Wes Anderson ‘s Moonrise Kingdom won Best Feature tonight at the IFP Gotham Independent Film Awards tonight in New York, while David France’s How to Survive a Plague took Best Director. Benh Zeitlin ‘s Beasts of the Southern Wild , meanwhile won two awards including the Breakthrough Director prize and the inaugural Bingham Ray award. Moonrise Kingdom actors Bob Balaban took to the stage with fellow actors noting that if “Wes Anderson asks you to be in a movie…just be in it.” Anderson was a no-show, however, for the big win. Zeitlin took Best Breakthrough Director for Beasts of the Southern Wild . Taking to the stage, he said he hopes more people gets the kind of “freedom” he had to make his film which won Sundance earlier this year and the Camera d’Or in Cannes earlier this year. Zeitlin also won the inaugural Bingham Ray Award which honors a “promising emerging filmmaker.” How to Survive a Plague won Best Documentary. The film captures the ACT-UP movement and the push to get antivirals through government roadblocks. The emotional doc won accolades at Sundance. “It’s a story not about what AIDS did to our community, but a story about what our community did to HIV,” said director David France. Best Ensemble Cast went to Your Sister’s Sister . Actor Mark Duplass thanked his fellow actors Rosemarie Dewitt and Emily Blunt for their work only making $100 a day. The film beat out the likes of heavy-hitting Oscar contender Silver Linings Playbook as well as Moonrise Kingdom and Bernie . Said an excited Emayatzy Corinealdi about her Best Actor win: “This time last year I was at home eating Frosted Flakes… But to go from Sundance to Gotham with [ Middle of Nowhere ] is a dream for me…This role doesn’t come around often, so I’m grateful.” Best Feature: Moonrise Kingdom – Wes Anderson, director; Wes Anderson, Scott Rudin, Steven Rales, Jeremy Dawson, producers (Focus Features) Best Documentary: How to Survive a Plague – David France, director; Howard Gertler, David France, producers (Sundance Selects) Best Ensemble Performance: Your Sister’s Sister – Emily Blunt, Rosemarie Dewitt, Mark Duplass (IFC Films) Breakthrough Director: Benh Zeitlin for Beasts of the Southern Wild (Fox Searchlight Pictures) Breakthrough Actor: Emayatzy Corinealdi in Middle of Nowhere (AFFRM and Participant Media) Bingham Ray Award (Recognizes “Emerging American Filmmaker” includes a Panavision camera package valued at $60K) Benh Zeitlin , director of Beasts of the Southern Wild Gotham Independent Film Audience Award : Artifact , directed by Bartholomew Cubbins Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You: An Oversimplification of Her Beauty – Terence Nance, director; Terence Nance, Andrew Corkin, James Bartlett, producers Calvin Klein Spotlight on Women Filmmakers ‘Live the Dream’ grant: Stacie Passon , director, Concussion
Rihanna’s camp cited conflicting schedules but we all know that’s just the professional way to act like you’re not sore when you’ve just lost out on a blockbuster-movie role. According to The Daily Mail : In April it was reported that Rihanna was gearing up to play a villainous role in the upcoming blockbuster The Fast and the Furious 6. But it has now been revealed that Rita Ora has been cast for the part over the Diamonds singer. Rita, who celebrates her 22nd birthday Monday, apparently impressed during castings outshining the 24-year-old Rihanna. A source told the newspaper: ‘Rihanna impressed movie bosses with her role in Battleship. But schedules didn’t work out and Rita really shone during castings. The Hot Right Now singer, who has previous acting experience proved to be a big hit with the filmmakers, as the source added: ‘They loved her look and her attitude.’ News of losing what was meant to be her second blockbuster role is set to rub Rihanna the wrong way according to reports. Rita is set to star in the movie alongside Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Michelle Rodriguez, Tyrese Gibson, and Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson. The sixth installment of the speed racing franchise is set for release in May 2013 and filming is currently underway. Congrats Rita…and make sure you do a better job with this chance at acting than Rihanna did in ‘Battleship’! Images via tumblr
