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Category: Hollywood

  • Oscar nominee Matthew McConaughey will star in Gus Van Sant’s next film

    Oscar nominee Matthew McConaughey will star in Gus Van Sant’s next film

    MUMBAI: Matthew McConaughey, who recently won the Golden Globe and the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) award for his performance in Dallas Buyers Club and has been nominated for the coveted Academy Award, has been cast in Gus Van Sant’s upcoming film along with Ken Watanabe (The Last Samurai).

     

    Based on a script by Chris Sparling (Buried), the story of Sea of Trees follows an American man played by McConaughey, who takes a journey into the infamous “Suicide Forest” at the foothills of Mount Fuji with the intention of taking his own life. When he is interrupted by a Japanese man played by Watanabe, who has had second thoughts about his own suicide, and is trying to find his way out of the forest, the two begin a journey of reflection and survival.

     

    Gus Van Sant was nominated for an Academy Award for helming the Matt Damon starrer Good Will Hunting and the Sean Penn starrer Milk, for which Penn won the Best Actor Oscar. In addition to Dallas Buyers Club, McConaughey was last seen in The Wolf of Wall Street and can also be seen in the HBO Original series True Detective, currently airing in India on HBO Defined.

  • Kristen Bell and Michael B. Jordan to Host Academy’s Sci-Tech Awards

    Kristen Bell and Michael B. Jordan to Host Academy’s Sci-Tech Awards

    MUMBAI: Actors Kristen Bell and Michael B. Jordan will host the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Scientific and Technical Awards on Saturday, February 15, at The Beverly Hills Hotel.  They will present 19 awards to 52 individual recipients during the evening.

     

    “We are thrilled to have Kristen and Michael join us as hosts for this year’s Sci-Tech Awards,” said Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs.  “They are bright, young talents in the film community and will be a great addition to a night that honors the industry’s technical achievements.”

     

    Bell recently lent her voice to the Oscar-nominated Disney animated feature Frozen.  She also will be seen in the title role of the upcoming feature Veronica Mars, in theaters this March.  Bell’s other film credits include The Lifeguard, Hit & Run, When in Rome and Forgetting Sarah Marshall.

    In 2013, Jordan appeared in his first major leading role in the critically acclaimed film Fruitvale Station.  He also will be seen in That Awkward Moment, with Zac Efron and Miles Teller, due out this Friday.  His other credits include Chronicle and Red Tails.

     

    Portions of the Scientific and Technical Awards Presentation will be included in the Oscar telecast.

     

    Awards for outstanding film achievements of 2013 will be presented on Oscar Sunday, 2 March, 2014, at the Dolby Theatre at Hollywood & Highland Center and televised live on the ABC Television Network.  The Oscars, produced by Craig Zadan and Neil Meron, also will be televised live in more than 225 countries and territories worldwide.

  • Oscar Academy rescinds original song nomination for Alone Yet Not Alone

    Oscar Academy rescinds original song nomination for Alone Yet Not Alone

    MUMBAI: On Tuesday night, the Academy’s Board of Governors voted to rescind the Original Song nomination for Alone Yet Not Alone, music by Bruce Broughton and lyric by Dennis Spiegel. The decision was prompted by the discovery that Broughton, a former Governor and current Music Branch executive committee member, had emailed members of the branch to make them aware of his submission during the nominations voting period.

     

    “No matter how well-intentioned the communication, using one’s position as a former governor and current executive committee member to personally promote one’s own Oscar submission creates the appearance of an unfair advantage,” said Cheryl Boone Isaacs, Academy President.

     

    The Board determined that Broughton’s actions were inconsistent with the Academy’s promotional regulations, which provide, among other terms, that “it is the Academy’s goal to ensure that the Awards competition is conducted in a fair and ethical manner. If any campaign activity is determined by the Board of Governors to work in opposition to that goal, whether or not anticipated by these regulations, the Board of Governors may take any corrective actions or assess any penalties that in its discretion it deems necessary to protect the reputation and integrity of the awards process.”

     

    An additional nominee in the Original Song category will not be named. The remaining nominees in the category are:

     

    “Happy” from Despicable Me 2– Music and Lyric by Pharrell Williams

    “Let It Go” from Frozen – Music and Lyric by c and Robert Lopez

    “The Moon Song” from Her – Music by Karen O; Lyric by Karen O and Spike Jonze

    “Ordinary Love” from Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom – Music by Paul Hewson, Dave Evans, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen; Lyric by Paul Hewson

     

    The members from each of the Academy’s branches vote to determine the nominees in their respective categories – actors nominate actors, film editors nominate film editors, musicians and composers nominate song and score.

     

    During the nominations process, all 240 voting members of the Music Branch received a Reminder List of works submitted in the Original Song category and a DVD copy of the song clips with film and song title only (additional information including composer and lyricist is not provided).  Members were asked to watch the clips and then vote in the order of their preference for not more than five nominees in the category. A maximum of two songs may be nominated from any one film.

