Disney Gives ‘The Lone Ranger’ Permission to Say ‘Hi-Yo Silver, Away!’
        
(latinoreview.com)                 Disney Gives ‘The Lone Ranger’ Permission to Say ‘Hi-Yo Silver, Away!’ After weeks of drama, intense negotiation, and will-they-won’t-they whispers, “The Lone Ranger” is officially back on at Disney.

From the outside looking in, it doesn’t seem as though Disney really won this financial battle with Gore Verbinski and Jerry Bruckheimer.  They wanted that budget of $230 million substantially reduced, but capitulated at last to Verbinski and Bruckheimer’s final tally of $215 million.  Verbinski, Bruckheimer and Depp all reduced their fees, shortened the shoot, and trimmed the production budget, but it still seems like an awfully steep price for the studio to pay.  I’m not at all sure that includes marketing, after all.

Depp and Armie Hammer remain attached to play Tonto and the Lone Ranger, respectively, and Deadline reports that Ruth Wilson has joined the cast as the female lead.  Wilson is a brilliant and lovely actress, yet another British star that hasn’t made the leap across the sea, but certainly deserves to.  If you’d like to meet her pre-“Ranger”, you can check her out in “Jane Eyre,”  “Small Island” or as a freaky serial killer in “Luther.”  You won’t regret it, and you can join me in hoping she plays a female gunslinger, and not just a sassy saloon girl (though she would be awesome) or lost pioneer woman.

Disney is hurrying to get the film into production, and plan on having everything set by next week so that filming can begin in January or February.  It’s not known if they plan on keeping that December 12, 2012 release date, but one hopes they realize the delay is a blessing in disguise, and that is an absolutely disastrous release date for them.  “The Hobbit” and “World War Z” are winning that weekend. It won’t be “The Lone Ranger.”  I’m not good at predicting box office, but it’s just obvious, even from here.

Now, we’ll sit back and watch the wacky Depp costumes float in, and confirmation as to whether there will be werewolves or train explosions.  Watching this film may be as much fun – perhaps even more! -- as watching it on the big screen.




Guillermo del Toro & 'Pacific Rim' to Take Over Pinewood Toronto Studios

(hollywoodreporter.com)               No second unit means Warner Bros.' monsters vs. mechas action movie will shoot on five of the seven sound stages at the Toronto mega-studio.

TORONTO -- Guillermo del Toro flying solo on Pacific Rim means the Hollywood director is about to take over Pinewood Toronto Studios.
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The mechas vs. monsters movie from Legendary Pictures has scheduled 132 shooting days on five of the seven soundstages at the Toronto mega-studio from October 2011 to May 2012.

It turns out del Toro will not have a second unit on Pacific Rim, as the tentpole picture is known.

So he’ll be constantly shuttling between the five soundstages at Pinewood Toronto so he can shoot the picture with a single vision.

Pacific Rim, which stars Charlie Hunnam, Charlie Day and Idris Elba, is slated for a July 21, 2013 release date by Warner Bros.

The monster movie sees a powerful extraterrestrial force threaten the Earth's existence, with humans uniting to fight them off.




Chris Columbus Direct Subterranean Alien Race For "Road Crews"

(darkhorizons.com)              Chris Columbus ("Percy Jackson," "Mrs. Doubtfire") is negotiating to direct the action comedy "The Secret Lives of Road Crews" at Paramount Pictures says Deadline.

The story follows a clandestine group of road crew workers who are the last line of defense against a subterranean alien race. Kevin Lund and T.J. Scott scripted the feature, with Craig Mazin doing a re-write and writers being sought for another re-write.

Hal Lieberman is producing and was originally attached back when the project was set up at DreamWorks.




Dreamworks Animation Signs "Game Changing" Deal With Netflix

(reuters)            Online video rental company Netflix Inc (NFLX.O) said it won pay TV rights to Dreamworks Animation (DWA.O) movies starting in 2013, the first time a major Hollywood studio has chosen an Internet streaming player over a traditional cable channel.

News of the deal drove Netflix's stock up nearly 7 percent to a high of $137.88 in early trade on Nasdaq on Monday.

