anglais > vocabulaire > film / cinéma / vidéo / image / technologie / acteur

Stills, posters and designs > The British Film Institute's
unique collection of photographs and illustrations from cinema and television
http://www.bfi.org.uk/collections/stills/index.html

still

frame

cinema

in cinemas

cinematography

picture house

release

re-release

new print

art house film

mainstream movie

film critic
http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/interactive/2008/apr/13/1

review
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2008/dec/12/day-the-earth-stood-still

one not to be missed

theatrical marketplace

art-film market

edit

cut

final cut

redux

sequel
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2009/nov/16/2012-roland-emmerich
http://film.guardian.co.uk/features/featurepages/0,,1816899,00.html
http://film.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,1740659,00.html

prequel
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/may/06/angels-and-demons-tom-hanks-dan-brown
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/may/05/x-men-origins-wolverine-hugh-jackman
http://film.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,12589,1516449,00.html

instalment
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/gallery/2009/jun/30/harry-potter-and-the-half-blood-prince?picture=349577498
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/jun/16/the-final-destination-trailer-review

Lord of the Rings > The third and final instalment in the Tolkien trilogy

flick
http://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/2007-04-28-hogzilla-movie_N.htm

parody

shoot

shot

shot on location on a low-budget in 17 days

pan

shooting

filming

steadycam / Steadicam
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steady_cam

film-maker

Oscar-winning film-maker
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/sep/15/abraham-lincoln-spielberg-redford

film-making

rushes

Bollywood (India)
http://film.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,1837035,00.html

box office
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2010/mar/09/alice-in-wonderland-uk-box-office
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/11/15/arts/AP-US-Box-Office.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2008/nov/10/2
http://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/news/2007-05-06-spidermanboxoffice_N.htm
http://film.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,1740642,00.html

box-office record USA 2008
http://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/news/2008-07-19-boxoffice_N.htm

break one box office record
http://film.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,1828204,00.html

smash box-office records
http://film.guardian.co.uk/features/featurepages/0,,1816899,00.html

smash
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/07/movies/awardsseason/07Scott.html

top the charts for three weekends in a row
http://film.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,1828204,00.html

blockbuster
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2009/nov/16/2012-roland-emmerich
http://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/news/2008-10-30-oscar-contenders_N.htm
http://film.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,1738679,00.html

crowdpleaser
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/feb/23/oscars-results-slumdog-kate-winslet

gross
http://film.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,1828204,00.html

hit

sleeper hit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2009/jan/20/slumdog-millionaire-sleeper-hit

flop
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/25/movies/25eddie.html

film industry

entertainment industry
http://film.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,1738679,00.html

score

soundtrack to

film composer

Sir Malcolm Arnold
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1879936,00.html

Clint Eastwood
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/festival/2008/10/clint-eastwood-composer.html

Thomas Newman
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Newman

Bernard Herrmann 1911-1975
http://arts.guardian.co.uk/filmandmusic/story/0,,1726989,00.html

New York: Metropolitan Print Company, for Raff and Gorman,
ca. 1896.
Color lithograph.
Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress (155)
http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/british/brit-5.html

silent era
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Brownlow
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0002206/
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/vshtml/vshome.html
http://film.guardian.co.uk/features/featurepages/0,4120,939015,00.html
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0002206/

silent movie

silent film classic

silent slapstick
http://film.guardian.co.uk/features/featurepages/0,4120,1465182,00.html

Vitascope

cinema-going

admissions

cinema multiplexes

audience (-s)
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/07/movies/awardsseason/07Scott.html

preview

preview screening

coming to a screen near you

film-maker

colour
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1456188,00.html

black and white

crisp black and white

character

fictional character

James Bond
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/jamesbond
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/video/2008/oct/29/roger-moore-james-bond
http://film.guardian.co.uk/features/featurepages/0,,1948908,00.html
http://film.guardian.co.uk/bond/0,,790850,00.html

real people
http://film.guardian.co.uk/features/featurepages/0,4120,1355826,00.html

villain
http://film.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,1945466,00.html

hero (-es)

superhero (-es)

acting

film set

hit UK screens

masterpiece

festival / fest

film fest

Edinburgh film fest
http://www.edfilmfest.org.uk/
http://film.guardian.co.uk/festivals/news/0,,1818752,00.html

New York Film Festival USA
http://www.filmlinc.com/nyff/nyff.html
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/n/new_york_film_festival/index.html

Sundance Film Festival Park City, Utah USA
http://festival.sundance.org/2010/
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/s/sundance_film_festival_park_city_utah/index.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/29/movies/29sundance.html

Toronto International Film Festival CAN
http://www.tiff.net/default.aspx
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/t/toronto_international_film_festival/index.html

at the Cannes film festival FR

Palme d'Or winning film

Human Rights Watch International Film Festival USA
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/12/movies/12rights.html?8dpc

script

screenplay

screenwriter / writer > Budd Schulberg > On the Waterfront
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2008/jul/30/marlonbrando.theatre

screenwriter / writer
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/13/business/media/13vote.html
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2432977,00.html

comedy writer > Larry Gelbart
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/12/arts/12gelbart.html

plot

story

storyline
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/slumdog-makes-it-to-top-dog-1629407.html

end

ending

alternative endings
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2009/apr/23/wolverine-hugh-jackman-different-endings

trailer
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2009/jul/23/alice-in-wonderland-tim-burton-johnny-depp
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXJEDUainX4
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2008/oct/09/oliver.stone.w.trailer

film crew

film maker

subtitle

subtitled

celluloid

grain

footage

censor

take the censors to court to overturn an 18 certificate
http://film.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,12589,1333141,00.html

censorship
http://film.guardian.co.uk/features/featurepages/0,4120,1324491,00.html
http://film.guardian.co.uk/censorship/news/0,11729,749447,00.html
http://film.guardian.co.uk/censorship/news/0,11729,666650,00.html
http://film.guardian.co.uk/censorship/0,11729,660393,00.html

US censors > NC-17 rating
http://film.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,12589,1320095,00.html

Hays Code of 1934
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2008/jul/15/features.culture1
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2008/feb/29/2

British Academy Film Awards Baftas
http://www.bafta.org/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/baftas
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/feb/10/baftas-slumdog-pitt-jolie-boyle
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/feb/08/bafta-awards-2009-winners
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/gallery/2009/feb/08/baftas-red-carpet?picture=342948369

Bafta awards 2007
http://film.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,2010981,00.html

Screen Actors Guild Awards SAG USA 2007
http://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/movieawards/2007-12-20-sag-nominations_N.htm

British Independent Film Awards 2007
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/film/2007/11/whats_the_best_british_film.html

win

academy award

at the Academy Awards

Oscars
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/feb/23/oscars-results-slumdog-kate-winslet

Oscars USA 2009
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/feb/23/oscars-results-slumdog-kate-winslet

Oscars USA 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/25/movies/awardsseason/25osca.html

Oscars nominations USA 2008
http://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/movieawards/oscars/2008-01-22-oscar-nomination-news_N.htm
http://film.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,2244968,00.html

Oscars USA 2007
http://film.guardian.co.uk/oscars2007/0,,1986215,00.html

Oscars nominations USA
http://film.guardian.co.uk/oscars2006/story/0,,1698991,00.html
http://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/movieawards/oscars/2006-01-31-oscar-nomination-news_x.htm
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/31/movies/redcarpet/31cnd-oscars.html

golden globe award USA

the 67th annual Golden Globe Awards — decided by the fewer than 90 members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association USA 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/18/movies/awardsseason/18globes.html
http://projects.nytimes.com/awards/golden-globes/2010/ballot/new

The Golden Globes Awards USA
http://film.guardian.co.uk/oscars2008/story/0,,2240488,00.html
http://film.guardian.co.uk/oscars2007/story/0,,1991464,00.html
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,11069-1989400,00.html

Golden Globe Nominations USA 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/14/movies/13cnd-globe.html

red carpet
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/gallery/2009/feb/23/oscars-fashion-red-carpet-pictures?picture=343625107
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/gallery/2009/feb/08/baftas-red-carpet?picture=342948369

novel

bring ... to the big screen
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/jul/27/kong-king-of-skull-island-movie

Patrick O'Brian's seafaring novels have been made into a blockbuster movie.
http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/generalfiction/story/0,6000,1095195,00.html

best film speeches > "I love the smell of napalm in the morning"
http://film.guardian.co.uk/News_Story/Guardian/0,4029,1114528,00.html

in the opening scene

digital video

miniDV camera

editing software

lens

CCD

camcorder
http://technology.guardian.co.uk/weekly/story/0,,2044592,00.html

picture quality

FireWire / iLink / DV in /IEEE 1394 plug

USB connection

plug the camera in

tape

storage

section

in point

fast forward to

out point

mark out

capture

rewind

play

edit

shuffle the scenes around

pirate DVD copy

"d-cinema"

digital film-making

digital camera

digitised post-production

digital projection

digital distribution

digital sound

digital graphics and special effects

digital landscaping

digital distribution

Internet movie provider

online pay-per-view showing

VHS
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/features/
isex-how-pornography-has-revolutionised-technology-1749247.html?action=Popup&ino=4

Super 8 projectors
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/features/
isex-how-pornography-has-revolutionised-technology-1749247.html?action=Popup

A British fim produced by Michael Leighton George Relph, designer and film producer,
born February 16 1915; died September 30 2004
The Guardian p. 31 8.10.2004
http://www.politics.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,3604,1322634,00.html

British Film Institute BFI
http://www.bfi.org.uk/

the world's first right-wing film festival in Dallas, Texas, USA
http://film.guardian.co.uk/festivals/news/0,11667,1311295,00.html

National Museum of Photography, Film and Television
http://www.ingenious.org.uk/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/news/0,12597,1235009,00.html

He Doth Surpass Himself: ‘Avatar’ Outperforms ‘Titanic’

January 27, 2010
The New York Times
By MICHAEL CIEPLY

LOS ANGELES — James Cameron’s science-fiction epic “Avatar” has passed his “Titanic” to become history’s highest-grossing film, with a sizable boost from higher-priced tickets for 3-D and Imax showings.

“Avatar,” like other contemporary films, has also benefited from the steady inflation of ticket prices —today’s average is $7.46, up from $4.69 in 1998 when “Titanic” was in theaters — meaning that “Titanic” had to sell many more tickets to reach box-office totals like “Avatar’s.” But “Avatar” remains poised to keep going for weeks if not months.

Through Monday its ticket sales around the world reached $1.86 billion, edging past the $1.84 billion in sales posted by “Titanic,” which came out in December 1997, according to figures released Tuesday by 20th Century Fox.

Fox released “Avatar” around the world; it split the distribution of “Titanic” with Paramount Pictures.

Through Monday “Avatar” took in about $554.9 million in domestic theaters, placing it just behind “Titanic,” with sales of $600.8 million, in the domestic box-office rankings, and just ahead of “The Dark Knight,” a Warner Brothers film from 2008, which took in $533.3 million.

The performance of “Avatar” is particularly striking because the film — a leading contender in this year’s Oscar race — reached its summit so quickly.

“In just 39 days it has eclipsed the worldwide record,” said Paul Dergarabedian, the president of Hollywood.com’s box-office division. “That’s extraordinarily impressive.”

Mr. Dergarabedian said he thought “Avatar” would pass the domestic box-office mark set by “Titanic” by the middle of next week, and that it is almost certain to pass $2 billion in worldwide sales before the end of its run.

Privately, some involved with the film are guessing that final ticket sales will go as high as $2.5 billion, though Fox has made no public projection. New Line Cinema’s “Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King,” No. 3 in the all-time worldwide rankings, had $1.1 billion in ticket sales, according to Boxofficemojo.com.

Fox said 72 percent of worldwide sales for “Avatar” came from 3-D screens. If Mr. Dergarabedian’s estimates are correct, the movie has accounted for roughly 56 million admissions in domestic theaters to date.

That is about the same number of tickets that “Titanic” had sold at this point in its theatrical run, he said.

But “Titanic” played and played, remaining in theaters until September 1998 and racking up about 128 million admissions. “Avatar” still needs a very long tail to surpass the number of viewers who saw “Titanic.”

To calculate the number of “Avatar” viewers around the world is impossible without taking into account exchange rates and a patchwork of ticket prices and viewing habits in dozens of countries in which the film has been showing.

Large-format Imax theaters have accounted for about $137.1 million of “Avatar” ticket sales around the world, said Greg Foster, president and chairman of Imax Filmed Entertainment. “There’s been only the most minimal drop-off,” he said. Imax theaters are scheduled to continue showing “Avatar” until “Alice in Wonderland,” another 3-D film, from Walt Disney, opens on March 5.

The world record is sweet vindication, both for Mr. Cameron and for Fox. Skeptics had questioned whether Mr. Cameron could deliver on his promise of a revolutionary visual experience, and whether Fox and its financial partners would profit from a film that cost nearly a half-billion dollars to make and release.

While those questions are now settled — the film will make a profit and the critics have been kind — the Academy Awards, scheduled for March 7, remain a hurdle. On Sunday the Producers Guild of America gave its highest movie award, sometimes a harbinger of success at the Oscars, to “The Hurt Locker.” A small, independent drama about the Iraq war, it was directed by Kathryn Bigelow, who is Mr. Cameron’s ex-wife.

On Tuesday Tom Rothman, a chairman of the Fox film operation, said the global success of “Avatar” carried a lesson beyond economics. “It tells you all of us on the planet have more things in common than we have dividing us,” Mr. Rothman said.

He Doth Surpass Himself: ‘Avatar’ Outperforms ‘Titanic’, NYT, 27.1.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/27/movies/awardsseason/27record.html

With $72.7 Million, ‘New Moon’ Sets New Opening Day Record

November 21, 2009
Filed at 12:19 p.m. ET
The New York Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Vampires and werewolves have vanquished a dark knight.

"The Twilight Saga: New Moon" took in $72.7 million in its first day to break the single day domestic box office record previously held by "The Dark Knight," which had a $67.2 million opening day last year.

The Friday haul for the "Twilight" sequel includes a record $26.3 million from midnight screenings alone.

If "New Moon" maintains its pace, it might have a shot at the all-time best opening weekend record of $158.4 million, also held by "The Dark Knight."

"New Moon" continues the story of teen romance between a girl and a vampire (Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson), with the sequel adding a love triangle with a teen werewolf (Taylor Lautner).

With $72.7 Million, ‘New Moon’ Sets New Opening Day Record, NYT, 21.11.2009, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/11/21/movies/AP-US-BoxOffice-NewMoon.html

'Knowing' Tops at Box Office With $24.8 Million

March 22, 2009
The New York Times
Filed at 2:44 p.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Audiences knew what they wanted this weekend: Nicholas Cage and the apocalypse.

Summit Entertainment's supernatural thriller ''Knowing,'' which stars Cage as an astrophysics professor who figures out how to predict monumental catastrophes, debuted as the No. 1 movie at the weekend box office with $24.8 million in ticket sales, according to studio estimates Sunday.

''Knowing'' easily foiled ''I Love You, Man'' and ''Duplicity,'' the other films opening in wide release. ''I Love You, Man'' was second with $18 million and ''Duplicity'' was third at $14.4 million.

The victory was another affirmation for Summit Entertainment, the small studio behind the vampire saga ''Twilight,'' which opened last year with more than $69 million and went on sale Saturday on DVD after fans lined up at midnight.

Richie Fay, the studio's president of domestic distribution, said there are several reasons for the studio's successes.

''We've got great creative talent at the studio, veterans on the marketing side and I've got a few years under my belt on the distribution side,'' said Fay. ''It's the right people coming together at the right time. We're lean and mean, but we pack a punch. We can deliver on all levels. With the DVD coming out so well, we're obviously a fully functioning studio.''

The ''bromantic'' comedy ''I Love You, Man'' attracted equal numbers of men and women, according to the studio. It stars Paul Rudd and Jason Segel

''I think the movie debuted at expectations,'' said Don Harris, Paramount's vice president of distribution. ''We had the advantage of opening at the beginning of college and high school spring break, so the audience for this film is going to continue to be available. We think the movie will have good legs. There are no other comedies coming out for the next couple of weekends, so that bodes well for the film.''

The weekend's other major debut, Universal's romantic comedy ''Duplicity,'' was written and directed by ''Michael Clayton'' director Tony Gilroy and stars Julia Roberts and Clive Owen as romantically entangled former spies who scheme to steal millions of dollars from their rival pharmaceutical companies.

''I liken 'Duplicity' to cinematic fine dining,'' said Paul Dergarabedian, president of box office tracker Media By Numbers. ''I think 'Knowing' and 'I Love You, Man' were more like fast food. They were fun and easy. 'Duplicity' was just a little bit more of a challenging film for audiences. I think audiences were looking for a different kind of escapism.''

Factoring in 2009's higher admission prices, the box office total was down 5 percent compared with last year, the second straight weekend of decline.

Dergarabedian doesn't believe the decline indicates the end of an otherwise stellar year at the box office, however, saying next weekend's debut of Dreamworks' ''Monsters vs. Aliens'' should be strong.

''Being only 12 weeks into the year, every weekend makes a huge difference,'' said Dergarabedian. ''We're still doing great this year, but it just shows you that the business is extremely cyclical. I'm not ready to signal any kind of doom and gloom just yet. We have 'Monsters vs. Aliens' opening Friday, and I think that will get us back on track.''

Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Media By Numbers LLC. Final figures will be released Monday.

1. ''Knowing,'' $24.8 million.

2. ''I Love You, Man,'' $18 million.

3. ''Duplicity,'' $14.4 million.

4. ''Race to Witch Mountain,'' $13 million.

5. ''Watchmen,'' $6.7 million.

6. ''The Last House on the Left,'' $5.9 million.

7. ''Taken,'' $4.1 million.

8. ''Slumdog Millionaire,'' $2.7 million.

9. ''Tyler Perry's Madea Goes to Jail,'' $2.5 million.

10. ''Coraline,'' $2.1 million.

------

On the Net:

http://www.mediabynumbers.com

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Universal Pictures, Focus Features and Rogue Pictures are owned by NBC Universal, a unit of General Electric Co.; Sony Pictures, Sony Screen Gems and Sony Pictures Classics are units of Sony Corp.; DreamWorks, Paramount and Paramount Vantage are divisions of Viacom Inc.; Disney's parent is The Walt Disney Co.; Miramax is a division of The Walt Disney Co.; 20th Century Fox, Fox Searchlight Pictures and Fox Atomic are owned by News Corp.; Warner Bros., New Line, Warner Independent and Picturehouse are units of Time Warner Inc.; MGM is owned by a consortium of Providence Equity Partners, Texas Pacific Group, Sony Corp., Comcast Corp., DLJ Merchant Banking Partners and Quadrangle Group; Lionsgate is owned by Lionsgate Entertainment Corp.; IFC Films is owned by Rainbow Media Holdings, a subsidiary of Cablevision Systems Corp.

'Knowing' Tops at Box Office With $24.8 Million, NYT, 22.3.2009, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/03/22/arts/AP-Box-Office.html

Batman Rules the Night, and the Whole Weekend

July 21, 2008
The New York Times
By MICHAEL CIEPLY

LOS ANGELES — Fevered fans pushed “The Dark Knight,” the sixth of the Warner Brothers series of “Batman” movies, to record three-day ticket sales of $155.3 million over the weekend, shoring up what so far had been a wobbly year at the box office.

By Warner’s estimate the film narrowly eclipsed opening-weekend ticket sales last year of $151.1 million for Sony Pictures’ “Spider-Man 3,” the previous record holder.

Including a solid $27.6 million for the musical “Mamma Mia!” from Universal Pictures, the weekend’s Top 12 films took in about $249.6 million, according to the box-office consultant Media by Numbers. That lifted the domestic box-office total for the year to $5.36 billion.

That is still down about 1 percent from last year, and the number of theatergoers is down 3.7 percent. But the weekend performance gave studios and theater owners alike reason to take heart, as it proved that even a familiar franchise like “Batman” can still bring surprises.

“It just took on a life of its own,” said Dan Fellman, Warner’s president for theatrical distribution. “You never expect anything like this.”

Excitement around “The Dark Knight” began to build sharply weeks ago, much of it fed by anticipation of the performance as the Joker by Heath Ledger, who died in January.

Theaters began adding midnight and then early-morning screenings of the film as fans scooped up advance tickets online. At sellout shows around the country, audiences — including more than a few viewers who came made up to resemble Mr. Ledger’s evil clown character — pushed Friday ticket sales to an estimated $66.4 million, including an extraordinary $18.5 million from the midnight showings.

That the film’s opening took on an event status that previous “Batman” movies never quite achieved apparently owed something to its strong presence in Imax format.

The film — directed by Christopher Nolan and starring Christian Bale — was filmed partly using Imax cameras and opened on nearly 100 Imax screens in the United States. That meant a boost at the box office because Imax tickets cost an average of $12.80, about 80 percent more than the overall average ticket price of $7.08, as estimated by Media by Numbers.

Imax screenings contributed $6.2 million to the “Dark Knight” box office, beating the previous Imax record, $4.7 million for “Spider-Man 3,” by more than 30 percent, said Greg Foster, the president of filmed entertainment for Imax.

The summer box office had been solid but not spectacular, with tickets for the season up slightly at $2.76 billion, thanks to price inflation, and attendance down about 2 percent. Films like “Iron Man” from Paramount Pictures and Marvel Studios and “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” from Paramount and Lucasfilm have topped the $300 million mark.

But “Hancock,” an off-center superhero movie from Sony Pictures and the star Will Smith, came up short of last year’s “Transformers” box office over the July Fourth holiday, and several releases, including “Meet Dave” from Eddie Murphy and 20th Century Fox, fell flat.

This weekend Fox suffered another embarrassment with the animated “Space Chimps,” which took in just $7.4 million and placed seventh.

The box-office take for “Mamma Mia!,” starring Meryl Streep, was almost identical to that on the equivalent weekend last year by “Hairspray,” a New Line Cinema musical that took in $27.5 million in first-weekend sales and went on to make $118.9 million.

Other top-performing films over the weekend included “Hancock,” with $14 million (for a total of $191.5 million); “Journey to the Center of the Earth” from Warner, with $11.9 million (a total of $43.1 million); “Hellboy II: The Golden Army” from Universal, with $10 million ($56.4 million total); and “Wall-E” from Walt Disney with $9.8 million ($182.5 million total).

For all the records the weekend’s performance also underscored how much harder studios have been working for their hits in recent years. The 1989 “Batman,” with a reported budget of $35 million, opened to about $40.5 million and went on to take in more than $251 million at the domestic box office.

“The Dark Knight,” by contrast, has been reported to cost more than $180 million. Given the pattern of contemporary blockbusters, the film appears unlikely to match the performance of “Batman,” whose domestic box office would be on the order of $450 million if adjusted to reflect ticket-price inflation.

Today’s event films tend to open bigger, and disappear more quickly, than those of the past. Thus, “Spider-Man 3” took in about 45 percent of its $336.5 million in total sales on its opening weekend, and “Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End” took in 37 percent of its $309.4 million on the first weekend last year.

“Batman,” by contrast, relied on the opening weekend for just 16 percent of sales.

Mr. Fellman said he believed “The Dark Knight” would continue to outpace “Spider-Man 3” in coming days, thanks to a midsummer run when school is out. “Spider-Man 3” was released in early May and had to fight harder for midweek business.

By week’s end, Mr. Fellman said, “The Dark Knight” will probably take in more than the $205 million in total domestic ticket sales for its predecessor, “Batman Begins,” in 2005.

Batman Rules the Night, and the Whole Weekend, NYT, 21.7.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/21/movies/21batm.html?hp

'Dark Knight' sets box office record with $66.4M

19 July 2008
USA Today

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Batman's joust with the Joker has set another box office record. Stoked by fan fever over the manic performance of the late Heath Ledger as the Joker, The Dark Knight set a one-day box office record with $66.4 million on opening day, Warner Bros. head of distribution Dan Fellman said Saturday.

The movie's Friday haul surpassed the previous record of $59.8 million set last year by Spider-Man 3. The Dark Knight might break the opening-weekend record of $151.1 million, also held by Spider-Man 3.

"I think they're in jeopardy," Fellman said of the Spider-Man 3 records.

The Dark Knight began with a record $18.5 million from midnight screenings, topping the previous high of $16.9 million for Star Wars: Episode III — The Revenge of the Sith.

The opening day grosses for The Dark Knight far exceeded the full weekend haul of its predecessor, Batman Begins, which took in $48.7 million in its first three days in 2005.

