TV / Film News

Dolphin Hunt Town Shrugs off Cove Oscar

Source: All About Jazz
March 15, 2010

TAIJI, Japan - The gala crowd in Los Angeles cheered as “The Cove" won the best documentary Oscar with its grisly portrayal of dolphin hunting. Half a world away, residents of the small Japanese village shown in the film abhorred the attention and said it won't end their centuries-old tradition. In Taiji on the rocky coast of southwest Japan, residents gathered in whale eateries with names like “Tail" and rolled their eyes Monday when told of Oscar laurels for the ...

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New Zealand Capital Erects Film Sign

Source: All About Jazz
March 10, 2010

The New Zealand home base of Weta Digital, and a host of other NZ film companies, is set to officially become Wellywood, with a Hollywood-style sign to be erected on the hills of the Miramar Peninsula.

The term has been used informally for some time but the new lettering -- mimicking the style of the Hollywood sign -- will be almost 12 feet high and more than 90 feet long. It is more diminutive than L.A.'s 45ft high letters, perhaps ...

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Underwater Footage Key To 'Cove'

Source: All About Jazz
March 10, 2010

Much of the impact of “The Cove," which collected the documentary feature Oscar on Sunday night, comes from underwater footage that could not have been captured without help from Lucasfilm spinoff Kerner Optical.

Kerner runs a hush-hush “skunk works" that solves high-tech problems for private industry, government contractors and the occasional three-letter agency. Since Kerner's expertise is in models, miniatures and camera engineering, many of those problems involve exotic cameras. For “The Cove," which exposes the slaughter of toxin-laden dolphins ...

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Japanese politicians pan Oscar winner "The Cove"

Source: All About Jazz
March 9, 2010

The Oscar win for documentary “The Cove" is not getting much applause in Taiji, the port city in western Japan where helmer Louie Psihoyos and his crew secretly filmed the annual dolphin slaughter.

“This film has mistakes of fact," mayor Kazutaka Sangen told local press. “I'm surprised that it won the award even though its content is not truthful." Tokyo-based Medallion Media will release the doc in Japan this summer. But Sangen said, “(Theaters) with common sense will call off ...

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Disney/ABC/Cablevision Save Oscar for NY

Source: All About Jazz
March 8, 2010

It came down to the wire, but New York-area Cablevision viewers got their Oscar fix. Disney/ABC restored service of its New York flagship, WABC, to Cablevision customers 10 minutes after the Oscars began, ending a day-long standoff. “We've made significant progress, and have reached an agreement in principle that recognizes the fair value of ABC7, with deal points that we expect to finalize with Cablevision," said WABC prexy/GM Rebecca Campbell. “Given this movement, we're pleased to announce that ABC7 will ...

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Disney Pulls NY TV Signal on Eve of Oscar's

Source: Michael Ricci
March 7, 2010

Walt Disney Co. silences WABC-TV for many New York City-area viewers on the eve of the Oscars, part of an ongoing dispute with Cablevision Systems Corp. over carriage fees.

Potentially leaving millions of New York City-area homes unable to watch Sunday's Oscar telecast, Walt Disney Co. pulled its WABC-TV signal off Cablevision Systems Corp. at midnight Saturday as part of a fight over carriage fees. The action -- coming on the eve of one of television's biggest events and ...

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Oscar's Sunday Tune in Early

Source: All About Jazz
March 6, 2010

The people behind Sunday's Oscars show are urging people to tune in early for one of the program's best sequences. Bill Mechanic, who is producing the awards ceremony with Adam Shankman, promised “the most dynamic opening, from drama to spectacle to humor, that has ever been staged."

Shankman said the show will be funny, lively and fun. “People hate it when I say this," he said, “but I always say this is the best-dressed reality competition show on TV." The ...

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Jazz-Infused Film 'Handsome Harry' Starring Jamey Sheridan to be Released by Paladin Films on April 16

Source: Michael Ricci
March 5, 2010

Handsome Harry is the latest film by Bette Gordon, whose 1983 feature Variety remains a signal work of the early American “indie" movement. Heading an impressive ensemble cast, Jamey Sheridan (The Ice Storm, Syriana) portrays the title role -- a divorced man, alienated from his grown son, whose life is defined by a number of casual relationships but no intimate ones. A loner by choice, Harry is forced out of self-imposed exile when he is summoned to the deathbed of ...

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