News

March 8, 2010 - [ Huffington Post ]

It was a big night for Participant Media at the Oscars. Their TakePart.com web presence was shown during a series of American Express commercials, and their film "The Cove" won Best Documentary.


The film about dolphin slaughter in Taiji, Japan, captivated millions and inspired many to take action. During the film's victory speech, film subject and animal activist Ric O'Barry held up a sign that said "Text Dolphin To 44144."



Well, what happens if you do that?
 


According to TakePart.com, going forward on that text will sign you up to receive information about how to end the dolphin slaughter in Japan.
 


ABC quickly cut away from the stage once O'Barry held up the sign.
 


For more Cove-related actions, you can visit TakePart.com/thecove and sign on to the campaign to help spread the word. Through Zannel, you can also share photos and videos through your mobile device.

March 2, 2010 - [ IndieWire ]

Robert DeNiro and Jane Rosenthal’s are launching Tribeca Film, a new distribution initiative building on their annual Tribeca Film Festival in New York. Ten films are set to launch the new initiative.

In the major announcement today, DeNiro and Rosenthal’s Tribeca Enterprises, the for-profit wing of the umbrella group that produces the annual Tribeca Film Festival unveiled Tribeca Film today as, “a comprehensive distribution and marketing platform for independent film.” Additionally the group will launch Tribeca Film Festival Virtual (TFFV), an online venture that will offer work screening in the April festival to audiences through its website: www.tribecafilm.com/virtual. American Express, which is the premiere sponsor of the Tribeca Film Festival, will come on board with these initiatives as the “Founding Partner of Tribeca Film and TFFV.”
 

February 25, 2010 - [ Variety ]

Among the many early George Romero films tapped so far for remake, "The Crazies" was perhaps the ripest candidate, since the 1973 original had a great premise somewhat underserved by the film itself. While not a slam dunk, this revamp by helmer Breck Eisner (of the enjoyable but underperforming "Sahara") emerges an above-average genre piece that's equal parts horror-meller and doomsday action thriller. B.O. prospects look healthy if unspectacular, with strong ancillary biz to follow.
 


Monsters of one sort or another may be a horror norm, but there's always been something more deeply frightening about the notion of seemingly ordinary folk suddenly manifesting lunacy. The striking core idea in Romero and Paul McCollough's '73 screenplay was to turn a small town into a petri dish experiment in infectious insanity, contaminated water turning citizens into homicidal maniacs who still looked like the folks next door.

February 25, 2010 - [ Hollywood Reporter ]

Bottom Line: This spirited yet faithful George Romero remake has the makings of a certified hit.


A lesser-known entry in the George A. Romero living dead oeuvre, 1973's "The Crazies" has been given the remake treatment to surprisingly satisfying effect.
 


Part zombie movie, part apocalyptic bioterror, part military conspiracy thriller, the refit hybrid doesn't stint on the visceral kicks demanded by contemporary audiences while remaining reasonably true to those Romero roots.

February 24, 2010 - [ Associated Press ]

Breck Eisner's insane-in-the-membrane update of the George A. Romero cult horror movie "The Crazies" opens with a brief shot of fire, devastation and small-town apocalypse, followed by a title card that takes us back to the same Iowa farm community two days earlier.

February 24, 2010 - [ NPR ]

How much do we really know about the food we buy at the grocery store? Filmmaker Robert Kenner talks about his documentary, Food, Inc., which is up for an Oscar. The film raises questions about the safety of our food.
 


NEAL CONAN, host: 
In the run-up to the Oscars this year, we're taking a look at the films nominated for best documentary. Last week, we talked with Daniel Ellsberg about "The Most Dangerous Man in America." Today, a picture one critic describe as a horror film for the socially conscious, "Food, Inc." Michael Pollan, who wrote "Omnivore's Dilemma" and Eric Schlosser of "Fast Food Nation" tell us that food has changed more in the past 50 years than in the previous 10,000. Among their examples: industrialized chicken. 
 


(Soundbite of movie, "Food, Inc.") 



