The keyboardist, whose Vox organ solos were as much a part of The Doors’ sound as Jim Morrison’s Beat poet vocals, Robbie Krieger’s psychedelic blues guitar and John Densmore’s jazzy drum work, met Morrison while they both attended UCLA’s film school in the early ‘60s.

Born Feb. 12, 1939, in Chicago, Manzarek graduated from DePaul before making his pivotal move to California. Shortly after they both graduated from UCLA, Manzarek and Morrison ran into each other on Venice Beach. After hearing Morrison sing “Moonlight Drive” for him, they decided to form The Doors, named after Aldous Huxley’s 1954 groundbreaking drug book, The Doors of Perception. Krieger and Densmore joined the band after meeting Manzarek at a transcendental meditation lecture.

The Doors initially signed to Columbia, but then Elektra picked them up when Columbia inexplicably dropped the fledgling band. Released in 1967, The Doors eponymous debut album literally broke on through to the other side, hitting No. 2 on the charts, led by “Light My Fire,” the band’s first No. 1 song. The seven-minute album version (written by Krieger) may have been sliced to three for the single, but it still retained its sonic power, anchored by Manzarek’s and Krieger’s lengthy solos.

The band recorded five more stellar albums before Morrison’s mysterious death in Paris in 1971.

During the post-Doors years, Manzarek recorded several solo albums and wrote three books, one of which (Light My Fire: My Life with The Doors) told his version of the epochal five-year stretch when The Doors were one of the greatest bands of the classic-rock era.

Manzarek and Krieger got back together in 2001 and formed The Doors of the 21st Century, featuring The Cult’s Ian Astbury on vocals. But Densmore, who disapproved of their appropriation of The Doors name, sued and was able to shut down the tour. Manzarek and Krieger subsequently toured together under their own names, playing The Doors music people wanted to hear. Now Krieger will have to go it alone.

“I’m just glad to have been able to have played Doors songs with him for the last decade,” the guitarist said in a press release posted at Facebook. “Ray was a huge part of my life.”

In Manzarek’s honor, Sunset Strip staples The Roxy and Whisky A Go Go are displaying remembrances on their respective marquees. The former reads: “We love you Ray Manzarek. You will always light our fire.” The latter: “Thanks for all the memories.”

Bigas Luna, a larger-than-life director, became famous after the 1975 death of dictator Francisco Franco. Luna’s second feature, 1978’s “Bilbao,” rolled off the new sexual liberties to portray a hen-pecked husband who kidnaps a prostitute to slake his sexual frustrations, hanging her from his ceiling like a religious martyr.

“Bilbao” initiated Bigas Luna’s long-term exploration of sexual and emotional inadequacy, set in the context of social repression. This inspired the 1990’s sexual awakening drama “The Ages of Lulu,” whose S & M orgy was cut by the British Board of Film Classification.

These obsessions also lends weight, however, to Bigas Luna’s finest film achievement, his so-called Iberian Trilogy, produced by Andres Vicente Gomez: “Jamon, Jamon” (1992), “Golden Balls” (1993) and “The Tit and the Moon,” (1994), a celebration of often earthy Spanish pleasures and mix of old and new, ranging from Spain’s roadside brothels to its hams and omelettes in “Jamon, Jamon,” machismo and construction boom in “Balls” and Catalan human towers in “Moon.”

Between directing 1985 amor fou meller “Lola,” Bigas Luna twice made a play for the international market with English-language movies, 1981’s religious cult drama “Reborn,” with Dennis Hopper, and 1987’s underrated horror-film-within-a-horror-film “Anguish.” The movies of his trilogy remain his best performing films abroad, however.

A graphic artist in his early career and lifelong painter, Bigas Luna was often ahead of his times.

He gave Penelope Cruz, Javier Bardem and Jordi Molla their big break in “Jamon, Jamon,” ended “Lola” with a teen Ariadna Gil swimming, established a digital cinema workshop in 1999, set 2006’s teen-dreams drama “I Am La Juani,” in Spain’s new suburban high-rise sprawl, which has re-shaped the

country, and spent years raising the finance for 3D movie “Second Origen,” which he left unshot.

