May 10, 2013
NBC orders 5 new TV series for next seasonBy David Bauder, Television Writer
NEW YORK (AP) — Sean Hayes, Parker Posey, Minnie Driver and Gillian Anderson will have prominent roles in new television series that NBC has decided to air next season.
The network said Thursday that it had ordered five new series, in advance of its annual schedule announcement Sunday, when it will detail where the rookie and returning shows will be placed on the schedule.
NBC also said that it has renewed “Parks and Recreation,” the comedy that gets much critical respect but generally poor ratings.
Four sitcoms are being canceled, the network said: “Up All Night,” ”Guys with Kids,” ”1600 Penn” and “Whitney.”
The long-struggling network had a strong fall this season behind NFL football and “The Voice” but tumbled in midseason and recorded some of its worst ratings ever.
NBC’s biggest hope for next season is its comedy starring Michael J. Fox, which was announced in the winter. He’ll play a sportscaster with Parkinson’s disease who is returning to work, much like Fox is an actor with Parkinson’s who is returning to series television.
Hayes, the former “Will & Grace” actor, stars as a gay divorced dad in “Sean Saves the World,” juggling work responsibilities with raising a 14-year-old girl. The series, one of three new comedies NBC announced Thursday, is from Hayes’ production company and has the veteran sitcom hand James Burrows as an executive producer and director.
Posey plays a divorced mom in “The Family Guide,” with an 11-year-old son who had always been his blind father’s guide but is replaced by a guide dog named Elvis.
The third comedy ordered by NBC is an adaptation of the Nick Hornby novel “About a Boy.” Actor Will Freeman is the “ultimate man-child” who bonds with the 11-year-old son of a needy, vegan single mom played by Driver.
Brand-name producer J.J. Abrams (“Lost,” ”Alias”) already has “Revolution” on the NBC schedule. The network said it will also add “Believe,” about a young girl coming to grips with superpowers like levitation, controlling nature and predicting the future.
Anderson, who made her name on “The X-Files,” is a featured actor on “Crisis,” about a bus full of high school students who are the children of Washington elite and are kidnapped.
NBC’s series pickups came a day after Fox announced the new series it will introduce next season. Networks used to try to keep such news a secret before announcing their schedules to advertisers. (Those meetings are all scheduled for next week.) But word often leaks out beforehand, so some of the networks are trying to take control of that process this year.
Bertolucci to head Venice Film Festival juryMILAN (AP) — The Venice Film Festival has announced that Oscar-winning director Bernardo Bertolucci will chair the jury for the 70th Venice Film Festival.
Bertolucci, 73, headed the jury previously in 1983, when the Golden Lion went to Jean-Luc Godard’s “First Name: Carmen,” and he has premiered numerous films at the festival, starting with “The Grim Reaper” in 1962 and more recently “The Dreamers,” in 2003.
Bertolucci’s 1987 film “The Last Emperor” won nine Oscars. The festival says it was the first and only Italian film to win the Academy Award for best director.
Bertolucci said in a statement Thursday that the festival will give him the opportunity to discover “the most mysterious niches of filmmaking in the most mysterious countries of the world.”
The festival will be held Aug. 28-Sept. 7.
Coke takes anti-obesity campaign global
By Candice Choi, Food Industry Writer
NEW YORK (AP) — Coca-Cola says it will work to make lower-calorie drinks and clear nutrition information more widely available around the world, intensifying a push against critics who say its drinks pack on the pounds.
The Atlanta-based company, which makes Sprite, Fanta and Minute Maid, already offers diet drinks in most markets. But they’re not always as readily available in emerging markets such as China and India as they are in the U.S.
With sugary drinks coming under fire for fueling obesity rates, Coca-Cola Co. has been more aggressive in trying to convince customers its products can be part of a healthy lifestyle. That campaign has included the company touting its wide range of lower-calorie offerings. But Coca-Cola has also stood by its full-calorie drinks, saying that physical activity plays an important role in fighting obesity.
