The American Film Institute gave its selections for the best of 2012. The recent New York and Boston critics darling Zero Dark Thirty . AFI Awards selections are made through AFI’s jury process in which scholars, film and television artists, critics and AFI Trustees determine the most outstanding achievements of the year, as well as provide a detailed rationale for each selection. This year’s juries – one for film and one for television – were chaired by producers and AFI Board of Trustees Vice Chairs Tom Pollock (former Vice Chairman of MCA, Chairman of Universal Pictures) for the movies and Rich Frank (former Chairman of Walt Disney Television, President of Walt Disney Studios, President of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences) for television, and includes award-winning artists such as Angela Bassett, Brad Bird, Chris Carter, Marta Kauffman and Octavia Spencer ; film historian Leonard Maltin; scholars from prestigious universities with recognized motion picture arts programs (Syracuse, UCLA, University of Texas, USC, Wesleyan); AFI Board of Trustees; and critics. “AFI AWARDS celebrates America’s storytellers as collaborators,” said Bob Gazzale, AFI President and CEO in a statement. “We are honored to bring together artists as a community, without competition, to acknowledge the gifts they have given the world in 2012.” AFI will honor the creative ensembles for each of the selections on January 11th in Los Angeles. AFI Movies of the Year: Argo Beasts of the Southern Wild The Dark Knight Rises Django Unchained Les Misérables Life of Pi Lincoln Moonrise Kingdom Silver Linings Playbook Zero Dark Thirty AFI TV Programs of the Year: American Horror Story Breaking Bad Game Change Game of Thrones Girls Homeland Louie Mad Men Modern Family The Walking Dead
Tommy Lee Jones has played a lot of curmudgeonly sons of bitches over the course of his career, but his latest is his something to behold. The actor’s portrayal of the rapier-tongued Pennsylvania congressman Thaddeus Stevens is one of the cornerstones of Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln , and now that Disney has released a clip of one of his key scenes, you can see for yourself why he’s generating Oscar buzz. In addition to being the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee during the CIvil War, Stevens was a staunch abolitionist and the kind of orator who was known for verbally decimating his opponents with searing invective. (As he does in this pivotal scene.) At the New York screening where I saw Lincoln , audience members applauded this and other scenes where Jones opened a can of whoop-ass on his pro-slavery rivals. New Yorkers love an inspired put-down when they hear one. What’s not apparent from the clip is how tightly controlled, complex and palpable Jones’ performance is overall. Hobbling around with a pronounced, painful-looking limp and looking at the world through bag-laden, world-weary eyes, his anger and his disdain for those who oppose abolition come at you like 3D fists when he’s on screen. Check out the clip below and tell me whether you agree that this is a performance worthy of an Oscar nomination. Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter
Tommy Lee Jones has played a lot of curmudgeonly sons of bitches over the course of his career, but his latest is his something to behold. The actor’s portrayal of the rapier-tongued Pennsylvania congressman Thaddeus Stevens is one of the cornerstones of Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln , and now that Disney has released a clip of one of his key scenes, you can see for yourself why he’s generating Oscar buzz. In addition to being the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee during the CIvil War, Stevens was a staunch abolitionist and the kind of orator who was known for verbally decimating his opponents with searing invective. (As he does in this pivotal scene.) At the New York screening where I saw Lincoln , audience members applauded this and other scenes where Jones opened a can of whoop-ass on his pro-slavery rivals. New Yorkers love an inspired put-down when they hear one. What’s not apparent from the clip is how tightly controlled, complex and palpable Jones’ performance is overall. Hobbling around with a pronounced, painful-looking limp and looking at the world through bag-laden, world-weary eyes, his anger and his disdain for those who oppose abolition come at you like 3D fists when he’s on screen. Check out the clip below and tell me whether you agree that this is a performance worthy of an Oscar nomination. Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter
More good news from Movieline’s parent company, Penske Media Corp. (PMC): FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE BGR Website Launches THE NEW BGR, With Complete Redesign. Leading mobile and gadget brand redefines the category with new look and remarkable user experience. Today marks BGR’s third redesign since the site’s initial launch six years ago, though this redesign is noticeably its most thorough. Markedly apparent is the site’s sharp rebranding, with new logos, colors, and what Jonathan calls, “a new personality.” Jonathan and his team created a new logo to better reflect this site’s growth and evolution, with what Jonathan describes as, “Clean-cut, strong and powerful, but still with an edge and personality.” Founder, Chairman, and CEO of Penske Media Corporation (PMC) Jay Penske said, “Jonathan has once again raised the bar in technology and gadget publishing—not only answering his users’ requests, but significantly enhancing BGR.com’s design and presentation layer on all platforms. The new BGR homepage design is second to none in one of the