Animated Shorts 611: ASTRO BOY Flies Again!
Director David Bowers has every reason in the world to sound relieved.
After innumerable trials and tribulations his latest project, the CGI feature film version of "Astro Boy," had its world premiere in J
Flowers, slightly trampled, at NY Fashion Week
NEW YORK – Designers at New York Fashion Week had a new tactic to woo back wary customers: flowers.
Those lovely symbols of spring renewal emerged through rain-drizzled gloom on Sunday as Mercedes Benz Fashion Week
Muted florals — seen at Derek Lam, Adam, Cynthia Rowley, BCBG and Cynthis Steffe — were blurred like they had been caught in a downpour. The sense was one of transition: Spring is coming, but not undaunted.
Retailers should be satisfied with the pops of color, something they want to draw customers into stores. Yet the colors aren't so bright they require sunglasses — designers are aware of the gloomy context, too.
DEREK LAM
It was time for Derek Lam to have some fun, so he turned to a bit of retro carnival atmosphere.
His spring collection was a departure for the designer, who is known for sophisticated and elegant clothes. He went so far in his notes to describe them as a little "tawdry," borrowing details from summer fun destinations.
Tawdry, though, seems to be on a sliding scale: For Lam, there still needs to be luxury — and his customer is that woman who prefers glamour to gimmicks. She got what she was looking for in a wheat suede jacket with a leather back, worn with a jade-colored corset that had black strips of boning.
The palette and prints were all over the place — greens and blues, purple and gold, oversized island florals and star prints — the kind of mix you'd see along the boardwalk.
LELA ROSE
The skies cleared and it was like Lela Rose made it happen. Her spring collection was upbeat, wearable and, dare we say it, pretty.
She drew inspiration from the waves, surfers and scuba divers of Venice Beach, Calif., with colors borrowed from daybreak and sunset. There were a few pieces, including a green one-shoulder dress with rows of vertical blue laser-cut fabric, that mimicked the rolling tide.
Rose showed a knack for chic daytime dresses (actress Mariska Hargitay was wearing one in the front row). A sea-glass blue cotton dress with an open neck, drawstring waist and zip front would have been perfect on this Indian summer Sunday in New York.
A few ecru-colored jacquard pieces were a little dressier, but the yellow splash floral pattern on them made them versatile for more casual occasions.
VIVIENNE TAM
The butterfly that had a large part in the new Vivienne Tam spring collection made for a bohemian moment that seems rare these days as the industry seems singularly focused on breaking out of the retail-sales rut.
But Tam's light, delicate touch on the runway is most likely an easy-to-sell look. That probably wasn't an accident: Tam seems to have no problem mixing the art of fashion with the business of consumerism. She opened her show with a brief video commercial for technology company HP. Models carried butterfly-decorated handheld computers like clutch purses.
You know what? They looked good, a seamless fit for the clothes that gave a modern twist to the hippie.
The butterfly prints she used were feminine but not too delicate or corny. They worked best on printed silk jersey dresses and blouses.
CHADO RALPH RUCCI
What's makes a Chado Ralph Rucci black cocktail dress different from the countless other lovely black cocktail dresses presented at New York Fashion Week? It's all in the craftsmanship.
Rucci, the only American to be invited to show Haute Couture in Paris under his own name, is a stickler for details, resulting in fine clothes that need to be seen, felt — and probably even better, worn — to be fully appreciated.
For evening, Rucci's interest in the human body was brought to a handful of artsy prints — prints that would be hard to imagine at a socialite gala. A museum opening party, perhaps?
The black-tie pieces that showed Rucci's fascination with Japanese culture fared better. ("Chado" was added to his company name in 1994 after a tea ceremony.) A black-and-gold kabuki gown with an obi waist and checkerboard shawl and a strapless vanilla-silk gown with elaborate gold-wing arms were the kinds of pieces that make a positive, long-lasting impression.
BENHAZ SARAFPOUR
Behnaz Sarafpour tied up her spring collection with ribbons, bows and a little lace.
The tan georgette ribbon dress shown as a finale made for effortless eveningwear, and above-the-knee pleated dresses with knots of ribbons at one shoulder were perfect for cocktails. But on two lace dresses, hot pink and yellow ribbons looked like afterthoughts — neon prison bars on otherwise very wearable outfits yearning to break free.
A better bet were crepe de chine pleated shorts, with a wide, swingy feel. Also on trend were blue georgette dresses in a wispy feather print that fit nicely with the muted florals seen on other runways.
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Associated Press writer Lisa Tolin contributed to this report.
