It should come as little surprise that Netflix doesn’t plan to report box office grosses for “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery,” which opens in theaters later this month. Since the streamer never discloses financials, there’s not much of a case to crack when it comes to that particular puzzle.
But given the lack of transparency around ticket sales, will anyone aside from Benoit Blanc be able to peel back the layers on the success or failure of director Rian Johnson’s anticipated whodunit? Without box office figures or tangible streaming metrics, there won’t be a clear way to determine whether Netflix made a good deal when it spent more than 450 million for the rights to two sequels to “Knives Out.”
“It’s a very big investment,” says Stephen Galloway, the dean of the Chapman University film school. But Netflix hasn’t wavered on its streaming-first mission.
But given the lack of transparency around ticket sales, will anyone aside from Benoit Blanc be able to peel back the layers on the success or failure of director Rian Johnson’s anticipated whodunit? Without box office figures or tangible streaming metrics, there won’t be a clear way to determine whether Netflix made a good deal when it spent more than 450 million for the rights to two sequels to “Knives Out.”
“It’s a very big investment,” says Stephen Galloway, the dean of the Chapman University film school. But Netflix hasn’t wavered on its streaming-first mission.
- 11/7/2022
- by Rebecca Rubin
- Variety Film + TV
Amazon bought MGM for its history — but not necessarily its standalone future.
The e-commerce giant surprised Hollywood on Thursday by announcing the completion of its $8.5 billion acquisition of MGM, an iconic Hollywood brand whose presence in the modern entertainment industry has diminished over time and numerous changes in ownership since the mid-1980s.
The Federal Trade Commission had suggested it might object to Amazon’s purchase of MGM, raising the prospect of a long fight. On the heels of Thursday’s closing announcement, the FTC still raised the threat of a future challenge to the combination.
Analysts expect the tech company to try and exploit MGM’s best-known pieces of intellectual property for future gain — but don’t believe the studio has a long path ahead as a separate, influential entity.
“The reason for the acquisition seemed like they were after the big titles, the intellectual property, which of course,...
The e-commerce giant surprised Hollywood on Thursday by announcing the completion of its $8.5 billion acquisition of MGM, an iconic Hollywood brand whose presence in the modern entertainment industry has diminished over time and numerous changes in ownership since the mid-1980s.
The Federal Trade Commission had suggested it might object to Amazon’s purchase of MGM, raising the prospect of a long fight. On the heels of Thursday’s closing announcement, the FTC still raised the threat of a future challenge to the combination.
Analysts expect the tech company to try and exploit MGM’s best-known pieces of intellectual property for future gain — but don’t believe the studio has a long path ahead as a separate, influential entity.
“The reason for the acquisition seemed like they were after the big titles, the intellectual property, which of course,...
- 3/17/2022
- by Brent Lang and Brian Steinberg
- Variety Film + TV
Christopher Nolan’s next movie “Oppenheimer,” a $100 million-budgeted historical drama about physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer and the creation of the atomic bomb, could be considered one of an endangered species.
These days, it’s rare for traditional studios to pump nine figures into a film that isn’t inspired by popular toys, novels or comic books. Even before Covid-19 upended the moviegoing landscape, audiences had been gravitating toward superheroes and science-fiction spectacles — and not much else. That reality has made it increasingly difficult for Hollywood to justify the economics of greenlighting expensive movies that aren’t based on existing intellectual property. They’re a bigger risk, not only in recouping investments for studios, but also in generating profits, spawning sequels and leveraging consumer product riches. No matter how well people receive Nolan’s film, it’s unlikely J. Robert Oppenheimer’s face will adorn t-shirts or lunch boxes.
By backing “Oppenheimer,...
These days, it’s rare for traditional studios to pump nine figures into a film that isn’t inspired by popular toys, novels or comic books. Even before Covid-19 upended the moviegoing landscape, audiences had been gravitating toward superheroes and science-fiction spectacles — and not much else. That reality has made it increasingly difficult for Hollywood to justify the economics of greenlighting expensive movies that aren’t based on existing intellectual property. They’re a bigger risk, not only in recouping investments for studios, but also in generating profits, spawning sequels and leveraging consumer product riches. No matter how well people receive Nolan’s film, it’s unlikely J. Robert Oppenheimer’s face will adorn t-shirts or lunch boxes.
By backing “Oppenheimer,...
- 11/18/2021
- by Rebecca Rubin
- Variety Film + TV
Australian Survivor will remain in Queensland for its seventh season, which will be filmed at Charters Towers.
Set to screen across Network 10 platforms later this year, the next iteration of the franchise has received a $3.9 million grant from the Federal Government’s Location Incentive scheme, with the expectation it inject more than $29 million into regional Australia.
It comes production company Endemol Shine Australia moved the series from Fiji to Cloncurry for the sixth season.
CEO Peter Newman said the company was pleased to bring production back to Queensland.
“Cloncurry provided the game with a visually stunning location, and we know that Charters Towers will provide an equally rich Australian backdrop for the Survivors to battle it out,” he said.
“We look forward to working closely with the local community and crew and supporting the Charters Towers economy throughout a successful production period.”
ViacomCBS chief content officer and EVP Anz Beverley McGarvey...
Set to screen across Network 10 platforms later this year, the next iteration of the franchise has received a $3.9 million grant from the Federal Government’s Location Incentive scheme, with the expectation it inject more than $29 million into regional Australia.
It comes production company Endemol Shine Australia moved the series from Fiji to Cloncurry for the sixth season.
CEO Peter Newman said the company was pleased to bring production back to Queensland.
“Cloncurry provided the game with a visually stunning location, and we know that Charters Towers will provide an equally rich Australian backdrop for the Survivors to battle it out,” he said.
“We look forward to working closely with the local community and crew and supporting the Charters Towers economy throughout a successful production period.”
ViacomCBS chief content officer and EVP Anz Beverley McGarvey...
- 10/5/2021
- by Sean Slatter
- IF.com.au
Bankers are already starting to salivate over what other megadeals could be in the offing following this week’s surprise pair-up of WarnerMedia and Discovery.
AT&T’s desperation to drop a company that it spent $85.4 billion and a year and half in legal fights to acquire raises the immediate question of what else might be possible in an era when Wall Street is pressuring big media conglomerates to keep generating content for audiences hungry to stream their favorite dramas and comedies.
Sure, smaller entertainment companies like Lionsgate and AMC Networks have long been seen as potential acquisition targets — and Amazon just offered a reported $9 billion to buy MGM for its vast library — but financial minds are starting to indulge their greatest scenarios. What if Apple swooped in and picked up a big media name? Do NBCUniversal and ViacomCBS need to add more heft even though they are both products of sizable mergers?...
AT&T’s desperation to drop a company that it spent $85.4 billion and a year and half in legal fights to acquire raises the immediate question of what else might be possible in an era when Wall Street is pressuring big media conglomerates to keep generating content for audiences hungry to stream their favorite dramas and comedies.
Sure, smaller entertainment companies like Lionsgate and AMC Networks have long been seen as potential acquisition targets — and Amazon just offered a reported $9 billion to buy MGM for its vast library — but financial minds are starting to indulge their greatest scenarios. What if Apple swooped in and picked up a big media name? Do NBCUniversal and ViacomCBS need to add more heft even though they are both products of sizable mergers?...
- 5/19/2021
- by Brian Steinberg and Brent Lang
- Variety Film + TV
Cmg sales slate includes animation Dia De Muertos, horror-thriller The Shed.
Uncommon Pictures has teamed up with Edward Noeltner’s La-based Cinema Management Group (Cmg) on Tim Disney’s sci-fi feature William ahead of the Efm next week.
Disney, the great-nephew of Walt Disney, directed and co-wrote the feature about two star academics, Dr Julian Reed, played by Waleed Zuaiter and Dr. Barbara Sullivan played by Maria Dizzia (Orange Is The New Black) who fall in love after discovering the body of a previously frozen Neanderthal man.
Against the directive of university administrators, they take the controversial move of creating...
Uncommon Pictures has teamed up with Edward Noeltner’s La-based Cinema Management Group (Cmg) on Tim Disney’s sci-fi feature William ahead of the Efm next week.
Disney, the great-nephew of Walt Disney, directed and co-wrote the feature about two star academics, Dr Julian Reed, played by Waleed Zuaiter and Dr. Barbara Sullivan played by Maria Dizzia (Orange Is The New Black) who fall in love after discovering the body of a previously frozen Neanderthal man.
Against the directive of university administrators, they take the controversial move of creating...
- 1/31/2019
- by Jeremy Kay
- ScreenDaily
Peter Newman.
Endemol Shine Australia has elevated Peter Newman from MD, unscripted content, to chief content officer.
Since joining in 2012 he has overseen more than 60 series including MasterChef, Married At First Sight, Australian Survivor, Australian Ninja Warrior, Gogglebox, Ambulance and the current slate which includes Lego Masters for the Nine Network, Changing Rooms for Network 10 and Old Peoples Home For Four Year Olds for the ABC.
In his new role he is responsible for all Esa’s productions, running the production and development teams and contributing to the strategic direction of the company led by CEOs Mark and Carl Fennessy.
Prior to Esa he was head of production and development at Sbs. He started his career at the BBC in London and later served as head of development for the UK’s Outline Productions.
Newman said: “As a team, we set really high standards for ourselves and I look forward...
Endemol Shine Australia has elevated Peter Newman from MD, unscripted content, to chief content officer.
Since joining in 2012 he has overseen more than 60 series including MasterChef, Married At First Sight, Australian Survivor, Australian Ninja Warrior, Gogglebox, Ambulance and the current slate which includes Lego Masters for the Nine Network, Changing Rooms for Network 10 and Old Peoples Home For Four Year Olds for the ABC.
In his new role he is responsible for all Esa’s productions, running the production and development teams and contributing to the strategic direction of the company led by CEOs Mark and Carl Fennessy.
Prior to Esa he was head of production and development at Sbs. He started his career at the BBC in London and later served as head of development for the UK’s Outline Productions.
Newman said: “As a team, we set really high standards for ourselves and I look forward...
- 11/19/2018
- by The IF Team
- IF.com.au
Michelle Williams is the next actress pegged to play Janis Joplin in a biopic that has been in the works for over a decade. Michelle Williams Signed To Play Janis Joplin In Biopic Hollywood has been attempting to do a definitive film about Joplin’s life for years, with screenwriters and actresses coming and going. Producer Peter Newman […]
The post Michelle Williams Is Next Actress Pegged To Play Janis Joplin In Biopic appeared first on uInterview.
The post Michelle Williams Is Next Actress Pegged To Play Janis Joplin In Biopic appeared first on uInterview.
- 10/12/2016
- by Hillary Luehring-Jones
- Uinterview
About four years ago, it was reported that director Sean Durkin was to helm a biopic about singer Janis Joplin with Tony-winning actress Nina Arianda in the lead role. In the interim, there was radio silence on that front, though there were other reports that Lee Daniels would make his own biopic with actress Amy Adams, and Durkin went on to direct the British miniseries “Southcliffe” and produce films like “James White” and most recently “Christine.” Now, Durkin’s Joplin biopic is back in the mix as Variety reports that Michelle Williams is in talks to play the lead role in Durkin’s film.