Mr. RICHARD LOBB (Director of Communications, National Chicken Council): In a way, we're not producing chickens. We're producing food. It's all highly mechanized, so all the birds coming off those farms have to be almost exactly the same size. What the system of intensive production accomplishes is to produce a lot of food on a small amount of land at a very affordable price. Now somebody explain to me: What's wrong with that? 
 


CONAN: Well, award-winning filmmaker Rob Kenner spent more than six years talking with farmers, families, food industry workers, and with the few industry representatives who agreed to speak with him, like Richard Lobb of the National Chicken Council, who you just heard. 
If you'd like to talk with the director of "Food, Inc.," give us a call: 800-989-8255. Email us: talk@npr.org. You can also join the conversation on our Web site at npr.org, click on TALK OF THE NATION. We've also posted clips from the film and a link to watch segments from the other documentary nominees that we're going to be talking about. Again, npr.org, click on TALK OF THE NATION. 
 


Robert Kenner joins us now from member station KPCC in Pasadena. Nice to have you with us today.

February 23, 2010 - [ Movie Maker ]

Days after we filmed at Carole Morison’s chicken farm in Pocomoke, Maryland, our production van was still swarming with flies attracted by all the chicken poop we had tracked in on our shoes. Sitting inside a ballroom at a Beverly Hills hotel with 120 other Oscar nominees, Carole’s farm seemed very far away. But it’s because people like Carole Morison were willing to participate in Food, Inc. that I was sitting at that luncheon at all. Carole let us into her life and, unlike many people we asked, she let us inside her farming operation. She knew that going on camera could be risky for her, but she was ready to speak out. She told a powerful story about losing her independence as a farmer, about raising animals in a way that felt wrong to her but that seemed to be her only option. Today, Carole is no longer farming, and her future is uncertain.
 

February 23, 2010 - [ Moving Pictures Magazine ]

“Food, Inc.” became a different film than what I’d intended to make. I thought it would be fascinating to look at how our food gets to the table — from different points of view. On one hand, we spend less on food today than at any other time in history. We can eat what we want, when we want it, regardless of seasons. On the other hand, this food has hidden costs that we will all pay for down the line. Industrial food production pollutes the water, robs nutrients from the soil, exploits the workers who grow and process the food, exploits the animals and, ultimately, it makes people sick. This seemed like fertile ground for a film.

February 22, 2010 - [ Huffington Post ]

What's in your hamburger? Having beaten out Michael Jackson's: This is It in DVD sales on Amazon.com, the Oscar-nominated documentary Food, Inc. garnered national attention for its filleting of the country's food system. Filmmaker Robert Kenner spoke with Fabio Periera about his own eating habits and his goals in making Food, Inc.

Fabio Periera: What was the most important thing you learned about your own eating habits while making Food, Inc.?
Robert Kenner: Basically, industrial food does not taste as good to me anymore. 
 


FP: Do you eat industrial food?
RK: I'm not a perfect eater. I travel, there are times I'm starving, but I don't like to. I think sometimes people are scared and think they'll have to totally change the way they eat. I just think what we tried to do is make people conscious about the cost of this food system.

February 22, 2010 - [ Variety ]

Kudos are presented by the Humane Society


Oscar-nommed films "Up," "Food Inc." and "The Cove" are among the 49 nominees for the 24th Genesis Awards.
The annual ceremony, which is presented by the Humane Society, recognizes film, TV, news and written work for their contributions to showcasing animal issues.
 
Also among the noms are "The Men Who Stare at Goats" (feature film), "Bones" (dramatic series), "The Ellen DeGeneres Show" (talkshow) and "Animal Cops: Philadelphia" (reality series).
 
The kudofest is March 20 at the Beverly Hilton Hotel.

February 20, 2010 - [ New York Times ]

IT may come as a shock, but the fanboys reveling in the eviscerations, explosions and Car Wash of Death scene contained in the director Breck Eisner’s new take on “The Crazies” will also be contributing to socially progressive cinema. Perhaps even to the public good. With any luck, they won’t notice. 
 


