Posts Tagged Hollywood
From Russia to Hollywood – 2/10
on August 31, 2010 by admin in Expats, Comments (0)
From Russia to Hollywood: The 100-Year Odyssey of Chekhov and Shdanoff (1999) Michael Chekhov and George Shdanoff were Russian expatriates who came to Hollywood and became two of the […]
Golden Dreams: California in an Age of Abundance, 1950-1963
on May 14, 2010 by admin in California, Comments (5)
ISBN13: 9780195153774 Condition: NEW Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark. Product DescriptionA narrative tour de force that combines wide-ranging scholarship with captivating prose, Kevin Starr’s acclaimed multi-volume […]
Week Around the Ists
on May 3, 2010 by admin in Shanghai, Comments (0)
To raise awareness, the Hollywood Sign was temporarily covered up February | Photo by therealquarrygirl via the LAist Featured Photos pool on Flickr LAist was delighted to report that […]
China’s movie-makers prepare 3D entrance
on April 13, 2010 by admin in Shanghai, Comments (0)
Alice in Wonderland. Photo by CFP Following the spectacular box office revenues of Hollywood’s “Avatar” (1.3 billion RMB) and “Alice in Wonderland” (168.6 million RMB in 12 days), it […]
Fodor’s California 2010
on April 4, 2010 by admin in California, Comments (2)
ISBN13: 9781400008599 Condition: NEW Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark. Product DescriptionCalifornia is one of America’s most popular vacation destinations, and for good reason — the state […]
Movie news: Avatar extends screening date (again), China’s Oscar blues and ragging on Zhang Ziyi
on March 21, 2010 by admin in Shanghai, Comments (0)
Circle of Sound Good news for those of you who have yet to catch Avatar (and seriously, what is taking you so long?). The popular flick’s final day of […]
Exiles in Hollywood
on March 15, 2010 by admin in Expats, Comments (5)
246 Pages Published by Limelight Editions Softcover Product DescriptionFleeing Nazi persecution, half of Europe’s creative talents, including screen legend Greta Garbo and composer Igor Stravinsky, were, in Arnold Schoenberg’s […]
Marlene Dietrich stars in Berlin
on February 16, 2010 by admin in German Way, Comments (0)
A segment of the Hollywood Walk of Fame on Vine Street. Photo: Hyde Flippo Things can move slowly in Germany and Berlin. Especially things having to do with “the […]
Sundance: Car Accidents, Cigarettes, Beards, and Other Indie-Film Tropes
on January 26, 2010 by Vanity Fair | VF.com in Arts/Entertainment, Comments (0)
Park City’s Egyptian Theater, on Main Street. Photograph by Pete Smithsuth. Independent films are meant to offer an alternative to Hollywood’s formulaic studio movies. But as I’ve learned in the past four days at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival, indies are often just as formulaic—it’s just a different formula. Jean-Luc Godard once said all one needs to make a movie was a girl and a gun. But for independent film, all you really need is a beard and a car crash. Or a dead kid. Here is a list of indie-film tropes and the Sundance movies that employ them. (Click on a title to see a description and trailer of the film.) With 113 feature films at the festival, we haven’t seen everything, so let us know if there are any other movies that follow the indie formula. Car accidents Hesher
Welcome to the Rileys
Nowhere Boy
Enter the Void
Blue Valentine
Animal Kingdom
Boy
Q&A with Jackie Collins
on January 19, 2010 by Vanity Fair | VF.com in Arts/Entertainment, Comments (0)
Jackie Collins on Hollywood wives, vampires, and her past life as a leopard.
Oscars: Has Precious Peaked?
on December 24, 2009 by Vanity Fair | VF.com in Arts/Entertainment, Comments (0)
The Avatar marketing campaign promised that the film would revolutionize our collective conception of cinema, and though the jury is still out as to whether or not it made good on that claim, the film’s strong reception has definitely changed this year’s Oscar race. Of the four films that were considered question marks until they were screened for critics earlier this month (the others being The Lovely Bones, Nine, and Invictus), Avatar is the only one that seems to still be on the rise. And as the effects-heavy Hollywood behemoth waxes, the biggest film to come out of the 2009 film festival circuit has begun to wane. Though most pundits still expect the film to land a best-picture nomination (in a ten-nominee field, it would be a huge upset if it didn’t), the buzz surrounding Lee Daniels’s Precious: Based on the Novel by Sapphire seems to have been drowned out by the ascendant Avatar, the critical darling The Hurt Locker, and trend story–baiting Up in the Air. As Peter Knegt put it last week in a column at indieWIRE, “A month ago, I would have suggested Precious was in a better position than [Air and Locker], but it’s becoming increasingly apparent that the film may have peaked.”