Reviews were excellent for director Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins, but they were stellar for his Dark Knight.

"We've really never seen anything like this," said Paul Dergarabedian, president of box-office tracker Media By Numbers. "The death of a fine actor taken in his prime, a legendary performance, and a movie that lives up to all the hype. That all combined to create these record-breaking numbers."

Buzz had been high for the Batman sequel well before Ledger died of an accidental prescription-drug overdose in January. Trailers last fall revealing Ledger's demented Joker, with crooked clown makeup, turned up the heat even more. The critical acclaim over his performance that built from advance screenings left fans in a frenzy.

"It's a combination of things. Certainly, that's a great part of it, but I think this movie's gross was partly because of the reviews it received and the incredible buzz and word of mouth that preceded it with our early screenings," Fellman said. "And the success and quality of the last one, Batman Begins, delivered by Chris Nolan just set the tone for the opening of this movie."

The Dark Knight reunites Christian Bale as Batman, the vigilante crime-fighter tormented by personal tragedy, and co-stars Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman and Gary Oldman. Maggie Gyllenhaal also stars.

The film spins an epic crime duel as Ledger's Joker orchestrates a reign of terror on the city of Gotham aimed to spread chaos and break down the restraint that keeps Batman on the right side of the law.

While critics are taking the film seriously enough to suggest Ledger could be in line for an Academy Award nomination, the action-packed movie also delivers as pure summer movie escapism.

"If you're worried about mortgage payments and gas prices, when you're sitting in The Dark Knight for two and a half hours, you're not thinking about any of that stuff," Dergarabedian said.

'Dark Knight' sets box office record with $66.4M, UT, 19.7.2008, http://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/news/2008-07-19-boxoffice_N.htm

Sydney Pollack, Film Director, Is Dead at 73

May 27, 2008
The New York Times
By MICHAEL CIEPLY

LOS ANGELES — Sydney Pollack, a Hollywood mainstay as director, producer and sometime actor whose star-laden movies like “The Way We Were,” “Tootsie” and “Out of Africa” were among the most successful of the 1970s and ’80s, died Monday at home here. He was 73.

The cause was cancer, said the publicist Leslee Dart, who spoke for his family.

Mr. Pollack’s career defined an era in which big stars (Robert Redford, Barbra Streisand, Warren Beatty) and the filmmakers who knew how to wrangle them (Barry Levinson, Mike Nichols) retooled the Hollywood system. Savvy operators, they played studio against studio, staking their fortunes on pictures that served commerce without wholly abandoning art.

Hollywood honored Mr. Pollack in return. His movies received multiple Academy Award nominations, and as a director he won an Oscar for his work on the 1985 film “Out of Africa” as well as nominations for directing “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?” (1969) and “Tootsie” (1982).

“Michael Clayton,” of which Mr. Pollack was a producer and a member of the cast, was nominated for a best picture Oscar earlier this year. He delivered a trademark performance as an old-bull lawyer who demands dark deeds from a subordinate, played by George Clooney. (“This is news? This case has reeked from Day 1!” snaps Mr. Pollack’s Marty Bach.) Most recently, Mr. Pollack portrayed the father of Patrick Dempsey’s character in “Made of Honor.”

Mr. Pollack became a prolific producer of independent films in the latter part of his career. With a partner, the filmmaker Anthony Minghella, he ran Mirage Enterprises, a production company whose films included Mr. Minghella’s “Cold Mountain” and the documentary “Sketches of Frank Gehry,” released in 2006, the last film directed by Mr. Pollack.

Mr. Minghella died in March, at the age of 54, of complications from surgery for tonsil cancer.

Apart from the Gehry documentary, Mr. Pollack never directed a movie without stars. His first feature, “The Slender Thread,” released by Paramount Pictures in 1965, starred Sidney Poitier and Anne Bancroft. In his next 19 films — every one a romance or drama but for the single comedy, “Tootsie” — Mr. Pollack worked with Burt Lancaster, Natalie Wood, Jane Fonda, Robert Mitchum, Al Pacino, Dustin Hoffman, Meryl Streep, Tom Cruise, Harrison Ford, Nicole Kidman, Ms. Streisand and others. A frequent collaborator was Robert Redford.

“Sydney’s and my relationship both professionally and personally covers 40 years,” Mr. Redford said in an e-mailed statement. “It’s too personal to express in a sound bite.”

Sydney Irwin Pollack was born on July 1, 1934, in Lafayette, Ind., and reared in South Bend. By Mr. Pollack’s own account, in the book “World Film Directors,” his father, David, a pharmacist, and his mother, the former Rebecca Miller, were first-generation Russian-Americans who had met at Purdue University.

Mr. Pollack developed a love of drama at South Bend Central High School and, instead of going to college, went to New York and enrolled at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theater. He studied there for two years under Sanford Meisner, who was in charge of its acting department, and remained for five more as Mr. Meisner’s assistant, teaching acting but also appearing onstage and in television.

Curly-haired and almost 6 feet 2 inches tall, Mr. Pollack had a notable role in a 1959 “Playhouse 90” telecast of “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” an adaptation of the Hemingway novel directed by John Frankenheimer. Earlier, Mr. Pollack had appeared on Broadway with Zero Mostel in “A Stone for Danny Fisher” and with Katharine Cornell in “The Dark Is Light Enough.” But he said later that he probably could not have built a career as a leading man.

Instead, Mr. Pollack took the advice of Burt Lancaster, whom he had met while working with Mr. Frankenheimer, and turned to directing. Mr. Lancaster steered him to the entertainment mogul Lew Wasserman, and through him Mr. Pollack landed a directing assignment on the television series “Shotgun Slade.”

After a faltering start, he hit his stride on episodes of “Ben Casey,” “Naked City,” “The Fugitive” and other shows. In 1966 he won an Emmy for directing an episode of “Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theater.”

From the time he made his first full-length feature, “The Slender Thread,” about a social work student coaxing a woman out of suicide on a help line, Mr. Pollack had a hit-and-miss relationship with the critics. Writing in The New York Times, A. H. Weiler deplored that film’s “sudsy waves of bathos.” Mr. Pollack himself later pronounced it “dreadful.”

But from the beginning of his movie career, he was also perceived as belonging to a generation whose work broke with the immediate past. In 1965, Charles Champlin, writing in The Los Angeles Times, compared Mr. Pollack to the director Elliot Silverstein, whose western spoof, “Cat Ballou,” had been released earlier that year, and Stuart Rosenberg, soon to be famous for “Cool Hand Luke” (1967). Mr. Champlin cited all three as artists who had used television rather than B movies to learn their craft.

Self-critical and never quite at ease with Hollywood, Mr. Pollack voiced a constant yearning for creative prerogatives more common on the stage. Yet he dived into the fray. In 1970, “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?,” his bleak fable of love and death among marathon dancers in the Great Depression, based on a Horace McCoy novel, received nine Oscar nominations, including the one for directing. (Gig Young won the best supporting actor award for his performance.)

Two years later, Mr. Pollack made the mountain-man saga “Jeremiah Johnson,” one of three closely spaced pictures in which he directed Mr. Redford.

The second of those, “The Way We Were,” about ill-fated lovers who meet up later in life, also starred Ms. Streisand and was a huge hit despite critical hostility.

The next, “Three Days of the Condor,” another hit, about a bookish C.I.A. worker thrust into a mystery, did somewhat better with the critics. “Tense and involving,” said Roger Ebert in The Chicago Sun-Times.

With “Absence of Malice” in 1981, Mr. Pollack entered the realm of public debate. The film’s story of a newspaper reporter (Sally Field) who is fed a false story by federal officials trying to squeeze information from a businessman (Paul Newman) was widely viewed as a corrective to the adulation of investigative reporters that followed Alan J. Pakula’s hit movie “All the President’s Men,” with its portrayal of the Watergate scandal.

But only with “Tootsie,” in 1982, did Mr. Pollack become a fully realized Hollywood player. By then he was represented by Michael S. Ovitz and the rapidly expanding Creative Artists Agency. So was his leading man, Dustin Hoffman.

As the film — a comedy about a struggling actor who disguises himself as a woman to get a coveted television part — was being shot for Columbia Pictures, Mr. Pollack and Mr. Hoffman became embroiled in a semi-public feud, with Mr. Ovitz running shuttle diplomacy between them.

Mr. Hoffman, who had initiated the project, argued for a more broadly comic approach. But Mr. Pollack — who played Mr. Hoffman’s agent in the film — was drawn to the seemingly doomed romance between the cross-dressing Hoffman character and the actress played by Jessica Lange.

If Mr. Pollack did not prevail on all points, he tipped the film in his own direction. Meanwhile, the movie came in behind schedule, over budget and surrounded by bad buzz.

Yet “Tootsie” was also a winner. It took in more than $177 million domestically and received 10 Oscar nominations, including for best picture. (Ms. Lange took home the film’s only Oscar, for best supporting actress.)

Backed by Mr. Ovitz, Mr. Pollack expanded his reach in the wake of success. Over the next several years, he worked closely with both TriStar Pictures, where he was creative consultant, and Universal, where Mirage, his production company, set up shop in 1986.

Mr. Pollack reached perhaps his pinnacle with “Out of Africa.” The film, based on the memoirs of Isak Dinesen, paired Ms. Streep and Mr. Redford in a drama that reworked one of the director’s favorite themes, that of star-crossed lovers. It captured Oscars for best picture and best director.

Still, Mr. Pollack remained uneasy about his cinematic skills. “I was never what I would call a great shooter or visual stylist,” he told an interviewer for American Cinematographer last year. And he developed a reputation for caution when it came to directing assignments. Time after time, he expressed interest in directing projects, only to back away. At one point he was to make “Rain Man,” a Dustin Hoffman picture ultimately directed by Mr. Levinson; at another, an adaptation of “The Night Manager” by John le Carré.

That wariness was undoubtedly fed by his experience with “Havana,” a 1990 film that was to be his last with Mr. Redford. It seemed to please no one, though Mr. Pollack defended it. “To tell you the truth, if I knew what was wrong, I’d have fixed it,” Mr. Pollack told The Los Angeles Times in 1993.

“The Firm,” with Tom Cruise, was a hit that year. But “Sabrina” (1995) and “Random Hearts” (1999), both with Harrison Ford, and “The Interpreter” (2005), with Nicole Kidman and Sean Penn, fell short, as Hollywood and its primary audience increasingly eschewed stars for fantasy and special effects.

Mr. Pollack never stopped acting; in a recent episode of “Entourage,” the HBO series about Hollywood, he played himself.

Among Mr. Pollack’s survivors are two daughters, Rebecca Pollack and Rachel Pollack, and his wife, Claire Griswold. The couple married in 1958, while Mr. Pollack was serving a two-year hitch in the Army. Their only son, Steven, died at age 34 in a 1993 plane crash in Santa Monica, Calif.

In his later years, Mr. Pollack appeared to relish his role as elder statesman. At various times he was executive director of the Actors Studio West, chairman of American Cinematheque and an advocate for artists’ rights.

He increasingly sounded wistful notes about the disappearance of the Hollywood he knew in his prime. “The middle ground is now gone,” Mr. Pollack said in the fall 1998 issue of New Perspectives Quarterly. He added, with a nod to a fellow filmmaker: “It is not impossible to make mainstream films which are really good. Costa-Gavras once said that accidents can happen.”

By Sydney Pollack

A selected filmography: “The Slender Thread” (1965)
“This Property Is Condemned” (1966)
“The Scalphunters” (1968)
“The Swimmer” (1968) (uncredited)
“Castle Keep” (1969)
“They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?” (1969)
“Jeremiah Johnson” (1972)
“The Way We Were” (1973)
“The Yakuza” (1974)
“Three Days of the Condor” (1975)
“Bobby Deerfield” (1977)
“The Electric Horseman” (1979)
“Absence of Malice” (1981)
“Tootsie” (1982)
“Out of Africa” (1985)
“Havana” (1990)
“The Firm” (1993)
“Sabrina” (1995)
“Random Hearts” (1999)
“The Interpreter” (2005)
“Sketches of Frank Gehry” (2005)

Sydney Pollack, Film Director, Is Dead at 73, NYT, 27.5.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/27/movies/27pollack.html?8dpc

‘No Country for Old Men’ Wins Oscar Tug of War

February 25, 2008
The New York Times
By DAVID M. HALBFINGER and MICHAEL CIEPLY

HOLLYWOOD — “No Country for Old Men,” Joel and Ethan Coen’s chilling confrontation of a desperate man with a relentless killer, won the Academy Award for best picture on Sunday night, providing a more-than-satisfying ending for the makers of a film that many believed lacked one.

The Coens, who live in New York and remain aloof from the Hollywood establishment, also shared the directing and adapted screenplay awards. Joel Coen thanked the academy members for “letting us continue to play in our corner of the sandbox.”

No film ran away with the night, however, as the 80th annual Academy Awards gave a bruised movie industry a chance to refocus its ever-inward gaze on laurels instead of labor strife.

Daniel Day-Lewis won best actor for his portrayal of a ruthless oil tycoon’s rise from the sweat and sludge of wildcatting to wealth, power and madness in “There Will Be Blood.”

And Marion Cotillard won the Oscar for best actress for her incarnation of the tormented chanteuse Edith Piaf in “La Vie en Rose.”

“Thank you life, thank you love,” an elated Ms. Cotillard said. “It is true there are some angels in this city.”

None of the best picture nominees went home empty-handed: all picked off a significant win in one category or another.

Javier Bardem won a fourth Oscar for “No Country,” capturing the best supporting actor for his role as the cattlegun-wielding, pageboy-wearing serial killer. He thanked the Coens, saying they “put one of the most horrible haircuts in history over my head.”

The Oscar for “No Country” was a long-sought triumph for Scott Rudin, a prolific producer who has specialized in movies on the smarter end of the spectrum, but only once before received a best-picture nomination, for “The Hours” in 2003.

Tilda Swinton took best supporting actress for playing a nervous wreck of a corporate lawyer who throws morality under the bus of her ambition in “Michael Clayton.”

The indie delight “Juno,” about a pregnant teenager with a mouth on her, won for best original screenplay, by Diablo Cody, who once worked as a stripper. She tearfully thanked her family for “loving me for who I am.”

“No Country” was denied in several technical categories, as well as in cinematography: Robert Elswit won that Oscar for “There Will Be Blood,” whose extended tracking shots in harsh open spaces and dimly lighted images of claustrophobic spots made for stunning scenes despite long stretches with little dialog.

With all four top acting prizes going to Europeans and the New York-based Coen brothers’ film in contention for several others, it was a night when Hollywood’s glittery establishment came out to honor what was essentially a gaggle of outsiders.

Another example: “Falling Slowly,” the ballad from “Once” about the music created in the space between two people, won best original song. It was written by the film’s stars, the Irish Glen Hansard and the Czech Marketa Irglova, who have since become a real-life couple.

“Atonement,” nominated for seven awards, won for best original score. The awards were otherwise all over the map, with the first nine going to different films, leaving the show’s host, Jon Stewart, to set the tone with a riff on the three-month writers’ strike that had threatened to turn the Oscars itself into a marathon of montages.

“You’re here — I can’t believe it, you’re actually here!” he joked as the show opened. “The fight is over, so tonight,” he added, “welcome to the makeup sex.”

Mindful of the election season, he took note of the Democratic primary race between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. “Normally when you see a black man or a woman president, an asteroid is about to hit the Statue of Liberty,” he said.

“Ratatouille,” a rodent’s-eye view of the accessibility of art, won for best animated feature. Brad Bird, that film’s director, thanked his junior high school guidance counselor: “He asked me what I wanted to do with my life,” Mr. Bird recalled. “I said, ‘Make movies.’ He asked me what else I wanted to do with my life. And I said, ‘Make movies.’ ” Mr. Bird said the doubt he faced was “perfect training” for a life in Hollywood.

“Taxi to the Dark Side,” an examination of American torture practices, won best documentary feature.

Also in the early going, “La Vie en Rose” won for best makeup and “Elizabeth: The Golden Age” won for costume design. “The Golden Compass,” in which every human character is born with a shape-shifting animal companion known as a “daemon,” scored a big early upset in the visual-effects category, beating two far more successful films: “Transformers” and “Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End.”

Among the lesser-watched categories, “The Bourne Ultimatum” won Oscars for all three in which it was nominated: film editing, sound mixing and sound editing.

“The Counterfeiters,” a Nazi-era drama, became the first Austrian film to win an Oscar, for best foreign-language film.

Owen Wilson presented the award for best live-action short to “Le Mozart des Pickpockets,” and played it straight, avoiding any reference to his personal collapse and hospitalization just as his “Darjeeling Limited” was being released last fall. Best animated short went to “Peter and the Wolf,” and was presented by an animated Jerry Seinfeld, in his “Bee Movie” character.

The animation award, and Mr. Stewart’s opening monologue, provided a lighthearted liftoff for an Oscars telecast sure to be weighted down by the field of mostly small and dark films in the running for the top honors. Embraced by critics, those movies have been less warmly received by the mass audiences whose attentions have sustained the Academy Awards as one of the nation’s few remaining shared rituals.

The lack of a clear consensus among critics and audiences left the potential for an Oscar night in which the top awards were scattered in every direction. Among other things, the evening promised to be a tug of war over sensibilities: Academy voters were being asked to choose between the nihilism of “No Country for Old Men,” in which the serial killer prevails; the hopeful spunk of “Juno,” in which a pregnant teenager forges her own solutions; or, perhaps, a saga of childhood betrayal and lives destroyed, in “Atonement,” set against the backdrop of British retreat in the early days of World War II.

As Mr. Stewart put it: “Does this town need a hug?” He added, “All I can say is, thank God for teen pregnancy.”

The 80th annual Academy Awards, held at the Kodak Theater here, delivered a welcome return to pomp and ritual for a town still recovering from the strike by film and television writers that stripped the glitz from the enterprise. “I think the town is ready to celebrate,” said George Clooney, walking up the red carpet accompanied by his girlfriend, Sarah Larson. “I know I am, but then that’s never been a problem for me.”

On Sunday, however, jitters still surrounded a broadcast that was assembled quickly around a roster of independent-style films, none of which has shown the audience appeal of a “Titanic” or “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King,” previous best-picture winners that pulled large audiences to the awards show in the past.

The early proceedings were slightly ad hoc, not quite normal for a show that operates more like an industry, bringing the 6,500-member Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences roughly $40 million in net income each year. Security was tight, but did not operate with the usual precision. Promised ID checks and wristbanding did not occur. Mr. Stewart, the evening’s host, had little more than a week to prepare once writers voted to return to work.

With help from a smash-up special effects opening and Mr. Stewart’s monologue, things started out with a bang. But the show began to drag as one dusty montage after another of Oscar history piled up, more numerous and less effective than in recent memory.

The machine came slightly off the rails later on, as Mr. Stewart brought Ms. Irglova back out after a commercial break when she had been denied the chance to give an acceptance speech.

Probably nothing caught the slightly cynical air of self-reference better than Jack Nicholson’s lead-in to a montage of all 79 prior best-picture winners. “They touch the humanity — heh, heh, heh — in all of us,” laughed Mr. Nicholson, with a touch more of the Joker than human warmth.

A film community that lost its balance, and never quite got it back, was also clearly unsure how much fun was too much fun under the circumstances: The annual orgy of status, heat and sequined victory laps, Vanity Fair magazine’s Oscar after-party, was abruptly canceled, as were several other ordinarily hot-ticket private gatherings.

That sense of being unmoored was not the only disconnect on display.

All the stated concern for films and filmmakers aside, Oscar night has always been about stars — just ask ABC. Thirty nine million people tuned in two years ago when “Crash” upset “Brokeback Mountain,” one of the worst ratings performances in memory. (The 2003 telecast, shadowed by the beginning of the Iraq war, was worse.) That is compared with 1998, when 55 million viewers watched “Titanic” win 11 Oscars, Jack Nicholson beat out Matt Damon, and Helen Hunt slip past Kate Winslet.

Though no one would deny that this year’s contenders are long on talent, they are exceedingly short on celebrity. Casey Affleck’s breakthrough in “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford” was nominated, but Brad Pitt’s starring performance was not. Cate Blanchett picked up nominations in both actress categories, but Angelina Jolie (“A Mighty Heart”) and Julia Roberts (“Charlie Wilson’s War”) went unacknowledged.

Rather, relative unknowns like the 21-year-old Ellen Page and the 13-year-old Saoirse Ronan nabbed nominations for best actress (“Juno”) and best supporting actress (“Atonement”), respectively. For that matter, Mr. Clooney (“Michael Clayton”) and Johnny Depp (“Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street”) picked up best-actor nominations, while the twice-honored Tom Hanks (“Charlie Wilson’s War”) and Denzel Washington (“American Gangster”) went empty-handed.

Instead, the megawatts would be supplied by the awards presenters — Mr. Hanks and Mr. Washington among them, along with stars like Jessica Alba, Renée Zellweger, Forest Whitaker, John Travolta and Harrison Ford — creating a scenario in which the Hollywood establishment turned out to sustain an institution that had failed to repay the gesture.

If Hollywood’s preoccupation with its intramural tensions seemed at odds with the celebratory order of the day, some here have suggested a divide involving the movies themselves: between the darkness and despair of films like “There Will Be Blood” and “No Country for Old Men” and what the industry’s countless amateur political analysts discern as a more hopeful mood abroad in the land. By that logic, the frustrations over the Iraq war that gave rise to such films, as well as more direct cinematic responses like “In the Valley of Elah,” may have come a year too late to strike a chord with a public that has finally moved on, at least to the next election.

Perhaps nothing has drawn more attention and concern than the sharp line dividing films that have pleased the widest audiences from those embraced by critics. Thanks to “Juno” and its $130 million in ticket sales, the five best-picture nominees together have grossed $327 million, $111 million of that since the academy nominations were announced, an unusually strong Oscar bump. But the combined grosses are a far cry from a decade earlier, when “Titanic” inflated the total.

“Juno” was not the only $100 million-plus movie up for an award; the animated “Ratatouille” received five nominations; “The Bourne Ultimatum,” “Transformers” and “Enchanted” each had three. But in the major categories, only “American Gangster” exceeded that mark besides “Juno.”

Art and quality aside, the paucity of widely seen movies up for consideration is ominous not just for ABC selling commercial time against the telecast but for the academy itself, rendering it that less culturally relevant. Left unchecked, the trend threatens to turn the yearly ritual into a niche affair instead of a shared national experience.

Yet for all the doom and gloom on the minds of academy members and obsessives — Heath Ledger’s death provided another reason to mourn — there were many areas in which excitement could be seen bubbling up out of the ground like Daniel Plainview’s black gold in “There Will Be Blood.”

If small and dark films captured the attention of critics and the academy, it was not for lack of ambition among Hollywood studios.

David Carr contributed reporting.

‘No Country for Old Men’ Wins Oscar Tug of War, NYT, 25.2.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/25/movies/awardsseason/25osca.html?hp

Writers Vote to End Strike

February 13, 2008
The New York Times
By MICHAEL CIEPLY

LOS ANGELES — Hollywood’s writers made it official on Tuesday night, voting to end their bitterly fought strike at the 100-day mark by an overwhelming margin.

Of 3,775 writers who cast ballots, 92.5 percent voted in favor of ending the strike. Officials of the Writers Guild of America West and the Writers Guild of America East disclosed results of the tally here an hour after voting closed at 6 p.m.

“The strike is over. Our membership has voted, and writers can go back to work,” Patric M. Verrone, president of the West Coast guild, said in a statement.

The decision to end the strike became all but inevitable after the guilds’ governing boards on Sunday unanimously approved the tentative three-year agreement with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, following strong expressions of support at mass meetings on both coasts.

Union members must still decide whether to ratify the contract in coming days. But Tuesday’s vote to end the strike brought relief to an industry that wants to get its television productions and future movie schedules back in order.

Wednesday morning will bring a rush to the office by television writers who are especially eager to get existing series like the CBS comedy “Two and a Half Men” and the ABC drama “Grey’s Anatomy” quickly up to speed.

The strike upended the television viewing habits of millions of Americans by shutting down production on most dramas and comedies and forced movie studios to halt some big-budget films. It also dried up the livelihoods of not just the 12,000 guild members but tens of thousands of people who rely on such productions for work.

How much economic damage was wrought by the walkout has been subject to debate.

Writers predicted that the strike would cause $2.5 billion in economic losses if it continued to the five-month mark, as did their 1988 strike. But a report from the Anderson School of Management at the University of California, Los Angeles, estimated losses for a strike of that length at only about $380 million, because companies had already spent heavily to stockpile programs and other factors.

