Hollywood Directors Remember 'Legend' Roger Ebert
April, 05, 2013 1:38 pm | Comments On #danny boyle, Darren Aronofsky, Martin Scorsese, Movies, Paul Weitz, Roger Ebert, Steven SpielbergRoger Ebert influenced generations of film critics and helped millions of movie fans discover films they might not otherwise have seen. But Ebert is also a hero to directors, who saw in him a champion with the clout to rescue movies from obscurity, make pointed criticisms or spread his passionate appreciation far and wide.
TheWrap asked a number of directors for their thoughts on Ebert, and received these comments:
Darren Aronofsky:
“For all film lovers, he was a legend. I can remember looking forward to his and Siskel's show as a kid, on local channel 11 – or was it 9? That empty balcony. The teasers at the start, the movie you really wanted to hear about at the end. Rooting for a disagreement, a respectful yet stinging argument.
“I ended up meeting him and his charming wife in...
Read MoreDanny Boyle: Never Mind the Olympics, Here's the Bloody, Kinky 'Trance'
April, 05, 2013 12:03 pm | Comments On #danny boyle, Movies, TranceWhen Danny Boyle burst on the scene in the mid 1990s with the dark crime film “Shallow Grave” and the jarring drug comedy “Trainspotting,” savvy viewers might have been able to predict that someday he’d make a movie like the new “Trance.”
A violent, kinky, sexually explicit and mind-bending thriller about an art dealer (James McAvoy), a thief (Vincent Cassell, below) and a hypnotist (Rosario Dawson) who tries to retrieve McAvoy’s memories, it has the drive and darkness characteristic of Boyle’s early work.
But it would have been harder to predict that in between his first movies and his new one, the 56-year-old British-born...
Read MoreAcademy Asks Members to Sound Off on Oscars Future
April, 04, 2013 1:01 pm | Comments On #Academy Awards, academy of motion picture arts and sciences, Awards, dawn hudson, hawk koch, oscarsThe agenda for the Academy’s first-ever coast-to-coast meeting of all its members just got a little clearer.
An invitation was sent to the near-6,000 members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences on Thursday afternoon, detailing more about a May 4 meeting at which the AMPAS membership is invited to sound off on matters of concern to the 86-year-old organization.
“We want more member engagement,” AMPAS President Hawk Koch told TheWrap on Thursday. “I’ve been a member of the Producers Guild and the Directors Guild for years, and they always had meetings where everybody got together to mix and mingle and talk to each other about what’s going on.
“We’...
Read MoreWake Up and Embrace the Technology, Urges Napster Documentary 'Downloaded'
April, 02, 2013 6:17 pm | Comments On #Alex Winter, Downloaded, henry rollins, independent film, indies, Movies, NapsterIt was perhaps inevitable that at the Q&A that followed a screening of Alex Winter’s Napster documentary “Downloaded” on Monday night, one audience member would ask if the movie was going to be available on the internet for free.
The film, after all, chronicles the rapid rise and equally rapid fall of the file-sharing service that fundamentally changed the music industry, ushering in a generation of music fans who got their music for free online rather than paying for it in record stores.
To admirers, it was a revolution that put power in the hands of the fans; to the record industry, it was an assault on copyright and intellectual property, a case of organized piracy on a scale...
Pioneering Rock Journalist Paul Williams Dies at 64
March, 28, 2013 3:25 pm | Comments On #Bob Dylan, Crawdaddy, music, Obituaries, Paul Williams, rock 'n' rollPaul Williams, a pioneering music journalist who started the first magazine devoted to rock ’n’ roll criticism, died on Wednesday in Southern California. He was 64.
Williams was the founder of Crawdaddy! magazine and the author of more than two dozen books about music, popular culture and new-age philosophy. He died of complications related to Alzheimer’s, which came on after he suffered a brain injury in a 1995 bicycle accident.
Williams was a 17-year-old student at Swarthmore College when he launched Crawdaddy in 1966. At a time when the mainstream media looked askance at rock music and the only magazines devoted to the sound were teeny-bopper publications like Tiger Beat,...
