Innholdsfortegnelse for 12/2/2014 i The Hollywood Reporter

On Nov. 11, Rogue One writer Chris Weitz launched a barrage of anti-Donald Trump tweets that mirrored what many in Hollywood had posted on social media in the wake of the presidential election. But several messages took the crusade further, injecting the new Star Wars film into a divisive political debate: “Please note that the Empire is a white supremacist (human) organization,” wrote Weitz. Added fellow Rogue One scribe Gary Whitta, “Opposed by a multicultural group led by brave women.” Both men changed their avatars to a Rebel insignia with a safety pin, a reference to the symbol of solidarity with persecuted groups that has spread following the election. Responses offered a predictable split between cheers for the activism and jeers toward Hollywood liberals. What Disney and Lucasfilm might not…

AWARDS SEASON 2016 PICTURE Patriots Day The third teaming of Peter Berg and Mark Wahlberg, after Lone Survivor and Deepwater Horizon, brought AFI Fest to an emotional close Nov. 17, with heroes and survivors of the Boston Marathon terror attack on hand. Live by Night Ben Affleck’s crime tale was unveiled at the DGA on Nov. 16, and the prevailing reaction was that, unlike Argo, his previous director/actor effort, the best hopes for this one exist in belowthe-line categories. Lion Former President Bill Clinton was among those in the audience cheering Harvey Weinstein’s top Oscar hope, Garth Davis’ drama about an Indian man’s search for his birth mother, at the movie’s New York premiere Nov. 16. SUPPORTING ACTOR Jonah Hill • War Dogs Leonardo DiCaprio hosted a Nov. 14 DVD…

ANIMATION SHOWDOWN! It’s a stealth attack: Over Thanksgiving weekend, Universal will sneak Sing — described as American Idol with farm animals — into 200 AMC theaters just as Disney opens its big holiday animated tentpole Moana. However, the Polynesian princess pic has a month to itself before Sing opens Dec. 21. Both should be huge. FEEL-GOOD FILMS HOPE TO ESCAPE THE ART HOUSE In 2010, eventual Oscar winner The King’s Speech successfully migrated from indie theaters to the multiplex. This year, two contenders hope to do the same: The Weinstein Co.’s Lion (Nov. 25), starring Dev Patel as an Australian man seeking his Indian birth mother, and La La Land (Dec. 9), Lionsgate’s whimsical musical starring Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling. THE SPACE RACE Four films tackle outer space, albeit…

Relativity Media president Dana Brunetti says sleep is the key to staying healthy, so during awards season he does it “as much as possible.” Easier said than done. To promote shuteye, seven-time Emmy winner Allison Janney turns to hot baths with Young Living essential oils — Lavender, Peace & Calming and Valor are her staples. Constance Zimmer, Emmy nominated last year for UnREAL, relies on melatonin, specifically USANA’s Pure Rest. “I can’t recommend it enough.” TV writer Sheila Callaghan, nominated for Shameless, increases her anti-anxiety medication during awards season. “Coming from a playwriting background, high-glamour Hollywood stuff is still new to me, and I get quite overwhelmed by it.” She tried Ambien, “but after my husband found me naked on all fours talking to the birds, I figured it was…

On the (high) heels of #askhermore for Hollywood red carpets comes a year of feminist self-acceptance. The #nomakeup selfie on Instagram became a badge of honor for Gwyneth Paltrow, Adele and Alicia Keys — whose commitment to being makeup-free extended to The Voice, red carpet and her 8 million followers. But for all the looks in 2016 that did require some intervention from a makeup artist or hairstylist, THR has compiled and ranked the top 25 beauty moments from film, television and the red carpet. Topping the rankings that mix feminist statements with unabashed fabulousness, Beyonce inspired black women to embrace their natural hair texture with her Lemonade visual album (No. 1 on THR’s list), while Lupita Nyong’o celebrated her Kenyan heritage with haute head wraps during her Queen of…