Netflix did not disclose the financial terms of the deal.

However, Dreamworks CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg told The New York Times that the deal, worth $30 million per picture to Dreamworks over a number of years, was "game-changing" and represented a bet that viewers would soon no longer make distinctions between content streamed on the Internet or through cable.




The New Hires Of Pixar

(blog.joshallan.com)                   Edwin Catmull is a thin man in his mid-sixties, with a Ph.D., wire-rim glasses, and graying beard. In interviews he comes across as soft-spoken, almost pensive, although one can read years of wisdom behind a kind expression. He is earnest and straightforward, talks patiently, and, in most every way, resembles your favorite college professor.

But Dr. Catmull is not a professor.

He is the President of two of the most powerful and well-respected companies in the world: Disney Animation Studios and Pixar, the company who literally created computer-generated animation.

On September 1, 2008, the Harvard Business Review published an article written by Dr. Catmull entitled How Pixar Fosters Collective Creativity. In this article, Catmull states some seemingly backward approaches to bringing in new talent to an organization:

    “Successful organizations face two challenges when bringing in new people with fresh perspectives. One is well-known—the not-invented-here syndrome. The other—the awe-of-the-institution syndrome (an issue with young new hires)—is often overlooked.

    The bigger issue for us has been getting young new hires to have the confidence to speak up. To try to remedy this, I make it a practice to speak at the orientation sessions for new hires, where I talk about the mistakes we’ve made and the lessons we’ve learned. My intent is to persuade them that we haven’t gotten it all figured out and that we want everyone to question why we’re doing something that doesn’t seem to make sense to them. We do not want people to assume that because we are successful, everything we do is right.”

How many companies do you know who practice this philosophy? Where the President of the company, first of all, shows up at new employee orientations? And then he doesn’t just make an appearance or sit in the back, but stands up and tells stories about company screw-ups, to help reinforce a culture that respects ALL ideas, even if they come from a first-day-on-the-job newbie?

The list of organizations coming to my mind isn’t very long.

I watched the documentary film The Pixar Story this weekend (and highly recommend it). As you’re surely aware, there’s a certain magic about Pixar. What you may not know is that most of the fairy dust resides within their unique culture—and this is something they’ve fought very hard to protect.

There are so many things we can learn from an organization like Pixar, but for today that’s all I want to say: great company culture may emerge through serendipity, but it doesn’t stay great by accident. People—real people who care enough to put some skin in the game—have to get involved, stand up, get a little dirty. People like Ed need to do some “crazy” things.

Don’t kid yourself that a great workplace “just happens.” Like growing a garden, it requires a lot of work and a bit of mess. It takes time and effort—and this means having people who have enough time built in to their jobs to actually focus on it. There’s simply no other way to build an amazing work environment.

How many Dr. Catmull’s does your company have?

Are you one?




How 'Total Recall' Saved Toronto's Film Industry

(thestar.com)               On an isolated soundstage in Toronto’s Port Lands, designers have created a dark, futuristic vision.

The bones of New Asia are being created out of brick, steel and Styrofoam in one of the most elaborate set designs ever constructed in the city.

In fact, Total Recall, a remake of the 1990 sci-fi action film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, is set to be the most expensive movie in Toronto history. With a budget estimated at anywhere from $130 million to as much as $200 million, once marketing costs are added, the production is a behemoth.

It is also a watershed moment for Toronto moviemaking. As the cast, including Colin Farrell, Jessica Biel and Kate Beckinsale, wrapped the shoot here Thursday after more than six months of production and filming, it may well be remembered as the movie that saved the Toronto film industry.

If you had trouble getting a carpenter to build your deck this summer, blame Total Recall. If you had trouble getting to work on Lake Shore Blvd., you can blame Total Recall too. The shoot blocked off traffic for four days.

From the money that Farrell has dropped at yoga classes, to Biel’s penchant for fine dining in the city with on-and-off-again boyfriend Justin Timberlake, the production, directly and indirectly, has had an enormous impact.

Either way, it was hard to escape the movie’s deep economic gravity.

