Thursday, June 26, 2008

Covenant News- The Latest Industry & Social News From the Entertainment & Media Capital of the Universe, HOLLYWOOD, Los Angeles.CA. Thur 26 June 2008


WHO READS THE LBN E-LERT?

Veteran Music Manager, Jim Morey, along with 295,000 other "influencers," worldwide








LBN-SNAP....


Carol Burnett........





MTV TO ROCK THE VOTE, WILL NOW ACCEPT POLITICAL ADS:

Politicians can finally get their MTV


After declining political advertising since its inception in 1981, MTV is reversing course.

The Viacom MTV Networks channel --

once known for round-the-clock music videos and now home to a host of reality shows --
says it will now take political ads, though only from political candidates and party political committees, not from third parties.

LBN-OVERHEARD:

***Barack Obama didn't attend the BET Awards, but that didn't stop attendees from talking about him.

"If we all register and vote, we will have the first black president in the history of America,"

Sean "Diddy" Combs told the crowd Tuesday at the Shrine Auditorium before chanting "Obama or Die" -

a declarative remix of his neutral "Vote or Die" motto from the 2004 presidential election, when he attempted to boost the youth vote.

***Coldplay's new album is already living the life.

"Viva La Vida" will debut at No. 1 on The Billboard 200 album chart with over 720,000 copies sold in its first week,

the second-best opening week of 2008, according to the trade magazine's Web site.



LBN-A DIFFERENT VIEW......
























LBN-DID YOU KNOW?

***Coca-Cola was originally green.

***If you yelled for 8 years, 7 months and 6 days, you would have produced enough sound energy to heat one cup of coffee.

*** Every day more money is printed for Monopoly than the US Treasury.

*** It is impossible to lick your elbow.

*** The world's largest amphibian is the giant salamander.
It can grow up to 5 ft. in length.

LBN-QUOTE:

" Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future,
concentrate the mind on the present moment. "

-Buddha

LBN-HISTORY:
On June 25, 1950, war broke out in Korea as forces from the communist North invaded the South.

Tuesday, June 24th, 2008

Democratic presidential hopeful asks fundraisers to aid former rival

By Matthew B. Zeidman
WASHINGTON, D.C.
(Hollywood Today)

6/25/08 –

“The way to continue our fight now, to accomplish the goals for which we stand, is to take our energy, our passion, our strength and do all we can to help elect Barack Obama,”

said Hillary Clinton in a speech to supporters on June 7th.

In what may be an attempt to placate disenfranchised supporters of former First Lady Hillary Clinton’s defunct run for president, presumptive Democratic nominee Barack Obama has put out a call to help his former rival pay her massive campaign debt.

During a Tuesday teleconference, Obama instructed his fundraising team to solicit money from donors to aid Clinton in paying down $22.5 million owed to creditors, the Associated Press reported.
His financial assistance to Clinton, in addition to Clinton’s campaigning for Obama, may be crucial in converting staunch Clinton backers to Obama’s side and ensuring Democratic victories in states where Obama and Republican candidate John McCain are closely matched.

Though Clinton was considered the most likely winner early on in the race for the Democratic nomination, Obama garnered an insurmountable lead in super-delegates, party leaders who are permitted to vote for whomever they wish at the Democratic convention in August.
Despite strong showings in primaries nationwide, Clinton was forced to concede early this month.


Tuesday, June 24th, 2008

It’s 1994, and Sir Ben Kingsley is a small-time dealer’s shrink



By Robin Rowe
HOLLYWOOD, CA (Hollywood Today)
6/25/08 -
“I learn my lines four weeks before a film, if I’m given weeks,” says Sir Ben Kingsley who stars as psychiatrist in Sony Pictures Classics’ new film ‘The Wackness’.
Kingsley is known for being extremely well-prepared in front of the camera.
“It’s a lot simpler than people would like to think.
There seems to be an eagerness to over-complicate the process.
I feel quite ashamed sometimes to share how little research I do.”

“I arrive at the set,” says Kingsley.
“I’m not going to let the director or any of the other actors down, and I know my lines.
I’m word perfect.
I know how my character would behave.
I do what my character needs to do.
I must allow my character to do what my character says he likes to do on the page, and I follow that strictly.”

“With Sir Ben, it wasn’t about authenticity,” says director Jonathan Levine.
He’s not the kind of ‘New York actor’ you might expect in that role.

He’s just an amazing actor.

He gave this distinctly kind of ‘New York actor’ you might expect in that role.
He’s just an amazing actor.
He gave this distinctly ballsy performance, a strange concoction.
Our idea was to just bring him into this world and have the world react to him.”