10 Questions About DC ENTERTAINMENT
While some people will see Wednesday's announcement of the formation of DC Entertainment by Warner Bros. as a copycat follow-up to last week's Disney/Marvel mega-deal, this restructuring appears to have been in the work
More on Newsarama:
Warner Bros. Creates DC ENTERTAINMENT To Maximize DC BrandsDr. Oz leaving Oprah Winfrey for his own talk show
NEW YORK – A young production staffer at "The Dr. Oz Show" wasn't buttering up her boss when she took a bite out of a carrot as he approached in an elevator lobby recently.
Vegetables were on the menu. So were frui
"The Dr. Oz Show," starring the heart surgeon and health evangelist, debuts Sept. 14. It's perhaps the most eagerly anticipated syndicated talk show since another Oprah Winfrey associate, Dr. Phil McGraw, went solo in 2002, said Bill Carroll, a market expert for Katz Television.
Oz has a sleek new studio at New York's 30 Rockefeller Plaza in the same room where Conan O'Brien worked before heading West. Its most fearsome element is the "truth tube," a platform that can display a person's weight, body fat and other health indicators, much like "The Biggest Loser" scale.
His goal is to make health information interesting and entertaining without trivializing it.
"There is no question we can save lives every day if we can motivate people to do what we're talking about," Oz said in a backstage conversation over lunch (salads, of course). "The challenge isn't what to say — because we know that — the challenge is how to say it so people are motivated."
He expects few celebrity guests, and no Winfrey visit is on the schedule. The show will typically open with a health "hot topic" like swine flu or immunization, and will end with audience questions. In between, Oz will try different ways to make health advice personal, recognizing that lectures don't work as well as stories viewers can relate to.
In one pre-taped episode, a woman brings her beer-bellied husband for a surprise "intervention." He listens to Oz describe how an unhealthy lifestyle was likely taking years off his life.
A woman who scrimps on sleep to take care of her family gets on a driving simulator while tired. She's reduced to tears and recognizes how sleeplessness affects more than herself when she "kills" six people, including a family of three, in accidents caused by dulled senses.
Besides controlling what his own staff eats, Oz has been secretly monitoring the food brought in to Jimmy Fallon's studio down the hall. Expect an unflattering public comparison.
"The crew is an experiment for us," Oz said. "If all I offer you is healthy food, you're either going to eat that stuff or you're not going to eat. And most people will eat. After a while, it becomes what you're used to eating. It's a little bit every day that makes a difference."
Oz envisions a "Let's Make a Deal" type game with four contestants to illustrate ways of curing vitamin D deficiency. One contestant opens a box with a "prize" of cod liver oil. Another reveals a picture of the sun, and wins a tropical vacation.
That's the tightrope Oz walks — fall off and he makes the serious seem silly. He's convinced this is the best way for people to remember what they've learned.
Carroll suggested Oz has the personality to make it work. The new show faces competition from "The Doctors," another health hour that premiered to modest success last season, but Carroll said there's room for both.
"The audiences can tell when you are real, and he is real," he said. "He's very likable. He's the person you wish was your doctor."
Oz had a decent enough career before television beckoned. He's a prominent surgeon with expertise is repairing heart valves. (Disclosure: His partner, Dr. Craig Smith, performed a quintuple bypass on this reporter two years ago.) He will continue to perform surgery one day a week.
Yet Oz noticed that he was getting more jazzed up persuading people they didn't need surgery than operating on them.
He landed a show, "Second Opinion," on the Discovery Channel and persuaded Winfrey to appear. "Before Oz went on Oprah, Oprah went on Oz," he said. That opened the door to Winfrey's media kingdom, resulting in 55 appearances on her talk show in five years, and eventually his own show. It's co-produced by Winfrey's Harpo Productions and Sony Pictures Television. He's contractually prohibited from airing in direct competition with her.
Oz likes to point out how real-life versions of Dr. Marcus Welby, the fictional doctor from a hit ABC series in the 1970s, are dying out — the ranks of general practitioners thinned by specialists, and the desire for high-tech solutions profound. The missing human touch is now often supplied by real-life TV doctors like ABC's Tim Johnson and CNN's Sanjay Gupta.
"I found myself going to work and taking care of people who wanted to get better who believed that their only path to salvation was through my scalpel," he said. "I can heal with steel. I know how to do that. But it's very disenfranchising when you realize the true solutions are outside the operating room."
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On the Net:
http://www.doctoroz.com
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EDITOR'S NOTE — David Bauder can be reached at dbauder(at)ap.org
Court: Paris Hilton can pursue Hallmark lawsuit
NEW YORK (Reuters) – The celebrity and heiress Paris Hilton may pursue her lawsuit against Hallmark Cards over its use of her picture and catchphrase "That's hot" on a greeting card, a federal appeals court
Hilton had contended that Hallmark violated her privacy and right of publicity by ripping off a scene from her reality TV show "The Simple Life" on a birthday card captioned "Paris's First Day as a Waitress."