“This has been a total game changer,” says Paul Bronfman, chair of Pinewood Toronto Studios, in an interview. “We have come through some dark days to get here.”

Because of Total Recall, the city is on track to hit close to a billion dollars in production value this year, a record.

That’s compared with $726 million in 2010. The peak year, according to Toronto Film and Television Office figures, was 2001, when production hit $928 million, before a soaring Canadian dollar and SARS crippled the once high-flying industry. (Adjusted for inflation, 2001’s figures equal $1.135 billion in today’s dollars.)

Peter Finestone, the city’s film commissioner, calls Total Recall the first big “tentpole” to hit the city.

“This was equivalent to the big top, or the whole circus moving to town and taking over,” says Finestone. “This movie has had an enormous impact to everyone, from people who put the cones on the street to protect parking spaces, to lighting, to sound and camera people to guys who run the catering trucks.”

Monty Montgomerie, business manager for IATSE local 873, which represents film industry workers, says the movie will have paid its members a significant $25 million in wages alone since production first started in March — that’s equivalent to the entire budget of some Hollywood movies.

During peak production, the project employed up to 600 workers from one local. There were more than 300 carpenters on set — more than most housing developments — on some days.

“These are good quality, well-paying jobs,” said Montgomerie. “This has had a massive impact.”

Full article:             http://www.thestar.com/news/article/1057854--how-total-recall-saved-toronto-s-film-industry



"Blade Runner" Sequel Moves Forward

(darkhorizons.com)                   "Contagion" and "The Bourne Ultimatum" scribe Scott Burns has reportedly entered active talks to write the "Blade Runner" project at Alcon and Warner Brothers reports Twitchfilm.

Ridley Scott is committed to both direct and produce this new installment in the franchise which is expected to be set in the same universe as that seen in Scott's 1982 seminal sci-fi classic.




World Designed For "Fantastic Voyage"

(comingsoon.net)                   The other project, the Isaac Asimov adaptation, Fantastic Voyage, also appears to still be on the table, despite rumors last month that Levy might pass.

"'Fantastic Voyage' I've been working on with Jim Cameron for the last seven months," he said, "We've got a script and a world design that we love. It'll be an underwater, 3D action sci-fi extravaganza."





Netflix and DreamWorks Animation Announce Deal

(Netflix, DreamWorks Animation)                   Netflix and DreamWorks Animation have announced a multi-year agreement, which means DreamWorks Animation titles will no longer be available on HBO:

Netflix, Inc. and DreamWorks Animation SKG, Inc. today announced a new multi-year licensing agreement that will make Netflix the exclusive subscription television service for first-run feature films and select television specials from DreamWorks Animation, the award-winning creators of such beloved franchises as "Shrek," "Madagascar," "Kung Fu Panda" and "How to Train Your Dragon."

Beginning with its 2013 feature films, new DreamWorks Animation titles will be made available for Netflix members to watch instantly in the pay TV window on multiple platforms, including television, tablet, computer, and mobile phones. Under the agreement, certain critically lauded and commercially successful DreamWorks Animation catalogue titles – including "Kung Fu Panda," "Madagascar 2," "Chicken Run" and "Antz," among others – will also be made available to Netflix members over time.




Avatar-Class 3D Comes to Alaska Studio

(Alaska Journal of Commerce)                 Anchorage-based Evergreen Films has earned the first certification for 3D production from Cameron Pace Group, which was co-founded by “Avatar” director James Cameron. In collaboration with BBC Earth and Reliance Pictures, “Walking with Dinosaurs 3D” will be shot and produced in Alaska and is set for a major worldwide release in 2013.

The biggest movie yet filmed in Alaska has gotten a boost from the biggest director in Hollywood.

“Walking with Dinosaurs 3D” producer Evergreen Films is the first studio to win certification from Cameron Pace Group for creation of 3D content and will be using the same technology from blockbusters “Avatar,” “Transformers” and “Pirates of the Caribbean.”

CPG was co-founded by James Cameron, the director of the two highest grossing films of all time — “Avatar” ($2.8 billion) and “Titanic” ($1.8 billion) — and Vince Pace, who worked with Cameron on “Titanic” and “The Abyss.”