most exciting categories online.” Jonathan and his team have created the new BGR to better reflect today’s internet experience, making its content clear and easy to navigate from a desktop, tablet and or mobile phone, with no redirects to a subdomain. Users will also find greater ease clicking through the site’s galleries, hubs, review pages, tip us box, search area, integrated Twitter feeds, mini hubs, featured section pages, and more. The new BGR clarifies its verticals and categories with its new hubs layout, making it easier for users to navigate to the categories they most like to read about. Sidebars have been eliminated and each page is full with, allowing content to flow as users read – from left to right. Real-time information is an aspect of the site that will continue to be enhanced over the next few weeks, with comments continually updating as well as new posts appearing if they go up while a user browses the homepage. BGR is pleased to have partnered with Motorola on its re-launch and rebranding. Motorola has also stepped in to partner on a BGR app for Android, set to launch in the next couple weeks. About BGR: Jonathan Geller is the founder of Boy Genius Report, now known as BGR. What began as a column on popular gadget blog Engadget quickly grew into one of the site’s biggest draws, and Jonathan soon detached the wildly popular column to create what has since become the biggest mobile news destination in the world. BGR was acquired by leading digital media company PMC in April 2010 and Jonathan currently acts as President and General Manager of the newly formed BGR Media, Inc., and Editor-in-chief of the BGR website. About Penske Media Corporation (PMC): PMC is a leading digital media and publishing company founded by Jay Penske in 2004. Today, PMC engages with audiences across the web, television, mobile, print and social media—reaching more than 83 million consumers monthly according to Comscore. PMC owns a unique and growing portfolio of lifestyle brands that provide the web’s best original content in categories including entertainment, sports, breaking news, media, finance, tech, health, shopping, fashion, beauty, and automotive. BGR, PMC Studios, Deadline.com, Variety, OnCars, HollywoodLife, ENTV, India.com, Movieline, TVLine, AwardsLine, Young Hollywood Awards, The Style Awards, and Breakthrough of the Year Awards are all part of the expanding PMC portfolio. For more information on PMC and its brands, please visit: www.PMC.com or its digital properties directly. PRESS CONTACT: Lauren Gullion Press@PMC.com Follow Movieline on Twitter.
Alec Baldwin says the documentary he’s making with filmmaker James Toback , Seduced and Abandoned , continues to take shape. I spoke to Baldwin briefly at the reception that Hamptons International Film Festival Chairman Stuart Suna threw at his East Hampton home on Saturday afternoon. There, the actor — who arrived at the party gallantly carrying his new bride Hilaria Thomas’s high-heeled party shoes — explained that interviews he and Toback conducted with venerable filmmakers Martin Scorsese , Francis Ford Coppola , Roman Polanski and Bernardo Bertolucci will comprise the core of the project. “They are the pillars of the film,” said Baldwin, who described Seduced and Abandoned as a “meta” documentary about filmmakers who venture to the carnival-like South of France festival to raise funds for their latest projects. The “meta” aspect of the film stems from Baldwin and Toback’s plans to appear in Seduced and Abandoned as themselves as they attempt to scare up funds for a small movie they may or may not make. Baldwin also said that the incorporation of the Cannes festival footage the men shot on Croisette in May will depend what falls under the “fair use” doctrine of U.S. copyright law. He also confirmed that movie mogul Harvey Weinstein will not appear in Seduced and Abandoned. Weinstein drew Baldwin’s ire when he declined to be interviewed for the film at Cannes, although the two men made peace a few days later. In May, Toback told Deadline , “We will talk to every billionaire financier in Cannes, to a few directors and movie stars to get a sense of where film is today and how it is changing as a business, and the whole evolution of Cannes from a pure festival to this bizarre mix of wildly diverse elements. It still clings to the pure notion of film, with all sorts of other ramifications from financial to maritime implications that make it so complex.” Baldwin let drop another nugget of interesting information later that night at a Q&A he conducted with actor Richard Gere at Guild Hall in East Hampton. There, the 30 Rock star said that he might be teaching at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, where he is an alumni, in the spring. Although it’s a fair assumption that Baldwin will be teaching some form of acting class, he did not elaborate upon his comment. I’ve put in a call to his spokesman and to NYU and will update accordingly. Also in attendance at the chairman’s reception in East Hampton were Gere, Sting, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Adam Driver and Dree Hemingway. Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
Variety , the old-media show-business trade publication founded in 1905, has been acquired by Movieline’s new-media parent company, Penske Media Corp. (PMC) The deal was announced today by PMC Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Jay Penske and Variety ‘s seller, Reed Information, a division of Reed Elsevier. For some insight into what the deal will mean, check out this report by Deadline’s Mike Fleming , who spent 20 years at Variety before joining PMC. The announcement of the sale can be found after the jump.