A three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Hallmark's argument that its depiction of the Hilton Hotels heiress was protected speech as a matter of law.
It sent the case back to a lower court, which had turned aside Hilton's claim of trademark infringement but rejected other Hallmark defenses.
Lincoln Bandlow, a lawyer at Lathrop & Gage LLP in Los Angeles representing Hallmark, said "the analysis of the First Amendment defense is incorrect. It will leave a lot of speakers subjected to meritless right of publicity claims."
He said Hallmark will evaluate options including a possible appeal to the full 9th Circuit or the U.S. Supreme Court.
Brent Blakely, a lawyer for Hilton, was not available for comment.
The card showed Hilton's face superimposed on a cartoon of a waitress serving a plate of food to a restaurant customer.
Hilton tells the customer, "Don't touch that, it's hot." The customer asks, "What's hot?" Hilton responds, "That's hot." The inside of the card reads "Have a smokin' hot birthday."
The appeals court rejected Hallmark's argument that the card was sufficiently "transformative" as to deserve automatic protection because the setting was different and the phrase "that's hot" referred to the temperature of a plate of food.
While noting differences from the TV show, including that the cartoon body was of a generic female and not Hilton, Judge Diarmuid O'Scannlain said "the basic setting is the same: we see Paris Hilton, born to privilege, working as a waitress."
He concluded that Hilton "has at least some probability of prevailing on the merits before a trier of fact."
The private equity firm Blackstone Group LP took control of Hilton Hotels Corp in 2007. Hallmark is privately held and based in Kansas City, Missouri.
The case is Hilton v. Hallmark Cards, U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals (Pasadena), No. 08-55443.
(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel; Editing by Gary Hill)
Ballroom show to hit Broadway amid dance popularity
NEW YORK (Reuters) – After performing in more than 30 countries, ballroom dance company "Burn The Floor" debuts on Broadway on Sunday with producers saying the time -- and the timing -- is right.
Reality
"Maybe 10 years ago (ballroom dancing) didn't have much street cred," said Jason Gilkison, who started with "Burn The Floor" as a dancer when it was founded in London in 1999. He is now the company's choreographer and director.
"But now to see your favorite celebrity do it on TV you can go out and learn swing and salsa. All of a sudden everyone seems to be dancing," he said. "When we first started the show 10 years ago it was the blue rinse set and now when we were in Japan last time it was screaming teenagers."
"Burn The Floor" producer and founder Harley Medcalf and Carrie Ann Inaba, also a producer of the Broadway show and a judge on "Dancing with the Stars," both said "the time is right" for a ballroom dancing production on Broadway.
"If you said to someone a couple of years ago 'What's the Paso Doble?' they would have been like 'what?'" said Medcalf, referring to a dance style modeled on a Spanish bullfight. "But now through the reality TV shows everyone is educated and they can see the dimension and the meaning (of dance)."
The program for "Burn The Floor," which will perform an initial three-month run on Broadway, also explains the different styles of dance performed in the show.
"What America and the world is learning when you watch great choreography and great dancers perform great choreography it's just beautiful," said Inaba.
"Dancing with the Stars" grew from the British TV show "Strictly Come Dancing" and the format has been licensed in more than 30 countries, while "So You Think You Can Dance" premiered in the United States in 2005 and local versions have and are being developed in more than 10 other countries.
DANCE NOT LIMITING
At The Ailey Extension, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater program of dance classes for the general public, there has been an increase in students in 2009 of more than 40 percent compared to last year, said director Yvette Campbell.
Every month, more than 2,400 people take classes at the New York City-based group, up to 800 of whom are new students.
Campbell said the program's popularity was in part boosted when Alvin Ailey dancers were guest performers on "So You Think You Can Dance" a year ago.
"Whenever you're sitting on your sofa watching these television shows you think 'I can take a class,'" she said.
"It's back to a time where it's very romantic and very inspiring to dance like that," Campbell said. "We don't dance together anymore, as a culture we don't do partner dancing anymore ... . Now we do kind of a disco thing where everyone dances together on the floor but we don't touch each other."
She said The Ailey Extension even offers an Indian dance class, which began after the success of Oscar-winning film "Slumdog Millionaire."
"This whole Bollywood dance theme has become very popular in the United States, so I started offering this class which is totally sold out," Campbell said.
Joseph Roach, a theater professor at Yale University, said that an increase in the popularity of dance is "in part a direct challenge to the mind-body split, the basis of Western metaphysics, now obsolete."
