Woody Allen sues American Apparel for using his likeness in advertising
March 31st, 2008 by Scott Marks
Woody Allen was in federal court today looking to put a dent in American Apparel’s profit margin to the tune of $10 million claiming the clothing manufacturer illegally used his image in an internet and billboard advertising campaign.
According to Variety, the lawsuit contended Allen was not contacted by the company and did not give permission for them to the use his likeness and accuses American Apparel of “blatant misappropriation and commercial use of Allen’s image.” It goes on to say the billboard falsely implied that Allen sponsored, endorsed or was associated with American Apparel, said the lawsuit, which seeks at least $10 million in compensatory damages and unspecified punitive damages.
The picture of Rebbe Woody is a frame blow up from Annie Hall. In the film Woody fantasizes how he must look in the eyes of his girlfriend’s Jew-hating Grammy. The Yiddish text on the billboard translates into “the Holy Rebbe.”
The lawsuit describes Woody as among the most influential figures in the history of American film and a man who has maintained strict control over the projects with which he is associated. Woody appeared in a lot of American advertising campaigns in the 60s, most notably a series of Smirnoff vodka ads, but hasn’t been a pitchman for products or services in the United States in decades.
Tags: Advertising, American Apparel Inc., ANNIE HALL, Lawsuit, Smirnoff Vodka, Woody Allen
Filed Under News
David Elliott honored by San Diego film community
March 31st, 2008 by Scott Marks
David Elliott shares a fundamental bonding moment with daughter Sabrina:
Photo Courtesy of The Walter Parks Thatcher Memorial Library
Local cinema shindig reels in the fun!
by Burl Stiff, Jr.
Society Columnist
March 31, 2008
For someone who spent so many hours in a darkened room, the view of Del Cerro must have seemed staggering.
The Cinema Society’s Andy and Beth Friedenberg opened their luxuriant hilltop home to the San Diego film community last night to pay tribute to former Union Tribune film critic David Elliott.
The evening’s guest of honor, looking sartorially splendiferous in his customary blue blazer and button down Oxford, worked the crowd while his wife, Union Tribune classical music critic Valerie Scher, held court with local publicists about her new Rated G column.
Landmark Theatre’s Chris Principio was there, so was David Swanson. As always, screening-mate Jean Lowerison wowed the crowd in purple. The Coronado Museum’s Joe Ditler talked Our Gang comedies with Citizen Video’s Holly Jones while the San Diego Reader’s film critic Duncan Shepherd was anxious to visit the Friedenberg’s opulent subterranean screening room.
Local publicists old and new joined in the revelry. Former Solomon Friedman reps Stacey Torgeson and Jennie Petro mingled with current Allied Advertising whizkids J. R. Cordray, Jennie Ogness Gendron, Cathy Pedlow, Andy Hart, Lindsay Flateur, Heather Secrist and Jen Curran.
Also in attendance, Herb and Roberta Ross (sans Brooklyn), the ever mirthful Fred Saxon and his bride Laurie, and the Review Express’ Diana Saenger accompanied by her better half Lou.
More were the San Diego library’s Ralph DeLauro, Ginette Vicot, Emulsion Compulsion scribe Scott Marks , Marion Kahn, Cinema Under the Stars impresario Doug Yeagley, the North County Times’ Dan Bennett and KGTV anchorwoman/San Diego Asian Film Festival director Lee Ann Kim who was gracious enough to sandwich in an appearance between broadcasts.
Andy and Beth’s daughter Erica, with help from her ten year old son Morgan, was responsible for the never ending hours d’oeuvre.
Unlike one of Chris Principio’s screenings, the cocktail party went a half hour over it’s anticipated 120 minute running time. No money was raised for charity.
Tags: Andy Friedenberg, Burl Stiff, David Elliott, Film Critic, San Diego, Union TribuneFiled Under News
Martin Scorsese wants to be your friend on MySpace!
March 30th, 2008 by Scott Marks
Martin Scorsese is a 65-year old male who grew up on the Lower East Side of New York City. His interests are reading, music, solitude, movies and throwing telephones.
Look at Mr. Armani suit trying to connect with the kids! Scorsese’s sudden desire to be a part of the MySpace community is a marketing ploy to alert hipsters to his upcoming Rolling Stones documentary Shine a Light. In addition to listing Marty’s general interests, the site offers an exclusive clip from the film personally introduced by The Master.
