Vin Diesel en Cuba

USAHavana

Vin Diesel, protagonista de la saga “Fast & Furious” se encuentra en Cuba, para filmar una película de bajo presupuesto, junto al director de cine de Hollywood, Robert Rodriguez, un verdadero especialista en la materia.

Race-Hoax Debunked: 225 Bigger Oscar Snubs Than 'Selma'

Breitbart

by John Nolte

Producer Oprah Winfrey’s Selma won two Oscar nominations Thursday morning: Best Picture and Best Song. Because the Civil Rights drama failed to win nominations for its director, star or script, people are claiming it was snubbed (it was — the Best Pic nod is an also-ran) and crying racism.

I thought some context might help.

Before he won an Oscar at age 64, Martin Scorsese directed Raging Bull, Goodfellas, Casino, Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, King Comedy, Color of Money, and The Age of Innocence.

The Associated Press

Selma is only director Ana DuVernay’s third feature film. She is just 42 years old.

Before he won an Oscar at age 61 , Paul Newman starred in The Hustler, Hud, Cool Hand Luke, The Long Hot Summer, Verdict, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Cat On Hot Tin Roof, Sting, and Slap Shot.

David Oyelwo’s first big starring role is in Selma. He is just 38 years old.

As far as the racism charge, 10% of the acting nominations over the last 5 years have gone to black actors, which is almost perfectly in line with the 12.6% (on average over the last 5 years) population of ratio of blacks in America. Moreover, 7 films focusing on race and racism have been nominated for Best Picture in the last 5 years. Last year “12 Years a Slave” won Best Picture.

Yes, the cry of racism around Selma is, like Selma itself, just another in a long line of race-hoaxes dumped on the American people this year (Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Oprah’s Swiss purse lie).

Selma’s real problem is that it just isn’t a very good movie.

While the left crybabies over Oscar’s snub of Selma, here are 225 bigger Oscar snubs; a list of people who have never won a competitive Oscar, and a list of movies better than Selma that not only failed to win an Oscar, but were never even nominated! (Source.)

1. Alfred Hitchcock
2. Michael Mann
3. Orson Welles
4. Christopher Nolan
5. Jean Simmons
6. Annette Bening
7. Glenn Close
8. Agnes Morehead
9. Judy Davis
10. Gena Rowlands
11. Mia Farrow
12. Greta Garbo
13. Marilyn Monroe
14. Myrna Loy
15. Marlene Dietrich
16. Jean Harlowe
17. Carol Lombard
18. Lauren Bacall
19. Irene Dunne
20. Maureen O’Hara
21. Rosalind Russell
22. Martin Sheen
23. Steve McQueen
24. James Caan
25. Harvey Keitel
26. James Mason
27. Montgomery Clift
28. Eli Wallach
29. Bruce Dern
30. Gary Oldmam
31. Judy Garland
32. John Malkovich
33. Ed Harris
34. Donald Sutherland
35. Richard Harris
36. Peter Sellers
37. Cary Grant
38. Albert Finney
39. Deborah Kerr
40. Richard Burton
41. Fred Astaire
42. Kirk Douglas
43. Barbara Stanwyck
44. Edward G. Robinson
45. Peter O’Toole
46. Jean Simmons
47. Ridley Scott
48. Buster Keaton
49. Howard Hawks
50. Robert Altman
51. Sam Peckinpah
52. John Cassavetes
53. Sidney Lumet
54. Brian DePalma
55. David Lynch
56. Spike Lee
57. Lillian Gish
58. Errol Flynn
59. Joseph Cotton
60. Maurice Chevalier
61. Peter Lorre
62. Charlie Chaplin (except for a score award)
63. Stanley Kubrick (except for a special effects award)
64. George Lucas
65. Ernst Lubitsch
66. King Vidor
67. Arthur Penn
68. Fritz Lang
69. Akira Kurosawa
70. D.W. Griffith
71. Cecil B. DeMille
72. Ava Gardner
73. Rita Hayworth
74. Boris Karloff
75. Robert Mitchum
76. Thelma Ritter
77. Joan Allen
78. Sigourney Weaver
79. Dana Andrews
80. Lew Ayers
81. John Barrymore
82. Ralph Bellamy
83. Roddy MacDowall
84. Charles Boyer
85. Lee J. Cobb
86. Douglas Fairbanks Sr.
87. W. C. Fields
88. James Garner
89. John Garfield
90. Elliott Gould
91. Dennis Hopper
92. James Earl Jones
93. Gene Kelly
94. Arthur Kennedy
95. Anthony Perkins
96. William Powell
97. Tyrone Power
98. Walter Pidgeon
99. Claude Rains
100. Basil Rathbone
101. Will Rogers
102. Mickey Rooney
103. Robert Shaw
104. Richard Widmark
105. Clifton Webb
106. Jean Arthur
107. Ida Lupino
108. Jacqueline Bisset
109. Madeline Kahn
110. Bette Midler
111. Kim Novak
112. Michelle Pfeiffer
113. Lana Turner
114. Gloria Swanson
115. Margaretr Sullavan
116. Elsa Lanchester
117. Julie Harris
118. Blake Edwards
119. Richard Brooks
120. Tim Burton
121. William Wellman
122. Josef von Strernberg
123. Otto Preminger
124. W.S. Van Dyke
125. F.W. Murnau
126. Alan J. Pakula
127. Mervyn LeRoy
128. Stanley Kramer
129. John Frankenheimer
130. Stanley Donen
131. Advise and Consent (1962)
132. Bananas (1971)
133. Beat the Devil (1954)
134. The Big Clock (1948)
135. The Big Heat (1953)
136. The Big Sleep (1946)
137. Blood Simple (1984)
138. Bringing Up Baby (1938)
139. Brute Force (1947)
140. City Lights (1931)
141. The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)
142. Destry Rides Again (1939)
143. Dinner at Eight (1933)
144. Dirty Harry (1971)
145. Don’t Look Now (1973)
146. Dracula (1931)
147. Drugstore Cowboy (1989)
148. Duck Soup
149. A Face in the Crowd (1957)
150. Fail-Safe (1964)
151. Farewell My Lovely (1944)
152. Fort Apache (1948)
153. Frankenstein (1931)
154. Freaks (1933)
155. The Front Page (1975)
156. Gilda (1946)
157. Gun Crazy (1949)
158. Hard-Boiled (1992)
159. Heat (1995)
160. High Sierra (1941)
161. His Girl Friday (1940)
162. In a Lonely Place (1950)
163. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)
164. The Invisible Man (1933)
165. It’s a Gift (1934)
166. The Killing (1956)
167. The Parallax View (1974)
168. King Kong (1933)
169. Kiss Me Deadly (1955)
170. The Lady From Shanghai (1948)
171. The Lady Vanishes (1938)
172. The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943)
173. Lonely are the Brave (1962)
174. The Long Goodbye (1973)
175. The Long Riders (1980)
176. M (1931)
177. Mean Streets (1973)
178. Medium Cool (1969)
179. Metropolis (1927)
180. Miller’s Crossing (1990)
181. The Misfits (1961)
182. Modern Times (1936)
183. Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
184. The Mummy (1933)
185. Murder, My Sweet (1944)
186. My Darling Clementine (1946)
187. A Night at the Opera (1934)
188. The Night of the Hunter (1955)
189. Nightmare Alley (1947)
190. Nothing Sacred (1937)
191. Oliver Twist (1948)
192. Once Upon a Time in America (1984)
193. Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)
194. Out of the Past (1947)
195. Paths of Glory (1957)
196. Play It Again, Sam (1972)
197. Point Blank (1967)
198. The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946)
199. Reservoir Dogs (1992)
200. Ride the High Country (1962)
201. Rio Bravo (1959)
202. The Roaring Twenties (1939)
203. Scarface (1932)
204. Scarlet Street (1945)
205. The Searchers (1956)
206. The Shining (1980)
207. The Shop Around the Corner (1940)
208. A Shot in the Dark (1964)
209. Sid and Nancy (1986)
210. State of the Union (1948)
211. Sullivan’s Travels (1941)
212. Sweet Smell of Success (1957)
213. They Live By Night (1949)
214. The Thing (1951)
215. Things to Come (1936)
216. The 39 Steps (1935)
217. This Gun for Hire (1942)
218. 3:10 to Yuma (1957)
219. To Have and Have Not (1944)
220. Touch Of Evil (1958)
221. A Walk in the Sun (1946)
222. The Wild One (1953)
223. Winchester ’73 (1950)
224. The Women (1939)
225. The Wrong Man (1957)