Rihanna’s relationship with Chris Brown continues to make headlines thanks to the former’s own activity on social media. “Nobody’s Business” or everyone’s? On Saturday, she shared an Instagram photo of her “lover” lying shirtless in bed. Brown’s many tattoos and Bart Simpson jacket are clearly visible. The two have spent a lot of time together recently, in and out of bed. She boarded a private plane to jet to Berlin, Germany, for Brown’s Thursday concert. “All alone in my big ole jet!!! See u soon lover,” she tweeted en route to the European city, where she spent Thanksgiving with her “lover” and went clubbing. Still, both stars have insisted they’re not back together. Rihanna, who just finished her disastrous 777 Tour , told Andy Cohen that they haven’t rekindled their romance, despite hardcore PDA that suggests otherwise. Chris told Power 106 radio host Big Boy this month that they were “working on [their] friendship,” but echoed the theme of their recent collab, ” Nobody’s Business .” “As far as our personal life, I think people just got to give it a chance – or not even give it a chance, but just shut the hell up,” Brown said. “It’s me.” “At the end of the day, whatever opinion they have ain’t going to change nothing I’m doing.” Profound and eloquent as always, Chris Brown. Eloquent. Chris and Rihanna smushing again: Good idea? YES! They’re a great match! NO! Are you insane??? View Poll »
Sundays are a good time for soul-searching — which makes it a good time to check in with filmmaker Alex Gibney , whose chilling documentary about sexual abuse in the Catholic church, Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God , is a must-see for anyone interested in the subject as well as the larger issue of what happens when religion becomes big business. Gibney’s documentary, which is in its second week of theatrical release and will run on HBO in February, begins with the headlines-making case of Father Lawrence Murphy, who, in a letter to the Vatican in 1998, admitted to abusing some 200 boys since the 1950s at the St. John’s School for the Deaf in St. Francis, Wisconsin. Although the Vatican had been aware of Murphy’s actions since 1963, he was never defrocked and, in fact, was allowed to remain at the school until 1974 (when he was transferred). Mea Maxima Culpa , which translates to “My Most Grievous Fault,” takes Gibney all the way to the Vatican, and in this interview, the filmmaker talks about the surprisingly integral roles that the late Pope John Paul II and his successor Pope Benedict XVI (then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger) played in this tragic tale as well as his doubts that the church will ever openly confront this issue in a way that will bring some measure of peace to its many victims. Movieline: After seeing Mea Maxima Culpa , I thought that it shares a theme with Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer . On one level, this is about a giant corporation quashing someone those who dare to challenge its ethics. Gibney: That’s right. It’s an abuse of power of sorts. The Vatican is a corporation. It’s religion that’s become a corporation and therein lays the rub. The Vatican has become too seduced by its own power and money. Vatican City is its own state. What struck me about Mea Maxima Culpa is the arrogance that the church has shown towards those who have suffered sexual abuse at the hands of Catholic priests. For somebody like Pope Benedict, I don’t think it’s an arrogance born of malice. I think that the hierarchy intuits itself as a kind of holy order, which is innately better than everyone else and, therefore, can’t fathom the idea of punishing one of its own. It’s like ratting on a family member. If you find out a brother has committed a crime, you don’t go running to the police. But once you’ve started to believe your own hype, even if it’s illogical hype, it can take you to some dark places. And then you’re in the position of maintaining the illusion that you have done nothing wrong, which entails silencing anyone who says otherwise. I think many of these people are true believers — even somebody as sick as Father Murphy: In those therapist’s notes he talks about why he did what he did with those children. He said, “Well, I was taking their sins upon myself.” Doesn’t he also say that he was “fixing” rampant homosexuality at the St. John’s School for the Deaf by having sex with the students there? Right. “I was fixing it.” I think rationalizations like that are made because people like Murphy believe in their essential holiness. It’s not necessarily Machiavellian where they’re sitting there thinking, “Okay, here’s the strategy. We shall employ X, Y, or Z.” Although recently, I