As of Tuesday afternoon, a running tally by the producers’ alliance estimated that the walkout had cost writers about $285 million in lost wages and had cost workers in other film unions nearly $500 million.

The strike’s end appeared to make a walkout by Hollywood’s actors less likely when their contract expires June 30. The actors’ unions have not yet opened negotiations; but the road map for digital media compensation laid out in recent agreements with both writers and directors raised the prospect that similar solutions could work with actors.

The writers’ dispute was settled when company executives — notably Peter Chernin, the News Corporation president, and Robert A. Iger, the Walt Disney chief executive — opened talks with Mr. Verrone, along with David J. Young, executive director of the West Coast guild, and John Bowman, who headed the unions’ negotiating committee. A crucial break came when the two sides created a provision that provides the guilds a gain in the payment for digital distribution of entertainment beyond the terms of a recent deal between Hollywood producers and the Directors Guild of America.

Leslie Moonves, chief executive of CBS, said Hollywood executives might do well to spend more time with guild leaders in coming months, if peace is to prevail in the long term. “The lesson is, we shouldn’t meet every three years,” he said.

Writers Vote to End Strike, NYT, 13.2.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/13/business/media/13vote.html?hp

After the Writers’ Strike

February 11, 2008
The New York Times
By MICHAEL CIEPLY and BROOKS BARNES

LOS ANGELES — It is not quite peace that has broken out here in Hollywood. But emotions are finally settling down in the entertainment industry’s bubbling cauldron of labor disputes. This calm holds the promise of three years without strike threats, picket lines and the loss of Americans’ favorite television shows.

The tentative deal officially announced early Saturday morning between striking writers and Hollywood studios, networks and production companies — all but ending a three-month-old strike — has already made the threat of an actors’ strike this summer less likely. By Saturday afternoon, a pair of warring actors’ unions were trying to make amends with each other and prepare for joint contract negotiations that could suddenly prove smoother than most had dared predict a few days earlier.

Movie and television writers will almost certainly be back at work on Wednesday, pending the results of a Tuesday vote, in person or by faxed proxy, on whether to lift the strike. On Sunday, the governing boards of Writers Guild of America leaders unanimously approved the provisional deal with production companies, making approval by members likely.

“There comes a time in any strike when it is time to settle, and that time is when the pressure is greatest on both sides,” David J. Young, executive director of the Writers Guild of America West, said at a news conference Sunday at the guild’s headquarters here.

Mr. Young spoke of “huge victories” for screenwriters. He particularly cited a provision — to take effect in the third year of the contract — that calls for writers to get a percentage of revenue instead of a fixed fee for the streaming of entertainment on the Internet. Just how robust the digital media business will become remains a question, but the writers believed they needed to stake their claim now. And they wanted to avoid repeating a mistake they made some 20 years ago in agreeing to what they view as too small a piece from the sale and rental of videos and, ultimately, DVDs.

“That was the final critical issue, and producers ultimately moved on it,” Mr. Young said in an interview after the news conference. “It establishes the precedent that we wanted established.”

Not incidentally, the prospect of a writers’ settlement has already changed a complicated power equation that has kept a strike-weary business on edge about a possible walkout by perhaps 150,000 actors when their own contract expires, on June 30. With writers pointed back to work and directors having settled their new contract weeks ago, the actors would stand alone if they pressed for gains larger than those just achieved by their colleagues, especially in the contentious area of new media.

The Screen Actors Guild, which had been a staunch ally of striking writers, sharply changed directions on Saturday and tried to make peace with the more accommodating American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. The actors’ guild, with some 120,000 members, decided to drop a referendum and board resolution that would have increased its muscle on the customary joint negotiating committee it shares with the federation. The federation has about 70,000 members, more than half of whom are also in the guild.

The actors’ guild, which covers the movie industry and much television series production, has argued that its higher earnings entitled it to more bargaining power, and it was pursuing a block voting mechanism that would have solidified its power within the committee. The federation, which covers some prime-time television series, has for decades done its series and commercials bargaining in tandem with the actors’ guild. (Game shows, soap operas, and news broadcasts are dealt with in a separate negotiation.)

Rather than accede to the Screen Actors Guild’s changes within the committee, the federation had prepared to open television series talks with producers on its own in March. But the guild, after an emergency board meeting on Saturday, scratched its block voting idea and declared its desire to join the federation in talks with producers. The guild had earlier indicated it wanted to put off any negotiations until closer to its June deadline.

Reconciliation is not a given. “They need to give us some clarity on what it is they’ve actually done,” said Roberta Reardon, president of the federation, in a telephone interview Sunday.

Ms. Reardon’s union has been pressed by members to resolve Hollywood’s uncertainty by getting to the bargaining table. But its own set of successive negotiations has been postponed for months in deference to the writers and directors.

If the actors’ guild, known for its aggressive posture in talks, were to remain linked to the federation, which is widely viewed as being more pragmatic, the likelihood of an actors’ strike in June would almost certainly diminish. Kim Roberts Hedgpeth, the federation’s national executive director, has made clear that settlements with directors and writers can point the way toward relatively normal, and strike-free, negotiations for actors.

“I won’t call it a solution, but it’s a road map to a solution,” Ms. Hedgpeth said Sunday of the more generous new-media compensation approach that has emerged in the writers’ and directors’ settlements.

A spokeswoman for the Screen Actors Guild declined to comment on the union’s negotiating plans. She said her union planned to review the writers’ deal closely in coming days.

As to whether peace would prove contagious, especially where the actors are concerned, Hollywood’s sophisticates remained wary. “I would say the odds, if I were a betting man, are more toward settlement than not,” said Eric Weissmann, a veteran entertainment lawyer. But, he added, “Who knows?”

Among movie studios, the threat of an actors’ strike has already caused far more disruption than the reality of the writers’ walkout. For months, studios have been hustling to finish their feature films by early June. Indeed, while television production fell, feature film production in Los Angeles actually rose during the writers’ strike. Movie companies have been stockpiling against the possibility of what the filmmaker Terry George, speaking to writers in their New York assembly on Saturday, called “nuclear winter” — a prolonged shutdown and merged strike between actors and writers.

But there was enough sweetness and light in the air by Sunday afternoon to make the prospect of more conflict seem remote. One top executive, still too skittish to speak for the record at a time when writers were voting on their return, said his lesson from the last few months’ labor stand-off was, “People should talk to each other.”

Even Patric M. Verrone, the strike-hardened president of the West Coast writers’ guild, was joking about the joys of returning to the grind. “Writers can be back at work on Wednesday,” Mr. Verrone told the assembled media crowd at his news conference, even as his recorded voice was going out to writers on robocalls, talking up the deal and describing the vote. “Or even Tuesday night if they want to go to the office really, really late.”

After the Writers’ Strike, NYT, 11.2.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/11/arts/television/11stri.html

Writers Begin Strike as Talks Break Off

November 5, 2007
The New York Times
By MICHAEL CIEPLY

LOS ANGELES, Nov. 4 — A strike by Hollywood writers began in New York just after midnight Monday, and negotiators for screenwriters and producers broke off talks, according to the Associated Press.

More than 12,000 screenwriters represented by the Writer Guild of America West and the Writers Guild of America East in the early morning hours in New York began the first industry-wide strike since writers walked out in 1988. That strike lasted five months and cost the entertainment industry an estimated $500 million.

A contract between the unions and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers — which represents networks, studios and other producers — expired Wednesday night after more than three months of acrimonious negotiations. Guild leaders called for a strike to begin Monday morning. A federal mediator, who joined the talks last week, asked the sides to continue talking in a Sunday session.

Throughout the weekend, guild leaders held orientation meetings for strike captains, who would supervise picketing teams, and otherwise prepared for an effort to shut down as much movie and television production as possible. Representatives for the producers and writers on Sunday declined to comment on the talks.

The Writers Guild of America East said that beginning at 9 a.m. Monday, hundreds of its members would picket outside Rockefeller Center, with its cluster of major media companies in the neighborhood. And picketers here are expected to march outside more than a dozen studios and production sites in four-hour shifts, one beginning at 9 a.m., the other at 1 p.m.

The sides have been at odds over, among other things, writers’ demands for a large increase in pay for movies and television shows released on DVD, and for a bigger share of the revenue from such work delivered over the Internet.

Writers Begin Strike as Talks Break Off, NYT, 5.11.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/05/business/media/05strike.html?hp

'Evil' Zombies Rule With $24 Million

September 24, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:13 a.m. ET
The New York Times

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- The undead of ''Resident Evil'' still have plenty of life in them.

''Resident Evil: Extinction,'' with Milla Jovovich again fighting flesh-hungry zombies in the third installment based on the video game, opened as the No. 1 weekend flick with $24 million in ticket sales, according to studio estimates Sunday.

It was the best debut for the franchise, topping the $23 million debut of part two, 2004's ''Resident Evil: Apocalypse.''

Sony Screen Gems hinted there could be more ''Resident Evil'' movies, though the latest had been billed as the final one.

''Until the next,'' joked Rory Bruer, Sony's head of distribution. ''It absolutely would not surprise me considering the success of the franchise that they find a way to come up with another. It's a real possibility.''

Lionsgate's ''Good Luck Chuck,'' with Jessica Alba and Dane Cook in a romantic comedy about a man jinxed at finding true love, debuted in second place with $14 million despite an almost universal thrashing by critics.

Universal's ''Sydney White,'' starring Amanda Bynes as a college freshman who teams with frat house dorks in a fight against campus snobs, premiered at No. 6 with $5.3 million.

The previous weekend's top movie, the Warner Bros. drama ''The Brave One,'' fell to No. 3 with $7.4 million, raising its total to $25.1 million.

Brad Pitt's ''The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford'' and Sean Penn's ''Into the Wild'' each opened strongly in limited release.

Penn went behind the camera for his fourth directing effort on ''Into the Wild,'' which took in $206,596 at four theaters for a whopping average of $51,649 a cinema, compared with $8,487 in 2,828 theaters for ''Resident Evil: Extinction.''

''Into the Wild,'' released by Paramount Vantage, stars Emile Hirsch in the real-life story of Christopher McCandless, whose two-year odyssey of self-exploration across North America ended tragically in Alaska.

Pitt stars as the legendary outlaw in the Warner Bros. saga ''Assassination of Jesse James,'' which took in $144,000 in five theaters, averaging $28,800. The film chronicles the last year of James' life as he lapses into paranoia over betrayal by cohorts, among them young admirer Ford, played by Casey Affleck.

''Into the Wild'' expands to more theaters beginning Friday, and ''Assassination of Jesse James'' begins wider release Oct. 5.

Focus Features' ''Eastern Promises,'' with Viggo Mortensen and Naomi Watts in a drama set among Russian mobsters in London, expanded from a handful of theaters into nationwide release, coming in at No. 5 with $5.7 million.

The top five movies all had R ratings, unusual in a movie market generally dominated by PG-13 flicks.

''The Rs have it this weekend,'' said Paul Dergarabedian, president of box-office tracker Media By Numbers. ''That makes sense in this fall season, when grittier, more intense films are released.''

Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Media By Numbers LLC. Final figures will be released Monday.

1. ''Resident Evil: Extinction,'' $24 million.

2. ''Good Luck Chuck,'' $14 million.

3. ''The Brave One,'' $7.4 million.

4. ''3:10 to Yuma,'' $6.35 million.

5. ''Eastern Promises,'' $5.7 million.

6. ''Sydney White,'' $5.3 million.

7. ''Mr. Woodcock,'' $5 million.

8. ''Superbad,'' $3.1 million.

9. ''The Bourne Ultimatum,'' $2.8 million.

10. ''Dragon Wars,'' $2.5 million.

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On the Net:

http://www.mediabynumbers.com

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Universal Pictures and Focus Features are owned by NBC Universal, a joint venture of General Electric Co. and Vivendi Universal; Sony Pictures, Sony Screen Gems and Sony Pictures Classics are units of Sony Corp.; DreamWorks, Paramount and Paramount Vantage are divisions of Viacom Inc.; Disney's parent is The Walt Disney Co.; Miramax is a division of The Walt Disney Co.; 20th Century Fox, Fox Searchlight Pictures and Fox Atomic are owned by News Corp.; Warner Bros., New Line, Warner Independent and Picturehouse are units of Time Warner Inc.; MGM is owned by a consortium of Providence Equity Partners, Texas Pacific Group, Sony Corp., Comcast Corp., DLJ Merchant Banking Partners and Quadrangle Group; Lionsgate is owned by Lionsgate Entertainment Corp.; IFC Films is owned by Rainbow Media Holdings, a subsidiary of Cablevision Systems Corp.

`Evil' Zombies Rule With $24 Million, NYT, 24.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/arts/AP-Box-Office.html

Michelangelo Antonioni, 94, Italian Director, Dies

July 31, 2007
The New York Times
By RICK LYMAN

Michelangelo Antonioni, the Italian director whose chilly canticles of alienation were cornerstones of international filmmaking in the 1960s, inspiring intense measures of admiration, denunciation and confusion, died on Monday at his home in Rome, Italian news media reported today. He was 94. He died on the same day as Ingmar Bergman, the Swedish filmmaker who died at his home in Sweden earlier Monday.

“With Antonioni, not only has one of the greatest living directors been lost, but also a master of the modern screen,” said the mayor of Rome, Walter Veltroni. His office said it was making plans for Mr. Antonioni’s body to lie in state on Wednesday, Reuters reported.

Tall, cerebral and resolutely serious, Mr. Antonioni harkens back to a time in the middle of the last century when cinema-going was an intellectual pursuit, when purposely opaque passages in famously difficult films spurred long nights of smoky argument at sidewalk cafes, and when fashionable directors like Mr. Antonioni, Alain Resnais and Jean-Luc Godard were chased down the Cannes waterfront by camera-wielding cineastes demanding to know what on earth they meant by their latest outrage.

Mr. Antonioni is probably best known for “Blow-Up,” a 1966 drama set in Swinging London about a fashion photographer who comes to believe that a photograph he took of two lovers in a public park also shows, hidden in the background, evidence of a murder. But his true, lasting contribution to cinema resides in an earlier trilogy — “L’Avventura” in 1959, “La Notte” in 1960 and “L’Eclisse” in 1962 — which explores the filmmaker’s tormented central vision that people had become emotionally unglued from one another.

This vision of the apartness of people was expressed near the end of “La Notte,” when his star Monica Vitti observes, “Each time I have tried to communicate with someone, love has disappeared.”

In a generation of rule-breakers, Mr. Antonioni was one of the most subversive and venerated. He challenged moviegoers with an intense focus on intentionally vague characters and a disdain for such mainstream conventions as plot, pacing and clarity. He would raise questions and never answer them, have his characters act in self-destructive ways and fail to explain why, and hold his shots so long that the actors sometimes slipped out of character.

It was all part of the director’s design. As Mr. Antonioni explained, “The after-effects of an emotion scene, it had occurred to me, might have meaning, too, both on the actor and on the psychological advancement of the character.”

Mr. Antonioni broke other conventions, too. Many of his editing cuts, angles and camera movements were intentionally odd, and he frequently posed his characters in a highly formalized way. He employed point-of-view shots only rarely, a practice that helped erect an emotional shield between the audience and his puzzling characters.

“What is impressive about Antonioni’s films is not that they are good,” the film scholar Seymour Chatman wrote. “But that they have been made at all.”

Perhaps the defining moment in Mr. Antonioni’s career came on the night “LAvventura” was screened at the 1960 Cannes Film Festival. Many in the audience walked out and there were numerous boos, catcalls and whistles. The director and Monica Vitti thought their careers were over.

But later that night, Roberto Rossellini and a group of other influential filmmakers and critics drafted a statement which they released the following morning. “Aware of the exceptional importance of Michelangelo Antonioni’s film, ‘L’Avventura,’ and appalled by the displays of hostility it has aroused, the undersigned critics and members of the profession are anxious to express their admiration for the maker of this film,” they wrote.

One of the great legends of iconoclastic filmmaking — how being booed at Cannes could become a badge of honor — was born.

“L’Avventura” went on to win the festival’s Special Jury Prize and become an international box-office hit, spurring furious debate. Some found the film pointless; others read reams of meaning into its languid predicaments. Mr. Antonioni’s international reputation was made.

The next year, Sight and Sound, the influential British film magazine, polled 70 leading critics from around the world and they not only endorsed “L’Avventura,” but they also chose it as the second-greatest film ever made, just behind “Citizen Kane.’

After burnishing his reputation in the early 1960s, Mr. Antonioni surprised many by trying to make movies with Hollywood’s backing. He fumbled, saw his audience and his celebrity dissipate, and came to make fewer and fewer films.

“My subjects are, in a very general sense, autobiographical,” he once wrote. “The story is first built through discussions with a collaborator. In the case of “L’Eclisse,” the discussions went on for four months. The writing was then done, by myself, taking perhaps fifteen days. My scripts are not formal screenplays, but rather dialogue for the actors and a series of notes to the director. When shooting begins, there is invariably a great amount of changing. When I go on the set of a scene, I insist on remaining alone for at least twenty minutes. I have no preconceived ideas of how the scene should be done, but wait instead for the ideas to come that will tell me how to begin.”

The world of an Antonioni film “is a world of people alienated from one another,” wrote Andrew Turner in his book “World Film Directors” (1968). “Their actions have no meaning or coherence, and even the most fundamental of emotions, love, seems unsustainable.’

Interviewers also found Mr. Antonioni to be a cool, combative subject. “Even when he is telling stories about himself, Antonioni’s face remains set in its habitually serious expression,” Melton S. Davis wrote in a 1964 profile for The New York Times Magazine. “Precise in manner, conservative in dress and quiet in speech, he could be taken for a banker or art dealer recounting an unfortunate business deal.”

But Mr. Antonioni could also be graciously charming. Sometimes, interviewers said, the director’s shrewd green eyes would soften and his lips would curl into a smile that some described as ironic, others as chilly.

Michaelangelo Antonioni was born on September 29,1912 into a well-to-do family of landowners in Ferrara, in northern Italy, a town that he described as a “marvelous little city on the Paduan plain, antique and silent.” Around the age of ten, his family remembered, Michelangelo began to design puppets and to build model sets for them. Later, as a teenager, he became interested in oil painting, favoring portraits to landscapes.

He attended the University of Bologna and earned a degree in economics and commerce in 1935. But it was at the university that he also began to write stories and plays and to direct some of them. He was a founder of the university’s theatrical troupe and one of the its leading tennis champions. He also wrote scathing reviews of both American and Italian genre films for the local paper, and decided to try his own hand at filmmaking.

Mr. Antonioni wanted to make a realistic documentary about the local insane asylum. The patients helped him set up the equipment. Then, he turned on the bright floodlights.

The patients went berserk, he later wrote, “and their faces — which before had been calm — became convulsed and devastated. And then it was our turn to be petrified. The cameraman did not even have the strength to stop his machine, nor was I capable of giving any orders whatever. It was the director of the asylum who finally cried, “Stop! Lights out!” And in the half-darkened room we could see a swarm of bodies twisting as if in the last throes of a death agony.”

Mr. Antonioni decided to give up filmmaking.

In 1940, at the age of 27, he moved to Rome to work as a secretary to Count Vittori Cini. The job didn’t last long. He worked as a bank teller and joined the staff of Cinema magazine, edited by Benito Mussolini’s son, Vittorio. During this period, Mr. Antonioni dropped his aversion to filmmaking and took classes at the Institute of Experimental Filmmaking. His wrote some screenplays, including “Un Pilota Ritorna” (The Return of the Pilot) in 1942 in collaboration with another budding director, Roberto Rossellini.

In 1943, Mr. Antonioni returned to Ferrara and found a local merchant willing to bankroll his first film, a documentary called “Gente del Po” (People of the Po Valley), about the wretched lives of local fishermen. The German occupying forces destroyed much of the footage, though a few scraps survived and became a nine-minute curtain-raiser at the 1947 Venice Film Festival for Alfred Hitchcock’s “Spellbound.”

After the war, Mr. Antonioni wrote more film criticism and continued making short documentaries. All the while he became increasingly skeptical about the neo-realist movement, which dominated Italian filmmaking, and its relentless focus on substandard social conditions. He yearned to look beyond such things and into the hearts of individuals. “His films were about street sweepers, not street sweeping,” is the way the film critic Robert Haller put it. But no one would let him make the kind of films he wanted to make.

“For ten years, the movies forced me not to use ideas but empty words, cleverness, business sense, patience, stratagems,” Mr. Antonioni wrote in an introduction to a 1963 collection of his screenplays. “I am so scantily blessed with such gifts that I recall that period as being the most painful one in my life.’

At age 38, Mr. Antonioni found backing for his most ambitious, non-documentary project, “Cronaca di un Amore” (Story of a Love). Ostensibly about a man and woman plotting to kill her husband, it turned out to be the earliest example of Mr. Antonioni’s approach. In the film, the husband dies, but it is unclear whether he was murdered, committed suicide or died by accident. This whole plot line vanishes and the film, instead, focuses on the lover’s emotions.

As with later Antonioni films, the settings were stark, the scenes fussily composed, the shots held a few beats longer than necessary. The film won the Grand Prix International at the Festival of Punta del Este in 1951.

In 1954, his 12-year marriage to the former Letizia Balboni fell apart. She later told interviewers that the director had become increasingly remote. “We lived in silence,” she said. “We reached the point where we communicated with each other only through the characters he created and about whom he wanted my advice. He has only one way of expressing himself: His work. What he does is have his actors live out emotional crises in his films, by proxy living out the crises in his own life.’

Mr. Antonioni sank into a deep depression. His insomnia worsened. Often he spent the early morning hours writing screenplays.

In 1955, at the height of this crisis, Mr. Antonioni had his first important artistic triumph. “Le Amiche” (The Girlfriends)” was about the mundane, loveless lives of a group of middle-class women in Turin. It won a Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival.

Mr. Antonioni began experimenting more with improvisation on the set. “It’s only when I press my eye against the camera and begin to move the actors that I get an exact idea of the scene,” he wrote. He used this technique extensively in “Il Grido (The Outcry)” in 1957, probably the grimmest of his films.

It was while shooting “Il Grido” that Mr. Antonioni met a young stage actress named Monica Vitti, who would become his greatest and most enduring star, and his almost constant companion during much of the “60s.

For two years, Mr. Antonioni could not find a producer to back him. Finally, in 1959, he found someone and finished a screenplay that had been burning in the back of his mind for a long time. But “L’Avventura” almost died before it was born. Chronically short of money, his producer eventually pulled out of the project just as Mr. Antonioni and the actors were working on a craggy island near Sicily.

“It had gotten to the point where there was no food,” Mr. Antonioni remembered. “One crew deserted us. We got hold of another crew and they, too, left. I had 20,000 meters of film and the actors stayed, so I carried the camera on my back and continued shooting.” Eventually, a new producer appeared.

“L’Avventura” proved to be the turning point in his career and is widely regarded as Mr. Antonioni’s masterpiece.

As with most of Mr. Antonioni’s films, it focuses on the comfortable, ennervated lives of well-to-do Italians, in this case a group of friends on a yachting trip. Without warning, during a visit to a wave-thrashed atoll, one of them, an emotionally distraught woman named Anna, simply vanishes. Had she drowned herself because her lover, Sandro (Gabriele Ferzetti), seemed in no hurry to marry her? Had she hurled herself off a cliff in a fit of ennui? Had she been swallowed by the shark she claimed to have seen? Or had she fled on another boat?

The small island is searched. It rains. Police arrive. Then, gradually, Sandro develops an attraction to Anna’s best friend, Claudia (Ms. Vitti). She resists, then warms to him. Eventually, they stop mentioning Anna at all. The search is forgotten. Sandro betrays Claudia, for no apparent reason. We never discover what happened to Anna.

In “L’Avventura,” Mr. Antonioni’s singular technique can be seen in full flower. “The overwhelming sense of estrangement conveyed by “L’Avventura” is as much a product of the style of the movie as of its events or dialogue,” Mr. Turner wrote.

The director rapidly found backing for his next two films, which further explored the themes of alienation he introduced in “L’Avventura” and which he later said were meant to be seen as a trilogy.

In “La Notte” (The Night),” Marcello Mastroianni plays an author with writer’s block suffering through his loveless marriage to Jeanne Moreau . He meets a young woman at a party, played by Ms. Vitti, who he believes personifies the creativity that has abandoned him. The film won the Golden Bear at the 1961 Berlin Film Festival.

