Oscar telecast nixing montages, elaborate tributes

By Gregg Kilday

Sun Feb 20, 2011 6:21pm EST

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - As preparations for next Sunday's Academy Awards move into high gear, the show's producers have booted a number of familiar elements.

Gone will be the movie montages -- like last year's salute to horror movies -- that often contribute to the broadcast's unwieldy running time. While there will be film clips from the ten best picture nominees and brief filmed introductions to different segments of the show, "Within the body of the show, we are not doing any film montage sequences," said Bruce Cohen, who will produce with Don Mischer.

Gone too will be the relatively new tradition, established just two years ago, of using five presenters to offer tribute testimonials about each of the best actor and actress nominees. "We're not going to do that this year," Cohen told the Hollywood Reporter. "What we did love about it was that it was a moment where each of the nominees really gets their due. (But) we found a version of that, without using the five people on stage, from the 1970 Oscars, and we stole it."

The producers also have enlisted the nominees' mothers to participate in promotion and pre-show activities, and some of them will be in the audience for the telecast.

This year's producing team is restoring individual performances of the four nominated songs, which were eliminated last year. Producers were upset that Cher, a major audience draw, was not nominated for her Burlesque ballad, "You Haven't Seen the Last of Me."

"We were surprised, and we were disappointed," Cohen says when of the song, which won its composer Diane Warren a Golden Globe but failed to earn an Academy nomination.

They have lined up most of the other names associated with the songs that were nominated, though: Oscar perennial Randy Newman will perform his "We Belong Together" from "Toy Story 3"; Mandy Moore and Zachary Levy, who sang the duet "I See The Light" on the "Tangled" soundtrack will reteam with composer Alan Menken; and Gwyneth Paltrow, who sings "Coming Home" in "Country Strong" will reprise that tune on the broadcast.

Because English pop singer Dido, who was nominated along with Rollo Armstrong and A.R. Rahman for the song "If I Rise," from "127 Hours" was not available, the producers have drafted Florence Welch from Grammy-nominated act Florence + the Machine to appear with Rahman.

"We feel we really lucked out, and this is a good year to bring the best song performances back," Cohen says.

Acclaimed Iranian film triumphs in Berlin

By Mike Collett-White and Annika Breidthardt

BERLIN | Sun Feb 20, 2011 3:53am EST

BERLIN (Reuters) - Iranian drama "Nader and Simin: A Separation" won the Golden Bear for best picture at the Berlin film festival on Saturday, while its ensemble cast also picked up the best actor and actress prizes on a triumphant night.

Director Asghar Farhadi's portrayal of a marriage in crisis was firm favorite for the coveted award, and its victory was the first for an Iranian picture, Berlin organizers said.

In the movie, one family is pitted against another in a gripping legal tussle which highlights the gap between middle class "intellectuals" and poorer, traditional Iranians for whom religious beliefs and honor tend to be more important.

It was praised for its subtle exploration of Iran's class divisions and religious conservatism, which it managed to combine with the tension of a crime thriller. The acting awards were a bonus for Farhadi, whose daughter Sarina starred.

Farhadi paid tribute to fellow Iranian film maker Jafar Panahi, who was unable to accept Berlin's invitation to sit on the main jury after being sentenced to six years in jail and banned from making movies or traveling abroad for 20 years.

He stands accused of inciting opposition protests in 2009 and making a film without permission, and his sentence has caused an outcry in the movie making world.

"I want to remind you of Jafar Panahi," Farhadi told the glitzy awards ceremony. "I really think his problem will be solved, and I hope he will be the one standing here next year."

When asked to speak about the situation in Iran, he replied: "I can either say what you want me to say and the result would be that I get into trouble and couldn't make films anymore.

"Or I can say as much as I'm allowed to and continue making films. I prefer making my films. I'm not a hero, I'm a film maker," he told reporters, adding that he spoke to Panahi after receiving the Golden Bear.

Panahi's absence was marked with an empty chair alongside jury head Isabella Rossellini at the opening press conference, and some German media have dubbed this year's cinema showcase the "Iranian Berlinale."

DARK TALE OF A HORSE

The runner-up film prize went to Hungarian director Bela Tarr's black-and-white "The Turin Horse," a slow-moving, bleak feature about a farmer and his daughter's forsaken lives in a windswept, isolated house.

The love-it-or-loathe-it picture, which Tarr has said would be his last, sharply divided critics, but its stark images, sparse dialogue and relentlessly droning score were considered among the most memorable at this year's festival.

"That is true it is my last film. The last so-called Tarr film," he told reporters after receiving his award.

"I believe that in this film everything comes together. Everything is contained in this film -- everything that I believe needs to be shown in film, i.e. everything that uses the language of film."

