At 6:30 pm on Thursday, June 19, producer Walter Mirisch, 86, will sign copies of his new book of memoirs, I Thought We Were Making Movies, Not History, at the American Cinematheque’s Egyptian Theater on Hollywood Boulevard. The book signing will be followed by a screening of two Oscar-winning Mirisch productions: Billy Wilder’s mordant [...]
Former Paramount studio chief Robert Evans was saluted by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences on May 22, 2008. A screening of Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby was part of the proceedings.
Photos: Todd Wawrychuk / ©A.M.P.A.S. (Luke Wilson, Robert Evans solo), Richard Harbaugh / ©A.M.P.A.S. (Ali MacGraw photos, Rebecca De Mornay)
Click on the images [...]
Producer William Castle, Mia Farrow, Robert Evans on the set of Rosemary’s Baby.
"An Academy Salute to Robert Evans" will feature a 40th anniversary screening of (a brand new print of) Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby, and an onstage "conversation" with all-powerful Viacom chairman Sumner Redstone (he of the Tom Cruise spat), film director Brett Ratner, Velvet [...]
Patrick Goldstein’s "Hollywood’s endangered entrepreneurs" in the Los Angeles Times:
"It’s hard to imagine New Line Cinema without Bob Shaye, its prickly paterfamilias. The company is being absorbed into Time Warner’s Warner Bros. film division, with Shaye and most of the employees being cast adrift. Long after he’d sold his company in 1993, Shaye continued to [...]
2007 Producers Guild of America’s Golden Laurel Awards
2007 Golden Laurel feature-film and long-form TV nominations: January 14, 2008. Television series nominations: November 15, 2007.
2007 Golden Laurel winners: Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills on February 2, 2008.
("*" denotes the winner in each category)
The two biggest surprises among the PGA’s 2008 Golden Laurels was the presence [...]
Mother love and melodrama in The Trespasser: Purnell Pratt, Gloria Swanson, and Robert Ames, who would die two years after this film was made.
Academy film scholar Cari Beauchamp will talk about the convoluted personal and professional relationship between actress Gloria Swanson and producer Joseph P. Kennedy (right) in a program featuring highlights from her upcoming [...]
Libby Motika in The Palisadian-Post:
"Once there was a city spread out idyllically on the slopes of Santa Ynez Canyon [between Santa Monica and Malibu] with sweeping views of the sea. The streets were lined with houses of many types, from humble cottages to mansions, and the buildings were fashioned after the architecture of many lands.
"But [...]
© Allan Ellenberger Collection
June Mathis. The name means nothing to most of today’s filmgoers and to the vast majority of self-proclaimed film historians. Yet, nearly nine decades ago June Mathis was, next to Mary Pickford, one of the two most powerful women in Hollywood. “She fairly lives and breathes motion pictures,” reported the New York [...]
Below is an open letter (dated March 2) that producer John Sinno sent to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Sinno co-produced James Longley’s Iraq in Fragments, which earlier this year was nominated for an Academy Award in the best documentary feature category.
Note: This year’s best documentary feature Oscar winner was [...]
Not everyone will fit into the Academy Award’s Van.
The Academy’s Producers Branch Executive Committee has announced the final roster of producers nominated in the Best Picture category for the 79th Academy Awards. They are:
Alejandro González Iñárritu, Jon Kilik and Steve Golin, for Babel
Graham King for The Departed
Clint Eastwood, Steven Spielberg, and Robert Lorenz [...]
Little Miss Sunshine was the surprise feature film winner at the 18th Producers Guild of America (PGA) Awards. The pseudo-offbeat family comedy directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, and written by Michael Arndt has also been nominated for the Directors Guild Award and the Screen Actors Guild Award for best ensemble (which includes Alan [...]
Sherry Lansing, the former Paramount chairman and a strong advocate for cancer research, has been voted the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award by the Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Lansing will receive the award at the 79th Academy Awards presentation on February 25, 2007.
