'TBH Politoons'
Thanks, again, Tim!
Opening Tonight In NYC
'Horns and Halos'
"Horns and Halos"
Friday, February 28th
Cinema Village
22 E. 12th St.
NYC
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Winner "Best Documentary" - 2002 New York Undergound Film Festival
Winner "Best Documentary" - 2002 Chicago Underground Film Festival
Official Selection 2002 Toronto International Film Festival
Official Selection 2002 Rotterdam International Film Festival
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
"Horns and Halos" captures the unlikely connection of three men – a U.S.
president, a discredited author and an underground publisher – whose
paths to power and popularity become tangled in a book.
In October 1999, a short article appeared in the New York Times: St.
Martin's Press recalled Fortunate Son, the first published biography of
George W. Bush. At the time of its recall, the book was #8 on
Amazon.com's best-seller list – no doubt due to the book's widely
publicized allegations that Bush had been arrested for cocaine
possession in 1972. However, Bush wasn't the only one with a hidden
past. Citing distrust of the author, J. H. Hatfield, the publisher
pulled the book from stores after learning that he was a convicted
felon.
Several weeks later, small underground imprint Soft Skull Press, the
self-styled "punk of publishing," announced that it would re-publish
the book. But getting Fortunate Son back on the shelves wouldn't prove
so easy. Operating out of a tenement basement on New York City's Lower
East Side, 29-year-old founder Sander Hicks struggled without
significant success for over a year to get the book back into stores
and into the national consciousness. After months of lawsuits, bad
press, and disagreements with the distributor, Soft Skull made one
final desperate attempt to make a splash at the 2001 Book Expo of
America. Against the author's wishes, Hicks revealed the sources for
the book's cocaine allegations, which leads to electrifying
consequences.
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Indiewire declared "Horns and Halos" one of the best undistributed
films of 2002. So we decided we'd better distribute it.....
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Reader Link
from Tim
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
For the 2nd day in a row, the weather-forecasters missed giant rainstorms in the morning. Guess that's one reason why prognosticators in PA shouldn't be calling the weather in LA.
Watched some of 'Profiles From The Front' - jeez, it seemed as if the format, pacing & music were 'borrowed' from 'Battlefield' on PBS.
Did the farmer's market/CostCo circuit today. Don't know why, but the kid loves vegetables - especially cauliflower & broccoli. Gotta admit though, I do enjoy the looks from older shoppers who overhear
the kid carrying about vegetation. Should have seen the looks when I told the kid he could chose either cauliflower or strawberries, and he opted for the cauliflower!
Tonight, Friday, CBS starts the night with a FRESH 'Star Search', then a FRESH 'special' -
'Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band', with performances lifted from a concert last year in Barcelona, followed by '48 Hours'.
Scheduled on a FRESH Dave, Guest host Regis Philbin welcomes Charles Grodin, Greg Giraldo, and Kathleen Edwards.
Scheduled on a FRESH Craiggers are Michael Michele and Adam West.
NBC offers a FRESH 'Mr. Sterling', followed by 'Dateline', and then a
RERUN 'Law & Order: Special Victims Unit'.
Scheduled on a FRESH Jay are Diane Lane, Michael C. Hall, and Jennifer Hanson.
Scheduled on a FRESH Conan are Tom Arnold, Ann Curry, and the Coral.
Scheduled on a FRESH Carson Daly are Laura Prepon, Reggie Miller, Harland Williams, and The Walkmen.
ABC opens with a RERUN 'America's Funniest Home Videos', then a FRESH
'I'm A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here', and then '20/20'.
Scheduled on a FRESH Jimmy Kimmel are Steve-O and this week's guest co-host Don King.
The WB offers a FRESH 'What I Like About You', then a FRESH 'Grounded For Life',
followed by a FRESH 'Reba', and then another FRESH 'Grounded For Life'.
Faux has the FRESH made-for-tv movie 'Baywatch Hawaiian Wedding'.
UPN has the movie 'Spawn'.
Check local PBS lisitings for a FRESH 'NOW With Bill Moyers'.
On HBO is a FRESH 'Real Time With Bill Maher'.
Anyone have any opinions?
Or reviews?
(See below for addresses)
A view of London and its surrounding regions shot by an astronaut aboard the International Space Station on the evening of February 4, 2003. London's open spaces such as Richmond and Hyde Parks are clearly visible as are the illuminated stertches of the M25 and Heathrow and Gatwick Airports.
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Nears Showtime Sitcom Pilot Deal
Richard Pryor
The Showtime cable channel is close to partnering with ailing veteran comedian Richard Pryor and "Mad About You" writer Bill Grundfest to create a sitcom based on the legendary performer's standup routines.