Q&A: Nancy Meyers on It’s Complicated
on by Vanity Fair | VF.com in Arts/Entertainment, Comments (0)
I’m under thirty, I’m not married, and I’m not a woman. So when speaking with Nancy Meyers about her new movie, It’s Complicated, I felt a bit like an interloper. I had the same feeling when I saw the film at a screening packed with women of a certain age—unlike my neighbors, I didn’t audibly moan at the sight of Meryl Streep tilling her perfect, organic vegetable garden, or cracking the feuilletée crust of a freshly baked chocolate croissant, or walking in on a naked Alec Baldwin. (To be fair, in the latter case, neither did they.) In fact, the only bit I could personally relate to was the sequence when the three get too stoned to function. Still, I found the film to be a thoroughly enjoyable way to spend a couple of hours. Kind of like a lazy brunch at Le Pain Quotidien. Or like strolling through a Williams Sonoma where, even if you can’t afford anything, you can still snack on some of the free hors d’oeuvres from the test kitchen. Meyers is one of the only female writer-directors to make studio films. She’s also one of the few Hollywood screenwriters to follow the write-what-you-know principle. As a result, she’s cornered the affluent divorcée market in an industry heavily oriented towards males under 35 and dominated by comic book movies and extraterrestrial adventure. In It’s Complicated, our January cover girl—Meryl Streep—plays Jane, a fifty-something mother of three grown-up kids, who, after having given up on love, all of a sudden finds herself sucked into a love triangle between her cocky ex-husband (Alec Baldwin) and the sweet, nerdy architect (Steve Martin) assigned to redesign her kitchen. Though I wasn’t exactly her target audience, Meyers responded congenially, even when I essentially accused her of mongering lifestyle porn. She also touched on the importance of emotional truthfulness, the eternal appeal of Meryl Streep, and the surprise of learning her two male leads would co-host the Oscars.
How Much Did Avatar Really Cost?
on December 23, 2009 by Vanity Fair | VF.com in Arts/Entertainment, Comments (0)
In Hollywood, the saying goes, the really creative folks are the accountants. Certainly the number-crunchers at 20th Century Fox, the studio distributing James Cameron’s costly and complex epic Avatar, will be kept busy over the coming months as box office grosses pour in and profit participators line up for their share. As ticket sales are tallied, and investors are repaid, the question will be, Was Avatar worth it?
Determining the final cost of this film is a trick in itself. Wildly different reports have been published, ranging from $230 million (The New Yorker) to nearly $500 million (The New York Times). Avatar’s official budget lies somewhere in between, probably closest to the figure the Los Angeles Times’s John Horn and Claudia Eller cited earlier this month—$280 million for the production, plus marketing costs. “It is the most expensive film we’ve made, but now, having the luxury of hindsight, it is money well spent, so I’m not concerned about it,” James Gianopulos, co-chairman and C.E.O. of Fox Filmed Entertainment, told CNN in early December.
Normally, when people talk about a movie budget, they’re talking about the production costs—the expense of hiring the actors, building the sets and keeping the special effects artists chained to their computer monitors and fed their steady diet of Red Bull and Skittles. They’re not talking about the marketing costs. So when you hear that the third Pirates of the Caribbean movie cost $300 million, that number doesn’t include paying to slap Johnny Depp’s face on every billboard and bus in town. In the case of Avatar, Fox shared the production costs with investor groups Dune Capital Management and Ingenious Film Partners to hedge the risk. The filmmakers also took advantage of a tax credit in New Zealand, where they shot the live-action footage that comprises about a third of the film. That shaved off a cool $30 million. Fox is bearing the cost of the marketing budget, which will tally up to about $150 million by the time the last blue alien flickers off the screen.
Jeff Bridges: The Vanity Fair Interview
on by Vanity Fair | VF.com in Arts/Entertainment, Comments (0)
Jeff Bridges turned 60 this year, but age has not slowed him down. On the contrary, those new little aches and pains that remind a man of his mortality have given him a second wind. With an outlook like that, it’s no surprise he’s survived a half-century in “the biz,” as he calls it. With Crazy Heart, in which he plays a down-and-out country music legend who turns his life around, he may finally get a shot at that Oscar that’s eluded him after four nominations. In fact, Vegas odds have him taking home the hardware. Bridges is a child of Hollywood. Son of actor Lloyd Bridges, Jeff grew up in the affluent Holmby Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles. Yet he seems the antithesis of all things Hollywood—he’s patient, laid back, and still passionately in love with Jean, his wife of 35 years, placing their union among the most long-lasting showbiz marriages. Bridges still carries around a picture taken just seconds after he first asked Jean out (she said ‘no’ by the way), and rarely passes up an opportunity to show it off. We met for breakfast at The Four Seasons in L.A., where we endured blaring Christmas music and jack-hammering long enough to carve out a conversation on everything from country music to his newfound enthusiasm for solving child hunger in the U.S., to how he deals with stagefright. (Would you believe it, even The Dude has anxiety on set.)
Brittany Murphy: Does Her Death Count?
on December 22, 2009 by Vanity Fair | VF.com in Arts/Entertainment, Comments (0)
I want to draw my personal line at Brittany Murphy. It’s a death without worthy pathos. It does not even invite much morbid curiosity. A most minor starlet, already past her prime, dies in an utterly conventional way—methodical, long-term, self-abuse. And yet, nearly as a Christmas miracle, she’s reborn as Joan of Arc, or Michael Jackson. The point, obviously, is that celebrity death is a really big draw. Celebrity death is bigger even than celebrity adultery, except for Tiger Woods. But were Tiger Woods to die, his death would now be bigger than his adultery. The celebrity press, having done incredibly big numbers with big deaths, now needs more celebrities to die. And these cannot be old celebrities. Brittany Murphy may have been past her professional ingénue prime, but she’s still in her Hollywood-dying prime. The only problem, which the celebrity press is hoping can be overlooked, is that almost nobody knows who she is. Even the descriptions of her career progress are embarrassingly vague. Exactly which character in Clueless? It’s an iffy and existential strategy for the celebrity media. Can Brittany Murphy achieve in death the fascination that she failed mightily to attract in her working life?
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