A generous agourmet, Bigas Luna grew grapes and, in one of his last public acts in December, offered friends wine from his vineyard and Jabugo ham from Iberian pigs he raised in oak woods in Extremadura.

“Jamon, Jamon” changed my life,” Penelope Cruz said Saturday in a written statement. “Bigas was one of the wisest persons I’ve known, living the present and enjoying the small things in life.”

“I owe Bigas the woman I love, two soulmates and a career I never dreamed I’d have,” Javier Bardem added. “When confronted with any conflict, rather than drama and anguish, he preferred a smile, love and a good slice of ham.”

Born in Germany, Ruth moved to Britain with her family during the Nazi regime. After marrying an Indian architect and moving to New Delhi, she began to write about her life there. She drew on her experiences for the novel “Heat and Dust” about a young woman living in India in the 1920s, which won the Booker Prize and was adapted for the 1983 James Ivory film.

Ruth collaborated with Merchant and Ivory on films that were often literary adaptations, including “Mr. and Mrs. Bridge,” starring Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward (in their last joint appearance on screen), “The Remains of the Day,” “Quartet,” “The Golden Bowl” and “A Soldier’s Daughter Never Cries.”

Producer Ismail

Merchant first called her in 1961 to ask the novelist, who had never written a screenplay, about adapting her novel “The Householder,” which would be Indian producer Merchant’s first film and his off-screen companion James Ivory’s first narrative picture. The film came out in 1963, and the trio went on to work together for nearly 50 years, often on adaptations of novels by Henry James and E.M Forster.

“When Ruth writes something, she does it with a very fine comb, so there is no question of the pitfalls or traps that people often fall into,” Merchant said in 2001.

Ruth was also Oscar-nominated for “The Remains of the Day,” from the Kazuo Ishiguro novel about a butler in an English manor house. The high-profile film starred Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson in Oscar-nominated performances.

Her writing was marked by detailed evocation of the lives of foreigners in India, and she often took on novels about people caught in socially-constricted worlds.

Her only original screenplay was 1995′s “Jefferson in Paris,” starring Nick Nolte, which was both an artistic and commercial flop.

Ismail Merchant, who was James Ivory’s lover for years, died in 2005.

Jhabvala’s last screenplay was James Ivory’s 2009 film, “The City of Your Final Destination,” which was also an artistic disappointment.

With all the ups and downs, the trio of Jhabvala, Merchant and Ivory represents one of the longest, most fruitful collaborations in film history.

Just when you thought the horror movie had nowhere to go, comes along The Dark Half, the new George Romero picture, based on Stephen King’s l989 novel. As expected, the Romero-King discount viagra collaboration proves to be a match made in heaven.

I have always been partial to Romero’s films for a personal reason. In l969, while an undergraduate student, I visited Paris for the first time. A classmate, obsessed with film as I was, took me to a midnight screening of what he described as a schlock film: Night of the Living Dead. The rest, as they say, is history. The film not only put Romero, at age 28, on the cinematic map, but it also went on to become a cult movie.

Produced like many Romero endeavors on a minimal budget, Night of the Living Dead was a tongue-in-cheek essay in zombie carnage, and it still occupies a landmark status in the development of midnight movies. Like other cult films (The Rocky Horror Picture Show), young audiences in major urban cities and college towns embraced the film with their repeated viewing.

Along with Roger Corman, Romero is a key figure in the introduction of explicit violence and excessive gore into the horror genre. Indeed, Romero secured his position as schlock horror king of the l970s, with Dawn of the Dead (l978), a satire of American consumerism and sequel to Night of the Living Dead.

Martin (l978), a vampire/sex fiend tale, did little for the tourist trade of Pittsburgh, where Romero lives and works.