Of the 50 or so 3D films released in the last few years, CPG has contributed to about 30 that have generated some $7.5 billion in gross box office worldwide.

Among films using CPG technology, the “Dark of the Moon” installment of the “Transformers” series grossed $1.1 billion last summer and “On Stranger Tides” posted just more than $1 billion for the “Pirates of the Caribbean” franchise.

Expectations for “Walking with Dinosaurs 3D,” set for a so-called tentpole release in 2013, are also high. Twentieth Century Fox won the bidding war for distribution at the American Film Market last November, and according to a report from industry pub Variety, sold out within a week worldwide.

The dino epic, scripted as a dramatic offering with character arcs, is a collaboration between Anchorage-based Evergreen, BBC Earth and Reliance Pictures. Variety pegged the deal as the largest ever closed by IM Global, a film financing, sales and distribution company partially owned by Reliance.

NANA Development Corp., an Alaska Native regional corporation, acquired a minority stake in Evergreen Films last year.

“‘Walking with Dinosaurs 3D’ offers us a fantastic opportunity to push our advances in 3D even further,” Cameron said in a release from BBC Worldwide. “We’re inspired by the creative ambition behind the film and the opportunity to work on a feature that brings audiences a real, visceral experience.”

Evergreen Films CEO Mike Devlin, who moved to Alaska in 2005, a couple years after selling his company, Rational Software, to IBM for $2.1 billion, said achieving “Avatar-class” 3D has long been a goal for Evergreen.

“By partnering with Jim Cameron … we get the benefit not only of great technology, but technology developed from a filmmaker’s point of view,” Devlin said. “He’s not just doing technology for technology’s sake. He’s looking at it from the point of view of what does the filmmaker need to have artistic freedom and creative freedom to tell a story, but use 3D in a tool for telling that story.

“Jim is a big advocate of shooting the films in 3D, in using 3D in the storytelling from the very conception of the film. In ‘Walking with Dinosaurs,’ we’re very much thinking that. If it was just the dinosaurs at a distance, you wouldn’t have to worry about the 3D as much.”

The original “Walking with Dinosaurs” was a six-episode documentary series produced by BBC Earth in 1999 that won several Emmys and drew a worldwide audience of 700 million.

Variety reported the presales are expected to cover most, if not all, of the film’s $65 million budget. That’s more than double the estimated $30 million budget for “Big Miracle” starring Drew Barrymore filmed in Alaska that wrapped last year (originally titled “Everybody Loves Whales”).

The script is by John Collee, who wrote “Happy Feet,” which won the 2007 Oscar for best animated feature film of the year. Animal Logic of Sydney, Australia, was the animation studio for “Happy Feet” and is also building the cast for “Walking with Dinosaurs 3D.”

Filming has already begun around Southcentral near Girdwood and on the Kenai Peninsula for the live backgrounds that will provide a prehistoric setting for “Walking with Dinosaurs 3D.” Alaska isn’t just providing the scenery, either.

The film will star dinosaurs that once roamed the North Slope and wintered in Denali National Park more than 70 million years ago. All of the post-production work will also take place in Evergreen’s Anchorage studios.

Evergreen has post-production offices on Hillside, and is renovating the old Crowley building on Sandlewood Place in south Anchorage. The new headquarters for Evergreen will have a “smart” sound stage with a 50-foot by 50-foot green screen and a 24-seat studio for screenings and viewing dailies.

Sound stages and state-of-the-art post-production capability are essential infrastructure if Alaska wants to truly develop its film industry. The new Evergreen headquarters and technology will be available for any company producing a film in Alaska, and represents a new job opportunity for NANA shareholders.

“We’ll have a chance to add more permanent jobs as the industry grows,” said Robin Kornfield, vice president of communications for NANA and the president of its film services subsidiary Piksik. “We’re looking forward to having special technology here in Alaska that anyone can use. NANA is known in Alaska as a support company to oil and mining. We’re taking those capabilities and applying them to a brand new industry. We’re looking forward to providing those same services — catering, security — and opportunities for training and jobs and advancement and education that come through the film business.”