“L’Eclisse” (The Eclipse)” most directly addressed the alienating effects of material wealth, following the love affair of a young woman of simple tastes, Ms. Vitti again, and a money-hungry stockbroker (Alain Delon).

The film’s ending is much discussed. Abandoning the principal characters, the film closes with a montage several minutes long composed of 58 shots, most of them on or near a street corner where the lovers used to meet. Water seeps from a barrel. The brakes on a bus screech. A fountain is turned off. An airplane zooms overhead. Finally, with the street corner dark and empty, the camera zooms in on the white, annihilating glare of a streetlight. The end.

Mr. Antonioni said he intended the ending to show “the eclipse of all feelings,” and saw it as a coda both to the film and to the entire trilogy. But he also wanted different people to read different meanings into his work. “There may be meanings, but they are different for all of us,” he told an interviewer.

In 1964, Mr. Antonioni made his first color film, “Il Deserto Rosso (Red Desert)” with Richard Harris. It, too, starred Ms. Vitti, as a woman coming gradually unhinged. To mirror her mental state, the director used color in very unusual ways, having houses and even trees painted bright colors and then changing those colors from scene to scene.

By the mid-’60s, Mr. Antonioni was one of the most famous and controversial film directors in the world; his movies were screened regularly on the global festival circuit and the auteur was the subject of countless essays and magazine articles. Inevitably, a Hollywood studio, in this case MGM, came calling. Not so inevitably, Mr. Antonioni welcomed them, signing a three-picture deal.

“Blow-Up” was his first effort for the studio. Filmed in English, with the British stars David Hemmings and Vanessa Redgrave in the hip milieu of the swinging London fashion scene, “Blow-Up” became the director’s biggest hit. It was also, stylistically, different from his previous films, more conventionally plotted and faster-paced, though still fundamentally ambiguous.

Following its commercial and critical success, Mr. Antonioni came to America to make his first big-budget film, and chose the student protest movement as his subject. “Zabriskie Point” (1970) was the result and it was a disaster.

Though some foreign critics praised the film, it was almost universally panned in the United States. “To many critics, it seemed as if the director, who had begun the decade in absolute control of his medium, was ending it in something approaching total confusion,” Mr. Turner wrote.

“Zabriskie Point” was a box-office flop for MGM, one of the biggest financial failures of its day. Mr. Antonioni was devastated and, in many ways, his career never recovered. Certainly, his most fertile creative period was over. He had made six films in the 1960s, many of them regarded as masterpieces, but would make only three more films in the ensuing quarter-century.

But Mr. Antonioni recaptured some of his previous critical respect with 1975’s “The Passenger,” starring Jack Nicholson as a reporter in North Africa who assumes the identity of a gun-runner. The film closes with a famous, 10-minute continuous tracking shot in which Mr. Nicholson is seen in his hotel room, waiting to be killed. The camera pulls out of the room and meanders through the courtyard. People and objects move in and out of the seamless shot before the camera comes full circle and re-enters the hotel room to find Mr. Nicholson dead. “ ‘The Passenger’ leaves no doubt about Antonioni’s mastery,” wrote the film critic David Thomson, who called it “one of the great films of the ’70s.”

Following “The Passenger,” Mr. Antonioni announced he wanted to take some time to study new technologies and spent five years doing so, before Ms. Vitti asked him to return to directing with a 1980 Italian television film called “Il Mistery di Oberwald” (The Mystery of Oberwald).” Shot on videotape and transferred to film, it was substantially lighter than his previous works. This, he said, allowed him to “escape from the difficulty of moral and esthetic commitment, from the obsessive desire to express oneself.” It was awarded a silver ribbon for visual effects at the 1980 Venice Film Festival, but made little international impact.

Mr. Antonioni made his final commercial film, “Identificazione di una donna” (Identification of a Woman) in 1982, about a man who has affairs with two women following the death of his wife. It won a Grand Prix at the Cannes festival that year.

In 1985, while working on a film adaptation of a short story he had written in 1976, Mr. Antonioni suffered a stroke and the project was put aside. He married the next year for the second time, to the former Enrica Fico, and they lived quietly in an apartment in Rome. She was at his side when he died, the Italian news agency ANSA reported. He had no children, The Associated Press reported.

Mr. Antonioni worked on an Italian television documentary built around the 1990 World Cup soccer championship, but did not direct again until 1995 when Italian producers lured him out of retirement to make a film, “Beyond the Clouds,” based on a book of stories Mr. Antonioni had written. Since his stroke, Mr. Antonioni had difficulty speaking more than a few words at a time, so much of the work was done by his wife, Enrica, who energetically interpreted the director’s demands. The film starred Jeanne Moreau and Jeremy Irons. The reemergence of Mr. Antonioni spurred the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences to present him with a Lifetime Achievment Award in 1995.

Mr. Antonioni began directing again in his 90s. He collaborated with Steven Soderbergh and Wong Kar-wai, the Hong Kong director, on a trilogy about love and sexuality called Eros, which was released in 2004. He also made a short film called Lo Sguardo di Michelangelo.To his champions, like David Thomson, “the predicament of the world’s greatest living filmmaker unable to work is a fit subject for one of his mediations.”

For Mr. Thomson, “The enigmas in Antonioni’s work are as subject to time as monuments are to erosion, and the achievements of some films can offset or explain the apparent,or early, limits of others. For example, ‘The Passenger’ helped us to see the longing for escape and space in ‘L’Avventura’ and illuminated the persistence of life at the end of ‘L’EcLisse.I suspect that Antonioni’s best films will continue to grow and shift, like dunes in the centuries of desert. In that process, if there are eyes left to look, he will become a standard for beauty.”

But for others Mr. Antonioni remained not only enigmatic, but also unreachable to the end.

One interviewer asked him to look back over his life. “In a world without film, what would you have made?” he was asked.

Mr. Antonioni replied: “Film.”

Christine Hauser and Graham Bowley contributed reporting for this article.

Michelangelo Antonioni, 94, Italian Director, Dies, NYT, 31.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/31/movies/31cnd-antonio.html?hp

The master: Ingmar Bergman 1918 - 2007

Published: 31 July 2007
The Independent
By Paul Schrader, film director and screenwriter of 'Taxi Driver'

I would not have made any of my films or written scripts such as Taxi Driver had it not been for Ingmar Bergman.

His death, at the age of 89, may not have been a surprise. He was an old man. But what he has left is a legacy greater than any other director. He made film-making a serious and introspective enterprise. No one had been able to pull that off until he showed up. I really wasn't that interested in being a film-maker, except in the way that Bergman redefined what you could be as a film-maker.

I think the extraordinary thing that Bergman will be remembered for, other than his body of work, was that

he probably did more than anyone to make cinema a medium of personal and introspective value. Movies by nature are, of course, very commercially driven and very accessible. No one really used cinema as private personal expression in that way. Bergman showed that you could actually do movies that were personal introspections and have them seen by general audiences.

For an entire generation, starting in the 1960s, it was a whole new way to see the very nature of cinema. It is impossible for anyone of my generation not to have been influenced by Bergman. That is just a matter of fact. He cut too wide a path down the history of cinema not to influence everybody. I can remember vividly my first taste of a Bergman film. Through a Glass Darkly, the first of Bergman's trilogy of films with Winter Light and The Silence, when I was about 17, at our local little cinema in Grand Rapids, Michigan, while I was at college. It was probably the fourth or fifth serious film I had ever seen and it just took me unawares. I had no idea that movies could be a serious enterprise.

He has a handful of masterpieces, but the film that stands above all the others is Persona. He has done a lot of visceral, painful work - even his last film, Saraband, is extraordinary - but Persona really brings together all his personal demons, as well as his relationships with women.

It's not like we have lost an ongoing voice. His body of work was completed. So we are losing one of the saints in the pantheon, which is sad to note, but it is actually an occasion to appreciate what has been left behind.

Not all his films were great. I'm not a big fan of the family reminiscence stuff which is Fanny and Alexander. I wasn't knocked out by the early domestic comedies such as Smiles of a Summer Night. After The Virgin Spring in 1959 and Through a Glass Darkly in 1961, then it really starts getting interesting. Persona was the pinnacle of that. Coming as it did in 1966, it was the great seminal film during the great seminal years of the acme of cinema. Once you got into that trilogy of Persona, The Hour of the Wolf and The Shame, it's just incredible. He reinvented himself in 1973 with Scenes from a Marriage, then he went back to the theme for Saraband, another major piece of work, in 2003.

Time magazine had a wonderful opening line in its review of Saraband. "He's old. He's old fashioned. He's out of date. How dare Ingmar Bergman make a great movie."

There are a lot of directors who are poets behind a camera. Bergman is more of the metaphysician behind the camera. Persona was his boldest film - and the Swedish cinematographer Sven Nykvist, who was shooting the films, did a lot of very interesting work in that film such as over exposures, letting stuff burn out, the way that light and dark contrasted in ways that were previously considered unacceptable and breaking some of those rules.

I was a big Bergman fan so I would tend to see each of his films the first day they were released if I was in a city where they were being shown. I do remember the anticipation of going to that first show the first day. He obviously played a role in my choice to be a critic and then to be a film-maker, and in my decision to take film seriously.

Last of the greats

* Woody Allen: "He was a friend and certainly the finest film director of my lifetime."

* Richard Attenborough: "The world has lost one of its very greatest film-makers. He taught us all so much throughout his life."

* Lars von Trier" "I am proud to say he treated me exactly like his other children - with no interest whatsoever."

* Bille August, Danish director: "He was the last big director left. The three big ones for me were Kurosawa, Fellini and Bergman. The two others had already passed and now Ingmar has also left us. He leaves a big vacuum behind. He was such an incredible, unusually bright person."

The master: Ingmar Bergman 1918 - 2007, I, 31.7.2007, http://arts.independent.co.uk/film/news/article2819580.ece

Disney to Cut Smoking in Family Films

July 26, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 8:45 a.m. ET
The New York Times

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- The Walt Disney Co. will eliminate smoking from all its films released under its label and will discourage smoking in films released under its Touchstone and Miramax brands, the company said Wednesday.

Disney chief executive Robert Iger made the pledge in a letter to U.S. Rep. Edward J. Markey, D-Mass, chairman of the House Telecommunications and the Internet Subcommittee, who last month held a hearing in Washington, D.C., on the topic.

''The Walt Disney Co. shares your concern regarding deaths due to cigarette smoking,'' Iger wrote.

Iger also said that a public service announcement will be included on any DVD of a film that includes smoking and that the company would encourage theater owners to show an anti-smoking message before screening films that depict characters lighting up.

Universal Pictures said it instituted a policy to reduce smoking in youth-oriented films in April, but did not announce it publicly until Wednesday.

The studio said it will include a health warning along with films that include smoking.

''We believe it's possible to do that while respecting filmmakers' creative choices and we are committed to partnering with them in this effort,'' Universal Studios chairman Ron Meyer said Wednesday.

In May, the Motion Picture Association of America said it would begin considering smoking as a factor in rating films.

Markey praised Disney's decision.

''Now it's time for other media companies to similarly kick the habit and follow Disney's lead,'' Markey said.

Disney to Cut Smoking in Family Films, G, 26.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/arts/AP-Disney-Smoking-Ban.html

Blacklisted Writer Bernard Gordon Dies

May 12, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 1:22 a.m. ET
The New York Times

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Bernard Gordon, a screenwriter blacklisted during Hollywood's anti-communist crusade in the 1950s, has died. He was 88.

Gordon died Friday at his Hollywood Hills home after a long battle with cancer, according to his daughter, Ellen Gordon.

''He was highly principled, scrupulously honest,'' his daughter said. ''He could argue anybody under the table.''

Gordon wrote dozens of movies but many never carried his name until the Writers Guild of America began restoring credits to blacklisted writers in 1980. About a dozen of Gordon's credits were restored, more than any other writer, said Dave Robb, a longtime friend.

Among them was Gordon's co-writing credit on 1957's ''Hellcats of the Navy,'' which starred Ronald Reagan and his future wife, Nancy Davis.

Gordon's movies included ''55 Days at Peking,'' ''Battle of the Bulge'' and the 1962 science fiction cult classic, ''Day of the Triffids,'' along with low-budget fare like ''Zombies of Mora Tau.''

Gordon was born Oct. 29, 1918 in New Britain, Conn., and raised in New York City. He moved to Hollywood around 1940. He was declared physically unfit for the military and spent World War II working in the film industry.

He also joined the Communist Party and was active in a labor guild. Gordon eventually quit the party after revelations of Stalin's crimes, his daughter said.

In the 1950s, Gordon was subpoenaed to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee, which was investigating Communist influence in Hollywood. He was never called before the panel, but an acquaintance named him before the committee and he was fired from a studio and blacklisted, along with hundreds of other film industry workers.

Though condemned as un-American, Gordon never thought his political views were undermining the nation, Robb said.

''They were all super-patriotic. They just thought the U.S. was going down the wrong road,'' Robb said.

For a decade, Gordon couldn't work under his own name but continued to churn out films using pseudonyms. He spent several years in Spain, where he wrote and produced movies. His last movie, ''Surfacing,'' was in 1981.

In 1999, Gordon took the lead in protesting the awarding of an honorary Oscar to director Elia Kazan, who had named names before the House Un-American Activities Committee.

''He helped to support an oppressive regime that did incalculable damage to America and abroad,'' Gordon later wrote in the Los Angeles Times.

Gordon wrote two books: 1999's ''Hollywood Exile, or How I Learned to Love the Blacklist,'' and 2004's ''The Gordon File: A Screenwriter Recalls Twenty Years of FBI Surveillance,'' which was based on his 300-page FBI file.

Blacklisted Writer Bernard Gordon Dies, NYT, 12.5.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/arts/AP-Obit-Gordon.html

'Disturbia' Earns $9.1M As Spidey Looms

April 30, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 7:46 a.m. ET
The New York Times

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Movie-goers continued to keep their eyes on the Peeping Tom thriller ''Disturbia,'' which fended off a weak batch of newcomers to remain No. 1 for the third straight weekend with $9.1 million.

The movie business seemed to be on hold in anticipation of a huge summer that begins this week with Sony's ''Spider-Man 3.'' The top-12 movies took in an anemic $62.9 million, down 30 percent from the same weekend last year, when ''RV'' was the No. 1 movie with $16.4 million.

DreamWorks and Paramount's ''Disturbia,'' starring Shia LaBeouf as a house-bound teen whose surveillance of neighbors uncovers a killer, raised its total to $52.2 million after three weekends, according to studio estimates Sunday.

Disney's supernatural thriller ''The Invisible'' turned in the best performance among the weekend's ho-hum debuts, taking in $7.6 million to open at No. 2. The movie centers on a teen trying to solve his own murder while trapped in a nether zone between life and death.

Paramount's ''Next,'' starring Nicolas Cage as a man whose ability to see into the future is exploited by federal agents trying to stop a terrorist nuclear attack, premiered at No. 3 with $7.2 million.

Lionsgate's ''The Condemned,'' with wrestler Stone Cold Steve Austin as one of 10 Death Row inmates dropped on an island to fight to the death for an Internet reality show, debuted in ninth-place with $4 million.

Yari Film Group's comedy ''Kickin' It Old Skool,'' starring Jamie Kennedy as a man who wakes from a 20-year coma and tries to revive his break-dancing career, opened at No. 11 with $2.8 million.

Though movie attendance is up 1.2 percent so far this year compared to last, Hollywood has been in a lull in recent weeks as a huge crop of summer films looms, including Friday's premiere of ''Spider-Man 3,'' followed closely by DreamWorks Animation's ''Shrek the Third'' and Disney's ''Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End.''

''I think people are just absolutely ready for a big summer movie,'' said Rory Bruer, head of distribution for Sony. ''You can see by the box office over the last few weekends, they're ready, and it's been a long time coming. I do anticipate it's going to be an incredible weekend for us.''

''Spider-Man'' took in $114.8 million in its first weekend in 2002, a three-day opening that remained an all-time high until ''Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest'' set a new record last summer with $132 million.

In 2004, ''Spider-Man 2'' opened on a Wednesday before a long four-day Fourth of July weekend and took in a record $180.1 million in its first six days.

''This was an incredibly slow weekend. To have a top movie come in under $10 million just shows how the marketplace is in a holding pattern,'' said Paul Dergarabedian, president of box-office tracker Media By Numbers. ''It'll all be made up next weekend with `Spider-Man 3.'''

Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Media By Numbers LLC. Final figures will be released Monday.

1. ''Disturbia,'' $9.1 million.

2. ''The Invisible,'' $7.6 million.

3. ''Next,'' $7.2 million.

4. ''Fracture,'' $7.1 million.

5. ''Blades of Glory,'' $5.2 million.

6. ''Meet the Robinsons,'' $4.84 million.

7. ''Hot Fuzz,'' $4.8 million.

8. ''Vacancy,'' $4.2 million.

9. ''The Condemned,'' $4 million.

10. ''Are We Done Yet?'', $3.4 million.

------

Universal Pictures and Focus Features are owned by NBC Universal, a joint venture of General Electric Co. and Vivendi Universal; Sony Pictures, Sony Screen Gems and Sony Pictures Classics are units of Sony Corp.; DreamWorks, Paramount and Paramount Vantage are divisions of Viacom Inc.; Disney's parent is The Walt Disney Co.; Miramax is a division of The Walt Disney Co.; 20th Century Fox, Fox Searchlight Pictures and Fox Atomic are owned by News Corp.; Warner Bros., New Line, Warner Independent and Picturehouse are units of Time Warner Inc.; MGM is owned by a consortium of Providence Equity Partners, Texas Pacific Group, Sony Corp., Comcast Corp., DLJ Merchant Banking Partners and Quadrangle Group; Lionsgate is owned by Lionsgate Entertainment Corp.; IFC Films is owned by Rainbow Media Holdings, a subsidiary of Cablevision Systems Corp.

'Disturbia' Earns $9.1M As Spidey Looms, NYT, 30.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/arts/AP-Box-Office.html

Jack Valenti, 85, Dies; Confidant of a President and Stars

April 27, 2007
The New York Times
By DAVID M. HALBFINGER

Jack Valenti, who became a confidant of President Lyndon B. Johnson and then a Hollywood institution, leading the Motion Picture Association of America and devising a voluntary film-rating system that gave new meaning to letters like G, R and X, died yesterday at his home in Washington. He was 85.

The cause was complications of a recent stroke, his family said. He had been hospitalized in Baltimore in March.

For 38 years, Mr. Valenti was the public face of the movie and television production industry and one of its fiercest advocates. He lobbied Congress to protect filmmakers’ intellectual property from piracy and to ease trade barriers overseas. And he fended off lawmakers’ recurring campaigns to curb violence and sex on the screen, arguing for free expression. He devised the film-rating system precisely to avoid censorship by local review boards.

He also remained a starry-eyed fan, cherishing his friendships with Kirk Douglas, Sidney Poitier and Frank Sinatra, falling speechless before Sophia Loren and savoring his seconds in the spotlight as a regular presenter at the Academy Awards.

As a Houston political consultant, he was in the motorcade when President John F. Kennedy was shot on Nov. 22, 1963, and he watched as Johnson was sworn in beside Jacqueline Kennedy aboard Air Force One.

Mr. Valenti soon became known, and for a time mocked, for his unfailing loyalty to Johnson, if not outright idolatry of him. “I sleep each night a little better, a little more confidently because Lyndon Johnson is my president,” he once said in Boston, inviting guffaws nationwide.

Even after leaving a senior post at the White House in 1966, Mr. Valenti remained at Johnson’s service, secretly arranging the president’s surprise detour to the Vatican to meet with Pope Paul VI on the way back from Vietnam in December 1967.

His fidelity was lifelong. Mr. Valenti, a bantam 5-foot-7 who forever looked up to the towering Johnson, picked fights with critical Johnson biographers like Robert Caro and Robert Dallek.

Mr. Valenti’s forthcoming memoir, “This Time, This Place: My Life in War, the White House, and Hollywood” (Crown), does as much to polish Johnson’s legacy as his own. He was to have begun a six-city tour on June 5 to promote the book.

In 1966 Mr. Valenti took his talents for personal politicking — and lionizing his bosses — to Hollywood, heeding the request of Lew Wasserman and Arthur Krim, then chairmen of MCA/Universal and United Artists respectively, that he take over the Motion Picture Association. “If Hollywood is Mount Olympus,” Mr. Valenti once said of his new liege, “Lew Wasserman is Zeus.” He became the organization’s third president.

At the time, Hollywood was still officially operating under the Hays Production Code, the industry’s draconian and increasingly outmoded self-censoring rules that flatly barred nudity, profanity, miscegenation and even childbirth scenes from being depicted on film.

Mr. Valenti was soon confronted with two films in 1966 that convinced him that the code had become obsolete. He dealt with one, “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?,” by negotiating a compromise in which three out of four particular vulgarisms were cut.

Later that year, M.G.M. released Michelangelo Antonioni’s “Blowup” even though that film, showing brief scenes of nudity, lacked Production Code approval. Sensing that other films would also begin flouting the code and in turn create a vacuum into which local politicians and censorship boards might rush, Mr. Valenti decided to act.

“I knew I had to move swiftly, and I did,” he later recalled. “I was determined to free the screen from anything like the Hays Code. But I also emphasized that freedom demanded responsibility.”

So by late 1968 he persuaded the national theater-owners association to buy into a system of voluntary ratings, based on an ascending scale of adult content, that would be enforced at the box office: G, M (later PG), R and X.

The system was not without flaws and detractors, and it required some tinkering. In 1984, after receiving complaints about frightening parts of PG-rated movies (“parental guidance suggested”) like “Gremlins,” the association added the PG-13 category (“parents strongly cautioned”). Though the other ratings were trademarked, the X was not, and pornographers quickly co-opted it. In 1990 the association replaced the X with NC-17 (no one 17 and under admitted), hoping it would be embraced, but distributors have mostly spurned it for commercial reasons, leaving many filmmakers to make wrenching cuts to adult-themed films in pursuit of an R rating.

Mr. Valenti always rebutted critics by citing an annual survey, paid for by the association, showing that parents of young children strongly believed that the ratings were useful.

In 1983, at the height of the Reagan administration’s deregulation efforts, Mr. Valenti led a fight to preserve federal rules intended to protect television producers and studios from the market power of the three major networks. The Federal Communications Commission was considering repealing the rules and allowing the networks to produce programs, thus giving them vertical control over production, distribution and exhibition.

In his memoir, he said he asked Mr. Wasserman, who had once been Ronald Reagan’s agent, and Charlton Heston to urge the president to oppose the repeal. The White House did just that, and the federal rules remained in place until 1995, by which time mergers between studios and networks had rendered them unnecessary.

In Mr. Valenti’s last decade at the association, it became consumed with fighting digital piracy. But one of his bolder strokes, in 2003, blew up in his face. He had learned that half the films being sent to industry people on DVD, known as screeners, for awards campaigns were turning up for sale illegally around the world. So he banned screeners altogether. A storm of protest ensued — loudest of all from the major studios’ own specialty divisions, which rely heavily on awards attention to publicize their films — and the policy was overturned by a federal judge, who said it ran afoul of antitrust laws.

Jack Joseph Valenti was born in Houston on Sept. 5, 1921, to the son and daughter of Italian immigrants from Sicily. He traced his passion for politics to the day his father, a clerk for the city government, took him to a political rally, where the 10-year-old Jack was invited to give his first speech, from a flatbed truck, for the Harris County sheriff. “I never recovered from it,” Mr. Valenti wrote.

As a youth he worked for a chain of second-run movie theaters in downtown Houston, roaming the city putting up posters in storefront windows in exchange for free passes. Hired as an office boy at the Humble Oil Company (an antecedent to ExxonMobil), he attended the University of Houston at night but still managed to be elected class president his sophomore year.

A voracious reader, he devoured everything by Macaulay, Churchill and Gibbon, and his speaking and writing style would mix his native twang with the rhetorical flourishes of his heroes in a brew of cliché, cornpone, compelling phrases and clunkers that one critic called “a kind of Texas baroque.”

In 1982 Mr. Valenti published a guide to oratory, “Speak Up With Confidence,” which was revised and reissued in 2002. He also wrote “The Bitter Taste of Glory,” a book of essays (World, 1971); “A Very Human President” (W. W. Norton, 1975), about Johnson; and a political novel, “Protect and Defend” (Doubleday, 1992), edited by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.

