Wes Anderson: Absentee Director

Fur flies on 'Mr. Fox' -- latimes.com

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Sony Prepares To Pick Up Doctor Parnassus

VARIETY: 'Parnassus' finds Stateside buyer

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The Walking Dead: Coming To AMC?

VARIETY: Frank Darabont circles zombies
AMC attacks comic series adaptation - By CYNTHIA LITTLETON Posted: Tue., Aug. 11, 2009, 8:00pm PT

AMC is venturing into zombie-drama territory with multi-hyphenate Frank Darabont.

Cabler is close to finalizing one of the richest development deals ever with Darabont to write and direct a series adaptation of the Image Comics graphic novel series "The Walking Dead," penned by Robert Kirkman. Gale Anne Hurd of Valhalla Motion Pictures and David Alpert of Circle of Confusion are also on board to exec produce.

Project is set among a group of zombie survivors of an apocalypse who are led by a police officer, Rick Grimes, in search of a safe place to live. Numerous editions of the "Walking Dead" graphic novels have been published since 2003.

To read the rest of the article, click here.

'70s Flashback: 'Squeaky' Fromme To Be Freed

CNN: After 34 years, Lynette 'Squeaky' Fromme to be released
By Ashley Hayes - updated 2:45 p.m. EDT, Wed August 5, 2009

(CNN) -- The president she once pointed a gun at has been dead for nearly three years, and her longtime idol and leader, Charles Manson, remains in prison.

However, Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme is about to get her first taste of real freedom in more than three decades.

According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, Fromme, now 60, is set to be released on parole August 16.

To read the rest of the article, click here.

Article ©2009 CNN. Photo by Vernon Merritt III, ©Time Life Pictures/Getty Images.

John Hughes, 1950 - 2009

VARIETY: Director John Hughes dies at 59 - by Pat Saperstein

"John Hughes, who captured the zeitgeist of 1980s teen life as writer-director of The Breakfast Club and Sixteen Candles and produced and scripted family hits such as Home Alone, died Thursday of a heart attack in Manhattan while taking a walk. He was 59.

After an impressive string of hits -- Home Alone is one of the top-grossing live-action comedies of all time -- Hughes, who never won a major show business award, stopped directing in 1991 and virtually retired from filmmaking a few years later, working on his farm in northern Illinois."

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Siegel Heirs Lose Latest Superman Lawsuit

VARIETY: Warner Bros. wins 'Superman' case
Siegel heirs can only pursue DC Comics profits
By DAVE MCNARY - Posted: Wed., Jul. 8, 2009, 7:15pm PT

Warner Bros. and DC Comics have won a favorable ruling in the suit filed by the heirs of "Superman" co-creator Jerome Siegel.

In a decision announced Wednesday, U.S. Judge District Court Judge Stephen G. Larson found that the license fees the studio paid to corporate sibling DC Comics didn't represent "sweetheart" deals as they weren't below fair market value. That means the heirs will be able seek profits only from DC Comics -- which earned $13.6 million from Warner Bros. for the 2006 release of "Superman Returns" -- rather than from Warner Bros. as well.

To read the rest of this article, click here.

Superman ©DC Comics.

Article excerpt ©REI.

Micheal Jackson Dies At 50

VARIETY: Michael Jackson Dies - King of Pop suffered heart attack in Los Angeles
by Pat Saperstein - 2:09 pm PT

Michael Jackson, the worldwide pop sensation was pronounced dead Thursday afternoon. He was 50.

According to reports on the Los Angeles Times' web site, Jackson was rushed midday Thursday from his home to a Los Angeles hospital, where he could not be revived.

Jackson was attempting a comeback after years of tabloid headlines, most notably his trial and acquittal on child molestation charges. He had been scheduled to perform 50 sell-out concerts at London's 02 arena from next week to March 2010.

To read the rest of this article, click here.

First Stills From Tim Burton's Alice In Wonderland

slashfilm.com has a few beautiful stills from Tim Burton's new version of Alice In Wonderland. There's some pictures of the main characters, as well as a couple of pieces of concept art.

I feel confident that the film will look amazing, but Alice is such an episodic story that it's going to be a tough nut to crack. It sounds like this film (like many Burton adaptations) will be taking a lot of liberties:

"... the film is actually a sequel to the original story, and follows Alice, now 17 years old, as she escapes from a snooty party and follows a white rabbit down a hole, back to Wonderland. The White Rabbit is convinced that he has the right girl, the one who had visited the magical land ten years prior. But Alice doesn’t remember her past visit to Wonderland."

We'll see... check out the links and enjoy!

Image courtesy of Walt Disney Pictures, Yahoo! Movies and slashfilm.com.

LA Gossip Examiner: Tom Hanks - Will produce, direct and star in 3D animated Woody Woodpecker film?

LA GOSSIP EXAMINER: Tom Hanks - Will produce, direct and star in 3D animated Woody Woodpecker film?

I highly doubt this is true, but it's the weirdest rumor I've run across in a while!

Comic book cover scan from sawlady.com.
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Nichols At MoMA

NYTIMES.COM: Mike Nichols, Master of Invisibility
By CHARLES McGRATH -- Published: April 10, 2009
Photo by Tony Cenicola

MIKE NICHOLS, the subject of a two-week retrospective starting Tuesday at the Museum of Modern Art, is not an obvious choice for a place as artsy and highbrow as the MoMA film department. MoMA retrospectives tend to be awarded to brooding European auteurs — Milos Forman was the last one, and Bernardo Bertolucci is scheduled for next year — and not to commercial Hollywood directors who include on their résumé pop hits like “Working Girl,” “The Birdcage” and, just recently, “Charlie Wilson’s War.”

Except for a puzzling string of duds in the mid-’70s, almost all of Mr. Nichols’s movies have made money, and a few, like “The Graduate” and “Carnal Knowledge,” have been recognized as cultural landmarks. But because of their commercial shimmer, their way of eliciting exceptional performances by top-of-the-line stars, it’s sometimes hard to say what makes a Nichols movie a Nichols movie. They seem like vehicles for actors, not the director, whose stamp is in leaving almost no trace of himself.

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To read the rest of the article, click here.

It's interesting... I would've thought that "The Graduate", "Who's Afraid Of Virgina Woolf?" and "Carnal Knowledge" alone would have sufficient highbrow cachet to merit a MoMA retrospective. But they still made too much money? Sheesh!

"The King" Draws The Prisoner!

Until about a week ago, I'd had no idea that this Prisoner comic existed! It makes sense that the tone and content of the show would appeal to him. The comic was never completed, but it's still interesting to see bits of Portmeirion and Number Six as seen through Kirby's eyes.

There's two great blog posts about this already, so I'll just link you to them - pages at hyperdave's Datajunkie blog, and more pages (with an analysis) by Charles Hatfield at twomorrows.com. Enjoy!

Thanks to The Jack Kirby Collector magazine, hyperdave, Charles Hatfield, amctv.com, and Karen Prell for the tip-off!

Be seeing you.

Ground Control To Major Tom (Mason)

VARIETY: Tom Hanks circles 'Major' toy story
Universal developing live-action 'Matt Mason'
By MICHAEL FLEMING - Posted: Tue., Mar. 24, 2009, 8:00pm PT

Universal will develop "Major Matt Mason," a live-action feature based on the vintage Mattel action figure. Pic will be developed as a star vehicle for Tom Hanks, and Graham Yost will write the script.

Playtone partners Hanks and Gary Goetzman will produce.

The toy line originated in 1966; Mason led an astronaut team that worked on the moon and lived in a space station. The toy was a hit in the buildup to the first manned moon mission. Mattel retired the line in the 1970s.
To read the rest of the article, click here.

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"Apollo 13" and "From The Earth To The Moon" covered this terrain, but hey, if I could do more astronaut movies, I would too!

Dick Tracy Locked Up In Warren Beatty's House?

AWN.COM: Beatty Sued Over Dick Tracy Rights
REUTERS - March 23, 2009

In an effort to regain the motion picture and TV rights to DICK TRACY, Tribune Media Services is suing Warren Beatty, reports REUTERS. In papers filed last week, Tribune states that Beatty "wrongly claims" the rights exclusively.

To read the rest of the article, click here.

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If Beatty hasn't done anything with the property in over ten years, he might want to consider selling it back to Tribune (though if the larger company's bankrupt, that doesn't really work). I guess it depends on whether or not Tribune Media Services sold Beatty all of the "Tracy" rights exclusively and indefinitely.

I'm assuming that Tribune wants the property back so they can try and generate revenue, though they'll have to dig deeper into the hole in order to get some cash coming in. I really like the comic strip, but how many fans of it are left at this point?

EXX-TERRR-MINN-AAAATE--

TELEGRAPH.CO.UK: Dr. Who Dalek found in pond
Last Updated: 8:34AM GMT
04 Mar 2009 - Photo by SOLENT

The group had already fished out an old table football game and a skateboard when they bumped into the Dalek head, which was covered in weeds.

Sales executive Marc Oakland was pushing a rake around the bed of the shallow pool when he found the object with its distinctive eye stalk.

The 42-year-old said: "I'd just shifted a tree branch with my foot when I noticed something dark and round slowly coming up to the surface.

"I got the shock of my life when a Dalek head bobbed up right in front of me."

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Doesn't this feel like the ending of a time-loop Dalek story? Dude, smash that thing before it reactivates!

To read the rest of the article, click here.

Farewell, Travel View-Master Reels

GOOGLENEWS.COM: View-Master 3-D travel reels head into the sunset
By DOUG WHITEMAN

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Amber LaPointe's introduction to one of the country's greatest tourist attractions came from small square pictures on a white wheel.

"It was like you could look into a world away," said the 28-year-old from Toledo, Ohio. "My only image of the Grand Canyon was from the View-Master."

The iconic reels of tourist attractions, often packaged with a clunky plastic viewer and first sold to promote 3-D photography, are ending their 70-year run after years of diminishing sales.

To read the rest of the article, click here.

Double Oscar Winner Not Exactly A Fan

THE INDEPENDENT: Forgotten golden girl of the Oscars
In the 1930s Luise Rainer won Best Actress Oscars in successive years. Gerard Gilbert meets a movie legend
Friday, 20 February 2009

One former Academy Award winner who won't be watching the Oscars this Sunday – and not just because she is almost deaf and no longer bothers with television – is the 99-year-old actress Luise Rainer. "All that ballyhoo... all these long speeches, thanking the grandparents and the great-grandparents... No, I find it very boring", she says in her German-accented English. You can only feel thankful that Rainer was spared Kate Winslet's simpering breakdown at the Golden Globes last month.

To read the rest of the article, click here.

Bloom County Heading Your Way. All Of It.

IDWPUBLISHING.COM: Bloom County Library to Collect Entire Run of Classic American Comic Strip - San Diego, February 4, 2009

IDW Publishing is pleased to announce the forthcoming release of The Bloom County Library. Beginning in October 2009, each of the five volumes will collect nearly two years worth of daily and Sunday strips, in chronological order. This will be the very first time that many of these comic strips have been collected, and the first time in a beautifully designed, hardcover format. The books will be part of IDW's Library of American Comics imprint, and designed by Eisner Award-winner Dean Mullaney.

"Fans have pestered me for years," said Berkeley Breathed, "for this ultimate BloomCounty collection in that polite, respectful badgering way that only fans can manage. Thank God I can now tell them something better than just 'please remove your tent from my lawn.' I can say, 'It's coming!"

To read the rest of this article, click here.

Production Begins On Secret Of The Unicorn

VARIETY: Bell, Craig to star in 'Tintin'
Steven Spielberg sets cast for trilogy
By TATIANA SIEGEL - Posted: Mon., Jan. 26, 2009, 3:45pm PT

Steven Spielberg has set his cast for "The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn," the first installment in the 3-D motion-capture trilogy that Paramount Pictures and Sony Pictures Entertainment are co-financing.

"Billy Elliot" thesp Jamie Bell will star as the titular character, an intrepid young reporter whose relentless pursuit of a good story thrusts him into a world of high adventure. Daniel Craig will co-star as the nefarious Red Rackham.

To read the rest of the article, click here.

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Refresh my memory here. Is "Secret of the Unicorn" a title of one of the original books, or is "Red Rackham's Treasure" being adapted under a different title?

Another Tom & Jerry Movie On The Way

VARIETY: Tom and Jerry head to the bigscreen
Warner Bros. playing cat and mouse game
By MARC GRASER - Posted: Wed., Jan. 21, 2009, 9:00pm PT

Warner Bros. is turning to Tom and Jerry to create its own "Alvin and the Chipmunks"-like family franchise.

Plans are to bring the constantly warring cat and mouse to life as CG characters that run around in live-action settings.

Studio-based Dan Lin, currently producing the upcoming "Sherlock Holmes" and exec producer on "Terminator: Salvation," will adapt the classic Hanna-Barbera property as an origin story that reveals how Tom and Jerry first meet and form their rivalry before getting lost in Chicago and reluctantly working together during an arduous journey home.

To read the rest of the article, click here.

Watchmen Legal Wrinkles Ironed Out

VARIETY: WB, Fox make deal for 'Watchmen'
Warner to open superhero film March 6
By MICHAEL FLEMING, DAVE MCNARY
Posted: Thurs., Jan. 15, 2009, 7:33pm PT

Warner Bros. and Fox have settled their very public battle over "Watchmen." A deal has been hammered out that that gives WB some face-saving points, but which gives Fox the equivalent of a movie star’s gross participation.

Warner Bros. gets the right to open its superhero pic on March 6 as planned, and Fox's logo will not be on the film, sources said.

To read the rest of the article, click here.

Salinger At Ninety

NY TIMES: Still Paging Mr. Salinger
By CHARLES MCGRATH
Published: December 30, 2008

On Thursday, J. D. Salinger turns 90. There probably won’t be a party, or if there is we’ll never know. For more than 50 years Mr. Salinger has lived in seclusion in the small town of Cornish, N.H. For a while it used to be a journalistic sport for newspapers and magazines to send reporters up to Cornish in hopes of a sighting, or at least a quotation from a garrulous local, but Mr. Salinger hasn’t been photographed in decades now and the neighbors have all clammed up. He’s been so secretive he makes Thomas Pynchon seem like a gadabout.

Mr. Salinger’s disappearing act has succeeded so well, in fact, that it may be hard for readers who aren’t middle-aged to appreciate what a sensation he once caused.

To read the rest of this article, click here.

Jack and Ben Shut Down, Layoff At Laika

OREGONLIVE.COM: Laika lays off 65, shelves CG film
by Mike Rogoway, The Oregonian
Wednesday December 17, 2008, 2:29 PM

Laika, Phil Knight's Portland animation studio, laid off 65 people today as it pulled the plug on a long-gestating film.

"Jack and Ben's Animated Adventure" was a computer-generated feature once slated to be Laika's second film. The first movie, a stop-motion picture called "Coraline," is due in theaters Feb. 6.

To read the rest of this article, click here.

What If... Brad Bird Had Directed The Spirit?

LA TIMES: 'The Spirit' movie that could have been
by Steven Paul Leiva - 11:55 AM PT, Dec 12 2008

For every movie that makes it to the screen, there are a thousand projects that fall to the wayside. Later this month, "The Spirit," finally, hits theaters after plenty of failed attempts. Steven Paul Leiva was a key figure in one of those failed attempts and in this guest essay for Hero Complex he talks about the film that could have been.

Frank Miller’s film version of Will Eisner’s innovative 1940s comic book, “The Spirit” opens on Christmas Day. It will be stylistic and hyper-visual, a hoped-for perfect melding of film and “sequential art,” a term coined by Eisner. What it will not be, however, is revolutionary. Comic book movies are now the meat and potatoes -- not to mention several side vegetables -- of Hollywood. And even its green screen, scene-simulation style is just part of a Miller continuum that started with “Sin City.”

But if the world had turned a little differently, if fate had been a little kinder, a “Spirit” feature film would have debuted in the 1980s that would not only have been revolutionary but -- those of us involved in it were convinced -- a huge hit, possibly the first $100 million-grossing animated feature. And the futures of such filmmakers as Brad Bird, Gary Kurtz, John Musker and John Lasseter might have taken alternative paths.

For the rest of the article, click here.

Thanks to Cartoon Brew for the tip!

Barbie's Best Accessory: Bright Pink Lawyers

Matty Mattel may pick up quite an entourage soon:

"In the battle of the doll makers, the house that Barbie built won a sweeping court victory Thursday, accessories and all.

A federal jury found that a Mattel Inc. designer created the lucrative Bratz doll concept while he worked at Mattel under an exclusivity contract.

It was a scathing defeat for MGA Entertainment Inc., which introduced the dolls -- known for big heads, pouty lips and bare-midriff outfits -- in 2001."

To read the rest of David Colker's LA Times article, click here.

Barbie Takes Bratz To Court

Apparently, the originator of the wildly successful Bratz doll line was still under contract with Mattel when Barbie's controversial rival was created. Naturally, with so much at stake, the claim is going to court:

"The tiny, fake fur was flying as the Barbie-Bratz court battle wrapped up Thursday, with toy industry giant Mattel Inc. and upstart MGA Entertainment Inc. both claiming ownership of the hugely successful Bratz line of dolls.

MGA, which seven years ago debuted the saucy Bratz doll, has maintained from the May 27 start of the trial that Mattel was trying to unfairly stomp out competition to its faltering Barbie empire.

"For 40 years Barbie was the only doll in town," Tom Nolan, lawyer for Van Nuys-based MGA, said in his closing argument. "And then Bratz came in and knocked her off her pedestal."

Mattel, headquartered in El Segundo, sued in 2004, claiming that Bratz -- known for hip-hugging outfits and bare midriffs that have given some parents fits -- were secretly created by one of its own Barbie designers, Carter Bryant, even though he had an exclusivity contract with the company."

Read the rest of David Colker's LA Times article here.

In Memoriam

Soldiers who lost their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2008.

Name * Rank * Date of death * Age * Home


Alicea, Rivera Rafael Angel * Ssg, Army * 02-05 * 30 * Bayamon, PR

Allmon, William Elliott * Sgt, Army * 04-12 * 25 * Ardmore, OK

Alvarez, Conrad * Sgt, Army * 02-20 * 22 * Big Spring, TX

Anderson, Joshua Roland * Spc, Army * 01-03 * 24 * Jordan, MN

Anderson, Phillip Reid * Sgt, Army * 03-10 * 28 * Everett, WA

Ault, Jesse Adam * Ssg, Army * 04-09 * 28 * Dublin, VA

Baez, Miguel Angel III * Cpl, Army * 02-05 * 32 * Bonaire, GA

Barrett, Chad Alan * Ssg, Army * 02-02 * 35 * Saltville, VA

Bennett, Durrell Lavoy * Cpl, Army * 03-29 * 22 * Spanaway, WA

Birkman, Tracy Renee * Sgt, Army * 01-25 * 41 * New Castle, VA

Bishop, John Thomas * Pfc, Army * 04-23 * 22 * Gaylord, MI

Bitton, Albert * Cpl, Army * 02-20 * 20 * Chicago, IL

Blystone, Ronald Carl * Ssg, Army * 04-23 * 34 * Springfield, MO

Bolander, Bryan Eugene * Ssg, Army * 04-29 * 26 * Bakersfield, CA

Bradley, Juantrea Tyrone * Ssg, Army * 03-12 * 28 * Greenville, NC

Brosh, Benjamin Keith * Cpl, Army * 04-18 * 22 * Colorado Springs, CO

Brown, Jason Logan * Ssg, Army * 04-17 * 29 * Magnolia, TX

Brown, Lerando Junior * Sgt, Army * 03-15 * 27 * Gulfport, MS

To see the full list, click here.

Blogging: A Cautionary Tale (Excerpts)

"Back in 2006, when I was 24, my life was cozy and safe. I had just been promoted to associate editor at the publishing house where I’d been working since I graduated from college, and I was living with my boyfriend, Henry, and two cats in a grubby but spacious two-bedroom apartment in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. I spent most of my free time sitting with Henry in our cheery yellow living room on our stained Ikea couch, watching TV. And almost every day I updated my year-old blog, Emily Magazine, to let a few hundred people know what I was reading and watching and thinking about...

...The anecdotes I posted on Emily Magazine occasionally featured Henry, whom my readers knew as a lovably bumbling character, a bassist in a fledgling noise-rock band who said unexpectedly insightful things about the contestants on “Project Runway” and then wondered aloud whether we had any snacks. I didn’t write about him often, but when I did, I’d quote his best jokes or tell stories about vacationing with his family.

Henry, seemingly alone among our generation, went out of his way to keep his online presence minimal. Now that we’ve broken up, I appreciate this about him — it’s pretty much impossible to torture myself by Google-stalking him. But back then, what this meant was that he was never particularly thrilled to be written about. Sometimes he was enraged.

Once, I made fun of Henry for referring to “Project Runway” as “Project Gayway.” He worried that “people” — the shadowy, semi-imaginary people who read my blog and didn’t know Henry well enough to know that he wasn’t a homophobe — would be offended. He insisted that I take down the offending post and watched as I sat at my desk in our bedroom, slowly, grudgingly making the keystrokes necessary to delete what I’d written. As I sat there staring into the screen at the reflection of Henry standing behind me, I burst into tears. And then we were pacing, screaming at each other, through every room of our apartment, facing off with wild eyes and clenched jaws...

...As Henry and I fought, I kept coming back to the idea that I had a right to say whatever I wanted. I don’t think I understood then that I could be right about being free to express myself but wrong about my right to make that self-expression public in a permanent way. I described my feelings in the language of empowerment: I was being creative, and Henry wanted to shut me up. His point of view was just as extreme: I wasn’t generously sharing my thoughts; I was compulsively seeking gratification from strangers at the expense of the feelings of someone I actually knew and loved. I told him that writing, especially writing about myself and my surroundings, was a fundamental part of my personality, and that if he wanted to remain in my life, he would need to reconcile himself to being part of the world I described.

After a standoff, he conceded that I should be allowed to put the post back up. As he sulked in the other room, I retyped what I’d written, feeling vindicated but slightly queasy for reasons I didn’t quite understand yet."

Photo by Elinor Carucci.

To read the rest of Emily Gould's NY Times Magazine article, click here.

A Methodical Construction Of Sprawling Adventure

"LONDON — Any writer who has struggled to 'do the words' would take heart from the self-effacing assessment written for himself by Ian Fleming, the raffish Englishman born 100 years ago this month who became one of the most successful authors of his time through the creation of the world’s best-loved spy, James Bond.

Fleming died in 1964, at 56, of complications from pleurisy after playing a round of golf in Oxfordshire though he had a heavy cold. But the real culprits were years of smoking up to 80 cigarettes a day, and a fondness for drink. Perhaps because of the difficulty he found in resisting life’s indulgences, he adopted a strict writing routine in his last 12 years, the period in which he wrote more than a dozen Bond novels that spawned the multibillion-dollar film franchise.

Rising early for a swim in the aquamarine waters in the cove below his idyllic Jamaican retreat, Goldeneye, Fleming tapped away at his Remington portable typewriter with six fingers for three hours in the morning and an hour in the afternoon — 2,000 words a day, a completed novel in two months, all the while keeping up the sybaritic lifestyle that led Noël Coward, a frequent guest at Goldeneye and no puritan himself, to describe the Fleming household as 'golden ear, nose and throat.'”

Photo: Horst Tappe/Hulton Archive — Getty Images

To read the rest of John F. Burns' NY Times article, click here.

California Supreme Court Approves Same-Sex Marriages

SAN FRANCISCO — Gay and lesbian couples in San Francisco rejoiced Thursday over a California Supreme Court decision affirming their right to marry even as political leaders on both sides of the issue girded for an extended fight in the courts and at the ballot box.