Full Article:   http://www.alaskajournal.com/Alaska-Journal-of-Commerce/September-2011/Avatar-class-3D-comes-to-Alaska-studio/



'Star Wars' Mark Hamill Celebrates 60th Birthday

(celebs.gather.com)                     Star Wars actor Mark Hamill celebrated his 60th birthday on Sunday. That's right, Luke Skywalker is now six decades old, and it is hard for some fans to believe. The actor was not well-known before George Lucas's series of films launched him to stardom.

Since starring in Star Wars, Mark Hamill has gone on to have many other career successes. Did you know that he was supposed to be in TV's Eight is Enough, but got released from the contract to appear as Luke Skywalker instead? Since his big screen stardom, he has lent his voice to cartoons like Batman and The Simpsons.

Unfortunately for the birthday boy, he was in a car accident in 1977 after the Star Wars filming was complete, and he has significant facial scarring. While that must have been hard, it hasn't kept him from working or from having a successful personal life. He has been married since 1978, and he has three children. Overall, it has been a great life for Mark Hamill.

Happy birthday to the man who will always be remembered for playing the iconic Luke Skywalker. It has been an amazing six decades.




On the “Danger” of Andy Serkis

(incontention.com)                   I suppose some might put it down to the fact that I didn’t find the film as spirit-lifting as many critics did, but I have a hard time signing the blogosphere’s imaginary petition for Andy Serkis to get a Best Supporting Actor nomination for “Rise of the Planet of the Apes.”

It’s not that I don’t admire Serkis’s expertise, or accept motion-capture performance as a valid and exciting discipline. Nor am I a physical purist in terms of what constitutes award-level acting. Not two years ago, I happily included James Gandolfini on my hypothetical Oscar ballot for “Where the Wild Things Are,” and I have no beef with the 2001 BAFTA nomination handed to Eddie Murphy in “Shrek.” An actor’s face may be his foremost tool, but if he can affect audiences without it, then more power to him.

I will admit, however, to some uncertainty as to the border between Serkis’s contribution and that of the FX team; whereas I can locate and identify the limitations of Gandolfini’s work, much of the critical praise for Serkis’s Caesar hinges on a undeniable expressiveness that has nonetheless been enhanced beyond the actor’s own means.

Luckily, this winds up as a moot point for me, given that I don’t find either the character or the interpretation of Caesar — however impressive — sufficiently rich or layered to merit consideration as one of the year’s best performances, be it the product of unfathomable technical wizardry or a man in a monkey suit. (Compared to Serkis’s Gollum from the “Lord of the Rings” films, for example, Caesar is a pretty thin creation; meanwhile, the critics marvelling at how the film’s impressive rendition of Caesar dwarfs the film’s human performances are promoting a false dichotomy when the humans in question are as flatly written as James Franco and Freida Pinto. The Golden Gate Bridge out-acted them too.)

An Oscar for motion-capture acting may be an interesting story to chase, but I have yet to see an individual performance that fires my interest in it beyond the theoretical. I rather wish Serkis’s cheerleaders had been as vocal when he delivered a less groundbreaking but considerably more exciting in-the-flesh turn as Ian Dury in “Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll,” but that wouldn’t have afforded them the opportunity to claim high ground in the Brave New World stakes. I can’t help suspecting that many of those pre-emptively bashing the Academy for their conservatism in this matter like the idea of Serkis’s “Apes” performance even more than they like the performance itself.

One word I wouldn’t use to describe Serkis’s work — and not only because I’m not a working actor — is “dangerous”: until someone decides that motion capture technology is a necessary expense for non-fantastical, character-driven drama (hey, check out those digitally rendered scowls in “Winter’s Bone!”), I don’t see how the innovation narrows the scope of an average actor’s career as much as it extends it:

One man who disagrees, however, is veteran critic and performance essayist David Thomson: in a recent essay for The Guardian, he admires the process behind Serkis’s characterization, while also describing it rather vaguely as a “grave warning”:

    Serkis has said he finds no difference between performance-capture and acting. We should take this as a grave warning. Pioneers are often innocent opportunists, yet sometimes they sense a new nature in the world. So it’s worth stressing that Serkis can be a brilliant and disturbing actor with no more technology on his side than film, a camera and a good part… We may not see such miniature work again, and no one will dispute the right of a once-harried actor to find comfort and splendour. But the pioneering that Serkis leads is more important, and every bit as dangerous, as far-fetched lab experiments with chimpanzees.

