CHICAS PRODUCTIONS

Venezuela has the largest proven oil reserves in the world. It was once so rich that Concorde used to fly from Caracas to Paris. But in the last three years its economy has collapsed. Hunger has gripped the nation for years. Now, it’s killing people and animals that are dying of starvation. The Venezuelan government knows, but won’t admit it!!! Four in five Venezuelans live in poverty. People queue for hours to buy food. Much of the time they go without. People are also dying from a lack of medicines. Inflation is at 82,766% and there are warnings it could exceed one million per cent by the end of this year. Venezuelans are trying to get out. The UN says 2.3 million people have fled the country - 7% of the population.

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Prosecutors Say Telemarketers Duped Old Folks Into Investing $2

Federal prosecutors have indicted 18 individuals accused of conducting a boiler-room telemarketing operation that allegedly took $25 million from the elderly.

The indie film realm has been subject to allegations of duping investors in the past, but perhaps never like this. According to Assistant United States Attorney Stephen Cazares, the alleged fraud took place in southern California and Florida.

Between 100 and 200 telephone operators cold-called old folks and induced them to put up money for films. The investors were promised returns "up to 1000 percent," as well as film credits. They were allegedly shown "shiny, glossy marketing materials" touting revenue already earned from product placement deals.

Some of the money went to Cinamour Entertainment, which created several films, including From Mexico With Love and Red Water: 2012. Investments were also solicited for Q Media Assets for a pair of films, Way of the Dolphin and Eye of the Dolphin.

However, it is charged that telemarketers falsely promised that 93% of the money raised would go into production and promotion, but that more than a third of the money ended up in the pockets of the telemarketers. Cazares says the "heart of the case was the failure to disclose commissions or the true use of the money."

Law enforcement have already arrested 11 individuals from the operation, including Daniel Toll, the president of Cinamour.

Prosecutors also say they have obtained a guilty plea from a former CIA agent who headed Q Media over charges of conspiracy, mail fraud and tax charges.

Some of the individuals who have been charged with crimes are accused of encouraging investors to liquidate individual retirement accounts. These defendants are now facing trials for conspiracy, wire fraud, and money laundering.

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In order to avoid all the SCAMS, we decide not to publish all the info of the recruter in the job postings. You'll find the Daily Password in our Monthly Newsletter. You can Subscribe to our Newsletter here Thanks. A. www.chicas-productions.com
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18 charged in indie film investment scam

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Eighteen people from Southern California and Florida are facing federal charges in an alleged telemarketing scam that solicited more than $25 million for independent films.

According to two indictments filed Wednesday in Los Angeles federal court, the defendants lied to investors nationwide and falsely promised 1,000 percent returns.

One indictment says Cinamour Entertainment LLC took about $15 million from about 450 victims to promote "From Mexico with Love", which cost $5 million to make and earned only half a million at the box office.

The other indictment alleges telemarketers for Q Media Assets LLC fraudulently raised about $9 million for a film called "Eye of the Dolphin" and a sequel. The film made about $70,000 and the sequel went straight to video.

The charges include conspiracy, mail and wire fraud

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Great blog: The Points Guy : how to earn points for reward travel

The Points Guy is a blog written by a man who is committed and obsessed with showing readers how to earn points for reward travel, free hotel stays and more. Then when you have the points he helps you cash them in and find the best deal reward travel deals and tricks and tips to navigate reward travel booking sites. He recently quit his day job to focus on his Points Guy endeavor full time, so I can only imagine that the content will be better than ever going forward. I highly recommend that you peruse on over to the Points Guy and start learning about reward travel. You could be taking your next vacation using reward miles/points!

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LACMA presents a retrospective of Tim Burton's artwork and film

By Rob Lowman, Staff Writer
Posted: 06/05/2011 12:49:17 PM PDT
Updated: 06/05/2011 12:57:40 PM PDT

By the time Tim Burton turned 10 in 1968, everybody in America was familiar with the phrase "beautiful downtown Burbank." It had been coined by Gary Owens, who used it on the hit series "Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In." The town fathers had even found it so catchy that they adopted it and trademarked it.

For the young future filmmaker, Burbank was not so sunny - or, more precisely, the suburban town did not inspire the sunniest of imagination in him. Accompanying the introduction to the coffee-table book "The Art of Tim Burton" (Steeles Publishing), there is a drawing called "Self-Portrait, 1990." Though by then the director was in his 30s, the black-and-white sketch shows a roundish-headed figure with unruly hair with the words "Boy From the Burbank Lagoon."