Read More: Toronto Review: Despite Limited High Notes, ‘Janis: Little Girl Blue’ Can’t Best the Power of ‘Amy’
The film will tell the story of the last six months of Joplin’s life before she tragically died of a drug overdose in 1970. It will be produced by Peter Newman,...
Read More: Toronto Review: Despite Limited High Notes, ‘Janis: Little Girl Blue’ Can’t Best the Power of ‘Amy’
The film will tell the story of the last six months of Joplin’s life before she tragically died of a drug overdose in 1970. It will be produced by Peter Newman,...
- 10/11/2016
- by Vikram Murthi
- Indiewire
It has been four years since we heard word of Sean Durkin‘s Janis Joplin biopic, Janis. About a year later, it was reported that Lee Daniels would be taking on his own biopic (talk about a change in voice!) with Amy Adams, while, on his end, there was merely silence. The Martha Marcy May Marlene helmer went on to Southcliffe and, since then, has only been “seen” in a producing capacity on BorderLine Films’ titles — but an awfully enticing bit of news would tell us the project’s still very much in sight.
So let’s just get it right out: Janis is close to acquiring Michelle Williams, who takes a role once considered for Nina Arianda. That’s about as deep as this news goes, for what’s in Variety gives us less information than was available in the previous presidential-election cycle. As we learned then, it’s...
So let’s just get it right out: Janis is close to acquiring Michelle Williams, who takes a role once considered for Nina Arianda. That’s about as deep as this news goes, for what’s in Variety gives us less information than was available in the previous presidential-election cycle. As we learned then, it’s...
- 10/11/2016
- by Nick Newman
- The Film Stage
Personally I think Paolo Sorrentino is too young to be ruminating on age. But to listen to Harvey Keitel and Michael Caine as they face the hurdles of growing old is a treat. And in the end, this is a film about youth, not old age.
In the 1980s producers Hisami Kuroiwa and Peter Newman created the two hit films “Smoke” and “Blue in the Face” in which Harvey Keitel played a younger version of himself while living in Brooklyn in a working class neighborhood. Now in “ Youth”, he is a director of some note, planning his next production to star the great “Brenda” (Jane Fonda) while holing up with his crew in an A level sanitorium (spa) somewhere in the Swiss Alps. La Fonda is superb as a brassy, vulgar star who in her sneering way causes Harvey to lose hope in the future. Future is an attribute of Youth.
While memory shows the past forgotten and far away, it is the future that looks so close and that keeps us young. Harvey Keitel demonstrates this to his crew by having them look though the different ends of a telescope. The demonstration of the different views captures the essence of this film as it looks out upon the beautiful clean mountain nature of the Swiss Alps.
Michael Caine, a retired composer and conductor, and his daughter played by Rachel Weisz, are superb as only a father and daughter of their high caliber could be. While Caine refuses to appear before the Queen to conduct his simple tunes created and sung only by his deceased wife, he is able to conduct nature and its noises divinely and is able to reconstruct a future for himself and his daughter.
This Pathe-sold, Pathe coproduction between Italy, France , Great Britain and Switzerland, looks like the sequel to “A Great Beauty” and like most sequels, it falls short of its model. Part Fellini and party Thomas Mann (Magic Mountain) the visuals and the music almost exceed the film itself. However, the cast holds the entity together and like life on Magic Mountain, the audience must allow itself to sink into the posh comfort while dealing with the distinct discomforts of life’s aging processes.
In the press conference, a large dias with Paulo Sorrentino, Paul Dano
Harvey Keitel, Michael Caine, Rachel Weisz and Jane Fonda, in a smallish press room spoke of what made them work on this film; what past roles they, like the actor in the film, could not shake off; their thoughts on aging, how it is to work in Hollywood with Hollywood mores.
Watch the press conference here:
http://www.festival-cannes.com/en/mediaPlayer/15329.html
Jane said, “This film is not a satire on Hollywood, it is very true to life. The relationship between the actress Brenda, and her producer-director is very true to life, ‘a la Sorrentino’, that is, somewhat surreal.”
Michael Caine’s response to the question of working in Hollywood and the relationships among actors, directors and producers was that “Making movies is the same everywhere, only [in Hollywood] you get more money for it.”
It has been 49 years since Michael Caine was in Cannes. “Alfie” 50 years ago won in Cannes, but he did not, and so he never came back. This time however he loves the film so much that he would go with it anywhere for free. “If any of us gests an award we all [the cast] should get awards.”
Someone asked Sorrentino about his choice of the Norwegian group. He looked a bit confused and said he did not choose them. His music supervisor and composer, David Lang did it all.
His Dp, Luca Bigazzi, and he have been friends for a very long time and Sorrentino’s own vision and the Dp’s are very close to the same. It is the visuals which are always most outstanding in his films and within such a framework, the characters he studies are rigorously tested by the high level of circumstances in which they must perform. This is literal for the actors as well as for the characters who find themselves in the top, almost god-like position.
When asked, “Have any roles stuck to them longer perhaps than they would like?”
· La Fonda immediately spoke up naming “Barbarella” which has stuck to her and said she, she is conflicted by it.
Harvey answered “no”. · Rachel said “The Mummy”. “I don’t regret it at all, but young people are always saying, ‘Oh you’re from ‘The Mummy’. I like it.”
· Michael Caine said “Alfie” and commented on Alfie being a womanizer whereas he has been married to the same woman for 46 years.
Why is Sorrentino so interested in the passage of time?
“This is the only thing that interests people”, he said, “me at least. The theme fascinates me. I am passionately interested in the future which gives us freedom. The future gives us the feeling of youth. Optimistically, it dispels our fears.”
The question arose about how Sorrentino got such a wonderful ensemble:
Harvey: “Everyone of us has personal reasons for working in this film. We all have feelings about time.”
Paul Dano: “For me, it comes from the writing. I pore over it and figure out how we’ll do what we do. Paulo’s writing is wonderful.”
Rachel agrees with both but for her it’s all about the director, unifed in turn by a piece of music. How a director directs gives a point of view. If another director directed this movie, it would be an entirely different movie.
Michael Caine, who already cited the fact that both he and Harvey Keitel were soldiers though at different times, but that they share a soldierly bond in their long-time friendship, again cited being a soldier, going into an extremely dangerous situation in which you try to keep everyone alive. This was his experience with “Youth”.
Paolo added that “Music and cinema are two forms of art, two forms of beauty that will never disappear and is constantly changing”
On aging:
Jane spoke of her obvious make up in her scene, showing her vulnerability to aging.
Michael Caine spoke of showing his aging body.
Jane answered, “Yes one is vulnerable playing an old woman putting up the mask of makeup. When she removes it (and the wig) she becomes very vulnerable and that is fun to play.”
How does Jane Fonda define youth?
“Age is very much a question of attitude. If you have passion in your life, you are young. You remain young and vital in mind when you have passion in your life. I do and the film does.”...
In the 1980s producers Hisami Kuroiwa and Peter Newman created the two hit films “Smoke” and “Blue in the Face” in which Harvey Keitel played a younger version of himself while living in Brooklyn in a working class neighborhood. Now in “ Youth”, he is a director of some note, planning his next production to star the great “Brenda” (Jane Fonda) while holing up with his crew in an A level sanitorium (spa) somewhere in the Swiss Alps. La Fonda is superb as a brassy, vulgar star who in her sneering way causes Harvey to lose hope in the future. Future is an attribute of Youth.
While memory shows the past forgotten and far away, it is the future that looks so close and that keeps us young. Harvey Keitel demonstrates this to his crew by having them look though the different ends of a telescope. The demonstration of the different views captures the essence of this film as it looks out upon the beautiful clean mountain nature of the Swiss Alps.
Michael Caine, a retired composer and conductor, and his daughter played by Rachel Weisz, are superb as only a father and daughter of their high caliber could be. While Caine refuses to appear before the Queen to conduct his simple tunes created and sung only by his deceased wife, he is able to conduct nature and its noises divinely and is able to reconstruct a future for himself and his daughter.
This Pathe-sold, Pathe coproduction between Italy, France , Great Britain and Switzerland, looks like the sequel to “A Great Beauty” and like most sequels, it falls short of its model. Part Fellini and party Thomas Mann (Magic Mountain) the visuals and the music almost exceed the film itself. However, the cast holds the entity together and like life on Magic Mountain, the audience must allow itself to sink into the posh comfort while dealing with the distinct discomforts of life’s aging processes.
In the press conference, a large dias with Paulo Sorrentino, Paul Dano
Harvey Keitel, Michael Caine, Rachel Weisz and Jane Fonda, in a smallish press room spoke of what made them work on this film; what past roles they, like the actor in the film, could not shake off; their thoughts on aging, how it is to work in Hollywood with Hollywood mores.
Watch the press conference here:
http://www.festival-cannes.com/en/mediaPlayer/15329.html
Jane said, “This film is not a satire on Hollywood, it is very true to life. The relationship between the actress Brenda, and her producer-director is very true to life, ‘a la Sorrentino’, that is, somewhat surreal.”
Michael Caine’s response to the question of working in Hollywood and the relationships among actors, directors and producers was that “Making movies is the same everywhere, only [in Hollywood] you get more money for it.”
It has been 49 years since Michael Caine was in Cannes. “Alfie” 50 years ago won in Cannes, but he did not, and so he never came back. This time however he loves the film so much that he would go with it anywhere for free. “If any of us gests an award we all [the cast] should get awards.”
Someone asked Sorrentino about his choice of the Norwegian group. He looked a bit confused and said he did not choose them. His music supervisor and composer, David Lang did it all.
His Dp, Luca Bigazzi, and he have been friends for a very long time and Sorrentino’s own vision and the Dp’s are very close to the same. It is the visuals which are always most outstanding in his films and within such a framework, the characters he studies are rigorously tested by the high level of circumstances in which they must perform. This is literal for the actors as well as for the characters who find themselves in the top, almost god-like position.
When asked, “Have any roles stuck to them longer perhaps than they would like?”
· La Fonda immediately spoke up naming “Barbarella” which has stuck to her and said she, she is conflicted by it.
Harvey answered “no”. · Rachel said “The Mummy”. “I don’t regret it at all, but young people are always saying, ‘Oh you’re from ‘The Mummy’. I like it.”
· Michael Caine said “Alfie” and commented on Alfie being a womanizer whereas he has been married to the same woman for 46 years.
Why is Sorrentino so interested in the passage of time?
“This is the only thing that interests people”, he said, “me at least. The theme fascinates me. I am passionately interested in the future which gives us freedom. The future gives us the feeling of youth. Optimistically, it dispels our fears.”
The question arose about how Sorrentino got such a wonderful ensemble:
Harvey: “Everyone of us has personal reasons for working in this film. We all have feelings about time.”