“There is a place for all of our beverages in a healthy lifestyle,” CEO Muhtar Kent said in a call with reporters Wednesday.
The announcement from Coca-Cola comes as packaged food companies across the industry look for growth in developing markets, where middle-class populations are growing rapidly. As more people head to cities and earn more money, they’re more prone to eating convenient packaged foods that critics say lead to obesity.
The shifting populations in such countries represent an enormous opportunity for U.S. companies. For example, Coca-Cola has noted that Americans on average drink 403 servings of its various beverages a year. That compares with just 12 servings per year in India and 38 in China.
And the company’s diet options aren’t nearly as popular in such countries. In the U.S., where sugary drinks are often blamed for making people fat, diet drinks now account for 41 percent of sales for the flagship Coke brand. That’s up from single-digits in the 1980s.
Even in the major Chinese cities, by contrast, the percentage of sales that diet options account for is in the “high single digits,” Kent said.
Coca-Cola Co. says its goal is to have diet options available wherever regular versions are sold. But that doesn’t mean there would be a diet alternative for every particular brand. For example, if a store in India sells Coke it might also offer Sprite Zero, which doesn’t have any calories, to meet the goal.
Coca-Cola also says it’s also working to have cans and bottles around the world display calories counts on the front of the label, as it does in the United States. But the company didn’t have a timeline for when it hoped to achieve its goals.
It also says it will stop advertising to children under 12 anywhere in the world.
The announcement build on a campaign the company started earlier this year. In January, Coca-Cola began airing its first TV commercial in the U.S. addressing obesity. That ad has since been rolling out to other countries.
New J.J. Abrams, Greg Kinnear dramas set for FoxLOS ANGELES (AP) — Fox says its lineup next season will include a new drama from producer-writer J.J. Abrams of “Lost” and “Star Trek” movie fame.
The series, with the working title “Almost Human,” was described by Fox as police drama set 35 years in the future, when officers are teamed with human-like androids. The cast will include Karl Urban, Michael Ealy and Lili Taylor.
Other series announced Wednesday by Fox are “Rake,” a legal drama starring Greg Kinnear in his broadcast network debut; “Gang Related,” about an elite Los Angeles gang task force, and “Sleepy Hollow,” a reinvention of the classic Washington Irving tale.
British director Bryan Forbes dies at age 86LONDON (AP) — British film director Bryan Forbes, whose work includes the original 1970s horror classic “The Stepford Wives,” has died at age 86 after a long illness, a family spokesman said Wednesday.
Matthew D’Ancona said Forbes died surrounded by his family at his home in Surrey.
Forbes was born John Theobald Clarke in 1926 in London. He began his film career as an actor, playing a number of supporting roles in British films in the 1940s and 1950s, but he soon found more success in screenwriting, and later directing.
He made his debut as director in “Whistle Down the Wind,” the 1961 movie about children who come across an escaped convict and mistake him for Jesus.
Forbes went on to make films such as “King Rat,” a tale of survival in a prisoner-of-war camp, and “The Stepford Wives,” a thriller about sinisterly perfect suburban housewives.
He was screenwriter for “Chaplin,” the 1992 biopic of Charlie Chaplin starring Robert Downey Jr., and also wrote several novels. His latest book, “The Soldier’s Story,” was published last year.
Forbes was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2004 for services to the arts.
He is survived by his wife, the actress Nanette Newman, and two daughters.
Carbon VFX Hires O’Beirne As Sr. Producer in NY Office
NEW YORK–Paul O’Beirne has joined Carbon as sr. producer in its New York office. He comes over after an eight-year tenure as sr. VFX producer at Smoke & Mirrors where his work spanned varied disciplines, including the feature The Dead Weather, directed by Jonathan Glazer; music videos for Feist’s “I Feel It All” and “1,2,3,4”; The New Tenants directed by Joachim Back which won an Oscar for Best Short Film; and Hannibal: The Pilot directed by David Slade. Commercially O’Beirne has worked on campaigns for major brands like Coca Cola, BMW, Burger King, AT&T and Budweiser
O’Beirne, originally from the UK, got his start in the business as a runner at Rushes Post Production and from there he went on to Channel 4. While with Channel 4, he was involved in many areas of production and post including scheduling, studio coordinating and producing. After two years with Channel 4, he went on to become a VFX producer with Smoke & Mirrors in London and shortly relocated with the core VFX team to open their New York studio.