In the introduction, Leah Gallo, a writer and photographer who worked with the director on "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street," tells the familiar story of Burton, who "never felt he belonged in the Southern California suburbia where he was raised. He identified with Universal film monsters more than the people around him."

As we well know, Burton channeled his sense of being an outsider into his creative sensibilities and became one of Hollywood's biggest directors. Now the Los Angeles County Museum of Art is presenting a major retrospective of his art. Originally curated by New York City's Museum of Modern Art, the exhibition revolves around the theme of Burbank. It includes

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more than 700 drawings, paintings, photographs, film and video works, storyboards, puppets, concept artworks, maquettes, costumes and cinematic ephemera, including art from a number of unrealized and little-known personal projects.
"About Burbank," says Britt Salvesen, who organized the LACMA exhibit, "I think (Burton's art) has always really honed in on the contrast between the blue skies and the trees and the perfect green lawns and the darkness within.... Finding that dark underside is crucial to his art, and I think that is part of what people identify with."

While the first part of the exhibition is called "Surviving Burbank 1977-1984," it was the city itself that helped give Burton a start. In ninth grade, he won a city contest to create an anti-littering poster, and in high school he placed third in a fire-prevention poster contest. With the encouragement of an art teacher, Burton then began to develop his own style.

"Tim would be the first to tell you that he wasn't haunting LACMA in those years," says Salvesen, "but later came to know a lot more about art history when he studied at CalArts. I think early on his influence was more pop culture."

In that sense, Burton's early drawing style exhibits traces of Mad magazine and Dr. Seuss (Theodor Geisel). At 17, he submitted a children's book to Walt Disney Productions called "The Giant Zlig," about the adventures of gentle monsters. It was turned down for being too similar to Seuss. Later you can see traces of illustrators and cartoonists like Edward Gorey, Ralph Steadman and Edward Sorel. There are also hints of gothic Victorian and Mexican dia de los muertos art as well as German Expressionism.

After graduating from high school, Burton went on to the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, where some of his classmates included directors John Lasseter, Brad Bird, John Musker and Henry Selick. After his third year there, he got a job as an animator at Disney, which was impressed with his 11/2-minute short "Stalk of the Celery Monster." Like Seuss, Burton is fond of wordplay. A number of Burton's short films are being shown on flat screens throughout the exhibition, including "Vincent" from 1982 (about a boy who wanted to grow up to be like the actor Vincent Price, who actually narrated it) and "Frankenweenie" (which combined Burton's love for dogs and "Frankenstein").

He worked at Disney for four years, but it was never a good fit. But Paul Reubens was looking for someone to direct "Pee-wee's Big Adventure" and chose Burton after seeing "Frankenweenie."

Burton's career quickly took off. He made "Beetlejuice," "Batman" and "Edward Scissorhands" in a row, and soon critics were using the term "Burtonesque."

You get that as you enter the "Tim Burton" exhibition through a toothy white character with branches for hair. The three-dimensional rendering is based on an unrealized project of Burton's called "Trick or Treat." Toothy creatures populate many of the works. You can draw your own psychological conclusion as to what that represents. What many of the works have in common involves transformation. While a creature in a painting or drawing begins as one thing, it may mutate into another, often something quite sinister.

What's fun, as Salvesen notes, is connecting the dots between an early drawing and a movie that might be made 15 years later. Seeds of, say, "Mars Attacks" can be seen in youthful works as well as later paintings. Films were always an influence, and one of the early documents is a list of some of Burton's favorite horror flicks as a teen. As part of the exhibition, LACMA is screening a retrospective of Burton's own films as well as a series of horror films and creature features that the director endorsed.

Much of the work in the exhibition - perhaps all of it ultimately - is related to his filmmaking. Outside the museum is an original topiary from "Edward Scissorhands," while inside is the costume worn by Johnny Depp as the character. There is also a model of the cookie-making robot, a hand created by Stan Winston Studios and sketches Burton made for the film.

Salvesen says over the years Burton has been able to do more with less with the sketches for his movies.

"The drawings in his early years were in great detail, probably reflecting the training he was getting at Disney and CalArts. Later, as he came to form this incredible team of collaborators that he works with film after film - the fabricators and costume designers - he is able to communicate to them with much more minimal suggestions."

The exhibition, which traveled to London and Toronto from New York before arriving in L.A., has not gone over well with some art critics, who see it mostly as movie memorabilia. (Indeed, Bonhams & Butterfields is coincidentally auctioning off props, drawings and storyboards from Burton's "The Nightmare Before Christmas" on June 26. Items may be seen on the auction house website.)

