Monday, February 1, 2010

Oscar-winning Director is Also America's Favorite Movie Star

To view the chart that comes with this article, visit Business Wire or Harris Interactive.

Press release from Business Wire:

Clint Eastwood is America’s Favorite Movie Star

Johnny Depp is number 2 and, last year’s favorite, Denzel Washington drops to number 3

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--2009 may be the year that brought the movies back. Between Avatar, the latest Harry Potter movie, Julie and Julia, New Moon from the Twilight series, and so many others, box office revenues topped $10 billion – a new record. Clearly people love going to the movies – and within all the various types of movies out there, everyone has their favorite movie star.

This year there is a new number one for the Harris Poll’s favorite movie star list. Hopefully, we’ve made his day; Clint Eastwood is on top, up one spot from number 2 last year. In second place, jumping up from number 8 last year is the man of many characters, Johnny Depp. Dropping from three years spent at number one, Denzel Washington is at number three this year.

These are some of the results of The Harris Poll® of 2,276 adults surveyed online between December 7 and 14, 2009 by Harris Interactive®.

The Usual Suspects
Returning to the list after a one year absence is Miss Congeniality, Sandra Bullock, and Forrest Gump, or rather Tom Hanks, moves up two spots this year to number 5. He’s both Up in the Air and back on the list - George Clooney is at number six after two years off the list, and, proving that you can have staying power in Hollywood even after you are no longer making movies, John Wayne is on the list at number 7, down from last year when he was tied for number 3.

She has multiple Academy Awards and for the first time she has a place on this list - Meryl Streep debuts at number 7. With his long career, Morgan Freeman debuted last year on the list at a tie for number 9 and this year he holds that spot alone. Rounding out the list is the Pretty Woman herself, Julia Roberts, in at number 10, down four spots from last year.

Gone With the Wind
This year there are three additions to the list from last year, which means that three actors have dropped out of the top ten. Hancock is a distant memory and Will Smith, who was tied for third place, had no movies in 2009 and is not on the list this year. 2008 saw the new Indiana Jones and last year Harrison Ford was number 5 on the list but has dropped off this year. The third to drop was Angelina Jolie, who was tied for number 9.

For Ordinary People
Different groups have their own favorite movie stars. For women, Johnny Depp is number one while for men it is Clint Eastwood. Clint is also on top for the two older generations, Baby Boomers (those aged 45-63) and Matures (aged 64 and older). The younger generations split with Echo Boomers (aged 18-32) going for Johnny Depp and Gen Xers (those aged 33-44) saying Sandra Bullock is their favorite.

The Harris Poll® #11, January 26, 2010
By Regina Corso, Director, The Harris Poll, Harris Interactive

Methodology
This Harris Poll was conducted online within the United States December 7 and 14, 2009 among 2,276 adults (aged 18 and over). Figures for age, sex, race/ethnicity, education, region and household income were weighted where necessary to bring them into line with their actual proportions in the population. Propensity score weighting was also used to adjust for respondents’ propensity to be online.

All sample surveys and polls, whether or not they use probability sampling, are subject to multiple sources of error which are most often not possible to quantify or estimate, including sampling error, coverage error, error associated with nonresponse, error associated with question wording and response options, and post-survey weighting and adjustments. Therefore, Harris Interactive avoids the words “margin of error” as they are misleading. All that can be calculated are different possible sampling errors with different probabilities for pure, unweighted, random samples with 100% response rates. These are only theoretical because no published polls come close to this ideal.

Respondents for this survey were selected from among those who have agreed to participate in Harris Interactive surveys. The data have been weighted to reflect the composition of the adult population. Because the sample is based on those who agreed to participate in the Harris Interactive panel, no estimates of theoretical sampling error can be calculated.

These statements conform to the principles of disclosure of the National Council on Public Polls.

The results of this Harris Poll may not be used in advertising, marketing or promotion without the prior written permission of Harris Interactive.


About Harris Interactive
Harris Interactive is one of the world’s leading custom market research firms, leveraging research, technology, and business acumen to transform relevant insight into actionable foresight. Known widely for the Harris Poll and for pioneering innovative research methodologies, Harris offers expertise in a wide range of industries including healthcare, technology, public affairs, energy, telecommunications, financial services, insurance, media, retail, restaurant, and consumer package goods. Serving clients in over 215 countries and territories through our North American, European, and Asian offices and a network of independent market research firms, Harris specializes in delivering research solutions that help us – and our clients – stay ahead of what’s next. For more information, please visit www.harrisinteractive.com.