A reimagining of the horrormeister George A. Romero’s 1973 low-budget thriller “The Crazies” is about a spill of biological weaponry into a small town’s water supply and the military response to what ensues: an epidemic of homicidal mania that turns a bucolic Iowa community into a virally induced abattoir.

February 16, 2010 - [ Hollywood Reporter ]

Magnolia Pictures has acquired North American theatrical rights to "Countdown to Zero," Lucy Walker's documentary about the escalating nuclear arms race that debuted at Sundance. Magnolia will release the film in theaters this year.
 


History Channel picked up the U.S. TV broadcast rights.
 


"Countdown" was produced by Lawrence Bender and developed, financed and exec produced by Participant Media, together with World Security Institute. Jeff Skoll, Diane Weyermann, Bruce Blair and Matt Brown served as exec producers.
 


The film, which argues for nuclear disarmament, features such global figures as Jimmy Carter, Mikhail Gorbachev, Pervez Musharraf and Tony Blair. Valerie Plame Wilson, who also appears in the film, introduced a clip from it last week at the annual TED Conference in Long Beach. It also screened this month at Global Zero Summit in Paris.
 


The deal was negotiated on behalf of the filmmakers by Josh Braun and Jason Janego of Submarine and Jeff Ivers of Participant with Tom Quinn and Dori Begley of Magnolia and History's Peter Gaffney.

February 12, 2010 - [ Wired ]

In 2006, Oleg Khinsagov was caught trying to smuggle 100 grams of refined uranium into Georgia with the aim of selling it to a Muslim man whom he believed was connected to “a serious organization.”



Khinsagov, a whippet-thin, 50-year-old Russian trader who generally transported fish and sausages, was carrying the uranium in two small bags in his jacket pockets when he was caught in a sting operation. The amount was small, but enriched enough to make a bomb, and Khinsagov said he had another 2 to 3 kilograms stored in his apartment that he was willing to sell.
 

February 9, 2010 - [ OPS ]

The Works International is delighted to announce the acquisition of Academy Award® nominated documentary THE COVE by Japanese distributor Medallion Media which is planning a tentative release date of April 2010 in Japan.



Until now Japanese distributors have shied away from the award-winning documentary which generated huge coverage and controversy in Japan when it was finally included in the line-up of the 2009 Tokyo Film Festival after initially being rejected. Despite threats of legal action by fishermen from the town of Taiji featured in the film, the festival scheduled another screening after the first sold out within hours. Most Japanese are unaware of the annual dolphin cull that takes place in Taiji and also the significant risks of mercury poisoning from the consumption of dolphin meat which the film so effectively exposes. In spite of continued opposition from the Taiji fishermen, Medallion Media recognized there were many people keen to see the film. Says Norio Okahara, Director of Medallion Media: “In distributing THE COVE we are not taking sides. Rather, we are presenting the film for the Japanese to decide for themselves about the issues it raises. There is a debate to be had here and this important film – and the Academy Award® nomination only serves to reinforce its importance - offers the opportunity for such a debate.”

February 5, 2010 - [ Skoll Foundation ]

I attended the Global Zero Summit in Paris this week, representing Larry Brilliant of the Skoll Global Threats Fund, which is a financial supporter of Ploughshares, an organization that supports peace and security worldwide. Global Zero is pushing for the elimination of all nuclear weapons based on a multi-stage, multi-year plan that all the world’s nuclear powers would embrace.  You can reach the basic approach here.
 


The key theme at the Summit - which included senior current and former officials from nuclear and non-nuclear states - is that the time for action is now. There is high-level political support for disarmament - U.S. and Russian Presidents Obama and Medvedev, UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown and UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon all had statements of support read at  the Summit.  There is general consensus that nuclear weapons no longer serve to deter the threats of today’s world - terrorism by non-state actors, regional conventional arms conflicts, and the like.  And there is growing fear that proliferation will make it more likely that weapons fall into the wrong hands.  On top of this, countries around the globe are expected to push for greater use of nuclear for non-carbon energy generation in the face of climate change, so there’s real interest in putting into place processes and practices that will make sure this can happen peacefully.  Reducing or eliminating nuclear weapons will help this process.