Some of the works are manufactured by others, although to Burton's specifications, like "Carousel," a suspended flying-saucer object illuminated by black lights and accompanied by music of longtime Burton collaborator Danny Elfman. And while there are masks and the Penguin's black-wicker pram from "Batman," still most of it is from Burton's hand.

While a painting like "Blue Girl with Wine," showing a woman with bull's-eye breasts, or the objects "Brains With Coiled Feelers" or "Blue Baby With Nails" (both self-explanatory) are amusing, and the large-scale Polaroids like "Blue Girl With a Skull" are striking, often it is smaller items or letters that catch one's eye in the exhibition.

The filmmaker, who is working on a full-length version of "Frankenweenie" and a feature remake of the old TV vampire soap "Dark Shadows" with Depp (who else?), visited LACMA a couple of times as the show was being installed and made some decisions about certain works that were aesthetically important to him.

"That was all really useful for us," says Salvesen. "We wanted to reflect his very unique visual style. It wasn't my intention to make this a uniform museum exhibition. I wanted it to be his world."

Burton did visit the exhibition over the Memorial Day weekend, prompting hundreds of fans to show up at the museum. Many of them dressed in costumes like the bizarre characters of his films and waited in line to meet him and have him sign his book. The filmmaker is expected to return sometime in October, but no date has been set.

Of course, Burton has escaped Burbank. The filmmaker now lives in London with his companion, Helena Bonham Carter, and their two children. The pair famously keep homes next door to each other with a connecting room. And while he may live in England, no doubt the dark musings he had growing up in Burbank are etched forever in his mind. So in one way, what is on display at LACMA can be seen as a triumph of the filmmaker's imagination, rather than of his skills as an animator or painter.

"I think he has a certain nihilism at his core, but it's so counterbalanced by this drive to create," says Salvesen. "I find that interesting about so many artists - and Burton is one of them - that despite a pessimism or apprehension about the human condition they still always create something new in the world."

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Latin America Emerges as Biggest Buyer of Hollywood TV Series, Movies at L.A...

The region has become a growth market thanks to robust economies in key territories and distribution technology that has created new ways to reach consumers.

The largest group of buyers at the recent L.A. Screenings wasn't from Europe or Asia. It was the contingent from the two dozen countries in Latin America and the Caribbean that have emerged as a growth market for Hollywood series and movies thanks to robust economies in key territories, especially Brazil, and distribution technology that has created new paths to reach consumers from Mexico to Argentina.

"Latin America has risen in importance recently because there are so many windows you can sell simultaneously," said Gary Marenzi, president, worldwide television at MGM. "The pay television business is booming, and we have seen our partners down there grow in subscribers and build new channels and new businesses. Basic cable and broadcast are as strong as ever and the S-VOD business is starting to grow."

Unlike other parts of the world, Hollywood's most important customers are not the big local television stations. "The fact is that for most terrestrial television networks in Latin America, our programming is not the must-have and the foundation," said Jeffrey Schlesinger, president of Warner Bros. International Television. "It's much more telenovela-centric kind of broadcasting."

The telenovelas, soap opera-style serial dramas, are made in Latin America, especially in Mexico. Instead, the most voracious customers of American shows and movies are the cable and satellite services, which produce little of their own content.

"Technology has created opportunities in digital media in Latin America," said Peter Iacono, managing director of international at Lionsgate. "The way people consume media is so different than it was a few years back."

It is not just the Americans who have benefited either. "It's any quality content that will perform for them," said Sheila Aguirre, senior vp sales and development, Latin America and Hispanic U.S. at FremantleMedia Enterprises. "We have American series, but we also have British and Australian series. Quite frankly, if you dub them, they all look alike."

Aguirre said Latin America has also grown as a customer because the region was not as hard hit by the 2008-09 recession as Europe, Asia and the U.S. "Latin America was not as affected by the global crisis as many of the other countries," added Aguirre. "They've become more resourceful."
What that means is that they have been through economic, political and social turmoil for years, but at present are, with some exceptions like Venezuela, more economically and politically stable than in past years.

"Certainly the economic environment is much better than it was the last few years," said Armando Nunez, president of CBS Studios International. "The demand for our content remains robust. We were lucky even during the darkest hours of the global financial crisis the demand for American content remained strong."

