Word is that director Andrew Douglas is joining 8Media, the bicoastal company launched by Steve Golin, founder and former chairman of bicoastal/international Propaganda Films. Douglas comes over from bicoastal/international Satellite….Bicoastal/international Hungry Man has signed director Marc Klasfeld, who had been helming music videos through his own production company, Rock Hard Films, New York. The signing marks his first foray into the commercial arena….Director Spencer Antle has joined Metro Pictures, Marina del Rey, Calif….DNA, Hollywood, has added director Bryan M. Domyan….A pair of publicly held companies with commercial production house holdings have launched ventures to diversify into the Internet. New York-headquartered Paradise Music & Entertainment (NASDAQ: PDSE), parent to bicoastal spot shop Straw Dogs, has formed bicoastal Paradise Digital Productions, a division designed to develop and produce content for the Web. Matt Rader has been named president of the new venture, with Elisabeth Caren serving as its director of development….And Minneapolis-headquartered iNTELEFILM (NASDAQ: FILM)—the corporate banner under which reside such commercial production companies as bicoastal/international The End and Chelsea Pictures, bicoastal Curious Pictures, and New York-based Populuxe Pictures—has opened webADTV.com. The new subsidiary will combine iNTELEFILM’s digital archiving and retrieval service, InteleSource.org, with additional Web-based services under development. WebADTV.com will also focus on other Internet initiatives, including applying iNTELEFILM’s short-form expertise to new media advertising models….Invisible Dog, New York, may soon be wagging its tail on both coasts….Tim Smith, CEO of Red Sky Interactive, San Francisco, has been named jury president of the Cannes Cyber Lions….Peligro Music and Sound Design, Los Angeles, has signed spot composer Gordon Cyrus. This is the first stateside commercial representation for Cyrus, who’s established himself as a freelancer in Paris and Stockholm, having composed spots directed by such notables as Traktor of bicoastal/international Partizan, and Jhoan Camitz of Satellite….
Jules Feiffer, Pulitzer Prize-Winning Cartoonist and Writer, Dies At 95
Jules Feiffer, a Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist and writer whose prolific output ranged from a long-running comic strip to plays, screenplays and children's books, died Friday. He was 95 and, true to his seemingly tireless form, published his last book just four months ago.
Feiffer's wife, writer JZ Holden, said Tuesday that he died of congestive heart failure at their home in Richfield Springs, New York, and was surrounded by friends, the couple's two cats and his recent artwork.
Holden said her husband had been ill for a couple of years, "but he was sharp and strong up until the very end. And funny."
Artistically limber, Feiffer hopscotched among numerous forms of expression, chronicling the curiosity of childhood, urban angst and other societal currents. To each he brought a sharp wit and acute observations of the personal and political relations that defined his readers' lives.
As Feiffer explained to the Chicago Tribune in 2002, his work dealt with "communication and the breakdown thereof, between men and women, parents and children, a government and its citizens, and the individual not dealing so well with authority."
Feiffer won the United States' most prominent awards in journalism and filmmaking, taking home a 1986 Pulitzer Prize for his cartoons and "Munro," an animated short film he wrote, won a 1961 Academy Award. The Library of Congress held a retrospective of his work in 1996.
"My goal is to make people think, to make them feel and, along the way, to make them smile if not laugh," Feiffer told the South Florida Sun Sentinel in 1998. "Humor seems to me one of the best ways of espousing ideas. It gets people to listen with their guard down."
Feiffer was born on Jan. 26, 1929, in the Bronx. From... Read More