Romero’s later work tended more toward the mainstream, though not always successfully. Creepshow (l982) was an uninspired homage to the EC horror comics that he and Stephen King had read as children, and Monkey Shines: An Experiment in Fear (l988) fared poorly with both critics and audiences.

I am therefore delighted to recommend The Dark Half as an accomplished horror film. Ironically, Timothy Hutton, who has recently played such undistinguished roles (The Temp), renders one of his best performances to date. I say ironically, because most “serious” actors consider the horror film a disreputable genre–at least compared with epic, dramatic, and even melodramatic narratives.

In this reworking of the famous Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Hutton plays a double role. He is Thad Beaumont, a nice small-town (Castle Rock, Maine) teacher and ambitious writer, and George Stark, a sleazy killer wearing a black leather jacket and lizard-skin boots. Elvis Presley’s popular l960s song, “Are You Lonesome Tonight,” which introduces Stark, is used as a musical motif.

Stark is the pseudonym Beaumont has given himself when he produces trashy novels. But threatened with exposure of his identity, Beaumont bravely decides to terminate Stark and achieve a new respectability as a writer of honorable novels. But can one do away with one’s inner self with such ease? Of course not, and soon the other half–the inner evil–comes to haunt and torture Beaumont and his family.
As with most horror films these days, there are allusions to other thrillers, most notably to Hitchcock’s classic The Birds. There are at least three scary moments that evoke this Hitchcockian imagery, when thousands of sparrows suddenly fly or invade Beaumont’s house. I also wonder is it is just a coincidence that Jeffrey Beaumont was the hero’s name in David Lynch’s Blue Velvet.

The film plays skillfully with the notion of doubles–and twins. Beaumont and his wife (played by Amy Madigan) are the parents of twins. In the climax, the two babies watch in bewildering amazement as their father fights with his double, lacking any clue as to what is going on.

The Dark Half displays Romero’s usual dark skills and truly frightening sensibility. Working with a first-rate cinematographer, Tony Pierce-Roberts, who has done marvels for Merchant-Ivory (Howards End) and won an Oscar for A Room With A View, the picture has a stunning visual style. In almost every respect, The Dark Half is an A movie and a major improvement over Romero’s previous flicks.

But even when Fuqua was directing music videos, he had to fight against being stereotyped – honored to have worked with Prince and Stevie Wonder, he never had the same opportunity with other favorites like Eric Clapton and U2. What he wanted more than anything was to make deep, resonant films rather than another urban flick that starred people of the same race. Mysticism and Joseph Campbell had far greater appeal to him than doing another gangsta thriller set in the ‘hood. Though not always successful in pulling off movies out of his comfort zone – the realist take on the mythological “King Arthur” (2004) being a prime example – Fuqua challenged himself to push his boundaries and see the world through a colorless lens.

Fuqua was born on May 30, 1965 in the rough-and-tumble Homewood neighborhood in Pittsburgh, PA. Raised in a good home – his father was a foreman for Heinz, his mother a medical technician – Fuqua, nonetheless, confronted the nightmares of living in a violent neighborhood, finding dead bodies in the alley, dodging a bullet at age 14, and suffering a stroke a year later from all the stress. But Fuqua was a good student and a talented basketball player – two gifts that helped elevate him out of the ghetto and into the University of West Virginia on an athletic scholarship, where he also studied electrical engineering. After two years of electromagnetism and signal processing, Fuqua called it quits and, while taking a baroque art class, became fascinated with painting. A brief return to Pittsburgh was followed by a move to New York, where he began working as a production assistant on local productions, learning the ins-and-outs of putting together a shoot.%0

Winner revealed last summer that specialists had given him 18 months to live due to heart and liver problems.

Winner, who also produced, scripted and edited many of his films, will be best remembered for helming the controversial 1974 revenge thriller “Death Wish” and the first two of its sequels in 1982 and 1985. In a 2012 interview with street newspaper The Big Issue the director admitted, “When I die, it’s going to be ‘Death Wish director dies.’ I don’t mind though. ‘Death Wish’ was an epoch-making film.”