“It’s just amazing to feel like I am a full citizen — I am not a second-class citizen,” said Christmas Laubrile, a nurse, who was with her partner, Alice Heimsoth. “I don’t have to sit in the back of the bus, and I don’t have to take second best.”

Among those celebrating were Gavin Newsom, the city’s mayor, who had set off a fair amount of the national debate over gay marriage in 2004 when he ordered the county clerk to issue licenses to same-sex couples. More than 4,000 couples married, though those unions were later invalidated by lower court decisions.

“What a day for San Francisco, what a day for California, what a day for America, what a day for equality,” Mr. Newsom said before a crowd of several hundred jubilant supporters at San Francisco City Hall.

Photo by Jim Wilson.

To read the rest of Jesse McKinley's NY Times article, click here.

Remake OTD: The Bad Lieutenant

"Nicolas Cage will star in an updated version of 1992's 'The Bad Lieutenant' with Werner Herzog directing, Edward R. Pressman producing and Avi Lerner's Nu Image/Millenium Films financing.

Project, also called 'The Bad Lieutenant,' is due to be announced at Cannes. Production will start in late summer.

The original pic, also produced by Pressman, starred Harvey Keitel and was directed by Abel Ferrara from a screenplay by Ferrara and Zoe Lund. That pic received an NC-17 rating with the depraved title character heavily involved in drugs, gambling, sex and stealing while a New York police officer."

To read the rest of Dave McNary's Variety article, click here.

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Well, you know, there's a franchise there.

Fraggle Movie Moves Forward

"The Weinstein Co. will turn the Jim Henson series 'Fraggle Rock' into a live-action musical feature.

Cory Edwards, who directed the animated 'Hoodwinked!' for TWC, will helm the picture and write the screenplay. The Jim Henson Co. will produce and TWC will distribute.

Just like the series, the film will be populated by a mix of human characters and Fraggle Rock puppets. TWC co-chair Harvey Weinstein, who has been steering his company more aggressively into the family film arena, made the marriage with Lisa Henson, who runs JHC with her co-CEO brother, Brian Henson."

If you want to read the rest of Michael Fleming's Variety article, click here.

Chris Wedge Throws Hat In Live-Action Ring

"Ice Age" helmer Chris Wedge has signed on to direct Brian Selznick's magic-themed children's novel "The Invention of Hugo Cabret" for Graham King's GK Films, Johnny Depp's Infinitum Nihil and Warner Bros.

"The Aviator" scribe John Logan has been tapped to pen the adaptation.

King and Infinitum Nihil's Christi Dembrowski will produce the live-action film, which centers on an orphaned boy who secretly lives in the walls of a busy Paris train station and looks after the clocks. He gets caught up in a mystery adventure when he attempts to repair a mechanical man.

To read more of Tatiana Siegel's Variety article, click here.

David Silverman Directing For Disney

"David Silverman, who most recently helmed 'The Simpsons Movie,' has signed on to develop and direct 'The Pet,' a live-action sci-fi family comedy for Disney. Scott Rudin and Craig Perry are producing."

To read the rest of Borys Kit and Gregg Goldstein's THR article, click here. Photo by Ronnie Del Carmen.

Congratulations, David! Have fun!

Things That Read Like Onion Articles, But Aren't Dept.

"'My Beautiful Mommy' is aimed at kids ages four to seven and features a plastic surgeon named Dr. Michael (a musclebound superhero type) and a girl whose mother gets a tummy tuck, a nose job and breast implants. Before her surgery the mom explains that she is getting a smaller tummy: 'You see, as I got older, my body stretched and I couldn't fit into my clothes anymore. Dr. Michael is going to help fix that and make me feel better.' Mom comes home looking like a slightly bruised Barbie doll with demure bandages on her nose and around her waist.

The text doesn't mention the breast augmentation, but the illustrations intentionally show Mom's breasts to be fuller and higher. 'I tried to skirt that issue in the text itself,' says Salzhauer. 'The tummy lends itself to an easy explanation to the children: extra skin and can't fit into your clothes. The breasts might be a stretch for a six-year-old.'

The book doesn't explain exactly why the mother is redoing her nose post-pregnancy. Nonetheless, Mom reassures her little girl that the new nose won't just look 'different, my dear—prettier!'"

To read the rest of Karen Springen's Newsweek article, click here

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While I kinda-sorta understand the intention of explaining your hospital visit rather than simply disappearing for a while, there's something about introducing a child to more body image issues (and surgical options) to the four-to-seven set that just seems... wrong.

I think they should change the name of the book to, "Mommy Needs This, Jane". Here's some suggestions for additional page captions:

* Daddy talks with the new secretary a lot.
* Daddy's team leader was pretty, too, but her shirt needed more buttons.
* Daddy's DVDs were weird. Jane had never seen girls like these before.
* Mommy was very quiet. She looked in the mirror all day.
* Doctor Tucker gave Mommy some papers. She signed them really fast.
* He explained to Jane that to make Mommy pretty again, that he had to make her a little sick.
* Mommy's face was different. But it wasn't good-different this time.

Here's a preview of the sequel, "Dick Is Small":

* Daddy looked nervous. Wouldn't Dick rather play with the bigger truck if he could pick?, he said. Well, girls feel that way, too.

Dave Barclay Interview

"Films like Star Wars, Labyrinth and The Dark Crystal were graced with the inventive and imaginative characters brought to life by Dave Barclay. Carole Bouchard had a chance to talk to the puppet master about his unique career.

Now that he has embraced new technology like motion capture, CG and real-time digital puppeteering, he is definitely pioneering an exciting future for a craft that injects real and unique personality into storytelling."

To read the rest of Carole Bouchard's CG Channel interview with my buddy Dave, click here!

Awww!

"What's black and white and warm all over? A penguin in a wetsuit, naturally. Sounds like a joke, but it's quite serious for biologists at the California Academy of Sciences, who had a wetsuit created for an African penguin to help him get back in the swim of things.

Pierre, a venerable 25 years old, was going bald, which left him with an embarrassingly exposed, pale pink behind.

Unlike marine mammals, which have a layer of blubber to keep them warm, penguins rely on their waterproof feathers. Without them, Pierre was unwilling to plunge into the academy's penguin tank and ended up shivering on the sidelines while his 19 peers played in the water.

'He was cold; he would shake,' said Pam Schaller, a senior aquatic biologist at the academy."
To read the rest of Michelle Locke's MSNBC article, click here.

Del Toro To Direct Hobbit Films

"In a major step forward on 'The Hobbit,' Guillermo del Toro has signed on to direct the New Line-MGM tentpole and its sequel.

The widely expected announcement -- which had been rumored for several weeks -- came Thursday afternoon jointly from exec producers Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh, New Line president Toby Emmerich, and Mary Parent, newly named chief of MGM’s Worldwide Motion Picture Group.

Del Toro’s moving to New Zealand for the next four years to work with Jackson and his Wingnut and Weta production teams. He’ll direct the two films back to back, with the sequel dealing with the 60-year period between 'The Hobbit' and 'The Fellowship of the Ring,' the first of the 'Lord of the Rings' trilogy."

To read the rest of Dave McNary's Variety article, click here.

Daniel Myrick: Success As Librating Force

“The Blair Witch Project,” the cult hit released in 1999, ends without ending, but the viewer is pretty sure that what follows after the abrupt camera cut is quite grim. And one of the people who never seemed to make it back from those dark, awful woods was Daniel Myrick, the film’s co-director.

Mr. Myrick spurned the Hollywood blandishments that came his way in the film’s aftermath, instead charting his own course, including a few straight-to-video projects that did not remotely approach the culture-tilting or commercial impact of “Blair Witch,” his first feature. But despite the jokes — and articles — about “The Curse of the Blair Witch,” Mr. Myrick never became frantic about the next big thing.

To read the rest of David Carr's New York Times article, click here.

Remake OTD: The Fury

Fox 2000 is set to bring Brian De Palma’s “The Fury” back to the bigscreen.

The label has tapped Brian McGreevy and Lee Shipman to pen a contemporary reimagining of the 1978 supernatural horror film.

New version will center on a young man with heightened kinetic powers who is abducted by the government in order to take advantage of his special gifts.

To read the rest of Tatiana Siegel's Variety article, click here.

Mighty Atom Gains Weight

"Forget the svelte little feller capable of soaring through the skies and 100,000 horsepower strength: the roly-poly latest incarnation of Japan's most famous cartoon character of all is more like LardAss-tro Boy, according to Shukan Shincho (4/10).

In a collaboration with decorated illustrator Lily Franky, Tezuka Productions has produced a version of Astro Boy (known as 'Mighty Atom' in Japan) with fleshy jowls and a belly that wouldn't look out of place on Japan's other icons, sumo wrestlers."

Read the rest of Ryann Connell's Manichi Daily News article here.

Joe Simon, 94, Appearing At New York Comic Con

“'Living legend' is how Joe Simon is categorized on the list of special guests appearing at the New York Comic Con at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center this weekend. Mr. Simon, 94, has a different take on it. 'I call it the old-geezer table,' he said during a recent interview at his Midtown Manhattan apartment.

Mr. Simon will take part in the 'Legends Behind the Comic Books' panel at 3 p.m. on Friday, one of numerous events planned at the convention, a three-day celebration of all things comics.

Mr. Simon earned the 'legend' title with his partner Jack Kirby by creating Captain America, the superhero who arrived in December 1940, just in time to play a patriotic foil to the Axis powers. The cover of the first issue even has the good captain socking Hitler in the jaw.

For Mr. Simon and Mr. Kirby, though, the biggest blow came when they were dismissed from the series, which had been selling a million copies a month, in a dispute over royalties. The team moved to Detective Comics (today DC Comics), but Captain America stayed with Timely, the forerunner of Marvel Comics.

It’s a tale worthy of its own comic (and one of many inspirations for Michael Chabon’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, 'The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay'): On the frontier of a new industry, writers and artists creating scores of characters, but publishers profiting from them."

To read the rest of George Gene Gustine's New York Times article, click here.

And Then There Were None: Ollie Johnston, 1912 - 2008

Ollie Johnston, the last of Walt Disney's legendary animators dubbed "The Nine Old Men", died today at the age of ninety-six. His work has inspired legions of animators, cartoonists and fans alike.

Condolences to his friends and family.

UPDATE: If you'd like to read Charles Solomon's New York Times obituary for Mr. Johnston, click here.

Roger Ebert Retires From Television

"WHAT is film criticism? This may sound like a lofty philosophical question, but I suspect to most people it has a down-to-earth, empirical answer. Film criticism is two guys (and usually it is guys) arguing: shifting in their seats, rolling their eyes, pointing fingers and interrupting, and every now and then agreeing. Or that’s the way it looks on television at least.

One of the guys who made it look that way, who made the crazy idea that movie critics could thrive on TV seem like a no-brainer, recently announced his departure from the airwaves. On April 1 Roger Ebert published a letter to readers of The Chicago Sun-Times that was essentially a farewell to the long-running, widely syndicated weekly program that has made him not simply the best-known movie reviewer in America, but the virtual embodiment of this curious profession.

But the real news in Mr. Ebert’s letter was his return to regular written criticism. A recurrence of cancer of the salivary gland in the summer of 2006 might have left him unable to speak — a problem recent surgery failed to solve — but he has hardly lost his voice."

To read the rest of A. O. Scott's article, click here.

Photo by Associated Press.

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Isn't that picture fantastic? It really kicks my already overactive nostalgia into overdrive!

Copyright Law Under Siege

"As an artist, you have to read this article or you could lose everything you've ever created!

An Orphaned Work is any creative work of art where the artist or copyright owner has released their copyright, whether on purpose, by passage of time, or by lack of proper registration. In the same way that an orphaned child loses the protection of his or her parents, your creative work can become an orphan for others to use without your permission.

Currently, you don't have to register your artwork to own the copyright. You own a copyright as soon as you create something. International law also supports this. Right now, registration allows you to sue for damages, in addition to fair value.

What makes me so MAD about this new legislation is that it legalizes THEFT! The only people who benefit from this are those who want to make use of our creative works without paying for them and large companies who will run the new private copyright registries.

These registries are companies that you would be forced to pay in order to register every single image, photo, sketch or creative work.

It is currently against international law to coerce people to register their work for copyright because there are so many inherent problems with it. But because big business can push through laws in the United States, our country is about to break with the rest of the world, again, and take your rights away.

With the tens of millions of photos and pieces of artwork created each year, the bounty for forcing everyone to pay a registration fee would be enormous. We lose our rights and our creations, and someone else makes money at our expense.

This includes every sketch, painting, photo, sculpture, drawing, video, song and every other type of creative endeavor. All of it is at risk!"

To find out more, read the rest of Mark Simon's AWN article here.

Illustration by Jon Hofferman.

UPDATE: It's worth double-checking, but I've heard that this is old news - that the bill has been voted down already. Can anyone confirm that?

Remake OTD: Wuthering Heights

"Natalie Portman is attached as the lead in a new film version of 'Wuthering Heights.'

Olivia Hetreed ('Girl With a Pearl Earring') wrote the script.

The most recent bigscreen adaptation of Emily Bronte's classic matched Ralph Fiennes with Juliette Binoche, but the Goldwyn release grossed just $624,643 in 1989."

Read the rest of Dade Hayes' Variety article here.

Remake OTD: Stanno Tutti Bene/Everybody's Fine

"Robert De Niro, Drew Barrymore, Kate Beckinsale and Sam Rockwell are set to star in the Kirk Jones-directed 'Everybody's Fine.'

The remake of the Giuseppe Tornatore film 'Stanno Tutti Bene' was written by Jones. He came aboard when the redo was first set up by Hollywood Gang Prods. and Cecchi Gori USA (Daily Variety, March 16, 2006).

De Niro will play a widower who realizes that his deceased wife was his only connection to his children. He decides on a whim to take a road trip to reconnect with each of his grown kids, discovering that their lives are far from perfect."

To read the rest of Micheal Fleming's article, click here.

Remake OTD: Short Circuit

"Dimension Films is rewiring 'Short Circuit,' acquiring rights to remake the 1986 film.

S.S. Wilson and Brent Maddock, who created the characters and wrote both 'Short Circuit' films, have been hired to write the remake. David Foster and Ryan E. Heppe will produce with John Hyde."

Read the rest of the article here.

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Wow, the eighties are back with a vengeance! I guess 'Saturn 3' will be next.

Sooner Or Later, Everyone Remakes Rick's

"It is one of the greatest films of Hollywood's golden era, a triple Oscar-winning classic with electrifyingly charismatic stars and a script bursting with memorable lines.

But now Madonna has stunned the movie industry with plans to remake Casablanca – and this time set it in Iraq.

The singer, whose previous film career has been littered with critical and commercial turkeys, is also planning to take the lead role of Ilsa Lund, which originally made a star of Ingrid Bergman."

Read the rest of the Daily Mail article here.

Al Jaffee, Still Folding In

"If you were young at any time in the last 44 years, you know the fold-in: the feature on the inside of Mad’s back cover that poses a question whose answer is found by folding the page in thirds. September 1978: “What colorful fantastic creature is still being exploited even after it has wiggled and died?” A picture of a garish butterfly, folded, becomes an equally garish Elvis.

The fold-ins these days are as full of youth culture as ever. (March 2008: “What major star has recently admitted receiving illegal career-damaging human growth injections?” And a picture that looks as if it’s going to be Roger Clemens folds to become Jamie Lynn Spears, pregnant.) So the first thing that strikes you when Mr. Jaffee greets you at the door of his studio on the East Side of Manhattan is his age. This man, still credibly negotiating the milieu of teenagers, is 87."

-- Neil Genzlinger, from his New York Times article. Read the rest here!

Photo by Librado Romero.

PS - Be sure and try the cool interactive fold-in retrospective!

The Evidence Of D.B. Cooper?

"The worn parachute that children found while playing on their family’s property in rural southwestern Washington this month may be the one that D. B. Cooper used on that mysterious night in 1971 when he carried out what the authorities call the only unsolved hijacking in United States history.

Then again, maybe not." -- William Yardley, NY Times

If you're as curious as I was, you can read the rest of the article here.

David Lean's Centenary

"And so we are left with a galling irony: on March 25th, almost none of us will see “Lawrence” on the big screen. That is its natural habitat—the only place, you might say, where its proud and leonine presence has any meaning. Anything more cramped is a cage, as Jon Stewart showed during this year’s Oscar ceremony. At one point, we found him gazing at his iPhone. “I’m watching ‘Lawrence of Arabia.’ It’s just awesome,” he said, adding, “To really appreciate it, you have to see it in the wide screen.” And he turned the phone on its side. Deserts of vast eternity, reduced to three inches by two." -- Anthony Lane

Read the whole article here.

Where Is John Hughes?

"JOHN HUGHES hasn't set foot in Hollywood for years, but his influence has never been more potent. The king of 1980s comedy, Hughes now qualifies as something of a Howard Hughes-style recluse -- he doesn't have an agent, doesn't give interviews and lives far away, somewhere in Chicago's sprawling North Shore suburbs where most of his films were set."

I'm not the biggest fan of his films, but this is an interesting article. Read the rest of it here.

"They're Young, They're Beautiful, They Kill People"

"I was arguing with Jack Warner about 'Bonnie and Clyde,' and he said to me, 'Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's fine, kid, that's your opinion.' Then he says, 'You have your opinion, but you do know whose name is up on the water tower, right?' So I said, 'Yeah, hey, look, it's got my initials!' "

-- Warren Beatty, qouted from Geoff Boucher's great LA Times article about the genesis and impact of Bonnie & Clyde. Read it here!

Remake OTD: The Wolfman

"...with this film, when I first found out they were going to do it, I went and talked to somebody I know at Universal. I said, 'You've got to let me do this! I'll do some really cool stuff.'"

-- Rick Baker, on campaigning to do makeup on Joe Johnston's The Wolfman.

There's a great interview at ew.com with preview photos. Check it out!

Scott Pilgrim Movie On The Way

HOLLYWOOD REPORTER: Cera ponders 'Life' with Universal
By Borys Kit - March 19, 2008

Michael Cera is in final negotiations to star in "Scott Pilgrim's Little Life" for Universal.

Edgar Wright is directing the adventure romance, which is being produced by Marc Platt and Eric Gitter. Wright and Nina Park also are producing.

"Life" tells the story of a young slacker (Cera) who meets the woman of his dreams but finds that he can only win her heart by battling and defeating her seven evil ex-boyfriends.

The project is based on the Oni Press graphic novel "Scott Pilgrim Volume 1: Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life," written by Bryan Lee O'Malley. Michael Bacall and Wright wrote the screenplay.

Cera and Wright had mutual admiration for each other's work, which manifested itself when Wright stepped in to act alongside Cera and Jonah Hill in a viral promo for "Superbad"; Wright acted as a snarky interviewer to an exasperated Cera and Hill.

The studio is eyeing a fall start.

Cera is filming the Judd Apatow-produced "Year One" with Jack Black. He next shoots "Youth in Revolt" for Dimension, with Miguel Arteta directing.

He is repped by Paradigm, Thruline Entertainment and attorney Jamie Feldman.

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Congratulations, Mr. O'Malley! A "Pilgrim" movie could be a lot of fun!

Thanks to I Watch Stuff! for the tip-off.

Lost Sleeping Beauty Art Comes Home

"A Japanese university plans to return about 250 pieces of original animation art to the Walt Disney Company that were mislaid in storage after traveling to Japan nearly five decades ago.

Disney said that the art — cels, backgrounds, preliminary paintings and storyboard sketches — was part of a collection that was handpicked by Walt Disney himself. It was sent to Japan in 1960 for a touring exhibition timed to the opening of the film 'Sleeping Beauty.' The exhibition opened at Mitsukoshi Department Store in Tokyo in May of that year and traveled to 16 other stores throughout Japan."

To read the rest of Charles Solomon's article, click here.

Remake OTD: Dune

VARIETY: Berg to direct 'Dune' for Paramount
Misher producing adaptation of sci-fi novel
By TATIANA SIEGEL - Posted: Mon., Mar. 17, 2008, 9:00pm PT

Peter Berg is attached to direct a bigscreen adaptation of Frank Herbert's classic sci-fi novel "Dune" for Paramount Pictures.

Kevin Misher, who spent the past year obtaining the book rights from the Herbert estate, will produce via his Par-based shingle.

Herbert's 1965 novel is a sweeping, futuristic tale set on the remote desert planet Arrakis, which produces the interstellar empire's sole source of the spice Melange -- used for distant space travel. An empirewide power struggle ensues over the control of the spice. Berg would be the latest helmer to take a crack at the property, which spawned a 1984 David Lynch film as well as a 2000 Sci Fi Channel miniseries starring William Hurt.

The project is out to writers, with the producers looking for a faithful adaptation of the Hugo- and Nebula Award-winning book. The filmmakers consider its theme of finite ecological resources particularly timely.

New Amsterdam's Richard Rubenstein, who produced Sci Fi's "Dune" and sequel "Children of Dune," is also producing alongside Sarah Aubrey of Film 44, Berg's production banner. John Harrison and Mike Messina exec produce.

Paramount envisions the project as a tentpole film.

Berg and Misher enjoy strong ties dating back to Misher's executive days at Universal Pictures. Misher also produced Berg's second directorial outing, "The Rundown."

Actor-turned-helmer Berg most recently directed the upcoming Will Smith starrer "Hancock." His directing credits include "The Kingdom" and "Friday Night Lights."

Remake OTD: Heavy Metal

VARIETY: Paramount puts pedal to 'Metal'
Fincher tests 'Heavy'
By MICHAEL FLEMING - Posted: Thurs., Mar. 13, 2008, 8:30pm PT

Paramount Pictures will make an animated film inspired by the '70s sci-fi fantasy magazine Heavy Metal, with director David Fincher spearheading the project.

"Heavy Metal" will be stamped by the erotic and violent storylines and images that remain the trademark of a magazine that debuted in the U.S. in 1977. The mag introduced the works of American artists and writers such as Robert Silverberg, Harlan Ellison and H.R. Giger.

The film will consist of eight or nine individual animated segments, each of which will be directed by a different helmer.

Fincher will direct one of the segments; Kevin Eastman, the "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" co-creator who is now owner and publisher of Heavy Metal, will direct another. So will Tim Miller, whose Blur Studios will handle the animation for what is being conceived as an R-rated, adult-themed feature.

Fincher, Eastman and Miller will produce the film. The studio will lock in the other directors shortly. The mag previously spawned a 1981 animated feature and 2000 sequel.

Fincher, who directed "Zodiac" for Par, recently wrapped the Brad Pitt-Cate Blanchett starrer "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," which Par releases Dec. 19. Fincher recently became attached to direct Paramount's adaptation of the Charles Burns graphic novel "Black Hole" and is also developing "Torso" and "The Killer" for the studio.

Miller is writing, directing and producing a feature-length version of "Rockfish." Blur has also been responsible for animating such videogames as "Transformers: The Game," based on the hit pic from DreamWorks and Paramount.

Dave Stevens, 1955-2008

NEWSFROMME.COM: Dave Stevens, R.I.P.
by Mark Evanier
Tuesday, March 11, 2008 - 11:25 AM

Illustrator Dave Stevens, best known for his "good girl" art and The Rocketeer, died yesterday following a long, wrenching battle with Leukemia. Dave was born July 29, 1955 in Lynwood, California. He was raised in Portland, Oregon, then his family relocated to San Diego, where he attended San Diego City College and became involved in the early days of the San Diego Comic Book Convention, now known as the Comic-Con International. His skills as an artist were instantly evident to all, and he was encouraged by darn near every professional artist who attended the early cons, but especially by Jack Kirby and Russ Manning. In 1975, when Manning began editing a line of Tarzan comic books to be published in Europe, Dave got his first professional assignment, working on those comics and also assisting Russ with the Tarzan newspaper strip. Soon after, he worked on a few projects for Marvel (including the Star Wars comic book) and a number of underground comics. Later, he also worked with Russ on the Star Wars newspaper strip.