1995 Matt Drudge launches the Drudge Report and later makes Andrew Breitbart the site’s first employee. 2004 Breitbart meets Steve Bannon as the latter makes and markets a Ronald Reagan documentary he’s producing. 2005 Breitbart launches news aggregator Breitbart.com. 2007 With best friend and attorney Larry Solov, Andrew Breitbart founds Breitbart News Network. May 28, 2011 Breitbart News reports that Rep. Anthony Weiner sexted with a 21-year-old woman. Weiner resigns June 21. July 2011 Bannon premieres his Sarah Palin documentary, The Undefeated, in Pella, Iowa, and taps Andrew Breitbart to introduce the former vp candidate to the crowd. March 1, 2012 Andrew Breitbart dies of heart failure at age 43. Bannon is named executive chairman of Breitbart News, and Solov is named CEO. June 16, 2015 Donald Trump formally announces…

L.A. Recording School A branch of the Los Angeles Film School, LARS is interested in teaching one thing with its nine-month program: the nuts and bolts, hardware and software of music recording. The facility offers 50,000 square feet of recording facilities and classrooms, including more than 20 labs and studios. Musicians Institute College of Contemporary Music Originally formed in 1977 as The Guitar Institute of Technology, the school offers performance programs in bass, drums, guitar, keyboard technology and vocals, as well as degrees in DJ performance and production and music business. The Art Institute of California The AIC’s Audio Production degree program trains students in recording, editing, mixing and mastering digital audio using the latest technology, taking them through the finer points of live and studio music production as well…

Television MSNBC’s Moment How Trump could boost the lib-leaning network p. 18 Film TV in Imax Marvel-ABC deal a potential game-changer p. 22 Heat Index Hayma Washington There’s a new Emmy boss as the Television Academy elects the former Amazing Race executive producer to be its first African-American chairman and CEO. Ang Lee The Oscar-winning director’s Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk gets sacked in theaters and likely will lead to a blowout loss for Sony. J.K. Rowling The Harry Potter author successfully launches a film franchise and screenwriting career with the strong opening of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. Phil Robertson His A&E reality series Duck Dynasty, now pulling just 1 million viewers, is canceled after five years and 130 episodes. Showbiz Stocks $760.16 (+2.9%) AMAZON.COM (AMZN) The…

Today executive producer Noah Oppenheim says the 48 hours after audio leaked in September of Donald Trump bragging about groping women to Billy Bush were a “whirlwind” that NBC News struggled to manage. Reflecting for the first time on the scandal that led Bush, 45, to exit the network but did not prevent Trump from beating Hillary Clinton, Oppenheim describes an unprecedented atmosphere where top execs weren’t sure what steps to take as Bush became embroiled in one of the campaign’s biggest bombshells. “There wasn’t an opportunity to catch our breath and say, ‘What does this mean for our anchor?’ ” Oppenheim tells THR’s Kim Masters in an upcoming episode of her KCRW radio show. “It was all moving so quickly that I don’t think there was ever a fully…

MGM’S ‘MULTICAST’ MOGULS SEE THE FAITH-BASED LIGHT Deal of the Week MGM revealed Nov. 16 that Mark Burnett and wife Roma Downey are launching what is being billed as the first 24/7 network for faith and family content. But Light TV is more than meets the eye. Beginning in December, Light TV will be broadcast via Fox affiliates in L.A., New York and several other major cities as a digital multicast, a subchannel like the ones used to broadcast QVC and HSN, as well as such genre-specific channels as African-American-targeted Bounce TV and Katz Broadcasting’s crime- and mystery-focused Escape and action-adventure-themed Grit. MGM already boasts sci-fi-themed multicast channel Comet and classics provider This TV. Such channels offer MGM a low-cost way to repackage old movies and TV series from its…

May the Force be with Lucasfilm and Disney as they report grosses for the spinoff Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, whose debut during the Dec. 16-18 weekend inevitably will be compared to Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ $248 million opening weekend last year. “It’s like trying to manage expectations for a ride in a Ferrari,” says box-office analyst Paul Dergarabedian of comScore. “It’s all about messaging that this is a different kind of Star Wars movie, more like what Fantastic Beasts is to Harry Potter.” The campaign began in earnest Sept. 21 when Disney CEO Bob Iger told investors that Rogue One was not expected to match the $940 million Force Awakens grossed domestically (insiders say a haul of half that film’s $2.07 billion worldwide would be considered fine).…