Paul Dano: “For me, it comes from the writing. I pore over it and figure out how we’ll do what we do. Paulo’s writing is wonderful.”
Rachel agrees with both but for her it’s all about the director, unifed in turn by a piece of music. How a director directs gives a point of view. If another director directed this movie, it would be an entirely different movie.
Michael Caine, who already cited the fact that both he and Harvey Keitel were soldiers though at different times, but that they share a soldierly bond in their long-time friendship, again cited being a soldier, going into an extremely dangerous situation in which you try to keep everyone alive. This was his experience with “Youth”.
Paolo added that “Music and cinema are two forms of art, two forms of beauty that will never disappear and is constantly changing”
On aging:
Jane spoke of her obvious make up in her scene, showing her vulnerability to aging.
Michael Caine spoke of showing his aging body.
Jane answered, “Yes one is vulnerable playing an old woman putting up the mask of makeup. When she removes it (and the wig) she becomes very vulnerable and that is fun to play.”
How does Jane Fonda define youth?
“Age is very much a question of attitude. If you have passion in your life, you are young. You remain young and vital in mind when you have passion in your life. I do and the film does.”...
- 6/16/2015
- by Sydney Levine
- Sydney's Buzz
For a performer whose career was so short-lived, Janis Joplin has been hugely influential and such a largely contentious figure in the world of music. We’ve recently gotten a Jimi Hendrix biopic, along with music stories about everyone from the short lived (Ian Curtis, Jim Morrison, John Lennon) to the long-living legends (Johnny Cash, Ray Charles), so it makes sense that a Joplin biopic is long past due.
Late last week, Deadline was breaking news that Jean-Marc Vallee had signed on to direct Get it While You Can, the working title for a Janis Joplin film with Amy Adams attached to star and sing in the film. This would be Vallee’s fourth film following Dallas Buyers Club, the upcoming Wild, and the just-wrapped Demolition.
Adams is terrific casting, and Vallee is promising, but we’ve been down this road before, and a new director attached is no closer...
Late last week, Deadline was breaking news that Jean-Marc Vallee had signed on to direct Get it While You Can, the working title for a Janis Joplin film with Amy Adams attached to star and sing in the film. This would be Vallee’s fourth film following Dallas Buyers Club, the upcoming Wild, and the just-wrapped Demolition.
Adams is terrific casting, and Vallee is promising, but we’ve been down this road before, and a new director attached is no closer...
- 11/25/2014
- by Brian Welk
- SoundOnSight
The long-in-the-works Janis Joplin biopic, Get It While You Can, will begin shooting in the second half of 2015 in Los Angeles and San Francisco with Amy Adams starring as the singer. Dallas Buyers Club director Jean-Marc Vallée is in negotiations to helm the picture, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Ron Terry, who previously executive produced a TV movie about Jimi Hendrix in 2000, and Teresa Kounin Terry wrote the script; Craig Borten and Melisa Wallack, who co-wrote Dallas Buyers Club together, are in negotiations to rewrite it.
Rolling Stone first reported...
Rolling Stone first reported...
- 11/21/2014
- Rollingstone.com
Orion, the precursor to Sony Pictures Classics, has taken on new life. When MGM bought the label in 1996 after its declared bankruptcy in 1991 was over, it waited until 2013 when it once again used the name Orion as a tv brand for “Paternity Court”, the syndicated court show. Now, as reported by Variety, September 11, 2014, “MGM intends to use the venerable indie name Orion as a brand for smaller releases, both domestically and internationally, on VOD and limited theatrical.”
See Orion Pictures Label Returns for First Time in 15 Years
Variety recalls Orion as the distributor of ‘80s and ‘90s independent hits such as “RoboCop,” “The Terminator” and “The Silence of the Lambs.”
I remember Orion Classic’s Donna Gigliotti, my counterpart when I was at Lorimar and her two colleagues, Michael Barker and Tom Bernard, now of Sony Pictures Classics. Together we bought Working Title and Channel Four’s “My Beautiful Laundrette” in 1985 and “End of the Line” together and briefly thought we would do Jonathan Demme’s adaptation of Spaulding Grey’s “Swimming to Cambodia” together with producer and now-professor of film at Nyu, Peter Newman. Some drama with Donna pouring her white wine over Peter as the film went to Cinecom where now-Columbia Film School’s Chairman, Ira Deutchman, exec produced it at while at Cinecom. It was Ira who gave me a pirated version of Q&A, the first database which I turned into FilmFinders, my company of 25 years until bought and buried by IMDb in 2008.
But most of all I remember Orion’s principals and founders Arthur Krim, Orion's board chairman; Eric Pleskow, president and chief executive officer; William Bernstein and Mike Medavoy who were the most wonderful men in the business. Smart and well educated men with a respect that touched me deeply and led me gently into the business.
In 1982 they acquired the almost equally well-loved Filmways after investment banking firms of Wertheim and Company and Bear, Stearns and Company chose them as the top contenders for the troubled Filmways. At that time, in 1982, Orion’s own movies were not doing so well either.
Orion had been formed in the spring of 1978 by the former top management team at United Artists, which had left in a dispute with Transamerica, the insurance company parent of United Artists. Orion had been releasing its films through Warner Brothers but was eager to acquire a distribution network of its own. Filmways had the nation's seventh-largest film distribution network, with 16 branch offices in the United States. (The other six were the major studios.) New York Times reported extensively about this in 1982 and as I was getting my sea legs on this ship of fools we call the film business, this was the most important news of the day.
And now Orion is making its first theatrical appearance in 15 years with
“The Town That Dreaded Sundown,” a horror movie from “American Horror Story” director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon. A recently released trailer of the film features the Orion label, its first appearance since 1999’s “One Man’s Hero.” “The Town That Dreaded Sundown” is the second recent production to carry the Orion label, following Brazilian film “Vestido Pra Casar” which is to go out theatrically later this year. “Town” will also be released under the Bh Tilt label, a recently-created multiplatform expansion from Jason Blum’s Blumhouse Productions. Blumhouse’s international sales are handled by Stuart Ford’s Im Global.
MGM’s Orion Releasing is also releasing Mark Platt’s production, “ We’ll Never Have Paris”, which is being represented internationally by K5 (“The Visitor”) and distributed in Benelux by Cdc United Network, in the Middle East by Falcon, and in the U.K. by Metrodome Distribution.
As a postscript, I want to say that I still love this crazy business. Plus ça change, plus c’est la mĕme chose.
.
See Orion Pictures Label Returns for First Time in 15 Years
Variety recalls Orion as the distributor of ‘80s and ‘90s independent hits such as “RoboCop,” “The Terminator” and “The Silence of the Lambs.”
I remember Orion Classic’s Donna Gigliotti, my counterpart when I was at Lorimar and her two colleagues, Michael Barker and Tom Bernard, now of Sony Pictures Classics. Together we bought Working Title and Channel Four’s “My Beautiful Laundrette” in 1985 and “End of the Line” together and briefly thought we would do Jonathan Demme’s adaptation of Spaulding Grey’s “Swimming to Cambodia” together with producer and now-professor of film at Nyu, Peter Newman. Some drama with Donna pouring her white wine over Peter as the film went to Cinecom where now-Columbia Film School’s Chairman, Ira Deutchman, exec produced it at while at Cinecom. It was Ira who gave me a pirated version of Q&A, the first database which I turned into FilmFinders, my company of 25 years until bought and buried by IMDb in 2008.
But most of all I remember Orion’s principals and founders Arthur Krim, Orion's board chairman; Eric Pleskow, president and chief executive officer; William Bernstein and Mike Medavoy who were the most wonderful men in the business. Smart and well educated men with a respect that touched me deeply and led me gently into the business.
In 1982 they acquired the almost equally well-loved Filmways after investment banking firms of Wertheim and Company and Bear, Stearns and Company chose them as the top contenders for the troubled Filmways. At that time, in 1982, Orion’s own movies were not doing so well either.
Orion had been formed in the spring of 1978 by the former top management team at United Artists, which had left in a dispute with Transamerica, the insurance company parent of United Artists. Orion had been releasing its films through Warner Brothers but was eager to acquire a distribution network of its own. Filmways had the nation's seventh-largest film distribution network, with 16 branch offices in the United States. (The other six were the major studios.) New York Times reported extensively about this in 1982 and as I was getting my sea legs on this ship of fools we call the film business, this was the most important news of the day.
And now Orion is making its first theatrical appearance in 15 years with
“The Town That Dreaded Sundown,” a horror movie from “American Horror Story” director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon. A recently released trailer of the film features the Orion label, its first appearance since 1999’s “One Man’s Hero.” “The Town That Dreaded Sundown” is the second recent production to carry the Orion label, following Brazilian film “Vestido Pra Casar” which is to go out theatrically later this year. “Town” will also be released under the Bh Tilt label, a recently-created multiplatform expansion from Jason Blum’s Blumhouse Productions. Blumhouse’s international sales are handled by Stuart Ford’s Im Global.
MGM’s Orion Releasing is also releasing Mark Platt’s production, “ We’ll Never Have Paris”, which is being represented internationally by K5 (“The Visitor”) and distributed in Benelux by Cdc United Network, in the Middle East by Falcon, and in the U.K. by Metrodome Distribution.
As a postscript, I want to say that I still love this crazy business. Plus ça change, plus c’est la mĕme chose.
.
- 10/21/2014
- by Sydney Levine
- Sydney's Buzz
Though it might have seemed like the Amy Adams-starring Janis Joplin biopic, Get It While You Can, was permanently stalled out after years of back and forth, THR now reports that its gotten fresh life thanks to the addition of a new director. The outlet reports that recently-revitalized Precious helmer Lee Daniels is currently in talks to direct the tragic rock n’ roll film, with Adams still set to star in the project (whole years after her first attachment). The script has been penned by producer Ron Terry and his wife Theresa Kounin-Terry. Adams has been attached to star in the film since back in July of 2010, when Fernando Meirelles was set to direct the project. At one point, Catherine Hardwicke was also once rumored for the directing gig. The film will be independently financed, but THR also reports rumors that “there have been preliminary talks with Focus Features about coming on board, though...
- 10/17/2012
- by Kate Erbland
- FilmSchoolRejects.com
Back to New York, post New Years. The Rabbi at the closing of the New Year said we still have until the next holiday (Sukkot) to ask forgiveness and to be written up in the Book of Life, and so I continue the blog I was writing regarding not only our recent New York trip but the unfinished topics that I did not get to complete in the past year, mostly about Cannes. As in Part I, this is a rambling account, so get ready for a long read.
We went to NYC after Tiff 12. Being at Ifp Filmweek in NYC where my partner Peter Belsito was on a speed dating table, we appreciated its new venue at Lincoln Center. At the same time as our event, Nyff was having its press screenings. Our own L.A. Times gave its Los Angeles stars some ink today. We hugged Rose Kuo, chatted with Eugene Hernandez, Eric Kohn and Peter Kneght, all hanging around together just like in the old Indiewire days. The layout of Ifp and Nyff at the newly designed Lincoln Center and the convergence between the two events is a great development. Joana Vicente has infused Ifp with new energy.