In 1977, Dave went to work for Hanna-Barbera where he drew storyboards and layouts, many of them for the Super Friends and Godzilla cartoon shows and bonded with veteran artist Doug Wildey, who produced the latter. Wildey and Stevens became close friends and in 1982, when Dave created his popular character, The Rocketeer, he modelled the character's sidekick, Peevy, on photos of Doug. Dave himself was Cliff Secord, who donned the mask of The Rocketeer, and other friends appeared in other guises.

The Rocketeer made Dave's reputation and also spawned a resurgence of interest in fifties' figure model Bettie Page, whose likeness Dave used for the strip's heroine. But the strip was not profitable for Dave, who was among the least prolific talents to ever attempt comic books. It wasn't so much that he was slow, as his friends joked, but that he was almost obsessively meticulous, doing days of study and sketching to create one panel, and doing many of them over and over. Even then, he was usually dissatisfied with what he produced and fiercely critical of the reproduction. Friends occasionally pitched in to help with the coloring but some begged off because they knew it was humanly impossible for anyone, including Dave himself, to produce coloring that he'd like. Eventually, he sold most of the rights to Disney for a Rocketeer movie that was produced in 1991. Dave served as a co-producer of the film and did a brief cameo, but the endeavor was not as lucrative for him as he'd hoped, and it pretty much ended Dave's interest in continuing the character.

Most of what Dave did after that fell into the general category of "glamour art," including portfolios and private commissions. Many of these were illustrations of Bettie Page who, though once thought deceased, turned out to be alive and living not all that far from Dave. They met and Dave became her friend and, though he was not wealthy, benefactor. Deciding that too many others had callously exploited her likeness, Dave voluntarily aided Ms. Page financially and even took to helping her in neighborly ways. One time, he told me — and without the slightest hint of resentment — "It's amazing. After years of fantasizing about this woman, I'm now driving her to cash her Social Security checks."

Dave was truly one of the nicest people I have ever met in my life...and was certainly among the most gifted. Our first encounter was at Jack Kirby's house around 1971 when he came to visit and show Jack some of his work. As I said, Kirby was very encouraging and he urged Dave not to try and draw like anyone else but to follow his own passions. This was advice Dave took to heart, which probably explains why he took so long with every drawing. They were rarely just jobs to Dave. Most of the time, what emerged from his drawing board or easel was a deeply personal effort. He was truly in love with every beautiful woman he drew, at least insofar as the paper versions were concerned. (Dave was married once...for six months to the prolific movie actress, Brinke Stevens, and she retained his last name after they divorced.)

Dave's illness these last few years was a poorly-kept secret among his friends, but he insisted that it be kept quiet, and struggled to make occasional public appearances. We tried to get together for dinner every month or so but it wound up being more like every six months. The last time, he joked that it was lucky he had such a reputation for slow production. Now that he was unable to work for weeks at a time, no one noticed that his output had declined. His main efforts went towards an "Art of Dave Stevens" book he was struggling to assemble. Mostly though that evening, we talked about comics and comic artists. Dave was a fan in the very best sense.

I don't really know how to end this and maybe I don't want to...because it will mean another level of loss regarding one of my closest friends. As long as I can keep writing about him, I feel he's still with me in some manner. And the thought of losing a great guy like Dave Stevens is just too, too sad. He was truly loved and admired by all who knew him. I'll post information about a memorial service, if and when I hear about that kind of thing.

A Comic Artist Crosses Over Into Fashion

WALL STREET JOURNAL: From Caped Crusaders to Hoodies
Cartoonist Paul Pope Is Branching Out With His Own DKNY Jeans Line
By JAMIN BROPHY-WARREN - March 8, 2008; Page W1

Paul Pope usually draws costumes for superheroes. Now he's designing clothes for real people.

The 37-year-old artist has inked works for both Marvel and DC Comics. Last year, he won two Eisner Awards (the comic equivalent of an Oscar) for his work on "Batman: Year 100," a portrait of the Dark Knight in 2039. Revered comics creator Frank Miller calls Mr. Pope's work "brilliantly sloppy."

Recently, Mr. Pope has set his sights on another creative arena: fashion. Last year, Diesel, an Italian fashion company, hired him to design silk-screens and window displays for its Los Angeles store. Also last year, Mr. Pope took on his biggest fashion project: DKNY, the New York fashion company started by Donna Karan, tapped him to design his own line for the DKNY Jeans brand, bringing his dark graphic work to pants, hoodies and T-shirts. Last week, the final samples of his work arrived at the company's headquarters in New York. The line debuts this fall.

Kevin Monogue, president of DKNY Jeans, says the cartoonist's art strikes a chord with the company's target customers: fashion-forward urban professionals.

Cartoonists like Mr. Pope have become major players in the entertainment world. Marjane Satrapi, author of "Persepolis," co-directed the Oscar-nominated movie based on her graphic novel. Mr. Miller, author of the comics "Sin City" and "300" (both made into hit movies), is directing the film "The Spirit." And writer Brian K. Vaughan rode the popularity of his "Y: The Last Man" and "Ex Machina" comic books into an executive story-editor position for ABC's "Lost."

Joss Whedon, writer of the TV show "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," which is now a best-selling comic, says that comic artists are a great source of ideas. "To put it in movie terms, he's your co-director, actor, editor, and costume designer. He makes everything at once," says Mr. Whedon.

Mr. Pope has been in demand by a wide range of companies. Industrial Light and Magic flew him to San Francisco to teach its staff the finer points of creating fictional worlds. The popular vinyl toy maker Kidrobot tapped Mr. Pope to create a line for the company. He also served as a consultant for the animated film adaptation of Michael Chabon's Pulitzer-winning novel "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay."

Fellow cartoonists call Mr. Pope the "Jim Morrison of comics," for his brooding material and his ragged fashion sense. In his comics, his brush strokes are lush and unruly, and evoke Japanese calligraphy. His images are typically gritty and dystopian, but underlined with a dark beauty. At last year's San Diego Comic-Con, Mr. Pope was mobbed by hundreds of fans demanding signatures on their sketchbooks and the occasional body part. Mr. Pope regularly turns material in late, but collaborators endure the tardiness because "it's damn well worth it," one former editor says.

Artistic Inspiration

At the viewing of his line for DKNY last week, Mr. Pope arrived fashionably late, finally entering adorned in a black velvet jacket and boot-cut jeans. DKNY's Mr. Monogue waited for more than a half hour. Surrounded by mannequins wearing his clothing, Mr. Pope laced his fingers along the inside of the items. It was the first time Mr. Pope had seen the finished pieces on a human shape. He lingered over one of his favorite pieces: a jacket with a multi-panel comic he authored splayed across the inside. The comic was an abstract piece about love in outer space. "We looked at a lot of Mapplethorpe for this one," he says, referring to Robert Mapplethorpe, the photographer known for his stark, often erotic black-and-white work.

Mr. Pope often draws inspiration from artists outside his field, such as photographers, painters and musicians. He thrives at night, taking in jazz at a bar around the corner of his SoHo area apartment. He walks with a low gait and a long stride, his tangled hair often tucked under a beanie. His voice is fluid and his statements sometimes provocatively grandiose. In a cab ride across the Williamsburg Bridge, he pauses and says: "Art ended with Warhol, and music with Hendrix." Later he wonders if he's the last artist living in his neighborhood.

He draws full, Mick Jagger-like lips, perhaps a nod to the British rock he plays when he works -- or to his own image. Most of the male figures he draws look like him, sporting the same wiry frame and angular facial features. "He looks as if he'd been drawn by himself," says novelist Mr. Chabon. "There's a liquid quality in the way he moves."

Mr. Pope grew up in a farmhouse in Bowling Green, Ohio. His parents split up when he was five, and he turned to drawing as a way to "make people happy." He went to Ohio State to pursue art but never finished. He later worked for Kodansha, a publisher of Japanese manga comics, and took periodic trips to Tokyo. After leaving the company, he scored his breakthrough work in 2006 with the publication of the widely acclaimed "Batman: Year 100." He has two book-length comics due out in the next year: "THB" and "Battling Boy."

Though he's working with some of DKNY Jeans' top people, Mr. Pope has never before designed clothes. His 12-year-old nephew jokes that Mr. Pope is a superhero "because I always wear the same thing," Mr. Pope says. At his favorite Italian bar downtown, he admits that Diesel gave him lots of free clothing. "I don't even know how much this costs," he says, pointing at his jacket.

He's a striking contrast to the image of the awkward, unhip comic artist epitomized by Robert Crumb and Harvey Pekar. One of his former editors remembers meeting a young Mr. Pope at a comic conference 10 years ago with a torn T-shirt and a bare midriff. His first major graphic novel "Heavy Liquid" featured a fictional buyer's guide with price breakdowns for the items that the characters sported. "I don't think I made the clothes expensive enough," says Mr. Pope, chuckling.

Launching The Line

In the spring of 2006, Andy Nipon, vice president of design for DKNY men's licensing, read an article about Mr. Pope and his "Batman: Year 100" book. After viewing some images of Mr. Pope's work on the Web, he called Mr. Pope into the company's offices in midtown Manhattan to talk about his work. Mr. Pope showed up on time at around 2 p.m. sporting a black pea coat with an army-fatigued Henley shirt and boots. "I thought he'd be more foreboding," says Mr. Nipon. "That he'd carry that darkness."

Mr. Nipon was impressed by Mr. Pope's wide-ranging creative interests and his pointed technical questions about the line. The DKNY Jeans executive decided to "pull the trigger" and about six weeks later, Mr. Pope trekked to DKNY's offices again to give a presentation before the entire design team. For DKNY, Mr. Pope's work fit nicely with their emphasis on New York City. "He has an aggressive hand," says Mr. Nipon. "It's a strong connection to the city."

At his SoHo area studio on a recent Friday evening before the viewing, Mr. Pope fingers through the dozen different designs he had prepared for DKNY. The company asked him to focus on camouflage and he spent weeks studying the history of the pattern. Mr. Pope poured through a 900-page tome created by fashion label Maharishi and eventually settled on natural camouflage from insects.

Inspired by the patterns on the wings of monarch butterflies that he caught as a child, he thumbed through the two battered field guides that now sit atop a pile of manga in the corner. At the tall bookshelf by his back window, Mr. Pope unearths a set of insect wings that he purchased in his neighborhood. "The question was 'Can you find a new way to do camo?' " he said.

To create the designs, he followed his usual routine. While he pencils the patterns, he listens to free jazz like Pharaoh Sanders through a set of headphones that stretch the length of the room. He always starts right to left to avoid smudging the ink with his sable-hair brush. "Inking is the Zen part of the process," he says. He works quickly. "I rarely make mistakes."

Because Mr. Pope has no experience designing clothing, Mr. Nipon says the company placed some limitations on what the artist could do. At the DKNY studio last week, Mr. Pope was surprised at how some of the clothes turned out.

"You guys didn't go with the zebra print, eh?" he asks Stephen Hooper, vice president of design for DKNY Jeans men's division, as he thumbs along the outside of some pants. Mr. Hooper laughs, "Maybe next time, Paul."

Write to Jamin Brophy-Warren at Jamin.Brophy-Warren@wsj.com

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It makes total sense to me - Mr. Pope's drawings look a bit like loose fashion illustrations, and his characters like models.

A More Direct Route To Audiences?

NY TIMES: Giving the Outsiders a Say on Movies
By CHARLES LYONS - Published: March 10, 2008

Film enthusiasts vote at the box office on which movies succeed or fail. The idea behind a new Web site, Massify.com, is to give them a vote on which films are made in the first place, along with some say in the script and the casting.

Massify members (membership is free and anyone can join) are offered a platform to promote themselves and whatever current projects they are involved in, and are also eligible to vote on other users’ film ideas through online competitions in which members vie for financing and distribution from Massify and its partners.

And after granting money to winners of its online competitions, determined by popular user vote, the investors in Massify will maintain a financial interest in the films that originated there, and help produce and bring them to market.

Massify aims to encourage collaboration, but it is not a philanthropic enterprise. Like most Web sites, Massify wants to attract advertisers even as it faces the challenge of proving itself as a practical place for the film industry and the public to discover new talent. “We’re building an audience before the film is made,” said Kenneth Woo, one of Massify’s two founders.

Brett Icahn, Massify’s other founder, said: “Online networks should apply a democratic process to the creation of content, not just the distribution of it,” he said. “The Massify community crowdsources the best ideas, and elects the best actors. It’s more a production network than a social network, because it’s driven by a creative purpose.”

Massify’s 10 full-time staff members, most of them under 30, occupy a loft office on Cooper Square, near New York University.

Mr. Icahn is the son of the financier Carl C. Icahn, who is backing the venture, giving Massify an edge on many start-ups noted for their ebullience and optimism, not their cash flow.

And among aspiring filmmakers, cash can be highly alluring. Mr. Woo said that Massify has already offered members the chance to win a student grant, awarding Ryan Bemler, a Columbia film student, $10,000 toward a short film after Massify users chose his project in an open competition.

Massify’s second online competition is co-sponsored by an independent horror film distributor, After Dark Films, which will present the winning film as part of its ongoing series “Eight Films to Die For.” Massify members will develop the film using the Web site’s online tools; they are invited to participate in a pitch round, after which 10 semi-finalists will be chosen by popular vote.

Once a final idea wins the competition, a round of casting allows actors registered with Massify to upload audition videos and vie for the film’s four leading roles. Users select 10 male and 10 female semifinalists for each role; these actors are flown to Los Angeles for screen tests.

The top four male and female vote-getters win principal roles in the film, which will be produced by After Dark Films and directed and written by established professionals.

In theory, the notion of empowering people who are trying to break into the movie business by allowing them to contribute to the filmmaking would seem to provide a crack in a long-closed Hollywood network, where entrance is not always predicated on talent but access.

“It’s a new way of thinking,” said Eugene Hernandez, co-founder of IndieWire.com, the independent film Web site begun in 1996, who said he had only recently become aware of Massify. “It’s exciting — all these things happening at the same time. Maybe the dream of democratization can become a reality.”

Practice is another matter, however. It remains to be seen just how effective a cluster of people in their 20s can be at reinventing what the French critic André Bazin once called “the genius of the system,” referring to Hollywood films made during the classic studio era, roughly the 1920s through ’50s.

During those years, and still today, power flowed from top to bottom in vertically integrated studios. But Massify wants power to flow the other way around, to give the people at the bottom of an organization an opportunity to be involved in the decision-making.

Not everyone registered on Massify appears to be looking for that sort of responsibility. The site’s key tabs lead to areas for film pitches, roles, people, and competitions. Many users have posted their photographs and just want to be attract Internet friends, not necessarily collaborate on a film.

Not yet, that is. Some Massify members have also begun posting short video clips or trailers teasing feature films they are trying to make. Others have uploaded full-length screenplays, effectively circumventing traditional gatekeepers like agents, managers and studio executives.

“There will come a point,” Mr. Hernandez said, “when the dominant generation will have emerged — and they won’t be wedded to traditional models of success.”

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It's an interesting idea - combined with a video-sharing site, films could be chosen, created and distributed without studio involvement at all. I imagine if this takes off, though, it'll get quickly snapped up like YouTube.

Remake OTD: Rosemary's Baby

SHOCKTILYOUDROP.COM (EXCL): Platinum Dunes Eyeing Rosemary's Baby Remake
Source: Ryan Rotten - March 3, 2008

Ira Levin's 1967 horror novel Rosemary's Baby is going to be born again on the big screen.

Shock was tipped off this weekend, and we were later able to confirm, Platinum Dunes is in talks with Paramount to update Roman Polanski's film starring Mia Farrow, John Cassavetes, Sidney Blackmer and Ruth Gordon. Industry sources tell us the Dunes team - producers Brad Fuller and Andrew Form - are currently looking for a writer (or writers) to tackle the material.

First adapted in '68, Rosemary's Baby concerns a young couple - Guy and Rosemary (Cassavetes and Farrow, respectively) - living in Manhattan. Shortly after settling into their new apartment, Rosemary becomes pregnant and slowly falls very ill. Paranoia and suspicion of witchcraft at work ensues.

Dunes is currently developing new films in the Friday the 13th (location scouting has begun!) and Nightmare on Elm Street (details) franchises.

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Thanks again to I Watch Stuff!

Remake OTD: The Breakfast Club

HOLLYWOOD REPORTER: 'Bumped' is 'Breakfast' at an airport
By Steven Zeitchik - Feb 29, 2008

NEW YORK -- Veteran producer Bridget Johnson will produce "Bumped," a modern-day version of "The Breakfast Club," with McG protege Anna Mastro attached to direct from a script by Lizzy Weiss.

"Bumped" is a comedy-drama revolving around five twentysomethings -- including a corporate go-getter, a musician and a flirt -- who normally wouldn't be friends but who get to know one another when they're bumped from a flight and wind up stranded at Chicago's O'Hare Airport.

The project marks the directorial debut for Mastro, who worked closely with director-producer McG on his "Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle" and was an associate producer on his "Stay Alive."

Mastro also has developed and produced the CW's "Pussycat Dolls" series and, like McG, shot music videos.

The film will be financed independently and later set up at a studio; it likely won't shoot until the SAG strike situation is resolved. Johnson ("As Good as It Gets"), who was an exec at Touchstone as well as at James L. Brooks' Gracie Films, produced the upcoming Miramax release "Smart People."

John Hughes' 1985 film "The Breakfast Club" (with which "Bumped" has no formal association) was a generation-defining comedy that helped build the careers of actors like Emilio Estevez.

Thanks to I Watch Stuff! for the dubious news.

New, AWESOME Dr. Seuss Toys Coming Soon!!

VINYLPULSE.COM: Dr. Seuss -- Horton Hears a Who! from Super Rad Toys
Feb 25, 2008

Dr. Seuss mesmerized generations (and continues to do so) of children with numerous books filled with his unique drawings and memorable rhymes. Horton Hears a Who!, one of his most popular titles, tells the tale of the well-known elephant and his ability to hear the tiny and therefore unseen Who's. The lovable Horton who reminds us all 'That a person is a person, no matter how small", will soon be released as a vinyl art toy from Super Rad Toys.

The 10" rotocast vinyl figure features an inquisitive Horton eyeing the tiny world of Whoville (situated on a 'speck' atop a pink flower). In addition to the White Classic Book edition pictured here (production sample -- final may vary) , Horton will also drop in Orange, Classic Gray,and a Blue 'Night' edition. Logo versions of a few colorways will be available as well. Looking further out, look for several artist editions from Jeremyville, Joe Ledbetter, Mike DeFeo (Blue Sky Studios), Tragnark and more. Horton will drop around the time the children's book hits the big-screen on March 14th 2008 as a CG animation film from 20th Century Fox / Blue Sky Studios (the people behind Ice Age). In addition to the large 10" version, Super Rad Toys will also release 3" and 1.5" keychain versions down the line. Click through to see the many shades and sides of Horton.

Horton is the first of several Dr. Seuss figures coming from Super Rad Toys. Expect to see toys based on Cat In The Hat, Green Eggs and Ham, The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, Yertle the Turtle, Fox in Sox and more.

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(various choking sounds)

This Takes Guts Dept.

SFGATE.COM: Film critic sees classics for the first time
Mick LaSalle - Sunday, February 24, 2008

No film critic has seen everything, and all film critics have famous classic movies that they have yet to see. I know one major film critic, for example, who has never seen "Citizen Kane." But this one critic (who shall also remain both nameless and genderless) would never say this publicly or admit this, except to close friends. You can imagine that when "Citizen Kane" comes up this critic just smiles and nods and waits for a chance to change the subject.

There's good reason to change the subject: Even though people know intellectually that it's impossible for any critic to have seen everything, they do expect critics to have seen everything they've seen, and they tend to get annoyed when they find out otherwise. Recently, I got a bucket of mail when I mentioned never having seen "An Affair to Remember." Some people were actually angry about it.

That's what prompted the concept for this article. I figured I'd pick five famous classics that I haven't seen (or have seen only in small parts) and watch them, and then write about the experience. In the process, I'd have an excuse to see "Blade Runner," "To Kill a Mockingbird," "Young Frankenstein," "2001: A Space Odyssey" and, of course, "An Affair to Remember."

Before talking about these individual movies, I should answer an obvious question: How is it possible for a film critic not see "Citizen Kane" or, for that matter, "To Kill a Mockingbird"? From an outsider's perspective, it just doesn't make sense. So let me explain.

Film critics see a lot of movies. But most film critics actually like movies, so that's not so bad. In my leisure hours, I often watch movies, but those leisure hours are precious, so when I do watch a movie, it has to be something I really want to see. There are plenty of classics that I want to see, plenty that I'm excited to see, but then there are titles that seem merely obligatory - and it's very easy to postpone seeing the obligatory ones, and to keep postponing them indefinitely.

Also, especially if you're a critic, there are some titles that you will have heard so much about that you feel as if you've seen them already. Some have been anthologized in documentaries, so that you've seen the key scenes. To sit through them feels like going through the motions.

There's another thing. Everyone who watches movies prefers one genre or actor over another. Critics are no different, but just in the course of doing our work, we end up seeing movies in all genres. I'm not particularly fond of action movies, but I've given lots of good reviews to action movies, simply because I can tell a good one from a bad one. But that doesn't mean that, in my leisure time, I'd put on a "Stone Cold" Steve Austin picture. Likewise, if science fiction isn't a favorite, you could easily end up going years before strapping yourself into a seat to sit through "2001: A Space Odyssey" - especially if you've been warned by just about everyone (including people who like it) that it's the most boring movie on earth.

What follows are impressions of five classics I watched as part of my self-imposed film festival:

"To Kill a Mockingbird" (1962): This one surprised me. Over the years, I've become familiar with many of the good moments contained in this film, and I thought I knew what to expect. I didn't. First, I didn't realize that the movie is entirely seen through the eyes of the three children, particularly Scout (Mary Badham), which presents a problem. Much of the first hour is taken up with the kids' fascination and fear of their mysterious neighbor, Boo Radley (Robert Duvall, in his first film role). Maybe this played as exciting in 1962, but today that whole section drags and drags.

The movie's real interest surrounds the trial in which Scout's father, Atticus Finch (Gregory Peck), defends a black man (Brock Peters) on a bogus rape charge. That begins a full 67 minutes into the film. It's where one might expect the movie to turn into a searing courtroom drama, but the energy remains low-key. Most surprisingly, Finch's summation to the jury is fairly limp. Considering that he is addressing 12 Southern racists in 1932, you'd think he might pull out the stops and try to shame them into doing the right thing, through every possible rhetorical means. Instead, he just stands there and more or less invites these dirt-poor knuckleheads to join him on his lofty moral plane. I knew that wouldn't work before the jury came in. Throughout, Peck is just great at projecting moral decency, but in the emotional moments his acting is less convincing.

Finally, the reversal at the end, involving Boo Radley, is too pat, and the atmosphere of emotional uplift feels misplaced. Sure, it's nice that Boo is in some way redeemed, but by the end everyone seems to have forgotten that an innocent man is dead because of some evil woman's accusation and the racist complicity of the community. Certainly, the death of this black man doesn't seem to have had a long-term affect on any white person's mood.

The redemption of Boo Radley is meant to imply that there may be some hope for the community, but in a movie that turns on racism, the redemption of a white man hardly feels like a fitting climax. If you really look at it, "To Kill a Mockingbird" is saying that in this community the biggest weirdo can find peace, even if he's guilty of manslaughter, as long as he's white. But a hardworking, decent, law-abiding, intelligent black man stands a good chance of ending up dead ... but that's OK, because Boo Radley has made friends with Scout. Huh?

