Howard Stern Reaches Out to Internet
Stern's four-hour-plus program will be made available live online at no charge for two days.
Ten months after leaving the commercial airwaves for subscription-based Sirius Satellite Radio, shock jock Howard Stern is out to attract a broad new online audience with his first-ever free Internet broadcast.
Stern's four-hour-plus program will be made available live online at no charge for two days, October 25 and 26, to promote an Internet radio service Sirius is launching this week. A formal announcement was planned for Monday morning.
The new service offers more than 75 channels of CD-quality programming over the Internet — without the need to buy a Sirius satellite receiver — for a monthly subscription fee of $12.95, the company said in a press release.
The service can be accessed by logging on to the Sirius Web site, www.sirius.com.
The two-day free trial of "The Howard Stern Show" marks the first time he has been available to a non-paying audience since he left terrestrial FM radio in December 2005.
After next week's promotion, fans will once again have to pay to hear the self-proclaimed "king of all media," either by subscribing to Sirius or its Internet service.
Stern's show and other Sirius programming had been available on the Internet before, but only to existing customers who had purchased a satellite receiver in addition to the $12.95 monthly radio subscription.
Under the new stand-alone Internet package, users anywhere in the world can subscribe and listen to Stern online without first having to buy satellite hardware, which is sold only in North America, a company spokesman said.
Sirius rival XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc. offers its own stand-alone Internet service for $7.99 a month.
Stern, a pioneer of ribald radio comedy bits like "Lesbian Dial-a-Date" and "Stripper Jeopardy," stunned the broadcast industry in October 2004 when he announced he was leaving commercial radio for satellite.
After fulfilling the last 14 months on his contract at CBS Corp., Stern debuted in January 2006 on Sirius under a five-year deal valued at $500 million and immediately became the marquee talent of the No. 2 satellite radio provider.
He also recently ventured into the realm of video-on-demand television with an all-Stern channel available through several major cable operators.
Sirius ended the third quarter with 5.12 million subscribers, an audience that pales in comparison to the 12 million listeners who regularly tuned into Stern at the peak of his CBS career. XM posted nearly 7.2 million subscribers for the third quarter.
David Cronenberg sweeps Director's Guild of Canada awards
David Cronenberg’s crime drama, A History of Violence, grabbed four feature film prizes at the Director’s Guild of Canada Awards.
The film, starring Viggo Mortensen, also captured awards for best film, best director, best sound editing and best picture editing.
It missed out on best production design, its fifth nomination, which was awarded to Atom Egoyan’s thriller Where the Truth Lies, starring Colin Firth and Kevin Bacon.
Cronenberg, whose past movies include Crash, Spider and Existenz, adapted the plot from a graphic novel of the same name by John Wagner and Vince Locke.
The story focuses on Tom Stall (Mortensen), a small-town family man whose bucolic life is up-ended when he saves lives while thwarting a robbery. Stall’s dark past begins to catch up with him as he attracts the attention of some big-city gangsters.
The film also starred Ed Harris, Maria Bello as Stall’s wife and William Hurt, who snagged an Oscar nomination for best supporting actor.
The big winner in the television category was Human Trafficking, an unflinching look at the sex slave industry starring Mira Sorvino and Donald Sutherland.
The drama took home the prizes for best film, best director for Christian Duguay and best production design.
And the now-defunct television series Slings and Arrows, starring Paul Gross as an eccentric theatre artistic director, came away with best TV drama series and best picture editing in a television series. Its three-year run won raves both in Canada and the U.S.
Other winners at the Saturday night gala in Toronto include:
Best Documentary: Hitler’s Children
Best Family Television Movie/Mini-Series: Spirit Bear
Best Comedy Television Series: Northern Town
Best Picture Editing, Television Movie/Mini Series: Canada Vs. Russia 1972
Best Sound Editing, Television Series: Puppets Who Kill
The Directors Guild of Canada represents more than 3,800 professionals working in film and television in the areas of direction, design, production and editing. It negotiates collective agreements and lobbies on behalf of its members.
