Archive for March 7th, 2008

Call me a Luddite, but I’m not as familiar with social networks as somebody who works for a website probably should be. So the news that Steven Spielberg would be launching a social network was kind of shrug-worthy for me, even more so when I discovered that said forum would be a venue where people could share their paranormal or extraterrestrial experiences (aka the worst cocktail party imaginable).

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HOLLYWOOD - Lost star Matthew Fox is to quit TV when the hit show comes to an end in 2010.

The actor, 41, is delighted at the huge success of the J.J. Abrams-created show, but admits his work on Lost has forced him to turn down other, more lucrative movie roles.

And so Fox, who made his name on 1990s teen TV show Party of Five, has vowed never to return to the small screen once Lost wraps at the end of season six.

He says, “I am getting these cool offers now, and often I can’t take them because of my responsibilities to Lost. I’m well aware that the success of the show is a big part of why I’m getting the offers and so my priority is to the show.

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MADRID — BBVA, Spain’s second-biggest high street bank, and savings banks Caixa Tarragona, Cajamar and Caja Madrid have inked with the country’s ground-breaking Audiovisual SGR film fund.A two-year-old, Madrid-based mutual guarantee scheme, Audiovisual SGR underwrites low-interest bank loans for film and TV companies.

Spain’s conservative financial establishment has traditionally fought shy of film and TV lending, making the latest SGR accords part of a breakthrough in local film finance.

Opening up its portfolio of financial entities, SGR has also signed up Germany’s Deutsche Bank.

“Our main achievement in these first two years has been to win the confidence of Spain’s financial world,” Audiovisual SGR general manager Susana Serrano told Daily Variety.
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Guess who’s swinging into summer?

CBS’ long-awaited drama “Swingtown” is going to be slated for a summer run, the network is expected to announce Wednesday.

With a few rare exceptions, like Fox’s teen drama “The O.C.,” scripted broadcast programming launched during the summer withers in the Nielsen ratings. A network’s holding a midseason series until summer typically signals a lack of confidence in the show.

But executive producer Carol Barbee said a postseason run creatively suits “Swingtown.”

“A summer launch is perfect for ‘Swingtown’ since the pilot takes place on the Bicentennial Fourth of July,” Barbee said.

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BARCELONA — Buena Vista Intl. will distribute Ramon Costafreda’s “Wrap Up” in Argentina, Uruguay and Chile.Pic is a co-production between Argentina’s Pol-ka Patagonik Film Group, Spain’s Continental and Oberon Cinematografica.

Disney is a shareholder in Patagonik, one of Latin America’s biggest film producers.

Scripted by Fernando Castets (“The Son of the Bride”) and helmer Costafreda, the pic stars Manuela Pal (“Palermo Hollywood”), Felix Gomez (“Summer Rain”) and Maria Bouzas (”The Impatient Alchemist.”)

“Wrap Up” is a tender-humored immigrant fable, turning on a young woman, who arrives in Galicia, Northern Spain, from Argentina. A make-up specialist, she’s at a crossroads in her life, and still deeply affected by the death of her lover. She then falls in love with the son of her old lover.

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If you said Tina Fey promoted Verizon on a recent episode of 30 Rock - give yourself a pat on the back.

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MOSCOW — A Russian adult animation channel pulled two American-made cartoon series from its schedules Wednesday after a government watchdog complained they were too violent.Moscow-based 2X2 took “Happy Tree Friends” and “The Adventures of Big Jeff” off the air after an official complaint from Rossvyazokhrankulutra that the cartoons were too cruel and violent.

Roman Sarkisov, general director of the channel, said the cartoons were within a month of the end of their license period and taking them off air harmed neither the company nor viewers.

“We did not argue with Rossvyazokhrankulutra — the cartoons are shorts of a few minutes each that our viewers have seen hundreds of times.

“Rather than argue we took them off air, although any television criminal drama in Russia is a hundred times more violent than these cartoons,” Sarkisov told Variety.

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HOW OFTEN DO YOU SIT back and think about the relationships you have? I do it quite a bit. Your friends, your family, your boss, your peers… whether it be a business or a personal relationship, the strongest ones thrive based on the same simple principle: it is better to give than to receive. A selfless attitude is an effective way to approach a relationship, and in business this is especially important. The best sales or business development people are those who take a genuine interest in you, identify areas of common interest and can help you to succeed and achieve your goals — all before they ask you for a dime. It goes back to a principle I have mentioned before: listen before you speak, but in this case I am emphasizing listening with true interest rather than just to check it off your list. The opposite of this attitude are the people who beg: they beg to be on RFPs, and they beg to be in the consideration even though they know the chances are slim to none of getting on the buy. These folks are never effective.

Even at an industry level (especially in Web 2.0) the strongest companies are those that provide a consumer solution first, before they intend to generate value from those same consumers. Google was the forefather of this model, and YouTube was the biggest successful example in recent years. Both companies went to market with a selfless solution and then retrofit a revenue model, reaching critical mass before they became corporatized.
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Rapper Jamal Woolard (a.k.a. Gravy, pictured) has landed the lead in the biopic Notorious, based on the life of rapper Notorious B.I.G., killed in 1997. Woolard won the role after a nationwide search that began online in August, and stars Angela Bassett, who plays Biggie’s mom, Voletta Wallace; Anthony Mackie (We Are Marshall), who’s been cast as Wallace’s rival Tupac Shakur; and Derek Luke (Antwone Fisher) as Sean Combs. George Tillman Jr. (Men of Honor) will direct the Fox Searchlight film, which begins shooting March 24 in New York City. Woolard gained notoriety in 2006 when he was shot in the buttocks on his way to an interview at NYC radio station Hot 97. He finished the appearance before being taken to the hospital. Ouch.

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