©2010 Harris Interactive, Inc. All rights reserved. [END]

List of Grammy Winners in Some Major Categories

Winners in selected major categories at 52nd Annual Grammy Awards:


Record of the Year: "Use Somebody," Kings of Leon

Album of the Year: "Fearless," Taylor Swift

Song of the Year: "Single Ladies (Put A Ring On it)," Beyonce Knowles

New Artist: Zac Brown Band

Pop Vocal Album: "The E.N.D.", The Black Eyed Peas

Female Pop Vocal Performance: "Halo," Beyonce Knowles

Male Pop Vocal Performance: "Make It Mine," Jason Mraz

Rock Album: "21st Century Breakdown," Green Day

Rock Song: "Use Somebody," Kings of Leon

R&B Album: "BLACKsummers'night, "Maxwell

R&B Song: "Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It)," Beyonce Knowles

Rap Album: "Relapse," Eminem

Rap Song: "Run This Town," Jay-Z, Rihanna and Kanye West

Best Rap/Sung Collaboration: "Run This Town," Jay-Z, Rihanna and Kanye West

Country Album: "Fearless," Taylor Swift

Female Country Vocal Performance: "White Horse," Taylor Swift

Male Country Vocal Performance: "Sweet Thing," Keith Urban,

Latin Pop Album: "Sin Frenos," La Quinta Estacion

Contemporary Jazz Album: "75," Joe Zawinul & The Zawinul Syndicate

Classical Album: "Mahler: Symphony No. 8; Adagio from Symphony No. 10"

Traditional Gospel Album: "Oh Happy Day," various artists

Dance Recording: "Poker Face," Lady Gaga

Electronic Dance Album: "The Fame," Lady Gaga

Alternative Music Album: "Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix," Phoenix

Spoken Word Album: "Always Looking Up," Michael J. Fox

Comedy Album: "A Colbert Christmas: The Greatest Gift of All!" Stephen Colbert

Go to http://www.grammy.com/ for a complete list of winners.

Beyonce Makes History with 6 Grammy Awards - A "Bits and Bites" Extra

Sunday night, January 31, 2010, at the Staples Center, Beyonce earned six Grammys, the most any woman has won in a single night in the Grammys' 52-year history.  Those six included a win for "Song of the Year" for "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)," an award she shared with the song's three co-writers.

The big awards were evenly split.  Taylor Swift's Fearless won the night's biggest award, "Album of the Year," beating out Beyonce's I Am...Sasha Fierce, among others.  The Kings of Leon won "Record of the Year" for "Use Somedy," from their album, Only by the Night.  The Zac Brown Band won "Best New Artist."

The Associated Press reporter David Bauder wrote this recap of the ceremony.

Sunday, January 31, 2010

Anti-Apartheid Writer Penning DreamWorks MLK Biopic

Press release from Business Wire:

Oscar Winner Ronald Harwood to Write Martin Luther King, Jr. Story for DreamWorks Studios


LOS ANGELES--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Acclaimed playwright and Academy Award-winning screenwriter Ronald Harwood will write the screenplay for DreamWorks Studios’ Martin Luther King, Jr. bio-pic, it was announced today by Mark Sourian and Holly Bario, Co-Presidents of Production for the studio. As previously announced, Steven Spielberg, Suzanne de Passe and Madison Jones will produce the film about the renowned civil rights leader.

“It is so gratifying for all of us at DreamWorks Studios to have a writer as respected and honored as Ronald Harwood to write the screenplay for our Martin Luther King film”

The DreamWorks film will be the first theatrical motion picture to be authorized by The King Estate to utilize the intellectual property of Dr. King to create the definitive portrait of his life. Dr. King copyrighted his speeches, books, and famous works during his lifetime.

“It is so gratifying for all of us at DreamWorks Studios to have a writer as respected and honored as Ronald Harwood to write the screenplay for our Martin Luther King film,” said Mark Sourian and Holly Bario. “His record of achievements makes him particularly suited to portraying this deeply personal story against the background of such a turbulent time.”

One of the world's most critically celebrated contemporary playwrights and screenwriters, the Oscar-winning Harwood brings to this much-anticipated project a career-long fascination with themes surrounding race, conscience and moral choices. Harwood is equally renowned for his revealing recreations of history, as in his Academy Award-winning screenplay for "The Pianist." He also received Oscar nominations for The Dresser, which lifted the curtain on backstage life in a World War II theatre, and for adapting the non-fiction tale of human transcendence, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. A native of South Africa, he has written extensively about apartheid, including the films Mandela, written while the future South African leader was still in prison, and an adaptation of Alan Paton's powerful classic, Cry The Beloved Country. He has also penned two anti-apartheid novels and two anti-apartheid plays (Tramway Road, Another Time.)

Harwood's diverse screen work, which often has simultaneously brought the past to life and enduring issues of human responsibility to the fore, further includes the Soviet gulag drama One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich; Taking Sides, the screen adaptation of his play about a conductor in Nazi Germany; and the W. Somerset Maugham story of 1930s revenge, Being Julia. These themes were also at the heart of his 2008 stage revival of "Taking Sides," which was paired with his newest play, "Collaboration," about the conduct of composer Richard Strauss during the Third Reich, in a popular and acclaimed run in London's West End.

Harwood says of his approach to Dr. King's life and impact: "I will not say anything about my approach to this screenplay except to say what I always say: 'I will do my utmost to be true to truth.'"