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Oprah’s Network Goes to the Movies

By GINIA BELLAFANTE
Published: June 1, 2011

Fifteen years ago Oprah Winfrey introduced a book club to her talk-show viewers and thus began providing the publishing industry with its own version of an entitlement program. As a subsidizer of literacy, she brought Tolstoy and Faulkner to those not necessarily in possession of the Penguin Classics while primarily shepherding forgettable middlebrow women’s fiction onto the shelves of those who might otherwise have been satisfied with People magazine. Three of her 10 selections in 1997 were children’s books by Bill Cosby, which should in itself sustain the question of her value as a national educator.

Her resources such as they are, Ms. Winfrey now has a network, OWN, and with it she is bringing her considerable imprimatur to the world of documentary film. Each month, under the rubric of a documentary club, OWN broadcasts a feature-length effort that carries the editorial judgment of Oprah Inc. Broadly speaking, something has come to say Oprah if it chronicles the spirit’s triumph over extreme adversity; if it helps, heals, inspires, ennobles, persuades, teaches, uplifts. The films appear to have been chosen according to more exacting, less hokey criteria. With a debut last month, the series continues this summer with three excellent entries: “The Sons of Perdition,” to be shown Thursday, and “Serving Life” and “Life 2.0” later on.

Implicit in the philosophy of Oprah’s Book Club was the idea that all reading is good and good for you. Ms. Winfrey has been both an absolutist and a friend of relativism, a believer in the cultural primacy of the book and yet someone who seems to feel that spending an afternoon in the company of a melodrama like Wally Lamb’s “She’s Come Undone” is just as meaningful as spending it with “Great Expectations.” Some of this Oprah-think is upended by her latest venture, as the films make a strong case not only for the power of other but also for the merits of a clean, emotionally unembellished brand of storytelling.

Beyond the cloyingly therapeutic dimensions of Ms. Winfrey’s tastes there has been a longstanding interest in narratives of dislocation, not merely in the metaphoric psychological sense but also along the more transparent lines of characters trapped in inhospitable worlds. It is this idea that has animated the film club’s initial selections.

The first book chosen for her club in September 1996 was Jacquelyn Mitchard’s “Deep End of the Ocean,” a novel about a kidnapped boy who winds up with an adoptive family living a few blocks from his biological parents. The documentary series began with “Becoming Chaz,” a movie about Chastity Bono’s uncomfortable life as a woman and subsequent sexual reassignment. But the series acquires its voice with “Sons of Perdition,” a chilling film by Jennilyn Merten and Tyler Measom, lapsed Mormons who examine young lives ruined by polygamy. The film is an essential addendum to HBO’s “Big Love,” which dramatized the abuses of fundamentalist Mormonism; it shows us just how accurate a portrayal the series rendered.

“Sons of Perdition” can be vague and confusing at times, but it conveys the tragedies of religious extremism with none of the hysteria that too often attends these kinds of projects. The film focuses on three teenage boys who leave a large polygamous community in Colorado City on the Utah-Arizona border run by the notorious Warren S. Jeffs. It shows how ill equipped the exiles are to make a transition to the mainstream. Moved to group housing with other young apostates who had succumbed to drugs and alcohol, the boys are uneducated and unmoored. In talking about the Holocaust, one confuses Bill Clinton with Hitler. They have trouble reading. A young woman confesses that she does not know the capital of the United States.

How this might have come to pass is evident in the frightening, whispery-toned recordings of preaching by Mr. Jeffs supplied here. Mr. Jeffs, who faces charges of bigamy and sexual assault in Texas, allows his followers virtually no consumption of information and entertainment. Warning his constituents that modern moviemakers are the “filthiest” people on earth, he condemns Walt Disney and the Care Bears as dangerous propagators of falsehood.

The next film in OWN’s series, “Serving Life,” is as quietly evocative of the subculture it explores, in this instance a prison hospice program at a maximum-security Louisiana penitentiary in which inmates care for the dying. The prisoners involved are selected in large part according to their fitness for withstanding the intensity. The camera turns to the most gruesome aspects of the work and demonstrates how the most broken lives can find meaning in quotidian displays of compassion.

“Life 2.0” is not a sequel but rather a look at the experiences of disparate people who have lost themselves to the virtual community Second Life, where participants assume alternate identities and conduct romantic relationships, businesses, parties and so on. The film maintains a lack of philosophical predictability even as it conveys the inherent weirdness of Second Life. Just when you think it is holding up as an example of our perilously disconnected civilization a grown man who stays up all night representing himself as an 11-year old girl, a moving story unfolds around him, one that will make you less inclined to curse the tyranny of technology if you’d be so inclined.