'Corner Gas' running out of fuel
We don't think Dog River has gone to the dogs, but we do think it's time to shake things up a little ...
By BILL HARRIS -- Toronto Sun
The question before the committee is whether Corner Gas has become Cornered Gas.
The CTV sitcom is into its fourth season. The fictional metropolis of Dog River, Sask., has only eight notable residents.
Storylines rarely carry over, which means fresh comedic situations must be manufactured for each episode.
Brent watches his first horror movie. Hank forms an unofficial fondue club. And in the episode set to air tomorrow (8 p.m.), Oscar and Davis compete to be named "newsmaker of the year" by the Dog River Howler.
Some of the tangents are funny, some of them are not. It's the same with any sitcom. But it leads us to wonder just where Corner Gas is on its inevitable popularity arc.
This needs to be said up front: We generally like Corner Gas.
We have no idea why. It's clunky. It's cornball. It's always summer, even though it's Saskatchewan. It's the type of show we usually would hate, hate, hate. But we don't.
Maybe it's because it's so darn Canadian, but not in a smug Rick Mercer kind of way. Maybe it's because the characters are so likable. But that's not to say there aren't weak links.
The two cops (Lorne Cardinal as Davis and Tara Spencer-Nairn as Karen) and Brent's mom (Janet Wright as Emma) usually don't bring much to the table (as far as the characters go, not the actors themselves). And as memorable as Eric Peterson is in the role of Brent's dad Oscar, his constant unreasonable irritability can be tiresome.
But there's something about the core foursome -- Brent Butt as Brent, Gabrielle Miller as Lacey, Fred Ewanuick as Hank and Nancy Robertson as Wanda -- that continues to click.
Ratings thus far this season have been down a bit. Granted, for a Canadian-made show, Corner Gas still is quite healthy, attracting more than a million viewers per episode. But on average, about a quarter of a million former fans seem to have drifted off in the fourth season, based on the early returns.
A good sign for Corner Gas is that we encountered several fans who were outraged last week because they felt they had not received enough advance warning of the time change (from 8:30 p.m., up to 8 p.m.). That kind of loyalty notwithstanding, the creators must guard against stale Gas.
We always have loved the cameos in Corner Gas. Tomorrow there's an appearance by former Canadian Governor General Adrienne Clarkson, and while her stiffness makes it hard to believe she used to make her living in broadcasting, we applaud her willingness to participate.
In last week's episode, however, both Brent and Lacey got job-shadows from the local high school. And as limited as the kids' roles were, it was refreshing to have the Dog River regulars interacting with other local residents, rather than just talking back and forth to themselves.
Is it time to add another quasi-regular character?
Now, if this were an American sitcom, bingo! Brent and Lacey would have a baby.
We're not suggesting anything that desperate. But it might be time to shake up the Dog River clique just a touch.
It has been four years with the same folks. Even in a town as tiny as Dog River, maybe eight isn't enough.
Clint Eastwood's $90-million baby
BEVERLY HILLS -- Clint Eastwood was doing a rare round of interviews to promote his new film last weekend when someone asked about his "sensitivity."
Pointing at another reporter who used the word in an earlier question Eastwood said "he's the one who mentioned sensitivity," prompting the room to erupt in laughter.
Though he seems more affable grandfather than Dirty Harry these days, Eastwood shows no signs of softening.
Or, after decades in the movie business on both sides of the camera, at the age of 76, slowing down.
But even if he doesn't like to talk about it, Eastwood has approached his current subject matter, as with those he's tackled in the past, with a tricky combination of grit and that word he doesn't seem to much like talking about.
Opening Friday, Flags Of Our Fathers is about the iconic Second World War photograph capturing the American flag-raising on the Japanese island of Iwo Jima. It is a massive project for anyone, but Eastwood in particular. At $90 million, it's by far his largest budget yet.
