News

September 16, 2011 - [ AMC ]

AMC News Correspondent Jacob Soboroff talks to <i>Last Call at the Oasis</i> director Jessica Yu, producer Elise Pearlstein and activist Erin Brockovich.

September 16, 2011 - [ PBS.org ]

Not so long ago, most major U.S. foundations fit the image of the giant East Coast institution, rooted in fortunes made by titans of the manufacturing and extractive industries. For decades, the Ford, Carnegie, and Rockefeller foundations carried out sweeping programs on a scale that rivaled those of governments. Many public reforms and institutions were buoyed by their efforts, including public broadcasting, public libraries, and the Green Revolution.

But in recent years that primacy has been challenged by a host of new foundations, rooted in the digital communications and technology sector, that are rewriting the rules of American philanthropy. They don't always march in lockstep or speak with one voice, but they are generating a new philanthropic culture nonetheless.

September 16, 2011 - [ Apple Trailers ]

The trailer, which goes up in theaters today, can be viewed online by clicking the following link:

September 16, 2011 - [ TakePart ]

In support of the Social Action Campaign for Contagion, TakePart.com has published an editorial and video series on real-life "Virus Hunters," featuring scientists on the front lines of preventing the next great pandemic.

These include Global Virus Forecasting founder Nathan Wolfe and Columbia University professor Dr. W. Ian Lipkin, from the Mailman School of Public Health.

September 15, 2011 - [ Market Watch ]

Paley Center for Media, V Lounge, Ogilvy & Mather and Writers Boot Camp at Bergamot Station Form Hubs for Multi-Venue, Weeklong Event Celebrating Social Media With Panels, Book Signings, Keynotes, Parties, Free Movie Screening and More; VIP and "Fast Check-in" Passes Available for First Time

LOS ANGELES, CA, Sep 15, 2011 (MARKETWIRE via COMTEX) -- The second annual Social Media Week Los Angeles seeks to break all records with more than 75 events, a 500-person opening party, celebrities, social media experts and enthusiasts gathering across Los Angeles from September 19-23. This year's event is expected to shatter last year's attendance of 4,000 people, according to city partner and conference producer, SocialRadius.

September 14, 2011 - [ Documentary Channel Blog ]

One of the best documentary films I’ve seen so far at the Toronto International Film Festival is Last Call at the Oasis, a big issue doc from the producers of An Inconvenient Truth and Food, Inc. yet also from the Oscar-winning director of less conventional nonfiction works, such as Protagonist. Filmmaker Jessica Yu’s last feature was a fictional sports comedy called Ping Pong Playa. Now she’s back with docs and trying something seemingly out of her element, concerning one of the elements: water.

I talked with her and one of the new film’s subjects, Erin Brockovich (the inspiration for the Julia Roberts movie), about issue docs and the time they take to bring their urgent subject matter to audiences. This is a two-part interview continued from Spout.com — though I think they can be read in either order.

September 14, 2011 - [ TakePart ]

For the broadcast premiere of Waiting For "Superman" on EpixHD, TakePart produced a short piece at how some of the kids in the film are doing today.

September 12, 2011 - [ Science & Entertainment Exchange ]

Sarah Newman knows how lucky she is to spend her workdays talking to experts in pandemics, nuclear security, and other topics. As the Research Manager at Participant Media she works to develop companion campaigns to films with important topics, such as Contagion and infectious disease. We caught up with Newman recently to ask her a few questions about her role at Participant, how films can get people engaged in science, and what science topic she wants to see more of in film and television.

September 12, 2011 - [ TakePart ]

The name Erin Brockovich stirs up visions of a fierce and feisty Julia Roberts taking down a massive power company that is polluting a town's water supply. The real Erin Brockovich is just as fierce and feisty. To this day, she's fighting to keep our drinking water safe.

Erin is one of the advocates featured in Jessica Yu's Last Call at the Oasis, a thought-provoking documentary about the global water crisis that premiered September 9 at the Toronto International Film Festival. TakePart had a chance to talk with Erin about why she has stayed on the front lines of this fight for the past 19 years.

