Movies Guide

Thriller is from Scott Wiper and John Petro

NEW YORK — Intrepid Pictures is on board to produce Scott Wiper’s Hitchcockian thriller “The Cold Light of Day.”

Wiper and John Petro’s screenplay follows Will Shaw, a young Wall Street trader whose family is kidnapped on a vacation to Spain. He’s left with only hours to find them, uncover a government conspiracy and the connection between their disappearance and his father’s secrets.

Intrepid Pictures principals Trevor Macy and Marc D. Evans will finance and produce the film, which Essential Entertainment is repping at next week’s American Film Market. Intrepid produced one of this year’s biggest hits, Rogue Pictures’ “The Strangers.” “Day” will be made outside of Universal and Rogue, which have a first-look pact with Intrepid. Uni is currently negotiating a sale of Rogue to Relativity.

Wiper co-wrote and directed the 2007 Lionsgate actioner “The Condemned.”

Connery Comes Out Of Retirement

Former James Bond star Sir Sean Connery has reportedly come out of retirement to shoot a new film with Orlando Bloom.

The 78-year-old has turned his back on acting in recent years and has not appeared on the big screen since 2003’s The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

But now Connery is said to have signed up to star in Quest of Sheherzade, based on the legendary 1001 Arabian Nights tale, alongside fellow Brit Bloom.

The news was revealed by the film’s female lead, Bollywood actress Celina Jaitley, who will play an Iranian princess.

She tells British publication The London Paper, “Sean Connery is there in the film and recently Orlando Bloom was also signed. They are planning to start the shooting from January next year.”

NEW YORK —

Larry Doyle, a former TV writer-producer for “The Simpsons,” was named the winner Monday of this year’s Thurber Prize for American Humor. He was cited for the novel “I Love You, Beth Cooper.”

“Clearly Larry Doyle was not the BMOC (Big Man On Campus),” Thurber judge Firoozeh Dumas said in a statement. “Had Larry been cool, he could have never written `I Love You, Beth Cooper,’ a hilarious yet painfully accurate account of high school in all its pimply glory.”

Doyle will receive $5,000. The two other finalists were Patricia Marx, for the novel “Him Her Him Again The End of Him,” and Simon Rich for “Ant Farm,” an essay collection.

The Thurber Prize, named for author-illustrator James Thurber, was founded in 1996.

A SLOW START: The fall TV season – which we haven’t quite escaped; do I need to point that out?  - is unofficially in its second week, and the numbers aren’t looking good. According to a Variety story this week, ratings have seen a 4.3 per cent decline from last year, with NBC getting the worst battering, losing a whopping 16.3 per cent of its viewership, followed by CBS, with an overall ratings decline of 9.6 per cent.

Only Fox and the CW are showing modest gains, though a Fox executive told Variety that he basically blamed viewers. “I just don’t think the general audience was ready or prepared or aware that broadcast TV was back with new season premieres,” said Peter Liguori, chairman of entertainment for Fox. I know what he means – even I can’t help but feel nostalgic for a time when we spent half the summer getting ready for the new TV season.

As a kid, we used to scan the production notes in Variety eager for news from the sets of Happy Days and All In The Family, and would linger for hours under shady trees to escape the midday heat and imagine just what we thought was going to happen in the upcoming seasons of Rhoda and The Rockford Files. We’d even turn our backyards into the junkyard set from Sanford & Son, and fight to see who got to play Meathead or J.J. from Good Times. Kids these days – they have no respect for tradition.

Fox, true to form, has been the quickest to react, rewarding Fringe with a second season despite its disappointing performance so far, and getting ready to cancel the Sarah Connor Chronicles for dragging down the ratings for Prison Break, its lead-out show on Tuesday nights. Most returning shows are trying to regain audiences lost to the short season caused by the Hollywood writers’ strike, but many of them have been off the air for 10 months. It’s at times like this that a download marketplace instead of a seasonal broadcast schedule should start looking even more attractive to executives; it’s already inevitable, but even at times like this, it’s unwise to underestimate the entropy that rules decision-making in the TV industry.

IN THE WOODS: Food programming is probably the most constricted on the air in terms of style, but the Food Network might have broken the mold with The Wild Chef, a homegrown production debuting tonight. Hosted by Martin Picard, the bear-like chef/owner of Montreal’s Au Pied de Cochon, and his amiable sous chef Hugue Dufour, it’s a woolly, ambling travelogue through the backwoods of Quebec, as Picard searches for something he’s never eaten before, like the muskrat he barbeques in the pilot.

A highlight is Picard and Dufour standing in a blizzard, blithely telling the audience that the first ingredient they need for a recipe is a snowstorm. The show is so utterly Canadian, right to the marrow of its essence, that it practically makes up the full requirements of Cancon, and should free Food up to turn over the balance of its week to Jamie Oliver and Rachel Ray.

Rick McGinnis writes about music, movies, books and television, but not opera.
 