As an Army B-25 pilot in World War II — the Naval air corps had rejected him because of a heart murmur — he flew 51 missions over Italy, but never piloted a plane again after returning his flak-battered bomber to the United States. He went to Harvard Business School on the G.I. bill, then returned to Humble Oil’s advertising department, where he helped its Texas gas stations jump from fifth to first in sales through a “cleanest restrooms” campaign. He co-founded an advertising agency in 1952, with a rival oil company, Conoco, as its first client. He later added Representative Albert Thomas, a Johnson ally, as a client.

It was in 1956 that he met Senator Johnson at a gathering of young Houston Democrats. As a sideline, Mr. Valenti had begun writing a weekly column in The Houston Post, and he rhapsodized there about the senator’s “strength, unbending as a mountain crag, tough as a jungle fighter.” Their friendship grew, and when Johnson became Kennedy’s running mate, he had Mr. Valenti run the ticket’s campaign in Texas. Mr. Valenti helped stage Kennedy’s televised meeting on Sept. 12, 1960, with a group of Protestant Houston ministers, an event that was instrumental in helping him overcome anti-Catholic bias.

Mr. Valenti cemented his ties to Johnson in 1962 when he married Mary Margaret Wiley, a Johnson secretary. The couple accompanied Johnson to Rome for the funeral of Pope John XXIII, and Mr. Valenti was put in charge of the Houston leg of Kennedy’s 1963 swing through Texas. After a dinner there on Nov. 21, Johnson asked Mr. Valenti to fly on Air Force Two the next day. Moments after learning Kennedy was dead, Mr. Valenti was summoned to Air Force One, where he was hired on the spot as a special assistant.

In his memoir he recalled helping rustle up votes for Johnson’s monumental Great Society legislation; witnessing Johnson’s private browbeating of Gov. George Wallace of Alabama after the attacks on civil-rights marchers in Selma; and being accused (unfairly, he maintained) by Robert F. Kennedy of leaking to the news media stories about Kennedy’s chances of being made Johnson’s 1964 running mate.

But Mr. Valenti may have rendered his most vital White House service by being a source of companionship, public praise and private candor, Mr. Dallek said; before leaving the White House, he warned Johnson how much the war was hurting his credibility with voters. Mr. Valenti spent more time socially with the president than any other aide, often bringing along his wife and their toddler daughter, Courtenay Lynda, a Johnson favorite.

In addition to his wife of 45 years and his daughter, now an executive vice president for production at Warner Brothers Pictures, Mr. Valenti is survived by a son, John Lyndon, of Los Angeles, the chief executive of icreate.com, an informational service for the film industry; another daughter, Alexandra Alice, a photographer and video director in Austin, Tex.; and two grandchildren.

Mr. Valenti, who was four days shy of 83 when he stepped down from the motion picture association, continued to come to work, nattily dressed, long afterward. “Retirement to me is a synonym for decay,” he wrote in his memoir. “The idea of just knocking about, playing golf or whatever, is so unattractive to me that I would rather be nibbled to death by ducks. So long as I am doing what I choose to do and love to do, work is not work but total fun.”

Jack Valenti, 85, Dies; Confidant of a President and Stars, NYT, 27.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/27/movies/27valenti.html?hp

Computers Join Actors in Hybrids On Screen

January 9, 2007
The New York Times
By SHARON WAXMAN

LOS ANGELES, Jan. 8 — James Cameron, the director whose “Titanic” set a record for ticket sales around the world, will join 20th Century Fox in tackling a similarly ambitious and costly film, “Avatar,” which will test new technologies on a scale unseen before in Hollywood, the studio and the filmmaker said on Monday.

The film, with a budget of about $200 million, is an original science fiction story that will be shown in 3D even in conventional theaters. The plot pits a human army against an alien army on a distant planet, bringing live actors and digital technology together to make a large cast of virtual creatures who convey emotion as authentically as humans.

Earlier movies like “The Lord of the Rings” series did this on a limited scale, as in the digitally designed character Gollum, whose performance came from the actor Andy Serkis, while others like “The Polar Express” have used live actors to drive animated images — so-called motion capture technology.

But none has gone as far as “Avatar” to create an entirely photorealistic world, complete with virtual characters, on the expected scale of the new film, Mr. Cameron said in a telephone interview.

“This film is a true hybrid — a full live-action shoot, with CG characters in CG and live environments,” said Mr. Cameron, referring to computer-generated imagery. “Ideally, at the end of the of day, the audience has no idea which they’re looking at.”

Jim Gianopulos, a co-chairman of Fox Filmed Entertainment, said that he expected theaters to update their facilities to accommodate the 3D demands of the film. “This will launch an entire new way of seeing and exhibiting movies,” he said.

“Jim’s not just a filmmaker,” Mr. Gianopulos added, referring to Mr. Cameron. “Every one of his films have pushed the envelope in its aesthetic and in its technology.”

The making of “Titanic,” Mr. Cameron’s last full-blown Hollywood feature, was the stuff of movie legend. Released in 1997, the film went far over its planned cost to become the most expensive production that had then been made, creating stunning visual effects with a combination of live action and computer graphics. But it also went on to become a historic success, taking in a record- breaking $1.8 billion at the worldwide box office and winning 11 Oscars, including the award for best picture.

Mr. Cameron said he had taken care to avoid the problems he encountered on that, his last gargantuan production, and was already four months into shooting some scenes by the time Fox gave final approval to the project on Monday. The shoot has been largely secret, in a building in the Playa Vista section of Los Angeles.

“I’ve looked long and hard at ‘Titanic,’ and other effects-related things I’ve done, where they’ve drifted budgetwise,” he said. “This has been designed from the ground up to avoid those pitfalls. Will we have other pitfalls? Yes, probably.”

Mr. Cameron has already devised revolutionary methods to shoot the film, and expects to create still more methods to bring to life the vision of a completely photo-realistic alien world.

For its aliens, “Avatar” will present characters designed on the computer, but played by human actors. Their bodies will be filmed using the latest evolution of motion-capture technology — markers placed on the actor and tracked by a camera — while the facial expressions will be tracked by tiny cameras on headsets that will record their performances to insert them into a virtual world.

The most important innovation thus far has been a camera, designed by Mr. Cameron and his computer experts, that allows the director to observe the performances of the actors-as-aliens, in the film’s virtual environment, as it happens.

“It’s like a big, powerful game engine,” he explained. “If I want to fly through space, or change my perspective, I can. I can turn the whole scene into a living miniature and go through it on a 50 to 1 scale. It’s pretty exciting.”

Sam Worthington, a young Australian actor, has been named to play the lead, a paralyzed former marine 150 years in the future, who undergoes an experiment to exist as an avatar, another version of himself. The avatar is not paralyzed, but is an alien: 10 feet tall, and blue. Zoe Saldana, another relative unknown, has been chosen as the love interest.

“We could do it with make-up, in a ‘Star Trek’ manner — we could put rubber on his face — but I wasn’t interested in doing it that way,” Mr. Cameron said. “With the new tools, we can create a humanoid character that is anything we imagine it to be — beautiful, elegant, graceful, powerful , evocative of us, but still with an emotional connection.”

Mr. Cameron is widely regarded as one of Hollywood’s foremost innovators, and he has been waiting to make the film, which he wrote more than a decade ago, while technology catches up to his vision. He began experimenting with these new filming techniques about 18 months ago, he said.

But he disputed the notion that the galloping pace of filmmaking technology has threatened the traditional role of actors or the emotional grip of a good story.

“There’s this sense of bifurcation, that really true artistic, cutting-edge filmmakers make these indie pictures, and that CG films are these clanking machines,” he observed. “I’ve tried to fight to inhabit both spaces. There’s a way to take all these technical tools and have them come from a place where the artist is still running the film. It’s not easy.”

While recognizing that it is was an expensive project, Mr. Gianopulos said that something like “Avatar” was precisely what the theatrical movie business needed in a time of stiff competition from video games and lavish home entertainment systems.

“What audiences are looking for, especially in the theater, is a unique experience,” said Mr. Gianopulos, whose studio also distributed the “Star Wars” series by George Lucas, though it does not own those films. It will fully own “Avatar.”

He added: “There is nothing as unique as what this film will be, as spectacle, as a presentation of a completely original world, in its presentation and its technology.” He said he expected the movie to become a series, and the actors were signed up to accommodate sequels.

The live-action shoot with actors will begin in April, with major effects being done by Weta, the filmmaker Peter Jackson’s New Zealand-based effects company, which created the effects for his “Lord of the Rings.” The film is scheduled for release in summer 2009.

Computers Join Actors in Hybrids On Screen, NYT, 9.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/09/movies/09came.html

Stiller, Smith Achieve Box Office Milestones

January 1, 2007
By REUTERS
Filed at 2:29 p.m. ET

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Ben Stiller led the North American box office for a second weekend with ``Night at the Museum,'' while Will Smith began 2007 on a good note as he logged his tenth $100 million movie.

According to studio estimates issued on Monday, ``Night at the Museum'' earned $46.7 million during the four days beginning on December 29. After 11 days, the family comedy has earned $125.8 million.

Stiller plays a security guard at a museum where the exhibits -- such as dinosaurs and Roman armies -- come to life at night. The family comedy, released by News Corp.'s 20th Century Fox, is based on a 32-page illustrated book by Milan Trenc.

Smith's former chart-topper ``The Pursuit of Happyness'' followed at No. 2 for a second weekend with $24.7 million. After three weekends, its total stands at $103.7 million. The acclaimed rags-to-riches tale was released by Sony Corp.'s Columbia Pictures, which has handled five of Smith's $100 million movies.

``Dreamgirls,'' a musical loosely based on the story of Motown hitmakers the Supremes, jumped four places to No. 3 with a four-day sum of $18.7 million. The total for the Paramount Pictures film stands at $41.6 million after just eight days in national release.

The movie widened to 852 theaters on Christmas day after a week of special engagements in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco. It will expand to about 1,800 theaters on January 12, three days before the Golden Globe Awards where it will compete for five trophies.Paramount's family movie ``Charlotte's Web'' rose one place to No. 4 with $15.1 million. The adaptation of the E.B. White barnyard tale has earned $55.9 million after three weekends. Paramount is a unit of Viacom Inc.

``The Good Shepherd,'' a spy drama directed by Robert De Niro, slipped one place to No. 5 with $14.3 million. The film, which stars Matt Damon and Angelina Jolie, has earned $38.3 million after two weeks. It was released by Universal Pictures, a unit of General Electric Co.'s NBC Universal.

Rounding out the top-10 were Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's ``Rocky Balboa'' with $13.7 million, Fox's ``Eragon'' with $10.6 million, the Warner Bros. Pictures pair of ``We Are Marshall'' with $10.2 million and ``Happy Feet'' with $9.7 million, and Columbia's ``The Holiday'' with $8.5 million. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer is closely held; Warner Bros. is a unit of Time Warner Inc.

Stiller, Smith Achieve Box Office Milestones, R, 1.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/arts/entertainment-boxoffice.html

MOVIE REVIEW | 'LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA'

Blurring the Line in the Bleak Sands of Iwo Jima

December 20, 2006
The New York Times
By A. O. SCOTT

There are certain assumptions that American audiences, perhaps without realizing it, are likely to bring to a movie about World War II. The combat picture has been a Hollywood staple for so long — since before the actual combat was over — that it can sometimes seem as if every possible story has already been told. Or else as if each individual story, from G.I. Joe to Private Ryan, is at bottom a variation on familiar themes: victory against the odds, brotherhood under fire, sacrifice for a noble cause.

But of course there are other, contrasting stories, a handful of which form the core of “Letters From Iwo Jima,” Clint Eastwood’s harrowing, contemplative new movie and the companion to his “Flags of Our Fathers,” which was released this fall. That film, partly about the famous photograph of American servicemen raising the flag on the barren volcanic island of Iwo Jima, complicated the standard Hollywood combat narrative in ways both subtle and overt. It exposed the heavy sediment of individual grief, cynicism and frustration beneath the collective high sentiments of glory and heroism but without entirely debunking the value or necessity of those sentiments.

“Letters,” which observes the lives and deaths of Japanese soldiers in the battle for Iwo Jima, similarly adheres to some of the conventions of the genre even as it quietly dismantles them. It is, unapologetically and even humbly, true to the durable tenets of the war-movie tradition, but it is also utterly original, even radical in its methods and insights.

In December 2004, with “Million Dollar Baby,” Mr. Eastwood almost nonchalantly took a tried and true template — the boxing picture — and struck from it the best American movie of the year. To my amazement, though hardly to my surprise, he has done it again; “Letters From Iwo Jima” might just be the best Japanese movie of the year as well.

This is not only because the Japanese actors, speaking in their own language, give such vivid and varied performances, but also because the film, in its every particular, seems deeply and un-self-consciously embedded in the experiences of the characters they play. “Letters From Iwo Jima” is not a chronicle of victory against the odds, but rather of inevitable defeat. When word comes from Imperial headquarters that there will be no reinforcements, no battleships, no air support in the impending fight with the United States Marines, any illusion of triumph vanishes, and the stark reality of the mission takes shape. The job of these soldiers and their commanders, in keeping with a military ethos they must embrace whether they believe in it or not, is to die with honor, if necessary by their own hands.

The cruelty of this notion of military discipline, derived from long tradition and maintained by force, is perhaps less startling than the sympathy Mr. Eastwood extends to his characters, whose sacrifices are made in the service of a cause that the American audience knows to be bad as well as doomed. It is hard to think of another war movie that has gone so deeply, so sensitively, into the mind-set of the opposing side.

Since the fighting that Mr. Eastwood depicts is limited to a single, self-contained piece of the Japanese homeland, the bloody roster of Japanese atrocities elsewhere in Asia and the South Pacific remains off screen. But this omission in no way compromises the moral gravity of what takes place before our eyes. Nor does it diminish the power of the film’s moving and meticulous vindication of the humanity of the enemy. (Mr. Eastwood also, not incidentally, exposes some inhumanity on the part of the American good guys, a few of whom are shown committing atrocities of their own.)

Any modern military organization depends, to some extent, on the dehumanization of its own fighters as well as their adversaries. (In “Flags of Our Fathers” the Japanese are all but faceless, firing unseen from bunkers and tunnels dug into the mountainside; in “Letters From Iwo Jima” we see the grueling work and strategic inspiration that led to the digging of those tunnels.)

An army needs personnel, not personalities, and one of the functions of the art and literature of war — especially on film, which exists to consecrate the human face — is to compensate for this forced anonymity by emphasizing the flesh-and-blood individuality of the combatants. Think of the classic Hollywood platoon picture, with its carefully distributed farm boys and city kids, its quota of blowhards and bookworms, all superintended by a wise, crusty commander. Even as they approach stereotype, those characters give names, faces and identities to men who have gone down in history mainly as statistics.

Historians estimate that 20,000 Japanese infantrymen defended Iwo Jima; 1,083 of them survived. (The Americans sent 77,000 Marines and nearly 100,000 total troops, of whom close to 7,000 died and almost 20,000 were wounded.) The Japanese commander was Lt. Gen. Tadamichi Kuribayashi, whose illustrated letters to his wife and children, recently unearthed on the island, were a source for Iris Yamashita’s script. Played by Ken Watanabe, Kuribayashi, who arrives on Iwo Jima with a pearl-handled Colt and fond memories of the years he spent in America before the war, is a dashing, cosmopolitan figure. He arouses a good deal of suspicion among the other officers for his modern ideas and for the kindness he sometimes displays toward the low-ranking soldiers.

The general is a practical man (those tunnels are his idea) in an impossible circumstance, and Mr. Watanabe’s performance is all the more heartbreaking for his crisp, unsentimental dignity. He anchors the film — this is some of the best acting of the year, in any language — but does not dominate it. Much as the Imperial Army may have been rigidly hierarchical, Mr. Eastwood’s sensibility is instinctively democratic. As the battle looms, and even as the bombs, bullets and artillery shells begin to explode, he takes the time to introduce us to Saigo (Kazunari Ninomiya), a guileless baker with no great desire to give his life for the glory of the nation; Lieutenant Ito (Shidou Nakamura), who will settle for nothing else; Baron Nishi (Tsuyoshi Ihara), an Olympic equestrian who once hobnobbed with Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks; and Shimizu (Ryo Kase), who Saigo suspects is an agent of the secret police.

It is customary to use the word epic to describe a movie that deals with big battles, momentous historical events and large numbers of dead. But while some of Mr. Eastwood’s set pieces depict warfare on a large scale, the overall mood of “Letters From Iwo Jima,” as the title suggests, is strikingly intimate. Even though the movie has a blunt, emphatic emotional force, Mr. Eastwood also shows an attention to details of speech and gesture that can only be described as delicate.

He is as well acquainted as any American director (or actor) with the language of cinematic violence, but he has no equal when it comes to dramatizing the ethical and emotional consequences of brutality. There is nothing gratuitous in this film, nothing fancy or false. There is the humor and the viciousness of men in danger; there is the cool logic of military planning and the explosive irrationality of behavior in combat; there is life and death.

As in “Flags of Our Fathers,” nearly all the color has been drained from the images, a technique that makes the interiors of the caves and tunnels look like Rembrandt paintings. The anxious faces seem to glow in the shadows, illuminated by their own suffering. At other times, in the hard outdoor light, Tom Stern’s cinematography is as frank and solemn as a Mathew Brady photograph.

A few scenes serve as hinges joining this movie to “Flags of Our Fathers.” While “Letters From Iwo Jima” seems to me the more accomplished of the two films — by which I mean that it strikes me as close to perfect — the two enrich each other, and together achieve an extraordinary completeness. They show how the experience of war is both a shared and a divisive experience, separating the dead from the living and the winners from the losers, even as it binds them all together.

Both films travel back and forth in time and space between Iwo Jima and the homelands of the combatants. In “Flags of Our Fathers” the battle itself happens mainly in flashback, since the movie is in large measure about the guilt and confusion that survivors encountered upon their reluctant return home. In “Letters From Iwo Jima” the battle is in the present tense, and it is home that flickers occasionally in the memories of men who are certain they will not live to see it again.

“Letters From Iwo Jima” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). It includes extremely graphic combat violence.

LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA

Opens today in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Directed by Clint Eastwood; written (in Japanese, with English subtitles) by Iris Yamashita, based on a story by Ms. Yamashita and Paul Haggis; director of photography, Tom Stern; edited by Joel Cox and Gary D. Roach; music by Kyle Eastwood and Michael Stevens; production designers, Henry Bumstead and James J. Murakami; produced by Mr. Eastwood, Steven Spielberg and Robert Lorenz; released by Warner Brothers Pictures and DreamWorks Pictures. Running time: 141 minutes.

WITH: Ken Watanabe (Lt. Gen. Tadamichi Kuribayashi), Kazunari Ninomiya (Saigo), Tsuyoshi Ihara (Baron Nishi), Ryo Kase (Shimizu), Shidou Nakamura (Lieutenant Ito) and Nae (Hanako).

Blurring the Line in the Bleak Sands of Iwo Jima, NYT, 20.12.2006, http://movies2.nytimes.com/2006/12/20/movies/20lett.html

Barberanism in cartoon land

Martin Rowson
The Guardian
December 20, 2006 03:11 PM

I've long believed that the cartoon shorts produced in Hollywood in the 1930s, 40s and 50s, mostly outside the baleful Disney gulag, are among the greatest achievements of western art.

These five-minute long essays in mayhem, featuring Bugs Bunny or Daffy Duck or Droopy, and directed by the likes of Tex Avery, Friz Freleng and Chuck Jones are (albeit silly) symphonies of joy. Right up there at the top stand Tom and Jerry, created by William Hanna and Joe Barbera, who's just died aged 95.

When you watch those Tom and Jerry cartoons, you don't just get all the victimless violence you could ever want, but also, frequently, a beauty which can rival anything in the movies. These little films won seven Oscars, and would often take up to a year to make. The technique was painstaking and very expensive (which was why in 1956 MGM closed its animation division where they made Tom and Jerry). The cartoons of that Golden Age should stand as a fitting and enduring monument to Joe Barbera and Bill Hanna, and almost excuse their later crimes. But not quite.

In his Guardian obituary only about seven lines are given over to Barbera's post-Tom and Jerry career, despite the fact that it took up most of his professional life and made him his millions. That strikes me as fitting. Although everyone born in the last 60 years might imagine that they have happy childhood memories of The Flintstones, Yogi Bear, Huckleberry Hound or, God help us, Scooby-Doo, the truth of the matter is that they're crap. Complete and utter crap. Worse, they're shoddily made crap, after Hanna-Barbera devised what they called "limited animation", more than halving the number of drawings from 26 per second to 3000 for five minutes, the better to fill the empty moments on TV between the ads. And thus they effectively destroyed animation for at least two generations, before it slowly began to claw its way back to respectability in the mid-90s.

Worse, this tat debauched not only its audience but also people within the profession. The great Mel Blanc, the voice of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Sylvester the Cat and Porky Pig, ended his days voicing Barney Rubble. Friz Freleng, who directed some of the best Bugs Bunnies in the 40s, bent the knee to market forces and spent the 60s and 70s churning out The Pink Panther. Great theme, for sure, but those cartoons, too, were crap.

As a culture we're now wilfully infantile, and we tend to dignify anything from our childhoods, such as Barbera's entire output from Huckleberry Hound onwards, with the benefit of the doubt. Don't. It's crap. If you doubt me, just remember The Banana Splits. Or The Hair Bear Bunch. Or Shazam. I could go on, but I can't stand it. All I can suggest is that you get hold of Johann Mouse: in five sublime minutes it's worth more than everything Barbera knocked off in the next 40 years, and almost redeems his memory. But, as I said, not quite.

Barberanism in cartoon land, G, 20.12.2006, http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/martin_rowson/2006/12/post_828.html

Joe Barbera, creator of cartoon classics, dies at 95

· Partnership with Hanna lasted more than 60 years
· Tom and Jerry won duo seven Academy Awards

Tuesday December 19, 2006
Guardian
Lee Glendinning

Joe Barbera, one half of the creative duo that delighted generations of children with the homicidal spats between a cat and a mouse, the ranger-baiting activities of a delinquent bear and the adventures of a ghost-hunting great dane and his pesky friends, died yesterday. He was 95.

In partnership with Bill Hanna, Barbera gave the world such classic cartoon characters as Tom and Jerry, Yogi Bear, Scooby-Doo, the Flintstones and the Jetsons.

As the hugely successful animation team Hanna-Barbera, it was Barbera's sketching skill and comic ability, combined with Hanna's warmth and keen sense of timing which saw the pair conceive some of the best-loved cartoon characters of all time. Tom and Jerry won seven Academy Awards, more than any other series with the same characters.

Barbera died of natural causes at home on Monday with his wife Stella by his side, a Warner Bros spokesman said.

Hanna, who died in 2001, once said he was never a good artist but his partner could "capture mood and expression in a quick sketch better than anyone I've ever known".

Neither intended to go into animation. Barbera, who grew up in Brooklyn, originally went into banking and Hanna, who had studied engineering and journalism, got involved with animation because he needed a job.

Joseph Barbera was born in Italy in 1911 and began his career as a tailor's delivery boy. He spent the early 1930s trying to become a magazine cartoonist on The NY Hits Magazine, but never managed it.

He first met William Hanna amid the blocks of MGM studios in the 1930s and together they began to bring to life a cast of characters that included Huckleberry Hound and Friends and Touché Turtle.

The cat and mouse format was first attempted in Puss Gets the Boot and earned them an Academy Award nomination. As they continued to experiment, these characters grew into Tom and Jerry, and their argumentative antics went on for 17 years. When MGM closed its animation unit in 1957 the team were forced to go into business themselves. After Hanna's death Barbera remained active as an executive producer at Warner Bros and continued to work on What's New Scooby Doo? and Tom and Jerry Tales.

Critic Leonard Maltin wrote in his book, Of Mice and Magic: A History of American Animated Cartoons: "This writing-directing team may hold a record for producing consistently superior cartoons using the same characters year after year - without a break or change in routine ... [their] characters are not only animated superstars, but also a very beloved part of American pop culture."

Barbera is survived by three children from a previous marriage, Jayne, Neal and Lynn.

Joe Barbera, creator of cartoon classics, dies at 95, G, 19.12.2006, http://film.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,1975201,00.html

Robert Altman, Director With Daring, Dies at 81

November 22, 2006
The New York Times
By RICK LYMAN

Robert Altman, one of the most adventurous and influential American directors of the late 20th century, a filmmaker whose iconoclastic career spanned more than five decades but whose stamp was felt most forcefully in one, the 1970s, died Monday in Los Angeles. He was 81.