An obvious question surrounding the documentary club is whether it can produce an Oprah effect, the term used to describe the windfall Ms. Winfrey’s book club offered authors. Cable television is already a generous benefactor of the documentary genre, making it easy to consume worthy, journalistic cinema any night of the week. More to the point, viewers won’t have any need to buy documentaries they’ll be seeing on OWN for the cost of their cable subscriptions. All Ms. Winfrey can offer is the keenness of her filter — so far, so good.

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Historic Change as Women Directors Leave Mark at Cannes...

Historic Change as Women Directors Leave Mark at Cannes

It's a cornucopia of female directing talent at the Cannes Film Festival 2011 after a year in which protests were loud over the fact that women were entirely absent from the competition.

This year marks an historic change: no fewer than four women directors are screening films in the competition this year -- a record, according to festival organizers -- and many more are competing in other categories.

It's hard to say if the festival reacted to last year's protest or if last year was a dry spell in a changed era of equality. Certainly it can't hurt that Kathryn Bigelow won the Oscar in 2010, breaking that particular glass ceiling.

Included in the main competition this year are:

* Britain's Lynne Ramsay, who directed "We Need to Talk About Kevin," which debuted on Thursday; it is a dark vision of American parenthood in which Tilda Swinton plays a mother riven with pain and guilt over her teenage son's violent actions. (It does not yet have U.S. distribution.)

* Australia's Julia Leigh (mentored by Jane Campion) brought "Sleeping Beauty' to the festival -- which Sasha Stone on TheWrap called "a wretched, stifling" fairy tale [1]– about beautiful women hired to be put to sleep by men and sexually used while unconscious.

See also: Cannes: 'Sleeping Beauty' Premieres, Tilda Swinton Turns Heads (Slideshow) [2]

* "Polisse" is an ambitious, multi-character police story by the French filmmaker who goes by the single name of Maiwenn (pictured, right). The film is set in the juvenile protection unit and chronicles the daily grind for cops dealing with child molesters, underage pickpockets and abusive parents. Maiwenn co-wrote and directed the film -- spending time immersed in a police unit to learn the subject -- in addition to playing a photographer in the story.

* "Hanezu" by Japanese filmmaker Naomi Kawase is a study of comparing the tradition of valuing the passage of time. Kawase wrote, directed, photographed and edited the film.

And these are far from the only films by women in the festival. "And Now Where Are We Going?" (`Et Maintenant On Va Ou") by Nadine Labaki is about a group of Lebanese women who try to ease religious tensions between Christians and Muslims in their village.

Jodie Foster's "The Beaver" is screening out of competition, "The Big Fix" by Rebecca and Josh Tickell is part of the festival as is "Return," by first-time filmmaker Liza Johnson, about a woman soldier (Linda Cardellini) returning to small-town life in Ohio and her husband (played by Michael Shannon).

"I was interested in doing a story set in a town like the one I came from," said Johnson, in an interview. "It seemed interesting, important, and under-told. The story that gets told most is expulsive – about men's rage. But the intimate ways in which people across a new gap is not often told." (See video)

"The Slut," screening in the Director's Fortnight section, is Israeli filmmaker Hagar Ben-Asher's poetic take on promiscuity. She wrote, directed and stars in the film as a woman living on an agricultural commune who services the men of the community as she raises chickens, and two daughters. The film has very little dialogue, but conveys emotion and the complexity of relations that sex engenders.

Whether women directors add a different dimension to the panorama of filmmaking is a matter of debate (I believe they do – more intimate stories, more stories that are

interested in and understand female characters).

I asked Maiwenn -- with striking looks and a mane of brown hair -- about the number of women directors this year, and she took offense at the notion that it was a reaction to last year's absence. (Which yielded an online petition [3]that raised 1,000 signatures in protest.)

Festival director "Thierry Fremaux and the committee love cinema and women enough to judge if films have their place in Cannes, directed by men or women," she said combatively at Friday's press conference. "It would be deplorable to create a quota of women to fill. I'm sure my film was taken it's because it's good not because I'm a woman.

But at the same time, Maiwenn noted that directing "is a masculine profession."

"It's very hard on the set," she conceded. "It's a masculine profession, about taking things in charge. That's the difficulty. And we are up against misogynistic financiers."

Johnson could connect with that sentiment. She finally found financing from Fork Films, a company run by Abigail Disney, a filmmaker and philanthropist interested in both peace-related and women's issues (bullseye!).