"Pryor Offenses," a pilot script set up at the network, will revolve around a character based on Pryor in his 30s. The project, set in present day, follows a comedian on the verge of a career
breakthrough and forever close to a personal breakdown.
Grundfest said he took material from Pryor's 1970s-era comedy albums and standup gigs and deconstructed it into a story of a conflicted man who's engaged to a smart, sophisticated African-American
lawyer and carrying on an affair with a down-to-earth white comedy club owner.
Grundfest will executive produce the project, along with Jennifer Lee Pryor, the comedian's wife and business manager. Grundfest said he first approached the Pryors with the concept.
"I was watching yet another sitcom with yet another alleged standup with an alleged point of view, and started yelling at the TV," he said. "I then went back to my garage and pulled out Richard's
albums and started listening to them on vinyl. I then thought, 'Oh my God, this could be a series."'
Grundfest said he then set up a meeting with Jennifer Lee Pryor and laid out his ideas for the first 13 episodes.
Pryor said she had always passed on TV pitches in the past but was impressed with how Grundfest conveyed the comedian's humor and point of view.
"Bill has created a brilliant way of turning Richard's material and characters into a ... comedy of pain," she said. "It's a show designed to make you laugh till you cry and cry till you laugh."
Richard Pryor
Diagnosed with Shingles
David Letterman
The eye infection that sidelined late-night television host David Letterman for most of this week was brought on by a case of shingles, a viral infection related to chickenpox, his doctor said on Thursday.
Actor Bruce Willis filled in as host of the CBS "Late Show" on Wednesday, while tennis legend John McEnroe and Regis Philbin from the morning show "Live! With Regis and Kelly" assumed guest-host duties for Thursday and Friday's shows.
The "Late Show" was already scheduled to be on a production hiatus next week, but it was not immediately clear whether Letterman would be ready to return the week after next.
When "Late Show" producers first revealed Wednesday that Letterman would miss that day's taping due to an eye infection, they had said repeats of earlier broadcasts would air Thursday and Friday. Letterman's absence
this week was his first since his recovery from open-heart surgery in early 2000, when he missed several weeks of shows.
Before then, Letterman, 55, had never missed an appearance in his more than 20 years of late-night television.
David Letterman
The Information One-Stop
Moose & Squirrel
Resurrecting 'Daredevil' Role
Jennifer Garner
20th Century Fox and production partner Regency Enterprises said Wednesday that Jennifer Garner will star in an action spinoff featuring her Elektra Natchios character, introduced in Ben Affleck's superhero hit "Daredevil."
The Elektra film will be set after events in "Daredevil," in which Garner's character seemingly died. But "Daredevil" ended with a cryptic scene indicating Elektra might have survived.
Garner, 30, played the martial-arts master girlfriend of Affleck's title character, a blind attorney who develops superhuman senses that allow him to become a masked crusader for justice.
Garner, who stars in the television hit "Alias," joins Halle Berry as the latest actress to earn a spinoff from a male-oriented action franchise. MGM plans a sequel for Berry's character from last year's James Bond movie "Die Another Day."
Jennifer Garner
Former Baywatch star Pamela Anderson, left, and her boyfriend Kid Rock pose for photographers in their ball outfits for the traditional Viennese Opera Ball, on Thursday, Feb 27, 2003
at a hotel in Vienna. The Opera Ball starts late Thursday evening at Vienna's state opera.
Photo by Martin Gnedt
MSNBC Making More Room For Hate TV
Phil Donahue
After having his show canceled by MSNBC, Phil Donahue let a few salvos fly on Wednesday, issuing a protest e-mail that condemned his former network for being impatient with his six-month-old program.
"We were hoping to break through the noisy drums of war on cable and become a responsible platform for dissenters as well as administration supporters," Donahue wrote.
A media watchdog Web site reported Donahue was angered by a leaked internal memo that called him "a tired, left-wing liberal out of touch with the current marketplace."
Phil Donahue
Conflict With Contractor
Tom Hanks
District Judge James May has sealed the file on the dispute between a contractor and actor Tom Hanks and his wife, actress Rita Wilson.
Storey Construction says it's owed one and three-quarter (M)million dollars on the huge residential complex he built for the couple in central Idaho's Wood River Valley.
Hanks asked May to seal the file to protect his and his wife's privacy. An attempt is being made to settle the dispute out of court.
Hanks and his wife built what is believed to be the largest home complex in the area. It includes a mansion-sized home, several guest houses, a swimming pool and tennis court and eleven
acres of landscaping. The value of the complex has not been published.
