Edward Burns on Purple Violets and the death of art films

An article at FirstShowing brought this to my attention. It seems that studios are no longer interested in Ed Burns’ little indie movies (he wrote and directed movies such as The Groomsmen, The Brothers McMullen, and She’s the One) as no distributor has picked up his eighth movie, Purple Violets, made for only $4 million. [...]

IATSE to WGA: “Your leaders are idiots”

Okay, so I embellished the quote a bit, but not by much. If you check out this cleverly-titled article, you’ll see that while individual members of IATSE (the crew members’ union) support the WGA strike, IATSE itself might not. At least not completely.
It seems that the head of IATSE, Tom Short, is not only telling [...]

One of the reasons why the movie industry sucks…

Full article: http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/11/11/business/strike.php?page=1
The gist: The studios may not be lying when they’re telling the writers on strike that they cannot afford another 4 cents per DVD.
Despite bringing in billions of dollars per year, movie studios may in fact be losing money. An independent study was made that basically audits the movie industry and one of [...]

NBC’s The Office all but dead

(btw, this verifies my previous guess that workers on strike cannot be fired…)
Today the Los Angeles Times posted an email from a key grip… sorry, EX-key grip of NBC’s The Office.
“Our show was shut down and we were all laid off this week. I’ve been watching the news since the WGA strike was announced and [...]

NBC bitch-slaps Jay Leno’s show

(yes, I know it’s called “The Tonight Show”… but c’mon, no one ever calls it that)
Interesting bit of news from the only source I need to keep me up on the WGA strike, DeadlineHollywoodDaily It seems that NBC is firing the “non-writing” staff on the show (unless I’m mistaken you can’t fire someone [...]

Where’s Tom Cruise’s accent??

The trailer for Tom Cruise’s upcoming movie Valkyrie, where he plays the man that was supposed to assassinate Adolf Hitler. Only you wouldn’t know it because he’s the only actor in the whole movie without an accent.

Stay up to date on the WGA strike

Nikki Finke (journalist for LA Weekly) has her own website over at DeadlineHollywoodDaily.com and she’s updating daily posts like once an hour with the latest inside info from both sides of the WGA picket line. Not all of it is verified, but good reading nonetheless.

Undeserving Stars: Kermit the Frog and Big Bird

Since I forgot to post an Undeserving Star last week, I’m posting two now. I’ll still be posting a new one this Friday
This Last week’s pick: Kermit the Frog and Big Bird.
Why? It’s bad enough that undeserving people get a star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame, but these two aren’t even people! They’re [...]

It’s 9:00am on the West Coast…

… do you know where YOUR writer is?

Crank

Written & Directed by Mark Neveldine & Brian Taylor (upcoming Game)
Starring Jason Statham, Amy Smart, Efren Ramirez, and Dwight Yoakam
IMDB Plot Summary: Professional assassin Chev Chelios (Statham) learns his rival (Jose Pablo Cantillo) has injected him with a poison that will kill him if his heart rate drops.
Despite the obvious parallel between this movie and [...]