Susan Ohmer, of the University of Notre Dame's Department of Film, Television and Theater, said she believes audiences admire the skill and focus of dancers in the reality TV shows and that it has become more acceptable because of some of the competitors, which include athletes such as football players.
"Dancing is not limited to a particular class or to people with lots of leisure time," she said. "It can be learned in a short period of time by people with athletic abilities, and that gives it a more populist appeal."
(Editing by Doina Chiacu)
Cy Coleman Echoes in New Revue, 'Best Is Yet to Come'
The show will continue to Aug. 2 in a production by Rubicon Theatre Company in Ventura, CA. New York producers are already pricking up their ears, Playbill.com has learned.
Zippel is the Tony Award-winning lyricist of To
Here's how Rubicon bills the show: "In a career spanning seven decades, Cy Coleman created a glittering string of standards and popular music classics, as well asÖCity of Angels, Sweet Charity, Barnum, The Life, Little Me, On the Twentieth Century and Will Rogers Follies. ÖZippel pays homage to Coleman with an elegant new musical revue performed by six singers accompanied by an eight-piece swing band. The sparkling score includes as-yet unpublished Coleman works, as well as songs made famous by the likes of Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett and Barbara Streisand."
The Best Is Yet to Come (the title is drawn from a lyric by Carolyn Leigh) has musical direction, musical supervision and vocal arrangements by Billy Stritch, orchestrations by Don Sebesky and choreography by Lorin Latarro. Assistant musical director is Christopher Marlowe.
Lillias White won the Tony as Best Lead Actress in a Musical for Coleman's The Life. Sally Mayes (Urban Cowboy, Closer Than Ever) starred in Coleman's 1989 Broadway musical Welcome to the Club, about divorce. David Burnham appeared in Broadway's The Light in the Piazza and Wicked. Graae, a stage and cabaret mainstay (Broadway's Falsettos, A Grand Night for Singing), recently starred in the York Theatre Company concert of the revised version of Jerry Herman's The Grand Tour. Murney starred in Wicked (on Broadway and the road) and starred in Andrew Lippa's The Wild Party Off-Broadway.
For tickets and more information, call the Rubicon box office at (805) 667-2900 or visit rubicontheatre.org.
As previously reported on Playbill.com, The Best is Yet to Come will dip into the deep well of Coleman's catalog, offering classic and obscure numbers he wrote with a variety of lyricists, including Carolyn Leigh, Dorothy Fields, Comden and Green, Michael Stewart, Zippel and others.
"His body of work was so extraordinary it would be exciting to see it in revue form, and I had had talked to Cy about it years ago," Zippel told Playbill.com. "He told me: 'That's for after I'm gone; let's write something new.'"
Zippel, who, with Coleman, also wrote the yet-to-be produced comic Napoleon musical, N, contacted the composer's widow, Shelby, and she enthusiastically agreed to move forward with a revue, the lyricist said.
The Best is Yet to Come takes its title seriously and will include songs from Coleman musicals that may yet surface (N, Pamela's First Musical and the Marilyn and Alan Bergman collaboration known as In the Pocket or Like Jazz).
Expect a classic revue form, Zippel said, where "the juxtaposition of the songs and the personalities" create fresh contexts for the songs while honoring the craft.
Zippel said The Best is Yet to Come will be divided between Coleman's pop standards (think "Witchcraft" or the title song), show music (Sweet Charity, Little Me, Seesaw, Barnum, I Love My Wife and more) and past Carolyn Leigh obscurities or songs that have yet to dawn.
Coleman died in 2004. He won Tony Awards for his scores to The Will Rogers Follies (1991, with lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green); City of Angels (1990, with lyrics by David Zippel); and On the Twentieth Century (1978, with lyrics by Comden and Green).
He was Tony-nominated for the book and score of The Life (about Times Square hookers and hustlers circa 1980); the score of Barnum (about showman P.T. Barnum, with lyrics by Michael Stewart); I Love My Wife (about wife-swapping in suburban New Jersey, with lyrics by Stewart); Seesaw (based on the play Two for the Seesaw, with lyrics by Dorothy Fields); Sweet Charity and Little Me (1963). He also served as a producer on some of his Broadway projects.
Coleman, a native New Yorker, was born Seymour Kaufman. He played classical music at Carnegie Hall and Town Hall as a child, but as an adult heard the siren call of jazz, pop and theatre music and never looked back. Working with the lyricist Carolyn Leigh in his early writing career in the late 1950s and '60s, he penned such hits as "Witchcraft," "The Best Is Yet to Come," "You Fascinate Me So" and "When in Rome."