Tom Hanks
~~ Spud Hawk
Thanks for that, Spud Hawk!
More From The 'Who Cares What You Think Administration'
FCC Gets Earful
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission got an earful of public support for media ownership limits on Thursday as the five commissioners took their effort to develop new rules outside Washington.
Big television broadcasters like NBC and Fox countered with pleas for the FCC to eliminate rules that bar them from reaching more than 35 percent of the national television audience or owning a newspaper and television or radio station in a single market.
The commission led by Chairman Michael Powell is slated to vote in May on those rules, as well as regulations limiting local radio concentration and cross-ownership of a television and radio station in the same market.
New media ownership rules, industry analysts say, are likely to set off a wave of mergers.
About 125 people -- including dozens of lobbyists from Washington -- attended the FCC-sponsored public hearing, which included five hours of presentations by industry officials who offered diverging opinions and one hour
of public comments that mostly favored keeping existing rules.
The five commissioners told the audience they supported diversity, local programming and competition in the media sphere but are expected to differ on how to get there.
"I think we got some insights, we'll have to digest it in total with everything else," said Powell, a Republican who has advocated liberalizing the rules a bit and previously supported eliminating the ban on a company owning
a newspaper and a radio or television station in the same market.
FCC Gets Earful
Legion d'Honneur
Bono
Bono, the leader of the Irish rock band U2, will be awarded the Legion d'Honneur by French president Jacques Chirac tomorrow in Paris. Bono, who toured Africa last summer with
then-Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, has tirelessly campaigned for Third World debt relief. Past recipients of the honor include Jerry Lewis, Neil Armstrong, Martin Scorsese,
Ronald Reagan, Robert De Niro, wine connoisseur Robert Parker and cooking expert Julia Child.
Bono
'Alias,' '24', '8 Simple Rules', 'George Lopez', 'Jim', & More
Early Renewals
Fox has ordered a third season of its critically worshipped hit drama "24," while ABC has given early pickups to "Alias" and nine other series while shifting veteran comedy "The Drew Carey Show" to summer.
In addition to "Alias," ABC Wednesday confirmed 2003-'04 orders for freshman comedies "8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter," "Life With Bonnie" and "Less Than Perfect"; sophomore sitcoms "According
to Jim" and "George Lopez"; and veterans "My Wife and Kids" and "America's Funniest Home Videos."
Unscripted juggernauts "The Bachelor" and "The Bachelorette" will also be back. ABC already had renewed cop drama "NYPD Blue" for next season.
ABC has a $3 million-plus-per episode deal in place with Warner Bros. TV for the 2003-'04 season of "The Drew Carey Show," but whether the comedy will be a part of the network's fall schedule remains up in the air.
The network has decided to put "Drew" on hiatus until summer, when it will return to its old 9 p.m. Wednesday slot with a run of 10 original episodes. Executives hope the sitcom, which has been struggling on
Friday nights, will reconnect with its audience.
Even if ABC chooses not to put "Drew" on its fall lineup, instead pushing it to midseason, the network will likely still have to pay for another season of the show. Warner Bros. has no incentive to let ABC
out of its deal, considering next season's episodes of the show are already sold into syndication.
Early Renewals
In The Kitchen With BartCop & Friends
Still Tops Forbes List
Bill Gates
It's not easy being a billionaire, and with the world mired in an economic slump, it has gotten even tougher, Forbes business magazine said on Thursday.
The net worth of the 476 billionaires on Forbes' annual list of the world's wealthiest people totaled $1.4 trillion, a drop of $141 billion from last year.
Bill Gates, 47, the chairman and co-founder of software giant Microsoft Corp., is still the richest person on the planet, with a fortune of nearly $41 billion.
Investor Warren Buffett again ranked No. 2 on the list, although his fortune shrank to $30.5 billion from $35 billion in the magazine's last survey.
The list's top 10 includes Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, Oracle Corp. CEO Lawrence Ellison, German discount supermarket kings Karl and Theo Albrecht, Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Alsaud of Saudi Arabia,
and the heirs of the Wal-Mart Stores Inc. discount retail empire.
Nearly half the people on Forbes' 17th annual billionaire's list, set to be published in its March 17 issue, saw their fortunes shrink, some dramatically.
But U.S. talk show queen and media mogul Oprah Winfrey leaped onto the list this year with an empire worth about $1 billion to become the first African-American woman to join the ranks of the world's billionaires.