The series reteamed Winner with Bronson, who had worked with him on “Chato’s Land” and “The Mechanic” (both 1972) and “The Stone Killer” (1973).

The prolific filmmaker, who made 30 of his 33 films in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, worked with film legends including Burt Lancaster, Orson Welles, James Coburn, Sophia Loren, Marlon Brando, Ava Gardner, Robert Mitchum and James Stewart.

Born in London to George and Helen Winner, who were Russian and Polish respectivel, Winner knew that he wanted to work in film from an early age.

Starting out in television Winner helmed his first feature in 1960 with “Shoot to Kill,” about a showbiz reporter caught up in political intrigue, which he also scripted.

In 1964, he worked with Oliver Reed on “The System,” the first of six collaborations with the actor including 1969 satire “Hannibal Brooks,” which brought him Hollywood attention.

Winner’s last film was the crime comedy “Parting Shots” in 1998.

A bon vivant and raconteur, he subsequently became better known in Blighty for his long-running restaurant column in the Sunday Times, which he wrote until Dec. 2, and for his frequent TV appearances including in adverts for insurance company esure which he also directed.

After making an unusual entrance to cinema by way of the art world, Bigelow put her distinctive stamp on standard genre films like the Western-twinged vampire flick, “Near Dark” (1987) and the feminist-themed cop thriller, “Blue Steel” (1990). With the financial success of the surfer bank heist picture, “Point Break” (1991),

Bigelow enjoyed newfound status as a mainstream director with a rather artistic bent. Following a brief marriage and creative collaboration with fellow director James Cameron, she directed one of her most
challenging films, the futuristic “Strange Days” (1995), which failed to catch on at the box office, but nonetheless displayed how successfully a filmmaker could marry art with narrative. Despite the financial
disaster that was “K-12: The Widowmaker” (2002), Bigelow continued to churn out an impressive body of work, including the war drama “The Hurt Locker” (2009), that honed in on her fascination with the meaning of
violence that was once thought to be the exclusive domain of male directors.

Born on Nov. 27, 1951 in San Carlos, CA, Bigelow was raised by her paint factory manager father and librarian mother. She developed an interest in art as a child, painting giant segments taken from the masters
when she was 14. After high school, she attended the San Francisco Art Institute where she studied painting and art for two years. In 1972, she won a scholarship for the Independent Study Program at the Whitney
Museum in New York, which gave her the opportunity to study and produce conceptual art that was critiqued by the likes of Richard Serra and Susan Sontag. Bigelow moved on to study film theory and criticism at
Columbia University, earning her master’s of fine arts in 1979, after having filmed backgrounds for performance artist Vito Acconci. During this time, she made her first venture into filmmaking with “Set-Up”
(1978), a 20-minute short that depicted two men beating on each other while a voiceover read an essay on the nature of violence. Though an experimental film with little narrative, “The Set Up” did lay the thematic groundwork for her later work.

After using her lanky frame to model in a Gap advertisement, Bigelow ventured into feature filmmaking in 1981 with “The Loveless,” an eccentric and often confusing art film that served as a meditation on the juvenile delinquent movies that were popular in the 1950s. Though off-putting to some, “The Loveless” did introduce the world to actor Willem Dafoe, while earning Bigelow attention from famed director Walter Hill, who helped secure a development deal for her when she moved to Los Angeles in 1983. She made her acting debut in artist and independent filmmaker Lizzie Borden’s “Born in Flames” (1983), a bizarre blend of feminism and science fiction. Bigelow became something of a cult figure with her next feature, “Near Dark” (1987), a stylish, atmospheric cross between horror movie and Western of modern-day vampires on the Great Plains that managed to avoid the heavily-mythologized trappings of other like films.