Leigh and Coleman would venture into the musical theatre, writing the scores to the Lucille Ball vehicle Wildcat (which offered the tune "Hey, Look Me Over!") and Little Me (which boasted "Real Live Girl" and "I've Got Your Number"). There was friction in the relationship. Pianist Coleman and his Cy Coleman Trio were playing engagements around the country, and Leigh wanted him to stay put in New York and focus on writing musicals.
Though Coleman did settle down to a theatre-writing life, he and Leigh did not write another show. With the legendary lyricist Dorothy Fields, he wrote "Where Am I Going?," "If My Friends Could See Me Now," "Big Spender" and "There's Gotta Be Something Better Than This" for Sweet Charity, Bob Fosse and Neil Simon's 1966 reimagining of Federico Fellini's "Nights of Cabiria." In the musical fable, Gwen Verdon starred as a dance hall hostess named Charity Hope Valentine (in the film, Cabiria is a prostitute).
The show's second Broadway revival (Fosse staged it in 1987) surfaced in 2004-05, months after Coleman's death.Those who only knew Cy Coleman as a Tony Award winning composer caught a rare glimpse of the pre-Broadway Coleman when he returned to his jazz piano roots in October 2004 for a gig at Feinstein's at the Regency.
The engagement represented life as Coleman lived it some 40 years earlier - performing not just his own jazz waltzes and songs but tunes by other writers. His October 2004 songlist included "Green Dolphin Street," "But Not for Me," "Comin' Home," "Mean to Me" and more. His side men were Gary Haase (on bass) and Buddy Williams (on drums).
The Feinstein's run (with the composer playing piano and singing) conjured Coleman's milieu of the 1950s and '60s, when he played smoke-filled rooms in Florida, hotels in Detroit and even his own 75-seat 58th Street nightclub, The Playroom, which he ran with partners in the late 1950s. William Holden had his own barstool there, Coleman told Playbill.com.
A couple of jazz performance albums from that era have been re-released for CD, but Coleman once said he'd like to unearth some others and get them on the market.
Why did Coleman stop performing? It's not that people stopped asking, he said. The Emmy-wining, Oscar nominated and Grammy-winning composer grew so busy creating and/or rehearsing musicals, from the film of "Sweet Charity" to Seesaw and beyond (including such unproduced shows as Eleanor, about Mrs. Roosevelt), that it became impractical to accept bookings.
"I never lost my love of playing," Coleman once said. "I've always worked from that base, as a musician."
One of the things that distinguished Coleman (beyond his pure, confident tunefulness) is the range of styles he used: A touch of folk and country in Will Rogers Follies, comic opera in On the Twentieth Century, vocalese and jazz in City of Angels, '60s disco in Sweet Charity, R&B in The Life, circus chase in Barnum, a country song in I Love My Life, and more.
For his late-career musical, The Great Ostrovsky, which won him a Barrymore Award in Philadelphia, he used klezmer and a Yiddish theatre music sound from the early 20th century.
"He was trying to reinvent his sound, he was always doing different style of theatre music - I think he was very proud of that," said Mary-Mitchell Campbell, a friend, pianist and music director who worked on a number of Cy Coleman projects, including Grace, a Dutch-language musical about Grace Kelly, Hitchcock and the royals of Monaco that bowed in Amsterdam in 2001.
Of Grace, Coleman had said, "Musically, I wanted to do a meld of European style and American style - the European feeling along with American pizzazz. That fascinated me."
Jackson's public memorial strikes a spiritual note
LOS ANGELES – Michael Jackson was eulogized in words and song Tuesday by an all-star list of musicians, athletes and other celebrities during a mournful ceremony in downtown Los Angeles, with the most poignant moment deli
"I just want to say ever since I was born, Daddy has been the best father you can ever imagine. And I just wanted to say I love him so much," Paris-Michael Jackson said before almost collapsing in the arms of her aunt Janet Jackson.
Watched by millions around the world, the memorial struck a tone more spiritual than spectacular Tuesday, opening with a church choir serenading his golden casket and continuing with somber speeches and gospel-infused musical performances.
The Rev. Lucious W. Smith of the Friendship Baptist Church in Pasadena gave the greeting on the same stage where Jackson had been rehearsing for a concert series in the days before his June 25 death at age 50. Then Mariah Carey sang the opening performance with a sweet rendition of the Jackson 5 ballad "I'll Be There," a duet with Trey Lorenz.
"We come together and we remember the time," said Smith, riffing on one of Jackson's lyrics. "As long as we remember him, he will always be there to comfort us."
Millions of fans around the world gathered at odd hours to watch the ceremony, which was broadcast by the major TV networks and cable channels from Tokyo to Paris to New York and streamed everywhere online in one of the biggest celebrity send-offs ever seen.