Read MoreRobert De Niro's Tribeca Film Fest to Close With De Niro's 'King of Comedy'
March, 28, 2013 11:00 am | Comments On #film festivals, Movies, robert de niro, tribeca film festivalThe Tribeca Film Festival will close with a new restoration of “The King of Comedy,” the 1983 Martin Scorsese film that happens to star Tribeca co-founder Robert De Niro.
The disturbing black comedy, in which De Niro plays obsessed stand-up comic Rupert Pupkin, who kidnaps talk-show host Jerry Langford (Jerry Lewis) and demands a spot on Langford’s show, won largely rave reviews but has grown in stature since its initial release.
The film has been given a digital 4K restoration by Scorsese’s Film Foundation, Regency Enterprises and 20th Century Fox.
According to Tribeca co-founder Jane Rosenthal, the idea of including restorations in the festival’s lineup came...
Read MoreOscars Overhaul Short-Documentary Rules, Plan to Expand Doc Branch
March, 27, 2013 6:19 pm | Comments On #Academy Awards, Awards, Best Documentary Feature, Best Documentary Short, documentaries, oscarsOne year after opening the Documentary Feature category to involve more voters, the Academy is doing the same for Documentary Shorts, which likely had fewer voters this year than any other Oscar category.
And in another change that could have a significant effect on the documentary awards, the Academy is expected this year to invite substantially more members to join the branch than ever before. The Board of Governors, according to branch governor Rob Epstein, has responded favorably to requests to relax the restrictions on new members for that specific branch.
The Academy has not publicly announced the changes, but Epstein, one of the three representatives of the Documentary Branch on the Board of...
Oscars Move Into March for 2014
March, 25, 2013 11:14 am | Comments On #Academy Awards, Awards, oscarsThe Oscars are getting out of the way of next year’s Winter Olympics and moving into March, 2014, but the show then plans to return to late February for the 2015 awards.
The move to March allows the Academy to slightly adjust the timetable that forced voters to cast their nominating ballots earlier than ever this year, although it still requires ballots to be returned in early January.
The dates for the 86th and 87th Oscars were announced on Monday morning by the Academy, which said that next year's Academy Awards will take place on March 2 and 2015's awards will happen on Feb. 22.
Although the organization has been under pressure to consider a move to early February or even late January,...
Read More'The Birds,' 'Beetlejuice' Added to Tribeca Lineup
March, 25, 2013 11:04 am | Comments On #Alfred Hitchcock, Beetlejuice, film festivals, Movies, The Birds, Tim Burton, tribeca film festivalAlfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds” and Tim Burton’s “Beetlejuice” are among the films added to the lineup at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival, TFF organizers announced on Monday.
The 50th anniversary screening of “The Birds” and the 25th anniversary screening of “Beetlejuice” will be part of the “Tribeca Drive-In” series of free outdoor screenings at the World Financial Center Plaza, and will take place on Thursday and Friday, April 18 and 19. “Lil Bub & Friendz,” a new film about a cat who became an internet sensation, will also screen as part of the series on April 20.
Tribeca also announced a collaboration with the Museum...
Read MoreDavid Mamet on 'Phil Spector': It's Not About Phil Spector
March, 22, 2013 6:54 am | Comments On #Al Pacino, David Mamet, Girls, HBO, Helen Mirren, lana clarkson, phil spector, Television, Zosia MametPlaywright, screenwriter and director David Mamet tries to have it both ways with “Phil Spector,” his upcoming HBO film about the eccentric music legend who was convicted for the 2003 shooting death of actress Lana Clarkson.
The film uses the names of Spector, Clarkson and the legal team that defended the mercurial producer and makes use of official court transcripts for a couple of scenes. But a disclaimer at its beginning insists, “This is a work of fiction ... It’s not ‘based on a true story,’” and Mamet called his work "a fable" in an interview with TheWrap this week.
Also read:...
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Description
Steve Pond, author of the L.A. Times bestseller The Big Show, has been covering entertainment for more than two decades. He also writes on the awards circuit for TheWrap, in his column "The Odds."