"To Kill a Mockingbird" strikes me as a movie classic that has outlived its shelf life and is maintaining its classic status based on false memory and reputation.

"Young Frankenstein" (1974): As is typical of Mel Brooks, this movie is a mix of dumb jokes that aren't funny, dumb jokes that are funny and brilliant, inspired bits that are classic and nothing can diminish them. The "Puttin' on the Ritz" number, the scene between the Monster (Peter Boyle) and the blind man (Gene Hackman) and just about any scene featuring Madeline Kahn are all hysterical - and, of course, I'd seen all of them before, in documentaries, on YouTube, everywhere. Watching the actual movie straight through was amusing, though hardly necessary. Somehow everything good about the movie has entered the culture, including the horses squealing at the name "Frau Blucher."

"An Affair to Remember" (1957): I liked this a lot more than I thought I would, and it was not quite the sappy indulgence that I expected. I thoroughly enjoyed the first hour, in which Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr meet on a ship, and I thought the scenes with the grandmother, played by Cathleen Nesbitt were genuinely touching - and I could see how that visit could become the catalyst for a romance. Unfortunately, the movie struck me as an 85-minute feature that insisted on being 114 minutes long, and so roughly the last half has a stretched-out feeling, and some of the ways in which it's stretched are ridiculous (unnecessary musical interludes, for example). And yet, despite these flaws, the desire to see the two protagonists get together, as well as our belief in them and their needs as people, remains undiminished. All in all, it's a good movie, and I'm glad I saw it.

"Blade Runner" (1982): I never saw "Blade Runner" when it was in theaters because I wasn't much of a sci-fi fan, and I didn't see it later because I didn't know what version to see. Having consulted aficionados, I decided to watch the latest version, which people tell me is the best. It's an excellent movie, and if I were reviewing it I'd have to give it the highest rating. At the same time, it's not what I look for in entertainment, and I didn't particularly enjoy it so much as intellectually appreciate its virtues. It's eerie, beautiful to behold and an impressively realized imaginative universe.

"2001: A Space Odyssey" (1968): Stanley Kubrick's compositions have a fascination in themselves, and there's something to be said for the movie's adventurous subject matter and its vision of the future. It's worth remembering that the film was made a year before the first moon landing. But having said all that, "2001: A Space Odyssey" is virtually unwatchable, a boring, impenetrable experience that I'm glad to finally have behind me.

E-mail Mick LaSalle at mlasalle @sfchronicle.com.

Cartoon Brew > Flip #11 > Me!

Jerry Beck did a quick write up on Steve Moore's Flip #11, which features Steve's interview with me. Thanks, Jerry!

JLA vs. SAG

NY TIMES: A Film’s Superheroes Face Threat of Strike
By MICHAEL CIEPLY - Published: March 1, 2008

LOS ANGELES — Do five or so of the greatest superheroes in the universe have the power to make a movie these days? Warner Brothers is struggling to find out.

Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman are among the biggest icons of DC Comics and are likely to be featured in the upcoming "Justice League" film.

In a Hollywood upended by labor strife — writers just ended one walkout, while actors are rumbling about another — the studio has been trying to begin production on a film based on the long-running DC Comics series “Justice League of America.”

The series unites Superman and Batman with Wonder Woman, Flash, Green Lantern and other extraordinary beings. Thematically, it shares an impulse with “The Three Musketeers”: one for all, all for one, their combined attributes stronger than any one superhero’s.

But nothing has been easy in a season when the usual difficulties of a globe-spanning, effects-laden production with a budget that could approach $200 million have become tangled in uncertainty over pending negotiations with the Screen Actors Guild. Around the industry, executives are wrestling with versions of the same dilemma: Should they go forward with movie projects that might be disrupted by an actors’ strike if shooting does not end by the guild’s June 30 contract deadline? Or should they wait, with the risk that prospective films will fall victim to afterthoughts and lost momentum?

Some of the movies working their way through that bind are Sony Pictures’ sequel to “The Da Vinci Code,” called “Angels & Demons”; Paramount and DreamWorks’ “Transformers 2”; and 20th Century Fox’s “Tooth Fairy.” “Justice League,” if it happens, will give Warner a summer blockbuster either next year or the year after. It could spawn sequels, like the Marvel-based “X-Men” series, which has taken in $1.2 billion at the global box office for 20th Century Fox. Just as important, the film could extend the appeal of Warner Brothers’ two caped mainstays, Superman and Batman, to lesser-known heroes (and inexpensive actors) who might then be featured in blockbusters of their own.

But Warner Brothers’ dreams of a widening stream of profits will come true only if the new film does nothing to detract from a continuing string of Batman movies, the next of which is “The Dark Knight,” set for release in July, or the Superman pictures, another of which is in the works for 2010.

In the past week the unlikely writers of “Justice League” — Kieran and Michele Mulroney, better known for Mr. Mulroney’s acting and his relationship to his brother Dermot Mulroney than for their uncredited work on “Mr. & Mrs. Smith” — were in Australia. They were consulting with the film’s director, George Miller, and revising a script that was being rushed to production when the writers’ strike hit in early November.

Warner Brothers executives declined to comment. And Mr. Miller, whose work has been as varied as “The Road Warrior” and “Babe: Pig in the City,” did not respond to requests for an interview. But several people involved with the film — who requested anonymity because of the studio’s policy of silence about a work in progress — said the revisions were part of a push to revive a project seen as crucial to broadening the studio’s rewards from its subsidiary DC Comics.

Six weeks ago, as the writers’ strike wore on, Warner Brothers, based in Burbank, Calif., halted the plans amid concerns that the screenplay did not quite meet the challenge of introducing a new series without undercutting the old ones. In effect, Batman and Superman would have to exist in two parallel movie universes without making the audience uneasy.

The studio allowed options to lapse on a cast of fresh, and relatively cheap, faces. Hired to step into superhero costumes were Armie Hammer, who has appeared on “Desperate Housewives,” as Batman; D. J. Cotrona, from the television series “Windfall,” as Superman; Adam Brody, of “The OC,” as Flash; the rapper Common as Green Lantern; and the fashion model Megan Gale as Wonder Woman.

Word that revered heroes would be played by relative unknowns raised howls on the Internet. Comic-book fans, a wary lot, “daydreamed about whether people from ‘The OC’ could fly,” in the words of one post on the movie site Joblo.com. Mr. Hammer, the great-grandson of the Occidental Petroleum Company chief executive Armand Hammer, was elsewhere referred to as “Frat-Man.”

But the ensemble had already bonded with Mr. Miller and one another on a trip to Australia, and the cast appears to be intact, even though the actors are no longer under contract.

“We’re having a long engagement, but sometimes a long engagement is worth the wait,” said Joan Hyler, who manages Mr. Hammer, speaking of her client’s standby status. As the writers’ strike ended a little over two weeks ago, some at Warner Brothers were still eager to get “Justice League” in production by mid-April, a start date that would almost certainly make the finished film available for the summer of 2009.

But studio executives now have a leery eye on the actors’ guild. The guild’s leaders will not conclude a survey of members’ concerns until the end of March, and have not yet scheduled negotiations that could provide a hint as to whether companies can expect a strike-free settlement along the lines of those with the writers’ and directors’ unions in the last few weeks. Guild leaders have been under pressure from some of the highest-paid actors, from the union’s longtime ally American Federation of Television and Radio Artists and from its own East Coast wing to get the talks going as quickly as possible.

So “Justice League,” while still moving forward, is not expected to start production this spring; a summer or fall shoot appears more likely, actors willing.

By then, the production may find itself leaving Sydney, where Mr. Miller made “Happy Feet.” According to a report this week in The Sydney Morning Herald, filmmakers and government officials have been embroiled in a debate as to whether the new film, with its enormous budget, would qualify for an incentive that provides a 40 percent rebate to Australian producers. If not, Warner — which has been discussing a financial alliance with Legendary Pictures, its partner on “The Dark Knight” and “Superman Returns” — may move the production to Canada or elsewhere.

The project’s title has also undergone some rethinking over time. According to some involved with the film, the word “America” may drop out, to make the film more palatable abroad, an ever more important consideration for the big studios.

If the movie is delayed, Warner Brothers will not be without heroics, of a sort, next year. Zack Snyder, who directed “300” for the studio, is finishing up his version of “Watchmen.” Set for release in March 2009, the film is based on Alan Moore’s revered graphic-novel series about flawed superheroes who become entangled in the difficulties of real life.

In Burbank, that story is a familiar one of late.

New Line Merges With Warner Brothers

VARIETY.COM: Warner Bros. gobbles up New Line
Company ends 40-year run as indie studio
By VARIETY STAFF - Posted: Thurs., Feb. 28, 2008, 1:22pm PT

New Line’s 40-year run as an independent studio ended Thursday when Time Warner said it would fold the company into Warner Bros. New Line will become a unit of Warners, maintaining separate development, production, marketing, distribution and business affairs operations.

Co-toppers Bob Shaye and Michael Lynne are ankling but are in talks to continue some business relationship with Warners.

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I've been told that Warners bought New Line (Turner Entertainment) in 1996, so I'm not sure what folding the studio into Warners' film division will mean.

Remake OTD: Akira

VARIETY: WB takes franchise turn with 'Akira'
Studio to adapt graphic novel
By MICHAEL FLEMING - Posted: Wed., Feb. 20, 2008, 12:59pm PT

Warner Bros. will turn anime artist Katsuhiro Otomo's six-volume graphic novel "Akira" into two live-action feature films, the first of which is being fast tracked for release in summer 2009. Legendary will co-finance with WB.

Each feature will be based on three of the books in Otomo's series. The story takes place in New Manhattan, a metropolis that was rebuilt after being destroyed 31 years earlier. Otomo will exec produce the films.

Graphic novel was first adapted for the bigscreen in 1988 as a popular animated film which Otomo directed.

Studio has closed a seven-figure rights acquisition deal with manga publisher Kodansha and has set Ruairi Robinson to direct a script by Gary Whitta ("Book of Eli"). Andrew Lazar's Mad Chance will produce with Appian Way's Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Davisson.

WB had the "Akira" rights several years ago only to let them lapse and then recapture them in a spirited bidding battle.

Robinson, an Irish helmer who has been Oscar nominated for his short film and commercials work, is making his feature debut.

The project was brought in by exec veep Greg Silverman, who has supervised "300" and "Batman Begins."

Lazar is producer on the WB comedy "Get Smart," and he's about to start production on the Jim Carrey starrer "I Love You Phillip Morris" for EuropaCorp.

Appian Way is producing the John Cusack starrer "The Factory" for WB and Dark Castle.

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This could be interesting, from a story perspective. The original is cool, but kind of degenerates into a lot of screaming and effects animation at the end. The challenge will be to clarify the story without damaging it. One of these days, I should try reading the entire graphic novel. I bought a lot of the re-laid out/re-colored version that Epic Comics did back in the day, but I don't know if they finished it.

Sandra Boynton, Greeting Card Queen

NEW YORK TIMES: The Power of Whimsy
By PHYLLIS KORKKI
Published: February 17, 2008

SANDRA BOYNTON’S studio, in a converted barn next to her Connecticut home, bears the milestones of her singular career: a long rack of greeting cards featuring quirkily drawn animals; a room full of small, sturdy children’s books, with names like “Snuggle Puppy!” and “Barnyard Dance!”; and, upstairs, where she does much of her work, old-time radios and jukeboxes representing her more recent foray into music CDs for children.

Ms. Boynton’s CDs have garnered three gold records and one Grammy nomination. These accomplishments, on top of the hundreds of millions of cards and tens of millions of books she has sold, are all the happy — and profitable — results of an unconventional approach to business.

As an entrepreneur, Ms. Boynton maintains a firm grasp on market realities and her finances, but she says she has succeeded by refusing to make money her main objective. Instead, she says, she has focused on the creative process, her artistic autonomy, her relationships and how she uses her time.

“I don’t do things differently to be different; I do what works for me,” she says. “To me, the commodity that we consistently overvalue is money, and what we undervalue is our precious and irreplaceable time. Though, of course, to the extent that money can save you time or make it easier to accomplish things, it’s a wonderful thing.”

While Ms. Boynton may make all of this sound relatively straightforward, she has overcome hurdles in three industries that have routinely tripped up or roundly laid low legions of would-be entrepreneurs.

MS. BOYNTON, 54, describes what she calls an “absurdly happy childhood” in Philadelphia. The third of four daughters, she attended Germantown Friends, a K-12 Quaker school famed for its arts education and interdisciplinary teaching. Her father, Robert Boynton, was an English teacher at the school. “The best English teacher I ever had,” she says.

She was fascinated by business at an early age and remembers selling pretty yellow flowers door to door for a dime when she was 8. Later, she discovered that they were weeds, but she still had takers. “I always liked selling things,” she says. “It gives you a sense of self-sufficiency.”

When Ms. Boynton was 14, a local newspaper printed drawings from an exhibit of her school artwork. She used the $40 she earned from her first published work to invest in two shares of AT&T — though she mistakenly thought she was buying shares of I.B.M. She still has the stock but has no clue how much it is worth.

Stocks held a special glamour for her: Her grandfather worked at a silver company, rising from the mailroom to the vice president’s perch. “Family legend has it that the company offered penny-a-share stock to employees, and he bought as much as he could afford,” she says. “And he became a wealthy man. That stock eventually put most of his 17 grandchildren through college.”

In addition to her investing activity, she developed a strong interest in art, music, literature and writing — all of which were central to the Friends curriculum. The school was so stimulating, academically and artistically, she says, that her first year at Yale was a disappointment.

At Yale, she majored in English, became involved in drama courses and productions and met her future husband, Jamie McEwan, in an acting class. She also worked on her drawing. Ever the entrepreneur, she started illustrating gift enclosure cards that were precursors of her animal-populated greeting cards.

In 1974, Ms. Boynton met Phil Friedmann, a partner in Recycled Paper Greetings, a greeting card company based in Chicago, at a stationery trade show. After Mr. Friedmann and his business partner, Mike Keiser, saw Ms. Boynton’s work, they asked her to start making cards for their company.

They wanted to pay her a flat rate. Though she was only 21 and unknown, Ms. Boynton, who had learned a lesson or two from her father’s other careers as a writer and publisher, demanded royalties.

“We quickly relented,” Mr. Keiser recalls of the royalty negotiations. It was a shrewd move on his part, too. He says that over about a decade — from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s — revenue at Recycled Paper went from $1 million to $100 million, largely because of the popularity of Boynton cards. Ms. Boynton has made 4,000 different cards for Recycled Paper, including the still popular “Hippo Birdies 2 Ewes” birthday card.

By Mr. Keiser’s rough estimate, Ms. Boynton has sold around a half-billion cards, which, he says, makes her one of the best-selling card creators of all time.

Her cards have become such a part of the mainstream that it is easy to forget how radical they were when they were introduced. Dominated by powerhouses like Hallmark and American Greetings, the card industry in the 1970s relied on flowery, color-saturated art and equally flowery prose, written in flourishes and curlicues.

Ms. Boynton’s cards, on the other hand, were populated with cats, cows, hippos, ducks, sheep, dragons and various other beasts, humanized through the placement of a dot for a pupil, or a single, expressive arc for an eyelid or mouth. She was also among the first greeting card artists to use white backgrounds.

Her cards were thoughtful, wry and whimsical. While the sentiments may have been unconventional, they resonated with the public.

“Things are getting worse,” said one card that featured a bewildered hippo. On the inside it said “please send chocolate.”

Whimsy, it turns out, had been undervalued. And the big card companies eventually took some of their artistic cues from her.

“It’s a lot easier to start in this business today than it was when Sandra Boynton got started,” Patti Stracher, manager of the National Stationery Show, the country’s biggest annual greeting card showcase. “She fueled a trend in what were then called alternative greeting cards. Alternative cards helped people communicate about topics that were really hard to address or that you could poke fun at.”

AFTER the cards came the books. Continuing with the chocolate theme, in 1982 Ms. Boynton published a general market book titled “Chocolate: the Consuming Passion” that became a best seller. Its publisher, the Workman Publishing Company, went on to print some of her children’s board books — small books with thick, boardlike pages, with 5 to 10 rhythmic words per page.

The books feature some of the same furry and feathery characters that her cards do, presenting a world that her editor of 27 years, Suzanne Rafer, calls “safe, unexpected and pleasurable” for children.

The most popular board book by Workman, “Barnyard Dance!” (“Bow to the horse. Bow to the cow. Bow to the horse if you know how.”) was published in 1993 and has 2.3 million copies in print.

Wendy Rhein of Atlanta has been reading Ms. Boynton’s books to her son, Nathan, 2 1/2, since he was born. “The drawings are entertaining,” she said, “and there’s a lyricism and rhyming that goes on that’s very singsong, and they’re fun for me to read to him.”

Succeeding in the children’s book market is hard and becoming more so, said Michael K. Norris, senior analyst at Simba Information, a market research firm. Technology is luring children away from books, and only a small percentage of children’s books wind up on families’ shelves.

“The market favors authors who have built up their brands over time,” Mr. Norris says. He says she also has an edge because “she knows exactly who her audience is and knows how to reach them.”

FROM books, Ms. Boynton decided to extend her rhythmic sensibility into song. She says she was helped along by “dumb luck.”

When she was working on the album “Philadelphia Chickens” in 2001, for instance, she told Mike Ford, her songwriting partner, that Meryl Streep (a fellow Yale alumna and a friend) was the only person who could do justice to the song “Nobody Understands Me.”

The very next day, Ms. Streep happened to stop by her studio. She recorded the song and then suggested that the actor Kevin Kline might want to record one, too. He sang “Busybusybusy.” Another friend of Ms. Boynton’s, Laura Linney, sang for the album, and Ms. Linney helped arrange for Eric Stoltz to put in an appearance.

Buoyed by her Hollywood supporters, Ms. Boynton approached some of the biggest names in the music industry — including Alison Krauss, Blues Traveler and the Spin Doctors — to contribute to her next album, “Dog Train.” From there, she was able to persuade some of her music idols — including Neil Sedaka, B. B. King, Steve Lawrence and Davy Jones — to sing on her most recent effort, called “Blue Moo: 17 Jukebox Hits From Way Back Never.”

It was lucky, Ms. Boynton says, that many managers of the big musical acts were men in their 30s who had young children who loved her books. And there was another stroke of luck: she decided to use her longtime publisher, Workman, to package her CDs inside of books instead of selling them in music stores. In retrospect, that alternative form of distribution was a stroke of genius, because it came just as the music business seemed to be imploding.

Ms. Boynton’s studio is not far from the farmhouse that she and her husband, Mr. McEwan — also a children’s book author — bought 28 years ago. In addition to creating greeting cards and children’s books, the couple also raised four children there, now ages 18 to 28.

The studio and her five-bedroom home, built in 1728, sit on 100 acres of rolling northwestern Connecticut countryside — evidence of a life that is comfortable, but not lavish.

When she is working on her music, Ms. Boynton drives five miles across winding rural roads to Mr. Ford, her songwriting partner, who also works out of a studio next to his house. The two sit side by side in leather chairs in front of an electronic keyboard and a computer loaded with music software, working to find the right sounds for her lyrics.

One three-minute song, from writing to final recording, can take a month to complete. She and Mr. Ford put in 14-hour days when they are in the thick of a project. “You have to enjoy the process of making it happen,” she says.

BECAUSE she has made so much money from her cards and books, Ms. Boynton says, she doesn’t need to rely on her CD business for income. Although the CDs make money for her publisher, she says they don’t make money for her. Essentially, she views them as “loss leaders” — products that are valuable not because they are profitable but because they help her maintain contact with her audience.

That philosophy helped persuade the blues singer B. B. King to record “One Shoe Blues” on her most recent CD. The song is a soulful lament that captures a toddler’s anguish about not being able to find a missing shoe when Mama is ready to go.

“At the level of detail I think is necessary to make them what they are, they simply can’t pay for themselves,” Ms. Boynton says of the CDs. “In purely business terms, it’s an irrational enterprise. And it’s also the best work I do.”

Ms. Boynton doesn’t have an agent. She has just one employee: her assistant, Kathleen Sherrill. There is no Inc. or LLC after her name. She prefers to be an unincorporated business with an orbit of “licensees,” for lack of a better word, around her.

Whenever she has made products like stuffed animals, mugs, jewelry, sheets or towels, she has maintained control over the finished product so it doesn’t stray from her vision — or saturate the market.

“Theoretically, I could choose to trade artistic autonomy and pride in my work for increased income — say, by broadly licensing my characters to be used for television,” she says. But that would be foolish, she says.

“I love what I do, I love the people I work with, I care very much about the value of the work I create, and I don’t need more money than I have. This is not revolutionary philosophy. It’s just common sense.”

Ilinois Dick Tracy Museum Closes

NORTHWEST HERALD: Funding woes foil Dick Tracy museum
By JENN WIANT - jwiant@nwherald.com
Monday, February 04, 2008

WOODSTOCK – The Chester Gould – Dick Tracy Museum, housed in the Old Courthouse building on the Woodstock Square since 1991, will close June 1 for financial reasons.

Jean Gould O’Connell, daughter of “Dick Tracy” comic strip creator and former Woodstock resident Chester Gould, said the museum had been struggling financially.

“It’s been happening slowly for the past couple of years,” she said. “It was much too difficult to get fundraisers going. It was the same few people [who] were called upon to do it. We just found that we couldn’t make a go of it.”

O’Connell is pleased that the museum, which is privately funded, has lasted this long.

“I’ve put my heart and soul into that museum and tried to make it something that Woodstock would be proud of,” she said. “This is a very sad time for us, but we’ve had very many wonderful years there.”

The estimated 300 pieces of memorabilia and art in the museum, most of which had been donated by people all over the country, will be returned to the owners, O’Connell said. Beverly and Cliff Ganschow, owners of the Old Courthouse, said they would like to maintain a small, permanent display of Chester Gould and “Dick Tracy” memorabilia in a room of the building.

Woodstock Mayor Brian Sager was sad to hear about the museum’s closing.

“The Dick Tracy Museum was a wonderful resource for members of the community, as well as the school youth, and certainly it provided a draw for some visitors to our community,” Sager said. “We certainly are going to miss the museum, but we do understand, with respect and appreciation to the family, the decision that they have had to make.”

Fundraising for the Dick Tracy statue being planned for the grassy area outside of the Old Courthouse had been put on hold, O’Connell said.

Kevin Stebbins, who organizes the annual Dick Tracy Days Parade in June, said the festival probably would cease to exist after the museum closed. The parade will no longer be associated with the comic strip character and will become a community parade, Stebbins said. It has been scheduled for a week earlier this year, on Father’s Day.

When he learned Monday that the museum would close, Stebbins said he was “kind of shocked,” but had expected it to happen eventually.

“I know that they’ve had some financial difficulties in the past and they haven’t had very much support in the community,” he said. “... [But] I wasn’t expecting it to happen so soon.”

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Crap! I was thinking of trying to go to Dick Tracy Days this year. So much for that... bummer.

Trek Now An '09 Release

VARIETY: 'Star Trek' pushed back to 2009
Paramount shuffles major releases
By PAMELA MCCLINTOCK
Posted: Wed., Feb. 13, 2008, 5:43pm PT

Paramount is pushing back the release of J.J. Abrams' "Star Trek" from Dec. 25 to May 8, 2009, saying the pic's gross potential is greater as a summer tentpole.

Move was part of a major reshuffling to the studio's release calendar, as well as to DreamWorks' release sked. A second key change: DreamWorks' 2008 Ben Stiller summer comedy "Tropic Thunder" is moving from July 11 to Aug. 15.

That's likely to mean that another film will take "Tropic's" old spot on July 11, particularly since there is such a dearth of broad comedies in the May-July stretch.

