Action-comedy pitch from Ken Kaufman and David Agosto
Ken Kaufman and David Agosto have sold an action-comedy pitch -- for the moment coroneted "Wardogs" -- to MGM with "Get Smart" helmer Peter Segal attached to direct. Although several studios were vying for the project, MGM picked it up for $1 million.
Segal and his Callahan Filmworks partner Michael Ewing ar producing along with Andrew Lazar.
The producers are keeping quiet on the plot, but Lazar said that "it's an action ensemble comedy in the vein of 'Ocean's Eleven,' where the casting becomes an event."
Added Ewing, "It is a bunch of these terrific actors getting together and having a good time� it's that kind of thing."
MGM, with CEO Harry Sloan recently re-upping for another three-year stretch in the top slot, continues to compete with the early majors for material.
The CAA-repped Segal and Ewing worked with MGM Worldwide Motion Picture Group chairman Mary Parent when she co-ran Universal on "Nutty Professor II: The Klumps."
Kaufman, repped by Endeavor, wrote the screenplays for "Curious George" and "The Missing," and he co-wrote "Space Cowboys." Last year, he sold his comedy pitch "Stone Kings" to Warner Bros., with Jay Roach attached to direct.
Agosto, also an Endeavor customer, has worked on several scripts with Kaufman, including "Curious George." Lazar was a producer of "Space Cowboys" and "Get Smart" along with Ewing.
More info
Saturday 23 August 2008
Wednesday 6 August 2008
An Environmental Study Into The Office Of The Future
�Mayo Clinic endocrinologist James Levine, M.D., Ph.D., has continued his research in environment-changing innovations with a six-month study of a real-life office that was re-engineered to increase casual physical activity or NEAT (non-exercise activeness thermogenesis). The study began in late 2007 and ended in 2008 at SALO, LLC, a Minneapolis-based financial staffing firm. Of the 45 employee volunteers involved in the scientific study, 18 were studied for weight loss and other changes.
Re-engineering included:
� Removing chairs and traditional desk seating
� Introducing walk tracks
� Educating and encouraging staff to conduct walking meetings
� Replacing traditional phones with mobile sets
� Adding desks attached to treadmills
� Introducing games in the workplace
� Providing high technology activity monitors
� Advising staff virtually nutrition
Results:
� The 18 individuals lost a total of 156 pounds, 143 of that in body fat.
� Individuals missed an mean of 8.8 pounds -- 90 percent of that was fat. Triglycerides decreased by an mean of 37 percent.
� The nine participants who had expressed a desire to lose weight lost an average of 15.4 pounds.
Another key determination -- no productivity was lost due to the new surround. In fact, company officials say revenue rose nearly 10 percentage during the first trey months of the study, and the company recorded its highest-ever monthly gross in January 2008 -- the study's midpoint.
Conclusion:
This "power of the future" is a functional environment that can likewise enhance weight loss and maintain wellness.
B-roll available at Pathfire:
-- SALO workplace -- female employee working at a walkstation
-- SALO's conference room
-- C.J. Dube, Oberon (a SALO Company) head, getting organic structure metrics deliberate in "The Bod Pod"
-- SALO's movement-oriented federal agency includes an active game room and employees/gamers playing foosball, puddle and hoops during breaks
-- Workplace wellness enterprise also includes walking meetings in nearby parks in good weather (and skyways during the cold months)
- SALO co-founders Amy Langer and John Folkestad let a walking meeting through Minneapolis' Loring Park.
Mayo Clinic uses Pathfire's Digital Media Gateway (DMG) for video distribution, streamlining our services and providing content that is easily accessible. On the DMG independent page, appear for the Mayo Clinic branded page in the left navbar, or click on the VNF Master Locator and search for mayoclinic0082. If you have questions or problems in locating the story, contact Pathfire Customer Support at 888-345-0489 or support@pathfire.com. If you do non have access to Pathfire's DMG, and would like access to Mayo Clinic's video resources by satellite or other means, please call 507-538-1092 or e-mail lkelly@mayo.edu.
Source - Robert Nellis
Mayo Clinic
More info
Re-engineering included:
� Removing chairs and traditional desk seating
� Introducing walk tracks
� Educating and encouraging staff to conduct walking meetings
� Replacing traditional phones with mobile sets
� Adding desks attached to treadmills
� Introducing games in the workplace
� Providing high technology activity monitors
� Advising staff virtually nutrition
Results:
� The 18 individuals lost a total of 156 pounds, 143 of that in body fat.
� Individuals missed an mean of 8.8 pounds -- 90 percent of that was fat. Triglycerides decreased by an mean of 37 percent.
� The nine participants who had expressed a desire to lose weight lost an average of 15.4 pounds.
