Categories
Awards

Uh oh!! This might cost her the OScar!!

Melissa Leo ignites firestorm of controversy
Last week, Supporting Actress nominee Melissa Leo (“The Fighter”) took out her own trade ads touting her more glamorous side. The character actress, who is the frontrunner at the Oscars, wanted to show the industry her versatility. Instead, she set off an on-going debate about the propriety of such self-promotion.
Pete Hammond (Deadline) spoke to her last Thursday, as the campaign ran timed to coincide with ballots arriving for Oscar voters. Leo told Pete that, frustrated after failing to land talk show gigs and magazine covers, ìI took matters into my own hands. I knew what I was doing and told my representation how earnest I was about this idea. I had never heard of any actor taking out an ad as themselves and I wanted to give it a shot.”
Tim Appelo (THR) followed up with Leo at Monday’s Academy Awards nominee luncheon. She told him, “The Oscars — it’s this illustrious group, a jury of my peers, I find out. It’s also a marketing [thing]. It’s show business. I didn’t ask that this opportunity for more come to me. I’ve just done what I’ve done. I think I’m finding out why I watch those competitive cooking shows, ’cause people aren’t on about who they are or how they’re dressed. It’s about what they’re doing.”
Among the Oscar pundits, Sasha Stone (Awards Daily) says, “A 50 year old fighting to continue to get access to interesting roles? Sheís an embarrassment. Iím not saying she deserves to win or not; what I am saying is that she doesnít deserve to NOT get it because of this.”
For Jeff Wells (Hollywood-Elsewhere), “Ads are always judged in terms of style, class and tone, and Leo’s now-disappeared ads, I feel, got it right. They were fine. She looked great. No harm done. We’ve all been so trained to squint our eyes and arch our backs whenever an individual takes out an ad of any kind. Only corporations and major companies can do this!”
Scott Feinberg penned the post “In Defense of my friend, Melissa Leo” which he ended thus: “I have continued to follow her closely from afar, and I have been overjoyed to see her finally receiving long overdue recognition for her work. Sheís more than just another bold-faced name; sheís a real person, and I hope that people will give her a break and not punish her for getting excited about the prospect of holding an Oscar, as any of the rest of us real people would, too. We need more people like Melissa Leo in this industry — and, frankly, in this world — not fewer.”
However, Dixon Gaines (Movieline) was unimpressed: “Itís got the whiff of desperation all over it. And that desperation, again, is peculiar because Leo practically had the Oscar in the bag — Vegas has her as the odds-on favorite to win — so why jeopardize things with a tone-deaf ìI am awesome!î ad? Separate from the campaigns, Oscar nominees themselves usually comport themselves with a modicum of class and restraint, not show up on Academy votersí doorstep, desperately busking for tips.”

Categories
Games

What will I do with my free time now?!?!

Iconic ‘Guitar Hero’ video game gets the ax
NEW YORK ñ These days, guns are more popular than guitars, at least when it comes to video games. The company behind “Guitar Hero” said Wednesday that it is pulling the plug on one of the most influential video game titles of the new century.
Activision Blizzard Inc., which also produces the “Call of Duty” series, is ending the “Guitar Hero” franchise after a run of more than five years. The move follows Viacom Inc.’s decision in November to sell its money-losing unit behind the “Rock Band” video games. Harmonix was sold to an investment firm for an undisclosed sum. Harmonix, incidentally, was behind the first “Guitar Hero” game.
Game industry analysts have long lamented the “weakness in the music genre,” as they call it ó that is, the inability of game makers to drum up demand for the products after an initial surge in popularity in the mid-2000s. Music games are often more expensive than your typical shoot-’em-up game because they require guitars, microphones and other musical equipment. While extra songs can be purchased for download, this hasn’t been enough to keep the games profitable.
Activision’s shares tumbled after the announcement, but investors appear more concerned with the company’s disappointing revenue forecast than the demise of the rocker game. As far as investors go, discontinuing an unprofitable product isn’t the end of the world, even if “Guitar Hero” fans disagree.
“In retrospect it was a $3 billion or more business that everybody needed to buy, so they did, but they only needed to buy it once,” said Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter. “It’s much like ‘Wii Fit.’ Once you have it, you don’t need to buy another one.”
“Guitar Hero” was iconic and often praised for getting a generation weaned on video games into music. But its end after a mere half a decade is a big contrast to other influential video game franchises, such as the 25-year-old Mario series from Nintendo. “Call of Duty” first launched in 2003, two years before “Guitar Hero.”
In a conference call, Activision said its restructuring will mean the loss of about 500 jobs in its Activision Publishing business, which has about 7,000 employees. But the company’s overall work force numbers are not going to change much because it is hiring people elsewhere.
Activision did better than expected in the fourth quarter, which ended in December, but that already was anticipated. After all, it launched “Call of Duty: Black Ops” in November. That game, which is mostly set during the Vietnam War, made $1 billion after just six weeks in stores. Its latest “World of Warcraft” game has also been doing well.
Bobby Kotick, Activision’s CEO, said the company’s big franchises “have larger audience bases than ever before and we continue to see significantly enhanced user activity and engagement for our expanding online communities.” Revenue from so-called “digital channels” ó that is, downloads, subscriptions and extra game content sold online ó now accounts for 30 percent of the company’s total revenue.
Activision said Wednesday it lost $233 million, or 20 cents per share, in the latest quarter, compared with a loss of $286 million, or 23 cents per share, in the same period a year earlier. Net revenue fell to $1.43 billion from $1.56 billion.
Its adjusted earnings of 53 cents per share were better than last year’s 49 cents and beat analysts’ expectations of 51 cents, according to FactSet. Revenue that’s been adjusted to account for games with online components was $2.55 billion, up slightly from $2.50 billion a year earlier and above analysts’ $2.25 billion forecast.
For the current quarter, which ends in March, Activision forecast adjusted earnings of 7 cents per share, and adjusted revenue of $640 million. Analysts are looking for earnings of 10 cents per share on higher revenue of $771 million.
Activision Blizzard also said its board authorized a new $1.5 billion stock buyback plan. And it declared an annual dividend of 16.5 cents, an increase of 10 percent from the dividend it issued in February 2010, its first ever.
Shares of the Santa Monica, Calif.-based company, which is majority-owned by France’s Vivendi SA, tumbled 87 cents, or 7.4 percent, to $10.82 in after-hours trading. The stock had closed the regular session down 19 cents at $11.69.