—
Cry me a river, Selma…

'La Dolce Vita' Actress Anita Ekberg Dies at 83

Felipe Ruiz de Chávez

NBC News.com

Anita Ekberg, the Swedish-born actress and sex-symbol of the 1950s and '60s who was immortalized bathing in the Trevi fountain in "La Dolce Vita," has died. She was 83.

Ekberg's lawyer Patrizia Ubaldi confirmed she died in Rome Sunday morning following a series of illnesses. She had been hospitalized most recently after Christmas.

Ubaldi said that in her last days Ekberg was saddened by the illness and her advancing age.

"She had hoped to get better, something that didn't happen," she said.

Ekberg had long lived in Italy, the country that gave her worldwide fame thanks to the iconic dip opposite Marcello Mastroianni. The scene where the blond bombshell, clad in a black dress, her arms wide open, calls out "Marcello" remains one of the most famous images in film history.

Born on Sept. 29, 1931, in the southern city of Malmo, Ekberg grew up with seven siblings.

In 1951 she won the Miss Sweden competition, after being recommended to enter by organizers who saw her on the street, and went to the United States to compete for the Miss Universe title.

She didn't win but became a model in Hollywood and later started taking on small acting roles.

Her role in Federico Fellini's "La Dolce Vita" — where she played a movie star — shot her to stardom. The movie was a colossal success and came to define the wild and carefree days of the early 1960s.

Hosting a Swedish radio program in 2005, Ekberg recalled shooting the scene in the Trevi Fountain in Rome. She said it was shot in February, the water in the fountain was cold and Mastroianni was falling over in the fountain drunk on vodka.

"And there I was. I was freezing," she said. "They had to lift me out of the water because I couldn't feel my legs anymore."

"I have seen that scene a few times. Maybe too many times. I can't stand watching it anymore, but it was beautiful at the time," she said.

Ekberg remained in Italy for years, appearing in scores of movies, many forgettable. She returned in two Fellini movies: "Clowns" and "Intervista."

Ekberg married Briton Anthony Steel in 1956, but divorced him four years later. In 1963 she married again to actor Rik van Nutter, but that marriage also failed.