Rose (Kuo) is also so smart! I had wanted to discuss her unique views on distribution, festivals and exhibition in a blog. We talked about it at length during our 2 hour drive home from Monte Carlo during Cannes. Another conversation I had wanted to blog about was one held over lunch at the Plage des Palmes in Cannes with French producer, Sylvain Burnsztejn and John Kochman of Unifrance about the futility of factoring in U.S. revenues when writing up budgets and projections for French films. U.S. has to be ignored as a market because the chances of foreign language films making any money are so negligible, even when they are French which have proven to be the most popular of all foreign language films in the U.S. U.S. box office and video numbers are so small that the U.S. is excluded from important participation in the film activities among European countries unless, like the French, they offer incentives even for English language films. This is something new which is proving lucrative for mid-range U.S. productions. I spoke more about it over dinner at Antonia Dauphin and Peter Newman's 5th Avenue apartment. (Another New York great spots!)
Antonia has been casting American name actors in European funded films with great success. I told her I wanted to introduce her to my friend in Berlin, Geno Lechner of Volume57, a unique collective of international performers - actors, dancers, musicians and vagabonds - dedicated to the promotion of outstanding, independent performing artists. Geno, an actress in European art films is also the owner of an extraordinary house in Berlin which she is considering using for artist retreats. If you are lucky you could rent a unit that was recently rented by one of my favorite actresses, Tilda Swinton. You can read more about Antonia and casting in Backstage.
As Antonia and I talked, I told her about Tiff 12's Casting By, a new documentary paying tribute to the legacy of the late, legendary casting director Marion Dougherty. It shines a light on one of the most overlooked and least understood crafts in filmmaking. Packed with interviews with a "who's who" of top stars and filmmakers (she discovered James Dean and told Warren Beatty to lose his Brando accent), this world premiere screening was followed by a live, onstage discussion with people who were deeply affected by Dougherty, including some of the participants in the film. Dougherty surely would have won an Academy Award for Casting had there been any. I had never thought about this before, but the film seemed like a call to action about this issue. I am for adding an Oscar for Best Casting. The craft of casting seems like a predominately female craft. It also reminded me that I had wanted to write a blog about casting and my friend Ronnie Yeskel and her new British casting director partner. Another issue casting directors face every day is that when they submit a script to a talent agent for a client, by law the agent is supposed to send the script to the client. However, this often does not happen. This was not brought up in the film because Marion, her director clients and the actors she chose to push (Richard Dreyfus for The Graduate, Al Pacino, Robert de Niro, etc.) did not work that way. She brought new Broadway and off-Broadway talent to the directors. Anyway see the movie; it’s a great piece of New York and Hollywood history. HBO picked up No. American rights, but Submarine is still repping the film for the world.
That was quite a day; earlier the same day, my Peter (Belsito) and I had presented our ideas on the world market at Peter Newman’s 3rd year graduate class at Nyu’s Tisch School of Film. At our dinner with Peter and Antonia, we also talked with their 14 year old daughter recently returned from a year in Paris with her mother where Brodlie had studied at Gordon Bleu. She is already an accomplished food writer, and is being presented to the King and Queen of Sweden for her talent.
Another great dinner with a couple of friends, Richard Lorber, his wife Dovie Wingarsd, was at Back 40 West at Prince and Crosby in SoHo, formerly Savoy, a restaurant our friend Larry Bognanow designed and had taken us to before. We ate and rushed to the screening of his film Radio Unnamable. Speak of being So New York. This film got great coverage that very day in the N.Y. Times, not only with A.O. Scott’s review but with a separate article about “The Cuban Boys”. It was held at Karen Cooper’s Film Forum. The audience had film people in it I had not seen since my heady New York days in the early 80s like Jill Godmilow. I knew the audience was made of other New York intelligentsia though I did not know them, and consequently I did not go to the after party, a mistake I frequently make due to my innate shyness. Oh well, try as I might, I cannot entirely rid myself of this...Maybe during the New Year I'll be better.
The story of Wbai’s Bob Fass, an icon of free speech radio, his legacy and his archives, are, to quote Variety, “as epic as the medium gets”. Indiewire itself says that it “superbly recreates a time when radio mattered”. I loved this doc about the people who never sleep in the city that never sleeps. I knew Wbai’s call letters but did not know Bob Fass. He evokes a NYC that equals that New York of Weegee. The warm testimonies and radio appearances by such friends of his such as Larry Krassner, Arlo Guthrie, Kinky Freidman, Abbie Hoffman, Bob Dylan, Joni Collins, Carly Simon evoke an entire era. He created the community network in the days of be-ins and fly-ins, flash mobs via radio. I loved this movie, the venue, the audience. A totally New York experience. Thank you Richard and Dovie! See the film’s website www.radiounnameablemovie.com or on Facebook or via www.kinolorber.com.
We called on Susan Krim, Donald’s recent widow but didn’t connect. She welcomed in the New Year with her two children in a country house she and Don had bought not so long ago.
We went to Rosh Hashanah at B’nai Jeshurin, the Upper Westside Reconstructionist Synagogue whose music Shlomo Carlbach created and which is now under the leadership of Argentinean clergy and cantor. The next day, we were invited by an old friend from Peter’s childhood in Bayside, Queens to Temple Emanu-el, the High Reform Synagogue of the Upper Eastside. Their rabbi retires next year and this year’s sermon was by the woman rabbi there. This brave woman spoke of church and state, faith-based politics, the kashruth of what makes a fetus a human with a soul and what control a woman has over her own body, and when must we speak out for what we believe to be true. (And if now now, when?)
A press screening of Bianconieves (Isa: 6 Sales) which some after-tiff buzz was held in N.Y.and L.A. but I missed it! Pity! I do hope I will see it soon as Snow White ranks with my favorite Sleeping Beauty among childhood fairy tales I loved.
Hilary Davis of Bankside, here for Ifp No Borders, her husband, Peter and I had an outstanding dinner at Robert with a view from the 9th floor of 2 Columbus Circle at the Museum of Arts and Design. So New York! I later returned for lunch with my cousin and afterward visited the Museum whose elevator dropped me on the 3rd floor where there was a native arts’ exhibiton for modern and traditional art from the Americas.
Trisha Robinson who was in acquisitions with me at Lorimar in the late 80s and went on to head Academy Home Video when video was going through its changes, has moved to New York’s Upper East Side for the next year or two. Our dinner at Table d’hote, a small intimate and quiet restaurant with 6 tables on East 92ndStreet at Madison had wonderful waiters and great Italian food. The next day Trisha and I had lunch at the Vienneses café in Neue Galerie and then went to the Guggenheim to see the photograpy retrospective of contemporary Dutch woman, Rineke Dijkstra.
Dinner with Ben Barenholz at an old favorite of his in Chelsea from before he had moved to the Eastside brought up film history in yet another New York light. His first midnight screening (El Topo), his box office all time winner Cousin, Cousine and his experiment with dubbing, his opinions of film today, of the people we know, his remembering having hired John Tilley as soon as he graduated college in North Carolina, and of hiring Eamonn Bowles for his first job outside of college again made me want to write a book! I plan to look up his history on the internet in the coming year. Ben had wanted to go to Gotham Pizza which has the best pizza in N.Y., but it was too crowded, so we went down 9th St. to another old, small and intimate Italian restaurant.
Some of my readers might remember Joy Pereths. She was the first U.S. rep for U.K.’s Channel Four / Film Four and licensed My Beautiful Laundrette to me when I was buying for Lorimar and Orion Classics, in the days when it was run by Michael Barker, Tom Bernard and Donna Giogliotti. Lorimar paid $75,000 for U.S. rights. That went toward P&A as it opened in N.Y. and L.A. and from there the film went on to make an astonishing $7 million at the box office and sold 75,000 video cassettes at wholesale, $59.95 a unit. The first film I acquired on my return to L.A. for Lorimar (and their first acquisition as well), the first film produced by Tim Bevan and Sarah Radcliffe, the first produced film written by Hanif Kureishi, starring Daniel Day Lewis, sold to U.S. by a British company, gay and with a Pakistani protagonist – what a record of firsts! I recall that when I made the deal, N.Y. was in hurricane-warning mode and Joy and I had to hold on to each other as we crossed the street from Lincoln Center. She is now raising money for marketing a documentary film.
Finally, my friend who dates back to before those Lorimar days, to the days she worked for Fox-Lorber and I was looking for my next job in New York after heading a special social issue documentyr branch of Films Inc, started by Charles’ wife Marge Benton. Susan Margolin of New Video had lots of news and ideas to share now that the company has been acquired by Cinedigm. She’s bringing together a new staff. Jeff Reichert from Magnolia heads theatrical marketing and former New Video executive Stephanie Bruder is VP of marketing; Vincent (Vinni) Scordino – who started with Sara Rose at Picurehouse -- is VP of acquisitions, and Bob Fiorella is Executive VP and Chief Strategy Officer of Entertainment. Also, Ellen Trost is their Business Affairs Manager is a great asset. We knew each other when she was in London working for a blue chip company, BFI if I remember correctly. I bumped into her on the streets in New York quite by accident.
Finally, we had lunch with Juan Caceras and Vanessa Erazo of the New York Latino Film Festival at Spice, a Thai restaurant on 9th Avenue in Chelsea. My readers know them as the originators ad writers of Latino Buzz which appears on SydneysBuzz every Wednesday (except today!). It was the first time we met face to faces. We discussed their wish to bring light to the Latino filmmakers in the U.S. in their blog and how pleased they are to be receiving news for others requesting blog space. I love having them use SydneysBuzz as their platform. Juan’s film was picked up for North American distribution by Tla and is winding down its festival run of about 20 film festivals. We discussed the Latin Film Festivals in the U.S. Vanessa’s ideas about the feasibility of a sort of Latino Film Festival co-ordinating umbrella and our discussion of the upcoming Film Festival Academy (Ffa) which will hold its first edition with the New York Film Festival this year spurred us on to creating a workable plan.
As I write this the High Holidays have come to a close. Completed are the processes of Atonement, Reconciliation and a Turning Back to what is important with my fellow humankind. Thursday I will take off on my next trip, this time a four- day trip to trinidad + tobago film festival. You’ll hear more from me then.
Until then, Le Shana Tova! A Sweet New Year! May you be inscribed in the Book of Life. Forgive me if my rambling has bored you, though if you got this far, it is a compliment for which I thank you!
We went to NYC after Tiff 12. Being at Ifp Filmweek in NYC where my partner Peter Belsito was on a speed dating table, we appreciated its new venue at Lincoln Center. At the same time as our event, Nyff was having its press screenings. Our own L.A. Times gave its Los Angeles stars some ink today. We hugged Rose Kuo, chatted with Eugene Hernandez, Eric Kohn and Peter Kneght, all hanging around together just like in the old Indiewire days. The layout of Ifp and Nyff at the newly designed Lincoln Center and the convergence between the two events is a great development. Joana Vicente has infused Ifp with new energy.