Bigelow became the third wife of director, James Cameron.
Bigelow directed her first major studio film, “Blue Steel” (1990), a tense action thriller about a rookie cop (Jamie Lee Curtis) who unwittingly becomes romantically involved with a killer (Ron Silver). Though the film was melodramatic to a fault, it nonetheless allowed Bigelow a good platform to comment on a woman’s struggle to make it in a world predominantly occupied by men. In her first collaboration with Cameron, which was released the same year the two divorced, Bigelow directed the character-driven heist thriller, “Point Break” (1991), which followed an FBI agent (Keanu Reeves) who has gone undercover to bust a group of bank robbers led by a Zen-like surfer (Patrick Swayze). While first introducing Reeves as a viable action star, “Point Break” was plagued by a rambling script that ultimately went nowhere, though the film managed to be entertaining enough to be her biggest money-maker to date.

Meanwhile, she made the jump over to television, making her directing debut in that medium with a segment of the six-hour miniseries, “Wild Palms” (ABC, 1993), a sci-fi drama about the dangers of brainwashing and technology.

Back to directing features, Bigelow teamed up with ex-husband-turned-producer Cameron for “Strange Days” (1995), a futuristic thriller about an ex-cop (Ralph Fiennes) who deals squids – digital recordings of other
people’s experiences that can be plugged directly into another’s brain. As the world awaits the new millennium, the squid dealer finds himself embroiled in the murder of a political activist killed by his former
colleagues. Though the film received some positive buzz at the 1995 New York Film Festival, it failed to gain traction upon theatrical release and died a quick death at the box office, leading to a long absence from the big screen. But Bigelow was hardly idle.

Since 1992, she had been developing a feature about the life of Joan
of Arc, and at one time had French director-producer Luc Besson involved. When Besson went on to make his version of the story, “The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc” (1999), Bigelow cried foul and filed a lawsuit alleging fraud, breach of contract and breach of fiduciary duty. Rather than face a protracted legal battle, Besson settled out of court for an undisclosed sum.

Additionally during her absence from the big screen, Bigelow saw her script for the thriller “Undertow” (1996) produced and aired on Showtime, starring Lou Diamond Phillips as a drifter who stalks a terrified woman (Mia Sara) and her lunatic husband (Charles Dance). Turning to episodic television, she helmed three episodes of
the acclaimed cop drama, “Homicide: Life on the Street” (NBC, 1993-99), including one of the series’ final episodes. The following year, she was back at the multiplexes with “The Weight of Water,” a psychological
thriller that interwove the story of a female photographer (Catherine McCormack) who investigates a 100-year-old murder that leads her to suspect that her husband (Sean Penn) is having an affair. Visually
interesting and well-acted, the film nonetheless languished for two years after its premiere at the 2000 Toronto Film Festival.

Bigelow next directed Harrison Ford and Liam Neeson in “K-19: The Widowmaker” (2002), an adaptation of a historical event where a faulty Russian nuclear submarine test-fired a missile in 1961, resulting in a leak in the reactor core that almost triggered the sub’s payload, and with it, possibly World War III. Made for over $100 million from non-studio financiers, including National Geographic, “K-19″ bombed at the box office, making it the biggest independent flop to date.

Once again, Bigelow was noticeably absent from the big screen for the
next several years. But after directing episodes of the short-lived series “Karen Sisco” (ABC, 2003-04) and “The Inside” (Fox, 2005), Bigelow returned to the feature world with “The Hurt Locker” (2009), an Iraq War drama as seen through the eyes of members from the Army’s elite Explosive Ordinance Disposal unit. The powerful film would go on to garner Bigelow the most accolades of her career up until that point, as well as put her in contention for the same Best Director Golden Globe as her ex-husband, Cameron, nominated himself for “Avatar” (2009). Though Cameron won the Globe, Bigelow took home the Directors Guild Award
for Best Director in late January 2009, becoming the first woman in history to have been so honored.

Bigelow had the chance to shatter the glass ceiling for good when she was among the five filmmakers nominated for Best Director at the Academy Awards. She would go on to win the Oscar, becoming the first female director to do so. In April 2010, Bigelow was named to the Time 100 list of most influential people of the year.