In an interview with Swedish tabloid Aftonbladet in 2006, Ekberg said her only regret in life was never having children.

"I would have liked to have a child, preferably a son," she was quoted as saying. "It didn't turn out that way. That's life, you just have to accept it."

In the interview, published in connection with Ekberg's 75th birthday, she also said she wasn't afraid of death.

"I'm just angry because I won't get the chance to tell others about death, where the soul goes and if there is a life afterward," she was quoted as saying.

"I don't know if paradise or hell exist, but I'm sure hell is more groovy."

Ubaldi said a ceremony would be held in the coming days at a Lutheran church in Rome, and that Ekberg had specified that her remains be cremated.

 

Hulton Archive / Getty Images Contributor

(FILE PHOTO) Swedish actress Anita Ekberg known for her role in the 1960 movie La Dolce Vita has died in Rome today after a series of illnesses. circa 1955: The Swedish actress Anita Ekberg, known as 'The Iceberg'.

Will Hollywood Embrace Cuba as a Shooting Location?

The Hollywood Reporter

by Alex Ben Block

This story first appeared in the Jan. 16 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine.

When President Obama on Dec. 17 proposed easing 50 years of restrictions on Americans who want to visit and do business in Cuba, the socialist nation stood to join neighbors such as the Virgin Islands, Bahamas and the Dominican Republic as a popular destination for Hollywood productions in search of historic architecture, good weather and pristine locations. But even relaxed restrictions on banking, travel and telecommunications would leave significant obstacles to overcome before the island nation could become Hollywood in the Caribbean.
Read more Industry Optimisitc on New Cuba-U.S. Era

Bob Yari, the only American to direct a feature in Cuba in generations — the recently wrapped Papa, a period story about Ernest Hemingway at the time of the Cuban revolution — says filmmakers still must obtain clearances from the Office of Foreign Assets Control, which acts for the U.S. Department of the Treasury. "That was very difficult and took a lot of time," says Yari.

And like anyone who wants to shoot in Cuba, Yari had to partner with Canada-based Cuba Film Productions, which serves as a liaison. Says Bruce Donnelly, who last year directed the documentary Alumbrones, about visual artists in Cuba: "[CFP] helped facilitate everything. But we had to make clear what the nature of the film was."

A Cuban Film Commission spokesman who asked to remain anonymous tells THR that despite the shift in policy, filmmakers still will encounter a detailed application process, and content will be a consideration: "All projects and scripts do get screened for content that would be considered extremely morally offensive, subversive or undermine the political or social values of society."
Read more Hemingway Biopic 'Papa' First Hollywood Feature Film Shot in Cuba in 45 Years

Nancy Haecker, a location manager who has made several trips to Cuba, says in addition to getting approval from government bureaucrats, filmmakers shooting in Cuba will find little infrastructure. "They don't have equipment to handle larger productions. Semi trucks of grip equipment, lighting and movie trailers would all have to come from Miami."

Still, there are clear advantages to shooting in Cuba. In addition to plenty of little-seen historic locations (not to mention all those classic American cars that would cost a fortune to rent elsewhere), the exchange rate is roughly equal with the U.S., and prices for food, housing, local transport and labor are extremely low. And perhaps most important: Cuba wants the business.

Says Michael Pacino, an executive producer with CFP: "American productions have always been welcome here in Cuba, to a large degree. However, because of the embargo, getting funds into Cuba on approved projects has been problematic. This shift in policy will definitely help."

Louis Zamperini: Unbroken at Sea and in a P.O.W. Camp, Made Whole by Christ

Breitbart

By Daniel J. Flynn

“I was too busy staying alive to think about dying,” World War II veteran Louis Zamperini told his son about his ordeal lost at sea and then locked up in a prisoner of war camp.

The famous runner’s real tests of endurance came the decade after his experience competing in the 5000 meters at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, when he floated at sea for a month-and-a-half and subsequently endured vicious beatings by a sadistic guard nicknamed “the Bird” during two years in Japanese captivity. Luke Zamperini tells Breitbart Sports, “These were my bedtime stories growing up.”

Luke Zamperini’s bedtime stories become everybody’s silver-screen stories on Christmas Day through Angelina Jolie’s cinematic adaptation of Laura Hillenbrand’s Unbroken. The Zamp, owner of a record 4:08 mile as a collegian, retained exquisite timing long after he had hung up his track shoes. The Christian immortalized as a celluloid hero on Christmas, like the patriot passing days before this past Fourth of July, shows that death doesn’t kill a man’s timing.

It often replaces the substance of a man with a symbol. But the symbolism of a Christmas Day release of Unbroken makes it hard to miss the substance of Louis Zamperini. He ran the 5000 meters in the Olympics for a few minutes in the mid-1930s and suffered in a POW camp for a couple of years as Americans assumed him dead during the mid-1940s. He spread Jesus Christ’s gospel for more than six decades.

www.people.com

Like Christ, Zamperini lived past his obituary and figured prominently in a bestselling book. The comparisons don’t go much further for the life celebrated in the pews on Thursday and the one celebrated in the movie-house aisles. The former juvenile delinquent drank with zeal, hastily scheduled barroom boxing matches with unwitting, conscripted opponents, and projected the bitterness in his soul upon the world immediately following the Second World War.