But that was before Johnson heard a lot of `Nos.' "I've had people say, `We're already doing a film with a woman this year,'" as a reason to turn her down, Johnson recalled.

There's still work to do.

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Creative Scotland Investing $1 Million Into Initiatives to Boost Scottish Film..

Among the four initiatives is Scottish production banner Sigma Films.

Scottish government backed agency Creative Scotland is pumping £1 million ($1.6 million) into a quartet of initiatives in an attempt to boost Scottish cultural content, develop audiences and bring fame and fortune to Scottish film companies.

Among the four initiatives is Scottish production banner Sigma Films.
It secures a quarter of the cash to help set up its distribution arm Sigma Releasing, to co-release its titles with other distributors and contribute to the p&a costs. An example would be the company's collaboration with Icon for the rollout of You Instead, starring Luke Treadaway.
Also benefiting from Creative Scotland largesse to the tune of £500,000 ($810,000) is a co-venture with the existing Aegis Fund and Prescience, named the MacKendrick Fund. It will offer debt and equity finance to local and international movie projects with Scottish elements or those to be shot in Scotland or post-produced there.

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Fanhattan Launches iPad App to Aggregate Movies, TV Shows From Netflix, Hulu Plus

"The current landscape for digital entertainment is overflowing with content, but it can be a confusing landscape for consumers to navigate," says CEO Gilles BianRosa.

NEW YORK - Amid ever-increasing online video services and evolving release windows, entertainment discovery service Fanhattan wants to help consumers find which film and TV content is available, where and in what form - from rental to purchase and subscription, for download, in streaming form, in theatres or on DVD.
To that end, Fanhattan, on Wednesday launched a free iPad app that brings together movie and TV show content from top digital media services, namely Netflix, Hulu Plus and Apple's iTunes, as well as the ABC Player. The latter comes into play when a Fanhattan user, for example, chooses to play ABC hit show Modern Family through it.

The company plans to add more digital services to its lineup of partners throughout the year and also expects to launch an Android app down the line. Among possible partners mentioned by executives is HBO Go.

Fanhattan, backed by venture capital firms NEA, Redpoint Ventures, GreyCroft Partners and BV Capital, as well as LA angel investor Jarl Mohn and independent investors, sees itself as the digital age's interactive program guide.

While consumers these days often have to look at various digital media stores and Web sites for available content, Fanhattan wants to help people find what they are looking for.
The app lets users browse content or search by titles, genres, talent, new releases and the like. Once a consumer chooses a title, the service shows which online or offline options a user has to watch - from a movie theatre to TV or a DVD purchase all the way to renting a series or using an existing digital media subscription, or even starting one. After all, if content is available via a service that the consumer doesn't currently subscribe to, he or she can sign up with Fanhattan's help.

Users can also easily access content featuring the same actors, reviews, ratings, trailers, related YouTube videos and basic info on talent, as well as buy fan gear from Amazon, movie tickets from Fandango or access soundtracks via iTunes.

Through a simple user interface, it also hopes to encourage exploration and discovery.
The company, which first outlined its technology and vision late last year, but didn't have any partners yet, will showcase its app later in the day at the D: All Things Digital conference.
"The current landscape for digital entertainment is overflowing with content, but it can be a confusing landscape for consumers to navigate," said Fanhattan CEO Gilles BianRosa. "Fanhattan brings the world of TV and movies into one rich platform that gives consumers a direct line into watching what they want without having to hunt and poke through a variety of services, prices and licensing rules."

BianRosa said the app will add more transparency to the windows and licensing arrangements of entertainment firms, which often confuse consumers. As a result, Hollywood and its partners will benefit from more discovery and easier access, he argued.

While it currently partners directly with digital distributors, which have licensing deals with entertainment firms, Fanhattan has also started reaching out to studios and pay TV operators.
"We are exploring ways to work with the studios directly, especially around marketing opportunities," such as related merchandise and other marketing assets, said BianRosa. Here, Fanhattan is pitching itself as a partner that can offer provides evergreen pages for movies and shows, allowing for further monetization.

And for pay TV companies, Fanhattan could serve as an interface to discover and access content.
Since its app is free, Fanhattan is looking to get revenue from paid-for premium service offers down the line and referral fees from partners - for example, for enabling a consumer to do a rental or other transaction or become a subscriber.

The company also plans to bring its service to connected TVs and various streaming devices in the future.