No wonder the Jets ain’t isht… SMH. Via NYPost : Jets owner Woody Johnson was asked if it was more important for him that his team have a winning season or Romney wins next month’s presidential election. “I think you always have to put country first,” said Johnson, who is the chairman of Romney’s campaign in New York, on Bloomberg TV’s “Money Matters.” “I think it’s very, very important not only for us, but for our kids and grandkids that this election come off with Mitt Romney and Ryan as president and vice president.” Johnson vented his frustration with the Jets’ 34-0 loss to the 49ers on Sunday. “The coaches and I were not happy with what happened yesterday, and the players aren’t either,” Johnson said. “So our job now . . . we are still leading in the AFC East , but that performance was absolutely unacceptable.” Like his coach Rex Ryan, Johnson had to fend off questions about Tim Tebow replacing Sanchez as the team’s starting quarterback. “There’s going to be more pressure, but this quarterback can get the job done,” Johnson said. “He really can. He had a bad day, the whole team had a bad day. Receivers have to be in the right spot. A few plays here and there, which is the norm of football today that went against us . .. and it could have been a different game.” The question about the 2-2 Jets’ starting quarterback situation have grown as Sanchez has struggled the past three weeks after a stellar season opener against the Bills. “It doesn’t mean Tim Tebow is going to be starting next week, but it’s a question that’s going to be asked more frequently if this progresses because it’s unacceptable,” Johnson said. “We failed in all three areas — offense, defense, special teams — and we let our fans down.” Sounds like this guy is oblivious to the fact that BOTH his teams are losers. Photo Credit: Dale Stephanos
Way to spin your struggles growing up so you could seem “relatable” to the rest of Black America. This b*tch just got put on blast! Like many of her fellow Repubs, Mia is opposed to “anchor babies” (a racist way to say “immigrants having children in order to stay in the country”). Turns out, Mia was an “anchor baby” herself…and the Mormon follower just got her azz fact checked after her RNC speech spit all that talk. We quoted Mia’s shady azz when she gave her speech at the RNC earlier this month… The speech, which drew sustained applause, combined her family’s journey to the U.S. with references to civil-rights icons Rosa Parks and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.‘Our story has been told over 200 years,’ she told the adoring crowd. ‘With small steps and giant leaps, from a woman on a bus to a man with a dream.’ ‘My parents immigrated to the U.S. with $10 in their pocket, believing that the America they had heard about really did exist. ‘When times got tough they didn’t look to Washington, they looked within…‘The America I grew up knowing was centered in self-reliance and filled with the possibilities of living the American dream.’ She claimed President Obama was dividing the country – ‘pitting us against each other based on our income level, gender and social status.’ ‘His policies have failed,’ she continued. ‘We are not better off than we were four years ago, and no rhetoric, bumper sticker or Hollywood campaign ad can change that. ‘Mr. President, I am here to tell you we are not buying what you are selling in 2012.’ And according to Mother Jones , Mia’s story doesn’t make a lot of sense: When she spoke at the Republican National Convention last month, Mia Love, a GOP rising star who’s vying to become the first black Republican woman elected to the House, wowed delegates with her parents’ up-by-their-bootstraps tale. She said their story of coming to America from Haiti with $10 in their pockets formed the basis for her own belief in self-reliance and her staunch opposition to government handouts…Though a child of immigrants, Love has embraced much of her party’s tough stance on immigration. She has implied that she would back deporting the US-born children of illegal immigrants so as not to reward “bad behavior.” Yet by Love’s own account, she is what Republicans derisively call an “anchor baby”— someone born to immigrant parents specifically to game the immigration system and secure legal status for family members. Love doesn’t talk about this aspect of her family’s immigration story now that she’s running for Congress, but she once said in a little-noticed interview that her birth on US soil helped bring her siblings to America. In January 2011, Love told the Deseret News that her parents, Jean Maxime and Marie Bourdeau, came to New York in the 1970s, fleeing poverty and looking for a better life. Love said that her parents immigrated legally, but were forced to leave their two young children behind in Haiti because their visa didn’t allow them to bring the kids. But, writes the Deseret News: There was an immigration law in place, however, that would grant the entire family citizenship if Jean Maxine and Mary had a baby in America. But there was a deadline. The law was set to expire on Jan. 1, 1976. On Dec. 6, 1975, with 25 days to spare, Mia was born in a Brooklyn hospital. In no time, her older brother and sister were sent for in Haiti and the family was re-united. Says Mia: “My parents have always told me I was a miracle and our family’s ticket to America.” It’s an uplifting story, but there’s one problem with this account. According to immigration lawyers and US