“He was a vengeful man,” Luke Zamperini informs. “The Bird beat him mercilessly for over two years. My dad suffered from what’s today referred to as post-traumatic stress disorder. He was having nightmares of the Bird beating him that inevitably ended with him strangling the life out of the Bird.” Zamperini longed to return to Japan “to finish him off,” concedes his son.

Instead of squeezing the life out of the Bird, Billy Graham infused new life into Zamperini. “Hearing Reverend Graham speak reminded him of the promises on the life raft and in the prison camp that he had made to God,” Luke Zamperini tells Breitbart Sports of the violent and boozed-out postwar version of his dad. “He felt he hadn’t lived up to his side of the bargain.”

“His hatred for the Bird wasn’t hurting the Bird one bit,” son says of father. “It was destroying Louis Zamperini.” The bitter veteran put down the bottle and picked up the Bible. The sleep that followed the Olympian’s close encounter of the Billy Graham kind, his son explains, resulted in “the first night he did not have that nightmare and he did not have that nightmare for the rest of his life.”

Whereas others might have wished not to revisit the painful events, Zamperini used them for inspiration to start an outdoorsman camp for boys and to speak to groups about the force that saved his life. “He made a living talking about it,” Luke Zamperini notes. “He was a famous American athlete who seemingly came back from the dead. He was given the key to every city.” Holding in his war story didn’t work for Zamperini. Letting it out did.

Zamperini’s saga includes the highs of running in the Olympics and the lows of cleaning a pig sty with his bare hands. It’s an amazing tale of survival, evading strafing Japanese planes and capturing food on the raft with the primitive hunting tools available at the end of his arms. It’s more importantly a story, like the story whose beginnings Christians celebrate today, of redemption. In a life of service to his savior, Zamperini embodied the central message of his faith.

Louis Zamperini enjoyed a Hollywood ending. It emanated from enjoying a Christian life. Readers and now viewers of Unbroken marvel at the better-than-fiction quality to the miler’s tale of superhuman endurance. The story’s greatness surely stems from the protagonist’s awareness of the greatest story ever told.

"Conducta": Manipulacion neokaxtrizta

AmericaTeVeCanal41

Las 1001 películas que hay que ver antes de morir en un vídeo de 10 minutos

microsiervos

Cuba: Island Of Music [Full movie]

a good sample of Cuban music despite significant omissions of great Cuban musicians living in exile and political overtones against the United States.

-------------------------
MVDmusicvideo

Sharon Stone Sues Bob Yari Over Aborted Cuba Trip To Shoot Hemingway Biopic

 

Deadline.com

The actress claims the director-producer wanted her to falsify documents and turn down other jobs to shoot Papa in Cuba in late 2012. Sharon Stone names Bob Yari and his production companies Magenta Light Productions and Sixth Floor Literary Properties as defendants in a lawsuit filed today in LA Superior Court. The suit claims that Yari and his companies “lied to [Stone] and attempted to lure her into being a participant in their fraudulent scheme to avoid the legal licensing requirements of the United States government.” It also alleges that she was induced “to forego other projects and commit to making [Papa] based on Yari’s false representation that Defendants had obtained the necessary documentation to shoot the Picture in Cuba and to enable Ms. Stone to travel to Cuba to render acting services.”

Stone claims she was advised to “check a box on her license application indicating that she was going to Cuba for a ‘cultural endeavor’ rather than” for an acting job. Had she done so, she says, she “would have subjected herself to a host of potential criminal liabilities and placed her passport privileges in jeopardy.” The actress never made the trip to play Ernest Hemingway’s last wife, Mary, and she says the role was recast. Marty Singer and Michael Holtz of Lavely & Singer are representing Stone in the suit, which seeks at least $500,000 in damages. Yari this month lost a seven-year multimillion-dollar court battle with members of the cast and crew of his Oscar-winning film Crash.

Philip Seymour Hoffman found dead from apparent overdose

chrisbarrett 

Randee Dawn

Oscar-winning actor Philip Seymour Hoffman was found dead Sunday in his New York City apartment, law enforcement officials confirmed to NBC News. He was 46.

A concerned friend found Hoffman in the actor's bathroom, fully clothed. When police arrived about 11:30 a.m., they found Hoffman still had a syringe in his arm. Glassine bags believed to contain heroin were also found, police said.

Most recently, Hoffman was at the Sundance Film Festival promoting his film "God's Pocket," opposite "Mad Men" actors Christina Hendricks and John Slattery. The actor was also set to star in a new Showtime comedy, "Happyish," which was introduced to TV critics last month in Los Angeles. One of Hoffman's last taped interviews can be seen here. 

Born in Fairport, New York, the versatile actor was accomplished in both theater and on the big screen. He earned three Tony nominations, three supporting actor Academy Award nominations (including 2012's "The Master"), and won a best actor Oscar for 2005's "Capote." He was most recently seen as Plutarch Heavensbee in the "Hunger Games" sequel "Catching Fire."

More >>

CIA papers Show Panetta Spilled bin Laden Secrets to 'Zero Dark Thirty' Scribe

breitbart

publicintelligence.net

By KIMBERLY DOZIER
AP Intelligence Writer
WASHINGTON
Newly declassified documents show that former CIA Director Leon Panetta revealed secret information to "Zero Dark Thirty" scriptwriter Mark Boal, who was allowed to attend Panetta's speech at CIA headquarters marking the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.

Judicial Watch filed a request for the more than 200 pages of documents, which the CIA released Tuesday. The documents concerned the internal investigation of its role in the film about the bin Laden raid.