September 12, 2011 - [ HealthcareCommunication.com ]

By the time you read this story, hospitals, physicians' offices and retirement homes will be abuzz as health care workers share their thoughts on the latest pandemic movie, Contagion, from Warner Bros. Pictures, Participant Media and Imagenation Abu Dhabi, which opened this weekend. The film revolves around a virus moving rapidly and infecting millions.

This health care editor doesn't pretend to be a movie critic or an authority on contagious diseases. I probably watch less than a dozen movies a year, most of them old ones or made-for-TV movies. My favorite movie is still the original True Grit, and I'm much more likely to watch a chick flick than a disaster film.

September 12, 2011 - [ IndieWire/Spout ]

As I noted in my review of Last Call at the Oasis, I’m not always for the big issue docs that try to save the world. So I was pleasantly surprised to really enjoy and appreciate how Jessica Yu worked with a grand-scale cause such as water. As in water shortage, water contamination and really any every other water-related problem affecting some part of the world today. I just had to talk to the Oscar-winning filmmaker, known previously for nontraditional docs like In the Realms of the Unreal and Protagonist and the fictional sports comedy Ping Pong Playa, to find out her secret recipe for making a great issue doc that isn’t heavy on scare tactics or boring fact sheets. The first part of this conversation is below. You can find the second part, about documentary immediacy, at the Documentary Channel Blog.

September 11, 2011 - [ New York Times ]

I ADMIT I was wary when I was approached, late in 2008, about working on a movie with the director Steven Soderbergh about a flulike pandemic. It seemed that every few years a filmmaker imagined a world in which a virus transformed humans into flesh-eating zombies, or scientists discovered and delivered the cure for a lethal infectious disease in an impossibly short period of time.

Moviegoers might find fantasies like these entertaining, but for a microbe hunter like me, who spends his days trying to identify the viruses that cause dangerous diseases, the truth about the potential of global outbreaks is gripping enough.

Then I discovered that Mr. Soderbergh and the screenwriter on the project, Scott Z. Burns, agreed with me. They were determined to make a movie — Contagion, which opened this weekend — that didn’t distort reality but did convey the risks that we all face from emerging infectious diseases.

September 11, 2011 - [ Hollywood Reporter ]

The good news ends there for new titles; Sony's Adam Sandler-produced comedy Bucky Larson bombs with a $1.5 mil opening, mixed martial arts pic Warrior draws strong praise from reviewers and moviegoers alike, but underperforms in grossing $5.6 mil.

TORONTO—Warner Bros. and Participant Media's viral pandemic thriller Contagion successfully infiltrated the domestic box office with a $23.1 million debut, easily winning the weekend race.

Yet don’t forget The Help. The late-summer hit may have been bumped down to No. 2 after coming in No. 1 for 25 days in a row—the best showing since The Sixth Sense (35 days)--but it still scored a weekend take of $8.7 million for a new domestic total of $137.1 million.

September 10, 2011 - [ Spout/Indiewire ]

The other day I wrote a column about how documentaries premiering at the Toronto International Film Festival have a better chance of immediate turnaround for Oscar consideration. I mentioned Jessica Yu’s Last Call at the Oasis simply because it’s an issue-oriented film, and now that I’ve actually seen the doc I believe it truly is on track for certain Academy recognition.

And someone should pick it up as soon as possible. Like TIFF docs programmer Thom Powers noted in his intro at the film’s premiere, distributors shouldn’t have any trouble finding a target audience. It’s necessary viewing for anyone on the planet who drinks water. But while it could wait until next year—and just as with Food, Inc. before it, it will still be nominated a year later if it waits—most of this film’s points are best communicated as soon as possible.

September 10, 2011 - [ Variety ]

Whether the glass is half full or half empty isn't the point of the effervescent "Last Call at the Oasis": It's whether there'll be anything in the glass at all. A sobering but somehow upbeat examination of the looming catastrophic global water shortage, Jessica Yu's latest docu can be seen as the final installment in Participant Media's Crisis Quartet -- "An Inconvenient Truth" (climate), "Food, Inc." (agriculture), "Waiting for Superman" (education) and now, a look at the Earth's most precious, and perhaps most endangered, commodity. The film should fare as well as its predecessors: Everyone, after all, gets thirsty.