O’Beirne’s hiring reflects a company expansion, which includes the recent opening of a Carbon office in L.A.
Microsoft extends search guarantee in Yahoo dealSAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Microsoft has extended a guarantee that provides Yahoo with financial protection as part of the two companies’ Internet search partnership.
An arrangement requiring Microsoft Corp. to pay Yahoo Inc. a minimum amount per search on Yahoo’s website expired March 31. That had raised concerns Yahoo might make less money from the Microsoft partnership.
Those worries eased Tuesday with a Yahoo regulatory filing that disclosed Microsoft is maintaining the revenue-per-search guarantee through March 2014.
Yahoo rose 90 cents, or 3.6 percent, to close Tuesday at $26.07. It’s the first time the stock has closed above $26 in nearly five years, continuing an upturn that began after Yahoo hired former Google executive Marissa Mayer as its CEO nearly 10 months ago. The shares have surged by 67 percent since Mayer’s arrival.
Yahoo, based in Sunnyvale, Calif., didn’t reveal the minimum amount that it’s likely to see under the Microsoft guarantee. But Yahoo Chief Financial Officer Ken Goldman told analysts last month that Yahoo’s revenue would decline by about $50 million to $60 million during the rest of this year without the guaranteed Microsoft payments.
Microsoft extended the guarantee on April 30, retroactive to April 1, according to Yahoo’s filing.
This is the second time that Microsoft has extended the guarantee since its 10-year search partnership with Yahoo began in 2010. The guarantee originally was supposed to expire in late 2011, but Microsoft agreed to protect Yahoo for a longer period because its technology hasn’t been generating as much advertising revenue as the two sides anticipated.
The alliance calls for Microsoft to provide its search technology to Yahoo in exchange for 12 percent of the revenue from search ads on Yahoo’s site.
The disappointing performance of the search partnership is one of the reasons that Yahoo fell into a financial funk that battered its stock. Yahoo posted modest revenue growth last year, the first gain since 2008.
Yahoo’s filing contained other good news besides the extension of the Microsoft guarantee. The documents also provided more details about the robust growth at Alibaba Group, a Chinese Internet company in which Yahoo owns a 24 percent stake.
Alibaba’s earnings during the final three months of last year more than doubled to $642 million while its revenue climbed 80 percent to $1.8 billion. That was illuminating information because Alibaba is still a privately held company. Alibaba is expected to go public within the next two years, giving Yahoo a chance to reap a huge windfall by selling its shares in the company.
‘Mammas’ is study in maternal instinctBy Sue Manning
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Isabella Rossellini’s search for the meaning of maternal instinct in “Mammas” looks at nine animals where things like polygamy, lying and dying convince her that “anything goes.”
The program timed to air Mother’s Day on the Sundance Channel is just the latest offbeat offering from the model-actress, who gets in costume and plays the parts of the animals.
In “Mammas,” Rossellini dresses as a mother spider, wasp, hamster, toad, cuckoo, dunnock, oil beetle, piping plover and cichlid fish to show how each brings her young into the world. The shorts also launch on sundancechannel.com on Mother’s Day.
“Mammas” is suggestive, but the episodes are mostly for comedy and entertainment, Rossellini said. They are also food for thought, the 60-year-old New Yorker believes.
Several women biologists, challenging popular thinking about maternal instinct, recently studied how animals behave, Rossellini said. Many people believe all mothers are altruistic, nurturing, protective and unselfish but they are not, she said.