In a statement, Panetta says he had no idea Boal was in the audience when he gave the speech. He says he assumed everyone inside had proper clearance.

CIA spokesman Dean Boyd says the agency has since "overhauled its procedures for interaction with the entertainment industry after an extensive internal review."

'TERROR CAMPAIGN' Report: N. Korea executes dozens over Bibles, films

foxnews

As many as 80 people were publicly executed in North Korea earlier this month, some for offenses as minor as watching South Korean movies or possessing a Bible.  

South Korean newspaper JoongAng Ilbo reported that the so-called criminals were put to death in seven cities across North Korea on Nov. 3, in the first known large-scale public executions by the Kim Jong-un regime.

A source, who is familiar with internal affairs in the North and who recently visited the country, told the paper that about 10 people were killed in each city.

Eight people -- their heads covered with white bags -- were tied to stakes at a local stadium in the city of Wonsan, before authorities shot them with a machine gun, according to the source. 

Wonsan authorities gathered a crowd of 10,000 people, including children, at Shinpoong Stadium and forced them to watch the killings.

“I heard from the residents that they watched in terror as the corpses were (so) riddled by machine-gun fire that they were hard to identify afterward,” the JoongAng Ilbo source said.

Most of the Wonsan victims were charged with watching or illegally trafficking South Korean videos, involvement in prostitution, or possessing a Bible.

Relatives or accomplices of the execution victims implicated in their alleged crimes were sent to prison camps.

There is no clear reason for the executions. One government official noted they occurred in cities that are centers of economic development. Wonsan is a port city that Kim is reportedly planning to make a tourist destination by building an airport, hotels and a ski resort on Mount Masik.

Simultaneous executions in seven cities could suggest an extreme measure by the North Korean government to quell public unrest or any capitalistic inclinations that may accompany its development projects.

The common theme of the persecution was crimes related to South Korea -- like watching South Korean films -- or corruption of public morals, especially sexual misconduct. North Korean law permits executions for conspiring to overthrow the government, treason and terrorism. But the country has also been known to order public executions for minor infractions such as religious activism, cellphone use and stealing food, in an effort to intimidate the public.

Some experts questioned whether the executions were related to earlier executions of members of the Unhasu Orchestra, a state-run orchestra that First Lady Ri Sol-ju used to participate in, according to the report.

“As the news that people were brutally killed in public executions spread in the countryside, the people have been spreading rumors that say that Kim Jong-un has started a terror campaign in response to the Ri Sol-ju’s pornography scandal,” the source told JoongAng Ilbo.

There were no executions in the capital of Pyongyang, where Kim depends on the support of the country’s elite. The young leader continues to build luxury and recreational facilities in the capital, including a new water park.

Quiz: Spy thriller or real NSA snooping program?

Gael Fashingbauer Cooper NBC News

Jaap Buitendijk

In the book and movie "World War Z," the first mention of the zombie epidemic comes thanks to a software decryption program spying on Chinese email. Brad Pitt stars as the former UN official who fights the epidemic.

Do recent revelations about the NSA’s surveillance programs have you spooked that Big Brother is watching? You’re not alone. Decades of movies, television shows, and Hollywood espionage flicks have fed our paranoid fantasies when it comes to fears that the government might be listening in on our phone calls, tracking our movements, perusing our sexts, and rifling through our emails. Even President Obama said in June that professed NSA leaker Edward Snowden’s flight from the U.S. had all the plot points of a summer spy thriller.

Test yourself. Can you sort out the fact from the fiction in the high-tech cloak-and-dagger scenarios outlined below?

A 'muscular' development
1. A national intelligence agency secretly breaks in to the main communication links at two major technology companies, positioning itself to collect information at will from millions of user accounts. But agency sources claim they're only looking at foreign data, filtering out anything with an American area code. One program is code-named "MUSCULAR." Fact or fiction?

A: Fact, according to this NBC News story.

Is that a code word for war?
2. An intelligence service using a software decryption program discovers that an Asian country is hiding a new viral outbreak, but the details are so horrific that the decoders believe the talk of illness must be code for a new weapons system or ultrasecret war plan. Fact or fiction?

A: Fiction. It happens in Max Brooks' "World War Z," a novel made into a movie starring Brad Pitt, and the virus is creating zombies.

Help us, rebel hacker, you're our only hope
3. Intelligence officers enlist an on-the-run hacker to steal a black box capable of breaking encryption on almost all computer systems, which the agency can then use to spy on other agencies. Fact or fiction?

A: Fiction. It was the central plot of the 1992 movie "Sneakers," starring Robert Redford.

Universal

The 1992 film "Sneakers" involved complicated computer hacking and espionage.

We're shocked, shocked about this
4. The nation's top intelligence official confirms they have been monitoring the phone calls of foreign leaders for years, and cites the false shock over gambling in the movie "Casablanca" to suggest international outrage is disingenuous. Fact or fiction?

A: Fact. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper cited the film when speaking to Congress, saying, "'My God, there's gambling going on here?' It's the same kind of thing," he said.

Little pitchers have big ears
5. It's revealed that a government agency has access to a program it calls XKeyscore, which can track Americans' email and online chat in real time. Fact or fiction?

A: Fact. According to information NSA leaker Edward Snowden shared with the U.K. Guardian, the program gathers data from across the Internet which can later be searched for names, phone numbers, keywords and more.