Rose (Kuo) is also so smart! I had wanted to discuss her unique views on distribution, festivals and exhibition in a blog. We talked about it at length during our 2 hour drive home from Monte Carlo during Cannes. Another conversation I had wanted to blog about was one held over lunch at the Plage des Palmes in Cannes with French producer, Sylvain Burnsztejn and John Kochman of Unifrance about the futility of factoring in U.S. revenues when writing up budgets and projections for French films. U.S. has to be ignored as a market because the chances of foreign language films making any money are so negligible, even when they are French which have proven to be the most popular of all foreign language films in the U.S. U.S. box office and video numbers are so small that the U.S. is excluded from important participation in the film activities among European countries unless, like the French, they offer incentives even for English language films. This is something new which is proving lucrative for mid-range U.S. productions. I spoke more about it over dinner at Antonia Dauphin and Peter Newman's 5th Avenue apartment. (Another New York great spots!)
Antonia has been casting American name actors in European funded films with great success. I told her I wanted to introduce her to my friend in Berlin, Geno Lechner of Volume57, a unique collective of international performers - actors, dancers, musicians and vagabonds - dedicated to the promotion of outstanding, independent performing artists. Geno, an actress in European art films is also the owner of an extraordinary house in Berlin which she is considering using for artist retreats. If you are lucky you could rent a unit that was recently rented by one of my favorite actresses, Tilda Swinton. You can read more about Antonia and casting in Backstage.
As Antonia and I talked, I told her about Tiff 12's Casting By, a new documentary paying tribute to the legacy of the late, legendary casting director Marion Dougherty. It shines a light on one of the most overlooked and least understood crafts in filmmaking. Packed with interviews with a "who's who" of top stars and filmmakers (she discovered James Dean and told Warren Beatty to lose his Brando accent), this world premiere screening was followed by a live, onstage discussion with people who were deeply affected by Dougherty, including some of the participants in the film. Dougherty surely would have won an Academy Award for Casting had there been any. I had never thought about this before, but the film seemed like a call to action about this issue. I am for adding an Oscar for Best Casting. The craft of casting seems like a predominately female craft. It also reminded me that I had wanted to write a blog about casting and my friend Ronnie Yeskel and her new British casting director partner. Another issue casting directors face every day is that when they submit a script to a talent agent for a client, by law the agent is supposed to send the script to the client. However, this often does not happen. This was not brought up in the film because Marion, her director clients and the actors she chose to push (Richard Dreyfus for The Graduate, Al Pacino, Robert de Niro, etc.) did not work that way. She brought new Broadway and off-Broadway talent to the directors. Anyway see the movie; it’s a great piece of New York and Hollywood history. HBO picked up No. American rights, but Submarine is still repping the film for the world.
That was quite a day; earlier the same day, my Peter (Belsito) and I had presented our ideas on the world market at Peter Newman’s 3rd year graduate class at Nyu’s Tisch School of Film. At our dinner with Peter and Antonia, we also talked with their 14 year old daughter recently returned from a year in Paris with her mother where Brodlie had studied at Gordon Bleu. She is already an accomplished food writer, and is being presented to the King and Queen of Sweden for her talent.
Another great dinner with a couple of friends, Richard Lorber, his wife Dovie Wingarsd, was at Back 40 West at Prince and Crosby in SoHo, formerly Savoy, a restaurant our friend Larry Bognanow designed and had taken us to before. We ate and rushed to the screening of his film Radio Unnamable. Speak of being So New York. This film got great coverage that very day in the N.Y. Times, not only with A.O. Scott’s review but with a separate article about “The Cuban Boys”. It was held at Karen Cooper’s Film Forum. The audience had film people in it I had not seen since my heady New York days in the early 80s like Jill Godmilow. I knew the audience was made of other New York intelligentsia though I did not know them, and consequently I did not go to the after party, a mistake I frequently make due to my innate shyness. Oh well, try as I might, I cannot entirely rid myself of this...Maybe during the New Year I'll be better.
The story of Wbai’s Bob Fass, an icon of free speech radio, his legacy and his archives, are, to quote Variety, “as epic as the medium gets”. Indiewire itself says that it “superbly recreates a time when radio mattered”. I loved this doc about the people who never sleep in the city that never sleeps. I knew Wbai’s call letters but did not know Bob Fass. He evokes a NYC that equals that New York of Weegee. The warm testimonies and radio appearances by such friends of his such as Larry Krassner, Arlo Guthrie, Kinky Freidman, Abbie Hoffman, Bob Dylan, Joni Collins, Carly Simon evoke an entire era. He created the community network in the days of be-ins and fly-ins, flash mobs via radio. I loved this movie, the venue, the audience. A totally New York experience. Thank you Richard and Dovie! See the film’s website www.radiounnameablemovie.com or on Facebook or via www.kinolorber.com.
We called on Susan Krim, Donald’s recent widow but didn’t connect. She welcomed in the New Year with her two children in a country house she and Don had bought not so long ago.
We went to Rosh Hashanah at B’nai Jeshurin, the Upper Westside Reconstructionist Synagogue whose music Shlomo Carlbach created and which is now under the leadership of Argentinean clergy and cantor. The next day, we were invited by an old friend from Peter’s childhood in Bayside, Queens to Temple Emanu-el, the High Reform Synagogue of the Upper Eastside. Their rabbi retires next year and this year’s sermon was by the woman rabbi there. This brave woman spoke of church and state, faith-based politics, the kashruth of what makes a fetus a human with a soul and what control a woman has over her own body, and when must we speak out for what we believe to be true. (And if now now, when?)
A press screening of Bianconieves (Isa: 6 Sales) which some after-tiff buzz was held in N.Y.and L.A. but I missed it! Pity! I do hope I will see it soon as Snow White ranks with my favorite Sleeping Beauty among childhood fairy tales I loved.
Hilary Davis of Bankside, here for Ifp No Borders, her husband, Peter and I had an outstanding dinner at Robert with a view from the 9th floor of 2 Columbus Circle at the Museum of Arts and Design. So New York! I later returned for lunch with my cousin and afterward visited the Museum whose elevator dropped me on the 3rd floor where there was a native arts’ exhibiton for modern and traditional art from the Americas.
Trisha Robinson who was in acquisitions with me at Lorimar in the late 80s and went on to head Academy Home Video when video was going through its changes, has moved to New York’s Upper East Side for the next year or two. Our dinner at Table d’hote, a small intimate and quiet restaurant with 6 tables on East 92ndStreet at Madison had wonderful waiters and great Italian food. The next day Trisha and I had lunch at the Vienneses café in Neue Galerie and then went to the Guggenheim to see the photograpy retrospective of contemporary Dutch woman, Rineke Dijkstra.
Dinner with Ben Barenholz at an old favorite of his in Chelsea from before he had moved to the Eastside brought up film history in yet another New York light. His first midnight screening (El Topo), his box office all time winner Cousin, Cousine and his experiment with dubbing, his opinions of film today, of the people we know, his remembering having hired John Tilley as soon as he graduated college in North Carolina, and of hiring Eamonn Bowles for his first job outside of college again made me want to write a book! I plan to look up his history on the internet in the coming year. Ben had wanted to go to Gotham Pizza which has the best pizza in N.Y., but it was too crowded, so we went down 9th St. to another old, small and intimate Italian restaurant.
Some of my readers might remember Joy Pereths. She was the first U.S. rep for U.K.’s Channel Four / Film Four and licensed My Beautiful Laundrette to me when I was buying for Lorimar and Orion Classics, in the days when it was run by Michael Barker, Tom Bernard and Donna Giogliotti. Lorimar paid $75,000 for U.S. rights. That went toward P&A as it opened in N.Y. and L.A. and from there the film went on to make an astonishing $7 million at the box office and sold 75,000 video cassettes at wholesale, $59.95 a unit. The first film I acquired on my return to L.A. for Lorimar (and their first acquisition as well), the first film produced by Tim Bevan and Sarah Radcliffe, the first produced film written by Hanif Kureishi, starring Daniel Day Lewis, sold to U.S. by a British company, gay and with a Pakistani protagonist – what a record of firsts! I recall that when I made the deal, N.Y. was in hurricane-warning mode and Joy and I had to hold on to each other as we crossed the street from Lincoln Center. She is now raising money for marketing a documentary film.
Finally, my friend who dates back to before those Lorimar days, to the days she worked for Fox-Lorber and I was looking for my next job in New York after heading a special social issue documentyr branch of Films Inc, started by Charles’ wife Marge Benton. Susan Margolin of New Video had lots of news and ideas to share now that the company has been acquired by Cinedigm. She’s bringing together a new staff. Jeff Reichert from Magnolia heads theatrical marketing and former New Video executive Stephanie Bruder is VP of marketing; Vincent (Vinni) Scordino – who started with Sara Rose at Picurehouse -- is VP of acquisitions, and Bob Fiorella is Executive VP and Chief Strategy Officer of Entertainment. Also, Ellen Trost is their Business Affairs Manager is a great asset. We knew each other when she was in London working for a blue chip company, BFI if I remember correctly. I bumped into her on the streets in New York quite by accident.
Finally, we had lunch with Juan Caceras and Vanessa Erazo of the New York Latino Film Festival at Spice, a Thai restaurant on 9th Avenue in Chelsea. My readers know them as the originators ad writers of Latino Buzz which appears on SydneysBuzz every Wednesday (except today!). It was the first time we met face to faces. We discussed their wish to bring light to the Latino filmmakers in the U.S. in their blog and how pleased they are to be receiving news for others requesting blog space. I love having them use SydneysBuzz as their platform. Juan’s film was picked up for North American distribution by Tla and is winding down its festival run of about 20 film festivals. We discussed the Latin Film Festivals in the U.S. Vanessa’s ideas about the feasibility of a sort of Latino Film Festival co-ordinating umbrella and our discussion of the upcoming Film Festival Academy (Ffa) which will hold its first edition with the New York Film Festival this year spurred us on to creating a workable plan.
As I write this the High Holidays have come to a close. Completed are the processes of Atonement, Reconciliation and a Turning Back to what is important with my fellow humankind. Thursday I will take off on my next trip, this time a four- day trip to trinidad + tobago film festival. You’ll hear more from me then.
Until then, Le Shana Tova! A Sweet New Year! May you be inscribed in the Book of Life. Forgive me if my rambling has bored you, though if you got this far, it is a compliment for which I thank you!
- 9/27/2012
- by Sydney Levine
- Sydney's Buzz
To my friends and readers: We are about to conclude the Jewish High Holidays which began 10 days ago with Rosh Hashanah and ends tomorrow with Yom Kippur. In the spirit of this season, I must ask everyone, if I have offended any of you, whether knowingly or unknowingly, I ask your forgiveness. If I have not published articles I promised you I would, please forgive me. I meant to when I said I would but have so many other commitments and things I must do. I am sure that the article is not forgotten and I may get to it in the coming year. But I ask forgiveness for overreaching and for commitments and promises I have not kept.