Bill Gates
A tourist shoots a picture of a giant 'Baiana' doll at Pelourinho, district of Salvador, in the northern coastal state of Bahia, Brazil, February 27, 2003. The streets of Pelourinho
are decorated with figures of the Bahia women, well-known as 'Baiana' as part of the carnival theme of Salvador where thousands of revellers are expected to celebrate the famous international annual festivities.
Photo by Paulo Whitaker
Snarky Gossip
Shiners Galore
Is it makeup, or did Matt Damon really get beat up filming a fight scene in L.A. with Greg Kinnear? The two play Siamese twins in "Stuck on You." "In one scene he gets sprayed with
mace, so his eye was irritated," Damon's spokeswoman said. Meanwhile, both Ben Affleck and Madonna are apparently sporting shiners on the Left Coast. Asked by the London Sun if it
hurt, Affleck muttered "yes" before scurrying away. Star magazine has photos of Madonna with what looks like a bruised right eye under the headline, "Who slugged Madonna?" Her rep,
Liz Rosenberg, told the tab: "This is most definitely not a black eye. I think it's a piece of hair or a shadow."
Shiners Galore
Book Club to Return
Oprah Winfrey
TV talk show host Oprah Winfrey, who shelved her popular book club last year citing a lack of suitable material, is bringing it back, this time for literary classics, a publishers' group said on Thursday.
The Association of American Publishers said Winfrey told the group she "cannot imagine a world where the great works of literature are not read" and that she hopes the new feature "will make classic works of literature accessible to every woman and man who reads."
The publishing group said Winfrey plans to make a classic selection three to five times a year, in shows originating from a site connected with the book or the author.
Oprah Winfrey
6 'Winners'
National Humanities Medal
resident Bush gave Art Linkletter a National Humanities Medal on Thursday for his career of "countless broadcast moments," getting kids to say the darndest things.
The resident awarded the medals in a closed door Oval Office ceremony; news photographers were admitted at the end.
Other awards went to:
_Donald Kagan, a professor of classics and history at Yale University;
_C-SPAN founder Brian Lamb, who hosts the literary programs "Booknotes" and "Bookends";
_Children's author Patricia MacLachlan, who authored a series of books about rural America in the early 20th century;
_The Iowa Writer's Workshop at the University of Iowa, the first creative writing degree program offered by a U.S. university that has produced scores of award-winning writers;
_The Mount Vernon Ladies' Association, the United States' oldest historic preservation organization;
_Frankie Hewitt, producing artistic director of the Ford's Theater in Washington;
_Writer and essayist Thomas Sowell, a senior fellow in public policy at the Hoover Institution in Stanford, Calif. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas picked up the medal for Sowell.
National Humanities Medal
Formerly 'The Vidiot'
'Half-Drunk' in Perfect Game
David Wells
David Wells was "half-drunk" when he pitched a perfect game for the New York Yankees in 1998.
In an upcoming autobiography, the New York Yankees pitcher recounts getting drunk at a "Saturday Night Live" cast party that ended in the early hours of the day he pitched against Minnesota.
"As of this writing, 15 men in the history of organized baseball have ever thrown a perfect game," he writes in galleys of the book. "Only one of those men did it half-drunk, with bloodshot eyes, monster breath and a
raging, skull-rattling hangover. That would be me."
The book, "Perfect I'm Not! Boomer on Beer, Brawls, Backaches and Baseball," will be published April 1 by William Morrow, a subsidiary of News Corp.
The disclosure by Wells recalls the no-hitter thrown by Pittsburgh's Dock Ellis
against San Diego in 1970. Ellis said he was on LSD that day. Ellis later entered drug rehab and became a counselor for recovering addicts.
David Wells
Bolivian Jorge Vargas holds a traditional devil's mask characteristic of the two-day carnival parade in the highland town of Oruro, in this file picture taken February 23, 2003.
Vargas and his family have participated for more than 40 years in the parade where some 40,000 dancers and 6,000 musicians pay tribute to the Virgin of Candelaria.
Photo by David Mercado
Snarky Gossip
Paul The Prude
Michael Caine, Oscar-nominated for "The Quiet American," recalls that even during the Swinging '60s in London, Paul McCartney was pretty much a prude. "Jane Asher, Paul McCartney's girlfriend
in real life, played my girlfriend in 'Alfie,' " Caine recalls in the premiere issue of Red Carpet magazine. "We did a scene where we'd been to bed together and she was wearing my shirt in the
morning like a night shirt. And they came in and got one of my other shirts, and cut the tail off and put an extra length on. And I said, what for? Paul doesn't want her showing so much leg. He was very prim and proper, Paul."