Like Par, many of the majors are likely to revisit their release skeds in the wake of the writers' strike as they try to balance out their 2008 and 2009 calendars.

"Star Trek" has no competition in its new slot -- at least not so far, although it opens one week after 20th Century Fox bows "X-Men Origins: Wolverine" and one week before Sony is slated to bow sequel "Angels and Demons."

Paramount also dated two titles. Martin Scorsese's Leonardo DiCaprio-starrer "Shutter Island" will be released Oct. 2, 2009.

An untitled comedy produced by Marlon and Shawn Wayans will be released on Feb. 9, 2009. Their brother Damon Wayans is directing from a script the three co-wrote with two other family members. Par is keeping the logline under wraps.

Here are the other release changes to Par's sked:

* Eddie Murphy family pic "Nowhereland" is moving from Sept. 26, 2008, to June 12, 2009.

* Renee Zellweger horror-thriller "Case 39" is moving from Aug. 22, 2008, to April 10, 2009.

* David Fincher's Brad Pitt starrer "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" is moving from Nov. 26, 2008, to Dec. 19, 2008.

In addition to the new date for "Tropic Thunder," DreamWorks and Par announced that Leonardo DiCaprio-Kate Winslet "Revolutionary Road" will be distributed by Par Vantage, and not the studio proper.

Remake OTD: A Nightmare On Elm Street

THEREGISTER.CO.UK: Michael Bay to relive A Nightmare on Elm Street
Slasher classic franchise reglove reboot
By Lester Haines - Wednesday, January 30th 2008 14:12 GMT

Transformers director Michael Bay and his partners at the Platinum Dunes production company have been tasked by New Line Cinema to "relaunch" the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise.

Wes Craven’s 1984 slasher classic gave the world the iconic Freddy Krueger, who haunted a total of nine films and two TV series. According to Variety, the new outing will represent a "complete overhaul" of the Nightmare concept.

Bay and chums are also gearing up for a May start on resurrecting Jason Voorhees of Friday the 13th in a new film to be helmed by Marcus Nispel. This is apparently up for a "complete overhaul" as well, and movie buffs will remember just what a complete overhaul did for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre - remade in 2003 by New Line with Nispel calling the shots and Platinum Dunes lurking in the shadows.

And just to reinforce the feeling that Hollywood has completely lost the ability to come up with an original concept, Variety adds that Platinum Dunes is "prepping an exorcism thriller" for Rogue Pictures, plus a remake of Near Dark to be directed by music vid vet Samuel Bayer.

Oh yes, and the company's filling its spare time "developing a Universal remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds", in which Casino Royale director Martin Campbell will presumably ensure that slated star Naomi Watts will get plenty of unwanted avian attention. ®
Bootnote

I haven't seen seen Transformers, but I did suffer Pearl Harbor a few years back. I recall thinking it was possibly the worst war flick of all time, and likely among the worst films of any genre, ever, but then I had quaffed a few ales.

Accordingly, I decided to give the film another chance a few weeks ago, while resolutely sober. As the title credits rolled, I cracked open a large bottle of tequila and downed half of it in one shot. Enough said.

Henson Biopic A Possibility

EMPIREFILMGROUP.COM: Empire acquires rights to Jim Henson screenplay
Empire has scheduled the film for production in late summer with a $30 million budget
February 4, 2008

Empire Film Group, Inc. has acquired the motion picture production and distribution rights to "Henson," an original screenplay by Robert D. Slane that chronicles the life and achievements of Muppets creator, Jim Henson. Empire has pegged the film for production in late summer with a $30 million budget to be funded through a consortium of international presales and co-production partners.

"This is a major project about an entertainer of legendary stature and worldwide acclaim," said Dean Hamilton-Bornstein, CEO of Empire Film Group. "The script is superb and should provide a terrific roadmap for a completed film that will satisfy both mainstream audiences and critics. We're very excited about this acquisition and the commercial caliber of this project."

"Henson" covers the life of puppeteer, filmmaker and entertainment mogul Jim Henson, from his early fascination with television as a teenager, through his spectacular career and life achievements. Empire anticipates hiring a major director, such as Penny Marshall, and hopes to attract notable star cast in key roles. Bornstein will act as Executive Producer, with Empire Home Entertainment President Eric Parkinson producing the film along with Xavier Mitchell.

"Jim Henson is one of the best known and most beloved entertainers of all time," said Parkinson. "His story is inspiring, tragic, heartwarming and epic, and will make for an important and entertaining motion picture. This is the sort of movie that Empire will be pursuing as we build the company into a leading independent studio."

Learn more about Empire Film Group by visiting www.empirefilmgroup.com.

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Sounds great to me! I'd love to see a good film about Jim Henson. His work has been languishing for years, and a well-made biography might help inspire a new generation of puppeteers.

Fraggle Rock Making-Of Book On The Way

MUPPETCENTRAL.COM: New behind-the-scenes book to celebrate Fraggle Rock
By Greg James, Muppet Central - January 22, 2008

Insight Editions is a publishing company known for creating unique art and photography books that celebrate iconic artists, films, television series and other entertainment franchises. Their award-winning collector's books have covered such topics as the art of Star Wars, Shrek, Hannah-Barbara, and Brian Froud.

Several sources at Insight Editions have informed me that the company is planning to release a deluxe book on the art and magic of "Jim Henson’s Fraggle Rock" and, after talking to several representatives at Insight Editions, here's some early information on this release.

The book will showcase the art, magic and vision of Jim Henson's beloved series by celebrating and showcasing the unique and imaginative world of Fraggle Rock. This book will include hundreds of rare drawings, concept artwork, storyboard images, production photos, and other treasures from the studio archives and private collections. This giant "coffee table book" will be a visual feast for any Fraggle fan. The book is said to include hundreds of beautiful color illustrations, photos and artwork from the making of Fraggle Rock along with behind-the-scenes comments, notes and other insights.

The gigantic hardcover book will retail for around $34.95 and will quickly become a prized possession of any Fraggle fan. More details on this comprehensive book are sure to surface as the release of draws closer.

This beautiful book is planned to hit store shelves on September 30, 2008, just around the same time that the final season of Fraggle Rock makes its way onto DVD.

Other fan-favorite Henson collector's books over the years include Jim Henson The Works (1993), Of Muppets and Men (1981), Sesame Street Unpaved (1998) and Jim Henson's Creature Shop No Strings Attached (1997).

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I'll be sure to pick this up, too! You can pre-order it at Amazon for $23.07 + shipping.

Bond 22 Titlers Get All Brainy, Somber

VARIETY: New Bond film unveils title
'Quantum of Solace' shooting at Pinewood
By ALI JAAFAR - Posted: Thurs., Jan. 24, 2008, 7:22am PT

The new James Bond film is to be called “Quantum of Solace,” producers announced Thursday at Blighty’s Pinewood Studios.

The title comes from a short story published as part of a collection by Bond creator Ian Fleming in 1960.

Pic, previously known simply as “Bond 22,” follows on directly from “Casino Royale” with Daniel Craig reprising the role of British super spy and embarking on a revenge mission following his betrayal by Vesper Lynd — Eva Green’s ill-fated character in the previous film — that takes him to Austria, Italy and South America.

As previously announced, Gallic thesp Mathieu Amalric (“The Diving Bell and the Butterfly”) plays Bond nemesis Dominic Greene, a ruthless businessman and member of a shadowy org. seeking to control large portions of the world’s natural resources.

Ukrainian actress Olga Kurylenko plays Bond girl Camille, who leads the Martini-shaking spy to Greene, while Brit actress Gemma Arterton (“St Trinian’s”) will play MI6 Agent Fields.

Marc Forster helms Craig in his second outing as Bond.

Returning from “Casino Royale” are Dame Judi Dench as M, Jeffrey Wright as Felix Leiter and Giancarlo Giannini as Mathis.

Pic started lensing at Pinewood earlier this month.

Producers are Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli of Eon Prods., Sony Pictures Entertainment and MGM.

Sony Pictures Releasing Intl. is releasing pic worldwide on Nov. 7.

Richard Knerr, 1926 - 2008

ASSOCIATED PRESS: Richard Knerr, who gave the world Hula Hoop, Frisbee, dies at 82
By JOHN ROGERS - Associated Press Writer

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Richard “Rich” Knerr is being remembered this week for creating a multimillion-dollar company out of slingshots, flying saucers and spinning hoops. But he did much more than that.

Knerr and his partner, Wham-O co-founder Arthur “Spud” Melin, specialized in fun with products like the Hula Hoop, the Slip ’N Slide, Silly String and the Super Ball, entertaining countless people from one end of the world to the other. They showed dogs a pretty good time, too, with another iconic Wham-O product, the Frisbee.

Knerr, who retired from the toy marketing business when he and Melin sold Wham-O in 1982, died Monday after suffering a stroke at his home in suburban Arcadia. He was 82. Melin, his partner and lifelong friend, died in 2002.

“The company motto was ’Our Business is Fun,’ and that really describes both Dad and Spud,” Knerr’s son, Chuck Knerr, told The Associated Press on Thursday. “They were two boys who just loved to have fun.”

They let the whole country in on the fun in 1958 when they began selling round, plastic hoops at 98 cents apiece. People snapped them up by the millions, as seemingly everyone in America that summer attempted to spin the things around their waists, hips, necks or knees.

“No sensation has ever swept the country like the Hula Hoop,” Richard A. Johnson wrote in his 1985 book “American Fads.”

Just as quickly, however, the fad ended.

“By the time September rolled around you couldn’t give them away because every household in America had two and they lasted forever,” Chuck Knerr recalled his father telling him.

It didn’t matter because not long after that the Frisbee, which had been introduced the year before, began to catch on — and not just with people. Dogs loved to play with it too. One such animal, Ashley Whippet, became a celebrity in the 1970s because of his astounding ability to chase and catch the things.

Because dogs tended to chew up Frisbees and people tended to lose them, they proved a much more lucrative product for Wham-O than Hula Hoops had.

Knerr and Melin went into business for themselves in 1948, making $2 a day selling slingshots they made out of old orange crates in Knerr’s garage. They named their fledgling company after the sound Melin liked to make every time he fired a slingshot.

The pair met by chance as teenagers outside a Pasadena movie theater. They went into business together because Melin raised falcons and they used homemade slingshots to fire meatballs at young birds to teach them to dive for prey. Their slingshots proved so popular that their barber suggested they place an ad in a magazine and start selling them by mail order.

“It sounds strange to say it now but at the time nobody ever made and sold a slingshot,” Chuck Knerr said. “They were always homemade.” Soon the boys were bringing home orders from the post office by the sack full, allowing them to pay off the bandsaw they had bought at a Sears store for $7 down.

Knerr would say years later that he discovered the Hula Hoop while at a sporting goods trade show in Chicago. An Australian man, during a conversation in the men’s room, told him of a fitness craze sweeping his country and agreed to send him a few of the exercise tools.

Knerr and Melin were at the beach one day when they saw a former Air Force pilot named Fred Morrison playing with the flying disc he’d made. They bought the rights to it, modified it and changed its name from Pluto Platter to Frisbee, naming it after a comic strip character Knerr liked.

Wham-O introduced the Slip ’N Slide in 1961, the Limbo Game in 1962 and the Super Ball in 1966. Silly String came along in 1972 and the introduction of the Hacky Sack in 1983 created another craze.

As the years passed and Wham-O became a brand recognized the world over, its founders continued to operate it as a small business based in the suburban San Gabriel Valley. They sold it to Kransco Group Companies in 1982. Mattel bought the company from Kransco in 1994 and sold it to a group of investors in 1997. It is now based in Emeryville.

In addition to his son, Knerr is survived by his wife, Dorothy, daughters Melody Marquez and Lori Gregory, stepchildren Richard Enright and Jeanne Stokes and eight grandchildren.

Setbacks For Justice League Movie

VARIETY: Warner pulls plug on 'Justice League'
Cast options lapse; spring start scrapped
By DIANE GARRETT, MICHAEL FLEMING, DIANE GARRETT
Posted: Wed., Jan. 16, 2008, 5:22pm PT

"Justice League" is no longer moving faster than a speeding bullet.

Warner Bros. let the options lapse on the young cast that director George Miller chose to play DC superhero staples. The studio, which had set Tuesday as its greenlight deadline for the pic, confirmed Wednesday the project is on indefinite hold.

Project now most likely won't get under way until late summer or fall at the earliest.

Cast members were informed late Tuesday their options would not be exercised, but they were also assured the studio is determined to make the film with them in it. But before that can happen, there are several problems to be resolved.

The studio's reasons included not getting the official response it needed on tax breaks from shooting in Australia. And while WB execs like the script they got from Kieran and Michele Mulroney, it would benefit from a little more work, something that isn't possible because of the writers' strike.

Some were surprised the studio didn't exercise cast options anyway. The deals gave WB the flexibility to exercise the deals immediately, or in July, and the actors will be making salaries in the low six-figure range. While Adam Brody, cast as the Flash, has a track record, most of the cast comprises such newcomers as Armie Hammer Jr., who plays Batman, and Megan Gale, who will play Wonder Woman.

The studio risks losing them to other film jobs. But it is likely most if not all the cast will make sure to be available starting late summer and fall, just in case. That's because of the starmaking potential of "Justice League."

Studio had set this week as the deadline to greenlight the superhero tentpole, which it was racing to get into production for 2009 release. That was always considered a dicey proposition, particularly when the writers went on strike, and because the film needs to be completed before the SAG deal expires in June.

With "Justice League" on indefinite hold, the studio has a superhero gap on its 2009 slate; status of the next "Superman" pic is also uncertain.

Animation Remake OTD: George of the Jungle

USA TODAY: 'George of the Jungle' will swing once again
By Bill Keveney, USA TODAY

George of the Jungle is getting a makeover.

The naive, Tarzan-like bumbler, known to many adults by the 1967 cartoon and its catchy theme song, returns in a new version on the Cartoon Network on Friday (9 ET/PT).

The new cartoon makes George a teenager instead of an adult, as he was in the original created by Jay Ward. His old friends — Ape the Ape; his pet dog, Shep; and gal pal Ursula — return, joined by some new characters.

Although this George is aimed at a younger audience, kids 6 to 11, he shares most of his predecessor's traits, says Tiffany Ward, daughter of the late animator.

"He still lucks into things. He still smashes into trees," she says.
FIND MORE STORIES IN: Cartoon Network | Matt Groening | Brendan Fraser | George of the Jungle

Ward's offbeat characters, which also included Rocky and Bullwinkle, Peabody and Sherman and Dudley Do-Right of the Mounties, may appeal both to parents who grew up with the original and to children who have seen the 1997 movie starring Brendan Fraser. (That film precedes the George episode Friday at 7 ET/PT.)

"Moms and dads know it. Kids grew up watching the film. They can all hum the theme song. And the humor is timeless," says Amanda Cortese of Classic Media, which made the show with Ward Productions under the label Bullwinkle Studios.

"What we're seeing in entertainment is a lot of co-viewing," Cartoon Network's Rico Hill says. "Kids are sitting down and enjoying TV with their parents."

In recasting George for a younger audience, there will be fewer of the Ward insider puns and jokes that attracted adults to his earlier cartoons. "Ward produced a whole string of shows based around humor more than the drawing style. They were aimed more at adults," animation historian Jerry Beck says.

Ward, who died in 1989, still has many fans, including The Simpsons creator Matt Groening, who named his central character Homer Jay Simpson in tribute.

New George characters include Ursula's father, Dr. Towel Scott, and a witch doctor and his daughter, Magnolia. They all live in a fictional jungle, Mbebwe. New performers play the theme. ("George, George, George of the Jungle — watch out for that tree … !")

The addition of Magnolia gives Ursula a friend and also may be a way to attract girls to a cartoon that tilts toward boys, Hill says.

George, an acquisition that has been broadcast in Canada, is a good fit for the Cartoon Network audience, Hill says. Although it has more girl appeal, he would have liked a little more diversity in the characters.

For some unexplained reason, Magnolia has a Southern accent. "That's the way of Jay Ward," Tiffany Ward says.

The new George has 26 episodes, each containing two cartoons. Only 17 episodes of the original were broadcast. Those, along with an unaired earlier pilot, will be available on DVD Feb. 12.

George isn't the only Ward update in production. Peabody and his pet boy, Sherman, are the subject of a DreamWorks film scheduled for 2010, Tiffany Ward says.

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That's the bad news. The good news is that the original show has a much better chance of being released on DVD soon, with (I'm assuming) an accompanying notice that it's no longer appropriate for children.

The Osamu Tezuka Manga Museum: A Mini-Tour

Christopher Butcher (manager of The Beguiling, a Canadian comic book store) has generously posted a bunch of his Tezuka Museum photos on his blog, Comics212. Until you can afford a trip there yourself - enjoy!

Parade Of The Three-Wheelers

LA TIMES: Three-wheelers have designs on sportiness, safety
Three-wheelers draw more and more interest. These new models demonstrate why.
By SUSAN CARPENTER, THROTTLE JOCKEY - January 2, 2008

Used to be that a three-wheeled motorcycle, or trike, meant one wheel in front, two in back. Then Can-Am sped onto the market with its snowmobile-esque Spyder, a three-wheeler that gave the segment a sporty makeover by putting the two wheels out front. In the year since the Spyder's unveiling, the three-wheeled segment is growing faster than a center fielder on steroids, with a number of new models coming to market throughout 2008. We take a sneak peek at the year's three-wheeled future.

Aptera Typ-1
Available: late 2008

The Aptera Typ-1 isn't easy to classify. It has three wheels, so it's registered as a motorcycle, but it has a steering wheel and seats two, so it feels more like a car. It's also electric. And did we mention it looks something like a dolphin?

The goal for this Carlsbad start-up was to make a passenger vehicle that has the same drivability, stability and safety characteristics as an automobile, only with higher energy efficiency, lower weight and fewer governmental hurdles than a company would encounter as a small-scale manufacturer of four-wheel vehicles.

The result is a future-is-now vehicle that's spacious, stylish, comfortable, eco-conscious, high-tech and so unusual looking that at one point during my time with the Typ-1, all the cars and pedestrians within a one-block radius were staring and/or snapping pictures.

Because the Typ-1 is a prototype, I wasn't able to drive it myself, but I did take a ride in the passenger seat. I just opened the DeLorean-type door, slid into the mod, green-and-white interior, closed the door behind me and strapped on my seat belt. Aptera Chief Executive and co-founder Steve Fambro turned the key to fire up the electric motor, pressed the pedal with the plus sign on the floor to accelerate, and we were off.

According to Fambro, the Typ-1 is capable of 80 mph and could travel up to 70 miles on a single charge while sustaining that speed, but he never took it up that fast and we didn't travel anywhere near that far as we cruised SoCal suburbia. The fastest we went was probably 45 mph, at which it felt stable. Taking corners, we went even slower, so I couldn't tell how it handled, but Fambro says the Typ-1 has been "designed for natural stability" and incorporates a traction control system that, in theory, can handle a 1G circle on par with a Honda Civic.

Riding in the Typ-1 is sort of like being in a high-tech fishbowl. There's incredible visibility from all sides except the back, which is equipped with a rear-view camera that displays whatever's happening behind the vehicle on a trio of computer screens.

The center of each of those three screens also displays the vehicle's speed, voltage and power, while a touch screen at the center of the dash controls the navigation system, stereo and other gauges, such as the odometer and temperature reading.

The Typ-1 is unusual for any number of reasons, the most notable being the body. Its water-worthy shape is formed from high-tech fiberglass that isn't just lighter than steel but 10 times stronger, according to Fambro. The Typ-1 has yet to be crash tested, but Fambro says the crumple zone on the Typ-1 is longer than that of a typical car, and the crush strength of the roof and side doors is stronger than what's been mandated for a regular passenger vehicle.

Can-Am Spyder
Available: July

If the manual-transmission Can-Am Spyder is a reentry bike for aging motorcyclists, the Canadian company's semiautomatic version may be more of a bridge vehicle for drivers of cars. The no-lean suspension on this groundbreaking three-wheeler already removed one barrier to entry for a vehicle you throw a leg over. Taking away the clutch and foot shifter removes another.

I was riding the first prototype of the Spyder with the SE5, or sequential electronic five-speed, transmission. With the exception of the thumb-operated shifter under the left grip, this version of the Spyder is otherwise exactly the same as the original SM5, or sequential manual five-speed, version that came out last year.

Considering the prototype was the first of three iterations before the SE5 Spyder goes into production, it was already highly evolved and well-functioning. In place of the foot shifter and clutch, there's a little black button that I pushed forward to upshift. I didn't need to roll off the throttle as I shifted. I just pushed the button and the transmission smoothly kicked it up a notch without bucking me like a bronco as it attempted to mesh gears; the sensation was similar to the seamless, continuously variable transmission of a car.

Downshifting, I had two options. I could push the button toward me, which required an act of finger contortion, or simply let the SE5 adjust to my slowing speed and downshift for me, which was my preference.

That made me wonder: Why didn't Can-Am just make the thing fully automatic on the upshift also? Mostly it was a matter of cost and efficiency. To make a fully automatic, CVT-type transmission would have required Can-Am to develop an entirely new transmission, instead of just modifying the one it was already using. That in turn would have upped the cost on the SE5 version, which already comes at a $1,500 premium.

Piaggio MP3 500
Available: February

Piaggio's groundbreaking MP3 250 hasn't even been on the market for a year, and already it's the bestselling scooter in the Piaggio brand lineup. So what's a manufacturer to do? Capitalize on that success with a one-two punch: a pair of 400-cc and 500-cc maxi-scooters that use the same twinned wheels and articulated front end to increase the bike's stability and riders' sense of calm.

While the profiles of the new maxis are bigger and more brutish, their dynamics are the same as the 250. The two front wheels, set 16.5 inches apart, lean in tandem, allowing riders to tilt the bike by as much as 40 degrees. Riders who are afraid to put a foot down can even lock the front suspension as they slow to 3 mph, allowing them to rest their feet on the textured metal floorboards instead of planet Earth. The bike also comes with a center stand, but it's redundant. The suspension lock and parking brake make the trike stable as a tripod when stopped.

The idea is that two wheels out front are better than just one because:

1) they provide a greater contact patch through turns and 2) they provide more stability on takeoffs, landings and at high speeds.

If the 12-inch front wheels hadn't been twinned, I wouldn't have been tempted to risk my life in pursuit of the bike's 89 mph max or to take it for 100-mile stints on the freeway, but I did. I even felt comfortable as I zipped along in the carpool lane, returning the many smiles and stares I was getting with a wave.

It's safe to say it was the three wheels that caused drivers to take their eyes off the road, but it could have been the style that prompted more than a few to accidentally veer into my lane. With its 500-cc version, Piaggio's showing its Italian heritage with a cutting-edge style designed to squelch any ideas that scooters can't be cool. Its matte black bodywork, tubular grill and fenced-in front lights are pure Mafia don. With its MP3 500, Piaggio is likely to have another hit on its hands.

TriRod F3 Adrenaline
Available: July

Unlike the rest of the three-wheeled field, which looks at the third wheel as a safety feature, TriRod Motorcycles sees it as a performance enhancement. The San Diego shop hasn't just added an extra wheel to the front of its F3 Adrenaline. It's upgraded the tires to automotive Pirellis and widened the spread of its twin wheels, so the F3 can carry more speed more aggressively through corners without running the risk of tipping over.

In the process, TriRod seems to have developed a new three-wheeling stunt: the side-sliding doughnut.

Like the Spyder, the F3 doesn't lean in turns. It's designed to ride like a three-wheeled Formula 1 race car with a sit-on versus sit-in design. The center of gravity is low for less body roll when cornering and the seat height is an exceptionally squat 17 inches. The front suspension is a pull-rod and crank-bell design that lessens unsprung weight for more responsive handling, while the double A-arms are unequal and not parallel for better grip on the ground.