His death, at Cedars Sinai Medical Center, was caused by complications of cancer, his company in New York, Sandcastle 5 Productions, announced. A spokesman said Mr. Altman had learned that he had cancer 18 months ago but continued to work, shooting his final film, “A Prairie Home Companion,” which was released in June, and most recently completing pre-production on a new film that he intended to begin shooting in February.

Mr. Altman had a heart transplant in the mid-1990s, a fact he publicly revealed for the first time last March while accepting an honorary Oscar at the Academy Awards ceremony.

A risk taker with a tendency toward mischief, Mr. Altman put together something of a late-career comeback capped in 2001 by “Gosford Park,” a multiple Oscar nominee. But he may be best remembered for a run of masterly films — six in five years — that propelled him to the forefront of American directors and culminated in 1975 with what many regard as his greatest film, “Nashville,” a complex, character-filled drama told against the backdrop of a presidential primary.

They were free-wheeling, genre-bending films that captured the jaded disillusionment of the ’70s. The best known was “MASH,” the 1970 comedy that was set in a field hospital during the Korean war but that was clearly aimed at antiwar sentiments engendered by Vietnam. Its success, both critically and at the box office, opened the way for Mr. Altman to pursue his ambitions.

In 1971 he took on the western, making “McCabe & Mrs. Miller” with Warren Beatty and Julie Christie. In 1972, he dramatized a woman’s psychological disintegration in “Images,” starring Susannah York. In 1973, he tackled the private-eye genre with a somewhat loopy adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s “The Long Goodbye,” with the laid-back Elliott Gould playing Philip Marlowe as a ’70s retro-hipster. And in 1974 he released two films, exploring gambling addiction in “California Split” and riffing on the Dust Bowl gangster saga with “Thieves Like Us.”

Unlike most directors whose flames burned brightest in the early 1970s — and frequently flickered out — Mr. Altman did not come to Hollywood from critical journals and newfangled film schools. He had had a long career in industrial films and television. In an era that celebrated fresh voices steeped in film history — young directors like Francis Ford Coppola, Peter Bogdanovich and Martin Scorsese — Mr. Altman was like their bohemian uncle, matching the young rebels in their skeptical disdain for the staid conventions of mainstream filmmaking and the establishment that supported it.

Most of his actors adored him and praised his improvisational style. In his prime, he was celebrated for his ground-breaking use of multilayer soundtracks. An Altman film might offer a babble of voices competing for attention in crowded, smoky scenes. It was a kind of improvisation that offered a fresh verisimilitude to tired, stagey Hollywood genres.

But Mr. Altman was also famous in Hollywood for his battles with everyone from studio executives to his collaborators, leaving more burned bridges than the Luftwaffe. He also suffered through periods of bad reviews and empty seats but always seemed to regain his stride, as he did in the early ’90s, when he made “The Player” and “Short Cuts.” Even when he fell out of popular favor, however, many younger filmmakers continued to admire him as an uncompromising artist who held to his vision in the face of business pressures and who was unjustly overlooked by a film establishment grown fat on special effects and feel-good movies.

He was often referred to as a cult director, and it rankled him. “What is a cult?” Mr. Altman said. “It just means not enough people to make a minority.”

The Breakthrough

The storyline had to do with a group of boozy, oversexed Army doctors in a front-line hospital, specifically a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital. Fifteen directors had already turned the job down. But at 45, Mr. Altman signed on, and the movie, “MASH,” became his breakthrough.

Audiences particularly connected with the authority-bashing attitude of the film’s irreverent doctors, Hawkeye (Donald Sutherland) and Trapper John (Mr. Gould).

“The heroes are always on the side of decency and sanity; that’s why they’re contemptuous of the bureaucracy,” the critic Pauline Kael wrote in The New Yorker. “They are heroes because they are competent and sane and gallant, and in this insane situation their gallantry takes the form of scabrous comedy.”

The villains are not the Communist enemy but marble-hearted military bureaucrats personified by the pious Frank Burns (Robert Duvall) and the hypocritical Hot Lips Houlihan (Sally Kellerman).

The film was nominated for five Academy Awards, including one for best picture and one for Mr. Altman’s direction. It also won the Golden Palm, the top award at the 1970 Cannes Film Festival, and the best picture of the year award of the National Society of Film Critics.

But “MASH” was denied the best-picture Oscar; that award went to “Patton.” In later years Mr. Altman received four more Academy Award nominations for best director and two for producing best-picture nominees, “Nashville” and “Gosford Park.” The only Oscar he received, however, was the honorary one in March.

Mr. Altman was angry that the lone Oscar given to “MASH” went to Ring Lardner Jr., who got sole screen credit for the script. Mr. Altman openly disparaged Mr. Lardner’s work, touching off one of his many feuds. Later, when Mr. Altman seemed unable to duplicate the mix of critical and box-office success that “MASH” had achieved, he grew almost disdainful of the film.

“ ‘MASH’ was a pretty good movie,” Mr. Altman said in an interview. “It wasn’t what 20th Century- Fox thought it was going to be. They almost, when they saw it, cut all the blood out. I fought with my life for that. The picture speaks for itself. It became popular because of the timing. Consequently, it’s considered important, but it’s no better or more important than any of the other films I’ve made.”

Mr. Altman’s interest in film genres was candidly subversive. He wanted to explode them to expose what he saw as their phoniness. He decided to make “McCabe & Mr. Miller” for just that reason. “I got interested in the project because I don’t like westerns,” Mr. Altman said. “So I pictured a story with every western cliché in it.”

His intention, he said, was to drain the glamour from the West and show it as it really was — filthy, vermin-infested, whisky-soaked and ruled by thugs with guns. His hero, McCabe (Mr. Beatty), was a dimwitted dreamer who let his cockiness and his love for a drug-addicted prostitute (Ms. Christie) undo him.

“These events took place,” Mr. Altman said, of westerns in general, “but not in the way you’ve been told. I wanted to look at it through a different window, you might say, but I still wanted to keep the poetry in the ballad.” “Nashville” interweaved the stories of 24 characters — country-western stars, housewives, boozers, political operators, oddball drifters — who move in and out of one another’s lives in the closing days of a fictional presidential primary. Mr. Altman returned to this multi-character approach several times (in “A Wedding,” “Health,” “Short Cuts,” “Prêt-à-Porter” and “Kansas City”), but never again to such devastating effect.

“Nashville is a radical, evolutionary leap,” Ms. Kael wrote in The New Yorker. “Altman has already accustomed us to actors who don’t look as if they’re acting; he’s attuned us to the comic subtleties of a multiple-track sound system that makes the sound more live than it ever was before; and he’s evolved an organic style of moviemaking that tells a story without the clanking of plot. Now he dissolves the frame, so that we feel the continuity between what’s on the screen and life off-camera.”

Mr. Altman’s career stalled after “Nashville,” although he continued to attract top actors. Paul Newman starred in “Buffalo Bill and the Indians” in 1976, Sissy Spacek in “3 Women” in 1977 and Mr. Newman again in “Quintet” in 1979. But critical opinion turned against Mr. Altman in the late ’70s, and his films fared worse and worse at the box office.

The crushing blow came in 1980, when Mr. Altman directed Robin Williams in a lavish musical based on the “Popeye” cartoon. Though it eventually achieved modest commercial success, the movie was considered a dud because it made less money than had been expected and drew almost universal scorn from the critics. Mr. Altman retained his critical champions, including Ms. Kael and Vincent Canby of The New York Times, who in 1982 called Mr. Altman one of “our greatest living directors.” But the tide had turned against him.

In “Fore My Eyes,” a 1980 collection of film essays, Stanley Kauffmann spoke for other critics when he derided what he saw as the director’s middle-brow pretensions. “He’s the film equivalent of the advertising-agency art director who haunts the galleries to keep his eye fresh,” he wrote.

If Mr. Altman never fully regained his critical pre-eminence, he came close, recapturing much of his luster in the final years of his life. And he always kept in the game.

He remade his career in the early ’80s with a string of films based on stage dramas: Ed Graczyk’s “Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean” in 1982, David Rabe’s “Streamers” in 1983 and Sam Shepard’s “Fool for Love” in 1985. He also did some fresh work for television, a medium he had reviled when he left it two decades earlier.

In 1988, he directed a strong television adaptation of “The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial,” a stage play by Herman Wouk based on his novel “The Caine Mutiny.” The Altman version restored the class conflict and anti-Semitism that had been excised from the 1954 Hollywood treatment starring Humphrey Bogart.

The ’90s brought an even more satisfying resurgence for Mr. Altman. It began with a pair of critical film successes: “The Player,” an acerbic satire based on the Michael Tolkin novel about a ruthless Hollywood executive, and “Short Cuts,” an episodic, character-filled drama based on the short stories of Raymond Carver. The films earned him his third and fourth Oscar nominations for best director.

Then, in 2001, came “Gosford Park,” an elaborate murder mystery with an ensemble cast that capped his comeback.

Mr. Altman’s last film, “A Prairie Home Companion,” based on Garrison Keillor’s long-running radio show, was released in June and starred Meryl Streep and Kevin Kline in another ensemble cast. Writing in The Times, A.O. Scott called the film a minor Altman work “but a treasure all the same.” “I seem to have become like one of those old standards, in musical terms,” Mr. Altman said in a 1993 interview. “Always around. Lauren Bacall said to me, ‘You just don’t quit, do you?’ Guess not.”

Son of a Salesman

Robert Bernard Altman was born on Feb. 20, 1925, in Kansas City, Mo., to Helen and B.C. Altman, a prosperous insurance salesman for the Kansas City Life Insurance Company. Mr. Altman’s grandfather, the developer Frank G. Altman, had built the Altman Building, a five-story retail mecca in downtown Kansas City. (It was razed in 1974.)

Young Robert attended Catholic schools and the Wentworth Military Academy in Lexington, Mo., before enlisting in the Air Force in 1945. He eventually became a co-pilot on a B-24. It was during this period that he invented what he called “Identi-code,” a method for tattooing numbers on household pets to help identify them if they were lost or stolen; he even talked President Harry S. Truman into having one of his dogs tattooed.

After the Air Force, Mr. Altman went to work with the Calvin Company, a film company in Kansas City, making training films, advertisements and documentaries for industrial clients. In 1947 he married LaVonne Elmer, but they divorced two years later after they had a daughter, Christine. He married Lotus Corelli in 1950, and they divorced in 1955; they had two sons, Michael (who wrote lyrics to “Suicide Is Painless,” the “MASH” theme song, when he was just 14) and Stephen, a film production designer who frequently worked with his father.

Mr. Altman began to set his sights on Hollywood while still working in Kansas City. His first screen credit came for helping write “Bodyguard,” (1948) a B movie about a hard-boiled detective.

It was not until 1955 that he actually headed for Hollywood; he had gotten a call offering him a job directing an episode of the television series “Alfred Hitchcock Presents.”

Over the next decade, he directed dozens of episodes of “Maverick,” “Lawman,” “Peter Gunn,” “Bonanza,” “Hawaiian Eye,” “Route 66,” “Combat!” and “Kraft Suspense Theater.”

It was while on the set of the TV series “Whirlybirds” that Mr. Altman met his third wife, Kathryn Reed. They married in 1957 and had two sons, Robert and Matthew. Mr. Altman’s wife and children survive him, as does a stepdaughter, Connie Corriere, 12 grandchildren and five great-grandchildren. Although Mr. Altman interrupted his early Kansas City work to crank out a teen exploitation movie called “The Delinquents” (1957), it was not until 1968 that he moved up to directing major actors in a Hollywood feature. The film, “Countdown,” starring James Caan and Robert Duvall, was a critically praised drama about the first flight to the moon. He followed that up in 1969 with “That Cold Day in the Park,” a psychological thriller starring Sandy Dennis as a woman driven mad by her sex urges.

In 1970, he made what is perhaps his strangest film, “Brewster McCloud,” about a nerdish youth who wanted to build his own flying machine and whiz around the Houston Astrodome.

Then came “MASH.”

In later years he gathered around him a company of favored performers, among them Mr. Gould, Lily Tomlin, Shelley Duvall, Bert Remsen and Keith Carradine. Many of his sets were celebrated for their party atmosphere, which often came through on the screen. He thought that creating a casual mood helped him expand the boundaries of filmmaking.

To achieve his vision, Mr. Altman was willing to battle studio executives over the financing of his films and ultimate creative control.

“Robert Altman is an artist and a gambler,” his longtime assistant director, Alan Rudolph, wrote in a 1994 tribute in Film Comment. “Pursuing artistic vision on film in America can sometimes put everything you own at risk.”

When a studio refused to distribute Mr. Rudolph’s first film, “Welcome to L.A.,” Mr. Altman responded by forming his own independent distribution company, Lion’s Gate, for the sole purpose of releasing the film. It was a harbinger of the independent film companies of the ’80s and ’90s.

“There’s a big resistance to me,” Mr. Altman told The Washington Post in 1990. “They say, ‘Oh, he’s going to double-cross us somewhere.’ When I explain what I want to do, they can’t see it, because I’m trying to deliver something that they haven’t seen before. And they don’t realize that that’s the very reason they should buy it.”

Mr. Altman acknowledged that his career had suffered as a consequence of his own behavior — his hard drinking, procrastination and irascibility, his problem with authority. He also had a long history of bitter relations with screenwriters. Many complained that he injected himself into the rewriting process and took credit for work he did not do.

But many actors said they loved working with Mr. Altman because of the leeway he gave them in interpreting the script and in improvising in their scenes. “For somebody like me who likes to hang out with my pals and goof off and take the path of least resistance,” Sally Kellerman said, “he’s wonderful that way.”

Mr. Altman said giving actors freedom could draw things out of them that they did not know were there. “I look for actors where there’s something going on there, behind that mask,” Mr. Altman said. “Tim Robbins fascinated me. This John Cusack guy: I always see something going on in there and I don’t know what it is.”

He never mellowed in his view of the movie business.

“The people who get into this business are fast-buck operators, carnival people, always have been,” Mr. Altman said in a 1993 interview. “They don’t try to make good movies now; they’re trying to make successful movies. The marketing people run it now. You don’t really see too many smart people running the studios, running the video companies. They’re all making big money, but they’re not looking for, they don’t have a vested interest in, the shelf life of a movie. There’s no overview. No one says, ‘Forty years from now, who’s going to want to see this.’ No visionaries.”

Robert Altman, Director With Daring, Dies at 81, NYT, 22.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/22/movies/22altman.html

An Appraisal

A Rogue Cinematic Player Steeped in the Art of Ambiguity

November 22, 2006
The New York Times
By A. O. SCOTT

A few weeks ago, emerging from a weekday afternoon showing of Robert Altman’s “California Split,” a fellow moviegoer and I — complete strangers momentarily colliding, like something out of an Altman movie — stopped in the lobby to puzzle over the film’s ending. In this 1974 picture, George Segal, playing a magazine writer whose obsessive gambling has nearly wrecked his life, has just completed an epic, bank-breaking lucky streak at the poker and craps tables of a Nevada casino. His happier, usually luckier partner, played by Elliott Gould, figures that this is the start of something big. But as the morning light seeps in through the windows of an empty bar away from the betting floor, it’s clear that for the other man, the ride is over. In the wake of a great, improbable, mind-blowing triumph, his response is to shrug and walk away.

Why does he do it? Is this really the conclusion toward which everything else — the scheming and conniving, the boozing and excuse-making — was leading? Has the character, at some point in the frenzy of his streak, undergone a psychological change? We’ve been rooting for him, against the odds, to pull off something like this, but has he, all the while, been rooting against himself? Or was he addicted to losing, a malady that winning has miraculously cured? These hypotheses all make sense, but they also bring you up short. The movie ends not with a sigh of satisfaction, but with a gasp. What just happened?

The films of Mr. Altman, who died Monday at 81, often end on a similar note, or rather on a dissonant, troubling chord, with a moment that is at once grand and deflating. His crowded, complicated climaxes tend to gather up loose ends and then fling them in the air. You get the big, rousing spectacle: the naked supermodels on parade in “Ready to Wear”; the concert and the gunfire in “Nashville.”

But you also get doubt, equivocation, a sly, principled refusal of the neat and tidy rituals of closure. At the end of “The Player,” we are glad to see the hero drive off into the California sunshine, even as we know that he has gotten away with murder. When murder or other mysteries are at issue — as in “Gosford Park” or “The Long Goodbye” — the solution to the crime is pretty much beside the point.

In narrative art, nothing is more artificial than an ending — life, after all, does go on — and Mr. Altman’s endings often serve two purposes. They bring the artifice to a dazzling pitch of virtuosity while exposing it as a glorious sham. They revel in plenitude, in throngs and spectacles, but there is a throb of emptiness, of incompletion, in the midst of the frenzy.

Mr. Altman thrived on the shapelessness and confusion of experience, and he came closer than any other American filmmaker to replicating it without allowing his films to succumb to chaos. His movies buzz with the dangerous thrill of collaboration — the circling cameras, the improvising actors, the jumping, swirling sound design — even as they seem to arise from a great loneliness, a natural state that reasserts itself once the picture is over. A makeshift tribe gathers to produce a film, or to watch one, and then disperses when the shared experience has run its course. Everyone is gone, and the only antidote to this letdown is another film.

And Mr. Altman made a lot of them, and now there won’t be any more. Life goes on, but every life must end. Robert Altman’s exit, while hardly unexpected — he had undergone a heart transplant sometime in the 1990s — is nonetheless jolting to his admirers. We had grown accustomed to his stamina and his refusal to fade away even when the whims of the film industry seemed to turn against him.

Fans of a certain age will remember the succession of films from the 1970s — from “M*A*S*H” to “A Wedding,” passing through “McCabe & Mrs. Miller,” “Nashville,” and “3 Women” — that seemed at once to come out of nowhere and to reveal the central truths of their place and time. Those of us who came a bit later will recall encountering those movies on scratchy prints in revival houses or college cafeterias, and marveling at their energy and strangeness.

It was especially sweet, in the early 1990s, to witness Mr. Altman’s return from the wilderness — not that he had ever stopped making movies. But he seemed, for much of the ’80s, to be living in a kind of internal exile, filming brilliant adaptations of plays like “Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean,” “Streamers” and “Secret Honor” and almost surreptitiously turning out a masterpiece, “Tanner ’88,” for HBO. (The prescience of that series, written by Garry Trudeau, is astonishing: it seems to foretell both the rise of Bill Clinton and the current vogue for infusing fiction with documentary techniques.) But Mr. Altman’s luck turned, and he made at least three more movies — “The Player,” “Short Cuts” and “Gosford Park” — that rank alongside, or perhaps surpass, the milestones of the ’70s.

I’m not inclined, at the moment, to single out monuments. The pleasures of minor Altman — the sweet, shaggy-dog lyricism of “A Prairie Home Companion,” the generous, curious spirit of “The Company,” the gallantry of “Dr. T and the Women” — are not to be underestimated, and to fix a canon would be to miss some of the playful, seat-of-the-pants spirit of the films themselves. I cannot imagine growing tired of Mr. Altman, or failing to be surprised by his movies.

At the moment, signs of his influence are everywhere: in the overlapping dialogue and interlocking scenes of a television show like “The Wire,” for example, or in the multiple narratives drawn together around a theme or a location, in films like “Babel,” “Bobby,” “Crash” and “Fast Food Nation.” And in the last year of his life, the Hollywood establishment, which had often treated Mr. Altman like a crazy old uncle, hailed him as a patriarch, presenting an honorary Academy Award as compensation for the half-dozen he should already have had. He accepted it with his usual wry, brusque grace, after allowing himself to be upstaged by Lily Tomlin and Meryl Streep, whose tribute — one talking over the other, no sentences finished or thoughts completed, all of it perfectly timed — was funnier and more moving than any Oscar moment had any right to be.

And then, a few months later, he released “A Prairie Home Companion,” a contemplation of last things that would be his last movie. It is tempting to declare it Mr. Altman’s valediction — especially now that his production company, Sandcastle 5 Productions, has said that he was suffering from cancer for the past 18 months. But if this movie was a last gathering of the troupe, after which the lights dim forever, and the audience disperses, it was also just another movie in a career like no other, and when it was over — in the ending I like to imagine — American cinema’s greatest gambler shrugged his shoulders and walked away.

A Rogue Cinematic Player Steeped in the Art of Ambiguity, NYT, 22.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/22/movies/22scot.html

MOVIE REVIEW | 'CASINO ROYALE'

Renewing a License to Kill and a Huge Movie Franchise

November 17, 2006
The New York Times
By MANOHLA DARGIS

The latest James Bond vehicle — call him Bond, Bond 6.0 — finds the British spy leaner, meaner and a whole lot darker. Now played by an attractive bit of blond rough named Daniel Craig, Pierce Brosnan having been permanently kicked to the kerb, Her Majesty’s favorite bad boy arrives on screens with the usual complement of cool toys, smooth rides, bosomy women and high expectations. He shoots, he scores, in bed and out, taking down the bad and the beautiful as he strides purposefully into the 21st century.

It’s about time. The likable Mr. Brosnan was always more persuasive playing Bond as a metaphoric rather than an actual lady-killer, with the sort of polished affect and blow-dried good looks that these days tend to work better either on television or against the grain. Two of his best performances have been almost aggressively anti-Bond turns, first in John Boorman’s adaptation of the John le Carré novel “The Tailor of Panama,” in which he played a dissolute spy, and, more recently, in “The Matador,” a comedy in which he played a hit man with a sizable gut and alarmingly tight bikini underwear. Mr. Brosnan did not demolish the memory of his Bond years with that pot, but he came admirably close.

Every generation gets the Bond it deserves if not necessarily desires, and with his creased face and uneasy smile, Mr. Craig fits these grim times well. As if to underscore the idea that this new Bond marks a decisive break with the contemporary iterations, “Casino Royale” opens with a black-and-white sequence that finds the spy making his first government-sanctioned kills. The inky blood soon gives way to full-blown color, but not until Bond has killed one man with his hands after a violent struggle and fatally shot a second. “Made you feel it, did he?” someone asks Bond of his first victim. Bond doesn’t answer. From the way the director, Martin Campbell, stages the action though, it’s clear that he wants to make sure we do feel it.

“Casino Royale” introduced Bond to the world in 1953. A year later it was made into a television drama with the American actor Barry Nelson as Jimmy Bond; the following decade, it was a ham-fisted spoof with David Niven as the spy and a very funny Peter Sellers as a card shark. For reasons that are too boring to repeat, when Ian Fleming sold the film rights to Bond, “Casino Royale” was not part of the deal. As a consequence the producers who held most of the rights decided to take their cue from news reports about misfired missiles, placing their bets on “Dr. No” and its missile-mad villain. The first big-screen Bond, it hit in October 1962, the same month that Fleming’s fan John F. Kennedy took the Cuban missile crisis public.

The Vatican later condemned “Dr. No” as a dangerous mixture of violence, vulgarity, sadism and sex.

Ka-ching! The film was a success, as was its relatively unknown star, Sean Connery, who balanced those descriptive notes beautifully, particularly in the first film and its even better follow-up, “From Russia With Love.”

In time Mr. Connery’s conception of the character softened, as did the series itself, and both Roger Moore and Mr. Brosnan portrayed the spy as something of a gentleman playboy. That probably helps explain why some Bond fanatics have objected so violently to Mr. Craig, who fits Fleming’s description of the character as appearing “ironical, brutal and cold” better than any actor since Mr. Connery. Mr. Craig’s Bond looks as if he has renewed his license to kill.

Like a lot of action films, the Bond franchise has always used comedy to blunt the violence and bring in big audiences. And, much like the franchise’s increasingly bloated action sequences, which always seem to involve thousands of uniformed extras scurrying around sets the size of Rhode Island, the humor eventually leached the series of its excitement, its sense of risk. Mr. Brosnan certainly looked the part when he suited up for “GoldenEye” in 1995, but by then John Woo and Quentin Tarantino had so thoroughly rearranged the DNA of the modern action film as to knock 007 back to zero. By the time the last Bond landed in 2002, Matt Damon was rearranging the genre’s elementary particles anew in “The Bourne Identity.”

“Casino Royale” doesn’t play as dirty as the Bourne films, but the whole thing moves far lower to the ground than any of the newer Bond flicks. Here what pops off the screen aren’t the exploding orange fireballs that have long been a staple of the Bond films and have been taken to new pyrotechnic levels by Hollywood producers like Jerry Bruckheimer, but some sensational stunt work and a core seriousness. Successful franchises are always serious business, yet this is the first Bond film in a long while that feels as if it were made by people who realize they have to fight for audiences’ attention, not just bank on it. You see Mr. Craig sweating (and very nice sweat it is too); you sense the filmmakers doing the same.