“Some mothers eat their babies if there are too many in a litter, other mothers abandon their babies into other birds’ nests for mothers who are not even of the same species to raise; mothers do not get pregnant always with the belly, but sometimes hold the babies in their mouth, they are cheek pregnant or back pregnant,” she said.
“This is what I am telling in the films. I’m saying that conventional idea we have that mothers are ready to sacrifice themselves has been proven incorrect.”
Rossellini is enrolled at Hunter College in New York, working toward a master’s degree in animal behavior. “I have been interested in animals since I was a child,” she said.
“Mammas” didn’t start out as a Mother’s Day project, Rossellini said. It was shown at the Berlin Film Festival in February.
It usually takes about two months after a debut to get it out and that happened to be really close to Mother’s Day, which seemed like perfect timing, she said.
“Mammas” is the third in a series commissioned by Sundance Channel and Robert Redford. It started with animal sex in “Green Porno” on Sundance Channel (which was also screened at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah) and moved to animal seduction in “Green Porno Seduce Me.” In all of them, she plays the animals in bright costumes and demonstrates what happens. It has endless room to grow, Rossellini said.
“They put ‘Green Porno’ on the Internet six years ago and it got millions of hits,” said the actress (“Blue Velvet,” ”Death Becomes Her”) and former model. She writes the scripts, sketches a costume she thinks will work, narrates, directs and plays the animal in every short.
The “Seduce Me” segment was on display in 2010 at the The Wolfsonian-Florida International University Museum in Miami.
“People were completely seduced by the series,” museum director Cathy Leff said. “From a scientific point of view, we learned a lot. She did a lot of research about mating. It was humorous and incredibly charming,” she added.
There’s a playful connection to Mother’s Day, Sundance Channel General Manager Sarah Barnett said. “Isabella gives you a different perspective and a sort of delicious new way of engaging with the idea of being a mother.”
“Mammas” is a work of visual seduction told by “a distinct and remarkable story teller. She has this unorthodox form and at the same time it’s incredibly accessible and surprisingly funny,” Barnett added.
Rossellini is the daughter of Oscar-winning actress Ingrid Bergman and director Roberto Rossellini.
Mother’s Day in Italy when Rossellini was a child wasn’t a big deal. The big holiday was Woman’s Day on March 1. “It was not just for mothers but for all women,” she said.
Despite two children of her own and dual citizenship, things haven’t changed much for Rossellini. “I am lucky if my children say ‘Happy Mother’s Day’ and bring me some flowers,” she said.
Rossellini did pay tribute to her mother in the “Mammas” story of the piping plover.
It starts with Rossellini (as a human) doing a dying scene on stage and getting pelted by tomatoes. It switches to her as a piping plover, fooling a fox by pretending to have a broken wing and leading the predator away from her nest.
The camera returns to the human, where it appears more tomatoes are hurled at Rossellini from the moving paper audience. She hides behind a stage curtain and says: “If I were as talented at pretending as the piping plover, I would be a Sarah Bernhardt, an Ingrid Bergman.”
She used Bernhardt’s name because she wanted a name that was familiar to people in several countries. She used Bergman’s name “because I thought mom would be offended” if she didn’t.
The simplicity of the bright, handmade costumes and paper props and the complexity of the tech-heavy delivery system added to the appeal of Rossellini’s first two series, Leff said.
She hopes Rossellini will turn to the Wolfsonian if she decides to put “Mammas” on display. “She’s a real provocateur, which we love,” Leff said.
Rossellini has done about 40 shorts now and hopes she can continue to do them. First though is her one-woman biology-themed tour through Europe and the United States in 2014.
The actress lives near Long Island and has two dogs, a cat, chickens and a vegetable garden.
She also volunteers at the nearby Guide Dog Foundation and for a few weeks is fostering a mother dog that just had 10 puppies.
With so much focus on motherhood, does Rossellini have a message for “Mammas” viewers? “Yes,” she said: “Happy Mother’s Day.”