By the way this free ranging stream of consciousness blog will go, it could also be called Jews in the News, the “News” being New Years and New York, and of course films. Imagining this as a new feature, and because it might only run once a year, I am going to use it here as a platform to mention everyone on my mind as they come up as a sort of New Year’s wrap up of things left undone.
To begin, I am writing about all the people and things I saw and did in New York and, again, I hope friends I don’t mention will forgive me. Like Lynda Hansen whom I did see at New York Film Society's Walter Reade Theater…or Wanda Bershan whom I saw across the room at a press screening or Gary Crowdes the editor-in-chief of Cineaste Magazine and whom I meant to greet but didn’t. I saw so many old New York friends and acquaintances and because it was New Years and a time of reflection, I revisited what were my circumstances when I left it in 1985 to return to L.A.
When I first moved to New York in 1980 to work for ABC Video Enterprises, I had spent 5 years practicing Orthodox Judaism. Being in New York represented the apotheosis of all things Jewish (outside of Israel, whose films and festivals will be the subject of another blog - excuse me Katriel Schory of the Israeli Film Fund and Alesia Weston the new director of the Jerusalem Film Festival). In New York, even those who were not Jewish by religion seemed Jewish to me by virtue of living in New York. When I realized this, my own Orthdoxy fell away from me as if I were shedding a cloak. I understood that my Jewish self was Jewish no matter what life style I would live. And I liked the New York life style most of all.
After Tiff 12 (Toronto International Film Festival 2012), Peter and I came for a week of relaxation to New York City. What a city! So New York, in-your-face, loud, crowded, lots of horns honking, and people: People. The best. We saw our friends, we saw New York with New Eyes.
We arrived by train from the airport, straight to our apartment! What great rapid transit, even if it is old and ugly, so blackened by dirt and age. I noticed new decorations on some walls of some stations, some works were better than others. I wish we had such a quick easy way to zoom around our fair city of L.A.
We stayed in an apartment in Chelsea – that of our daughter’s mother-in-law who lives half the year in the apartments built by the Amalgamated Ladies Garment Union. (The other half she spends in Truro.) Such history! Coincidently these are the very apartments I had wanted to live in when I was leaving NYC in 1985.
We were invited to a screening by Hisami Kuroiwa, whose friendship goes back to our early days in Cannes, or back to the days she produced Smoke and Blue in the Face with my other old friend Peter Newman. Araf (Venice Ff, Tokyo Ff, Isa: The Match Factory), which she associate produced, will be presented at the New York Film Festival (NYFF50), September 28 – October 14. The press screening at the new Walter Reade Theater was a great treat. The film’s director, Yesim Ustaoglu, ♀, who also directed Journey to the Sun and Pandora’s Box spoke via Skype at the press Q&A afterward.
Araf in Turkish means “somewhere in between”. The Somewhere in Between in the film is a 24-hour restaurant halfway between Ankara and Istanbul. The young girl whose first job it is; her friend – an “older” woman, not much older than herself who becomes her guide to adulthood; the girl’s childhood friend who works there as a teaboy and whose mother is not much older than the other two women and a truck driver who comes through en route, are the protagonists in this piece which brings to life a very distant place where the people’s most intimate issues are very much like our own to the degree that all the women share the same life issues of sex, love, work and family today in a world where traditions are giving way to the exigencies of modern life.
The issues are so much the same as what we are facing today, namely, our own bodies and all that entails. Parenthetically, these are the same issues in The Patience Stone (Isa: Le Pacte), which takes my prize for the Best Female Film at Tiff 12.
Both of these films deeply affected me in my own ways. When I say “affected”, what I mean is that some thought comes into my head which seems unrelated to the film but comes so suddenly and vividly to me and illuminates some part of my life. When this happens to me during a film, I know the film is really good because it is affecting a subconscious part of me and of something of concern to me. A thought comes to me which makes my life come together in a new way and I sometimes feel transformed by the experience. This is my criteria for what makes a good film. Of course story, script, direction, cast, music, costume and art decoration also count, but in the end, it is the emotional impact a film has upon me as a passive viewer which makes it a winning film for me. The same pertains to me for all art, whether painting, architecture (Wow factor here for NYC on the architecture front!) , sculpture, music, dancing, etc.
We were given a week’s guest pass to The Sports Center at Chelsea Piers by Alan Adelson whose documentary about James Joyce's hero, Leo Bloom in Ulysses, In Bed with Ulysses, is an exciting new film which I hope to see in the upcoming festival circuit. At the dinner, prepared and served by Alan and his wife Katie Taverna, an editor, who also has a new documentary about to surface, I was astounded by their home - so New York. Only in New York could someone live in Tribeca’s 19th century warehouse district in such an architecturally unique home amid such astounding works of art. Docu filmmaker, Deborah Schaffer and her late dear husband, the N.Y. architecht, Larry Bagdanow, introduced us to Alan several years ago. He also publishes Jewish Heritage Press, and he gave me a beautiful book entitled, The Last Bright Days: A Young Woman’s life in a Lithuanian Shtetl on the Eve of the Holocaust . Beile Delechy who, along with her brother, were the photographers for a small town called Kararsk in Lithuania, brought her photographs with her when she left Europe for the U.S. in 1938. They show the everyday reality for Jews and Lithuanians during the 1930s. Published by Jewish Heritage and Yivo Institute for Jewish Research, this book embodies my own aspirations. If I could have my books on my family published in such a way as this, I would die happy.
Speaking of Lithuania and this blog, being Jews in the News, must also cover some other Eastern European news because like New York, its innate character still seems Jewish, even though there are very few Jews there. There seems to be a resurgence of interest in the subject however, among the third generation since the Shoah.
Kaunas International Film Festival’s Tomas Tangmark, who heads distribution for the festival, is also a filmmaker whom I met at Wroclaw’s American Film Festival last November. By now his 12 minute short films should have wrapped. In Cannes, when we met again, he showed me his financial plan for “Breshter Bund – A Union Forever” which has received Development Support from the Swedish Film Institute and money from Swedish TV, has a production budget of around €25,000. It is about the workers at the Vindsberg factory in Vilkaviskis, Lithuania in 1896. Influenced by the current events in the world, the workers at the factory organize a strike. Their demand is a 10-hour working day. Whether they win, or lose, the outcome could change The Russian Empire. It was to shoot on location in Vilkaviskis, Lithuania in Yiddish this year.
This 12 minute short is only 1 of the 2 Yiddish language films we have heard about. Peter also heard about a feature which will be entirely in Yiddish. Thank you Coen Brothers whose A Serious Man opened the way!
When I was in Cannes this past year, I heard about Jewish Alley (Judengasse) at The Short Film Corner. Unfortunately Blancke Degenhardt Schuetz Film Produktion GmbH did not include any contact information on the brochure I picked up. Judengassse tells of the ordeal that the Jewish family Blumenfeld undergoes from 1933 to 1938. It is shot in B&W from a single camera position and presents the Holocaust and thoughts for the coexistence of different cultures in our modern society.
Also in Cannes I was so sorry to miss Raphael Berdugo’s second film since he left his company, Roissy Films, in the hands of EuropaCorp in 2008. The Other Son (Le fils de l’Autre) (Isa: La Cite, U.S.: Cohen Media Group) directed by Lorraine Levy ♀ about a man preparing to join the Israeli army who discovers he is not his parents’ biological son. In fact, he was inadvertently switched at birth with the son of a Palestinian family from the West Bank.
Returning to the subject of Eastern Europe in Cannes, Odessa comes to mind. Odessa cinema tradition began in 1894, a year and a half before the Lumiere brothers showed on the Boulevard des Capucines and its first studio opened in 1907. Serge Eisenstein made Odessa legend. On the very place where Battleship Potemkin was filmed, the Odessa Film Festival holds an open-air screening for 12,000 with a view of the sea. During their first year, there were 30,000 attendees. By year three, there were 100,000. It takes place in an opera house on a level of that in Vienna, but their emperor did not pay as in Austria; the people themselves paid for the building. There are $15,000 cash prizes giving for Best Film, Best, Director, and Best Actor. Tomboy won last year. It has a small market for Russian and Ukrainian films, a pitch session and a “summer school” where the students live in tents at attend master classes and a sort of Talent Campus. There is good food by the sea! Don’t you want to attend? I’m hoping to find a way to go, especially after Ilya Dyadik, the program director, so graciously showed me all that goes on there and introduced me to Denis Maslikov, the Managing Director of the Ukrainian Producers Association. It takes place in July.
Estonia is another country on my mind. During Tiff A Lady in Paris (Isa: Pyramide) warmed my soul. Starring Jeanne Moreau, and costarring Laine MÄGI, an actress who reminds me of Katie Outinen, (Kaurimaki's favorite actress) the film was about women and love and oh so French! How could you not love the imperious Jeanne Moreau wearing Chanel and being won over by an Eastern European drudge who, under Moreau’s tutelage transforms herself in a vividly chic woman. And ,Patrick Pineau, who plays the owner of of those upscale cafes you like to have lunch in when in Paris, only needs to take one small step toward Laine, and oh la la, you too fall in love with him!
Edith Sepp, the film advisor for the Estonian Ministry of Culture, met us originally at the Vilnius Film Festival in Lithuania and we had a lot of fun hanging out there. We already had a connection to Estonia because the Estonian American documentary The Singing Revolution was our client’s film. We introduced our client to Richard Abramowitz in 2006 who did extraordinarily well with the film’s theatrical release. Edith invited us to their Cannes reception at Plage des Palmes and we continued our conversation. At Tiff 12 and Karlovy Vary, their film Mushrooming screened, but the one I am really eager to see is In the Crosswind. It shot through four seasons. The director is a 23 year old young man and this is his first film. It cost 700,000 Euros which went into historical costumes, extras and a new technology he is creating to make a profound drama about the relocation of whole populations by the Soviets, a theme which has shaped European history. I hope to see it in Berlin…or Cannes…or Venice.. The film is a sort of documentary story, somewhat similar to Waltz with Bashir, but it is old in live action and with still photography. During Cannes, they were seeking 200,000 Euros to complete the film. There is much to say about both of the Eastern European countries with their new generation of articulate and talented filmmakers. I hope they will be the subject of another blog or two in the coming year.
One last note on Eastern European films. A veteran Czech producer, Rudolf Biermann whom we know since the early days of Karlovy Vary's freedom from the Soviet bloc, is still producing young, fresh comedies like the one one that showed at Tiff 12, The Holy Quaternity by Jan Hrebejk (Isa: Montecristo). This romp brings marital sex which has become boring to a new and simple solution between two couples who have been best friends throughout their marriage. It's risque and sweet and plays with two generations' differing views on the sex games we play for fun.
But I have digressed from New York...And now I must go to Yom Kippur services for the rest of today. This blog will be continued tomorrow!! Watch for Part II which will be about New York!
