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It seems as though everyone and his publicist is commenting on Harvey Weinstein and the Hollywood sex culture, but there is an interesting exception: the Motion Picture Association of America.  The scandal is not noted on its blog, nor in its news section, nor in its press releases, nor in the recent speeches by its chairman extolling the First Amendment and the institution of copyright. One would normally expect a major trade association to be active on such a big issue, but the explanation for the silence seems pretty easy.  The MPAA chairman (until the end of this year, which...

The National Film Board of Canada, the country's public filmmaker, has promised half the movies it finances will be directed by women. Those urging Hollywood to close the pay and opportunity gap for women directors should cast an envious eye to Canada. The National Film Board of Canada, the country's government-funded film producer, on Tuesday announced it will ensure at least half of its productions will be directed by women, and half of all production financing will go towards helping women tell their own stories.

The Korean government will focus their efforts to promote 270 degree movies, thermoplastics, and fuel cells, according to an announcement from the third public-private meetings of the ‘Creative Economy.’ The meeting was held to draft a plan for a second flagship project. The flagship project concept was initiated by the government to accelerate private businesses that have large growth potential. The first flagship project, which dealt with carbon fiber and energy storage systems, was initiated in May 2014. According to plans for the second flagship project, the government will support the development of a new cinema system that shows movies...

Over the fire I chatted with a neighbor who’s working on the “Red Dawn” remake. Get this: in the new version, China and Russia invade the US – to put a stop to our greed. There are times you wish you had a mouthful of kerosene so you could do a flaming spit take. If this is how the film turns out, it’ll be hilarious; it’s as if the filmmakers were a bit ambivalent about all the horrible jingoism that such a film might unleash, so they had to temper it with a bit of theoretical altruism that could be...

Anti-smoking groups are planning to increase the pressure on the movie industry to get actors to quit lighting up on the silver screen. Anti-tobacco activists worldwide plan to march Thursday from the Washington Convention Center to Motion Picture Association of America headquarters and call on the MPAA to take action to reduce smoking in the movies, including requiring an R rating for any movies with a non-historical depiction of smoking. The march and protest by various anti-smoking groups convening here for the World Conference on Tobacco or Health will follow the release of a study by the nonprofit, anti-smoking group...

Going to a movie theater with my son yesterday, I came upon a trailer for an upcoming film titled The Nativity Story, which is scheduled to open nationally in December. Its tagline reads: "One Couple. One Journey. One Child...who would change the world...forever." The Internet Movie Database (which simply titles the film Nativity) has little information on it, but I am certainly interested in watching it when it premieres. Of course, I am concerned about the movie's orthodoxy, so any further information is appreciated. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0762121/maindetails http://www.thenativitystory.com

(English-language translation) “Holy God!”, my grandmother would have said if she were still alive, if she spoke English, and if she would have read the [film] review of “Superman Returns” written by Richard Corliss titled “The Gospel of Superman” that appears in the June 26 issue of “Time”. We read that Bryan Singer’s version emphasizes the superhero’s divinity and elaborates: “He is not a super man; he is a god (named Kal-El), sent by his heavenly father (Jor-El) to protect Earth. That is a mission that takes more than muscles; it requires sacrifice, perhaps of his own life. So he...

QUARTZ HILL - It's not every day middle school students get to arrest their principal or watch a teacher peal out of the school parking lot. But for 60 students at Joe Walker Middle School, daring escapes and creative costumes were as much a part of the school year as textbooks and rulers. These students spent months of class time writing and producing their own movie, a 30-minute mystery/action/comedy titled "White Rose." "I was waiting to find the right teacher to work with," Anderson said. That person turned out to be computer lab teacher Debbie Fitzpatrick. Since teaming up in...

Socialite Paris Hilton has reportedly been asked to play celebrated humanitarian Mother Teresa in a movie biopic. Indian director T. Rajeevnath has contacted the hotel heiress about taking the lead role in his new film, which will chronicle the late nun's life. He tells MTV.co.uk, "My agents in California have contacted Paris Hilton. Although there are several actresses willing to play the role of Mother Teresa, the most widely respected and loved person, the history of the actress who is finally chosen for the role would have to be analyzed thoroughly before she is chosen."

Accused Leader of Counterfeit Motion Picture Network Pleads Guilty to Conspiracy to Traffic in Counterfeit Goods Guilty Plea Stems From First Joint IPR Investigation by ICE and Chinese Authorities GULFPORT, MS.- Michael A. Holt, Special Agent-in-Charge for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in New Orleans, and Dunn Lampton,United States Attorney for the Southern District of Mississippi, today announced that a man arrested on charges resulting from the first joint Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) investigation by U.S. and Chinese authorities has been convicted in federal court in Mississippi. Earlier today, Randolph Hobson Guthrie III, a U.S. citizen, entered a plea...