The characteristically tangled shenanigans — as if it mattered — involve a villainous free agent named Le Chiffre (the excellent Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen), who wheels and deals using money temporarily borrowed from his equally venal clients. It’s the sort of risky global business that allows the story to jump from the Bahamas to Montenegro and other stops in between as Bond jumps from plot point to plot point, occasionally taking time out to talk into his cellphone or bed another man’s wife. Mr. Craig, whose previous credits include “Munich” and “The Mother,” walks the walk and talks the talk, and he keeps the film going even during the interminable high-stakes card game that nearly shuts it down.

If Mr. Campbell and his team haven’t reinvented the Bond film with this 21st edition, they have shaken (and stirred) it a little, chipping away some of the ritualized gentility that turned it into a waxworks. They have also surrounded Mr. Craig with estimable supporting players, including the French actress Eva Green, whose talent is actually larger than her breasts.

Like Mr. Mikkelsen, who makes weeping blood into a fine spectator sport, Ms. Green brings conviction to the film, as do Jeffrey Wright and Isaach de Bankolé. Judi Dench is back as M, of course, with her stiff lip and cunning. But even she can’t steal the show from Mr. Craig, though a human projectile by the name of Sébastien Foucan, who leads a merry and thrilling chase across Madagascar, almost does.

“Casino Royale” is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). The sex is demure, the violence less so.

CASINO ROYALE

Opens today nationwide.

Directed by Martin Campbell; written by Neal Purvis, Robert Wade and Paul Haggis, based on the novel by Ian Fleming; director of photography, Phil Méheux; edited by Stuart Baird; music by David Arnold; production designer, Peter Lamont; produced by Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli; released by Columbia Pictures. Running time: 144 minutes.

WITH: Daniel Craig (James Bond), Eva Green (Vesper Lynd), Mads Mikkelsen (Le Chiffre), Judi Dench (M), Jeffrey Wright (Felix Leiter), Giancarlo Giannini (Mathis), Caterina Murino (Solange), Simon Abkarian (Dimitrios), Ivana Milicevic (Valenka), Sébastien Foucan (Mollaka), Jesper Christensen (Mr. White), Tobias Menzies (Villiers), Tsai Chin (Madam Wu), Lazar Ristovski (Kaminovski), Urbano Barberini (Tomelli), Veruschka (Gräfin von Wallenstein), Tom So (Fukutu), Ade (Infante), Charlie Levi Leroy (Gallardo) and Isaach de Bankolé (Steven Obanno).

Renewing a License to Kill and a Huge Movie Franchise, NYT, 17.11.2006, http://movies2.nytimes.com/2006/11/17/movies/17roya.html

Emoting by Ilana Rogel, an actress, is translated into a computer image.

Cyberface: New Technology That Captures the Soul NYT 15.10.2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/15/movies/15waxm.html

In a demonstration reel created by Image Metrics to show off its filmmaking technology,
Rodney Charles, an actor, gives life to an avatar named Samburu Warrior.

Image Metrics

Cyberface: New Technology That Captures the Soul NYT 15.10.2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/15/movies/15waxm.html

Cyberface: New Technology That Captures the Soul

October 15, 2006
The New York Times
By SHARON WAXMAN
SANTA MONICA, Calif.

THERE’S nothing particularly remarkable about the near-empty offices of Image Metrics in downtown Santa Monica, loft-style cubicles with a dartboard at the end of the hallway. A few polite British executives tiptoe about, quietly demonstrating the company’s new technology.

What’s up on-screen in the conference room, however, immediately focuses the mind. In one corner of the monitor, an actress is projecting a series of emotions — ecstasy, confusion, relief, boredom, sadness — while in the center of the screen, a computer-drawn woman is mirroring those same emotions.

It’s not just that the virtual woman looks happy when the actress looks happy or relieved when the actress looks relieved. It’s that the virtual woman actually seems to have adopted the actress’s personality, resembling her in ways that go beyond pursed lips or knitted brow. The avatar seems to possess something more subtle, more ineffable, something that seems to go beneath the skin. And it’s more than a little bit creepy.

“I like to call it soul transference,” said Andy Wood, the chairman of Image Metrics, who is not shy about proclaiming his company’s potential. “The model has the actress’s soul. It shows through.”

You look and you wonder: Is it the eyes? Is it the wrinkles around the eyes? Or is it the tiny movements around the mouth? Something. Whatever it is, it could usher in radical change in the making of entertainment. A tool to reinvigorate the movies. Or the path to a Franken-movie monster.

The Image Metrics software lets a computer map an actor’s performance onto any character virtual or human, living or dead.

Its creators say it goes way beyond standard hand-drawn computer graphics, which require staggering amounts of time and money. It even goes beyond “motion capture,” the technique that animated Tom Hanks’s 2004 film “The Polar Express,” which is strong on body movement but not on eyes, the inner part of the lips and the tongue, some of the most important messengers of human emotion.

“One of our principal tenets is to capture all the movements of the face,” Mr. Wood said. “You can’t put markers on eyes, and you can’t replicate the human eye accurately through hand-drawn animation. That’s pretty important.”

Ultimately, though, Image Metrics could even go beyond the need for Tom Hanks — or any other actor — altogether.

“We can reanimate footage from the past,” said Mr. Wood, a stolid man with a salesman’s smile. He was hired to introduce Hollywood to the technology, which the computer scientists who founded the company sometimes have difficulty articulating.

“We could put Marilyn Monroe alongside Jack Nicholson, or Jack Black, or Jack White,” he continued, seated in the conference room where the emoting actress and her avatar shared the screen. “If we want John Wayne to act alongside Angelina Jolie, we can do that. We can directly mimic the performance of a human being on a model. We can create new scenes for old films, or old scenes for new films. We can have one human being drive another human character.”

To prove the point Mr. Wood brought up on-screen an animated character that he showed at the Directors Guild of America this past summer. The character, a simple figure comprising just a few lines drawn in the computer, made the “I coulda been a contender” speech from “On the Waterfront,” in Marlon Brando’s voice. (Because Brando didn’t gesture much, the stick figure’s movements were based on those of a hired actor.) Then he pulled up a video of the musician Peter Gabriel singing a scat beat alongside a half-dozen animated figures who, one by one, joined him in precise concert. Finally he brought up a scene from a Marilyn Monroe movie in which animators replaced the original Marilyn with a computer-drawn version of her. The image isn’t perfect — or rather, it’s a bit too perfect for credulity — but it clearly shows the path that lies ahead.

The breakneck pace of technology combined with the epic ambitions of directors has, up to now, taken movies to places undreamed of in the past: the resinking of the “Titanic”; war in space between armies of droids; a love story between a dinosaur-sized ape and a human-sized woman. (Whoops, we had that one before.)

But if Image Metrics can do what it claims, the door may open wider still, to vast, uncharted territories. To some who make the movies, the possibilities may seem disturbing; to others, exciting: Why not bring back Sean Connery, circa 1971, as James Bond? Or let George Clooney star in a movie with his aunt, Rosemary; say, a repurposed “White Christmas” of 1954? Maybe we can have the actual Truman Capote on-screen, performed by an unseen actor, in the next movie version of his life.

Projects are already circulating around Hollywood that seek to revive dead actors, including one that envisions Bruce Lee starring in a new Bruce Lee picture.

Asked what he might do with the new technology, Taylor Hackford, the director of “Ray” and a dozen other movies, was at first dismissive. “It’s phenomenal, but its uses are in the area of commercials,” he said. (Image Metrics made a commercial last winter that revived Fred and Ethel Mertz of “I Love Lucy” discussing the merits of a Medicare package.) But after a moment’s reflection, he shifted his view. “If you’re working on ‘The Misfits,’ and Clark Gable died before the end of the film, you could have used it in that instance,” he reflected.

Or what if Warren Beatty, or Robert Redford, wanted to play a younger version of himself? “If you had Warren or Redford in a great role, and there was a flashback to a young character” — he mused — yes, that would be a reason to use it. Perhaps in “The Notebook,” he went on, in which Ryan Gosling played the young version of James Garner’s character? Mr. Garner could have played both versions himself.

Still, one thought was holding Mr. Hackford back. “If you want Ethel Barrymore to give you an incredible, heartfelt and painful performance, that comes from the soul of the actor,” he said. “It’s not something you can get by animation.”

IMAGE Metrics began in the living room of Gareth Edwards, a shy, baby-faced, 34-year-old biophysicist from Manchester, England. He, Alan Brett and Kevin Walker, all postdoctoral students from the University of Manchester, were conducting research into image analysis, a technique first developed to help computers analyze spinal X-rays. “We were very much scientists looking for the big problem,” he said. “Big in terms of the problem, and big in terms of the benefit.”

They decided to start a company, of which Mr. Edwards is the chief technical officer. He doesn’t work out of his living room anymore; now he works in the Santa Monica offices. (His colleagues remain in England along with a half-dozen other computer and physics Ph.D.’s.) But some things remain the same. “Image analysis is a difficult scientific problem,” he said. “You’re trying to analyze complex objects: the human spine, or the mapping of the human face. How do you teach a computer to understand the context of an image when that image is complex?”

Many surveillance devices rely on facial recognition software, but it produces a lot of false positives. Mr. Edwards and his colleagues took a different approach, one that starts with the generic model of a human head and layers onto that a mathematical distillation of an individual’s expressions. He compared his approach to describing a new bicycle. The person who’s listening is likely to picture the new bicycle based on other bicycles she has already seen.

“It’s model-based computer vision,” Mr. Edwards said. “The idea is, if you know an object, you can picture it. The key for animation was that realization: that we needed to build a computer system with the prior concept. The mathematical structure describes the basic concept of the face and maps the subtle variations.”

The first step has been using Image Metrics to allow live actors to animate virtual characters. Thus Kiefer Sutherland himself has been able to drive the performance of the animated version of his television character, Jack Bauer, in the computer game “24,” based on the hit show. Warner Brothers is using Image Metrics, along with several other companies, to animate a new character in the forthcoming “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix,” a monstrous relation of Hagrid, animated by an actor.

Larry Kasanoff is the producer and director of “Foodfight!,” which will be the first full-length movie to use Image Metrics technology. Sitting in his Santa Monica production office, surrounded by plush toys of characters (who will be played by Charlie Sheen, Hilary Duff and Eva Longoria), he talked about the difference between image analysis and standard computer-generated imagery, or C.G.I.

In a C.G.I. film, he said, “every time someone would say something, banks of people would have to figure out how the lips move, how the eyes move — and it’s not even that good.”

“Now we don’t have to spend three years having people meticulously hand-animate Charlie Sheen’s lines,” he added. “He says, ‘Food fight!’ in real time, live action, and it’s applied, via Image Metrics technology, to the character.”

So whereas a film like “Cars” cost $120 million and took dozens of animators five years to make, Mr. Kasanoff says that “Foodfight!,” which has not yet begun production, will be finished by February.

And movies are just the beginning. “For creating characters that don’t exist, this is unparalleled at the moment,” said Alex Horton, the animation director for Rockstar Games, which has been using Image Metrics for two years in top-selling titles like “Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas” and “The Warriors.” Games, he explained, don’t require the level of detail that movies do, but they demand far more screen time than the average film.

“There’s no taking away the fact that a team of animators can sit and make some very convincing animation if they want to,” he said. “But I challenge anyone to do the volumes that I need in the time that I need, at this level of quality, and to capture the nuance of the voice actor.”

IT sometimes seems that every six months or so another technology comes along that promises to revolutionize Hollywood and supplant what came before. “Toy Story” gave C.G.I. characters an early sense of humanity. Great excitement accompanied Stuart Little and his remarkable fur. Another fanfare erupted over Gollum, the gnomelike hobbit played by Andy Serkis through computer magic in the “Lord of the Rings” movies. In recent years the focus has been on motion capture, for which actors are wired with tiny digital sensors. Lately yet another system has emerged, called Contour, that tracks actors’ facial and body movements by coating them with phosphorescent powder.

But Hollywood producers seem to agree that this is something truly different.

“It’s a giant leap from the motion capture technology used today,” said Sam Falconello, the chief operating officer of Cinergi Productions, which made the “Terminator” series and is considering using Image Metrics to make “Terminator 4.” “I really believe in this technology. It is scaleable. It makes our effects budgets go further.”

It’s also far easier on the actors. Instead of being painted with a chemical or covered in sensors, they need only do what they would ordinarily do: act.

Mr. Kasanoff said that for comedy especially convenience was a central issue. “Try to get an actor to be funny and relaxed with 900 dots on his face,” he observed. “Now, when we direct the actors, they don’t even know the camera is there. They just act.”

Debbie Denise, a senior vice president at Sony Imageworks who tracks new technology developed both in house and elsewhere for the movie studio, said that her company’s motion capture technique has advanced to where it can credibly track subtle facial expressions. It is being used in the current production of “Beowulf,” a computer-generated version of the ancient tale directed by Robert Zemeckis, who directed “Polar Express.”

But she agreed that the Image Metrics approach was “very promising.”

“It’s been a challenge for everyone in this field to get away from markers,” she said. “How can you just videotape somebody? The way they’re doing it is very interesting.”

As for reanimating former movie stars? “That sounds terrific,” said Chris deFaria, head of visual effects for Warner Brothers. “I’d love to see it.” But, he added, “There are real complexities involved with that.”

Undoubtedly so. But at least one former movie star thinks the ideas holds some promise. Arnold Schwarzenegger, now the governor of California, has conducted tests with Image Metrics to use his Conan the Barbarian character in political ads.

Cyberface: New Technology That Captures the Soul, NYT, 15.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/15/movies/15waxm.html

Wall St. Woos Film Producers, Skirting Studios

October 14, 2006
The New York Times
By LAURA M. HOLSON

LOS ANGELES, Oct. 13 — Since the birth of Hollywood, movie studio chiefs have been makers and breakers of careers, arbiters of taste and gatekeepers who decide which movies are made.

But as Hollywood power shifts more to Wall Street investors, financiers are starting to bypass studio bosses by dealing directly with successful producers.

Now, instead of deals being cut over lunch at Spago or the Grill, movies are increasingly being greenlighted in conference calls to New York.

The reason is a simple desire for more control. Wall Street financiers want a greater say over what movies they finance and who makes them; producers want more artistic independence and a larger share of the profits.

The studios themselves are nudging the trend along, too, since they are making fewer movies.

A result for moviegoers is that they could begin to see even more thrillers, comedies and horror movies at the multiplex — the types of movies Wall Street favors, because of their more predictable payoff.

Joel Silver, the producer of the “Lethal Weapon” and “The Matrix” movies, is the latest and most important Hollywood figure to cut a big deal with Wall Street.

He has just joined forces with a consortium of financiers who have agreed to provide $220 million to produce 15 films over the next six years. Mr. Silver will not only have creative control, he will own the movies outright.

“I’ve spent 20 years working for studios,” Mr. Silver said in a recent interview beside an L-shaped azure swimming pool at his Brentwood mansion, a home he referred to as the house ‘The Matrix’ built. “It was always their call.”

To his new partners, Mr. Silver seems like a good bet. In more than two decades as a producer on the Warner Brothers lot, he has produced 46 movies, which have generated $5.6 billion in global ticket sales.

Ivan Reitman, the director of “Animal House” and “Ghostbusters,” struck a $200 million deal with Merrill Lynch in August to produce 10 low-cost films. Tom Cruise and his producing partner, Paula Wagner, after splitting with Paramount Pictures over the summer, are in discussions with potential investors, as are several other producers.

“Hedge funds are picking out who they want to be in business with,” said Rob Moore, president for worldwide marketing, distribution and home entertainment at Paramount Pictures, who gets calls weekly from producers lining up money. “They don’t claim to know how to make movies. They are investing in a track record.”

But such investments are not risk-free, as others have learned. At least since the early 1980’s, studios have occasionally distributed and marketed movies financed by outsiders, some of them from overseas. In the late 1980’s, for example, Crédit Lyonnais famously backed a troubled MGM and Carolco Pictures, which went bankrupt.

Indeed, Hollywood is rife with stories of financiers who came to town with a pocketful of cash, only to leave empty-handed, except for a photograph of themselves with a smiling starlet.

But the new investors are hoping that with enough analysis, they can avoid the fate of some of their predecessors.

In deciding whether to invest with Mr. Silver, the investment firm CIT Group examined not only genre films he had produced, but similar films made by competitors, as well as a wide range of other movies. This style of movie financing has been driven by necessity. Studios have been forced to trim their slates because of higher costs, but they still need a steady stream of movies to distribute. In turn, producers need financing, because the studios are backing fewer films. And cash-rich financial institutions are looking for places to invest, hoping to earn double-digit returns while limiting their exposure to the fluctuations of the stock market.

“It’s a confluence of interests between the people with the cash, studios and producers,” Mr. Reitman said. “As Wall Street gets involved in movie financing, hedge funds don’t want to be ‘stupid money’ and want to align themselves with people who have a history of success. They are looking for a guide. They don’t want to be sold a script that’s been around for eight years.”

Studio executives, who earlier would have balked at such deals, are now open-minded. “I wouldn’t say it’s bad timing given where our strategy is going,” said Jeff Robinov, president of production at Warner Brothers, which, like many studios, is making fewer films. With Mr. Silver providing his own movies, Mr. Robinov said, he can focus on bigger films, like the “Harry Potter” and “Batman” movies.

And regardless of who finances the movies, the studios still make money from distributing them.

Two years ago, studio-slate financing was the toast of Hollywood, with hedge funds and other investors linking up with studios to co-produce films. But many of those deals have yet to pay off. In some cases, studios kept lucrative film franchises for themselves. In others, financiers picked the wrong movies to back.

“Here is a huge industry with a lot of capital,” said Wade Layton, managing director of CIT Communications, Media and Entertainment, referring to private investors. “First, they start off with studios as a way to get up to speed. Then you start to look for deals with producers.”

So far, Mr. Silver’s deal, which includes the investors J. P. Morgan and D. E. Shaw, is the most generous a producer has landed. Mr. Silver will produce a mix of horror, comedy and action movies that will cost $15 million to $40 million apiece to make. Mr. Silver’s Dark Castle Entertainment currently has enough money for eight movies and if those are successful, the revenue will be used to finance the remaining films.

The films are to be distributed by Warner Brothers Pictures, which gets a distribution fee. The first film to be released under the deal is “White Out,” an action thriller about a United States marshal who tracks a serial killer across Antarctica. It is to be released in 2008.

“I would never take a big movie to a financier,” said Mr. Silver, who also has a separate producing deal with Warner through 2009. “What do you say if you go over budget by $10 million? What do you say?”

“With these movies, 30 days and you are done,” he said, wiping his hands together.

Mr. Reitman’s Cold Spring Pictures — a venture among Mr. Reitman; his producing partner, Tom Pollock; Merrill Lynch; and two other investors — retains half the copyrights to its movies. Cold Spring must find a studio to distribute the films and put up 50 percent of the budgets. The financing is $50 million in equity and $150 million in debt. “We don’t want them telling us what to make,” Mr. Pollock said. “But we know if we don’t perform, they won’t be happy.”

Mr. Reitman’s group, like Mr. Silver, will share in 100 percent of DVD sales, which are often highly profitable, compared with an industry norm of 20 percent.

In return for giving up potential profits, financiers want to curb Hollywood’s notoriously wild spending. “We are not making investments for them to fund development,” said Michael Blum, a managing director at Merrill Lynch.

But Wall Street financiers are loath to meddle with the movie-making itself. And producers prefer it that way. “When bankers start reading scripts, you know you are in trouble,” Mr. Layton said.

Mr. Silver agreed: “I don’t mind if they come to premieres. If they want to come to the set, that’s fine — but I’m not making movies in L.A.” (Mr. Silver’s movies are filmed around the world.)

Two weeks ago, Mr. Silver invited his new backers to his estate, Casa de Plata, where they celebrated over sushi, roast beef sandwiches and cocktails. The same week, Mr. Reitman and Mr. Pollock took their partners to Cut, Wolfgang Puck’s new steakhouse, where, Mr. Reitman noted, Merrill Lynch, paid the bill.

“I don’t think any of them are in it for the glamour,” Mr. Pollock said. “They kept talking about their next big deal, which was recreational vehicles.”

But Mr. Reitman said his investors wanted the lowdown on John Belushi, Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd in their younger days.

Did he share any gossip?

“A little,” Mr. Reitman said, smiling.

Wall St. Woos Film Producers, Skirting Studios, NYT, 14.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/14/business/media/14studio.html?hp&ex=1160884800&en=575062aaf330420c&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Camera System Creates Sophisticated 3-D Effects

July 31, 2006
The New York Times
By JOHN MARKOFF

PALO ALTO, Calif. — In a darkened garage here, Steve Perlman is giving digital actors a whole new face.

A former Apple Computer engineer who previously co-founded WebTV Networks and the set-top box firm Moxi, Mr. Perlman is now putting the finishing touches on Contour, a futuristic camera system that will add photorealistic three-dimensional effects to digital entertainment. The new system will be introduced today at the Siggraph computer graphics conference in Boston, and effects created with it could start appearing as early as next year.

The system could change the nature of cinematography in several ways, according to leading Hollywood producers and technologists who are planning to use the system. For example, it will make it possible to create compellingly realistic synthetic actors by capturing the facial movements of real actors in much greater detail than is currently possible.

David Fincher, who directed the films “Fight Club” and “Panic Room,” is planning to use Contour next year when he begins filming “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” a movie based on a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald in which Brad Pitt will play a character who ages in reverse.

“Instead of grabbing points on a face, you will be able to capture the entire skin,” Mr. Fincher said. “You’re going to get all of the enormous detail and the quirks of human expression that you can’t plan for.”

The technology will let filmmakers transform the appearance of actors in the computer, raising the possibility of a new form of digital video in which the viewer can control the point of view — what is being described in Hollywood as “navigable entertainment.”

The Contour system requires actors to cover their faces and clothes with makeup containing phosphorescent powder that is not visible under normal lighting. In a light-sealed room, the actors face two arrays of inexpensive video cameras that are synchronized to simultaneously record their appearance and shape. Scenes are lit by rapidly flashing fluorescent lights, and the cameras capture light from the glowing powder during intervals of darkness that are too short for humans to perceive.

The captured images are transmitted to an array of computers that reassemble the three-dimensional shapes of the glowing areas. These can then be manipulated and edited into larger digital scenes using sophisticated software tools like Autodesk’s Maya or Softimage’s Face Robot.

“Steve is really on to something here,” said Ed Ulbrich, vice president of Digital Domain, a Hollywood special-effects company in Venice, Calif. “The holy grail of digital effects is to be able to create a photorealistic human being.”

Until now, realistic digital actors have required significant amounts of computing power, at great expense.

“It’s been used in stunts and big special-effects scenes,” Mr. Ulbrich said. “Now you can use it for two actors sitting at a table and talking. You have the ability to tell stories and have close-up scenes that make you laugh and cry.”

Mr. Perlman’s system is a leap forward for a technology known as motion capture, now widely used in video games and in movies like “The Polar Express,” which starred Tom Hanks in various digital guises.

Motion capture cuts the costs of computer animation while creating more natural movement. Today’s motion-capture systems work by tracking the locations of hundreds of reflective balls attached to a human actor. This permits the actor’s movements to be sampled by a camera many times per second. But the digital record is limited to movement, and does not include the actual appearance of the actor.

The difference offered by Mr. Perlman’s technology is in the detail. Standard motion-capture systems are generally limited in resolution to several hundred points on a human face, while the Contour system can recreate facial images at a resolution of 200,000 pixels. The digital video images produced by the system are startlingly realistic.

Mr. Perlman, who helped develop Apple’s QuickTime video technology, said the computer-generated animation techniques pioneered by Pixar Studios were reaching a visual plateau and, as a result, losing some of their audience appeal.

But an important hurdle to commercial success for the Contour system is whether it will be the first low-cost technology to cross what film and robot specialists refer to as the “uncanny valley.”

That phrase was coined in the 1970’s by Masahiro Mori, the Japanese robotics specialist, as he sought to describe the emotional response of humans to robots and other nonhuman entities. He theorized that as a robot became more lifelike, the emotional response of humans became increasingly positive and empathetic — until a certain point at which the robot took on a zombie-like quality, and the human response turned to repulsion. Then, as the robot becomes indistinguishable from a human, the response turns positive again. Critics were quick to point out the eerie look of the characters in “Polar Express.”

“We are programmed from birth to recognize human faces,” Mr. Perlman said.