She became the first woman to receive an Academy Award for Best Director for The Hurt Locker She is the fourth woman in history to be nominated for the honor, and only the second American woman.

MILESTONES
1971 Lived in NYC variously as a student, artist and filmmaker
1971 Had one of her first “exhibitions” at the Whitney Museum in NYC
1978 Short film writing, producing and directing debut, “Set-Up” (a 20-minute-long Columbia student project)
Posed for a Gap advertisement
1980 Served as script supervisor for “Union City”
1982 First feature as co-writer/co-director (with Monty Montgomery), “The Loveless”; feature debut for star
Willem Dafoe
1983 Feature acting debut (as Kathy Bigelow), Lizzie Borden’s “Born in Flames”
1983 Moved to Los Angeles- Landed a development deal with producer-writer-director Walter Hill (who had been impressed by “The
Loveless”)
1987 Solo directorial debut (also co-wrote with Eric Red), “Near Dark”
1990 Directed Jamie Lee Curtis in “Blue Steel”
1991 Helmed “Point Break” with Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze; first collaboration with then husband
James Cameron (executive produced)
1993 TV directing debut, helmed the second hour of the sci-fi miniseries “Wild Palms” (ABC)
1995 Directed the futuristic film, “Strange Days”; co-scripted and produced by ex-husband James Cameron
1996 Re-teamed with Eric Red to write the thriller “Undertow” (aired on Showtime)
1998 Helmed a two-part episode of “Homicide: Life on the Street” (NBC); directed a third episode in 1999
2000 Directed the feature adaptation of Anita Shreve’s novel, “The Weight of Water”
2002 Directed Harrison Ford in “K-19: The Widowmaker”; also produced
2009 Directed the Iraq war thriller, “The Hurt Locker”; written by former Playboy journalist Mark Boal;
screened at festivals in 2008; earned a Golden Globe nomination for Best Director
2009 Nominated for the 2009 Golden Globe Award for Best Director – Motion Picture (“The Hurt Locker”)
2009 Nominated for the 2009 Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in
Feature Film (“The Hurt Locker”)
2009 Nominated for the 2009 Academy Award for Best Achievement in Directing (“The Hurt Locker”)

FAMILY
Father paint store manager
Mother librarian

COMPANION
Husband: James Cameron, Married Aug. 17, 1989; divorced Nov. 10, 1991; Cameron produced Bigelow’s screenplay “Point Break” (1991); he also produced and scripted her film “Strange Days” (1995)

EDUCATION
San Francisco Art Institute San Francisco, California 1970-1972 Attended for two years before transferring to the Whitney Museum Independent Study
Program Whitney Museum
Independent Study Program New York, New York, United States1972 Won a scholarship to study conceptual art

AWARDS

2009 Oscar Best Picture Co-Winner with Greg Shapiro/Mark Boal/ Nicolas Chartier. The Hurt Locker
2009 Oscar Directing Winner The Hurt Locker
2009 Directors Guild of America Award Feature Film Winner The Hurt Locker
2009 Golden Globe Best Director – Motion Picture Nominee The Hurt Locker

BIRTHDATE: 27 November 1951(age 60)
Birthplace: San Carlos, California, USA
BIRTH NAME: Kathryn Ann Bigelow

Dr. Aida Takla-O’Reilly, president of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA), was joined by Kristen Stewart (Twilight series, On the Road) and two-time Golden Globe nominated actor Simon Baker (The Mentalist) at the press conference this morning from the Beverly Hills Hotel.

“Jodie is a multifaceted woman that has achieved immeasurable amounts of success and will continue to do so in her career,” said Takla-O’Reilly. “Her ambition, exuberance and grace have helped pave the way for budding artists in this business. She’s truly one of a kind.”

The Cecil B. DeMille Award will be presented to Foster at the 70^th Annual Golden Globe® Awards on Sunday, January 13, 2013, LIVE coast-to-coast on NBC with the pre-show from 4:00-5:00 p.m. (PST)/7:00-8:00 p.m. (EST), and main telecast from 5:00-8:00 p.m. (PST)/8:00-11:00 p.m. (EST) from the Beverly Hilton Hotel.