Am I the only who thinks it's miraculous that we could all watch the workings of one of the world's oldest religions, live on worldwide TV? Seeing Pope Benedict XVI's appearance before the throng at St. Peter's Square, I thought about the continuity of the Roman Catholic Church, reaching back almost 2000 years -- and how the new Pope's debut was, in effect, an open-air mass, a religious rite available to any and all global villagers. Of course, those electronic villagers could cheer, or jeer, the former Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger according to their wont. For his part, when the just-elected...

Dr. Strangelove," Stanley Kubrick's 1964 film about nuclear-war plans run amok, is widely heralded as one of the greatest satires in American political or movie history. For its 40th anniversary, Film Forum is screening a new 35 millimeter print for one week, starting on Friday, and Columbia TriStar is releasing a two-disc special-edition DVD next month. One essential point should emerge from all the hoopla: "Strangelove" is far more than a satire. In its own loopy way, the movie is a remarkably fact-based and specific guide to some of the oddest, most secretive chapters of the Cold War. As countless...

Ohio has passed a law that lets police arrest people for videotaping movies in theaters. Governor Taft signed the bill last month and it takes effect in March. The film industry is trying to prevent piracy and they have several methods to fight it, including bag searches for people entering movie houses. But some say Hollywood's tactics could backfire. A recent study found that three out of every four movies leaked on the Internet came from industry insiders. That led the Motion Picture Academy of America to temporarily stop sending ``screener'' tapes and DVDs to Oscar voters.

Unhappy EndingsBig Studios Find Quality Films Too Often Are a Losing Proposition By Sharon Waxman Washington Post Staff WriterWednesday, May 7, 2003; Page C01 LOS ANGELESWhen Amy Pascal, chairman of Columbia Pictures, gave director Spike Jonze a green light two years ago to make his offbeat film "Adaptation," she also gave him a warning: Don't go over budget, she said, or she'd have to get involved in the production. Jonze didn't exceed the $20 million budget, and the studio didn't tinker with his vision. But "Adaptation" still ended up costing a small fortune, because Sony (Columbia's parent company) spent another...

WASHINGTON -- As part of an uphill battle against Internet movie piracy, entertainment industry lobbyist Jack Valenti offered university students a lesson in morality Tuesday. "Too many students don't believe it's wrong to steal these movies," Valenti told students at Georgetown University Law Center. "It is fracturing the moral contract to take something that does not belong to you." The appearance was one of several that the president of the Motion Picture Association of America plans at prominent universities over the next few months. Students are among the heaviest online traffickers of illegally copied material. Since the late 1990s, a...

Seldom a film comes about that not merely exposits but also patronizes the sensation-grabbing, flesh-lusting, nihilistic paradigm behind the Oscar nominations, but this time Hollywood has surpassed the veneer of “artistry” to uncover the brazen essence of its propagations. Earlier this week I had given myself an investigative assignment: to see one of the films in competition for the Academy Awards (which I, being fairly insulated from the cultural mainstream, seldom do) and to review it independently, not reading past evaluations, not filtering the works of others to form my perception from theirs. My analysis of the film, in its...

Filed at 3:00 p.m. ET NEW YORK (Reuters) - Critically acclaimed drama ``Far From Heaven'' swept the 68th annual New York Film Critics Circle awards on Monday, taking five prizes, including best film and best director, and setting the stage for one of the most confused Oscar battles in years. The 34-member New York group's naming of ``Far From Heaven'' as best picture came after film critic groups in Los Angeles and Boston chose different pictures this weekend. Los Angeles critics picked Alexander Payne's ``About Schmidt'' on Saturday as the year's best picture while Boston critics selected Roman Polanski's Holocaust...

CLEVELAND — I've written 14 movies. My characters smoke in many of them, and they look cool and glamorous doing it. Smoking was an integral part of many of my screenplays because I was a militant smoker. It was part of a bad-boy image I'd cultivated for a long time — smoking, drinking, partying, rock 'n' roll. Smoking, I once believed, was every person's right. Efforts to stop it were politically correct, a Big Brother assault on personal freedoms. Secondhand smoke was a nonexistent problem invented by professional do-gooders. I put all these views into my scripts. In one of...

The Italian health minister has proposed legislation that would require a health warning to be posted on screen whenever an actor or actress lights a cigarette. The proposal by the minister, Dr. Girolamo Sirchia, a surgeon, follows a report by Italian researchers that a cigarette appears on TV screens every seven minutes during primetime. Britain's Guardian newspaper quoted famed actor Giancarlo Giannini, himself a reformed smoker, as describing the idea as folly. "Anyone can go to the tobacconist to buy cigarettes while it will become impossible to enjoy a film in peace," he said.