Hot chocolate is good

[cleolinda]

Garden variety linkspam:

And Then They Go Bombing... Again: Basque extremists warn of new attacks.

Scorpion stings Vermont man on airplane.

Apple renames itself, unveils iPhone.

Sirius pays Howard Stern $83 mln stock bonus.

Golden Tomatoes for 'Casino' and 'Queen.'

'Pirates,' Depp lead People's Awards.

Keith Richards to be in next 'Pirates of the Caribbean' film. I mean, yes, we knew this, to the point where I linked to an actual on-set picture a while back, but the producers are finally confirming it officially. Note: Accompanying picture may scare small children.

Director's Guild nominations: Bill Condon, Dreamgirls; Jonathan Dayton, Valerie Faris, Little Miss Sunshine (!!!); Stephen Frears, The Queen; Alejandro González Iñárritu [whose name I am still struggling to spell and pronounce, but I think I have finally succeeded], Babel; Martin Scorsese, The Departed. I think there's still some room for change, but I would not be surprised at this point if these were the Best Picture Nominees. That's how far Little Miss Sunshine has come.

Also, from Oscarwatch as well, the Best Makeup finalists and the For Your Consideration gallery.

Alan Cumming, boyfriend make it official.

Brit tops Blackwell worst dresssed list.

O'Reilly, Colbert to trade appearances. January 18, be there or be square.

M. Night Shyamalan to do Avatar: The Last Airbender movie, not to be confused with James Cameron's long-awaited but unrelated Avatar project, in which I bought way too much play stock at the HSX back in the day.

Clive Owen, the new face of Lancome's men's line. I'll always think of Juliette Binoche as the face of Lancome proper; it's always her ads that I remember. However, while Owen has many, many good qualities, good skin is not one of them, which leads me to believe that this was a humanitarian intervention on Lancome's part. They did it for us, y'all.

Pachabel's Canon in D on an electric guitar.

Stuff You Need to Hear About linkspam:

lenamoster: "Since you link to a lot of information that people wouldn't get otherwise, I thought you might like to link to this, about an 18-ear-old Iranian girl sentenced to death for murder - she was defending herself and her niece from rapists. Clicking the link takes you to a more thorough description of what's going on, as well as another link to a petition calling for a retrial."

Big name comics writers going after Rick Olney, famous for never paying anyone, ever. "There's a guy called Ric(k)(?) Olney. He runs conventions and owns something called Tightlip Entertainment, a comic book company. He has a bad habit of not paying people. Ever. People in the comics industry have been comparing notes and as best as anyone can tell, nobody who did any work for him has ever received what they were owed. So Gail Simone, who went to one of his conventions and was never fully reimbursed, starts a thread on her message board on Comic Book Resources about Olney's various deceptions, and people who have been cheated or encountered the Rickster share their experiences. He's apparently a serial liar and prone to flameouts on message boards and in public. And Gail's thread proves no exception, as 'orcafresh' shows up and proceeds to threaten talent for breaking imaginary NDAs, spew insults and vitriol and get dogpiled by an all-star cast of comic book professionals. Eventually Gail has to ban him - the first time she's banned anyone from her board EVER - just to keep him from going back and deleting all his posts." Which they want to keep for a potential lawsuit.

Speaking of not paying anyone, ever: Granada Media is refusing, and has been refusing, to pay Peter S. Beagle any of the profits from the Last Unicorn cartoon on the grounds that it didn't make a profit. This is a common bit of dickery in the movie business, to the point where I believe the current New Line/Peter Jackson feud is because New Line employing similar creative accounting re: Fellowship of the Ring. (And it's funny that I should mention that, because A Call to Action in Support of Peter S. Beagle mentions that Saul Zaentz made something like $200 million from his rights to the Jackson movies, and part of this money could be used, but is not being used, to pay Beagle what Zaentz owes him for writing the screenplay for Ralph Bakshi's Lord of the Rings.) The problem here is that Beagle doesn't have the money--or indeed, any money at all--to sue Granada for what he's owed on The Last Unicorn (or, in fact, to sue Zaentz for the Bakshi script). I am pretty sure that we are talking about two separate money problems here, but even if I'm explaining it wrong, the fact remains that Peter S. Beagle has been deeply screwed over. I know I mentioned the new Last Unicorn DVD the other day, but I finally stopped and asked judith_s what exactly the whole thing was about, and this is what came out. So, to repeat what I quoted Call to Action saying the other day about the DVD: "On February 6, 2007, Lionsgate Entertainment is releasing a special 25th Anniversary DVD of THE LAST UNICORN. This new edition is a huge improvement over the old one. It is digitally remastered so it looks great and has 5.1 audio, it is widescreen instead of fullscreen, it has much better packaging, and it comes with special features, including a video interview with Peter. Best of all, Lionsgate has agreed to let us sell copies of the DVD through Conlan Press, and more than half of each sale will go straight to Peter and his projects. If you plan on buying this DVD, please buy it here — because Peter will get nothing from copies sold through any other outlet." Please pass this information on, particularly that last link/quote, if you know any fans of Beagle or the cartoon.

Comments

[bigeyedrabbit.livejournal.com]

WOW. That dickery on the part of Granada Media just leaves me utterly speechless. And I thought I was getting pretty immune to entertainment-business dickery.