By the way, the Jean [...]
Aliens screening in Hollywood, with producer Gale Ann Hurd hosting a discussion panel. Aliens (1986) was directed by James Cameron. Aliens starred Sigourney Weaver and Michael Biehn. Aliens is a sequel to Alien, a 1979 horror film directed by Ridley Scott, and starring Sigourney Weaver and John Hurt.
From the MGM Press Release:
LOS ANGELES, CA November 2, 2006 — United Artists, the studio founded by movie greats Douglas Fairbanks, Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford and D.W. Griffith some 85 years ago and responsible for delivering such iconic film franchises as “Rocky,” “Pink Panther” and “James Bond,” will be reborn under a partnership formed between [...]
Brief Obit: British cinematographer, director, and film and television producer Monty Berman, whose television series The Saint became an international hit, died in London last June 14. His obit was reported in The [London] Independent on Aug. 4.
Born in London in 1912, at the age of 17 Berman became a camera assistant at Twickenham Studios. [...]
In The New York Times producer Peter Gruber discusses producers’ film credits and his own experiences making the Academy Award-nominated 1978 drama Midnight Express: "Around midnight tonight, after what will undoubtedly be an excruciatingly long Oscar kudo-cast, the Academy Award for best picture will finally be announced. The expectant faces of all the producers of [...]
17th Producers Guild of America Awards - Golden Laurel Awards 2005
The 17th Producers Guild of America (PGA) winners were announced on January 22, 2006.
("*" denotes the winner in each category)
THEATRICAL MOTION PICTURE
* BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN
Diana Ossana
James Schamus
CAPOTE
Caroline Baron
William Vince
Michael Ohoven
CRASH
Paul Haggis
Cathy Schulman
GOOD NIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK
Grant Heslov
WALK THE LINE
James Keach
Cathy Konrad
ANIMATED MOTION [...]
18th Producers Guild of America Awards - Golden Laurel Awards 2006
The 18th Producers Guild of America (PGA) episodic television nominees were announced on December 5, 2006. Feature-film and long-form television nominees were announced on January 3, 2007.
The 18th Producers Guild of America (PGA) winners were announced at the Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles [...]
Los Angeles Film Festival 2005, including Rodrigo Garcia’s Nine Lives, starring Kathy Baker and Glenn Close, Don Roos’ Hapy Endings, starring Lisa Kudrow and Laura Dern, Wong Kar Wai’s 2046 with Gong Li and Tony Leung, and Jacques Audiard’s De battre mon coeur s’est arrete / The Beat That My Heart Skipped starring Romain Duris.
Mumbai-born producer and sometime director Ismail Merchant died today in London. He was 68.
Merchant and his partner, American director James Ivory, were responsible for several classy productions made in the last four decades, including Heat and Dust (1981), starring Julie Christie as a woman traveling through India; the drama Quartet (1981), with Maggie Smith, [...]
Posted in Film, Film Awards, Producers on March 10th, 2005 1 Comment »
"I daresay the Oscars may have peaked, and that’s because they’re falling prey to their own hype."
That’s Oscar-winning producer David Puttnam – for Chariots of Fire — discussing the Oscars while interviewed by Raja Sen at Rediff.com.
16th Producers Guild of America Awards - Golden Laurel Awards 2005
The 16th Producers Guild of America (PGA) winners were announced on January 22, 2005.
("*" denotes the winner in each category)
Darryl F. Zanuck Producer of the Year
* The Aviator
Finding Neverland
The Incredibles
Million Dollar Baby
Sideways
David L. Wolper Producer of the Year - [...]
French Producer René Cleitman has died of an undisclosed illness at a Paris hospital. Cleitman produced more than 20 feature films, including Cyrano de Bergerac, a major international hit starring Gérard Depardieu; the unabashedly romantic Le Hussard sur le toit / The Horseman on the Roof with Olivier Martinez and Juliette Binoche; Monsieur Hire with [...]