Among those who saluted Jackson were Motown music mogul Berry Gordy Jr., Brooke Shields, the Rev. Al Sharpton and basketball greats Magic Johnson and Kobe Bryant. Jennifer Hudson sang Jackson's hit "Will You Be There" and John Mayer played guitar on a whisper-light rendition of "Human Nature."
"This is a moment that I wished I didn't live to see," Stevie Wonder said before his performance. Usher broke down in tears after singing "Gone Too Soon."
Although the event was billed as a celebration, some speakers took the occasion to come to the defense of Jackson, whose life was marked as much by criticism and scorn as scintillating talent.
Gordy said that despite what he called "some sad times and maybe some questionable decisions on his part," the title King of Pop wasn't good enough for Jackson. "I think he is simply the greatest entertainer that ever lived," Gordy said.
Emotions rose when Sharpton delivered a fiery eulogy highlighting all the barriers Jackson broke and the troubles he faced. "Every time he got knocked down, he got back up," Sharpton said, and the applauding crowd jumped to its feet.
Sharpton rode the moment, building to a crescendo. "There wasn't nothing strange about your daddy," he said later, addressing Jackson's three children in the front row. "It was strange what your daddy had to deal with!" After he left the stage, chants of "Mi-chael! Mi-chael!" filled the arena.
The ceremony wrapped up with group performances of "We Are the World" and "Heal the World" sung by Lionel Richie, Hudson and Jackson family members — including his children — before a backdrop of symbols of religions from around the world. They were joined onstage by children in white and several other people who had participated in the ceremony. Then members of Jackson's family took the stage to thank the crowd and share their own thoughts, barely able to hide their emotion as they hugged in the ceremony's final moments.
An estimated 20,000 people were in the Staples Center as Jackson's flower-draped casket was brought to the venue in a motorcade under law enforcement escort. Those who gathered constituted a visual representation of Jackson's life: black, white and everything in between, wearing fedoras and African headdresses, sequins and surgical masks.
Fans with a ticket wore gold wristbands and picked up a metallic gold program guide on their way in. Acting as pallbearers, Jackson's brothers each wore a gold necktie and, in a touch borrowed from their brother, a single spangly white glove and sunglasses.
Brother Jermaine Jackson took the stage and sang the standard "Smile" as he fought back tears.
Jackson's hearse had been part of a motorcade that smoothly whisked his body 10 miles across closed freeways from a private service at a Hollywood Hills cemetery to his public memorial and awaiting fans.
The traffic snarls and logistical nightmares that had been feared by police and city officials did not materialize. Traffic was actually considered by police to be lighter than normal.
"I think people got the message to stay home," said California Highway Patrol Officer Miguel Luevano.
Deputy Police Chief Sergio Diaz, operations chief for the event, said authorities had expected a crowd of 250,000. Besides reporters and those with tickets to the memorial service, the crowd around the Staples Center perimeter numbered only about 1,000, he said.
Outside the Staples Center, Claudia Hernandez, 29, said she loved Jackson's music as a girl growing up in Mexico. Now a day-care teaching assistant in Los Angeles, Hernandez said she cried watching TV coverage of his death.
"I'm trying to hold in my emotions," said Hernandez, wearing a wristband to allow her admittance to the service and holding a framed photograph of Jackson. "I know right now he's teaching the angels to dance."
More than 1.6 million people registered for the lottery for free tickets to Jackson's memorial. A total of 8,750 were chosen to receive two tickets each.
"There are certain people in our popular culture that just capture people's imaginations. And in death, they become even larger," President Barack Obama told CBS while in Moscow. "Now, I have to admit that it's also fed by a 24/7 media that is insatiable."
The city of Los Angeles set up a Web site Tuesday to allow fans to contribute money to help the city pay for his Staples Center memorial service. Mayoral spokesman Matt Szabo estimated the service will cost $1.5 million to $4 million.
It was not clear what will happen to Jackson's body. The Forest Lawn Memorial Park Hollywood Hills cemetery is the final resting place for such stars as Bette Davis, Andy Gibb, Freddie Prinze, Liberace and recently deceased David Carradine and Ed McMahon.
Jermaine Jackson has expressed a desire to have him buried someday at Neverland, his estate in Southern California.
Midway during the memorial service, police Officer April Harding told the media gathered at the gates of Forest Lawn to disperse. Asked if Jackson's body was going to be returned to the cemetery after the memorial, she replied: "His body is not going to be returned here." She did not say where it would be taken.
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AP Entertainment writer Sandy Cohen, AP Music writer Nekesa Mumbi Moody, AP Special Correspondent Linda Deutsch, Associated Press writers Solvej Schou, Christina Hoag, Amy Taxin, Andrew Dalton, Anthony McCartney, Danica Kirka, and AP researcher Monika Mathur contributed to this report.