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Shakira mulls possibility of Arabic-language record

by Matt Glazebrook, Posted May 31, 2011

While plenty of her pop contemporaries struggle to express themselves coherently in one language, Shakira has long composed her idiosyncratic pop ditties in both her native Spanish and her English second tongue. Now she's just showing off, preparing to expand her songwriting fluency to another element of her expansive cultural make-up.

Though she was born and raised in Colombia, Shakira's father is an American of Lebanese descent and she credits her Arabic background for the Middle Eastern influence in her tunes and her propensity for belly-dancing on stage. According to Contactmusic, she is considering brushing up on her already-impressive language skills to make a more complete tribute to her heritage.

"It would be a challenge to do an album in Arabic, but I would first have to learn Arabic," she explains. "I am completely open to that experience -- at some point I would love that to happen in my life." At the moment, Shakira's Arabic extends as far as saying "ateeni boosa" which apparently translates as "can I have a kiss?"

A more tricky proposition is coming up with the Arabic for "lucky that my breasts are small and humble / So you don't confuse them, with mountains".

Shakira played her first concert in Arabic speaking Morocco on Saturday (28.05.11), closing the Mawazine World Rhythms Festival.
The 'Underneath Your Clothes' star has also previously been approached by Bollywood film makers about starring in an Indian production, which would likely see her singing in Hindi.

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NATO warns Canada on early VOD - Entertainment News, Film News, Media - Variety

NATO warns Canada on early VOD

Org enlists support for theatrical experience from Tarantino, Shyamalan, Favreau

By ANDREW STEWART

The National Assn. of Theater Owners took its fight against premium video-on-demand beyond U.S. borders, with NATO prexy and CEO John Fithian urging industryites at exhib confab ShowCanada tostay wary of shrinking theatrical windows.
"Early VOD releases to the home could damage the movie industry in two significant ways," Fithian said to the crowd on Wednesday. "Early releases will reduce movie ticket sales, and will exacerbate movie theft by giving pirates an early pristine copy of movies."

Fithian also called for the participating VOD studios -- Fox, Universal, Sony and Warner Bros. -- to release VOD sales stats: "How can the industry evaluate the studios' test if they continue to hide the facts?" Fithian asked.

Sony's "Just Go With It" was the first title to launch in April via premium VOD 69 days after its theatrical release. The remaining three titles included Warner's "Hall Pass," Fox Searchlight's "Cedar Rapids" and "The Adjustment Bureau," all about 60 days after theatrical release.

Until now, the premium VOD trial has stayed within the U.S., but as international grosses continue to overshadow domestic, studios undoubtedly will look to extend the VOD biz overseas.

After Canada, NATO plans to move to Europe later this month, then in August to Australia, where Fithian will hold meetings with local exhib execs. "We hope that this early VOD experiment begins and ends in the U.S.," Fithian said. "But if not, we want exhibitors everywhere to be prepared."

So far, NATO has earned support from such high-profile filmmakers as James Cameron, Michael Bay, Kathryn Bigelow and Guillermo del Toro. The org announced at the confab it has also enlisted backing from Christopher Nolan, Jon Favreau, M. Night Shyamalan, Quentin Tarantino and Mark Boal.

ShowCanada runs through June 2 in Ottawa.

Contact Andrew Stewart at andrew.stewart@variety.com

Thanks Variety!
NATO warns Canada on early VOD - Entertainment News, Film News, Media - Variety

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The Bilingual Advantage

By CLAUDIA DREIFUS
Published: May 30, 2011

A cognitive neuroscientist, Ellen Bialystok has spent almost 40 years learning about how bilingualism sharpens the mind. Her good news: Among other benefits, the regular use of two languages appears to delay the onset of Alzheimer’s disease symptoms. Dr. Bialystok, 62, a distinguished research professor of psychology at York University in Toronto, was awarded a $100,000 Killam Prize last year for her contributions to social science. We spoke for two hours in a Washington hotel room in February and again, more recently, by telephone. An edited version of the two conversations follows.

Q. How did you begin studying bilingualism?

A. You know, I didn’t start trying to find out whether bilingualism was bad or good. I did my doctorate in psychology: on how children acquire language. When I finished graduate school, in 1976, there was a job shortage in Canada for Ph.D.’s. The only position I found was with a research project studying second language acquisition in school children. It wasn’t my area. But it was close enough.

As a psychologist, I brought neuroscience questions to the study, like “How does the acquisition of a second language change thought?” It was these types of questions that naturally led to the bilingualism research. The way research works is, it takes you down a road. You then follow that road.