Here is what some of the human garbage on MySpace has to say about their new friend and His video:
“couldnt even watch it all it was so boring” - Stanton (That wouldn’t by some chance be Arch Stanton?)
“(The clip) sucked until the end… Dry Humor… At least the stones are alive!” - ~{UN$TOPP@BLE}~
“Scorsese, can you introduce me to Leo?” - Lindsay-Erin
“video was dumb…….check out my video!!!!!!!!!!” - ☆JACOB☆
The film premiers Friday and you better be there on opening day.
Casper the Friendly Director
Related Links:
My Scorsese Space
Martin Scorsese photos
Shine a light trailer
Shine a Light presskit
Shine a Light theatrical specs
Filed Under News
The Three Stooges: A study guide to “Pop Goes the Easel”
March 30th, 2008 by Scott Marks
Pop Goes the Easel marked the seventh of almost 200 two-reelers the boys made for Columbia pictures. Produced with minuscule budgets and equally tight shooting schedules it’s a miracle they were able to salvage enough footage to adhere to a movie screen for 17 minutes.
It’s always been my contention that The Three Stooges function best as a vacation from brainwork for hardcore cinephiles. Budding auteurs will learn more from studying the Three Stooges than they would from all the world’s film schools combined as these shorts are textbook examples of everything a filmmaker shouldn’t do.
This short has been with me since birth. I’ve seen it more times than I did my maternal grandparents. While it’s not the funniest Stooge opus, it is easily one of the most inept.
Sadly, the copy on You Tube was not taken from the remastered DVD so a couple of the finer aesthetic points will be lost in the translation. It’s also been sliced into three parts, so you’ll have to watch it on the installment plan.
00:59 Continuity: Larry stands next to the car holding his placard and in the next shot he’s leaning on the passenger door.
01:23 Enjoy Curly’s flood pants.
02:40 There was never time for re-takes on a Stooge short. The force of the sign connecting with Moe must have loosened his clip-on tie. As he whistles for Larry and Curly, watch as his tie proceeds to fall loose into his jacket.
03:53 Continuity: In one shot the boys play hopscotch on a residential street and in the next they’re running down a commercial boulevard.
04:26 It sure takes the cop a long time to open that door.
05:40 Bookmark Curly’s dubbed in reaction sound when Moe gouges his eyes. This “inner dialogue” will come into play shortly.
05:55 Forget about the foreground action. The real laughs come from Curly’s background continuity.
06:35 Enjoy the way Moe steps into his brutal slap to Larry’s face.
01:11 Much has been made in Stooge circles of Moe and Curly’s “look at the grouse” exchange. I tolerate it while awaiting Larry’s hilarious squeal as he steps through the window.
01:25 Is there anything funnier than a fermished Larry?
02:10 Either that dumb flatfoot can’t figure out how to open a door or editor James Sweeney needs tightening lessons.
02:27 When left to his own resources, Moe’s dialog can be painfully unfunny. It’s worth wading through to get to Yiddish Swami Larry and a deaf and dumb Curly.
03:23 A prime example of the pay off justifying the set-up. Ballerina Phyllis Crane’s upside-down “It’s a boat” revelation is basically an excuse for Curly to let fly another “grouse.” This unexpected cutaway of Crane still balanced on her noggin is the closest the Stooges ever came to surrealism.
03:27 No time to re-take Moe’s flubbed line.
04:04 Love it any time Larry is punished for being enthusiastic.
No pain, no gain
04:40 Is Moe poking Curly in the eyes or giving him devil horns from the front? Moe generally tried to pull his punches, but this is ridiculous!
04:48 Pay attention to the painting of the woman hanging above Moe. The art director obviously didn’t because when the boys run onto the next set the exact same portrait graces the wall.
04:51 Literally painted in a corner, the boys stand perplexed in front of a picture-covered wall. As soon as the cop comes snooping, the student’s artwork is inexplicably replaced by a black door.
05:02 So much ineptitude in so little time! In addition to the magic painting and black door, note that the Stooges exit a freshly painted floor and leave no footprints as they enter the next scene.
05:40 Watch the set shake after Curly shoves the cop.
05:59 “My sister Crumbette…”
06:26 Remember the dubbed in Curly reaction I asked you to remember in Part 1? Here’s your repeat reward!