     

    Academy Awards for outstanding film achievements of 2013 will be presented on Oscar Sunday, 2 March, 2014, at the Dolby Theatre at Hollywood & Highland Center and televised live on the ABC Television Network.  The Oscars, produced by Craig Zadan and Neil Meron, also will be televised live in India.

  • ‘Hunger Games’ actress to direct Pitch Perfect 2

    ‘Hunger Games’ actress to direct Pitch Perfect 2

    MUMBAI: Elizabeth Banks, the actor, who brought life to the Capitol-born chaperone in the Hunger Games film franchise, is all set to make her directorial debut with Pitch Perfect 2, the highly anticipated sequel to the 2012 instant hit – Pitch Perfect.

     

    According to Variety, Elizabeth Banks has been targeted to head the project after directing a segment of last year’s sketch comedy – Movie 43. The actress worked as a co-producer on Pitch Perfect and starred as commentator Gail Abernathy-McKadden.

     

    Banks will produce the sequel alongside Max Handelman (Surrogates) through their Brownstone Productions. Gold Circle Films’ Paul Brooks (The Wedding Date, Over Her Dead Body) and Jeff Levine will co-produce, while Scott Niemeyer (The Haunting in Conneticut, Life as We Know It) will be the executive producer. Anna Kendrick and Rebel Wilson are both expected to reprise their roles in the sequel.

     

    Banks recently reprised her roles as Effie Trinket in The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, which has grossed over $850 million worldwide, and is one of the voice artists in The Lego Movie, which opens 7 February in India.

  • Sony bags the rights to Facebook COO Sandberg’s ‘Lean In’

    Sony bags the rights to Facebook COO Sandberg’s ‘Lean In’

    MUMBAI: Sony Pictures has confirmed that it has acquired the rights to make the Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg’s book into a movie.

     

    Published in March 2013, Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead encourages women to advance their careers. If the film is able to capture the essence of the book, it won’t be so much a biography of Sandberg, who recently became one of the youngest female billionaires ever, as a manifesto advising women on how to achieve professional success.

     

    Sandberg also launched an organisation, Lean In, to further promote her message. She will donate her proceeds from the film to the foundation, according to Deadline, 

    which reported the story earlier.

     

    While there were few specifics available about the movie or the deal, Deadline said Sony Pictures, which made The Social Network about Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg – tapped Nell Scovell to write the script. Scovell helped Sandberg write the book as well.

  • Alfonso Cuaron honoured at the 66th Annual Directors Guild of America

    Alfonso Cuaron honoured at the 66th Annual Directors Guild of America

    MUMBAI: Hosted by Jane Lynch, the 66th Annual Director’s Guild of America Awards held at the Hyatt Regency center Plaza, Los Angeles on 25 January was a grand affair honoring the behind-the-scenes folks that shape our viewing experience.

     

    Academy Award nominee and Golden Globe Award winning director, Alfonso Cuaron (Pan’s Labyrinth, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban) snagged up his first Outstanding Directorial Achievement in a Feature Film award for the Sandra Bullock and George Clooney starrer space epic, Gravity.

     

    Steven Soderbergh (Ocean’s Eleven, Erin Brockovich, Magic Mike) took home not one, but two DGA awards as his debut win. One for Outstanding Directorial achievement in Movies for Television and Mini-Series in the Golden Globe winning HBO Original Movie, Behind the Candelabra starring Michael Douglas and Matt Damon. Soderbergh was also awarded the Robert B. Aldrich Service Award in recognition of extraordinary service to the Directors Guild of America and to its membership.

     

    In the Television category, Vince Gilligan won the Outstanding Directorial Achievement in a Dramatic Series for Breaking Bad, while Beth McCarthy-Miller won the Outstanding Directorial Achievement in a Comedy Series for 30 Rock.

     

    Grey’s Anatomy creator Shonda Rhimes and Betsy Beers (Casanova, The Hoax) won the DGA Diversity Award in recognition of commitment to diversity hiring and providing jobs and opportunities to women and minorities in DGA-covered categories.

  • ‘American Hustle’ director soon to venture into TV drama

    ‘American Hustle’ director soon to venture into TV drama

    MUMBAI: Having recently won the Golden Globe Award and the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Awards for American Hustle, David O. Hustle, the prolific writer, producer and director is now venturing into television. According to Deadline, the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) has given a straight-to-series 13-episode order to a drama project from the American Hustle writer/director and Erin Brockovich writer Susannah Grant. The two are executive producing with Sarah Timberman and Carl Beverly. The show, described as “an upstairs/downstairs soap centered on a private country club”, will be co-produced by CBS Studios and ABC Studios. This would be Timberman/Beverly’s fifth on-air series, joining Justified, Elementary, Unforgettable and Masters of Sex.