Another key determination -- no productivity was lost due to the new surround. In fact, company officials say revenue rose nearly 10 percentage during the first trey months of the study, and the company recorded its highest-ever monthly gross in January 2008 -- the study's midpoint.
Conclusion:
This "power of the future" is a functional environment that can likewise enhance weight loss and maintain wellness.
B-roll available at Pathfire:
-- SALO workplace -- female employee working at a walkstation
-- SALO's conference room
-- C.J. Dube, Oberon (a SALO Company) head, getting organic structure metrics deliberate in "The Bod Pod"
-- SALO's movement-oriented federal agency includes an active game room and employees/gamers playing foosball, puddle and hoops during breaks
-- Workplace wellness enterprise also includes walking meetings in nearby parks in good weather (and skyways during the cold months)
- SALO co-founders Amy Langer and John Folkestad let a walking meeting through Minneapolis' Loring Park.
Mayo Clinic uses Pathfire's Digital Media Gateway (DMG) for video distribution, streamlining our services and providing content that is easily accessible. On the DMG independent page, appear for the Mayo Clinic branded page in the left navbar, or click on the VNF Master Locator and search for mayoclinic0082. If you have questions or problems in locating the story, contact Pathfire Customer Support at 888-345-0489 or support@pathfire.com. If you do non have access to Pathfire's DMG, and would like access to Mayo Clinic's video resources by satellite or other means, please call 507-538-1092 or e-mail lkelly@mayo.edu.
Source - Robert Nellis
Mayo Clinic
More info
Thursday 26 June 2008
Digital cinema looking for gains in Amsterdam
Europeans looking for more traction at CinemaExpo
If the digital-cinema revolution took its time getting traction among U.S. exhibitors, the situation in Europe has been downright slo-mo.
D-cinema proponents say there has been a perfect storm of woes impeding progress in European territories: a tendency to lag behind U.S. rollouts, combined with a pullback in Hollywood studios' generosity in funding installations on both sides of the Atlantic and now the spreading global financial crunch.
"Everybody is suffering from the state of the financing market," said Gemma Richardson, a spokeswoman for London-based Arts Alliance Media. "We have five studios on board, so we're rolling. But we're trying to get everybody to pitch in and help, and that means from the pricing of equipment by the manufacturers and right on down the line."
An installations facilitator, Arts Alliance has been among those companies at the center of the European digital rollout.
"We're having conversations with the top cinema chains throughout Europe, and it's just a question of who wants to get in the game," said Howard Kiedaisch, Arts Alliance's New York-bred CEO and a former international executive at Universal and PolyGram.
Arts Alliance's deal this year with the French theater chain Circuit George Raymon marked the first funded through a virtual print fee arrangement with Hollywood studios. Through VPFs, studios agree to pay exhibs the equivalent of what print runs would cost for several years after converting to digital distribution.
Funding d-cinema installations by tapping studio largesse has been much more widespread in the U.S. But in the U.S. and Europe, Hollywood studios recently have insisted on much lower VPFs than was true in the earlier days of the U.S. digital rollout.
That's been a drag on how many circuits sign up for installations.
In some cases -- like a near $1 billion deal recently struck by four studios with the Belgium-based d-cinema service XDC -- impressive financing is in place. But third-party facilitators such as XDC or Arts Alliance still need to hammer out VPF-related agreements with individual exhibs.
"That's just what I call a hunting license," one d-cinema wag quipped of XDC's deal with Warner Bros., Disney, Paramount and Fox.
Europe's d-cinema rollout will figure in several sessions set for CinemaExpo International 2008. The annual exhibition trade confab kicks off Monday at the RAI convention center in Amsterdam.
Europe has only 1,300 screens equipped for movie-quality digital projection, with many of the installations involving lease-only arrangements with systems vendors and others funded with government subsidies. The U.S. has almost 5,000 movie-quality digital screens, dating from an initial round of deals in late 2005 and early 2006 orchestrated following a lengthy engineering phase by a Hollywood studio consortium.
"The reality is that only as of February of this year are we where the U.S. was in December of 2005," Arts Alliance's Kiedaisch said. "It should go faster now, because the U.S. rollout shows people digital cinema helps business once you have digital screens up and running."
Arts Alliance recently struck a deal with Spain-based Yelmo Cineplex to equip five screens in a Madrid multiplex set to open in July. Those installations won't tap into any VPF funding, but execs hope to do so eventually as Yelmo and Arts Alliance expand on their relationship.
Meanwhile, though 3-D installations necessarily lag digital installations -- you can't have the former without the latter -- the less-expensive, less-complicated 3-D rollout could gain quick traction once Europe's d-cinema footprint grows a bit.