The epic film incorporates massive beachfront invasion scenes, features some 100 speaking parts and spans three periods in time. The story behind Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal's Feb. 23, 1945, picture of five Marines and one navy corpsman raising the flag on the island's Mount Suribachi is not a simple one to tell, and that was just fine with Eastwood.
"I think as I've matured -- if that's a way of saying aging -- I've reached out to different sides of stories that were appealing to me," said Eastwood.
Those stories probably attracted him as a young man too, he said, but back then "the pressure was on" to do movies with a lot of action.
"As I got to this stage of life, where I am now, where I'm retreating to the backside of the camera," he explained, "I just felt it was time to address a lot of things that were closer to me than a lot of the fantasy characters I might have been involved with."
Rosenthal's Pulitzer Prize-winning photo captured the imagination of the American public and provided momentum for the final push to end the war. People back home wanted an uncomplicated, uplifting story to go with it. But the photo showed the second flag-raising that day (an American military higher-up requested the first flag as a momento) and though perceived as a symbol of victory, was snapped just days into what turned out to be a bloody, month-long battle in which Japan lost almost all of its 22,000 soldiers and nearly 7,000 Americans died.
Within days, half the men in the photo had been killed. The American government wasted no time shipping the trio of survivors -- navy corpsman John (Doc) Bradley and Marines Ira Hayes and Rene Gagnon -- back home to capitalize on the popular picture and drum up cash for war coffers as part of the famous Seventh War Bond Tour.
Still youngsters, the three became instant celebrities just a short time after watching their comrades die on the battlefield.
Inwardly, all struggled with their war experiences, their notoriety -- feeling they didn't deserve it -- a government willing to exploit them and adjusting to life after it all abruptly ended mere months later.
"It wasn't really a war story. I wasn't setting out to do a war movie -- I've been involved with a few as an actor," said Eastwood. "But I liked this. It was just a study of these people."
Still, Eastwood has not flinched from creating shocking, grisly combat scenes and because of the content, there are those who have tried to draw parallels between this film and the current war in Iraq. Eastwood, who was 15 when the photo was taken and well remembers the Seventh War Bond Tour, wouldn't wade far into that debate other than calling war in general a "futile exercise."
"The country seemed much more, I'm sure it wasn't, but in hindsight, much more unified," he said.
"The war we're in today is, excluding the Iraq war on the front lines, ideology, religion, there's a lot of factors coming into it, that may make the next war even more difficult. This one was much more cut and dried."
Eastwood became interested in the project after reading James Bradley's 2000 same-named bestseller.
Son of the highly decorated navy corpsman in the photo, Bradley grew up in a house where the subject of Iwo Jima was mostly off-limits. It was only after his father died, after conducting interviews with those who fought on Iwo Jima, that Bradley learned how those in the photo had been tormented by the experience and put all the pieces together into the book.
"I've always been curious about families who find out things about their relatives much after the fact," said Eastwood.
"And the kind of people I've talked to, many veterans of this campaign and other campaigns, the ones who seem to be the most on the front lines and have been through the most seem to be the ones who are quietest about their activity."
Eastwood also wanted to explore themes in the book about the fleeting nature of celebrity and our society's obsession with heroes.
"In the era we live now, everybody's being considered a hero," said Eastwood. "In that era, in the '40s, heroes were people of extraordinary feat."
During the process leading up to Flags, Eastwood starting thinking about the Japanese soldiers and sent for the book Letters From Iwo Jima, constructed of missives home from Japanese Lieut. Tadamichi Kuribayashi. He persuaded the studios to let him make a second movie, in Japanese, from the Japanese perspective.
Letters is set largely in the underground tunnels used to defend the island, and stars actor Ken Watanabe.
While much of Flags was shot in Iceland, where the black, volcanic sand mimics the look of Iwo Jima, Letters was mostly filmed in California.