Add a 120-cubic-inch, JIMS V-twin motor, and you've got yourself a three-wheeled missile.

I didn't get to ride the F3 Adrenaline because it's a prototype, but I did see it in action, so I will say this: TriRod isn't false billing.

It is, however, making itself into the Confederate Motor Co. of three-wheelers with a triumvirate of characteristics to match: high design, high performance and a high price: $55,000.

Vectrix V3
Available: late 2008

For its follow-up to the electric scooter it debuted last year, the Rhode Island manufacturer has gone the way of Piaggio. Literally. In order to make an electric version of a three-wheeled scooter, Vectrix had to license the right from the Italian manufacturer, which holds the patent.

While the V3 uses the same sort of independent, wheel-action suspension as the Piaggio MP3, allowing each front wheel to move independently but also lean in tandem and lock when stopped, Vectrix's front suspension is its own proprietary design.

I was able to ride a barely ridden prototype of the bike for the duration of a single charge, which, according to the digital dash, was about 45 miles. That is, if I'd ridden it the way I'd been asked -- on streets. But the Vectrix is capable of 62 mph and I wanted to see how it fared on the freeway, so that's where I took it.

Like all electrics, torque is constant on the V3, so it had amazing pickup as I got on the ramp and joined traffic. The production model should be even better because Vectrix will be upgrading its batteries. Instead of the Nickel Metal Hydride variety it used on its debut product, the Maxi, the V3's 125-volt battery pack will be lithium, which is quicker off the line. Vectrix anticipates the lithium-powered V3 will accelerate from 0 to 50 in a scant 5.2 seconds

On the freeway, the Vectrix did as well as I expected. It got up to its anticipated speed, but keeping it there reduced its range by about one-third. Anyone hoping to use the V3 as a freeway commuter would need to live fairly close to work or risk being stranded for a recharge.

Returning to city streets, I put the front end through its paces. At slow speeds and in turns, it didn't do as well as I'd wanted. It felt a little clunky and tin can-ish as I intentionally ran it over potholes and lumpy pavement. It's a good first effort for a fledgling manufacturer attempting a tricky front-end design, but it wasn't as fluid as its alpha-numerical competitor from across the pond.

susan.carpenter@latimes.com

TV Guide Movie OTD: The Greatest American Hero

PRODUCTIONCHARTS.COM: The Greatest American Hero
STATUS: July 2008
LOCATION: Arizona
PRODUCER: Stephen J. Cannell - Michael Dubelko
DIRECTOR: Stephen Herek
WRITER: Chris Matheson - Ryan Rowe

Based on the ABC-TV series which ran from 1980 to 1983. Story concerns a nebbishy teacher who becomes a reluctant superhero after extraterrestrials give him a special suit with powers he can barely understand or control when he loses its instruction manual. The film will reference the old series, but in the update there is more than one suit floating around the world.

Thanks to I Like Toys! for the link.

Are Movie Studios Making Themselves More Irrelevant?

LA TIMES: A sequel with the same ending
As they did in the '88 writers strike, the studios are pushing themselves out of the picture. By Thom Taylor - January 3, 2008
The writers guild keeps saying that its strike against the studios is about the future, but one need only look back to the 1988 strike to see that in key ways it is a repeat of the past. Nearly 20 years ago, when the writers asked for a bigger slice of the pie, the studios shrugged and Hollywood sank into a malaise. But out of that emerged new ways of doing business, a scenario that's happening again.

During the 1988 strike, writers worked independently on "spec scripts" (written on the speculation that they would eventually sell them) and a pipeline-dry studio system snapped them up. TV producers also sought alternatives to traditional, high-cost scripted series. The strike resulted in the 1990s' spec script boom and reality television -- two new business models.

It's not strikers' demands but the work stoppage itself that creates a new paradigm. By fighting the writers over the new-media issues today, the studios are effectively creating what they fear most: a major tectonic shift in the entertainment business that will reduce the role of the studios even further.

Generally speaking, before 1988, movie studios -- which then housed genuinely creative executives -- used to "develop" movies starting from source material such as a book, play, life story or pitch and hire a writer to nurture it into a screenplay. They would pay the writer usually a five-figure sum, maybe more, and both sides would see the project through to completion.

In the decade after the '88 strike, studios more often bought fully written "specs," and millions of dollars were thrown at ready-to-shoot scripts. The role of the executive was less creative and more business. The prices for specs escalated to obscene amounts even as studios, in essence, discovered that they were buying only "an idea" and then hiring even more writers to revise, rework and polish it. The process was often financially wasteful and ushered in concept-driven, amusement-park-ride movies. The money's been good, but studios largely relinquished the creation of heartfelt, character-driven films to the independent art-house world.

Flash forward to the current debate, in which studios claim that digital media are too new for them to commit to a particular payment structure. Their response is based on a fear that's haunted them since the arrival of the Internet: "disintermediation." This is cyber-speak for cutting out the middleman. In such an environment, the studios' role (as managers of content) is reduced to nonexistence. Sound a bit like what's been happening to the music industry?

The studios balked at writers' request for a 2.5% sliver of the digital media revenues, and the current strike began. Immediately, many writers emigrated to the Internet, at first generating short videos to virally market their labor messages and now to give creative outlet to their talent. The studios have maintained a misguided "talk to the hand" strategy, so the writers have sensibly picked up their toys and gone to play somewhere else.

The transition to making money from the new paradigm will naturally take time. Right now, anybody with a computer connection can create an overnight sensation on YouTube -- but that's not enough to quit your day job. Yet the Internet is on its way to becoming the public's preferred mass distribution system -- and that means Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Apple and telephone companies will compete with traditional networks by piping broadband content into home theaters. This sea change has the potential to turn the studios as we know them on their heads.

This evolution is progressing with the creation of every Break, Heavy, FunnyOrDie and MyDamnChannel: sites that give writers total creative control and up to 50% of revenue. Of course, these outlets are tiny compared with the networks' reach -- and nobody thinks the studios will disappear -- but they represent the first step toward the new paradigm that the studios fear.

Even before the strike began, many writers were wondering, "Why are we fighting for only 2.5% of a studio process that's so invariably inefficient?" And now the creative genie is out of the bottle. The longer the strike lasts, the more accelerated the disruptive technology becomes.

The companies will likely make a deal with the WGA in the coming months because all reality, all the time is a losing proposition. (Remember when ABC ran "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" every night and destroyed its prime-time viewership?) If the deal is as bad for writers as the studios' original proposal, the companies will feel that they have won the war. But the writers will have effectively won the most important battle: Their role as the creative center of the new entertainment business model has been confirmed.

The studios could have learned a lesson from the U.S. auto industry, which didn't adapt when it faced more efficient Japanese competitors. The car companies forgot that it all starts with innovation. Somehow the studios have forgotten that it all starts with the word.

Thom Taylor wrote "The Big Deal: Hollywood's Million-Dollar Script Market" about how the 1988 strike altered the movie business. He works at a global investment bank.

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Makes sense to me. It seems that at a certain point, many companies expend so much effort to keep things the way they are, they wind up getting hurt by change instead of embracing (and benefitting from) it. I wish big companies could get government protection for risk and progress, rather than being bailed out for clinging to the past.

The Richter Scales Go Viral

LA TIMES: Bursting Silicon Valley's bubble through song
The Richter Scales have an online hit with a musical video parody.
By Jessica Guynn, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer - December 24, 2007

SAN FRANCISCO -- An offbeat a cappella group composed mostly of computer geeks, the Richter Scales have performed original ditties and pop parodies in relative obscurity for seven years.

That is, until three weeks ago, when they released an online video that mocks the latest Internet frenzy sweeping Silicon Valley. "Here Comes Another Bubble," an original arrangement of Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire," pokes fun at the "monster rally all around the valley." In staccato bursts of words and images, it lampoons the Web industry's silly buzzwords and business names, pizza-and-beer-fueled engineers, male-dominated launch parties, billion-dollar valuations and mass-scale ego trips.

The musical romp opens with Facebook Inc. investor and board member Peter Thiel declaring, with a straight face, "There's absolutely no bubble in technology." Its final lines, "And when we are gone/This will still go on and on and on and on and on and on and on" are interrupted by a loud popping sound.

The clever commentary on the cult of the Silicon Valley start-up was an instant hit, passed along via e-mail and blogged by venture capitalists, entrepreneurs, coders and marketers. It climbed the charts to become YouTube's top-rated video in its first week with more than 1 million views.

"It's about the gold-rush spirit of thousands of entrepreneurs who want to try their hand at being the next Larry Page or Sergey Brin," said Matt Hempey, the 33-year-old PayPal Inc. product manager who wrote the lyrics and arranged the song.

Even those lampooned got a kick out of it. Technology blogger Robert Scoble said he laughed so hard that he sprayed Diet Coke out of his nose. TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington called it an honor to have his cigar-puffing mug gracing the video's display image.

Not everyone was amused. The video was yanked from the Web after Bay Area photographer Lane Hartwell complained that one of her images was used without credit, sparking a spirited online debate about fair use of copyrighted material. The Richter Scales last week cut a version without her image and listed credits for images they used.

That didn't appease Hartwell, nor some of the other photographers whose images briefly appear in the video. But so far the new version remains on YouTube and www.richterscales.com.

Hempey, who solos on "Here Comes Another Bubble," said the half-baked business plans, copycat companies and flowing venture capital dollars inspired him to set music to the debate that has flared in the industry: Are we in another high-tech bubble?

He says he sees so many people trying to spin fortunes on broadband and a prayer that it's deja vu for Silicon Valley.

The 15 members of the Richter Scales belong to a generation shaped by the Internet bust. Seven work for start-ups, four more are at technology companies such as Apple Inc. and Google Inc.

Curtis Chen, a 34-year-old bass singer and Web applications engineer at Google, said it didn't take long for his co-workers to become fans of the video.

"They really identified with it," he said. "There are a fair number of people here who worked at start-ups that failed, myself included. They are familiar with what happened the last time around and they can see it happening again, as the video says."

It was in 2000, during the Internet crash, that the Richter Scales banded together, a group of guys looking to stretch their vocal chords and rekindle the camaraderie of collegiate a cappella. They practiced Thursday nights in the empty offices of one member's start-up, located in a seedy San Francisco neighborhood next door to a strip club whose motto was "Feel the beauty, touch the magic."

The group's experimental, self-directed vibe appealed to its members' entrepreneurial natures.

A cappella means "in the style of the church" in Italian and is sung without the accompaniment of instruments. But nothing is sacred where the Richter Scales are concerned. They send up Christmas music and Gregorian chants alike with satire and slapstick, performing every six weeks, with two main shows a year. Ranging in age from 25 to 40, the guys bond at weekend retreats, spending as much time talking about their lives as they do writing songs.

They first put their voices to video this summer with a spoof of the sub-prime lending collapse, "Fine Line: Sub-Prime Decline," which was viewed more than 39,000 times and was mentioned on a handful of blogs. But the viral success of "Here Comes Another Bubble" surprised them.

Heretofore their highlights were singing the national anthem at a San Francisco Giants game, serenading guests at mayoral fundraisers and their own weddings and belting out a few tunes on street corners or in restaurants. (Their second gig was a lively rendition of "I Left My Heart in San Francisco" in the back of a Japanese tourist bus.)

"We perform at all sorts of kooky things where people are not listening to us," said James Currier, a 40-year-old San Francisco entrepreneur who co-founded the Richter Scales.

But about 200 people recently packed a rented San Francisco church to listen to the group's annual holiday medley. The Richter Scales, wearing black shirts, blue jeans and Santa hats, joked they were thrilled to see so many "unique visitors" show up for their "user-generated content."

They performed geek-friendly songs including Brian Rosen's ode to spam "I Got Mail" ("Now I've got new hair, a new physique/I lost twelve pounds in just one week/Yeah I got mail and I got it made"), and Jason Hunter's digital ballad "E-mail Me Your Love" ("Nothing turns me on like a well-placed emoticon"). Rosen, 36, is a senior software engineer at Pixar Animation Studios and Hunter, 28, is a senior content manager at EBay Inc.

"Seeing as we are a bunch of tech guys, we write what we know," said Rosen, the Richter Scales' musical director.

Their first live performance of "Here Comes Another Bubble" brought down the house.

Still, like any bubble-era start-up worth its weight in venture capital funding, the Richter Scales lost money on the gig, as they have on every one since inception.

The much-aired bubble video hasn't exactly lined their pockets either. They offer it free online, and they've sold only eight of their "We Hate A Cappella" CDs as a result of the publicity -- about one for every 125,000 viewers. That means 3.5 million people will have to view the video before they recoup the $355 it cost to make it.But they say they were never in it for the fame or fortune.

"I've really enjoyed making the valley laugh about something I am intimately familiar with," said Hempey, who survived a start-up failure or two. "It was a great idea at the right time."

jessica.guynn@latimes.com

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Here's hoping that the Scales' online bubble isn't a fluke. Go Brian!

Fantasy Nerds Everywhere Suddenly, Inexplicably Aroused

NY TIMES: Master of ‘Rings’ to Tackle ‘Hobbit’
By DAVID M. HALBFINGER - Published: December 19, 2007

LOS ANGELES — Goblins, trolls and dragons were a breeze compared with the caustic clash of egos that kept “The Hobbit” in Hollywood limbo for years. But a settlement announced on Tuesday between Peter Jackson and New Line Cinema holds the promise that peace will break out in Middle Earth and that fans could see the first of two resulting movies by December 2010.

The pact, which two people involved said was worth nearly $40 million to Mr. Jackson, ends years of litigation and acrimonious auditing over his share of the profits from the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy. Those movies grossed $2.9 billion worldwide, made Mr. Jackson’s reputation and vastly enhanced New Line’s stature among the major movie studios.

Though Sam Raimi has stated his interest, it is unclear who will direct the two Hobbit movies, but Mr. Jackson will not. Mr. Jackson and his producing and writing partners, Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens, are committed to making “The Lovely Bones” through 2008 and then he is directing “Tintin,” based on the Belgian comic strip, for Steven Spielberg.

But Mr. Jackson and his wife, Ms. Walsh, will be executive producers of the Hobbit films, and they will share with New Line the right to approve all creative elements: director, screenwriter, script, cast, filming location, even the visual-effects company used (as if there were any doubt that his Weta Digital would be chosen). “They can assure that the films will be made with the same level of quality as if they were writing and directing,” Mr. Jackson’s manager, Ken Kamins, said.

Settlement of the litigation freed New Line, which held the rights to make a “Hobbit” movie, and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, which has distribution rights, to cut a 50-50 financing deal: New Line will make the two films and distribute them domestically, and MGM will distribute them overseas. The untitled sequel is described as bridging the 60-year gap between the end of J. R. R. Tolkien’s “Hobbit” and the beginning of the “Rings” trilogy.

Despite the treasure involved — or perhaps because of it — the Jackson-New Line marriage grew testy by 2003, when Mr. Jackson began complaining about his share of the profits. New Line paid added bonuses, but Mr. Jackson nonetheless began an audit, which was said to particularly antagonize Bob Shaye, the studio’s co-chairman with Michael Lynne.

Warfare broke into the open in February 2005, when Mr. Jackson sued New Line over his audit, saying the studio was stonewalling his accountants. After Mr. Jackson told fans in a Web posting late last year that New Line had formally dropped him from “The Hobbit,” Mr. Shaye exploded on the Web, “He thinks that we owe him something after we’ve paid him over a quarter of a billion dollars.”

A thaw began some weeks later, Mr. Kamins said, when Mr. Jackson dined at the home of Harry Sloan, the chairman of MGM. It held distribution rights to “The Hobbit” and Mr. Sloan was desperate to get the franchise moving. By May, during the Cannes Film Festival, Mr. Jackson and Mr. Shaye joined a multiparty conference call; it was the first time they had spoken in about two years, Mr. Kamins said. “That call created a tone that really lasted into the fall,” he said.

If Mr. Sloan was motivated to spur a deal — he said the “halo effect” alone from “The Hobbit” could help attract talent and financing to MGM — Messrs. Shaye and Lynne of New Line were said to be facing a deadline of their own: their contracts as studio bosses expire in 2008, and the public combat with Mr. Jackson was a cause for frequent criticism. (Mr. Jackson at one point offered his “Lovely Bones” project to every major studio except New Line.)

The studio, meanwhile, has had a run of two years with only two hits, “Rush Hour 3” and “Hairspray.” Its costly “Golden Compass” opened to a disappointing $25.8 million gross in its first weekend.

In an interview on Tuesday, Mr. Shaye admitted that he had taken some aspects of the dispute with Mr. Jackson quite personally, but he and Mr. Lynne insisted they had faced no pressure from above to cut a deal.

Mr. Lynne said, “No one told us we had to resolve it one way or another.”

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VARIETY: 'Hobbit' back on track as twin bill
New Line settles dispute with Jackson
By MICHAEL FLEMING
Posted: Tue., Dec. 18, 2007, 9:23am PT

"The Hobbit" is finally happening.

After settling a lawsuit with Peter Jackson on "The Lord of the Rings," New Line co-chairmen/co-CEOs Bob Shaye and Michael Lynne announced jointly with MGM chairman Harry Sloan that the way is clear to turn J.R.R. Tolkien's "Hobbit" into two live-action films.

The resolution clears the way for "Spider-Man" helmer Sam Raimi to direct. While Shaye said no creative alignments have yet been made, Raimi has long been interested -- as long as Jackson was involved or gave his blessing.

The studios hope to start production in 2009, shooting two films simultaneously and releasing them in December 2010 and December 2011. New Line will run production and distribute domestically, while MGM will release internationally. The studios will co-finance the films.

Jackson's Kiwi stages, post-production and visual effects facilities -- which he built to accommodate "LOTR" -- likely will be used to mount "The Hobbit." And New Zealand once again will be used as the visual backdrop for Middle-earth, this time to tell the story of how Frodo's uncle, Bilbo Baggins, ventured from the Shire and wound up taking the Ring of Power from Gollum.

The key to moving forward was settling all litigation between Jackson and New Line over funds owed the filmmaker for "LOTR."

Jackson and partner Fran Walsh filed suit in Los Angeles Federal Court in 2005, charging they were shortchanged in profit participation on "The Fellowship of the Ring." A bitter war of words set Jackson and Walsh in one corner, Shaye and Lynne in the other.

Jackson's next two directing gigs are both for DreamWorks. He optioned Alice Sebold novel "The Lovely Bones" and wrote the script with his "LOTR" partners Walsh and Philippa Boyens. He'll also team with Steven Spielberg to co-direct "Tintin."

While those commitments will keep Jackson from directing "The Hobbit," the settlement deal is helpful not only for Shaye and Lynne but also for MGM's Sloan, who helped put the parties together.

The contracts of Shaye and Lynne expire next fall. The studio has weathered several tough post-"LOTR" years, and its latest attempt at a fantasy trilogy, "The Golden Compass," has proved tepid. Pic has so far grossed just north of $40 million domestic, while drawing $90 million in offshore ticket sales. Though Hossein Amini has scripted sequel "The Subtle Knife," it's unclear whether the second installment of Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" trilogy will go into production.

At MGM, Sloan planned to revive the studio with franchises. Dealt a setback when "Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins" went to Warner Bros. (MGM is suing financier Halcyon, claiming that its negotiation rights were violated), Sloan now has two plum titles to use as building blocks. Though Columbia distributes the James Bond film about to begin production, MGM gets the 007 franchise back after that, and Sloan said Daniel Craig is signed to a multipicture dseal.

"I give a lot of credit to Peter, Bob and Michael for putting their differences aside for a tremendous property that has an enormous fan base," Sloan said. "Between 'The Hobbit' and Bond, we're involved in two of the best-known franchises in the world."

Shaye and Lynne said while they have not yet gotten to shake hands with Jackson and Walsh, they consider the legal matter to be history.

"This is a complete resolution of all the disputes between us," Lynne said. "Obviously, there is extensive auditing on pictures that are successful. In our business, you can have differences of an accounting and legal nature that polarize people and get in the way of personal and professional relationships."

Shaye, whose barbed public comments toward Jackson once widened the gulf between them, said he was also relieved.

"Nobody likes contention," Shaye told Daily Variety. "None of us, not me, Michael, Peter or Fran, were happy that a dispute was destroying a fruitful and prosperous enterprise.

"All these lawyers were going crazy not letting the principals communicate directly, when we might have been able to solve this years ago. Movies are difficult enough to make without having a war going on," Shaye continued. "The settlement was done with the idea that the good spirit that nurtured the first three films can continue. I hope we can revive what was once a wonderful relationship."

Jackson was unavailable to comment beyond a statement and there was no comment about the size of his "LOTR" settlement.

"I'm very pleased that we've been able to put our differences behind us, so that we may begin a new chapter with our old friends at New Line," Jackson said in the statement. "The Lord of the Rings" is a "legacy we proudly share with Bob and Michael, and together, we share that legacy with millions of loyal fans all over the world. We are delighted to continue our journey through Middle-earth."

(Janet Shprintz in Hollywood contributed to this report.)

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"Mr. Lynne said, 'No one told us we had to resolve it one way or another.'"

Nothing except the oceans of money and piles of awards the "Rings" series has amassed! I figured something would get worked out eventually. Initially, I was worried about two "Hobbit" movies, but this is encouraging:

"The untitled sequel is described as bridging the 60-year gap between the end of J. R. R. Tolkien’s 'Hobbit' and the beginning of the 'Rings' trilogy."

That's fine with me! I was only concerned with padding (what I think is) Tolkien’s most succinct and self-contained book in order to stretch it over two films.

Cool! Well, we'll see...

David Gonzales: Beyond The Homies

LA TIMES: 'Homies' are where his art is
The barrio figurines left their creator rich but unfulfilled. Then he cast his brother as a model of mutual redemption.
By Hector Becerra, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer - December 18, 2007

HERCULES, CALIF. -- Ten years ago, David Gonzales created a hit with "The Homies," 2-inch plastic figurines depicting characters from the barrio, complete with bandannas and baggy pants. Inspired by the homeboys he grew up with, they were sold, quarter by quarter, in gum ball machines in mostly Latino neighborhoods.

Gonzales was lambasted by police and prosecutors, who said the impish images exploited gang life for profit. Naturally, they then sold better than ever: more than 120 million to date.

The 47-year-old Gonzales, now a father of three children in college, lives in an elegant two-story Spanish-style house overlooking San Francisco Bay, just down the road from the flinty central Richmond neighborhood where he grew up.

"I call this house 'the house that the Homies built,' " he said.

Gonzales has been featured in national magazines, including Rolling Stone, and rubbed shoulders with celebrities. His characters have adorned back-to-school folders, lunchboxes, breath mints and beach towels. The Pasadena Museum of California Art is hosting an exhibit on his Homies, and Nintendo will soon release a Homies video game.

Yet there has been a gnawing feeling of unfulfilled goals and unmet expectations. He wanted to hit the big time with an animated TV show -- something that would really leave his imprint. Oil paintings by Gonzales, often with religious themes, hang on the walls of his home -- a reminder that the artist created the toy maker, not the other way around.

He felt harried by a sense that time was slipping away, sounding curiously like someone stuck in his own plastic bubble. Sometimes, he bared his soul to a priest.

But not just any priest.

Gonzales, one of five boys in a family scraping by in a tough neighborhood, grew up intense, artistic and studious. He asked his parents to take him out of a Roman Catholic school and enroll him in a public school because the latter had an art program.

"I knew David was going to be an artist," said his mother, Agnes.

His brother Robert, younger by a year, hung out with a rougher crowd. He got into fights, burglarized homes with his friends and landed in jail. He dropped out of high school.