Categories
People

Good for you, Kevin!! Now start making good movies again!!!

Smith loses 65 pounds after plane shame
Clerks director Kevin Smith has dropped 65 pounds (29 kilograms) since he was asked to leave a plane because he was too fat.
The filmmaker was left fuming after he was ordered to evacuate his seat on a Southwest Airlines flight last February when he was deemed too big to fly.
A year after the incident, Smith admits he has slimmed down after the humiliating experience prompted him to embark on a healthier lifestyle.
But he refuses to trade his loose-fitting hockey jerseys for tighter clothing – because he’s convinced he’ll never have a slender build.
He tells U.S. TV host Joy Behar, “I sympathize far more with heavier people than I ever will with thin – I’ll never be thin. Let’s be honest, I’ve lost 65 pounds, but nobody’s going, ‘I wanna sleep with you!’ They’re just like, ‘Keep going, you look better.’
“I felt at that moment, ‘I’ll lose the weight, but I’m not putting on thinner clothes.’ I’m still the same person I was when I was 65 pounds heavier… Sometimes a fat dude has a lot to offer, if (you) can just get past the blubber.”

Categories
Movies

Ain’t love grand?!?

5 most inappropriate Valentine’s Day movies
LOS ANGELES ñ Anyone can run out and rent a romantic comedy starring Julia Roberts for Valentine’s Day. Anyone can stream the latest innocuous offering from Drew Barrymore ó or Jennifer Aniston, or Kate Hudson.
But it requires real guts to sit down with that special fellow or lady in your life and take in one of these massively uncomfortable choices. So here, without any needless flowery language, are the five most inappropriate movies to watch with someone you love on Valentine’s Day:
ï “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” (1966): Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor chew up the scenery and tear each other apart as the boozy and bickering husband and wife George and Martha. In adapting Edward Albee’s painfully honest play, director Mike Nichols burst onto the scene with this, his first feature (“The Graduate” came the following year). He gets up close and personal to provide an intimate view of the carnage. Burton and Taylor start out slyly needling each other in front of their poor, unsuspecting guests, then humiliating each other, and by the end, they’re threatening all-out war. That they were married to each other in real life ó for the first time ó only added to the intrigue. Nominated for 13 Academy Awards, it won five, including best actress for Taylor’s scathing performance.
ï “Closer” (2004): Another from Nichols, this time adapting a London stage production by playwright-screenwriter Patrick Marber. But it’s reminiscent of “Virginia Woolf” for its intense performances and raw emotions. Jude Law, Natalie Portman, Clive Owen and, yes, Julia Roberts fall giddily in love with each other, but don’t be fooled: This is the furthest thing possible from a date movie. These inordinately beautiful people do extraordinarily ugly things to one another ó Portman, playing a stripper in her first truly grown-up role, commits some of her offenses in little more than a G-string ó and the way they destroy each other and themselves is both brutal and breathtaking to watch.
ï “Blue Velvet” (1986): Nothing is ever what it seems in a David Lynch movie, and that certainly applies to love, as well. So a severed ear found lying in a field is so much more than just a severed ear ó it’s the key to a disturbing, underground world of twisted romance. Beneath a veneer of genteel suburbia, Kyle MacLachlan gets sucked into the bizarre lives of Dennis Hopper as a nitrous oxide-addicted criminal, and Isabella Rossellini as his masochistic sexual slave. Voyeurism and depravity, Roy Orbison and Pabst Blue Ribbon all collide hypnotically here. Lynch alternates between glib satire and a much darker, starker exploration of secret fears and desires.
ï “Natural Born Killers” (1994): Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis fall in love and kill people, and fall deeper in love and kill more people, and become media darlings in the process. It’s sort of romantic … in its own way. Oliver Stone isn’t exactly subtle in his satirical exploration of underserved fame and all its trappings; as is his tendency, he throws everything at us, from various film stocks and frenetic camera angles to an editing style that suggests he cut the film in a Cuisinart. But he was onto something back then, and the thirst for juicy scandal continues to go unquenched, no matter how questionable a person’s actions are.
ï “Fatal Attraction” (1987): It’s long since become a shorthand for stalking ó for crazy, clingy women who are too delusional to take “no” for an answer. All you have to do is mention boiling a bunny and everyone knows what you’re talking about. But back in its day, believe it or not, people actually took this movie seriously as a suspenseful thriller. It was nominated for six Academy Awards, including best picture and best actress for Glenn Close’s indelible performance as a spurned, vengeful mistress. If director Adrian Lyne’s sleek, steamy film has taught us anything, it’s that it is so much easier to stick with your husband or wife than indulge in an afternoon tryst. So maybe this is a good movie to see with the one you love after all.