"RealD is dependent on the roll-on success of digital cinema," said Michael Lewis, CEO of U.S.-based 3-D vendor RealD. "But 3-D has been the driver for getting digital out there, because right now there is one sunny area in the cinema business, and that's 3-D."
RealD, which operates more than 90% of the global 3-D screens, has almost 1,000 North American screens but just 192 elsewhere, including 116 in Europe. The company recently struck a contract to equip 600 screens operated in the U.K. and elsewhere by the Odeon/UCI and CineWorld circuits, but only slow progress will be marked on converting those screens until the chains sign off on VPF-related financing agreements.
Complicating Europe's VPF negotiations is the simple reality that more films are distributed there independently.
As a result, "exhibitors will just have to pay a larger share (of d-cinema installation costs) than in the U.S.," a d-cinema proponent noted.
Proponents of 3-D tout exhibitors' ability to charge more for 3-D movie tickets, as well as its ability to differentiate the theatrical experience at a time when home theater viewing is on the rise. As for d-cinema, it eventually will save studios on distribution costs and boosts exhibitors' ability to program advertising and alternative programming in their auditoriums.
"Everybody knows all the merits of digital," Kiedaisch said. "But it's important that anybody who wants to be around in three to five years helps drive the process. You can't just be an ostrich with your head in the sand."
See Also
Wednesday 18 June 2008
Tegma
Artist: Tegma
Genre(s):
Trance: Psychedelic
Electronic
Discography:
Live in Zrich Switzerland
Year: 2006
Tracks: 1
Around The World in 80 Minutes
Year: 2006
Tracks: 8
002 Avant.Garde
Year: 2005
Tracks: 9
Live At Cillas Kok Malmo (Sweden) 01.23.2004-Lth
Year: 2004
Tracks: 1
Encoded/Decoded
Year: 2003
Tracks: 9
Britney Spears & Mel Gibson - The Mystery Continues
Monday 9 June 2008
Los Campesinos! not a flamenco band, sorry
When they first started gigging two years ago at Cardiff University in Wales, Los Campesinos! would occasionally be mistaken for a flamenco band—that is, until the flamenco aficionados saw the seven indie-rockers on stage.
"Had we thought we were going anywhere, we would've put more thought into the band name," laughs the band's singer and resident glockenspiel player, Gareth, who like all the members uses Campesinos as his surname. "Our guitarist Neil was pretty fluent in Spanish and we all thought the word [which means 'peasants'] looked and sounded pretty cool. So why not? But it's ended up that people make all sorts of assumptions that really have nothing to do with the band or its intentions. People show up expecting a flamenco band, or a political band, and leave quite disappointed. They suggest it's in bad taste or inappropriate. We're not trying to upset anyone. We're not that kind of band."
Indeed, the Campesinos are a modest bunch by any standard. Their bus driver on a recent tour of Europe had to pull over to admonish the band—not for being too loud, but for not being loud enough. "He came back to ask us to make more noise because he was worried he would fall asleep while driving us to the next show," Gareth says. "We're not very good at being rock stars."
But the septet are becoming stars almost in spite of themselves. A series of terrific singles, notably "You! Me! Dancing!," ushered in an acclaimed debut album, "Hold On Now, Youngster …" (Arts & Crafts), released last month. The band's exuberant melodies and co-ed harmonies, tinged by Harriet Campesinos' violin playing and Gareth's frantic glockenspiel, reinvest indie-rock with an often-ignored virtue: joy.
"We were depressed by the music we were hearing while at Cardiff," Gareth says. "It was boring, derivative, masculine. In the context of U.K. guitar bands who were into looking cool, moody or stylish, we were anomalies: A mixed gender band with multiple instruments who looked like they were enjoying themselves."
Gareth's glock instantly separates the band from many of its contemporaries. "The band was originally a four-piece and they were looking for a singer," he says. "I loved the songs and I desperately wanted in. I couldn't really sing and I couldn't really play the glock, but I figured the combination might get me in somehow. And it worked!"
Gareth took over as the band's primary vocalist and lyricist, and he developed a personal tone that suited his rapid-fire sing-speak vocals. The lyrics brim with allusions to indie-pop icons and celebrate the notion of standing apart. "I'm not Bonnie Tyler/I'm not Toni Braxton/And this song is not gonna save your relationship," he declares on "We Are All Accelerated Readers."
"I don't like lyrics that are grand statements about how we should all love each other and how we're all in this together, because we're not," Gareth says. "My lyrics do try to exclude people. I don't want every single person to listen to my records and think, 'I agree with that guy.' I don't want everyone to connect to my music. I can't imagine playing a show where 4,000 people are singing along to my words and they're all thinking this song applies to them. That would be horrible."
That view is not born of elitism, Gareth insists, but on a genuine desire to say something that is personally meaningful.