Q. So what exactly did you find on this unexpected road?

A. As we did our research, you could see there was a big difference in the way monolingual and bilingual children processed language. We found that if you gave 5- and 6-year-olds language problems to solve, monolingual and bilingual children knew, pretty much, the same amount of language.

But on one question, there was a difference. We asked all the children if a certain illogical sentence was grammatically correct: “Apples grow on noses.” The monolingual children couldn’t answer. They’d say, “That’s silly” and they’d stall. But the bilingual children would say, in their own words, “It’s silly, but it’s grammatically correct.” The bilinguals, we found, manifested a cognitive system with the ability to attend to important information and ignore the less important.

Q. How does this work — do you understand it?

A. Yes. There’s a system in your brain, the executive control system. It’s a general manager. Its job is to keep you focused on what is relevant, while ignoring distractions. It’s what makes it possible for you to hold two different things in your mind at one time and switch between them.

If you have two languages and you use them regularly, the way the brain’s networks work is that every time you speak, both languages pop up and the executive control system has to sort through everything and attend to what’s relevant in the moment. Therefore the bilinguals use that system more, and it’s that regular use that makes that system more efficient.

Q. One of your most startling recent findings is that bilingualism helps forestall the symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease. How did you come to learn this?

A. We did two kinds of studies. In the first, published in 2004, we found that normally aging bilinguals had better cognitive functioning than normally aging monolinguals. Bilingual older adults performed better than monolingual older adults on executive control tasks. That was very impressive because it didn’t have to be that way. It could have turned out that everybody just lost function equally as they got older.

That evidence made us look at people who didn’t have normal cognitive function. In our next studies , we looked at the medical records of 400 Alzheimer’s patients. On average, the bilinguals showed Alzheimer’s symptoms five or six years later than those who spoke only one language. This didn’t mean that the bilinguals didn’t have Alzheimer’s. It meant that as the disease took root in their brains, they were able to continue functioning at a higher level. They could cope with the disease for longer.

Q. So high school French is useful for something other than ordering a special meal in a restaurant?

A. Sorry, no. You have to use both languages all the time. You won’t get the bilingual benefit from occasional use.

Q. One would think bilingualism might help with multitasking — does it?

A. Yes, multitasking is one of the things the executive control system handles. We wondered, “Are bilinguals better at multitasking?” So we put monolinguals and bilinguals into a driving simulator. Through headphones, we gave them extra tasks to do — as if they were driving and talking on cellphones. We then measured how much worse their driving got. Now, everybody’s driving got worse. But the bilinguals, their driving didn’t drop as much. Because adding on another task while trying to concentrate on a driving problem, that’s what bilingualism gives you — though I wouldn’t advise doing this.

Q. Has the development of new neuroimaging technologies changed your work?

A. Tremendously. It used to be that we could only see what parts of the brain lit up when our subjects performed different tasks. Now, with the new technologies, we can see how all the brain structures work in accord with each other.

In terms of monolinguals and bilinguals, the big thing that we have found is that the connections are different. So we have monolinguals solving a problem, and they use X systems, but when bilinguals solve the same problem, they use others. One of the things we’ve seen is that on certain kinds of even nonverbal tests, bilingual people are faster. Why? Well, when we look in their brains through neuroimaging, it appears like they’re using a different kind of a network that might include language centers to solve a completely nonverbal problem. Their whole brain appears to rewire because of bilingualism.

Q. Bilingualism used to be considered a negative thing — at least in the United States. Is it still?

A. Until about the 1960s, the conventional wisdom was that bilingualism was a disadvantage. Some of this was xenophobia. Thanks to science, we now know that the opposite is true.

Q. Many immigrants choose not to teach their children their native language. Is this a good thing?

A. I’m asked about this all the time. People e-mail me and say, “I’m getting married to someone from another culture, what should we do with the children?” I always say, “You’re sitting on a potential gift.”

There are two major reasons people should pass their heritage language onto children. First, it connects children to their ancestors. The second is my research: Bilingualism is good for you. It makes brains stronger. It is brain exercise.

Q. Are you bilingual?

A. Well, I have fully bilingual grandchildren because my daughter married a Frenchman. When my daughter announced her engagement to her French boyfriend, we were a little surprised. It’s always astonishing when your child announces she’s getting married. She said, “But Mom, it’ll be fine, our children will be bilingual!”

Thank you The NY Times!

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NATO warns Canada on early VOD - Entertainment News, Film News, Media - Variety

The Bilingual Advantage