Interior motives
6. A NATO monitoring facility observes the troubling activities of a scientist and then enlists a British agent to implant a homing device inside the body of the scientist's co-worker. Fact or fiction?

A. Fiction. The "scientist" is Dr. Evil, the "British agent" Austin Powers, and the "co-worker" is Dr. Evil's henchman Fat Bastard, in "Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me." You don't even want to know how Fat Bastard ejects the homing device from his body. Yeah, baby.

Mark Kelly gives an astronaut’s view of ‘Gravity’ - TWP

Warner Bros. Pictures

 

By Mark Kelly

Last weekend, my wife, Gabby, and I went to see the movie “Gravity” at our neighborhood theater in Tucson. I’m a retired astronaut who has been to space four times, so I’m usually a bit skeptical of films that take place in space. For me, watching movies about space is like a congresswoman watching “House of Cards.” It’s entertaining, but it’s obviously not the real thing.
Director Alfonso Cuarón does come remarkably close with “Gravity.” I’ve spent a total of 55 days in space so I know what to look for, and Cuarón really was able to capture what it looks like inside and outside of a spacecraft. It’s extremely difficult to film a movie that is almost entirely without gravity. In “Apollo 13,” Ron Howard achieved the effect of zero-gravity flight by filming in NASA’s zero-gravity airplane, the “Vomit Comet.”

Keep reading on The Washington Post >>

"Guan Jondred Dollar" - Cortometraje Mexicano

Cortometraje Mexicano/ Director - Antonio Galicia
CINES3MX

Wikileaks Alleges U.S. Govt. Funded HBO Movie About Organization

The Fifth Estate 

breitbart

By Frances Martel 

It's the second script in as many weeks for Wikileaks. Last week, the organization dropped what it alleges to be the script of an HBO-funded film on Julian Assange and Bradley Manning, one the leaking organization claims received aid from the governments of the United States and United Kingdom.

Hot off leaking the script to the Benedict Cumberbatch-led Fifth Estate, the Wikileaks account tweeted a link Thursday to a new script, allegedly that of the HBO/BBC project spearheaded by Rowan Joffe, confirmed to have signed on to the project in June.

In another tweet, Wikileaks accuses The Guardian of being in cahoots with HBO, BBC, and the two governments as well.

Neither HBO nor BBC have yet to confirm that the script is, in fact, their work. The script, which Wikileaks posted on the bizarre "experienced studio" website ageispolis.net, opens with Bradley Manning watching the video the world would come to know as "Collateral Murder." It focuses much of its attention on the release and impact of this video, as well as characters within the Wikileaks narrative directly in relation to that video, paramount among them hacker Adrian Lamo. 

It also takes its time to develop the character of Julian Assange, and herein one suspects lie most of Wikileaks' objections to the script. It depicts a Julian Assange that starts his journey a wandering dandy, prone to strokes of arrogance and increasingly alarming those around him with his concern that governments want to take him out. 

By the time he starts negotiating with larger media organizations, Assange becomes ruthless. At a celebratory dinner with editors from The Guardian, Assange refuses to redact names from the wires they are working on, insulted at the proposition. "This is typical of the bleeding heart middle class hand wringing I've come to expect from the so called liberal press," he tells them, concluding bluntly, "If an Afghan informer gives information to coalition forces he deserves to die." 

While the script overall does not paint the most favorable picture of the Wikileaks founder, it also does little to inspire sympathy for its own author. The Assange character in particular criminally abuses clichéd one-liners like "you are either with me or against me!" and "nobody's taking me down," at one point dropping the line, "I'm not a hacker—I'm a journalist" with the sort of hackneyed aplomb normally reserved for David Caruso. 

It certainly appears to be a work in progress, no matter whose work it ends up proving to be—Rowan Joffe's, the American government's, or a "leaker" looking to dupe Wikileaks.

Samuel L. Jackson disses Obama's pronunciation: "Be f**king Presidential ... stop trying to 'relate'"

Fox News

tepasmas.com

LOS ANGELES –  Samuel L. Jackson has some words of wisdom for President Obama when it comes to his deliberate dropping of “g’s” off the ends of words to seemingly sound like Joe Average.
“First of all, we know it ain’t because of his blackness, so I say stop trying to ‘relate.’  Be a leader.  Be f**king presidential,” Jackson told Playboy magazine. “Look, I grew up in a society where I could say ‘It ain’t’ or ‘What it be’ to my friends. But when I’m out presenting myself to the world as me, who graduated from college, who had family what cared about me, who has a well-read background, I f**king conjugate.”
The 64-year-old actor, who stars this fall in the highly-anticipated remake of “Oldboy,” is also known in social media circles as the “grammar police.”
“On Twitter someone will write, ‘Your an idiot,’ and I’ll go, ‘No, you’re an idiot,’ and all my Twitterphiles will go, ‘Hey, Sam Jackson, he’s the grammar police.’  I’ll take that,” he continued. “Somebody needs to be. I mean, we have newscasters who don’t even know how to conjugate verbs, something Walter Cronkite and Edward R. Murrow never had problems with.  How the f**k did we become a society where mediocrity is acceptable.”
Raised in Tennessee, Jackson went on to note that he’s finally proud to acknowledge his Southern roots, and how his strict family upbringing put him in good stead.
“Looking back, I love the South so much, even though there was a time when I didn’t feel so proud of being from there. The sense of community there is unheard of in this day and age. The idea that it takes a village to raise a child—it works,” he said. “The one thing my family insisted on was, don’t embarrass us. Don’t make us come to jail, because though we will come to see you, we’re going to leave you there. It just wasn’t an option for me. I was more afraid of the people I lived with than the people I ran with.”
The famed actor also staunchly defended director Quentin Tarantino’s controversial use of the “N” word in last year’s hit “Django Unchained.”
“These 20-somethings can’t turn around and tell me the word n**ger is f**ked-up in ‘Django’ yet still listen to Jay Z or whoever else say ‘n**ger, n**ger, n**ger’ throughout the music they listen to,” he told the men’s magazine. “You can’t have it one way and not the other. Saying Tarantino said ‘n**ger’ too many times is like complaining they said ‘kike’ too many times in a movie about Nazis.”
However, there are a couple of things he says won’t do onscreen – not even for his buddy Tarantino. Maybe.
“Probably dress up as a woman and kiss another guy. I don’t think people want to see me do that,” Jackson added. “He hasn’t asked me, but you know what?  If it’s done right and the story is good, I might.”