IMMIGRATION As Ivy League campuses and others strive to create sanctuaries for undocumented immigrants, the ACLU girds up. “We are in for the fight of our lives,” says exec director Anthony D. Romero, while Joseph-Gordon Levitt tweets, “After the recent election, all the more proud to call them partners.” aclu.org HUMAN RIGHTS The Council on American-Islamic Relations defends against threats like the presidentelect’s proposed registry of Muslims. “I am not in favor of any registry, for Muslims or other groups,” says the Museum of Tolerance’s Rabbi Marvin Hier. “We are in a democracy.” Donate at cair.com. WOMEN’S RIGHT TO CHOOSE Amy Schumer and Katy Perry (who donated $100,000) are encouraging fans to give to Planned Parenthood in pro-life vice president-elect Mike Pence’s name. For each donation, a thank-you certificate is…

Stamina, energy, feeling glamorous — all of that comes from a body that’s rested, a mind that is not distracted and a heart that is in a place of love and joy,” says Deepak Chopra, 69, the town’s godfather of groundedness, who spoke to THR about coping with awards-season stress. 1. Get a good sleep, every night. 2. Manage stress through meditation. 3. No matter what, walk 10,000 steps a day (but preferably also take a yoga class). 4. Focus on love and joy. 5. Eat carefully. Don’t overeat, don’t under-eat and don’t eat anything that’s manufactured, processed, refined or contaminated. Lots of vegetables, lots of fruit. And one more: For those who have put in the grueling hours yet are walking away sans statuette, Deepak offers this mantra: “…

Jellyfish Collagen Dr. Nigma Talib’s stable of starlets — including Kate Bosworth and Rosie Huntington-Whiteley — swear by her Serum No. 1 ($205), Creme No. 1 ($165) and specialty facials incorporating jellyfish collagen ($400). “Nothing in it stings you,” reassures Talib. “It just reverses signs of aging, builds up collagen and works with [active-ingredient-transporting] water technology for hydration and skin firmness.” The Londonbased naturopathic doc (with an awards-season residency at Four Seasons Beverly Hills) adds that jellyfish collagen is very similar to human collagen, so it doesn’t elicit allergic reactions. healthydoc.com Frozen Stem Cells Armie Hammer, Nicola Peltz and a regular roster of power agents and execs duck into Swiss esthetician Lena Bratschi’s under-the-radar Carasoin Day Spa and Skin Clinic for the Stem Cell Facial ($275), which uses human cells,…

The walls of the waiting area in the West Los Angeles headquarters of Breitbart News Network are decorated with three TV screens, one each for Fox News, CNN and MSNBC. On the coffee table is a Ronald Reagan picture book and Donald Trump coloring book, where the president-elect is portrayed as various superheroes and historical figures. For security reasons, the front door remains locked, and there is no signage indicating that this nondescript location is in fact ground zero of a media movement that helped elect one of the most polarizing presidential candidates in memory. Breitbart, in fact, not only promoted Trump on its popular news and opinion site but also loaned its executive chairman, Steve Bannon, to Trump, first to run his campaign and now as his chief counselor.…

Hollywood dynasties aren’t news even in the world of film scoring; the Newman family boasts everyone from legendary Alfred Newman to contemporary composers Thomas, David and Randy. And this year, two sets of brothers are well positioned for Oscar consideration. Rupert Gregson-Williams scored Mel Gibson’s harrowing, uplifting war movie Hacksaw Ridge, and his older brother Harry Gregson-Williams worked on Ben Affleck’s upcoming period gangster epic Live by Night. For Rupert’s first collaboration with Gibson, the director contacted him after being impressed by his work on The Legend of Tarzan. “We tended not to talk in terms of music, it was more in terms of the story,” says Rupert of working with Gibson on musically defining the movie’s hero, conscientious World War II objector Desmond Doss (Andrew Garfield). “He wasn’t a…

With networks seeking to cut through the clutter of a television landscape projected to soon hit 500 original series, ABC has found a unique strategy: Go big. Really big. On Nov. 14, the Disney-owned network said its straight-to-series order for Marvel drama The Inhumans will include a debut in more than 1,000 Imax theaters in 74 countries. The first two of the eight-episode series — about a race of superhuman heroes (among the more popular characters in the Marvel universe) — will run for two weeks starting Labor Day 2017 before airing as part of ABC’s fall lineup. The deal marks the first time a TV series will have its premiere on the big screen. And it gives ABC a way to “event-ize” Inhumans in the crowded fall TV space,…