Lee Pace is magic in `Daisies'
Relaxing on the set of his critically praised series, "Pushing Daisies," Pace taps the air teasingly with his forefinger. It's how Pace's character, Ned, makes others live or die
It's also how Pace keeps British actress Anna Friel, his lively co-star, in line during long production hours. Friel plays Ned's longtime love, Charlotte "Chuck" Charles.
"When Anna acts up on set, I just touch her like this," Pace said, pointing a magic finger.
The finger-tap is a joke on Ned and Chuck's deadly dilemma on "Pushing Daisies" (8 p.m. EDT Wednesday). In the show's pilot Ned resurrected Chuck after she was murdered. Now they live together. If Ned touches Chuck once more — directly, skin-on-skin — she's back in a casket, pronto.
"Just sitting together in a car, it's life or death stakes for them," Pace said of the seemingly doomed (or at least physically frustrated) couple. "Every day when we block scenes, I think, `Now how should we hold our bodies?'"
In fact, the physical intimacy of Ned and Chuck is carefully chaperoned on the Warner Bros. lot in Burbank, especially by executive producer Barry Sonnenfeld ("Men in Black"), who also directs the series.
"Barry's always going, `Ooops! Don't you dare touch Anna,'" Friel said. "It's hard, trying to fit together into a tight two-shot."
On a recent day of production, Friel was fighting a bad cold in her trailer. "Don't get too close," she said.
"We actually did try going for a week with no touching at all on set," Friel said of her co-star. "We didn't do too good. We're both — particularly me — incredibly tactile. By day three I was dead three times."
If "Pushing Daisies" carries a message about sexual abstinence, "that was never the intention, but you can certainly read it in," Fuller said. "I suppose the show is really about the dangers of any kind of intimacy, not just physical intimacy."
Fuller previously created "Dead Like Me," the Showtime series about grim reapers, and "Wonderfalls," the short-lived Fox series in which inanimate objects talked. With "Daisies," he meshes fantasy, comedic romance, comfort food and murder.
When he's not baking perfect pies, Ned investigates homicides, with help from Chuck and private eye Emerson Cod (Chi McBride). Zap, and Ned revives victims long enough for them to reveal their killers. Zap, and they're dead again.
"Ned's real gift is the understanding of the value of life and death," Pace said. "He's not careless with his powers. But after he brought Chuck back to life everything is different for him. It's like his life is happening for the first time."
Fantasy elements aside, playing Ned is not a stretch, Pace said. Not after his previous roles as a transgendered female entertainer in the 2003 Showtime telefilm "Soldier's Girl" and an inscrutable CIA agent in the 2006 movie "The Good Shepherd." He also played a supporting role in "Wonderfalls."
"There's a way that Bryan writes for Ned that's the way I speak," Pace said. "I ramble. And a big challenge with Ned is just trusting that less is enough. Ned's range of emotions is like this," he said, squeezing a bit of air between thumb and forefinger.
Indeed, much of the acting on "Pushing Daisies" is understated, by design.
"That's a tribute to Barry Sonnenfeld's directing style," Fuller said. "Since everything in the show is so vivid, if the acting were also vivid it might be too much."
Visually, "Pushing Daisies" pops with rich colors and quirky sets including the Pie Hole, Ned's restaurant-in-the-round with a crust-shaped roof.
"Daisies" is also an ongoing homage to one of Fuller's favorite filmmakers, Alfred Hitchcock. A future episode will feature a take on the dream sequence in Hitchcock's "Vertigo," Fuller said. Another episode will send up the infamous shower-stabbing scene in "Psycho."
"And there's a big homage to Hitchcock's `The Birds,' with a character who's pathologically afraid of birds," Fuller said.
On the romantic side of the series, visual jokes abound. Ned and Chuck must never brush flesh against flesh. But they adopt an array of inventive protective barriers, including cellophane, body bags and beekeepers' suits.
"Actually, there's something about the not-touching that's kind of hot," Pace said. "Ned and Chuck are turned on by wishing they could touch. When they cross each other in a doorway, they share that moment of, `I wish I could kiss you, I wish I could run to bed with you — but I can't.' But there's still something sexy about it, you know?"
___
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Critics at loggerheads in Toronto
Any description of the 2007 Toronto International FilmFestival undoubtedly will depend on which part of the festivalgot sampled. Even looking at the reviews of some high-profilepictures, a reader can only conclude that the festival played adirty trick on poor critics by screening entirely differentfilms with exactly the same titles. Some critics loved"Elizabeth: The Golden Age." Others didn't bother suppressingyawns. Some hated the pretentiousness of "The Assassination ofJesse James by the Coward Robert Ford." Others were enthralled.No one seemed to be discussing the same picture.