Martin Luther King, Jr. was born in Atlanta, Georgia in 1929. He became a civil rights activist early in his career as a pastor. He led the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955, and helped found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1957. His pioneering efforts to deliver racial equality through civil disobedience and other non-violent means led to the March on Washington in 1963, at which he delivered his renowned “I Have a Dream” speech. In 1964 he became the youngest person to receive the Nobel Peace Prize for his work to end racial segregation and racial discrimination. He was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977 and the Congressional Gold Medal in 2004. Dr. King was assassinated in April 1968 in Memphis, Tennessee at the age of 39.

About DreamWorks Studios:
DreamWorks Studios (www.dreamworksstudios.com) is a motion picture company led by Steven Spielberg and Stacey Snider in partnership with The Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group. The new company is a continuation of DreamWorks Studios which was formed in 1994 by Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and David Geffen. The company expects to put into production 5 to 6 films per year.

DreamWorks Studios can be found on Twitter at http://twitter.com/dw_studios. [END]

Avatar Beats Angry Mel Gibson Flick at Weekend Box Office

Box Office Estimates (U.S.) for the weekend of January 29 - 31, 2010

1 Avatar 20th Century Fox $30,000,000

2 Edge of Darkness Warner Bros. Pictures Distribution $17,120,000

3 When in Rome Walt Disney Studios Distribution $12,065,000

4 Tooth Fairy 20th Century Fox Distribution $10,000,000

5 The Book of Eli Warner Bros. Pictures Distribution $8,770,000

6 Legion Sony Pictures Releasing $6,800,000

7 The Lovely Bones Paramount Pictures $4,735,000

8 Sherlock Holmes Warner Bros. Pictures Distribution $4,510,000

9 Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel 20th Century Fox Distribution $4,000,000

10 It's Complicated Universal Pictures $3,720,000 [END]

Go to Box Office Mojo report for more details.

Review: Hughes Brothers Made a Documentary Classic with "American Pimp"

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 25 (of 2003) by Leroy Douresseaux

American Pimp (1999)
Running time: 87 minutes; MPAA – R for pervasive sexual content including dialogue, strong language, and some drug related material
DIRECTORS: The Hughes Brothers (Allen and Albert)
PRODUCERS: Kevin J. Messick and the Hughes Brothers.
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Albert Hughes
EDITOR: Doug Pray with Dan Lebental
Black Reel Awards nominee

DOCUMENTARY

The Hughes brothers are perhaps the most politically incorrect African American filmmakers as seen in their work, Menace II Society and Dead Presidents. They solidify their positions as the infante terribles of “black cinema” with their documentary film, American Pimp. It’s about the pimps, men (mostly black men in this film) who sell the bodies of women to other men for sexual intercourse.

In this study of “pimpdom,” street pimps discuss their lives and work: getting started, influences, technique, their style, handling their ho’s (whores, prostitutes), making money, pimp philosophy or their personal philosophy. Listening to the pimps, the viewers might get the idea that the Hughes just let the pimps take control of the film. The brothers do allow them total freedom to express themselves, and that’s what makes the film so bracing. From one pimp after another, the viewer gets a wall of information dressed in slang, profanity, and politically incorrect speech. It’s like the Hughes gave them the ultimate freedom in which to sell themselves, their lives, and their ideology.

Still, the Hughes control the tone of this film. They use film footage to illustrate some myths about pimps and prostitution, and they include a lot of personal photographs from the “archives” of the pimps. The Hughes frequently reference blaxtiploitation films, and for many of the pimps, so-called black exploitation films are how-to-manuals for pimps, and for some, maybe the films merge to become some kind of holy text. The Hughes also use the camera to really give the viewer a sense of the environment of the pimps, or players, as they like to call themselves. Bringing in the pimps’ surroundings gives the film an ambience so that the movie is more than just talking heads.

This film will offend many viewers. It’s non-judgmental when it comes to the pimps, and the Hughes really allow the pimps to by hyper verbal, to speak their minds even in the foulest terms. The filmmakers don’t seek to judge them; they leave that to the audience. American Pimp is a document about how the pimps see themselves, not really about how others see them, although the film features many ho’s talking about pimps and, to a lesser extent, their own lives.

I really like this movie, and I’ve seen it several times. I didn’t think I’d like it. Sometimes I laugh, and sometimes I find some of the material to be pretty rank. However, I was kind of sad when it ended. I was really curious about a lot of these men’s futures. I think most people who really like documentaries will be fascinated and, maybe, repulsed by this, but I think American Pimp is a testament to the power of film to communicate everything from the broadest cultures to the smallest, ugly corners of human life, both of which have been with us forever. You might not like that this film exists because you think it “glorifies” pimps, but you can’t deny the blunt force of its story.

8 of 10
A

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Sam Worthington to Play Dracula

Latino Review first reported and Entertainment Weekly confirmed it; Sam Worthington is negogiating with Universal Pictures to star in the planned-2011 tent poll movie, "Dracula: Year Zero."  Directed by Alex Proyas (Dark City; I, Robot), the film traces Dracula's roots.

I love me some Sam Worthington, who got really hot this past year because of Terminator: Salvation and (of course) Avatar.  But my initial reaction is that this Dracula movie is a joke.  I have a feeling that this will be in the vein of Van Helsing, which was a loud, obnoxious, mediocre movie.