W hen Alison Sudol was growing up, her parents both worked as acting teachers, which of course meant she had no interest in becoming an actor. “I never had any illusions about the industry,” says Sudol, whose family moved to Los Angeles from Seattle when she was 5. “I wanted nothing to do with that heartbreak.” Instead, she pursued music, releasing her first of four piano-driven indie albums in 2007 under the name A Fine Frenzy. But she became frustrated with the music business. “I found movies to be such a beautiful escape,” she says. So she enrolled in acting classes (not her parents’) and aced her third audition, to play a singer on Amazon’s Transparent. But it was a meeting with casting director Fiona Weir in spring 2015 that…

“It did something to my good side, so then I had two bad sides.” KELLY RIPA The Live With Kelly host, admitting a batch of “bad Botox” disfigured her face and left her unable to smile for six months. “You have big feet for a girl.” MANDY MOORE The This Is Us actress, revealing what Justin Timberlake told her when she used to open for NSYNC. “Ninety-nine percent of what people see is authentic.” MARK ZUCKERBERG The Facebook CEO, rejecting the notion that the social media site impacted the election with fake news stories. “His approach was absolutely genius!” KANYE WEST The rapper, announcing that although he didn’t vote in the election, he would have voted for Donald Trump. “There have been a few times this past week where all…

In late summer when I went up to see Steve Bannon, recently named CEO of the Donald Trump presidential campaign, in his office at Trump Tower in New York, he outlined a preposterous-sounding scenario. Trump, he said, would do surprisingly well among women, Hispanics and African-Americans, in addition to working men, and hence take Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan — and therefore the election. On Nov. 15, when I went back to Trump Tower, Bannon, promoted by the president-elect to chief strategist for the incoming administration, and by the media as the official symbol of all things hateful and virulent about the coming Trump presidency, said, as matterof-factly as when he first sketched it out for me, “I told you so.” The liberal firewall against Trump was, most of all,…

For Colleen Atwood, whose work has become emblematic of such aesthetically driven directors as Tim Burton and Rob Marshall, creating costumes for J.K. Rowling’s screenwriting debut, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, again required working within strict creative parameters, which she actually found freeing. “During the first meeting I had with [director] David Yates, he walked me over to the art department,” says Atwood. “They had the most amazing world they had spun that was so original and beautiful. I felt free to be part of that. … It’s not Harry Potter; it’s a new thing, so there was more latitude.” The costume designer, who has three Oscars to her name, has three films this year that are strong contenders: In addition to Beasts, she worked on the James…

Deadpool, Fox Bill Corso “Ryan Reynolds’ transformation started with gluing his hair down and hiding it under a tight-fitting skull cap,” says Corso, the film’s makeup designer. “A ghastly skull and veined underpaint was applied [over the cap] that would show through the thin, translucent silicone [mask] appliances, which were painted to match examples of extreme skin disorders. The closer you got, the more detail under his skin you could see. Ryan wore nine silicone prosthetic appliances when just his head was exposed.” Jackie, Fox Searchlight Miwoo Kim To re-create Jacqueline Kennedy’s iconic look on star Natalie Portman, makeup artist Kim’s research began with books and newsreels — particularly the first lady’s 1962 TV tour of the White House. “What truly makes Jackie’s facial features are her unique and strong…

T his year, when film and stage actor Ethan Hawke interviewed legendary singer-songwriter Patti Smith at the Tribeca Film Festival, he asked her about the value of awards. “She said something to the effect of, ‘Anytime anyone wants to give me an award, I think it’s bull,’ ” recalls Hawke. While he can understand that insecurity, he’ll find a way to transcend it Nov. 28 when he receives a career tribute at the Independent Film Project’s Gotham Awards in New York. Hawke, 46, has devoted much of his career to indie films, including the Oscar-nominated Boyhood (2014). A recent exception is The Magnificent Seven, the Sony Western that reunited the star with director Antoine Fuqua and Denzel Washington 15 years after the trio made Training Day. Hawke got his first…