do think there’s some of that as well. Tell me what’s going on with Cardinal Dolan , for example, and his maneuvers with the cemetery fund in Milwaukee. I wasn’t aware of that until I saw your film. Wasn’t that wild? After the deaf victims spend years trying to hold Murphy to account, imagine the vicious irony of the idea that when they petition the church for redress, the church moves its money into the cemetery account so it can continue to protect the grave of Father Murphy over and above the victims. There’s also remarkable home-video footage you use in which a group of the deaf men confront Murphy, and his caretaker, who knows sign language, is telling one of the men that he should drop this because he’s a Catholic above all. It’s Murphy’s helper. She had been a helper at the school and, yes, she’s signing furiously saying you are Catholic, you are Catholic. As if to say, you know, the church is more important. You can cut this guy some slack because we don’t want the enemies of the church to have access to any of this information. Put your religion ahead of your petty grievances — the fact that you and so many other children have been abused. Petty. Right. There’s a technical aspect of the film that I wanted to ask you about: Your interviews with the deaf men, who are using sign language to communicate, have an almost 3D quality. Yeah, we did something. We used a variable shutter — it’s what Spielberg used in Saving Private Ryan — so that there’s a kind of flutter to the hands that makes them resonate more. It does. I really felt the emotion and the pain behind their gestures. We actually shot those interviews with three, sometimes four cameras because we wanted to have one camera that took a complete record of their signing, which included their facial gestures and their hands. We wanted another camera that was more impressionistic in terms of being able to move in from the face to the hands, and so forth. We wanted a side angle, of course, and sometimes we would use a fourth camera just to get more details because we really wanted to bring that world to life for the hearing audience. There’s something so rich about their language that it’s very powerful to capture, particularly because their deafness was so much at the heart of this story. They were the voices that could not be heard. Yet, they made themselves heard by dint of their determination. You also use recreations in Mea Maxima Culpa to depict aspects of the Father Murphy story. What led to your decision to take that route? Frankly I was a little nervous about it. We shot some pretty extensive recreations on this one. I hate that word — recreation — but it just seemed that there’s something so poignant about the way Murphy entered that dorm room. I wanted to capture that hallucinatory quality, because the aspect of the story that most people found so haunting is that these children couldn’t hear him coming. That’s how vulnerable they were. Like the fox in the henhouse, he had them available to him at any time. You quote a letter from one of Murphy’s victims in which he says that he used to lay in bed shaking at night. Yeah, because you never knew when he was going to come in and touch you or one of your friends. In the film, you indicate that while Pope John Paul II was on his deathbed, the future Pope Benedict XVI, Cardinal Ratzinger, who oversaw all of the sex abuse cases at the Vatican, sent his chief prosecutor to New York and Mexico City to gather evidence about alleged sexual abuses by Marcial Maciel Degollado , who ran the Legion of Christ and raised a lot of money for the Vatican. As John Paul is dying, Cardinal Ratzinger, who is the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which oversees all of the sexual abuse cases, sends his chief prosecutor to New York and Mexico City to take testimony so they can build a case against Maciel. Ratzinger was legitimately furious at Maciel, but Maciel had very powerful protectors, notably John Paul and Cardinal Angelo Sodano. Ratzinger becomes Pope but Maciel was never tried under canonical law. It shows that — Even the Pope is not all powerful. That was a revelation to me. That is in essence the banality of evil. Pope Benedict has to play these political games instead of assuming the mantle of God and rendering punishment to somebody. He doesn’t. We don’t know if some kind of deal was cut by Sodano, or if Benedict was simply doing an Obama-like thing and saying we’re going to go forward, not backwards.