A brief trip to the remote Japanese island, which is considered a shrine and not open to tourists, provided key shots. Beachfront invasion footage from Flags -- shot so realistically one veteran complimented Eastwood on incorporating archival footage into the movie -- will double for the second film.
Letters will be released in Japan later this year, and is scheduled to open in North America in February.
"I think each film stands on its own, but the two projects are fascinating together," said Rob Lorenz, a long-time Eastwood associate who served as producer on both movies. "I think seeing one makes you want to see the other, and vice versa."
With Eastwood, who picked up a best picture and best director win in 2005 for his last project, Million Dollar Baby and Paul Haggis' turning in his first screenwriting credit after last year's best-picture winner Crash, Oscar buzz for the much-anticipated theatrical release of Flags has already started.
Winnipeg-raised, Ottawa-based actor Adam Beach has also been pegged for a possible supporting nomination for his standout portrayal of troubled flag-raiser Hayes.
Eastwood read Bradley's book shortly after it came out and knew he wanted to make it into a movie, but Steven Spielberg already had the rights. It turned out Spielberg had hired former marine William Broyles Jr. (Jarhead) to write the screenplay but couldn't get a version he liked.
That's when Eastwood ran into Spielberg, who suggested he produce and Eastwood direct. Eastwood tapped Million Dollar Baby screenwriter Haggis to adapt the book, recalling Haggis joked he had an 11% chance of cutting down the complicated, sprawling tale into a coherent film .
Once he came through, Eastwood decided on a cast of lesser-known actors -- Ryan Phillippe as a young Bradley might be considered the biggest name -- to keep the focus on the story.
"We just try to show these guys are really just a bunch of kids who are set off to fight for their country,"he said.
All of those involved in the project marvel at Eastwood's well-known tendency to run a spare ship when it comes to movie-making. He is notorious for capturing scenes in just one take, with Phillippe estimating 80% of the movie was shot that way.
"I think that's why his movies tend to be so alive," said Phillippe. "There are little mistakes ... and it's as imperfect as life. He likes it, he likes mistakes and there are little nuances of that kind of reality."
Canadian Barry Pepper, who was in Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan and plays flag-raiser Sgt. Mike Strank,says as a director Eastwood is as lean and efficient as every character he has ever played.
"He never raises his voice and everyone quiets around him within 100 yards of earshot to hear his next move," Pepper told Sun Media. "If you don't, you'll be left in the dust. He'll just shoot it without you."
Pepper split his lip after one of the movie's rigged explosions blew up in his face during a combat scene.
The medic on set said he'd have to go to the hospital for stitches. Dripping blood, Pepper went to Eastwood and told him he didn't want to go to the hospital for fear of being left out of that day's scenes.
"He laughed. He knew exactly what I was talking about ... He said 'Good. It's a long way from your heart,' " recalls Pepper.
Eastwood then reached over to pull out a piece of copper wire Pepper didn't know was embedded in his lip, and proceeded to tell him about the day he was shot clean through his left side with errant shrapnel on the set of 1992's The Unforgiven.
"We just kept on filming,"said Pepper. "Those were those most magical moments on set, listening to him tell stories.
Murray parties with Scottish students
LONDON - Actor Bill Murray created a small sensation in the Scottish town of St. Andrews, joining Scandinavian students at a late-night party and even helping to wash the dishes, a newspaper reported Sunday.
In the Oscar-winning movie "Lost in Translation," Murray plays a lonely middle-aged actor in Japan who befriends a young American woman and goes partying with her.
And in what the newspaper said was life imitating art, the 56-year-old Murray joined up with 22-year-old Norwegian student Lykke Stavnef, who took him to a house where a party of Scandinavian students was in full swing.
"Nobody could believe it when I arrived at the party with Bill Murray," Stavnef, a social anthropology student, was quoted as saying. "He was just like the character in 'Lost in Translation.'"