immigration officials, there doesn’t appear to have been a law of the kind described in the article that would have conferred citizenship on Love’s parents, let alone her siblings, by simply having a baby in the United States. Though American immigration law did change in 1976, it merely limited the number of immigrants from the Western Hemisphere who could obtain permanent visas. According to the US Citizenship and Immigration Services, the law since at least 1924 has barred minor children from petitioning for permanent residence status on their parents’ behalf. Love’s birth in the US couldn’t have helped to reunite her family in America, say immigration lawyers contacted by Mother Jones. And, they add, if the Bourdeaus were in the US legally on a permanent visa, they would have been able to bring the kids, according to the law at the time. In case you’re still wondering if this is really a black woman speaking…check out her shady stances on public funding: -Proposes eliminating the federally subsidized school lunch program and the funding that supports special education in public schools. -Wants to cut the Earned Income Tax Credit in half…keeping millions of working people out of poverty. -Pushing to radically slash housing subsidies that keeps millions of poor people off the streets. Luckily, Mia is trailing behind her opponent by double-digits but her ties to the right are scary. The GOP has given her major funding; $1 million towards the race and Vice Presidential nominee Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.), House Majority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio), Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have all held fundraisers for this sellout. Ann Romney offered up an endorsement and her son, Josh Romney, is the chairman of Mia’s campaign. SMH…this broad takes selling out to a whole other level! Images via AP/facebook
Also in Monday morning’s round-up of news briefs, a Fox studio co-head prepares to leave, consolidating leadership at the movie giant. Author Salman Rushdie says a controversial book he published in ’88 would “never be published today.” And remembering film professional/journalist Sandy Mandelberger. Hezbollah Leader Calls for More Protests Against Anti-Muslim Movie Sheik Hassan Nasrallah called for protests to continue Monday as the fall out from the anti-Muslim video Innocence of Muslims appears to be continuing into another week. The news comes after the U.S. State Department called for the removal of non-essential personnel from its embassies and consulates in Tunisia and Sudan,” Deadline reports . Fox Filmed Entertainment Co-Chief Tom Rothman to Exit Studio Co-Chairman Tom Rothman is exiting Fox at the end of the year. Jim Gianopulos will become the sole Chairman/CEO at the studio, which will be consolidated into the freshly dubbed Twentieth Century Fox Film, Deadline reports . The Master Sets Specialty Box Office Record It’s not every weekend that a specialty film can claim a record, but The Master opened with an incredible $145,949 per-theater average, the best limited release ever for a live-action film, topping another record-breaker from earlier this year, Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom , which bowed with with an average of $130,749 at four locations, Deadline reports . Salman Rushdie: ‘ Satanic Versus would not be published today’ The author said he thinks a climate of fear and reprisal exists today that would prevent him from getting his controversial 1988 novel The Satanic Versus from being published today. He said the banning of the book in many countries and the subsequent threats on his life including a fatwa by Iran’s then supreme leader Ayatollah Khomeini, had created a “long-term chilling effect,” BBC reports . RIP Arthur Sandy Mandelberger Mandelberger was a film professional and journalist, most recently Editor in Chief of FilmFestivalToday. He died at 57 on August 29th and is survived by his mother Eta and his partner of 37 years, Richard and sisters Miriam and Fanny. He battled cancer for nine years and asked that any donations be made to the Film Society of Lincoln Center.
NBC has responded to Sharon Osbourne’s accusation that it discriminated against her son Jack. The America’s Got Talent judge announced her resignation from that program this week, saying she simply couldn’t work any longer for a network that fired Jack from Stars Earn Stripes because he has been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. But NBC Chairman Bob Greenblatt fired back today, explaining the stance of his network in more detail and admitting medical concerns did play a factor is choosing NOT to have Jack compete against other celebrities in military training exercises. Said Greenblatt: “We hold medical information in strict confidence and therefore cannot comment specifically about Jack, but as a company that cares deeply about the health and safety of everyone on our shows – especially one like ‘Stars Earn Stripes’ that requires dangerous water stunts, strenuous physical activity, and uses live ammunition – we required all potential participants to undergo medical vetting to ensure that they could safely participate. “Although we did not ask Jack to participate in the competition, we were able to offer him two substantial alternative roles on the show, both of which he declined. This network does not discriminate on any basis. “Our hearts go out to her, Ozzy, Jack and his family at this time.”