[christwise.livejournal.com]

Oh, we talked about that in my film industry class. How they can make it look like Titanic didn't make a profit and how Leonardo DiCaprio didn't see any back-end of Catch me if you Can for years. Seriously, studio accountants are the most creative people in Hollywood.

[sucrelefey.livejournal.com]

Given his age and some of his habits *cough* smoking *cough* Clive's skin could look a lot worse that it is. But he better start using the sample packs they give him.

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I think the actual New Line/Jackson dispute is that New Line is claiming FOTR didn't make any profit at all, but I was hesitant to say that because I thought surely I must be mistaken--surely anyone with the sense God gave a breath mint would laugh that one out of the courtroom. But that one's just the most brazen case of creative accounting I've heard of--at least with Titanic, the costs soared so high (filming on water will do that) that at least you could kind of, maybe, believe for a moment that it didn't make a profit. Maybe.

[neveth.livejournal.com]

I cannot even speak of the utter despair and horror the thought of Mr. Shyamalan doing Avatar. It hurts bad enough that it's live action, but he doesn't do wacky, or the kind of light-hearted humor Avatar has! And he's writing it! *screams in great pain and anguish*

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

I'm just saying, he's a very... rugged man. And rugged's okay at forty, but you hit sixty and you get into... well, Keith Richards territory.

[neveth.livejournal.com]

it is so bad I couldn't even finish the first sentance properly! It was supposed to be "I cannot even speak of the utter despair and horror the thought of Mr. Shyamalan doing Avatar brings me."

[christwise.livejournal.com]

Well there's a thousand different costs they could think up that the gross needs to cover: reprints, shipping, producers paying themselves. They actually set some money aside in case, in case!, they want to re-release the film. They do this in advance. That's just the stuff I remember. Also, the money made on the success needs to cover the cost of the failures. I'm pretty sure they can claim without blushing that they're still in the red. I'm not saying it's right but yeah, it happens.

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Yeah, see, most movies, creative accounting at least sounds plausible. It's just that when Titanic makes a billion worldwide, and the three LOTR movies make something like a billion worldwide all together, it starts to look dodgy.

[christwise.livejournal.com]

Oh absolutely. We were told that if we're making a film, to budget ourselves at least a little bit of money because it gets depressing, watching people slowly hack away at any profit.

God, I just got an image of the seagulls from Finding Nemo. Mine? Mine!

[r-a-black.livejournal.com]

Ah, lenamoster's link goes to a 404. :\

[sigma7.livejournal.com]

Okay, fine, blow up a truckload of nuns and smash all the baby seals you want, but you do. Not. Fuck. With. Gail Simone. She's one of the Good People. And deserves to be treated accordingly.

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Fixed!

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Well, she seems to be kicking ass in this case.

[skyblade.livejournal.com]

On that subject, Robert Shaye is basically saying Jackson is for all intents and purposes blacklisted (http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire/index.php?category=3&id=39462). Granted, Jackson kind of made it public first, but Shaye's boldness after a very, very bad year for New Line strikes me as cocky. (Which was why I was never cheering Summer Redstone from the sidelines, and even that's a little different) Nothing feels as hollow as a suit being confrontational on "principle".

[lyricalnights.livejournal.com]

Speaking of Peter S. Beagle and Conlan Press, while folks are buying the new DVD version of The Last Unicorn movie, they could also take a look at the unabridged audio (http://www.conlanpress.com/html/audiobooks.html) of the book, read by Mr. Beagle himself. Right now it's only available by downloadable MPS, but they're supposed to be working on a cd as well and by all accounts it's a very nice production.

[ellaafleck.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I actually, *literally* screamed out loud when I read that he was doing the movie, and then screamed again at the live action. It's going to be so awful.

[bacardibreezer7.livejournal.com]

The case about the Iranian girl made me so sad. Particularly this quote: She reportedly told the court “I wanted to defend myself and my niece. I did not want to kill that boy. At the heat of the moment I did not know what to do because no one came to our help”.

Not only are they wanting to kill her for defending herself, but not one single person came to their aid during the attack.

[sucrelefey.livejournal.com]

Keith is necromancy in action.
Clive's what 42? Eh, smoking damage, LA sun damage, some acne scars, rugged but fixable still.

[plazmah.livejournal.com]

I think my response was "WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA?" :|

[the-wanlorn.livejournal.com]

I'm just letting you know, in case you have issue with it, that I've reposted the last paragraph of your entry, with credit and a link back to the entry, here (http://the-wanlorn.livejournal.com/372844.html) on my journal, since I'm a lazy SOB who can't be arsed to actually write something my self.

If you want me to take it down, let me know, and I will!

[sound-of-bells.livejournal.com]

Yay Little Miss Sunshine!

I was just watching that today and thinking that they should be getting more recognition, they really did an amazing job. *happy*

[callmesyd.livejournal.com]

My response was to die a little on the inside.

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Excellent. I only hope I explained the situation correctly.

[vkitty.livejournal.com]

The guy who invented instant ramen died. (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/09/opinion/09tue3.html?em&ex=1168578000&en=ba41a18dd9b1a5b6&ei=5087%0A)

I don't know about you, but I'm mourning.