There are some limits to the new technology. For example, the Contour system can capture eyebrows, mustaches and short beards, but it is not able to capture freely moving strands. It is also not able to capture areas where makeup cannot be applied, like the eyes or the inside of the mouth. The Contour developers are now experimenting with plastic teeth molds with embedded phosphor powder.

If the Contour system can be commercialized, it will allow digital film directors to easily and inexpensively control camera angles and generate elaborate visual fly-throughs in movies. It will also lower the cost of creating fantasy characters like Gollum in the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy.

In addition to films, the new system will be valuable in creating more realistic video games, Mr. Perlman said. A major video-game development company has committed to use the system in future games, he said, adding that he could not give its name at this time.

The Contour system has been developed by a small team of software and hardware engineers that Mr. Perlman has assembled in the garage of his home in Palo Alto, Calif., over the last three years. He rewired the garage to handle the power requirements of the lighting system and a small graphics supercomputer that was built from scratch. Contour will be distributed by Mova, one of a group of start-up firms that Mr. Perlman has assembled since he left WebTV in 1999, after it was purchased by Microsoft.

Contour is not the only attempt to develop more advanced digital cinematography techniques, said Richard Doherty, a digital media consultant who is president of Envisioneering Inc., in Seaford, N.Y.

“There are some upstarts in Los Angeles, but none have achieved the demonstrated scale and performance that Steve has shown,” Mr. Doherty said. “This is the kind of technology that is celebrated, and it is on the scale of the invention of the Steadicam. He’s going to give that kind of freedom to actors and directors.”

Camera System Creates Sophisticated 3-D Effects, NYT, 31.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/31/technology/31motion.html?hp&ex=1154404800&en=628a7b88218a87f5&ei=5094&partner=homepage

'The Searchers': How the Western Was Begun

June 11, 2006
The New York Times
By A. O. SCOTT

IN the last shot of "The Searchers," the camera, from deep inside the cozy recesses of a frontier homestead, peers out though an open doorway into the bright sunshine. The contrast between the dim interior and the daylight outside creates a second frame within the wide expanse of the screen. Inside that smaller space, the desert glare highlights the shape and darkens the features of the man who lingers just beyond the threshold. Everyone else has come inside: the other surviving characters, who have endured grief, violence, the loss of kin and the agony of waiting, and also, implicitly, the audience, which has anxiously anticipated this homecoming. But the hero, whose ruthlessness and obstinacy have made it possible, is excluded, and our last glimpse of him emphasizes his solitude, his separateness, his alienation — from his friends and family, and also from us.

Even if you are watching "The Searchers" for the first time — perhaps on the beautiful new DVD that Warner Home Video has just released to mark the film's 50th anniversary — this final shot may look familiar. For one thing, it deliberately replicates the first image you see after the opening titles — a view of a nearly identical vista from a very similar perspective. Indeed, the frame-within-the-frame created by shooting through relative darkness into a sliver of intense natural light is a notable motif in this movie, and elsewhere in the work of its director, John Ford. Especially in his westerns, Ford loved to create bustling, busy interiors full of life and feeling, and he was equally fond of positioning human figures, alone or in small, vulnerable groups, against vast, obliterating landscapes. Shooting from the indoors out is his way of yoking together these two realms of experience — the domestic and the wild, the social and the natural — and also of acknowledging the almost metaphysical gap between them, the threshold that cannot be crossed.

But that image of John Wayne's shadow in the doorway — he plays the solitary hero, Ethan Edwards — does not just pick up on other such moments in "The Searchers." Perhaps because the shot is thematically rich as well as visually arresting — because it so perfectly unites showing and telling — it has become a touchstone, promiscuously quoted, consciously or not, by filmmakers whose debt to Ford might not be otherwise apparent. Ernest Hemingway once said that all of American literature could be traced back to one book, Mark Twain's "Huckleberry Finn," and something similar might be said of American cinema and "The Searchers." It has become one of those movies that you see, in part, through the movies that came after it and that show traces of its influence. "Apocalypse Now," "Punch-Drunk Love," "Kill Bill," "Brokeback Mountain": those were the titles that flickered in my consciousness in the final seconds of a recent screening in Cannes of Ford's masterwork, all because, at crucial moments, they seem to pay homage to that single, signature shot.

At the end of "Brokeback Mountain," for instance, we are inside Ennis Del Mar's trailer, looking out the window onto the Wyoming rangeland, from a domestic space into the wilderness, as in "The Searchers." But in this case, the interior, rather than a warm, buzzing home, is barren, the scene of Ennis's desolation. The outside, insofar as it recalls the mountain where he and Jack Twist spent their youthful summer of love together, is an unattainable place of freedom and companionship, rather than a zone of danger and loneliness as it was in the earlier film. Ennis is severed from those he loves, and from his own nature, by the strictures of civilization, while Ethan's violent nature renders him an exile from civilized life, condemned to wander on the margins of law, stability and order.

Of course, "Brokeback Mountain" is a western by virtue of its setting rather than its themes, which recall the forbidden-love mid-1950's melodramas of Douglas Sirk more than anything Ford was doing at the time. But just about any movie that ventures into the territory of the western — and a great many that do not — has a way of bumping up against not only Ford's images but also his ideas.

He did not invent the genre, of course, and hardly restricted himself to it in the course of a career that began in the silent era and lasted more than 50 years. There will always be those who find the frontier visions of Budd Boetticher, Anthony Mann, Raoul Walsh and Howard Hawks more complex, more authentic or more varied than Ford's, as well as those who seek out western heroes less obvious than John Wayne. But like it or not, Wayne and Ford, whose long association is sampled in a new eight-movie boxed set and examined in a recent PBS documentary, "John Ford/John Wayne: The Filmmaker and the Legend," directed by Sam Pollard, have long since come to represent the classic, canonical idea of the American West on film.

Which is to say that their movies, however deeply revered and frequently imitated, have also been attacked, mocked, dismissed and misunderstood. If, from the late 1930's to the early 1960's, they defined the classic western — a tableau involving marauding Indians, fearless gunslingers, ruthless outlaws and the occasional high-spirited gal in a calico dress — they also begat the countertendency that came to be known as the revisionist western, with its nihilism, its brutality and its harsh demystification of the threadbare legends of the old West. Thus, after Sam Peckinpah and Sergio Leone, after "McCabe and Mrs. Miller" and "Unforgiven," after "Dead Man" and "Deadwood," the brightly colored black-and-white world of "The Searchers" might look quaint, simplistic and not a little retrograde.

It certainly looked that way at Bennington College in 1982, when the novelist Jonathan Lethem saw the film for the first time. He recalls the laughter of his fellow undergraduates in an essay called "Defending 'The Searchers,' " which also recalls his own earnest intellectual obsession with the film. His first attempt to appreciate it ends in defeat — " 'The Searchers' was only a camp opportunity after all. I was a fool" — but he keeps returning to contend with the sneers and shrugs of academic and bohemian friends and acquaintances, who can't see what he's so excited about. "Come on, Jonathan," one of them says, "it's a Hollywood western."

So it is, which means that it's open to the usual accusations of racism, sentimentality and wishful thinking. David Thomson, in his "Biographical Dictionary of Film," tips his hat to "The Searchers," but only in the midst of a thorough ideological demolition of its director, whose "male chauvinism believes in uniforms, drunken candor, fresh-faced little women (though never sexuality), a gallery of supporting players bristling with tedious eccentricity and the elevation of these random prejudices into a near-political attitude." The idea that Ford is an apologist for violence and a falsifier of history, as Mr. Thomson insists, dovetails with a longstanding liberal suspicion (articulated most fully by Garry Wills in his book "John Wayne's America") of Wayne, one of Hollywood's most outspoken conservatives for most of his career. And of course, the presumed attitudes that make Wayne and Ford anathema at one end of the spectrum turn them into heroes at the other.

But as the PBS documentary makes clear, the two men did not always march in political lockstep. And in any case, the closer you look at the movies themselves, the less comfortably they fit within any neat political scheme. Even the portrayal of Indian and Mexican characters, once you get past the accents and the face paint, cannot quite be reduced to caricature.

And Wayne himself, from his star-making entrance as the Ringo Kid in "Stagecoach" (1939) to his valedictory performance in "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" (1962), his last western with Ford, is hardly the simple personification of manly virtue his critics disdain and his admirers long for. Even when he drifts toward playing a John Wayne type rather than a fully formed character, there is enough unacknowledged sorrow in his broad features, and enough uncontrolled anger in that slow, hesitant phrasing, to make him seem dangerous, unpredictable: someone to watch. He is never quite who you think he will be.

And this is never truer than in "The Searchers," where much about Ethan's personality and personal history remains in the shadows. A former soldier in the Confederate Army, he arrives in Texas (though the film was shot in Monument Valley in Utah) three years after the end of the Civil War, with no way of accounting for the time lag apart from the angry insistence that he didn't spend it in California. Wherever he was, he acquired both a virulent hatred of Indians and an intimate understanding of their ways. When his two young nieces are kidnapped by Comanches — their parents and brothers are scalped and the farmstead burned — he sets out on a search that will last for years and that will blur the distinction between rescue and vengeance. It becomes clear toward the end that he wants to find the surviving niece (now played by Natalie Wood) so that he can kill her.

This impulse points to a terrifying, pathological conception of honor, sexual and racial, and for much of "The Searchers" Ethan's heroism is inseparable from his mania. To the horror and bafflement of his companions (one of whom is both a preacher and a Texas Ranger, and thus a perfect embodiment of civilized order), Ethan shoots out the eyes of a dead Comanche, and exults that this posthumous blinding will prevent this enemy from finding his way to paradise. But when you think about it, Ethan's ability to commit such an atrocity rests on a form of respect, since unlike the others he not only knows something about Comanche beliefs but is also willing to accept their reality. And the film, for its part (the script is by Frank S. Nugent, who was once a film critic for The New York Times before he took up screenwriting), acknowledges the reality of Ethan's prejudices and blind spots, which is not the same as sharing or condoning them.

The Indian wars of the post-Civil War era form a tragic backdrop in most of Ford's post-World War II westerns, much as the earlier conflicts between settlers and natives did in the novels of James Fenimore Cooper. That the Indians are defending their land, and enacting their own vengeance for earlier attacks, is widely acknowledged, even insisted upon. The real subject, though, is not how the West was conquered, but how — according to what codes, values and customs — it will be governed. The real battles are internal, and they turn on the character of the society being forged, in violence, by the settlers. Where, in this new society, will the frontier be drawn between vengeance and justice? Between loyalty to one's kind and the more abstract obligations of human decency? Between the rule of law and the law of the jungle? Between virtue and power? Between — to paraphrase one of Ford's best-known and most controversial formulations — truth and legend?

Ford's way of posing these questions seems more urgent — and more subtle — now than it may have at the time, precisely because his films are so overtly concerned with the kind of moral argument that is, or should be, at the center of American political discourse at a time of war and terrorism. He is concerned not as much with the conflict between good and evil as with contradictory notions of right, with the contradictory tensions that bedevil people who are, in the larger scheme, on the same side. When should we fight? How should we conduct ourselves when we must? In "Fort Apache," for example, the elaborate codes of military duty, without which the intricate and closely observed society of the isolated fort would fall apart, are exactly what lead it toward catastrophe. Wayne, as a savvy and moderate-tempered officer, has no choice but to obey his headstrong and vainglorious commander, played by Henry Fonda, who provokes an unnecessary and disastrous confrontation with the Apaches. In the end, Wayne, smiling mysteriously, tells a group of eager journalists that Fonda's character was a brave and brilliant military tactician. It's a lie, but apparently the public does not require — or can't handle — the truth.

In telling it, Wayne is writing himself out of history, which is also his fate in "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" (not, unfortunately, one of the discs in the Warner box). That film — which contains the famous line "When legend becomes fact, print the legend!" —throws Wayne's man of action and James Stewart's man of principle into a wary, rivalrous alliance. Their common enemy is an almost cartoonish thug played by Lee Marvin, but the real conflict is between Stewart's lawyer and Wayne's mysterious gunman, one of whom will be remembered as the man who shot Liberty Valance.

What we learn, in the course of the film's long flashbacks, is that the triumph of civilization over barbarism is founded on a necessary lie, and that underneath its polished procedures and high-minded institutions is a buried legacy of bloodshed. The idea that virtue can exist without violence is as untenable, as unrealistic, as the belief — central to the revisionist tradition, and advanced with particular fervor in HBO's "Deadwood" — that human society is defined by gradations of brutality, raw power, cynicism and greed.

If only things were that simple. But everywhere you look in Ford's world — certainly in "Fort Apache," in "The Searchers," in "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" — you see truth shading into lie, righteousness into brutality, high honor into blind obedience. You also see, in the boisterous emoting of the secondary characters, the society that these confused ideals and complicated heroes exist to preserve: a place where people can dance (frequently), drink (constantly), flirt (occasionally) and act silly.

And everywhere else — after Ford, beyond his movies — you find the same thing. The monomaniacal quest for vengeance, undertaken by a hero at odds with the society he is expected to protect: it's sometimes hard to think of a movie from the past 30 years, from "Taxi Driver" to "Batman Begins," that doesn't take up this theme. And the deeper question of where vengeance should stop, and how it can be distinguished from justice, surfaces in "Unforgiven" and "In the Bedroom," in "Mystic River" and "Munich."

In "Munich" the Mossad assassins spend most of the film in a limbo that Ethan Edwards would recognize, even though it takes place amid the man-made monuments of Europe rather than the wind-hewn rock formations of Monument Valley. The Israeli agents are far from home, exiled from the democratic, law-governed society in whose name they commit their acts of vengeance and pre-emption, and frighteningly close both to their enemies and to a state of pure, violent retaliatory anarchy. With more anguish, perhaps, than characters in a John Ford movie, they often find themselves arguing with one another, trying to overcome, or at least to rationalize, the contradictions of what they are doing. They appeal to various texts and traditions, but they might do better to pay attention to the television that is on in the background at one point in the movie: another frame within the frame, tuned, hardly by accident, to "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance."

'The Searchers': How the Western Was Begun, NYT, 11.6.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/11/movies/11scot.html

September 20, 1972

Call to gaol the makers of blue films

From the Guardian archive

Wednesday September 20, 1972
Guardian

New laws to make it easier to imprison pornographers are demanded in a 520-page report of Lord Longford's unofficial commission on pornography.
It demands sentences of up to three years for blue film makers and organisers of live sex shows.

The report wants the laws to cover radio and television, theatres and cinemas, and sex education in schools. The young are particularly vulnerable and therefore need special protection, the report says.

Instances of links between pornography and criminal corruption are cited, one of them involving a boy of 17.

"The painful irony of the present situation is that the young - those who claim to be the most disturbed by the public violence they read about in the press - are precisely those who are being conditioned to accept, and to participate in private violence, the sadistic and brutal hardcore of pornography."

The commission, set up 16 months ago by Lord Longford, aged 66, calls for a twofold law under which it would be illegal to display in a street or other public place any written, pictorial, or other material which was held to be indecent; or to produce or sell any article which outraged contemporary standards of decency or humanity.

Penalties for inducing people to act in obscene shows or take part in pornographic films should be a fine or imprisonment for not more than three years or both. Distributing or exhibiting publicly "any written, pictorial, or other material which is indecent" should lead to a fine or imprisonment for no longer than six months or both.

Prosecution would be easier if the report's definitions of obscenity and pornography became law. Pornography is defined as that which "exploits and dehumanises sex, so that human beings are created as things and women in particular as sex objects".

The test of obscenity should be: "An article or a performance of a play is obscene if its effect, taken as a whole, is to outrage contemporary standards of decency or humanity accepted by the public at large."

In a breakdown of the pornography trade, the report says that the mail order business will continue to increase unless it is stopped. Two Leeds University graduates had built up within a year a porn-by-mail clientele of 25,000 "bookclub members".

Many of the pornographers' customers are people with serious sexual problems, "but there is evidence that 'normal' people can become addicted to pornography in certain circumstances, and there can be little doubt that ordinary curiosity could lead teenagers to experiment with it".

From the Guardian archive > September 20, 1972 > Call to gaol the makers of blue films, G, Republished 20.9.2006, http://www.guardian.co.uk/fromthearchive/story/0,,1876623,00.html

November 3, 1960

The naked wonder in her face

From the Guardian archive

Thursday November 3, 1960
Guardian

Roslyn in "The Misfits" is a woman who has had the harsh upbringing and hard struggle of Marilyn Monroe, and yet like her has retained a zest for life.

That morning on a Nevada dry lake I had watched her repeat an emotional outburst ten times. Again and again, at [the director] John Huston's jovial bidding, "Okay, try it again, honey", she had had to begin screaming "Murderers" at Clark Gable, Montgomery Clift, and Eli Wallach, jumping in and out of high emotion.

When I met her a few hours later, I expected the drain of the repeated performances would have depressed her, but that was not the case. She entered the dimly lit hotel bar and began to relax only when we found a common liking for dimly lit surroundings.

I remarked on Roslyn's achievement at not being hard-boiled in spite of some harsh experiences. "Oh," murmured Miss Monroe, "but don't you find all people who have suffered are like that? They remain nice and sensitive. They do."

Her first teacher had been Michael Chekhov, the great Russian actor, whose last years were spent in the United States. "Then he died," said Miss Monroe with the lost air of a little girl.

The heroine of "Please don't kill anything" [a short story by Arthur Miller, Monroe's husband at the time] is so described. "Now she looked up at him like a little girl, with that naked wonder in her face even as she was smiling in the way of a grown woman."

She told with sudden shyness how she had once in class played Cordelia to Mr Chekhov's Lear: "He gave the greatest performance I have ever seen. It was wonderful."

Did she want to play Shakespeare on the stage ? Well, she would like to one day. "In a long, long time I would like to play Lady Macbeth." She paused as if fearing one might find her wish amusing. Reassured, she added "And it would be marvellous if Macbeth could be Marlon Brando."

She raced suddenly on her interest overcoming her insecurity: "I have done a few scenes at the Actors' Studio. I did a French play, adapted it a little to make it modern. I'll give you a copy if you like."

Not only Shakespearean actress but adapter as well: Miss Monroe obviously intends to leave that dumb blonde as far behind as she can. The impression she left, at that moment, was a moving one: a beautiful girl lauded for her good looks, who belatedly discovered that she had talent as well and was trying to plumb it to discover how much.

WJ Weatherby

From the Guardian archive > November 3, 1960 > The naked wonder in her face, G, Republished 3.11.2006, http://www.guardian.co.uk/fromthearchive/story/0,,1938357,00.html

On This Day - August 17, 1960

From The Times Archive

Buster Keaton is now regarded as the greatest comic of the silent movie era.
His modern reputation was much helped by the discovery and restoration of his films in Europe in the late 1950s

MR BUSTER KEATON, the legendary “frozen-faced” comedian of silent pictures, sped through London earlier this month on his way back to America after a European tour. Now aged 64, he has the appearance of a tough, leathery veteran. He is a short, stocky man, nut-brown in complexion, and when he speaks it is with punchy, gravel-throated directness.

After explaining why so many of his films had found their way into European collections, Mr Keaton embarked on more personal recollections.

“I began in vaudeville, on the stage: I was playing in the Palace Theatre in Shaftesbury Avenue in 1909 — my first trip to this country. And it was on the stage I learnt not to smile. I found that if I laughed at my own gags nobody else did: so I stopped laughing. I went into movies during the war. I never went into the Broadway show, and I’ve never been back on stage since.”

As his own director, changing his leading lady from film to film, Mr Keaton set his image on these comedies as “the great stone face” and as the master of such pieces of mechanical wizardry as the locomotive race in The General.

“Action. That’s what went out when the talkies came in. When talking pictures arrived the edict went around Hollywood — they all have to talk. The script writers got an upper hand and action got left out.”

From The Times Archive > On This Day - August 17, 1960, Times, 17.8.2005.

Walt Disney's Dumbo

18 December 1941

The Guardian > From the archive

"Dumbo," coming to the New Gallery on Sunday, is Mr. Disney at his most irresistible. It is certainly the most satisfying Disney since before or after "Pinocchio," and some will even prefer it to that masterpiece of puppetry. "Dumbo" lasts sixty-five minutes, and for once in a way it seems neither a minute too long nor a minute too short. It is enchanting, and as gay as a rondo of Mozart.

Dumbo is a blue-eyed baby elephant with abnormally big ears. May one dare to suggest to Mr. Disney that his eyes are one shade too light in colour? Elephants' eyes, baby or adult, are the colour of the periwinkle or wild clematis. Dumbo's eyes have, in Tennyson's phrase, "the little speedwell's darling blue". However, the major point about this lyrically charming person is his ears and not his eyes. They make him the butt and the joke of the circus.

But Timothy Mouse is a valiant though tiny sympathiser. Together they drink a bucketful of champagne, have an elephantine nightmare (a fantasia far more exciting than "Fantasia" itself), and wake up at the top of a tree. Six amusing black clowns with Negro voices laugh at their plight.

But Timothy has a notion. Dumbo, in his accidental cups, can have arrived there in only one way. He must have flown. He must be able to fly. He must be the world's new wonder – a flying elephant. His fortune is made as quickly as his fame.

Dumbo is a joy, but Timothy Mouse is still more. He is a complete and rounded character. We are concerned about him, whereas we were only amused by his progenitor Mickey. It is the difference between a personage and a figment. Timothy must have a whole short Disney to himself. So must Casey Junior, that delightful live railway-train which whoops with joy and relief when it reaches the top of a gradient.

Meanwhile, we have "Dumbo" for Christmas, with all these pleasures in it. It is rich in imaginative fun, it is often witty, and even its inevitable piece of slop – a zoological lullaby – does not last long.

A.D.

Fresh troops sent to meet Japanese. Fresh troops with mechanised equipment have been sent to Kedah to face the Japanese thrust into North-west Malaya. The thrust is now a serious threat to Penang. It has reached the River Muda, about sixteen miles north of Butterworth , an air base and railhead. From Butterworth there is a railway across the narrow strip of water to Penang. If they seize Penang the Japanese will gain a base for operations in the Indian Ocean.

Walt Disney's Dumbo, G, 18 December 1941, Republished 18.12.2008, p. 40, http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2008/dec/18/1

Censors take drastic action on 'sex' films

February 17 1932

The Guardian > From the archive

February 17 1932
The Guardian

A serious warning to the film industry regarding "sex" films, which are becoming more and more daring, is contained in the report for 1931 of the British Board of Film Censors, signed by Mr. Edward Shortt, K.C., president, which was issued yesterday.

"There has unquestionably been a tendency of late," the report declares, "for films to become more and more daring, the result probably of the large number of stage plays which are presented on the screen, and of the licence which is to-day allowed in current fiction.

"Subjects coming under the category of what has been termed 'sex' films, others containing various phases of immorality and incidents which tend to bring the institution of marriage into contempt, show a marked increase in number. Even when the story is not in itself immoral, there appears to be a desire to stress the unpleasant aspect which is best described as 'sex appeal'.

"The Board has always taken exception to stories in which the main theme is either lust or the development of erotic passions, but the president has come to the conclusion that more drastic action will have to be taken.

"There are producers who delight to show the 'female form divine' in a state of attractive undress. There has been also a move in a similar direction so far as men are concerned. The objectionable aspect is the tendency on every conceivable occasion to drag in scenes of undressing, bathroom scenes, and feminine underclothing which are quite unnecessary from the point of view of telling the story.

"They are solely introduced for the purpose of giving the film what is termed in the trade 'a spicy flavour.' The cumulative effect of a repetition of such scenes as can be described as 'suggestive' is very harmful."

Thirty-four films have been rejected, the reasons being —

The materialised figure of the sav iour. Blasphemy and comic treatment of religious subjects. Travesty of religious rites. The institution of marriage treated with contempt. Death treated with vulgar flippancy. Gross and brutal travesty of prison life. Hospital scenes treated with vulgar levity. Physiological enormities. Suggestive themes acted throughout by children.

Unrelieved sordid themes. Prolonged and gross brutality and bloodshed. Scenes in and connected with houses of ill-repute. Lives of thoroughly immoral men and women. Collusive divorce. Stories in which the criminal element is predominant. Equivocal and objectionable bedroom scenes. Habitual youthful depravity. Habitual immorality. Offensive political propaganda.

Gross and objectionable dialogue.

From the Guardian archive > February 17 1932 > Censors take drastic action on 'sex' films, Republished 17.2.2007, p. 30, http://digital.guardian.co.uk/guardian/2007/02/17/pages/ber30.shtml

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