"I really believe in the idea that the more people know something and believe in it, the less special it becomes," he says.
So he's not seeking mass popularity for Los Campesinos!?
"I can't imagine that, or what kind of compromises we'd have to make to achieve that," he says. "I'd much rather polarize people into extreme reactions. Love or hate us. That's better than anything in between."
greg@gregkot.com
Greg Kot co-hosts "Sound Opinions" from Chicago Public Radio.
Los Campesinos!
When: 8 p.m., June 7
Where: The Troubadour, 9081 Santa Monica Blvd.
Price: $15; http://www.troubadour.com
"Had we thought we were going anywhere, we would've put more thought into the band name," laughs the band's singer and resident glockenspiel player, Gareth, who like all the members uses Campesinos as his surname. "Our guitarist Neil was pretty fluent in Spanish and we all thought the word [which means 'peasants'] looked and sounded pretty cool. So why not? But it's ended up that people make all sorts of assumptions that really have nothing to do with the band or its intentions. People show up expecting a flamenco band, or a political band, and leave quite disappointed. They suggest it's in bad taste or inappropriate. We're not trying to upset anyone. We're not that kind of band."
Indeed, the Campesinos are a modest bunch by any standard. Their bus driver on a recent tour of Europe had to pull over to admonish the band—not for being too loud, but for not being loud enough. "He came back to ask us to make more noise because he was worried he would fall asleep while driving us to the next show," Gareth says. "We're not very good at being rock stars."
But the septet are becoming stars almost in spite of themselves. A series of terrific singles, notably "You! Me! Dancing!," ushered in an acclaimed debut album, "Hold On Now, Youngster …" (Arts & Crafts), released last month. The band's exuberant melodies and co-ed harmonies, tinged by Harriet Campesinos' violin playing and Gareth's frantic glockenspiel, reinvest indie-rock with an often-ignored virtue: joy.
"We were depressed by the music we were hearing while at Cardiff," Gareth says. "It was boring, derivative, masculine. In the context of U.K. guitar bands who were into looking cool, moody or stylish, we were anomalies: A mixed gender band with multiple instruments who looked like they were enjoying themselves."
Gareth's glock instantly separates the band from many of its contemporaries. "The band was originally a four-piece and they were looking for a singer," he says. "I loved the songs and I desperately wanted in. I couldn't really sing and I couldn't really play the glock, but I figured the combination might get me in somehow. And it worked!"
Gareth took over as the band's primary vocalist and lyricist, and he developed a personal tone that suited his rapid-fire sing-speak vocals. The lyrics brim with allusions to indie-pop icons and celebrate the notion of standing apart. "I'm not Bonnie Tyler/I'm not Toni Braxton/And this song is not gonna save your relationship," he declares on "We Are All Accelerated Readers."
"I don't like lyrics that are grand statements about how we should all love each other and how we're all in this together, because we're not," Gareth says. "My lyrics do try to exclude people. I don't want every single person to listen to my records and think, 'I agree with that guy.' I don't want everyone to connect to my music. I can't imagine playing a show where 4,000 people are singing along to my words and they're all thinking this song applies to them. That would be horrible."
That view is not born of elitism, Gareth insists, but on a genuine desire to say something that is personally meaningful.
"I really believe in the idea that the more people know something and believe in it, the less special it becomes," he says.
So he's not seeking mass popularity for Los Campesinos!?
"I can't imagine that, or what kind of compromises we'd have to make to achieve that," he says. "I'd much rather polarize people into extreme reactions. Love or hate us. That's better than anything in between."
greg@gregkot.com
Greg Kot co-hosts "Sound Opinions" from Chicago Public Radio.
Los Campesinos!
When: 8 p.m., June 7
Where: The Troubadour, 9081 Santa Monica Blvd.
Price: $15; http://www.troubadour.com
Sunday 1 June 2008
Lopez picks names for her twin babies
Singer and actress Jennifer Lopez has reportedly picked names for her twin babies.
According to Digital Spy, witnesses at the North Shore University Hospital in Long Island said that they overheard the star calling her babies Maximiano and Emelina.
Previous reports had suggested that the singer's mother recently bought bracelets for the babies and had the names Max and Emme engraved on them.
According to Digital Spy, witnesses at the North Shore University Hospital in Long Island said that they overheard the star calling her babies Maximiano and Emelina.
Previous reports had suggested that the singer's mother recently bought bracelets for the babies and had the names Max and Emme engraved on them.
Saturday 24 May 2008
Madonna - The Things They Say 8398
"Hopefully after we get through this adoption it will be easier for other people to adopt children and I'm happy to be the guinea pig." MADONNA is glad her adoption of Malawian tot DAVID BANDA will set a precedent for others.
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