Disney teams with EA on ‘Star Wars’ video games
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Disney is not giving up on “Star Wars” video games after all.
A month after shutting down game production at Lucasfilm subsidiary LucasArts, The Walt Disney Co. said Monday that it had entered multi-year deal with Electronic Arts Inc. to develop new “Star Wars” video games.
According to a statement, EA will develop games for a “core gaming audience” while Disney will retain the right to develop titles for mobile devices, social platforms and online.
Terms were not disclosed.
Disney is aiming to make its money-losing interactive unit profitable this year and shifting some game development costs elsewhere should help.
Disney bought Lucasfilm for $4.06 billion in December. The company said last month that it will release a new “Star Wars” movie every year starting in 2015.
SIM Digital acquires Canada’s PS Production ServicesLOS ANGELES–SIM Digital, a leading supplier of digital production equipment and postproduction services in North America, has acquired PS Production Services Ltd, one of Canada’s largest rental houses for lighting, grip, generators, digital cameras and dolly equipment.
The deal follows SIM’s recent acquisition of Bling Digital, a U.S. and Canadian specialist in postproduction technologies and workflows, and Master Key Finishing, a Los Angeles post facility. SIM has also been extending its footprint through an expansion of its facilities in Los Angeles and Atlanta. Its goal is to provide complete production and post-production solutions to producers throughout North America and, ultimately, in other production centers around the globe. Further acquisitions and expansion moves are planned.
Founded by the late Doug Dales in 1972, PS Production Services serves U.S. and Canadian motion picture and television producers through offices in Toronto, Vancouver and Halifax and has more than 130 employees. Since Dales’ untimely death in 2010, the company has built on his legacy and continued to experience significant growth.
“Doug was someone I very much admired and respected,” said Rob Sim, president and CEO of SIM Digital. “Both of our companies came from humble beginnings and through hard work and constant dedication, we were able to successfully grow them into what they are today. Our cultures are very similar so when this opportunity presented itself, I couldn’t think of two companies that better complemented one another. That thought was echoed by our management team who worked diligently to see SIM and PS come together.”
Through this acquisition, SIM Digital gains additional resources, a strong regional sales network, and experienced staff. Integration with SIM’s Canadian facilities will begin immediately. “There are tremendous synergies with this acquisition,” said SIM Digital Chief Strategy Officer James Martin. “It enhances our ability to bundle and deliver full-service solutions to our clients.”
SIM Digital worked with Granite Partners, a leading mid-market investment firm to complete the acquisition. Granite played an integral role and will be working in partnership with SIM moving forward.
HK director Wong Kar-wai gets top French honor
HONG KONG (AP) — Hong Kong film director Wong Kar-wai has been given France’s highest cultural honor.
Wong was named a Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters by French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius on Sunday.
Fabius bestowed the medal on Wong in a ceremony at the French consul-general’s official residence in the southern Chinese city.
The filmmaker said the award is “in a way, a tribute to Hong Kong cinema,” and that France is cinema’s “spirit home.”
Fabius said French artist Jean Cocteau might have called Wong Kar-wai “the calligrapher of light.”
Wong’s movies include “Chungking Express” and “In The Mood For Love.” His most recent film, “The Grandmaster,” was released this year.
It recounts the life story of Chinese martial arts legend Ip Man, famous for having trained Bruce Lee.
Rule lets Oscar voters watch DVDs for some votes
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Oscar voters will no longer be required to see certain nominated films in a theater to cast their ballots.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced Saturday that members will be mailed DVDs of documentaries, shorts and foreign language nominees — categories that don’t typically get lengthy stays on multiplex big screens.
President Hawk Koch says the move is an effort to expand member participation by giving voters as many opportunities as possible to see all the nominated films.
Prior to the final round of voting, the academy will mail members DVDs of films in Foreign Language Film, Documentary Feature, Documentary Short Subject, Animated Short Film and Live Action Short Film categories.
The nomination process remains unchanged.