Report: Memory Loss Forces Jack Nicholson to Retire

breitbart

By John Nolte 

It has been three years since Jack Nicholson last appeared on screen and now Radar Online is reporting that the three-time Oscar winner has retired from acting due to  a failing memory that makes it impossible for him to remember his lines. Radar's source says Nicholson will continue to be a public figure, just not on film.

The 76-year-old icon has no plans to appear in films again after a career spanning five decades.

“Jack has — without fanfare — retired,” a well-placed Hollywood film insider confirmed to Radar.

“There is a simple reason behind his decision — it’s memory loss. Quite frankly, at 76, Jack has memory issues and can no longer remember the lines being asked of him.

Nicholson's decision puts him in a club with fellow Oscar winners  Sean Connery and Gene Hackman, who also quietly retired from the acting profession in their mid to late seventies.

Radar adds that Nicholson will still be seen courtside at Lakers' games and in public appearances, such as his co-presentation of the Best Picture Oscar at last year's Academy Awards.

Nicholson's screen career began in 1956 in the television series Matinee Theatre.  After numerous film and television appearances, stardom would finally arrive thirteen years later with a memorable supporting role in 1969's Easy Rider. From there, Nicholson never looked back. On his way to becoming a screen legend, Nicholson would rack up an incredible twelve Oscar nominations, winning three.

‘Castro’s Daughter’ Movie Finds Director

Variety

blogs.estadao.com.br

Dave McNary

“Precious” producer Sarah Siegel-Magness will direct historical drama “Castro’s Daughter,” replacing “Il Postino” director Michael Radford.

Siegel-Magness will also produce through her Smokewood Entertainment banner along with Mankind Entertainment ’s John Martinez O’Felan and Joe Lamy. The screenplay, described as a coming-of-age story, was written by Bobby Moresco (“Crash”) and and Nilo Cruz, author of the Pulitzer Prize-wining play “Anna in the Tropics.”

Fernandez was born in 1956 to Fidel Castro, three years before he took power. She fled Cuba as a dissident in 1993 disguised as a Spanish tourist and later wrote her memoir “Castro’s Daughter: An Exile’s Memoir of Cuba.”

Fernandez currently has a Miami-based radio show “Simplemente Alina.”

Cruz, a Cuban native whose family left Cuba in 1970, is co-producing and will consult with Siegel-Magness.

“Alina Fernandez is an unsung hero who has carried the invisible flag for freedom and democracy,” Siegel-Magness said.

The deal was closed in Toronto prior to the Toronto Intl. Film Festival, which starts Thursday. Producers are aiming to start shooting next year.

Siegel-Magness directed “Crazy Kind of Love,” starring Virginia Madsen.

Mankind Entertainment is also developing a feature version of  “Anna in the Tropics.” Lee Daniels, who directed “‘Precious” and “The Butler” developed the screenplay with Cruz.

Radford came on board the project in June, 2011.

Orson Welles, un filme perdido y Cuba

armengol

Es la noticia más importante sobre cine en lo que va de año. Se acaba de hacer público el hallazgo de una película perdida de Orson Welles. A la sorpresa se añade un dato singular: la referencia a Cuba. Anecdótica, simplista, estereotipada y con decorados falsos. Es cierto. Pero no deja de llamar la atención que la isla siempre salte en donde menos se la espera que aparezca.

Quizá la sorpresa no sea tal y solo muestre un chovinismo trasnochado. La cercanía de Cuba a Estados Unidos y los vínculos históricos es lo que determina siempre, y repetirlo casi da vergüenza por lo manido. Pero primero la noticia.

Ayer The New York Times la daba a conocer y hoy el diario español El País tiene una amplia información al respecto. Se trata del descubrimiento en Italia de Too Much Johnson, la película que incluso Welles dio por perdida había sido encontrada en la pequeña localidad de Pordenone, Italia. Restaurada en Holanda y Estados Unidos, va a ser presentada en octubre y colocada en internet.

El País cuenta en detalle todo lo sucedido: como la peste a vinagre que despedía la cinta fue decisiva en el descubrimiento —las películas de nitrato al envejecer padecen lo que los expertos llaman “síndrome acético”­­— y el casi milagro de que se pudiera rescatar el 96 por ciento del material.  Sin embargo, aunque el periódico señala que el hecho “supone un acontecimiento mayúsculo para la historia de este arte [el cine]” no menciona que, antes de Citizen Kane estuvo Too Much Johnson.