By the way this free ranging stream of consciousness blog will go, it could also be called Jews in the News, the “News” being New Years and New York, and of course films. Imagining this as a new feature, and because it might only run once a year, I am going to use it here as a platform to mention everyone on my mind as they come up as a sort of New Year’s wrap up of things left undone.
To begin, I am writing about all the people and things I saw and did in New York and, again, I hope friends I don’t mention will forgive me. Like Lynda Hansen whom I did see at New York Film Society's Walter Reade Theater…or Wanda Bershan whom I saw across the room at a press screening or Gary Crowdes the editor-in-chief of Cineaste Magazine and whom I meant to greet but didn’t. I saw so many old New York friends and acquaintances and because it was New Years and a time of reflection, I revisited what were my circumstances when I left it in 1985 to return to L.A.
When I first moved to New York in 1980 to work for ABC Video Enterprises, I had spent 5 years practicing Orthodox Judaism. Being in New York represented the apotheosis of all things Jewish (outside of Israel, whose films and festivals will be the subject of another blog - excuse me Katriel Schory of the Israeli Film Fund and Alesia Weston the new director of the Jerusalem Film Festival). In New York, even those who were not Jewish by religion seemed Jewish to me by virtue of living in New York. When I realized this, my own Orthdoxy fell away from me as if I were shedding a cloak. I understood that my Jewish self was Jewish no matter what life style I would live. And I liked the New York life style most of all.
After Tiff 12 (Toronto International Film Festival 2012), Peter and I came for a week of relaxation to New York City. What a city! So New York, in-your-face, loud, crowded, lots of horns honking, and people: People. The best. We saw our friends, we saw New York with New Eyes.
We arrived by train from the airport, straight to our apartment! What great rapid transit, even if it is old and ugly, so blackened by dirt and age. I noticed new decorations on some walls of some stations, some works were better than others. I wish we had such a quick easy way to zoom around our fair city of L.A.
We stayed in an apartment in Chelsea – that of our daughter’s mother-in-law who lives half the year in the apartments built by the Amalgamated Ladies Garment Union. (The other half she spends in Truro.) Such history! Coincidently these are the very apartments I had wanted to live in when I was leaving NYC in 1985.
We were invited to a screening by Hisami Kuroiwa, whose friendship goes back to our early days in Cannes, or back to the days she produced Smoke and Blue in the Face with my other old friend Peter Newman. Araf (Venice Ff, Tokyo Ff, Isa: The Match Factory), which she associate produced, will be presented at the New York Film Festival (NYFF50), September 28 – October 14. The press screening at the new Walter Reade Theater was a great treat. The film’s director, Yesim Ustaoglu, ♀, who also directed Journey to the Sun and Pandora’s Box spoke via Skype at the press Q&A afterward.
Araf in Turkish means “somewhere in between”. The Somewhere in Between in the film is a 24-hour restaurant halfway between Ankara and Istanbul. The young girl whose first job it is; her friend – an “older” woman, not much older than herself who becomes her guide to adulthood; the girl’s childhood friend who works there as a teaboy and whose mother is not much older than the other two women and a truck driver who comes through en route, are the protagonists in this piece which brings to life a very distant place where the people’s most intimate issues are very much like our own to the degree that all the women share the same life issues of sex, love, work and family today in a world where traditions are giving way to the exigencies of modern life.
The issues are so much the same as what we are facing today, namely, our own bodies and all that entails. Parenthetically, these are the same issues in The Patience Stone (Isa: Le Pacte), which takes my prize for the Best Female Film at Tiff 12.
Both of these films deeply affected me in my own ways. When I say “affected”, what I mean is that some thought comes into my head which seems unrelated to the film but comes so suddenly and vividly to me and illuminates some part of my life. When this happens to me during a film, I know the film is really good because it is affecting a subconscious part of me and of something of concern to me. A thought comes to me which makes my life come together in a new way and I sometimes feel transformed by the experience. This is my criteria for what makes a good film. Of course story, script, direction, cast, music, costume and art decoration also count, but in the end, it is the emotional impact a film has upon me as a passive viewer which makes it a winning film for me. The same pertains to me for all art, whether painting, architecture (Wow factor here for NYC on the architecture front!) , sculpture, music, dancing, etc.
We were given a week’s guest pass to The Sports Center at Chelsea Piers by Alan Adelson whose documentary about James Joyce's hero, Leo Bloom in Ulysses, In Bed with Ulysses, is an exciting new film which I hope to see in the upcoming festival circuit. At the dinner, prepared and served by Alan and his wife Katie Taverna, an editor, who also has a new documentary about to surface, I was astounded by their home - so New York. Only in New York could someone live in Tribeca’s 19th century warehouse district in such an architecturally unique home amid such astounding works of art. Docu filmmaker, Deborah Schaffer and her late dear husband, the N.Y. architecht, Larry Bagdanow, introduced us to Alan several years ago. He also publishes Jewish Heritage Press, and he gave me a beautiful book entitled, The Last Bright Days: A Young Woman’s life in a Lithuanian Shtetl on the Eve of the Holocaust . Beile Delechy who, along with her brother, were the photographers for a small town called Kararsk in Lithuania, brought her photographs with her when she left Europe for the U.S. in 1938. They show the everyday reality for Jews and Lithuanians during the 1930s. Published by Jewish Heritage and Yivo Institute for Jewish Research, this book embodies my own aspirations. If I could have my books on my family published in such a way as this, I would die happy.
Speaking of Lithuania and this blog, being Jews in the News, must also cover some other Eastern European news because like New York, its innate character still seems Jewish, even though there are very few Jews there. There seems to be a resurgence of interest in the subject however, among the third generation since the Shoah.
Kaunas International Film Festival’s Tomas Tangmark, who heads distribution for the festival, is also a filmmaker whom I met at Wroclaw’s American Film Festival last November. By now his 12 minute short films should have wrapped. In Cannes, when we met again, he showed me his financial plan for “Breshter Bund – A Union Forever” which has received Development Support from the Swedish Film Institute and money from Swedish TV, has a production budget of around €25,000. It is about the workers at the Vindsberg factory in Vilkaviskis, Lithuania in 1896. Influenced by the current events in the world, the workers at the factory organize a strike. Their demand is a 10-hour working day. Whether they win, or lose, the outcome could change The Russian Empire. It was to shoot on location in Vilkaviskis, Lithuania in Yiddish this year.
This 12 minute short is only 1 of the 2 Yiddish language films we have heard about. Peter also heard about a feature which will be entirely in Yiddish. Thank you Coen Brothers whose A Serious Man opened the way!
When I was in Cannes this past year, I heard about Jewish Alley (Judengasse) at The Short Film Corner. Unfortunately Blancke Degenhardt Schuetz Film Produktion GmbH did not include any contact information on the brochure I picked up. Judengassse tells of the ordeal that the Jewish family Blumenfeld undergoes from 1933 to 1938. It is shot in B&W from a single camera position and presents the Holocaust and thoughts for the coexistence of different cultures in our modern society.
Also in Cannes I was so sorry to miss Raphael Berdugo’s second film since he left his company, Roissy Films, in the hands of EuropaCorp in 2008. The Other Son (Le fils de l’Autre) (Isa: La Cite, U.S.: Cohen Media Group) directed by Lorraine Levy ♀ about a man preparing to join the Israeli army who discovers he is not his parents’ biological son. In fact, he was inadvertently switched at birth with the son of a Palestinian family from the West Bank.
Returning to the subject of Eastern Europe in Cannes, Odessa comes to mind. Odessa cinema tradition began in 1894, a year and a half before the Lumiere brothers showed on the Boulevard des Capucines and its first studio opened in 1907. Serge Eisenstein made Odessa legend. On the very place where Battleship Potemkin was filmed, the Odessa Film Festival holds an open-air screening for 12,000 with a view of the sea. During their first year, there were 30,000 attendees. By year three, there were 100,000. It takes place in an opera house on a level of that in Vienna, but their emperor did not pay as in Austria; the people themselves paid for the building. There are $15,000 cash prizes giving for Best Film, Best, Director, and Best Actor. Tomboy won last year. It has a small market for Russian and Ukrainian films, a pitch session and a “summer school” where the students live in tents at attend master classes and a sort of Talent Campus. There is good food by the sea! Don’t you want to attend? I’m hoping to find a way to go, especially after Ilya Dyadik, the program director, so graciously showed me all that goes on there and introduced me to Denis Maslikov, the Managing Director of the Ukrainian Producers Association. It takes place in July.
Estonia is another country on my mind. During Tiff A Lady in Paris (Isa: Pyramide) warmed my soul. Starring Jeanne Moreau, and costarring Laine MÄGI, an actress who reminds me of Katie Outinen, (Kaurimaki's favorite actress) the film was about women and love and oh so French! How could you not love the imperious Jeanne Moreau wearing Chanel and being won over by an Eastern European drudge who, under Moreau’s tutelage transforms herself in a vividly chic woman. And ,Patrick Pineau, who plays the owner of of those upscale cafes you like to have lunch in when in Paris, only needs to take one small step toward Laine, and oh la la, you too fall in love with him!
Edith Sepp, the film advisor for the Estonian Ministry of Culture, met us originally at the Vilnius Film Festival in Lithuania and we had a lot of fun hanging out there. We already had a connection to Estonia because the Estonian American documentary The Singing Revolution was our client’s film. We introduced our client to Richard Abramowitz in 2006 who did extraordinarily well with the film’s theatrical release. Edith invited us to their Cannes reception at Plage des Palmes and we continued our conversation. At Tiff 12 and Karlovy Vary, their film Mushrooming screened, but the one I am really eager to see is In the Crosswind. It shot through four seasons. The director is a 23 year old young man and this is his first film. It cost 700,000 Euros which went into historical costumes, extras and a new technology he is creating to make a profound drama about the relocation of whole populations by the Soviets, a theme which has shaped European history. I hope to see it in Berlin…or Cannes…or Venice.. The film is a sort of documentary story, somewhat similar to Waltz with Bashir, but it is old in live action and with still photography. During Cannes, they were seeking 200,000 Euros to complete the film. There is much to say about both of the Eastern European countries with their new generation of articulate and talented filmmakers. I hope they will be the subject of another blog or two in the coming year.
One last note on Eastern European films. A veteran Czech producer, Rudolf Biermann whom we know since the early days of Karlovy Vary's freedom from the Soviet bloc, is still producing young, fresh comedies like the one one that showed at Tiff 12, The Holy Quaternity by Jan Hrebejk (Isa: Montecristo). This romp brings marital sex which has become boring to a new and simple solution between two couples who have been best friends throughout their marriage. It's risque and sweet and plays with two generations' differing views on the sex games we play for fun.
But I have digressed from New York...And now I must go to Yom Kippur services for the rest of today. This blog will be continued tomorrow!! Watch for Part II which will be about New York!