     

    This marks the first TV series for Russell, with rare back-to-back Best Picture Oscar nominees — American Hustle this year and Silver Linings Playbook last year accompanied by best writing and directing nominations both times. Along with his Golden Globe and SAG wins, Russell is nominated for two Academy Awards including Best Director and Best Original Screenplay. Last year, his film, Silver Linings Playbook earned two Academy Award nominations for Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay; he also picked up a Best Director nomination in 2011 for The Fighter.

  • Quentin Tarantino to publish script of ‘The Hateful Eight’ after it gets leaked online

    Quentin Tarantino to publish script of ‘The Hateful Eight’ after it gets leaked online

    MUMBAI: Quentin Tarantino, who won the Best Original Screenplay Oscar last year for Django Unchained, is extremely upset that the script of The Hateful Eight has leaked online and now instead of making the film; he will publish the script.

     

    The filmmaker reportedly is “depressed” as he didn’t want to shoot it until next winter and had just given the first draft to six people from where it got out.

     

    Tarantino learned of the leak after his agent started getting calls from other agents trying to get their clients in the film. Tarantino doesn’t know who leaked the script, but he has his suspicions.

     

    But the filmmaker’s fans shouldn’t be upset as now they will have a well-published script from him.

  • Paramount shows the way for digital distribution

    Paramount shows the way for digital distribution

    MUMBAI: Being one of the oldest and largest Hollywood distribution studios, which has relied on 35-millimeter film to capture motion pictures, has taken a huge step for the industry. Paramount Pictures has become the first big studio to stop releasing its major movies on film in the US.

     

    The studio’s Oscar-nominated film The Wolf of Wall Street is its first movie in wide release to be distributed entirely in digital format. The studio also notified theater owners that Will Ferrell’s comedy Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues, which opened in December, was the last movie released on 35-mm film, reports revealed.

     

    The decision is likely to encourage other studios to take a leap of faith and follow suit, pushing for a complete phase-out of film in a year or two. Closer home, we already have movies releasing on the digital format and this historic move will only fuel more distribution studios to think of migrating to the digital format seriously.

     

    The major factor for film studios to still remain hesitant of going completely digital is the factor of missing out on revenues and box-office collections from theatres which are still not equipped to show digital movies and are still on film. Internationally, Paramount is still expected to ship film prints to Latin America and other foreign markets where most theaters still show movies on film.

     

    So how will Paramount benefit from this move? Well here are a few facts to ponder over: Studios prefer digital distribution because it is much cheaper. Eventually, these movies could be beamed into cinemas by satellite, saving even more on production and shipping costs. Digital technology also enables theaters to screen higher-priced 3-D films and makes it easier for them to book and program entertainment.

     

    But then what about the theatre owners, they are at a risk of going out of business if they can no longer obtain film prints of movies.
     

    The future is certainly looking bleak for distribution of movies on film to continue…

  • ’12 Years a Slave’ set to release in India on 31 January

    ’12 Years a Slave’ set to release in India on 31 January

    MUMBAI: PVR Pictures, one of the largest independent distributor of Hollywood movies in India, is all set to bring the much awaited drama 12 Years a slave to India. Based on the memoirs of Solomon Northup, the movie stars award winning actors Chiwetel Ejifor, Michael Fassbender, Benedict Cumberbatch, Paul Dano and features a special appearance by Brad Pitt. The historical drama is directed by Steve Mcqueen (Hunger) and brings on board Brad Pitt as producer.

     

    Set in the 1900’s. 12 Years a Slave is the poignant story of Solomon Northup, a free black man from upstate New York, who is abducted and sold into slavery. Facing cruelty at the hands of a malevolent slave owner, as well as unexpected kindnesses, Solomon struggles not only to stay alive, but to retain his dignity. In the twelfth year of his unforgettable odyssey, Solomon’s chance meeting with a Canadian abolitionist will forever alter his life.

     

    Commenting on the release of the movie, PVR Pictures president Kamal Gianchandani said, “12 Years a Slave is meaningful cinema and acting prowess at its best. The movie handles sensitive subjects of slavery and racial discrimination beautifully winning accolades at across film festivals and award ceremonies. We are proud to bring the movie for our Indian audiences who are certain to appreciate good cinema.” 

     

    12 Years a Slave has won Golden Globe award for the Best Picture Drama and has received nine Oscar nominations.

     

    Release Date in India – 31 January, 2013

    Director – Steve McQueen

    Writers – Matt Whitely

    Producer – Mark Hulme & Marcos A. Rodriguezs

    Starring – Chiwetel Ejifor, Lupita Nyong’o, Michael Fassbender, Benedict Cumberbatch, Paul Dano, Brad Pitt