Se considera que fue esta película la que despertó lo que puede llamarse —nunca un cliché ha resultado más apropiado— la pasión de Welles por el cine.

No se trata de que veremos próximamente una nueva obra maestra de Welles. Too Much Johnson, que dura unos 40 minutos, es una película inacabada, silente y no se realizó con el objetivo de proyectarla de forma independiente, sino como parte de la presentación de la obra de teatro de igual título.

Cuando finalmente se exhiba, será principalmente una curiosidad —en gran parte aburrida por las repeticiones y la falta de edición en muchas secuencias— y más un producto para estudiosos y fanáticos de Welles.  Nada de esto, sin embargo, restará valor a lo que constituye su valor principal: resultará imprescindible.

Esta película, que estaba destinada a ser un complemento y nunca se ha exhibido públicamente, es realmente el primer contacto de Orson Welles con el cine (hay un corto anterior, que hoy puede ser visto en You Tube, The Hearts of Age, pero que se categoriza más bien como una “película casera”).

Ya por los fotogramas que se han dado a conocer, se puede apreciar esa profunda vinculación de Welles con el cine silente —la leyenda de que se encerró durante un año la filmoteca del Museo de Arte Moderno de Nueva York y vio toda la producción silente— que se desarrollará a plenitud en El Ciudadano.

¿Y dónde está la “conexión cubana”? Realmente en la obra de teatro. Too Much Johnson fue escrita por William Gillette, quien es recordado principalmente por su labor de actor y el haberle impreso el carácter y la figura definitiva al personaje de Sherlock Holmes —una figuración que permanece hasta hoy en el cine y el teatro—, y que entre cosas fue además inventor y autor teatral. Es más, el rastreo de la fuente puede ir más allá, ya que Too Much Johnson no es otra cosa que la adaptación de una farsa francesa, La Plantation Thomassin, de Maurice Ordonneau.

La comedia de Gillette, escrita en 1894, trata sobre un mujeriego neoyorquino, Augustus Billings (interpretado por el propio Gillette en la obra original y por Joseph Cotten en la película de Welles), que engaña a su esposa en múltiples ocasiones y para ello siempre acude al pretexto de que tiene una plantación en la isla, la cual “visita” con frecuencia, cuando lo que en realidad hace es estar con su amante de turno. Solo que hay un dueño de una plantación cubana verdadero, Joseph Johnson. Billings no solo intenta no ser descubierto por su esposa, sino que huye también de una amante obsesiva y del violento esposo de esta. Todos, Billings, su esposa y suegra, su amante y el marido, Johnson y su novia, se encuentran finalmente en un barco que va precisamente a… Cuba.

La producción de Too Much Johnson, para la temporada de 1938, del Mercury Theatre, fue un rotundo fracaso, pero ello no influyó mucho en la trayectoria de Welles, que por entonces tenía tan solo 23 años. Tres meses después, gracias a su programa de radio sobre la obra de otro Welles (Herbert George), La Guerra de los Mundos, alcanzó la celebridad que nunca le abandonaría. Solo faltaban tres años para que transformara al cine para siempre, con El Ciudadano, su primera obra maestra. Tampoco lo abandonaría esa tenue conexión cubana.

El protagonista de El Ciudadano está inspirado en el periodista, editor e impulsor de la Guerra Hispano-Americana, William Randolph Hearst, pero aquí la referencia a Cuba se limita a una línea del libreto: Kane recibe la comunicación de un reportero (el corresponsal de guerra y célebre ilustrador Frederic Sackrider Remington), que dice “No hay guerra en Cuba”, a lo que él responde: “Usted se encarga de brindar una prosa poética, yo pongo la guerra”. La célebre frase atribuida a Hearts.

Hay otra referencia a Cuba en Orson Welles. Se encuentra en The Voyage of the Damned, la película de Stuart Rosenberg de1976, una cinta menor sobre una gran tragedia y que contó con un reparto estelar que no la salvó de un tratamiento dramático convencional.

En la cinta de Rosenberg, Welles interpreta a un cubano tan corrupto como su célebre personaje de Harry Lime, en un filme que es casi —o no casi— una obra maestra: The Third Man (El Tercer Hombre) de Carol Reed, realizada en 1949.

En El Tercer Hombre, Welles no solo aportó una actuación memorable, sino que introdujo lo que es la mejor línea del excelente guión de Graham Greene, que no es magnífico porque fue Welles quien creó y dijo esto:

“En Italia, en 30 años de dominación de los Borgia hubo guerras, terror, sangre y muerte, pero surgieron Miguel Ángel, Leonardo da Vinci y el Renacimiento. En Suiza hubo amor y fraternidad, 500 años de democracia y paz y ¿que tenemos? El reloj de cuco”.

Welles recuerda esta declaración de arte e infamia, y hace otra similar en el personaje que brevemente interpreta en The Voyage of the Damned. Bien vestido, con un puro en la boca, José Estedes, que participa en la negociación —que resulta infructuosa— para permitir a los refugiados judíos a bordo del St. Louis entrar en Cuba expresa:

“En La Habana, de lo único que uno puede estar seguro, es de un tabaco”.

La frase guarda toda la vigencia que puede ofrecer el humo.