- 9/26/2012
- by Sydney Levine
- Sydney's Buzz
Huge undertaking for a sophomore pic – The Gospel According to Janis. But over the last ten years — even with a bevy of stars attached, including Lili Taylor, rock star Pink, and Zooey Deschanel Insert Piece of My Heart and The Gospel According to Janis
Gist:
Worth Noting:
Do We Care?: Durkin
http://www.deadline.com/2012/07/janis-joplin-film-casting-nina-arianda-tony-winner-sean-durkin-directing/
Exclusive: After recently winning the Tony for best actress in a play for Venus In Fur, Nina Arianda will make her screen-starring debut playing 1960s rock icon Janis Joplin. Joplin, a film that looks back on the final six months of the singer’s life with flashbacks to her early career, will be directed by Sean Durkin, whose feature debut Martha Marcy May Marlene won him a slew of festival acclaim including Best Director at Sundance.
Nina Arianda Janis Joplin Movie Joplin will be made for a budget under $20 million, with production to start early next year,...
Gist:
Worth Noting:
Do We Care?: Durkin
http://www.deadline.com/2012/07/janis-joplin-film-casting-nina-arianda-tony-winner-sean-durkin-directing/
Exclusive: After recently winning the Tony for best actress in a play for Venus In Fur, Nina Arianda will make her screen-starring debut playing 1960s rock icon Janis Joplin. Joplin, a film that looks back on the final six months of the singer’s life with flashbacks to her early career, will be directed by Sean Durkin, whose feature debut Martha Marcy May Marlene won him a slew of festival acclaim including Best Director at Sundance.
Nina Arianda Janis Joplin Movie Joplin will be made for a budget under $20 million, with production to start early next year,...
- 7/16/2012
- by Eric Lavallee
- IONCINEMA.com
Borderline Films writer-director-producer Sean Durkin has landed on a project to follow his critically acclaimed Sundance 2011 drama “Martha Marcy May Marlene,” which nabbed Durkin the narrative directing award at the festival that year. Durkin is now attached to helm “Joplin,” the long-gestating Janis Joplin biopic produced by Peter Newman (“The Squid and the Whale”), with Tony-winning actress Nina Arianda taking on the title role. Joplin was a rock-and-roll icon in the 1960s that rose to fame with Big Brother and the Holding Company before dying of a drug overdose in 1970 at age 27. Newman has long held rights to a good portion of Joplin’s catalog and a large collection of written materials, which will be used to create a depiction of the last six months of her life. Durkin is also set to write the script, though he hasn’t yet begun, which makes the producers’ goal of starting production early in 2013 unlikely.
- 7/9/2012
- by Jay A. Fernandez
- Indiewire
Sbs has announced its program line-up for the summer-autumn 2011-12 period. It follows this week's announcement that Screen Australia will fund a second series of Sbs's hugely successful Go Back to Where You Came From, which produced its highest ratings of the year. .With factual content we want to provoke debate,. said Sbs head of production and development Peter Newman. .With Go Back to Where You Came From series two and Immigration Nation we.re creating a body of work that is really getting under the skin of Australian immigration stories, whether it.s through a contemporary prism or a historical one.. The broadcaster will also screen Once Upon a Time in Cabramatta . the untold story of how the Vietnamese community overcame...
- 10/12/2011
- by Danii Logue
- IF.com.au
Maya Newell has won the F4 Award for Outstanding New Documentary Talent, presented by the Australian International Documentary Conference and the BigPond Adelaide Film Festival.
Newell’s film Two was one of the four finalists, chosen from the more than 80 entries received by the Australian International Documentary Conference.
Two i’s an expose of a secret personal world of adult babies, with the focus on an eccentric middle aged British man with a furry fetish, who is locked into a continual state of wanting to being two years old.
The jury was headed by Gil Scrine (Gil Scrine Films), joined by Fiona Lawson-Baker (executive producer, Ten Alps Asia), Anna Miralis (Channel4), Jenny Neighbour (programs manager, Sydney Film Festival) and Peter Newman (executive producer of factual for Sbs).
“The jury agreed unanimously on Two because it displays the sensitivity needed for its extremely delicate subject. It was closely observed yet discreet...
Newell’s film Two was one of the four finalists, chosen from the more than 80 entries received by the Australian International Documentary Conference.
Two i’s an expose of a secret personal world of adult babies, with the focus on an eccentric middle aged British man with a furry fetish, who is locked into a continual state of wanting to being two years old.
The jury was headed by Gil Scrine (Gil Scrine Films), joined by Fiona Lawson-Baker (executive producer, Ten Alps Asia), Anna Miralis (Channel4), Jenny Neighbour (programs manager, Sydney Film Festival) and Peter Newman (executive producer of factual for Sbs).
“The jury agreed unanimously on Two because it displays the sensitivity needed for its extremely delicate subject. It was closely observed yet discreet...
- 3/6/2011
- by Miguel Gonzalez
- Encore Magazine
Tonight, MTV and co-creator Bryan Elsley launch the Americanized version of the UK hit TV show Skins by pushing boundaries for casual sex and recreational drugs. What makes this unusual is that the cast is comprised of teens -- not the twentysomethings posing as teens that usually populate high school shows. Elsley cast all unknowns, understandable considering Hollywood's growing infatuation with discovering new stars. Of course, the Skins' newcomers were only too happy to take low salaries for the chance to pop the way X-Men: First Class’ Nicholas Hoult and Slumdog Millionaire’s Dev Patel did when they starred in the UK version of Skins. The U.S. version's lead is James Newman who plays the Hoult-originated role of the manipulative ringleader Tony. James is the 18-year old son of Peter Newman, producer of indie films like Smoke and The Squid And The Whale. He was the only kid...
- 1/17/2011
- by MIKE FLEMING
- Deadline
#31. The Music Never Stopped - Jim Kohlberg Jim Kohlberg's The Music Never Stopped definitely appears to be the sort of title that could preem at either Sundance, SXSW, Tribeca or if they really want to take their time, Tiff. It really depends on the tone and where they're at in the post-production/submission phase. A first time director, Kohlberg's filmmaking experiences have been limited to the producers' chair capacity, most recently: Peter Askin's Trumbo. The drama certainly has a Sundance-like cast in the Julia Ormond, J.K. Simmons, Mía Maestro, Lou Taylor Pucci, Tammy Blanchard and Cara Seymour ensemble, but what is most important for the inclusion is a distinct "authorial" voice, one that plays better than the Sundance selected Asperger's Syndrome disaster called Adam. A Premieres section or U.S Dramatic Competition could be in the cards. Scripted by Gwyn Lurie and Gary Marks, based on Oliver Sacks...
- 11/5/2010
- IONCINEMA.com
It could have been Renée, it could have been Zooey, but now Amy Adams looks set to play Janis Joplin. Priya Elan hopes it doesn't Jormp the shark
In Hollywood, the Janis Joplin story is a cinematic mirage. Like On The Road, Atlas Shrugged, and the remake of Barbarella, it's been a cornerstone of "Development Hell", chewed over so much that many wondered if it actually existed. There was the unauthorised Piece Of My Heart, which was to star Renée Zellweger or Brittany Murphy. There was The Gospel According To Janis which Penelope Spheeris was down to direct with Zooey Deschanel or P!nk. Thirdly there was an untitled flick, thought to be an adaptation of Laura Joplin's off-Broadway play about her sister (Laura Theodore, the show's star, was attached).
So it came as some surprise when Amy Adams was announced as starring in a new Joplin project. Directed by Fernando (City Of God) Meirelles,...
In Hollywood, the Janis Joplin story is a cinematic mirage. Like On The Road, Atlas Shrugged, and the remake of Barbarella, it's been a cornerstone of "Development Hell", chewed over so much that many wondered if it actually existed. There was the unauthorised Piece Of My Heart, which was to star Renée Zellweger or Brittany Murphy. There was The Gospel According To Janis which Penelope Spheeris was down to direct with Zooey Deschanel or P!nk. Thirdly there was an untitled flick, thought to be an adaptation of Laura Joplin's off-Broadway play about her sister (Laura Theodore, the show's star, was attached).
So it came as some surprise when Amy Adams was announced as starring in a new Joplin project. Directed by Fernando (City Of God) Meirelles,...
- 8/9/2010
- by Priya Elan
- The Guardian - Film News
The tale of the Janis Joplin biopic is a long and sordid one: two previous projects with big names involved have fallen through, disappearing into oblivion without ever having been made. The Squid and the Whale producer Peter Newman has been trying to make The Gospel According to Janis for nearly a decade; Renée Zellweger was involved in another attempt, Piece of My Heart, back in 2003. Now, Rolling Stone reports that actress Amy Adams is signed on to play the raspy-voiced songstress in a biopic directed by City of God guru Fernando Meirelles....
- 7/29/2010
- Pastemagazine.com
Amy Adams’ reps have confirmed that the 35-year-old actress will portray Janis Joplin in the biopic to be directed by Fernando Meirelles (City of God) and produced by Temple Hill Entertainment. Whether or not this movie actually makes it to the big screen is another matter entirely. Meirelles is co-writing the script, but is set to direct 360 — a BBC Films project written by Peter Morgan — prior to beginning work on Joplin. Also, the film does not yet have a studio partner, and sources say that the financing on the movie is rather shaky. Temple Hill didn’t return calls seeking comment.
- 7/19/2010
- by Nicole Sperling
- EW - Inside Movies
John McNaughton, who made a splash on the horror scene with Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer in the '80s, is in various stages of development on two projects. He's circling Sweet for Peter Newman Productions. Nicholas Hoult ( Clash of the Titans ) appears to be the front runner for the role of Steve, an average teenager who happens to get kidnapped and raped by two delusional housewives. Wowzer. Considered more drama than horror (but with a plot like that...), the film was scripted by John Wohlbruck. Then there's The Harvest for Elephant Eye Films. Said to straddle the line between a horror film and a psychological thriller, this one concerns a young doctor and nurse try to adjust to a new life when their child is born with a debilitating disease. How far are they...
- 4/16/2010
- shocktillyoudrop.com
Elf actress Zooey Deschanel has replaced singer Pink as Janis Joplin in the biopic Gospel According To Janis. The singer pulled out of the Penelope Spheeris film earlier this year and, after much speculation, Deschanel was eventually selected to take over the role. The script has gone through several revisions and now focuses on former Rolling Stone writer David Dalton, who was once assigned to write a cover story comparing the troubled Joplin to Judy Garland. Dalton accompanied the singer on a long tour and his adventures have become the central plot for the film. Deschanel has spent the past four months working with a vocal coach to help her mimic Joplin's gritty vocals, and she will sing all of Joplin's songs featured in the film. According to producer Peter Newman, it has been a struggle to find an actress who could sing or a singer who could act. He says, "Zooey is the first we found who excels at both." Filming will begin on November 13 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and the film is scheduled for release in 2008. Oscar winner Renee Zellweger is attached to another film about Joplin's life, but it is currently on hold at Paramount Pictures while the script is reworked.
- 9/20/2006
- WENN
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