The brothers were close, but their paths kept diverging. David enrolled at California College of the Arts in Oakland. He drew a comic strip for Lowrider magazine with characters familiar -- for better or worse -- to just about anyone growing up in Mexican American barrios. Robert moved to Nevada to work in the Job Corps.

One day in 1980, David got an urgent call from a hospital in Reno.

Robert and some friends had scuffled with a group of young men on the side of a desert road. Someone had hopped into a car and gunned it in Robert's direction, pinning him between two cars. His right leg had to be amputated below the knee.

When David and their mother reached the hospital, a priest told her that Robert must have been pulled from the grave by a guardian angel. The priest also remarked that Robert was highly spiritual, a comment that surprised his family.

David went back to college and Robert returned to his parents in Richmond. But even in a wheelchair he was rebellious, blowing insurance money on a lowrider and partying harder than ever. He moved out but soon felt lonely, isolated and miserable. He drank a lot.

One day, Robert returned to Richmond and found David in their parents' garage. If anyone could understand him, Robert figured, it would be David.

Robert wept. He told his brother he wanted to come back home. But he felt ashamed. What Robert really seemed to crave, David thought, was forgiveness -- penance.

"The prodigal son spends his riches and comes home. He rejects his parents' love and direction," David said, recalling what he learned in church and Catholic school. "A lot of people screw up in their lives and leave, and their parents slam the door in their face when they come back."

But David knew that would not happen to Robert, even if his brother had doubts. "Just speak to Mom and Dad," he told him. "They'll understand."

So Robert spoke to them.And they welcomed him back.

In the ensuing years, David made money designing T-shirts and selling them at flea markets and liquor stores. One of his first bestsellers featured Barturo, a barrio version of Bart Simpson who asked: "¿Qué pasa, dude?" Another successful shirt featured the Virgin of Guadalupe.

He took a job as an artist with the Postal Service in Oakland to support his wife and children. He painted a huge mural titled "Journey of a Letter" in a post office lobby in Fremont but eventually quit so he could pursue the T-shirt business full time, refining his barrio creations.

Then a manufacturer called him about making plastic figurines of his comic strip characters.

Meanwhile, after his garage chat with David, Robert patched up things with his parents, enrolled in vocational school, graduated with honors and took a job at a savings and loan. But, as David would feel years later, Robert sensed something was missing in his life. There had to be, he decided, a reason he survived the attack. One day, he called his parents into the living room and announced that, at age 24, he wanted to become a priest.

"He was the last person I expected to be a priest," his mother said. "When you think of a priest, you think quiet and studious. Robert was so rebellious."

In 1989, the year the Homies figurines made their debut, Robert took his religious vows and a new name, Masseo, after one of St. Francis' followers. When Robert was ordained as a Franciscan priest seven years later, David read a speech.

"Knowing Father Masseo . . . I'm sure he'll be dealing with a lot of problems facing young people, such as drugs, gangs and teen pregnancy," David said. "He'll be an important part of a lot of baptisms, first communions and confirmations. Those will be his children."

Soon enough, David would need Masseo for his own talk-in-the garage moment.

He was making lots of money. By most accounts, Homies were the best-selling character brand in vending-machine history. But police and prosecutor complaints were wearing on him. Many stores stopped selling Homies, and lots of people thought he was glorifying gangbangers and profiting from it.

The Homies, with names such as Chuco, Joker and Poco Loco, were just his humorous tribute to a subculture of Latino life, he said. "I'm not going to stop gangs, and I didn't create them," David said, sounding slightly exasperated. "They exist. Just like they exist in the regular Hispanic community, they exist in the Homie world."

David fired off a frustrated e-mail to his brother, saying that he was thinking of going back to the Postal Service. He found it hard, David said, to accept that "God blessed me with all this . . . artistic talent for that job in life."

"God didn't give you this talent for nothing," his brother replied.

The priest also reminded him that even a toy maker had a larger responsibility. Not every Homie had to be vato, a dude in the barrio.

So David kept at it. He created El Paletero (the ice cream vendor), who works to bring his grandchildren from Mexico. And Officer Placa, a rotund, doughnut-loving cop who "worked the barrio for about 20 years and knows all the Homies by name."

Robert suggested he create a figurine of a homeboy in a wheelchair -- a common sight in gang-afflicted neighborhoods. Willy G. became the most popular Homie ever. Soon, David got calls from the Special Olympics and from people who coached youngsters with disabilities.

He also created a homeless man, a young student and an activist. But no character would have a life of its own, and bind the two brothers, so much as El Padrecito ("the little father") -- a Franciscan priest with robes, sandals and stylish sunglasses who "acts like a second father to many of the Homies" and looks a bit like Robert.

The Padrecito turned out to be more than just a figurine. Masseo adopted him as his personal logo and found that the Homie helped him reach young people in need. Robert created El Padrecito's Online Church, where he fields questions, offers upbeat advice, counsels the troubled and sometimes delivers a religious message in rap.

"My life would probably be a lot more boring without the Homies," the priest said.

Robert talks optimistically about his dream of opening a monastery in the town of Guadalupe and reaching ever more people through the cyber-church.

To help Robert along, David sold him the rights to El Padrecito for $1 and gave him permission to use all of the Homies in his religious efforts. And last year David created Santos, a line of figurines of saints and religious figures, such as Pope John Paul II. David also donated $20,000 to his brother's growing cyber-church.

Last year, a young woman from Houston e-mailed El Padrecito to say she was about to earn her college degree. She wanted to thank the father for helping her cope with the execution of a family member on death row years before.

"Crazy as it sounds," she wrote, "if I hadn't written to you so long ago, my life may have turned out differently and I could have been just another statistic, just another face on the welfare line."

Could the priest have reached out to the young woman without El Padrecito? Probably, but the Homies certainly made it easier, Robert said. And the priest brought the artist a measure of redemption as well. "He helped the Homie family stay on the right path," David said. "It was reaffirming for me, and it let me know that I had not gone too bad."

And who would have ever expected that from the creator of Chuco, Joker and Poco Loco?

hector.becerra@latimes.com

And So It Goes

VARIETY: Singleton hunts for 'A-Team' team
Fox in early talks with director on remake
By TATIANA SIEGEL - Posted: Sun., Dec. 16, 2007, 8:00pm PT

Director John Singleton is gearing up to direct a bigscreen version of 1980s TV series "The A-Team" and talking about the casting possibilities all over town.

Twentieth Century Fox is in early talks with the helmer to resuscitate the gang, but the studio said no deal is in place, and the project is not envisioned as a pre-SAG/DGA strike affair.

Ice Cube, who starred in Singleton's debut, "Boyz N the Hood," has been rumored as a potential B.A. Baracas (played by Mr. T in the NBC series), but Fox denied that possibility.

Latest incarnation, penned by Jayson Rothwell, revolves around a group of Iraq vets wanted by the U.S. military for a crime they didn't commit. Their adventures combine helping the innocent while running from the law. Story has been given a modern twist by involving oil tycoons and laser technology.

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Nothing says 'modern' to me like lasers and oil barons.

A Christmas Story House Open For Tours

You'll be happy to know that the house where A Christmas Story was filmed looks exactly as it did in the classic 80's holiday film. But it wasn't easy...

Apparently, after the film's release, the original owners re-modeled everything in order to keep fans away. It didn't work. Fortunately, the next owner (Brian Jones, who snapped it up from eBay in 2004) was a huge Story buff, spending almost a quarter of a million to faithfully return the house to its original look. The house sports the iconic leg lamp in the front window, and a 1937 Oldsmobile in the driveway! Across the street is a Christmas Story museum where you can pick up souvenirs.

Check out the nerdy, nerdy details at achristmasstoryhouse.com.

Hammer Walks Among Us

VARIETY: Hammer comes back from dead
Film to be released via MySpace
By ARCHIE THOMAS - Posted: Thurs., Dec. 13, 2007, 8:02am PT

LONDON — The recently revived Hammer Films will produce its first feature in three decades and distribute it via social networking site MySpace’s web TV arm.

Legendary Brit production company Hammer built its name on a string of genre pics released in the 1950s and 1960s under the Hammer House of Horror label.

The new pic “Beyond the Rave” will be released in 20-minute online webisodes on MySpace TV and then be made available in its entirety on DVD to buy or download.

The youth-skewed vampire story set in England’s underground rave party scene follows a hedonistic soldier in his quest to track down his missing girlfriend in the last 24 hours before he flies to Iraq.

Cast includes Sadie Frost (“Bram Stoker’s Dracula”), Jamie Dornan (“Marie-Antoinette”), Nora-Jane Noone (“The Descent”) and Tamer Hassan (“Layer Cake”).

Matthias Hoene directs. Ben Grass and Tom Grass of Pure Grass Films produce for Hammer.

“ ‘Beyond the Rave’ was inspired by Tom and my own experiences of raves: the great highs, and the demons that can lurk in the dark before dawn,” said Ben Grass.

Hammer’s latest resurrection came in May when it was bought a consortium led by Dutch producer John de Mol.

DreamWorks, Nickelodeon Team Up For Television

LA TIMES: INDUSTRY - An animated partnership
By Martin Miller, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer December 10, 2007

ATOP the Nickelodeon studios in Burbank is a larger-than-life cavalcade of the cable network's signature animated characters. SpongeBob SquarePants is up there. So is Dora the Explorer, as well as a handful of others. Joining them soon, hope the network's executives, will be Skipper, Kowalski, Rico and Private -- the raucously comic penguins from the DreamWorks Animation film "Madagascar."

Thanks to their Viacom Inc. owners, the two entertainment powerhouses are teaming up to produce a new computer-generated animated comedy series for television that spins off the half-billion-dollar worldwide grossing success of the DreamWorks film. In the kind of synergy other corporations may wish upon a star for, the new series, whose working title is "Penguins," is slated to premiere in early 2009 -- just a few months after the sequel, "Madagascar: The Crate Escape," hits thousands of theaters nationally.

For Nickelodeon, the new series is part of a major ramp-up in production at the already humming animation studio. Next year, the 28-year-old company is poised to crank out some 225 half-hour cartoons, an increase in its animation of nearly 50% -- a total that bulks up the output of the nation's largest producer of TV animation. The expansion also represents a broader network strategy to maintain its enviable winning streak as the No. 1-rated cable company for nearly 14 years -- a feat performed in the face of increasing competition from other entertainment outlets, notably crosstown rival Disney.

Of the more than 40 original animated series the studio has launched since 1991, few have come with bigger expectations than are now being carried by the quartet of wisecracking penguins. Nickelodeon is no doubt looking for the kind of phenomenal success it has enjoyed with "SpongeBob," "Dora" and "Rugrats," which together have raked in billions of dollars in product sales.

Even though SpongeBob and Dora debuted before the millennium, both are still going strong, but like the Rugrats before them, they are not invulnerable to the shifting viewing habits of their core 2- to 11-year-old audience. In short, the studio could certainly use another franchise hit, one that a schedule can be built around -- and the wobbly little penguins just may make that kind of splash.

"These movies from Pixar and DreamWorks are very, very popular with kids and families, and Nickelodeon is very smart to capitalize on it," said Brad Adgate, an analyst at the ad firm Horizon Media in New York. "I think they're saying, 'Hey, let's just give the kids what they want.' "

But what about all those other penguins swimming around the cultural soup in recent years? Remember "March of the Penguins," "Surf's Up" and "Happy Feet"? And don't forget the trendy kids' website Club Penguin.

"We had them first," joked Jeffrey Katzenberg, head of DreamWorks Animation. "These penguins are the ones that lead the pack."

Cyma Zarghami, president of Nickelodeon, expressed confidence too: "I know, at first blush, it's like, 'Oh my God, more penguins!' But to quote Jeffrey, if everyone in the room thinks something is funny, you're on to something."

Though there will be minor adjustments here and there, the penguins will largely look, talk and act the same way they did in DreamWorks' hit movie. The challenge, of course, will be converting side characters into compelling main ones. In the movie, the penguins, who fancy themselves as a CIA-style strike force, were simply trying to bust out of Central Park Zoo and return to Antarctica -- only to be sidetracked to Madagascar.

But in the TV show, the four will effectively rule the zoo -- Julien, King of the Lemurs, and his extensive entourage will be there to muss their feathers -- and mostly stay within New York City when embarking on their top-secret missions.

"They're almost like four brothers; they're like the Marx Brothers," said Katzenberg. "They can take the littlest thing and blow it completely out of proportion, and it's just hilarious."

The seeds for the collaboration were sown in December 2005 when Viacom snatched up DreamWorks for $1.5 billion. Shortly thereafter, the two giants of children's entertainment were searching for the appropriate project on which to collaborate, Katzenberg said.

After running through a number of creative options, the spunky penguins who managed to steal some of the limelight in the star-studded movie won out.

In fact, the penguins project is the first joint animation effort between the two companies, but more are coming. They are already at work on another television spinoff from DreamWorks' upcoming "Kung Fu Panda," which is scheduled for release in June 2008. The animated movie stars Jack Black as a chunky panda who dreams of becoming a kung fu master.

Though the two companies are under the same corporate umbrella, that didn't mean one wouldn't be left out in the rain when it came to creative decisions. Initially, it seemed as if DreamWorks, which after all invented the characters, was going to call the shots, but the relationship hasn't turned out as expected.

"It's been a 180-degree reversal for us," Katzenberg said. "We originally thought that we were going to take a very hands-on approach, but we were just blown away by their creative team. We're really acting as advisors and consultants."

Likewise, Nickelodeon executives had no less praise for DreamWorks.

"It's almost a perfect marriage since we've led the surge on the TV side and they've led it on the feature-film side," said Mark Taylor, Nickelodeon's senior vice president. "I think they've been appreciative that we've taken what they've done and embraced it as opposed to trying to find a way to do it different, faster, cheaper or whatever."

A good working relationship helps Nickelodeon sharpen another potentially formidable weapon in its seemingly eternal struggle against Disney. The company with mouse ears, which has its own block of highly successful kids' animated programming, has been making particular gains against Nickelodeon in the so-called "tween" demographic (kids from the ages of 9 to 14).

In fact, until a recent NFL matchup, it was Disney's smash "High School Musical 2" that held the record for most viewers for a single program on basic cable. In August, the Friday night premiere drew 17.2 million viewers but was eclipsed by last week's New England Patriots-Baltimore Ravens game on ESPN -- also owned by Disney -- that logged 17.5 million viewers.

Nickelodeon executives believe the new penguin series will pack on competitive muscle for the network not only with its likable story lines, but also with its rich and vividly detailed CG (computer-generated) presentation.

The network plans to generate more CG content than ever next year, when the technique will account for about a quarter of its total animation production, including the shows "Tak and the Power of Juju" and "Back at the Barnyard."

In all, the company expects to deliver 29 hours of CG shows -- a figure that is the equivalent of about 19 feature films.

Just because computers help deliver a visually stunning result doesn't mean the process is easy.

"Computers don't really animate anything," said Josh Book, Nickelodeon's creative director of CG animation. "The choices the computer makes are never the ones you'd want either artistically or creatively. It still comes down to going in frame by frame and putting things where you want them.

"At the end of the day, the computer is a tool," Book added. "It's just like a pencil, but it's a very smart pencil."

Although inheriting the DreamWorks characters eases the load for Nickelodeon's CG animation team, it still takes a week to build a single character, and a single episode takes 44 weeks to complete.

"At any one time here, you can have 40 different episodes in production at varying stages," Taylor said. "It's a real logistical juggling act."

martin.miller@latimes.com

Who's Laughing Now?

NEW YORK TIMES: Homemade YouTube Video Lands Singer in a Web Ad
By SARA IVRY - Published: December 10, 2007

If, as the song goes, video killed the radio star, then homemade YouTube heroes like Tay Zonday have put a hit out on traditional advertising.

In April, Mr. Zonday became an Internet phenomenon after he posted a no-frills video for the song “Chocolate Rain” on YouTube featuring his earnest delivery and his deep voice, which he likens to that of Paul Robeson and Barry White.

Two weeks ago, Mr. Zonday, a 25-year-old graduate student in American studies at the University of Minnesota whose real name is Adam Bahner, posted a follow-up called “Cherry Chocolate Rain.” But in this case, the flashier video was an ad. With a little help from the rapper Mista Johnson, Mr. Zonday extols the virtues of Cherry Chocolate Diet Dr Pepper, a soft drink that will be available nationally from January through April. (Since November, it has had limited marketing in four states.)

Soft drink companies have often based ad campaigns around pop singers, but they are usually mainstream acts like Michael Jackson or Britney Spears, not an online curiosity like Mr. Zonday, who does not have a record contract.

“We’re doing this to try to do something fun and different and connect with consumers who might not see more traditional media,” said Jaxie Alt, the director for marketing at Dr Pepper, which worked with True Entertainment, a production company, in August to approach Mr. Zonday about reworking “Chocolate Rain.” Neither Mr. Zonday nor Dr Pepper would disclose how much Mr. Zonday received for the "Cherry Chocolate Rain" video.

In the months since it has been up, the video for “Chocolate Rain” has had roughly 12 million hits. “I probably posted it like millions of other people upload themselves singing or doing ordinary things in their lives, and I think that’s very much part of our time, part of our culture,” said Mr. Zonday. “It’s not something one gives a whole lot of more thought to than sending an e-mail or making a phone call,” added Mr. Zonday, who has also landed a television commercial for Comedy Central.

The newer video, for “Cherry Chocolate Rain,” has more than one million hits so far. The newer song has the same melody as the original but different lyrics. The viral approach “was very, very deliberate from a marketing standpoint,” said Shari Solomon Cedar, True Entertainment’s vice president for programming. “Our task was to get something in front of a tech savvy, younger audience, to break through and bring awareness that way. That’s what we achieved.”

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We're encouraged to think that there was a fat payoff at the end of the chocolate rainbow, but I wonder. Since experienced screenwriters are struggling to get their fair share of internet revenue, I hope Mr. Zonday ran out and got an agent and/or an entertainment lawyer as soon as he got the call. I doubt I would have at his age, but I imagine one of the biggest reasons for trotting out YouTube posters is that it's a lot easier and cheaper to 'negotiate' with a grad student than a established recording artist. If the experiment works, I would imagine the gap between budget and revenue is huge.

If he did cut a good deal, more power to him! Student loans aren't getting any cheaper.

Remake OTD: C.H.U.D.

DREAD CENTRAL UPDATE: Zombie to Redo C.H.U.D.!
Submitted by Johnny Butane on Wed, 11/07/2007 - 4:25pm.

This just in! Spoke with Rob and he confirmed he WILL be helming the C.H.U.D. remake!

Now this would be just plain weird ... But kinda cool at the same time.

Billboard.com just posted an article about Rob Zombie’s upcoming projects, everything from a White Zombie box set to the special edition of Halloween, and made mention in passing that the rocker cum director is attached to a remake of C.H.U.D..

Whoa now, what? Why? I mean, the original is a classic in its own right and a remake sure wouldn’t hurt, but why would Zombie tackle it? Billboard didn’t get confirmation from Zombie if that is his next film or not, so we’ll put this one in the “rumors” box for now.

Keep checking back; we’ll give you more when we know it!

- Johnny Butane

'Dilbert' Becomes What He Mocks - The Boss

NY TIMES: The Tables Turn for Dilbert’s Creator
By BRAD STONE
Published: November 11, 2007
Photo by Thor Swift

THIS is yet another story about a clueless but obtrusive boss — the kind of meddlesome manager you might laugh at in the panels of “Dilbert,” the daily comic strip.

The boss in question operates an upscale restaurant serving California cuisine about an hour’s drive east of San Francisco. The restaurant, Stacey’s at Waterford, is in trouble — two decades of rapid population growth in the region has prompted an influx of national competitors like P. F. Chang’s China Bistro and the Cheesecake Factory.

While the chains have 30-minute waits for tables on weeknights, Stacey’s at Waterford has more jewel-tone microfiber chairs than diners, and is slowly but steadily losing money. To make matters worse, this befuddled manager has never run a restaurant before or even supervised another person’s work in more than 20 years. His greatest qualification for the job, one might say, is 17 years spent satirizing cubicle culture.

In other words, Scott Adams, the “Dilbert” creator and the progenitor of the multimillion-dollar Dilbert empire, is now a pointy-haired boss himself.

Mr. Adams had repeatedly vowed never to let it come to this, refusing for years even to hire a personal assistant to help with Dilbert-related projects. “I did a really good job not being a boss for a long time, and I was happy with that,” he said.

But never say never. A decade ago, flush with Dilbert riches, he and the restaurant veteran Stacey Belkin opened a restaurant called Stacey’s Cafe in downtown Pleasanton, Calif., a bedroom community of San Francisco. Five years later, they opened Stacey’s at Waterford in an unremarkable strip mall nearby, in Dublin, Calif.

Until this summer, Mr. Adams’s involvement consisted of signing checks, writing clever jokes for the menus and leaving big tips for the wait staff after his regular visits. Then a personal battle between Ms. Belkin and a former chef intensified just as the big feed chains began staking their claim on the booming exurbs — thrusting Dilbert’s creator into the middle of a managerial nightmare.

Stacey’s Cafe is smaller, in a better location and is regularly packed. But Stacey’s at Waterford, never profitable to begin with, was suddenly seeing a 10 percent decline in revenue. Ms. Belkin, who was running both restaurants, was overextended.

Mr. Adams, meanwhile, was dispatching his comic-strip responsibilities in just a few hours each morning. So, in July, he agreed to take over day-to-day operations of Stacey’s at Waterford, thus becoming what he has consistently ridiculed: a boss.

“I am highly experienced at making funny comics about managers,” he wrote at the time on his popular blog, dilbertblog.typepad.com. “How hard could it be to transition from mocking idiots to being one?”

Those in his 35-member staff at Stacey’s at Waterford can gladly answer that one. In interviews authorized by their generously self-deprecating boss, employees describe him as trusting and appreciative, full of off-the-wall ideas about how to turn around the business, and dramatically clueless about the harsh realities of the restaurant industry.

“I’ve been in this business 23 years, and I’ve seen a lot of things. He truly has no idea what he’s doing,” said Nathan Gillespie, the new, wise-cracking head chef, after discussing a recent dust-up with Mr. Adams over the grilled salmon filet. (Mr. Gillespie had experimented with what he called small changes to the dish; friends noticed them and told Mr. Adams, who admonished the chef that new dishes need to go through a formal review.)

Mr. Gillespie is still miffed. “He’s a really nice guy, but he relies on his friends’ opinions,” he said, lamenting that his boss’s friends probably think a chain restaurant has good pizza.

Emma Lewis, the lunch manager, describes Mr. Adams as someone who should be shielded from tough decisions the way a crawling infant needs to be protected from household hazards. “We laugh and say we’re not going to let him watch the Food Channel,” she said. “He’ll think he can run a restaurant.”

On the other hand, employees also say he knows his limitations and combines deep trust in them with an instinctive ability to motivate people. They understand that to survive in this age of dominant restaurant chains, they must embrace some of his more unusual ideas and obsessions — but more on those later.

No one is more critical of his management skills than the humorist himself. “I’m quite sure I’ve succumbed to the pigeon theory of management,” he said. “Flying in every so often and dumping on everything.”

“THE most ineffective workers are systematically moved to the place where they can do the least damage: management.”

— Scott Adams

“The Dilbert Principle”

Mr. Adams, who turned 50 in June, has closely cropped, receding hair, spectacles and an unsurprising resemblance to his ink-drawn alter-ego. He is quick to recognize how the cynical cubicle-worker wisdom that propelled “The Dilbert Principle” onto best-seller lists is at work in his role as restaurant boss.

“Certainly I’m an example of the Dilbert Principle,” he said. “I can’t cook. I can’t remember customers’ orders. I can’t do most of the jobs I pay people to do.”