Paul The Prude
Malibu Car Crash
Bridget Fonda
Actress Bridget Fonda was hospitalized for minor injuries Thursday after crashing her car on a rain-drenched section of the Pacific Coast Highway, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department said.
The 39-year-old "Single White Female" star was alone in the car when it tumbled over an embankment about 7:30 a.m., sheriff's deputy Michael Gurrola said.
Her publicist, Nancy Seltzer, said the actress was "fine and doing well" and hoped to be released Friday.
Bridget Fonda
Unkind Cut
Ouch
A Filipino man cut off his penis and tossed it through a window to his estranged wife in a bid to prove his fidelity, a Philippine newspaper reported on Thursday.
The man wrapped the severed member in a newspaper and threw it through the window of his wife's parents' house in the northwestern town of Malasiqui, the Philippine Star said.
"So you will not suspect I am courting another girl," the Star said the man shouted before he hobbled off into the night.
His shocked wife gave the severed penis to police, who sought the help of an embalmer to preserve it until her husband could be found, the paper said.
Ouch
In Memory
Fred 'Mr. Rogers' Rogers
Fred Rogers, who became a nurturing "television friend" to a generation of children as host of the public television series "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood," died of cancer on Thursday at 74, his producer said.
An ordained Presbyterian minister who believed television should be used to nourish the human spirit, Rogers died before dawn at his home in Pittsburgh. He had been diagnosed with stomach cancer.
Rogers began his half-century career in children's television in the 1950s by doing puppet voices for the "The Children's Corner," a local show on Pittsburgh PBS affiliate WQED, the first community-owned television station in the United States, which he helped found.
He became a national personality in 1968 when WQED-produced "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood" entered national distribution for the Public Broadcasting System.
The series, which released its last new episode 34 years later in August 2001, continues as a popular rerun. It is the longest-running children's program on PBS, which also airs "Sesame Street" and other shows for young audiences.
Each episode opened with the gentle, soft-spoken Mr. Rogers entering a comfortable living room, singing the theme song "It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood," and donning a zippered cardigan sweater and a pair of sneakers.
One of his sweaters is now at the Smithsonian Institution.
Far from the often garish and dissonant atmosphere of children's commercial programming, "Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood" employed a gentle and soothing format that featured Rogers' own songs and puppet voices, and the recurring motto: "There's only one person in the whole world like you."
Over the years, his guests included such names as Yo-Yo Ma and Wynton Marsalis.
The centerpiece of the show was the Neighborhood of Make-Believe, which was filled with real life people as well as puppet characters including Daniel Striped Tiger, King Friday XIII and Lady Elaine Fairchilde.
Some TV industry figures mocked Rogers as a wimp who employed a somewhat hick-like style that included slow speech and the sunny trademark exclamation: "Hi, neighbor!"
But friends and colleagues say Rogers had a truly humble demeanor and never showed signs of becoming an off-camera tyrant or adopting a tongue-in-cheek approach to his audience.
"If we can share ourselves with our kids in ways that aren't frightening to them, that's the greatest gift we can give anyone -- the gift of an honest self," said Rogers, who is credited with having inspired other gentle children's shows including "Blues Clues" and "Barney."
Rogers' programs also tackled important subjects for children, including death, divorce and violence, including the real life violence on TV news.
During the Gulf crisis of more than a decade ago, Rogers made a public service announcement in which he advised parents: "Children aren't responsible for wars. The least, and the best, we adults can do is to let our children know that we'll take good care of them, no matter what."
He received two Peabody Awards, four Emmys, a "Lifetime Achievement" award from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, and the nation's highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Characteristically, the Web site of his production company, Family Communications Inc., (www.misterrogers.org) posted the announcement of his death alongside advice on how to relay the sad news to children who are likely to continue to see him on TV for years to come.
"Children have always known Mr. Rogers as their 'television friend,' and that relationship doesn't change with his death," the message said.
Born in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, he studied early child development at the University of Pittsburgh and received a charge to continue his work with families and children through television when he was ordained a minister.
Rogers is survived by his wife, Joanne, their two sons and two grandsons.
Fred 'Mr. Rogers' Rogers
A seal soaks in rays on the Isla Espiritu Santo, Mexico, Tuesday Feb. 25, 2003. Land owners transferred the uninhabited, 23,380-acre island in the Gulf of California to the
Mexican government in an effort to save the island's wildlife. The deal worth $3.3 million was a victory for the Mexican government which has been criticized for its plans
to upgrade and build 22 ports along the Baja California coast.
Photo by Marco Ugarte
'The Osbournes'
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