What passes for consensus fell on two films that cocktailchatter tends to label as "small," but perhaps that word needsre-examination. Are we talking budget? Certainly not ambitionin the terms of the two surefire hits of Toronto '07: "TheVisitor" and "Juno."
I asked a top exec at a studio classics division about hisinterest in Tom McCarthy's "Visitor." The look on his face saidit all: Too tough to market. So upstart Overture Films pickedup U.S. rights for a reported $1 million-plus, which probablyis a smart sale because the film does need a committed anddetermined distributor to create audience awareness for thissmall gem -- there's that adjective again -- as was the casewith McCarthy's last small gem, "The Station Agent."
Character actor Richard Jenkins plays a widowed professorwho gets involved in the lives of two illegal immigrants, whowere scammed into renting his Manhattan flat. It's a lovely,humane and surprising film -- the kind that reminds you why youfell in love with movies in the first place.
Repeat that last phrase for Jason Reitman's "Juno" from FoxSearchlight. To say this comedy focuses on an unintendedpregnancy is like saying "Sideways" is about wine. Accurate butnearly irrelevant. The film is a highly stylized and originalcomedy about growing up and responsibility and the strengththat comes in both friendship and family. There also is aterrific performance from Ellen Page that deserves an Oscarcampaign.
That's right, Toronto is supposed to be all about Oscar. Orat least insofar as it is part of a crucial axis that includesTelluride and Venice, which will prepare the way for fallcandidates for Oscar '08.
It didn't seem to work out that way this year, though. Tobe certain, Cate Blanchett seems set in two acting categoriesas best actress for "Elizabeth," whatever anyone thought of themovie, and for best supporting actress as Bob Dylan in "I'm NotThere."
Other familiar names are apparently in the mix: thebrothers Coen, Ang Lee, David Cronenberg and Brian De Palma.Writer-director Tony Gilroy seems to have won friends andinfluenced people with "Michael Clayton," which also is anotherfeather in George Clooney's hat. Sean Penn has made his mostaccessible film as a director with "Into the Wild," and youknow how Academy voters love to nominate him. Other than that,the crystal ball is fuzzy.
There seemingly were many more films arriving here withouta distributor. Some say it was a deliberate effort on the partof organizers to be more of a "discovery" festival likeSundance. For what it's worth, many Toronto staffers made theirfirst-ever trip to Park City in January to check out how thingsoperate there.
Several Toronto films might not get released in time forOscar contention. Alan Ball's "Nothing Is Private" was pickedup by Warner Independent Pictures but probably won't bereleased until the middle of next year at the earliest. UmaThurman received positive response for her role in VadimPerelman's "In Bloom," but it is being self-distributed by ToddWagner and Mark Cuban's Magnolia Pictures, which has yet toannounce a release date.
While such films as Paul Haggis' "In the Valley of Elah,"Neil Jordan's "The Brave One" and Noah Baumbach's "Margot atthe Wedding" divided viewers, you'd still have to considerTommy Lee Jones ("Elah"), Jodie Foster ("Brave One") andJennifer Jason Leigh and Nicole Kidman ("Margot") as earlyOscar contenders.
It was mostly thumbs down, though, for Oscar-winner GavinHood's political thriller "Rendition," Julie Taymor's musical"Across the Universe" and Woody Allen's "Cassandra's Dream."And there was an overall grumpy reaction from critics to the"Iraq films," meaning not just documentaries that focused onthe war but also films made under its influence, which, onecould argue, even includes "Elizabeth."
That didn't prevent multiple standing ovations for "Body ofWar," from veteran documentarian Ellen Spiro and a newcomer bythe name of Phil Donahue. (Yes, that Phil Donahue.) But thosestanding Os, coming largely from Toronto residents, had much todo with appearances onstage by the subject of the film, KansasCity's Tomas Young, who returned from deployment in Iraq shotand paralyzed and is now a leading anti-war advocate, androcker Eddie Vedder, who sang two songs he composed for thefilm.
The festival sleeper might be "Brick Lane," bought by SonyPictures Classics a week before its Toronto debut. Like"Visitor," this London-based story tells of the plight ofimmigrants, an increasingly common movie theme, though in thiscase the focus is on identity and self-worth. Directed by SarahGavron, the film displays terrific acting from a mostly Indiancast and the intelligence to let audiences discover its themeswithout hitting them over the head through undue dramaticemphasis. This too is a film that reminded you why you lovemovies. Which is what film festivals are really about, afterall.
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