But restaurants, he says, are in his DNA. Before he was born, his family owned and operated a diner called the Blue Moon in Windham, N.Y., in the 1950s. In high school and college, he bused tables at resorts in the Catskills.

“I have no interest in ever stepping onto a sailboat,” he said. “But I walk into a restaurant and all my senses and interests are activated in a single moment.”

Enriched by the 1990s success of Dilbert, he indulged his obsession. After investing in Stacey’s Cafe, he started a company, Scott Adams Food, in 1999. Its first and last product was the Dilberito, a vitamin-packed meatless burrito with a wheat-based meat substitute intended to give workaholics a full day’s worth of nourishment.

The company placed the Dilberito in national supermarkets, but Mr. Adams now complains that rival food makers surreptitiously sent agents into stores to bury it on the back of shelves. He closed the venture in 2003, though he licensed the protein substitute to a food conglomerate and continues to draw small royalties.

Two years later, he curtailed speaking engagements after contracting spasmodic dysphonia, a rare brain disorder that robbed him of his voice for a year. Gradually, he learned tricks like altering his speech patterns or talking in rhymes, which let him regain some speaking ability, though his voice remains halting and wispy.

Today, he is married and a stepfather to two young children. He still awakes at 5 a.m., drawing his strip and producing books like “Stick to Drawing Comics, Monkey Brain!” his most recent collection of entries from his blog. Cartooning now comes easily to Mr. Adams, who gets many ideas from readers via his Web site and draws strips in a few hours each morning on his computer. “I spend less time thinking about the strip than anything else I do,” he said.

So when the numbers on Stacey’s at Waterford started to go south, he had the free time to try to protect his investment. He declines to disclose exactly how much he has already spent or what the restaurant is losing. “The trajectory changed,” he said. “It was moving in the right direction and suddenly started moving rapidly in the wrong direction.”

“We needed a change in strategy.”

“THE purpose of a plan is to disguise the fact that you have no idea what you should be doing.”

— Scott Adams, “Dilbert’s Guide to the Rest of Your Life”

The linchpin of Mr. Adams’s strategy is the 50-person banquet room. “We are three banquets a week away from being on our way to riches and glory,” he said.

After taking over this summer, he hired an events coordinator who began attracting outings from local companies like Oracle, Chevron and Safeway, and introduced bonuses for employees who refer banquet business. He also turned to Dilbert fans for suggestions on how to use the party room, in a posting on his blog titled “Oh Great Blog Brain.”

The Dilbert faithful responded with more than 1,300 comments, mixing interesting ideas (interactive murder-mystery theater) with unlikely mischief (nude volleyball tournaments).

Mr. Adams asked his employees to read the comments and is now slowly trying some of them. The idea for Mommy Mojito Night, for example, originated on the blog and has met with initial enthusiasm from customers.

Along with such ideas, he also started indulging some odd, pointy-haired-boss-like obsessions.

He believes proper light is the primary factor in a restaurant’s success — not food, price, location, location or location. “With the right light, you look better and your date looks better,” he said. “That influences your impression of everything else.”

But when they designed their space, Mr. Adams and Ms. Belkin blundered by creating multiple, large floor-to-ceiling storefront windows that are now proving impossibly expensive to cover.

He always despised the light in the restaurant. So, skeptical employees in tow, he embarked on a surreal hunt for window coverings. One interior decorator after another suggested translucent curtains, or curtains that gather on the sides, or curtains designed to stay rolled up.

“Every meeting was the same conversation,” he said. “They couldn’t understand that the point was to have less light.” Roman shades would have done the trick, but they cost $50,000.

The project was temporarily shelved this fall, but not before it had become a source of comedy among the wait staff. “At this point, I’m sure he wouldn’t care if we put cardboard on windows,” said Kristina Jernigan, the bar manager.

More recently, Mr. Adams began plans to “Dilbertize” the restaurant. He hopes that adding more conspicuous references to his celebrity might create what marketers call a “purple cow” — that singular distinction that gets people talking.

The restaurant recently invited its bar patrons to draw on blank comic book panels; it will post the best efforts to its Web site, www.eatatstaceys.com. Mr. Adams also plans to add a flat-screen television to the bar and to run a constant loop of “Dilbert” strips on it. “For a fairly low investment, it becomes an automatic talking point,” he said.

But no one knows better than Dilbert’s creator that changes from above can stir fear and conspiracy among the troops. Converting the existing bar into a “Dilbar,” as employees called it, became the source of an uncomfortable rumor in the restaurant: that Mr. Adams would soon ask them to wear Dilbert-style white short-sleeved shirts and ties that curled upward.

“It is definitely not going to up our cool factor,” said a bartender, Brian Bundy, who believed that such a change was imminent.

Mr. Adams says he has no plans for such a requirement, and two employees deviously take credit for the starting the rumor. Still, many at the restaurant seem to think it’s a possibility.

“I bet you six months from now, you walk in here and see the ties,” said Ms. Lewis, the lunch manager.

Mr. Adams recognizes how such fears may have taken hold. “If you put that in context of my other bad ideas, it makes sense,” he said.

“LEADERSHIP is a flavor of evil. Obviously no one would need to lead you to do something you wanted to do anyway.”

— Scott Adams, “Dilbert’s Guide to the Rest of Your Life”

Mr. Adams tries to avoid the bad-boss stereotypes he mocks in ”Dilbert” and his best-selling books. Occasionally, he slips up. Trying to coordinate a conversation between a reporter and the dinner manager, Mr. Adams calls the employee on his off day and asks him to come in anyway. He agrees.

“I like to hire people with no life,” Mr. Adams said wickedly after the call.

That demanding streak is tempered by a more benevolent side: Mr. Adams generously tipped the entire staff after his 50th birthday party at the restaurant, though he’d spent part of the evening grousing that the lights were too bright.

In sizing up his own struggles as boss, he said: “The toughest thing is I have trouble being evil. I never punish mistakes, and it’s impossible for me to ask people to work harder. So my defense is to make sure people are happy about being here.”

Some employees, accustomed to hard-edged politics at other restaurants, think that this approach might further disadvantage Stacey’s in such a brutally competitive environment.

“He’s extremely loyal to people — in this business that can be deadly,” said Mr. Gillespie, the chef.

Mr. Adams shrugs off the possibility of failure at Stacey’s and said he has the money and willingness to keep trying new strategies until he finds one that works. “Any combination of things can help us,” he said. “If any of these new ideas take off, we’ll be fine, and if they won’t work, we can walk away from them and try something else.”

He adds that running a restaurant complements his life nicely. “It’s a source of stress, but it adds such richness and happiness to my life,” he says. “The problem with being a cartoonist is that if you don’t have someplace else to go, your life just gets so small.”

At the very least, Scott Adams is getting fresh insight into Dilbert’s pointy-haired boss.

Don Rickles - Still Going Strong In 'Mr. Warmth'

LA TIMES: Don Rickles is still in your face
A new documentary captures the myriad sides of insult comic Don Rickles. - November 8, 2007
By Paul Brownfield, LA Times Staff Writer - Photo by Anne Cusack

THERE are various ways to gauge the longevity of Don Rickles. His longtime publicist, Paul Shefrin, is the son of Rickles' previous publicist, Gene Shefrin, just as Rickles' longtime business manager, Bill Braunstein, is the son of Rickles' previous business manager, Jerry Braunstein.

"There was no voting, they were just given the jobs," Rickles said of the sons.

Rickles is 81 and enjoying a little bit of a renaissance, as it happens, with a memoir, "Rickles' Book," and now "Mr. Warmth: The Don Rickles Project," a feature-length documentary directed by John Landis, of "Animal House" and "The Blues Brothers" movie fame. The film screens at the AFI Film Festival Friday night and debuts on HBO Dec. 2.

The Rickles vault will always contain vintage "Tonight Show" clips and his appearances on Dean Martin celebrity roasts, Rickles brandishing his malice in a way that somewhere came back around to him as an ambassador of goodwill.

Today, when it comes to the art of the insult, the air is thicker but the skin is thinner (see Chris Rock versus Sean Penn at the Academy Awards in 2005). Maybe that's why Rickles holds up; he is, finally, still better than anyone at making ridicule seem cathartic. Despite this fact, no one had ever captured his live act on film, largely because Rickles himself never wanted to participate.

"Mr. Warmth" offers generous portions of Rickles performing last November at the Stardust in Las Vegas, before that hotel and casino was imploded. (Rickles said he just signed up for dates at the Orleans.)

According to Shefrin, Rickles does his act approximately 75 times a year. Occasionally, Rickles said, he can get the Indian casinos he plays to send him a private plane, but there's no mistaking his stunning endurance, and the mental acuity it takes to work a room, firing off insults at various customers who've paid for this very privilege.

Landis, who figures he's seen Rickles perform 50 times, says 65% to 70% of the act doesn't much change (ribbing the band; interludes of singing; assaulting the guy in the front row with: "That your wife?").

"But then there's always that 30 to 40% you've never heard before," Landis said. "The truth is he's a performance artist. I always thought so. He tells no jokes. There are no Don Rickles impersonators."

And yet "Mr. Warmth" is more than a concert film; it's a march through the history of Rickles' life, full of grace notes. Son of an Eastern European-Jewish immigrant father and a strong-willed mother, Rickles never went to college and served in the Philippines in World War II, later attending the American Academy of Dramatic Arts before moving to L.A., where, deep into his 20s, he continued to live with his mother Etta (in a high-rise then called Park Sunset, mother and son's living quarters separated by a curtain) while going onstage at a club called the Slate Brothers, where one night, as legend has it (though the venue changes according to the source), Rickles befriended Frank Sinatra by calling out: "Make yourself at home, Frank. Hit somebody."

Fraught silence, then a release of laughter. At L'Ermitage Hotel in Beverly Hills this week, munching on peanuts, Rickles told a similarly themed story from his days working the lounge at the Sahara, back when Vegas was run by the mob. Rickles performed on a stage over the bar ("There was a small stage and in between was a pit, where the bartenders walked, and the bar," he said). He did several shows nightly with Louis Prima -- midnight, 2 and then 5 a.m. for the breakfast crowd.

"I used to go out in the casino and go, 'Hold it! . . . hold it!' Really loudly. 'I'm performing in there, and the . . . noise is too much, I want it stopped! You understand that? Stopped!'

"They all stopped, froze," Rickles said, "then they laughed their asses off."

"MR. Warmth" begins with actor Harry Dean Stanton sitting in a booth at Dan Tana's in West Hollywood, blowing on a harmonica. For Landis, it's a self-referential prelude: The director met Rickles in the hillsides of Tito's Yugoslavia, where Landis was an 18-year-old gofer making 60 bucks a week on the set of "Kelly's Heroes," the 1970 movie starring Clint Eastwood, Telly Savalas, Stanton, Rickles and Donald Sutherland as soldiers who go behind German lines to seize $16 million in gold bullion. (Rickles likes to poor-mouth his film career, but Landis isn't buying it. "He was in 'Run Silent, Run Deep!' ")

In "Kelly's Heroes," Rickles played a character called Crapgame. At the end of the shoot, Rickles gave Landis a $50 tip, and a friendship was born.

"Mr. Warmth" has four producers, including Rickles' son, Larry, and Mike Richardson, publisher of Darkhorse Comics and producer of the "Hellboy" movies, who gave Landis the initial money to shoot Rickles at the Stardust.

Like many documentaries about comedians, "Mr. Warmth" gingerly attempts to explain Rickles' appeal without spoiling the joy that his slurs paradoxically bring (Robert De Niro is interviewed, as is Rock, Martin Scorsese, Bob Newhart, Sarah Silverman and Sidney Poitier, though you mostly keep wanting the film to return to Rickles onstage at the Stardust).

At first, you see him backstage, sipping coffee in a robe, putting on his tux and shambling to his position backstage, accompanied by his longtime tour manager, Anthony "Tony O" Oppedisano.

Watching Rickles before he goes out, it's hard to conjure what happens next. Which is why Landis wanted to show the transformation. "Don's an 81-year-old man who has an 81-year-old man's body," he said. But then the horn sounds and the spotlight hits, and it's Rickles. All over again.

"You like that, huh, you Nazi . . . ?" he barks at a customer in the front row, after dangling the microphone to imitate old Jewish men in the steam in Florida.

These jokes are impossibly vintage. And yet what is contemporary about Rickles is his command, the way in which he can make himself seem dangerous again, even now -- or maybe especially now. Things at the Stardust, for instance, get momentarily iffy when Rickles starts working a Japanese customer in the house and mis-hears the guy's last name ("No need to get [upset], Joe. Just asking your name").

There is a scene in "Mr. Warmth" where Rickles, sitting at home surrounded by photos of his show business pals, goes down one wall and says: "Dead. Dead. Cancer. Dead. Hanging on the ropes. Very bad. Very sick. Almost dead. And dying."

Rickles toured with Sinatra when the singer was having to read lyrics off a teleprompter.

"He was really struggling too," Rickles said. "I remember. . . . If I lose that, it won't be Don Rickles anymore."

Joey Bishop, the last Rat Pack member, died last month. Red Buttons died a day before Landis was to interview him for "Mr. Warmth," the director said. Rickles has diabetes and is more hunched over these days; he says he gave up tennis and golf because of back issues, and a few weeks ago, in New York for the screening of "Mr. Warmth" at the New York Film Festival, he cracked a rib riding his exercise bike.

He's better now, though the rib injury has prevented him from performing until after Thanksgiving.

"The audience won't know," he said of his return, "but maybe my trigger will be slightly slower. Slightly. Until it gets going, anyway."

paul.brownfield@latimes.com

How to Start Your Own Toy Line, Circa 2003

ACTION-HQ.COM: HOW TO BREAK INTO THE DESIGNER TOYS MARKET?
Interview with Casey Lau, Head of HyperChild

Everyone's heard about the cool designer toys that are coming out of Asia but how does one actually break into this market? What does one need to do to produce and market their own line of toys?

John Wong, the head of Action-HQ.com, sat down with Casey Lau, head of HyperChild to find out just this, in this exclusive interview for the good people at Action-Figure.com.

John Wong [Action-HQ.com] > Hey Casey, thanks for doing this interview with us and Action-Figure.com. For those who might not know, can you tell us about your company?

Casey Lau [HyperChild] > HyperChild is a think-tank and development company that creates and develops new entertainment properties such as toys, animation and character goods. We were founded and are based in Hong Kong, and are made up of a collective of writers, artists and designers. Our goal is to create new properties for a new generation of audience. We are launching two new properties lines this year with The Deviants and Garage Robots.

John Wong [Action-HQ.com] > Can you tell us something about your background so that the readers knows where you are coming from?

Casey Lau [HyperChild] > My experience is expansive with over 10 years in licensing, design, Internet development and the comic book industries. Some of my works include creating such properties as Virtex and The WonderLanders and, as you know, co-founding that little web-company called ActionAce.com. I would call myself a "designer" first and anything else -like writer, businessman, dishwasher - second.

John Wong [Action-HQ.com] > Cool! So tell us in layman terms how to get started in the designer toy industry?

Casey Lau [HyperChild] > Okay....to make your own toys you need a few things- if you can do them all yourself, great -if not you will need to put out some cash to have others come in to help you. As an aside, I could write a book on how to self publish your own comic book which is a lot cheaper than making toys, but perhaps next interview, haaa.

Anyway, the first step is DESIGN. Design your figures with good ol’ pencil and paper, and work out your designs in various poses until you’re are happy with one.

Then you basically need to draw out what we call “TURNS” an animation term for front, side and back views of a character. This is for a sculptor to see what it is you want to do. Obviously if you sculpt it yourself you wont need these but its usually always good to have a guide of what you want to do.

The next step is the sculpting. You can use various materials to do this: clay, sculptey, wax etc. whatever you are comfortable with. If you don’t know how, you will have to find a sculptor that you can work with.

Then you need to decide on color callouts and figure out the Pantone number for each of these colors.

Once you have devised a prototype you are happy with you then need to get it to a factory for costing and talk about numbers.

John Wong [Action-HQ.com] > How does one locate a factory?

Casey Lau [HyperChild] > The factory you will use will most likely be in China but your best bet is to talk to a factory’s agent in Hong Kong. That way communication is no problem and Hong Kong has been the center of toys for so long that they will know more about putting your product together than you will.

There are a few places to start sourcing factories and all are online and in English. Point your browsers to these websites to start surfing for the best factories:

www.tdcenterprise.com
www.alibaba.com
and look to come out to Hong Kong in January for the Toy Fair:
www.hktoyfair.com
Also a good place to look for exhibitors and getting in touch via email.

[HyperChild, Action-HQ.com and Action-Figure.com does not endorse any of the companies/information found on these sites. Deal with them at your own prerogative.]

John Wong [Action-HQ.com] > How would you know which factory to go with as there are so many?

Casey Lau [HyperChild] > In choosing a factory the most important thing is quality. Any factory can make a product but the quality of the product is a different thing altogether. So don’t go for the cheapest price but the best quality you can for the best price you can afford.

John Wong [Action-HQ.com] > What about costing and quantities?

Casey Lau [HyperChild] > Your negotiations will take time but have the factory send you some samples so you can see their work. Most factories should be able to point you to their work that can easily be found in the U.S., U.K. and throughout Europe. Don’t expect to find the same factory that Hasbro uses for your limited edition toy. You will need to find a good, stable, medium sized company that can handle the work for you.

Once you find the factory you will need to send them your prototype for costing. This is where you need to part with your original so make sure you make at least 2 of them. Within 2 weeks of receiving your prototype you will be able to get a cost for your figures. Depending on how many you want to make will determine the cost per piece. As most rotocast figures are done under 1000 pieces and looking at the retail price of HK vinyl today you can see that the costs are quite high.

The production process takes about 6-9 weeks, wax mould, master moulds, paint masters and production moulds all come next and there is a lot of back and forth between you and the factory to get it the way you want it. So again finding a good quality factory is # 1 as this will help with any aggravations created in the road of production.

From there you get your packaging design done to fit your toy and have that artwork sent to Hong Kong so they can print and package your toys. You tell the factory how many you want to pack in each case and they will then arrange to ship back to you.

Not as easy as it sounds but extremely gratifying when you open that sealed case of figures YOU created.

John Wong [Action-HQ.com] > Okay, here is the most important question, how much does it take to get started if all you can do is design the product? Can you give us a cost for sculpting as I think not many of us are competent to do that and how much is it to make 1,000 rotocast vinyl figures?

Casey Lau [HyperChild] > Well, like anything, costs break down by quality and negotiations. Sculpting can go from anything from $1,000 to $5,000 per figure in my experience -if you want someone famous to do it, it can go up to $10,000.

And then the price per piece depending on quality and size, articulation, number of parts - wow there are so many factors that come into pricing a figure that it could range from $1-$20 per piece for 1000 pieces. One thing I have learned is that to meet price points you have to be willing to let things go from your original ideas as some things may be too costly to do.

John Wong [Action-HQ.com] > Thanks, that was very informative. Let's talk about the other major component which is the market. In layman terms again, I think our readers would like to know how many pieces should someone starting out make and how do they sell it?

Casey Lau [HyperChild] > Well, there are online shops and brick and motor shops and the toys distributors to go too. This is a big question and you should figure out who your target audience is before you begin. In Hong Kong we have a very tight knit toy community of shops and shows where toys are sold and bought, as has the rest of Asia - in the U.S. or U.K. I would gather you would find some specialty shops that would be clued in to this scene.

John Wong [Action-HQ.com] > Thanks again, Casey. I think the readers now have a good and basic understanding on how to start. Any last words?

Casey Lau [HyperChild] > Just a plug. You can check out my line of figures at www.hyperchild.ws for a look at that will be available in June 2003 and are available for pre-order now at www.action-hq.com.

----- Please check out our sponsor and contributor of this content at www.action-hq.com for special deals, giveaways and discounts on their new category of Asian Designer Toys.

Remake OTD: Hellraiser

VARIETY: French duo to remake 'Hellraiser'
Clive Barker to produce for Dimension
By MICHAEL FLEMING
Posted: Mon., Oct. 15, 2007, 5:38pm PT

French filmmakers Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo have scared up the job of writing and directing a remake of Clive Barker's 1987 horror film "Hellraiser" for Dimension Films. Barker will produce.

Dimension, which scored a hit with a redo of "Halloween," has the same hopes for "Hellraiser," the film that hatched a franchise around the pasty-faced Pinhead.

The original film revolved around a couple who move into an old house inhabited by the man's eviscerated half-brother, who escaped hellish torture from the Cenobites but returned shorn of his skin. The Cenobites, who are triggered by a Rubik's Cube-like puzzle device that unlocks the gates of hell, would like another meeting with the man.

Maury and Bustillo most recently directed the French fright film "Inside," released last summer in France.

"Julien and Alex showed their incredible creative talent on 'Inside,' and I'm excited to have them at the helm, working with Clive Barker, to create a fresh, suspenseful and scary reimagining of the classic tale," said Weinstein Co. co-chairman Bob Weinstein.

TWC picked up distribution rights to "Inside," a thriller about a pregnant woman who loses her boyfriend in a car crash and is subsequently haunted violently by a mysterious woman.

Richard Kelly's Next Film

VARIETY: Frank Langella to star in Kelly's 'Box'
Actor joins Cameron Diaz in horror film - By DIANE GARRETT
Posted: Thurs., Oct. 11, 2007, 2:42pm PT

Frank Langella will star with Cameron Diaz in "The Box," a horror film to be directed by "Donnie Darko" helmer Richard Kelly.

The $30 million production is being bankrolled by Media Rights Capital.

Langella will play a stranger who presents a mysterious box to a woman.

Kelly wrote the script based on Richard Matheson short story "Button, Button" He is producing with Sean McKittrick of his Darko Entertainment shingle. Ted Hamm will be exec producer.

Pic starts shooting mid-November (Daily Variety, June 29). By then Langella will have wrapped the film version of "Frost/Nixon" for Imagine and director Ron Howard.

Langella won the Tony award for his work in "Frost/Nixon" on Broadway. In November, Roadside Attractions will release Langella's "Starting Out in the Evening" which played at Sundance and Toronto.

MRC, which pays star salaries along with partial copyright ownership that gives talent a DVD windfall, also bankrolled "Babel" and Sacha Baron Cohen's "Bruno."

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Hmm. I thought this story was made into a post-Serling "Twilight Zone" episode at one point. We'll see, I guess.

Universal Decides To Spend 100,000 Times More On Land Of The Lost Episode Than Kroffts Originally Did

VARIETY: Universal OK's 'Land of the Lost'
Will Ferrell comedy to cost $100 million
By DIANE GARRETT, MICHAEL FLEMING
Posted: Tue., Oct. 9, 2007, 8:00pm PT

Universal is pushing the button on "Land of the Lost" for a March start.

Decision to greenlight the Will Ferrell project surprised observers, who are aware that U had a rough ride with its $160 million comedy "Evan Almighty." Studio sources suggest the budget of "Land of the Lost," described as an event comedy, was recalibrated from $125 million to $100 million in order to earn its start date.

Brad Silberling will helm the bigscreen adaptation of Sid & Marty Krofft's children's skein of the same name. Jimmy Miller is producing along with the Kroffts; Julie Wixson-Darmody and Daniel Lupi exec produce.

Decision to move ahead effectively removes Ferrell from availability for other pre-strike projects on the cusp, such as "Himelfarb" for Warner Bros. The comedian has been attached to "Land of the Lost" for several years. Miller reps Ferrell and the Kroffts, who have long tried to get a bigscreen adaptation of their show made.

Adaptation by Chris Henchy and Dennis McNicholas revolves around a disgraced paleontologist, his assistant and a macho tour guide who find them