Comics superhero.
‘Blood Feast’ B-movie producer David Friedman dies
ANNISTON, Ala. (AP) – 1960s and 70s B-movie producer David F. Friedman has died in Anniston at the age of 87.
Friedman’s niece, Bridgett Everett, said he died of heart failure Monday morning at a nursing home.
Friedman was an independent movie producer who was credited with helping create “gore” or splatter movies.
He produced “Blood Feast” in 1963 for $24,500. His niece says the cult classic ended up netting $6.5 million for him and the other investors.
Friedman was born in Birmingham, Ala. He spent much of his career in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. He moved to Anniston in 1988 to be near family.
Wenders pays 3D tribute to choreographer Bausch
BERLIN (AP) – Director Wim Wenders is paying tribute in 3D to the late German choreographer Pina Bausch, who he calls a master of movement.
Wenders’ film “Pina” had its premiere at the Berlin film festival on Sunday. It was originally planned as a joint project with Bausch but Wenders decided to press ahead after her death in 2009.
Bausch was an innovative creator of striking, absurdist scenes.
When he saw her work, “I realized I might know enough about movies and movement, but I never, ever was able was able to decipher movement and create movement in the way that Pina had done it,” Wenders said.
“It was like I was and all of us filmmakers, we were … beginners in the art of seeing,” he added.
Wenders originally planned for Bausch herself to be the focus of the film, which would have been made in part on tour. The homage he made instead focuses on her dance company.
“We all did it together for Pina,” he told reporters. He originally planned to call off the project after she died, “but then it dawned on us that it was important for us to do it anyway.”
“It was a work of mourning, even though it wasn’t sad work,” he said of making the movie.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel donned 3D glasses for the premiere, which also was attended by President Christian Wulff. “Pina” is screening out of competition.
Belafonte: Brando helped inspire documentary film
BERLIN (AP) – U.S. civil rights activist and singer Harry Belafonte says Marlon Brando’s death was one trigger for his decision to make a documentary reflecting the events of his own life.
The 83-year-old Belafonte presented the film, “Sing Your Song,” at the Berlin film festival on Saturday. It is directed by Susanne Rostock and co-produced by his daughter, Gina.
Belafonte was close in his youth to Brando, who died in 2004.
He says that little is known about the actor’s work as a social activist, and when Brando died he was saddened not just at losing a friend and a great artist “but that also the history books had lost a story.”
Belafonte says his daughter also was pressing him to make a film about his life and document the people with whom he has shared it.