September 9, 2011 - [ Deadline.com ]

FRIDAY PM: This is shaping up as 2011′s lousiest box office weekend in North America with only $70M total grosses. Yes, even worse than Hurricane Irene’s. But no surprise which new North American movie is No. 1 tonight.

1. With $8M and an estimated $22+M weekend, it’s Warner Bros’ Contagion playing in 42% more theaters — 3,222 — than its nearest newcomer. This Participant Media-backed disease movie looked like yet another yikes-you’re-all-going-to-die formula pic. But I’m surprised it didn’t generate more appeal what with Oscar-winning Steven Soderbergh directing 6 Academy Award winners or nominees: Matt Damon, Kate Winslet, Marion Cotillard, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jude Law, and Laurence Fishburne. That added oomph to credited screenplay writer Scott Burns’ material. “Yes, it was important to be provocative and to scare people,” a Warner Bros exec tells me about the $60M-budget pic. “But both the print and trailer and TV campaign present a more well-rounded view of the mystery. We did sell the visceral experience — a smart and thrilling look at a  killer virus, the science behind it, and the aftermath.” Warner Bros took the film to Venice to solid reviews and conducted an aggressive consumer campaign. Besides, adult movies are working at the box office.

September 9, 2011 - [ Box Office Mojo ]

As of Thursday, The Help has topped the box office for 25 days in a row. That marked the longest uninterrupted streak since The Sixth Sense spent 35 days in first place in late summer 1999. Meet the Parents had the previous best post-Sixth Sense run at 24 days. With Contagion opening today, The Help's streak will almost certainly come to an end.

In the nearly ten years that Box Office Mojo has comprehensively tracked daily data, only three other movies have held the top spot for over three straight weeks. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring was in first from Dec. 19, 2001 to Jan. 10, 2002, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King took the crown from Dec. 17, 2003 to Jan. 8, 2004, and The Passion of the Christ reigned from Feb. 25, 2004 to March 18, 2004. Each of these movies opened on a Wednesday and was in first for 23 days.

September 9, 2011 - [ Huffington Post ]

A minuscule space separates health from disease and peace from pandemonium. It can be readily and rapidly crossed by a weapon of mass destruction that is invisible to the naked eye but possessing of a means of delivery that is ubiquitous and virtually unstoppable. The weapon is a virus and its weaponry human beings. It is by touch, breath, cough and sneeze that many a virus is transmitted: we put our hands to our face as many as 3,000 times a day -- after touching countless door handles, counters, dishes, and papers. The body count from a highly virulent strain depends upon what is called R-1 (or 2, or 4, or 8), the rate of its spread among its victims. Flu spreads at R-1, Smallpox R-3, and Polio R- 4-6. At a rate of R-4 the virus can infect 1 in 12 people on the planet (!) in a matter of months.

September 9, 2011 - [ Los Angeles Times ]

A lethal virus spreads across the globe and inspires panic and fear in Steven Soderbergh's thriller.

It starts with a cough. It ends with death on an unimaginable scale.

Contagion, the new thriller by Steven Soderbergh, tells a story for our time, a story of raging menace and out of control fear. It offers us thirty-something days in the life of a global pandemic, a lethal virus that travels like the wind and kills without a trace of mercy. This may not fit any conventional definition of entertainment, but it certainly keeps your eyes on the screen.

September 8, 2011 - [ New York Times ]

Contagion, Steven Soderbergh’s smart, spooky thriller about a thicket of contemporary plagues — a killer virus, rampaging fear, an unscrupulous blogger — is as ruthlessly effective as the malady at its cool, cool center. Set in the world-is-flat now, the movie tracks a mystery pathogen after it catches a ride on a flight from Hong Kong to Chicago, an early hop for a globe-sprinting pandemic that cuts across borders and through bodies as effortlessly as Mr. Soderbergh moves among genres, styles and eras, this time by updating 1970s paranoia freakouts like All the President’s Men for the anti-government, Tea Party age.