00:05 Another stunningly obvious dubbed in Curly reaction sound.
00:09 & 01:05 The remarkable Larry-ism, “I”ll show you guys a pitcher what is a pitcher.”
00:36 & 02:03 Pop goes the same shot twice!
01:30 What Larry does best: absorbing Moe’s abuse just seconds after giggling over pain inflicted upon fellow Stooge Curly (or Shemp).
02:09 It is imperative that any Stooge shoot has a bust perched on a high shelf that’s waiting to fall on the enemy’s head.
02:12 For me, Jack Duffy’s questioning cameo still draws the short’s biggest laugh.
02:15 Another rule of Stoogedom: Toupees will be launched off bald heads by either hunks of clay or a pie.
02:29 Stooge math: White clay + Black Dress + Woman’s Chest = Big Laffs!
02:40 Second biggest laugh: Professor Fuller mistaking pounding clay for someone at the door.
03:05 More Stooge math: White clay + Black Dress + Deaf woman’s rump = Bigger Laffs!
Videos: Part One, Part Two, Part Three
Photos: The Three Stooges
Dig A Hole: Richard Widmark
March 29th, 2008 by Scott Marks
He burst onto the movie scene with a snarling cackle in Henry Hathaway’s 1947 film noir Kiss of Death. Richard Widmark’s Tommy Udo was unlike anything the screen had seen. Udo was a career psychopath who took giddy delight in dispatching a wheelchair-bound granny down a flight of stairs.
Richard Widmark was born on Boxing Day (the Day After Christmas), 1914 in Sunrise, Minnesota. He spent his early years in Princeton, IL before taking acting classes at Lake Forest College. (His initial goal was to obtain a law degree.) After graduating he taught acting at the college until 1938 when he made his New York radio debut in Aunt Jenny’s Real Life Stories. Five years later he was on Broadway appearing in Kiss and Tell. A perforated eardrum kept him out of the service so Mr. Widmark continued on doing what he did best, acting.
While appearing with June Havoc in the Chicago company of Dream Girl, Widmark answered Hollywood’s call by signing a seven-year contract with 20th Century Fox. In an interview with the Associated Press, the actor revealed that he almost lost the career-making role of Tommy Udo. “The director, Henry Hathaway, didn’t want me,” the actor recalled. “I have a high forehead; he thought I looked too intellectual.” Fortunately the director was overruled by studio boss Darryl F. Zanuck, but according to Widmark, Hathaway “gave me kind of a bad time.”
The role earned Widmark a best supporting actor nomination and made him an overnight movie star. Between 1947 and 1954 Widmark took on the roles of psychopaths (The Street With No Name, Road House), a two bit hustler (Night and the City), a jilted airline pilot (Don’t Bother to Knock), a racist (No Way Out), a western villain (Yellow Sky), a “smoke jumper” (Red Skies of Montana), numerous military types (Halls of Montezuma, The Frogmen, Destination Gobi and Take the High Ground) and perhaps most precariously, George ‘Foghorn’ Winslow’s father in My Pal Gus. Only a dissolute wretch could spawn a boy like Georgie.
By 1950, Widmark was 20th Century Fox’s star player. That year, Elia Kazan was the first to cast the actor against type in Panic in the Streets. Widmark assumed the role of a physician in pursuit of the film’s plague-infected villain Jack Palance.
No director better understood Widmark’s ardent blend of charisma and combustible uncertainty than Sam Fuller in Pickup on South Street. Widmark plays Skip McCoy, a small time grifter who unwittingly lifts a roll of top secret microfilm, headed for the commies, from a dame on a subway. Fuller’s camera movements are even more agile than usual in order to keep up with the sportive actor. Skip doesn’t care much how he gets his money. When informed that the person paying for the stolen film is a Red, Skip spits back, “Who cares? Your money is as good as anyone else’s.” In the end, his moll must endure a savage beating before McCoy finally takes action against the red menace.
It’s odd that a man of Widmark’s concordant demeanor would wind up making a living playing tough guys. “I know I’ve made kind of a half-assed career out of violence, but I abhor violence,” he remarked in a 1976 Associated Press interview. “I am an ardent supporter of gun control. It seems incredible to me that we are the only civilized nation that does not put some effective control on guns.”