Sundays are a good time for soul-searching — which makes it a good time to check in with filmmaker Alex Gibney , whose chilling documentary about sexual abuse in the Catholic church, Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God , is a must-see for anyone interested in the subject as well as the larger issue of what happens when religion becomes big business. Gibney’s documentary, which is in its second week of theatrical release and will run on HBO in February, begins with the headlines-making case of Father Lawrence Murphy, who, in a letter to the Vatican in 1998, admitted to abusing some 200 boys since the 1950s at the St. John’s School for the Deaf in St. Francis, Wisconsin. Although the Vatican had been aware of Murphy’s actions since 1963, he was never defrocked and, in fact, was allowed to remain at the school until 1974 (when he was transferred). Mea Maxima Culpa , which translates to “My Most Grievous Fault,” takes Gibney all the way to the Vatican, and in this interview, the filmmaker talks about the surprisingly integral roles that the late Pope John Paul II and his successor Pope Benedict XVI (then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger) played in this tragic tale as well as his doubts that the church will ever openly confront this issue in a way that will bring some measure of peace to its many victims. Movieline: After seeing Mea Maxima Culpa , I thought that it shares a theme with Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer . On one level, this is about a giant corporation quashing someone those who dare to challenge its ethics. Gibney: That’s right. It’s an abuse of power of sorts. The Vatican is a corporation. It’s religion that’s become a corporation and therein lays the rub. The Vatican has become too seduced by its own power and money. Vatican City is its own state. What struck me about Mea Maxima Culpa is the arrogance that the church has shown towards those who have suffered sexual abuse at the hands of Catholic priests. For somebody like Pope Benedict, I don’t think it’s an arrogance born of malice. I think that the hierarchy intuits itself as a kind of holy order, which is innately better than everyone else and, therefore, can’t fathom the idea of punishing one of its own. It’s like ratting on a family member. If you find out a brother has committed a crime, you don’t go running to the police. But once you’ve started to believe your own hype, even if it’s illogical hype, it can take you to some dark places. And then you’re in the position of maintaining the illusion that you have done nothing wrong, which entails silencing anyone who says otherwise. I think many of these people are true believers — even somebody as sick as Father Murphy: In those therapist’s notes he talks about why he did what he did with those children. He said, “Well, I was taking their sins upon myself.” Doesn’t he also say that he was “fixing” rampant homosexuality at the St. John’s School for the Deaf by having sex with the students there? Right. “I was fixing it.” I think rationalizations like that are made because people like Murphy believe in their essential holiness. It’s not necessarily Machiavellian where they’re sitting there thinking, “Okay, here’s the strategy. We shall employ X, Y, or Z.” Although recently, I do think there’s some of that as well. Tell me what’s going on with Cardinal Dolan , for example, and his maneuvers with the cemetery fund in Milwaukee. I wasn’t aware of that until I saw your film. Wasn’t that wild? After the deaf victims spend years trying to hold Murphy to account, imagine the vicious irony of the idea that when they petition the church for redress, the church moves its money into the cemetery account so it can continue to protect the grave of Father Murphy over and above the victims. There’s also remarkable home-video footage you use in which a group of the deaf men confront Murphy, and his caretaker, who knows sign language, is telling one of the men that he should drop this because he’s a Catholic above all. It’s Murphy’s helper. She had been a helper at the school and, yes, she’s signing furiously saying you are Catholic, you are Catholic. As if to say, you know, the church is more important. You can cut this guy some slack because we don’t want the enemies of the church to have access to any of this information. Put your religion ahead of your petty grievances — the fact that you and so many other children have been abused. Petty. Right. There’s a technical aspect of the film that I wanted to ask you about: Your interviews with the deaf men, who are using sign language to communicate, have an almost 3D quality. Yeah, we did something. We used a variable shutter — it’s what Spielberg used in Saving Private Ryan — so that there’s a kind of flutter to the hands that makes them resonate more. It does. I really felt the emotion and the pain behind their gestures. We actually shot those interviews with three, sometimes four cameras because we wanted to have one camera that took a complete record of their signing, which included their facial gestures and their hands. We wanted another camera that was more impressionistic in terms of being able to move in from the face to the hands, and so forth. We wanted a side angle, of course, and sometimes we would use a fourth camera just to get more details because we