Cook’s Daughter ‘Scared’ By Seinfeld’s Remarks

A chef who claims comedian Jerry Seinfeld’s wife plagiarised her cookbook has now accused the funnyman “scaring” her young daughter.

Chef Missy Chase Lapine sued Seinfeld’s wife Jessica in January, claiming Seinfeld’s bestselling cookbook Deceptively Delicious had been “brazenly plagiarised” from her own tome, The Sneaky Chef.

Both books describe how to hide healthy ingredients in children’s food.

Seinfeld’s subsequent appearance on U.S. TV show The Late Show with David Letterman - where he joked, “Many of the three-named people do become assassins” and called Lapine a “wacko” and “mentally unhinged celebrity stalker” - prompted the chef to add a defamation charge against the funnyman.

In federal court documents filed on Tuesday, Lapine says she “started feeling scared” by the incident.

She adds: “I have never felt so frightened and vulnerable as the day my daughter, seven years old, came home from school and asked, ‘Mom, what is an assassin?’

“I thought I made a big mistake talking to any reporters because now this billionaire is angry and attacking me everywhere.

“I do not suffer from any mental infirmity. I am not a celebrity stalker. I am not a violent or dangerous person.”

Seinfeld’s lawyers are vying to get the defamation suit against him dismissed, insisting “mocking the litigious nature of society” is protected by his First Amendment right to freedom of speech.

BAYVILLE, N.Y. —

Billy Joel, who has championed the cause of Long Island, New York, fishermen in songs like “The Downeaster Alexa,” is helping with the funeral expenses for a clam-digger whose body was found not far from the singer’s mansion.

The body of Edwin Flores was found floating off a Long Island Sound beach in Lattingtown on Monday, six days after he was reported missing. The Nassau County medical examiner has confirmed the man’s identity and says an autopsy will be performed to determine the cause of death.

Joel, who has a house in nearby Centre Island, says he has made a donation to the North Oyster Bay Baymen’s Association to help Flores’ family with funeral and other expenses. He has declined to say how much he donated.

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Students included George Clooney, Doris Roberts

Milton Katselas, a Broadway director and acting teacher whose students included George Clooney, Gene Hackman, Michelle Pfeiffer and many other stars, has died. He was 75.

Katselas died of heart failure on Friday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, said Allen Barton, executive director of Katselas’ Beverly Hills Playhouse acting school.

“Everybody Loves Raymond” actress Doris Roberts, a multiple Emmy winner, studied with Katselas for decades.

“I am the actress I am because of him. I am the human being I am because of him,” she told the Los Angeles Times. “He was an original, extraordinary.”

“He had a wonderful genius for perception and for seeing what was missing in a scene. He taught you how to take it to the next level,” actress Joan Van Ark said. “He’s just irreplaceable. As actors, we’ve lost our shepherd.”

Katselas was born in Pittsburgh, where he studied theater at what is now Carnegie Mellon University. After graduating, he moved to New York and studied with acting coach Lee Strasberg.

He was 24 when he began teaching acting in New York.

Mentored by noted directors Elia Kazan and Joshua Logan, Katselas began his own directing career in the 1960s. He worked on several Broadway productions, including “The Rose Tattoo” in 1966. He was nominated for a Tony Award in 1970 for “Butterflies Are Free.”

He also directed several movies, including the 1972 film version of “Butterflies.”

Katselas wrote the 1996 book “Dreams Into Action: Getting What You Want.” The teaching text he used for decades was released this year as “Acting Class: Take a Seat.”

Katselas is survived by his brothers, Tasso and Chris, and a sister, Sophia.

Services have not been scheduled, a playhouse employee said.

MONTREAL - A spokesperson for the McGill University Health Centre says pop star Janet Jackson was discharged from the Royal Victoria Hospital about two hours after she checked in Monday night after cancelling her show.

The reason for her visit and where she went afterwards isn’t clear.

According to a statement released by W & W Public Relations, the singer called off the show after she “got suddenly ill” during a sound check.

The 42-year-old was rushed to hospital, while fans were informed of the cancellation about five minutes before the show was to begin with opening act L-L Cool J.

Promoter Groupe Spectacles Gillett says Jackson hopes to return to Montreal as soon as possible.

News from ©The Canadian Press, 2008

It’s Holiday Time At The Box Office!

7 November 2008 10:46 AM, PST | From Studio Briefing
| See recent Studio Briefing news

The holiday season semi-officially arrives at theaters this weekend with the
opening of the animated Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa from DreamWorks
Animation and Paramount. Box office prognosticators are forecasting a
$45-65-million debut for the film. The original Madagascar earned
$47.2 million during its opening over the Memorial Day weekend in 2005 (and
$61 million over four days). The comedy Role Models is expected to
place second with about $7-10 million, while Soul Men, featuring the
late Bernie Mac and Samuel L. Jackson may wind up with $6-9 million.