After appearing in 20 successful films at Fox, Daryl F. Zanuck, the man who fought to keep Widmark in Kiss of Death, refused to renew the actor’s contract. As if to add insult to injury Zanuck cast him in a supporting role billed below Spencer Tracy, Jean Peters AND Robert Wagner in Broken Lance. He starred in one other Fuller film while owned by Fox and hated every minute of it. Widmark was forced to appear in Hell and High Water and did not like the fact that his co-star Bela Darvi got her role by sleeping with Zanuck.
It wasn’t all thugs and psychos for Richard Widmark. After breaking with Fox in 1954, Widmark formed his own production company, Heath Productions, and began working for other studios. He found great success as psychiatric clinic chieftain Dr. Stewart McIver, a man convinced that the road to mental stability begins with drapes, in Vincente Minnelli’s hysterical CinemaScope melodrama The Cobweb. (When are they going to release a box set of Minnelli’s ‘Scope melodramas?) Before seeing this film, I never once considered putting my slacks on before my shirt. For me, that’s like putting your socks on before your shoes, but Widmark made it all look so commonsensical.
Widmark tried hard as The Dauphin in Preminger’s St. Joan, tackled social issues (Time Limit and the never ending Judgment at Nuremberg) and appeared to trade in his fedora for a ten gallon hat with a string of “A” westerns (The Last Wagon, The Law and Jake Wade, Warlock) topped off by John Wayne’s The Alamo. The Duke wasn’t crazy about scrawny Widmark in the role of strapping Jim Bowie, but United Artists was insistent.
Henry Brandon, Richard Widmark & James Stewart in John Ford’s Two Rode Together
His strongest role in a 60s western was opposite Jimmy Stewart in John Ford’s Two Rode Together. Both he and Stewart were hard-of-hearing (as well as balding), so the extraordinarily cruel Ford would purposely park his director’s chair far away from them and offer up his directions in a barely audible voice. When neither one of the stars could hear their director, Pappy the barbarian would loudly announced to his crew that after over 40 years in the business, he was reduced to directing two deaf toupees. Better bald and deaf than a sadistic, one-eyed, handkerchief-sucking lush.
His finest work of the decade was in Don Siegel’s tough, pre-Dirty Harry cop thriller Madigan. The film was such a hit, it spawned a short-lived TV series.
He worked consistently throughout the seventies, but with the exception of Robert Aldrich’s Twilight’s Last Gleaming, there isn’t much worth recommending. By the time he got around to Coma, The Swarm and Hanky Panky, Widmark smelled the decay and with the exception of a few scattered roles, pretty much abandoned acting after Against All Odds (1984).
He remained married to the woman he met while taking drama classes at Lake Forest College. When he wasn’t working, he and his wife playwright Jean Hazelwood lived a life of quiet seclusion alternating between a horse ranch in Hidden Valley, California and a farm in Connecticut. After 55 years together, their love story ended in 1997 with Ms. Hazelwood’s death. They had one child, a daughter named Ann who became the wife of baseball immortal Sandy Koufax.
With Widmark gone, that leaves only one of film noir’s top five male icons (Robert Mitchum, Robert Ryan, Lee Marvin, Kirk Douglas and Widmark) still alive. It wouldn’t hurt so bad if there were other around capable of filling their shoes. Who am I kidding? No one will ever fill Richard Widmark’s shoes.
Tags: Actor, Hollywood, Movie Photos, Obituary, Richard Widmark, Sam Fuller, Tommy Udo, Video, Whats My LineFiled Under Obituaries
Oliver Stone’s George Bush biopic “W” set to begin shooting
March 27th, 2008 by Scott Marks
W and a couple of ‘fluffers’
Let’s hope that Oliver Stone’s take on George W. Bush is half as entertaining as his previous presidential vivisection, Nixon.
With Josh Brolin already inked to star as our lunk-headed Commander in Chief, Elizabeth Banks today signed on to play Laura in Stone’s latest presidential biopic, W. Too bad Robert Ryan didn’t live to play Bush.
Stanley Weiser, who co-wrote Wall Street with Stone, penned the script and principle photography should commence in late April in Shreveport, La.
Can’t wait for “Taft!”
Tags: Biography, Biopic, Elizabeth Banks, George Bush, George W. Bush, Laura Bush, Movie, Oliver Stone, WFiled Under News
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