She said Murray was happy to drink vodka from a coffee cup, then to help wash dishes in the cramped kitchen. The Sunday Telegraph article is accompanied by a photograph that appears to show Murray, dressed in a checkered shirt and a brown vest, washing a metal pot at the sink.
As news spread around the city that Murray had showed up at the student party, the house became crowded with people wanting to meet the star of "Ghostbusters," the article said.
"He was joking with me about reheating some leftover pasta and how drunk everyone was," said Agnes Huitfeldt, 22, another partygoer.
Tom Wright, 22, another college student, said: "The party was overflowing with stunning Scandinavian blondes. He seemed to be in his element, cracking lots of jokes. It was the talk of the town the next day."
Shortly after doing the dishes, Murray left the party, the students said.
'Grudge 2' scares up $22M at box office
LOS ANGELES - Early Halloween spirit gripped movie audiences as the fright flick "The Grudge 2" debuted at No. 1, taking in $22 million during its first weekend.
Sony's horror sequel bumped the previous weekend's top film, the Warner Bros. release "The Departed," to second place. "The Departed," a mob epic from Martin Scorsese, took in $18.7 million, lifting its 10-day total to $56.6 million, according to studio estimates Sunday.
Universal's "Man of the Year," with Robin Williams as a political comic who's elected president, opened at No. 3 with $12.55 million.
Sarah Michelle Gellar, who starred in the 2004 hit "The Grudge," returns for a cameo in the sequel, which features Amber Tamblyn as her sister, haunted by the same angry spirits introduced in the first movie.
"The Grudge 2" was not screened for critics beforehand, and those who did review it on opening day generally trashed the movie. Fright flicks tend to have a built-in audience of horror fans who show up opening weekend regardless of reviews.
"These movies are not critics' darlings. They rarely are," said Paul Dergarabedian, president of box-office tracker Exhibitor Relations. "But audiences love horror. We've said it time and again, this is maybe the most consistently performing genre in the marketplace, especially right before Halloween."
With a strong hold from its opening weekend, "The Departed" is on its way to becoming Scorsese's biggest hit. The film is expected to surpass the $102.6 million gross of his 2004 drama "The Aviator," said Dan Fellman head of distribution for Warner Bros.
Two other new movies debuted in the top 10. The 20th Century Fox action thriller "The Marine," starring pro wrestler John Cena, was No. 6 with $7 million. "One Night With the King," Gener8xion Entertainment's saga of the biblical story of Esther, came in at No. 9 with $4.3 million.
The overall box office soared, with the top 12 movies taking in $100.8 million, up 41 percent from the same weekend last year, when "The Fog" debuted at No. 1 with $11.8 million.
In narrower release, Warner Independent's Truman Capote tale "Infamous" opened weakly with $435,000 in 179 theaters. The film averaged just $2,430 a cinema, compared to an average of $6,851 in 3,211 theaters for "The Grudge 2."
The movie, starring British actor Toby Jones as Capote on his quest to write the true-crime classic "In Cold Blood," received good reviews but was lost in the wake of last year's acclaimed "Capote," which covered the same period in the author's life and earned the best-actor Academy Award for Philip Seymour Hoffman.
"Unfortunately, the audience couldn't differentiate between the two," said Steven Friedlander, head of distribution for Warner Independent. "We're hoping if this one doesn't pick up theatrically, it can find a really solid video life so people can compare the two films."
Here are the estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Exhibitor Relations Co. Inc. Final figures will be released Monday.
1. "The Grudge 2," $22 million.
2. "The Departed," $18.7 million.
3. "Man of the Year," $12.55 million.
4. "Open Season," $11 million.
5. "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning," $7.75 million.
6. "The Marine," $7 million.
7. "The Guardian," $5.85 million.
8. "Employee of the Month," $5.6 million.
9. "One Night With the King," $4.3 million.
10. "Jackass Number Two," $3.3 million.