February 2, 2010 - [ guardian.co.uk ]

Joel Salatin is America's most celebrated pioneer of chemical-free farming – but if you want to taste his beef or chicken you'll have to move to Virginia. He talks to Gaby Wood about why local is best and his role in the documentary Food, Inc which attacks the giants of industrialised food production.

February 2, 2010 - [ Oscar.com ]

Best documentary feature
· "Burma VJ" (Oscilloscope Laboratories) A Magic Hour Films Production   Anders Østergaard and Lise Lense-Møller 
· "The Cove" (Roadside Attractions) An Oceanic Preservation Society Production   Nominees to be determined 
· "Food, Inc." (Magnolia Pictures) A Robert Kenner Films Production   Robert Kenner and Elise Pearlstein 
·   "The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers" A Kovno Communications Production   Judith Ehrlich and Rick Goldsmith

January 31, 2010 - [ Variety ]

Kathryn Bigelow has won the Directors Guild of America award for directing "The Hurt Locker," becoming the first woman to do so in the 62 years of the DGA awards.


Bigelow's win was announced Saturday night at the conclusion of the DGA awards ceremonies at the Century Plaza. She defeated James Cameron for "Avatar," Lee Daniels for "Precious," Jason Reitman for "Up in the Air" and Quentin Tarantino for "Inglourious Basterds." 
 


Bigelow, who shot the gritty drama in Jordan, was only the seventh female to be nominated for the DGA trophy. 
 


Bigelow said she was "stunned, honored and proud" in her brief acceptance speech.
 


"I felt a deep obligation to tell this story with as much honesty as possible," she added. "This is the most incredible moment of my life."
 


The DGA award is viewed as a reliable predictor of the Academy Award for best director. The same director has won both in all but six years since 1948, including last year, when Danny Boyle won both trophies for "Slumdog Millionaire." 
 


The directors branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences currently has 366 voting members, or about 6% of the total membership of 5,777. Oscar noms will be announced Tuesday. 
 


Bigelow was one of four "Hurt Locker" producers who took home the Producers Guild of America award Sunday. 
 


During a DGA panel discussion Saturday, Bigelow had stressed the importance of achieving a realistic portrayal of a US military squad desfusing bombs in Iraq. "Authenticity is a moral imperative," she declared.
 


Leslie Linka Glatter took the drama series award for the "Guy Walks into any Advertising Agency" for AMC's "Mad Men." The series pilot won the category two years ago.
 


Jason Winer won the comedy series kudo for the pilot of ABC newcomer "Modern Family."
 


Ross Katz took the award in the movies for TV-miniseries for HBO's Iraq war drama "Taking Chance."
 


Louis Psihoyos took the documentary trophy for "The Cove," which won the PGA award in docs Sunday. It's one of the 15 finalists for the Oscar documentary award.

January 31, 2010 - [ Variety ]

Winter's Bone," director Debra Granik's spare, suspenseful tale of a teenage girl's coming-of-age in the rural Ozarks, and "Restrepo," Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington's intense, close-up documentary look at a group of American soldiers in Afghanistan, won the top jury prizes for American films at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival's Saturday evening awards ceremony.
Audience awards for American competition entries went to "Happythankyoumoreplease," writer-director Josh Radnor's sitcom-style comedy about young New Yorkers trying to deal with grown-up issues, and the docu "Waiting for Superman," Davis Guggenheim's agitating assessment of the failing of the American public schools system.

January 28, 2010 - [ Variety ]

A kind of suicide hotline for a rogue-nuke world, "Countdown to Zero" boasts a cast of international superstars -- Jimmy Carter, Mikhail Gorbachev, Pervez Musharraf, Tony Blair -- and a convincing argument that the human race is on borrowed time: Given the number of nuclear weapons in existence, the ease with which they can be made, the eagerness of terrorists to possess them and a worldwide cluelessness about nuclear security, it's only a matter of time before something terribly ugly happens. A politically urgent picture, it will also literally scare the breath out of what will certainly be a worldwide audience.