“I remember Olivia and I were in a state of perpetual anticipation, this whirlwind of, ‘Sir Ben!
Oh my God, what do we expect?’, says Josh Peck who plays the lead role opposite Kingsley in ‘The Wackness.’
‘He came to me the first day of shooting and gave me a hug and said,
‘This part chose you;
you didn’t choose this part.’
And right then, every wall, every piece of trepidation, everything fell away, because he truly made me feel like an equal.’

“I think, to Ben’s credit, he knew we’d be intimidated,” says Levine.
“He knew that this was not going to work if Josh and I were scared of him, not to mention the fact that he’s just a sweet man.”

In ‘The Wackness’ it’s the summer of 1994 and the streets of New York are pulsing with rap music.
Hip-hop artist Marathon Man and plays a significant role in the film.
Josh Peck is a small-time marijuana dealer spends his last summer before college selling dope throughout New York City and trading it with his shrink Ben Kingsley for therapy.

In 1994, times are changing, as a newly inaugurated mayor Rudy Giuliani is looking to clean up New York with initiatives against minor crimes like noisy portable radios, graffiti and public drunkenness.
‘The Wackness’ is edgy dark comedy coming-of-age story with Josh Peck, Olivia Thirlby, Famke Janssen, and Mary Kate Olsen.

Peck’s character has a crush on his shrink’s stepdaughter, Olivia Thirlby from ‘Juno’.
An innocent first love experience becomes a life lesson.
When the doctor has a breakdown, it’s up to the younger man to throw the older one a lifeline.
Propelled by a rap music score, ‘The Wackness’ recaptures the mood of 1994, a time of pagers, not cell phones; a time when Tupac and Biggie were alive but Kurt Cobain had just died.

“For me, hip hop was at its best in ‘94: at its most creative and most authentic,” says Levine.
“And while the lives of my friends and I were distant from the gangsta life of the rappers, we identified with their spirit, and the authenticity of feeling that they embodied.
So we listened. These days, I don’t really listen to much hip hop.
I don’t think today’s artists have as much to say; the production’s too slick.
In ‘94, it was a movement; in ‘08, it’s pop.
Things just aren’t the same as they were then.
No music has ever spoken to me like the Class of ‘94.”
‘The Wackness’Running Time: 95 min.
Release Date: July 3rd, 2008 (limited)
MPAA Rating: R for pervasive drug use, language and some sexuality.
Distributors: Sony Pictures Classics

Rolling Stone revealed this week an important piece of pop culture news.

On Barack Obama’s iPod resides the likes of Bob Dylan, Sheryl Crow, Jay-Z and Yo-Yo Ma.

Other media reports suggested that John McCain’s tastes leaned toward Frank Sinatra and Rosemary Clooney, until, that is he learned that all Clooneys were liberals.


I remember attending an opening night on Broadway some years ago when everyone in the cast kept missing their cues.

That situation also reflects the present state of Hollywood’s labor negotiations.

This is the moment in the show when “management” steps in with a macho final offer to the Screen Actors Guild.

The leaders of SAG, headed by Alan Rosenberg, the Che Guevara of the talent guilds, review the offer and propose some tweaks.

That’s the cue for Bob Iger and Peter Chernin, Hollywood’s designated Twin Towers, to do the math and make some phone calls.


Then a long-forgotten phenomenon takes place:

People go back to work.

Those people, that is, who still have a job.

The big question in town, however, is this:

Does anyone know their lines?

Old-timers are scratching their heads.

They’ve never witnessed such a bewildering stalemate as the present one.

The retired CEO of one major put it this way:

“We’ve got a recession.

People can no longer afford to fill their gas tanks.

The writers strike was a failure for all practical purposes.

And the actors, who are fifth in line among the guilds, are going to go on strike?

Is this reality or science fiction?”

No one is interested in history, but here’s a brief reminder of the way things used to work:

In the Lew Wasserman era, Big Lew informally took the temperature of the guilds, sampled the opinions of some of his corporate colleagues, then made some quiet deals.

Of course, he had his “enforcers” standing by in case anything got out of control.

Bob Daly, when he headed Warner Bros., opted for a somewhat more transparent technique.

He orchestrated meetings with the key guilds one year before contracts were set to expire and settled issues in a cone of silence.

There was an absence of rhetoric and position-taking.

There was also an absence of strikes.But now we’re in a new era.

Everyone’s text-messaging.

Never before has so much data and information been exchanged so rapidly and efficiently.

So that’s the big irony.

Everyone’s on message, but no one’s talking.

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