It’s a sketchily thought piece — at no point does Thomson suggest what he thinks the consequences of this imagined danger could be, or how it might pertain to actors less practised in the process than Serkis — and I don’t share his belief that an Oscar nomination for Serkis is anything close to likely. (Thomson has never been the most astute of awards pundits.) Indeed, his own piece rather points to why it isn’t: Thomson may not be an AMPAS voter, but his concern couldn’t be a more textbook illustration of the resistance many industry folk (particularly those of more advanced years) might feel to the idea of out-of-body performance.





Lasseter Winery Coming Into its Own

(pressdemocrat.com)                   Nancy Lasseter was a single mom with a 5-year-old son and was putting herself through school when she met John Lasseter at a computer graphics trade show in San Francisco in 1985.

John, today a two-time Academy Award-winning director and chief creative officer for Walt Disney Animation and Pixar Animation Studios, was at Lucasfilm working on “Young Sherlock Holmes” at the time, while Nancy needed to get back to Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh to finish her degree in design.

By 1986, she was in California full-time, doing interface design with the advanced futures group at Apple Computer, experimenting with some of the first 3-D animation on the Macintosh computer.

The Lasseters share a love of storytelling through animation, and they would soon nurture a mutual interest in wine as well. Nancy joined a tasting group in Cupertino as a way to meet people and she and her now-husband John would often escape up to Wine Country for romantic getaways, including a honeymoon trip through the Alexander Valley, Mendocino and the Napa Valley.

It wasn't until the couple had three more sons and decided to move to Sonoma in 1993 that the wine bug really bit hard — Nancy in particular.

“My cleaning lady, Susan Blue, was there on a Friday and I said, ‘what are you doing this weekend?'” Nancy recalled. “And she said, ‘we're going picking and crushing,' and I went, ‘ah, I've been wanting to do that. Can I come?'”

“We didn't have the concept of people doing this amateurishly, as a hobby,” added John. “It was such a cool concept. Friends get together and form this co-op, make wine together and all share it.”

Nancy remembers the joyful, back-breaking work as if it were yesterday — the shoveling of zinfandel bunches into the back of a truck, the hand pressing, the bees.

“I'll never forget her coming home completely splattered with red wine and the look on her face,” John said. “She was so excited. Wow, okay, I thought, now I want to do this.”

By 1997, they bottled up enough zinfandel and a Bordeaux blend to print out Lasseter Family Winery labels to give out as Christmas gifts and that was that — a new family business was born.

In 2000, they bought 50 bare acres on Dunbar Road in Glen Ellen, planted syrah, grenache and mourvedre and started making wine at friends Tom and Marcy Smothers' winery just up the hill.

They bought an adjoining 35-acre property in 2002 with merlot and cabernet sauvignon grapes and a winery on it, previously used by Carmenet Winery. There, they quickly set about adding malbec and cabernet franc grapes as well.

Full Article:           http://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/20110926/LIFESTYLE/110929716/1309/sitemaps




The Smurfs 3D Passes $500 Million Mark At The Worldwide Box Office

(comicbookmovie.com)                  When it was released opposite Cowboys & Aliens back in July, no one really expected all that much from The Smurfs. Sure, it would likely be moderately successful with the younger crowd, but mediocre reviews and no huge stars in the cast meant that many had little faith in the movie making big money. Well, Deadline now report that it grossed an additional $12.9M over the weekend, bringing the international box office total to $364.4M, and the worldwide total to a whopping half-billion...$502.8M to be precise.

In many ways, this isn't really all that shocking, especially after the way in which The Smurfs 3D ended up giving Jon Favreau's Cowboys & Aliens a real run for its money when they faced off.