Iran drama wins top award at Berlin film festival

Thomson Reuters is the world's largest international multimedia news agency, providing investing news, world news, business news, technology news, headline news, small business news, news alerts, personal finance, stock market, and mutual funds information available on Reuters.com, video, mobile, and interactive television platforms. Thomson Reuters journalists are subject to an Editorial Handbook which requires fair presentation and disclosure of relevant interests.

NYSE and AMEX quotes delayed by at least 20 minutes. Nasdaq delayed by at least 15 minutes. For a complete list of exchanges and delays, please click here.

Lady Gaga breaks iTunes records, says on "drunk diet"

LOS ANGELES | Fri Feb 18, 2011 2:47pm EST

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Lady Gaga's "Born This Way" has become the fastest-selling single ever on Apple's iTunes store worldwide, racking up more than one million downloads in five days, Apple said on Friday.

Apple said the song -- a Madonna-influenced dance track that the 24 year-old singer performed after "hatching" from a giant egg at the Grammy Awards -- had hit the No. 1 spot on iTunes in 23 countries.

"Born This Way", the title track of a new album to be released in May, also went straight to the top of the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 singles charts earlier this week.

The flamboyant performance artist also revealed her secret for staying so thin, and how she gets her creative juices flowing.

"I am on the drunk diet," she told Sirius XM radio on Friday.

"I live my life as I want to, creatively. I like to drink whiskey and stuff while I am working. But the deal is I've got to work out every day, and I work out hung over if I am hung over. And it's about the cross-training and keeping yourself inspired. I have to say, I do a ton of yoga," she added.

The singer said in a television interview last weekend that she also smoked marijuana while writing her songs.

After headline-grabbing outfits, live performance stunts and a best-selling tour, Lady Gaga may be turning her thoughts to a possible new career -- in movies.

Asked if she saw herself becoming an actress, she told Sirius XM ; "I think at some point, yes. I think I'm sort of destined for that screen at some point."

But if there was a movie of her life, Lady Gaga said she would like to be played by Marisa Tomei -- the Oscar-winning actress from "My Cousin Vinny".

"I am such a Marisa Tomei fan. All my friends call me Marisa when I get angry. Because my New York accent just flies out of my body and I start smacking my gum," she said.

(Reporting by Jill Serjeant, editing by Christine Kearney)

Powered By WizardRSS

Paparazzi lie in wait for prince's bride-to-be

By Michael Holden

LONDON | Fri Feb 18, 2011 6:44am EST

LONDON (Reuters) - When Kate Middleton said "yes" to Prince William's marriage proposal, she was not just agreeing to become the wife of a future British king.

She was also signing up to massive media intrusion in her private life and years of intense attention from paparazzi photographers.

The question she and her future husband will now be pondering is whether that attention can be managed or if they will suffer from the same insatiable press frenzy that ultimately led to the death of William's mother, Princess Diana.

"There's huge interest. William has become the star of the royal family that his mother was and Kate's an attractive girl, so from a paparazzi point of view she potentially means a lot of money," said Max Clifford, Britain's best-known publicist.

"And these days the paparazzi are anyone -- anyone with a camera, anyone with a mobile phone," he told Reuters.

The couple's wedding on April 29 comes almost 14 years after Diana was killed with her lover Dodi al-Fayed when their limousine crashed into the wall of a Paris tunnel as they tried to escape from a posse of chasing paparazzi.

A British inquest in 2008 concluded the actions of the photographers were partly to blame for the fatal accident.

So far William and Kate, who began dating while at university in Scotland, have been largely spared the level of scrutiny that Diana suffered, partly through media restraint and because of more robust action from the royal family itself.

MOBBED

However, Middleton was mobbed by photographers on her way to work on her 25th birthday in 2007 and later that year formally complained to Britain's media watchdog, the Press Complaints Commission (PCC), after one newspaper published a picture of her which she said was taken as the result of harassment.

William has also complained that photographers on motorbikes had aggressively followed them after leaving a nightclub, while Queen Elizabeth has written to editors about paparazzi intruding on the royal family's privacy.

The crucial factor for the future will be the attitude of newspaper and magazine editors. If they do not use or pay for paparazzi pictures, there will clearly be less incentive for photographers to hound the royal couple.

"The judgment that editors will make will be 'can we justify showing this photo, breaking this news story, with our readers?'" Clifford said.

"Is it going to put them off or make more of them want to buy the paper or magazine? And that's the most important thing to all newspaper editors."

He predicted the couple's easy ride would continue initially, because upsetting the popular newlyweds is likely to upset their readers too.

Powered By WizardRSS