really wanted to bring that world to life for the hearing audience. There’s something so rich about their language that it’s very powerful to capture, particularly because their deafness was so much at the heart of this story. They were the voices that could not be heard. Yet, they made themselves heard by dint of their determination. You also use recreations in Mea Maxima Culpa to depict aspects of the Father Murphy story. What led to your decision to take that route? Frankly I was a little nervous about it. We shot some pretty extensive recreations on this one. I hate that word — recreation — but it just seemed that there’s something so poignant about the way Murphy entered that dorm room. I wanted to capture that hallucinatory quality, because the aspect of the story that most people found so haunting is that these children couldn’t hear him coming. That’s how vulnerable they were. Like the fox in the henhouse, he had them available to him at any time. You quote a letter from one of Murphy’s victims in which he says that he used to lay in bed shaking at night. Yeah, because you never knew when he was going to come in and touch you or one of your friends. In the film, you indicate that while Pope John Paul II was on his deathbed, the future Pope Benedict XVI, Cardinal Ratzinger, who oversaw all of the sex abuse cases at the Vatican, sent his chief prosecutor to New York and Mexico City to gather evidence about alleged sexual abuses by Marcial Maciel Degollado , who ran the Legion of Christ and raised a lot of money for the Vatican. As John Paul is dying, Cardinal Ratzinger, who is the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which oversees all of the sexual abuse cases, sends his chief prosecutor to New York and Mexico City to take testimony so they can build a case against Maciel. Ratzinger was legitimately furious at Maciel, but Maciel had very powerful protectors, notably John Paul and Cardinal Angelo Sodano. Ratzinger becomes Pope but Maciel was never tried under canonical law. It shows that — Even the Pope is not all powerful. That was a revelation to me. That is in essence the banality of evil. Pope Benedict has to play these political games instead of assuming the mantle of God and rendering punishment to somebody. He doesn’t. We don’t know if some kind of deal was cut by Sodano, or if Benedict was simply doing an Obama-like thing and saying we’re going to go forward, not backwards.
A Florida woman was caught on camera riding a manatee and was arrested Saturday on a charge of violating the Sunshine State’s Manatee Sanctuary Act. Ana Gloria Garcia Gutierrez, 53, mounted the endangered marine mammal September 30. She turned herself in to the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office in Florida shortly after authorities released pictures of her atop the creature , according to reports. “[Gutierrez explained] she is new to the area and did not realize it was against the law to touch or harass manatees,” the sheriff’s office said in a statement. An arrest warrant was issued for Gutierrez Saturday. She was taken into custody while working at Sears in St. Petersburg, according to law enforcement officials. Witnesses provided deputies with photos of Gutierrez on her joyride and a description, but they were unable to locate her until she turned herself in. FYI, the Florida Manatee Sanctuary Act states: “It is unlawful for any person at any time, by any means, or in any manner intentionally or negligently to annoy, molest, harass, or disturb or attempt to molest, harass, or disturb any Manatee.” No manatees were injured by Gutierrez, at least.
“Officers responded to a radio call from the home of Halle Berry at about 10 am,” the LAPD, Hollywood Division Watch Commander tells RadarOnline.com exclusively. There was a fight between two men at the house, the officer says, with “one of those individuals was transported to a local hospital for treatment. Cops responded to a 9-1-1 call made from Halle Berry#39;s home Thanksgiving morning. Her ex-boyfriend and father of her daughter, Gabriel Aubry, and her current boyfriend Olivier Martinez
Flo Rida and Cody Simpson also performed at Macy’s 86th annual extravaganza on Thursday morning. By James Dinh Carly Rae Jepsen at the 86th annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade Photo: Taylor Hill/ FilmMagic
Happy Thanksgiving- or as we like to call it- Spanksgiving! Here at Skin Central we want to give spanks for the feast of exposed breast meat from babes like Kim Basinger , Emmanuelle Seigner , and the rest of our Top 10 Nude With Food. Now loosen your pants and stuff your face!
Does K.Michelle want her ex-boo Memphitz back? Is K.Michelle Still In Love With Memphitz? Love & Hip Hop ATL star K. Michelle might still be riding high after her recent record deal but by the emo azz tweets she let out recently you wouldn’t know she was celebrating. K.Michelle took to her account and tweeted about a lost love… We have a feeling K.Michelle might be talking about someone but you can’t help but wonder about her infamous relationship with Memph. Although, the relationship was known to be wildly toxic and supposedly violent, she always seemed to mention how in love she was with her former boo despite how bad things were between them. Is K.Michelle still in love with her ex? Should Toya watch her back? Twitter