Chosen by the HFPA Board of Directors, the Cecil B. DeMille Award is given annually to the talented individuals who have made an incredible impact on the world of entertainment. Morgan Freeman was bestowed with the honor last year. Previous honorees include Lucille Ball, Bette Davis, Walt Disney, Harrison Ford, Judy Garland, Audrey Hepburn, Sophia Loren, Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Martin Scorsese, Frank Sinatra, Steven Spielberg, Barbra Streisand, among many others.

Foster’s stunning performances as a rape survivor in The Accused and as Special Agent Clarice Starling in the hit thriller The Silence of the Lambs earned her two Academy Awards^® for Best Actress and a reputation as one of the most critically acclaimed actresses of her generation.

Foster began her career at age three, appearing as “The Coppertone Girl” in the television commercial. She then went on to become a regular on a number of television series, including “Mayberry RFD,” “The Courtship of Eddie’s Father,” “My Three Sons” and “Paper Moon.” She made her feature debut in Napoleon and Samantha when she was eight years old.

But it was her role in Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (1975) which brought her to the audience’s attention and her powerful portrayal of a streetwise teenager in Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver (1976) that won her widespread critical praise and international attention. Foster appeared in a total of four films in 1976, Bugsy Malone, Echoes of Summer, Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane and Taxi Driver, which were all presented at the Cannes Film Festival. Alan Parker’s Bugsy Malone, earned her an Italian Comedy Award.

In total, Foster has appeared in more than 40 films, including Carnage for which she received a Golden Globe Award nomination; Nim’s Island with Gerard Butler; The Brave One for director Neil Jordan which earned her a Golden Globe Award nomination; Inside Man with Denzel Washington and Clive Owen; the box-office hit Flightplan; Jean Pierre Jeunet’s French language film, A Very Long Engagement; David Fincher’s box-office success, Panic Room; Anna and the King for director Andy Tenant, Contact for director Robert Zemeckis; Nell opposite Liam Neeson; the comedy Maverick opposite Mel Gibson and James Garner and the romantic drama Sommersby opposite Richard Gere.

Other motion picture credits include Woody Allen’s stylized black and white comedy Shadows and Fog; Siesta; Stealing Home; Five Corners; as well as earlier films Tom Sawyer; Freaky Friday; Adrian Lyne’s Foxes; Tony Richardson’s The Hotel New Hampshire and Claude Chabrol’s The Blood of Others, for which the multi-lingual Foster looped all of her own dialogue in French.

For her role in The Silence of the Lambs, Foster was also awarded a Golden Globe^® Award, a British Academy Award, a New York Film Critics Award and a Chicago Film Critics Award. Foster received her first Oscar^® nomination and awards from the National Society of Film Critics and the Los Angeles Film Critics for her role in Taxi Driver. She also became the only American actress to win two separate awards in the same year from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts – Best Supporting Actress and Best Newcomer honoring her performances in both Taxi Driver and Bugsy Malone.

Most recently Foster completed filming Elysium opposite Matt Damon for director Neil Blomkamp.

In addition to her acting, Foster has always had a keen interest in the art of filmmaking.

Foster made her motion picture directorial debut in 1991 with the highly acclaimed Little Man Tate, in which she also starred. In 1995, Foster directed her second film, Home for the Holidays, which she also produced. The film starred Holly Hunter, Anne Bancroft and Robert Downey Jr. Her most recent film, The Beaver, which stars Mel Gibson, was released in 2011.

Foster founded Egg Pictures in 1992 and the company produced Nell (1994), for which Foster earned an Academy Award^® nomination for Best Actress; Home for the Holidays (1995); the Showtime telefilm The Baby Dance (1998) which received a Peabody Award, four Emmy^® Award nominations and three Golden Globe^® Award nominations; as well as USA Films’ Waking the Dead, directed by Keith Gordon starring Billy Crudup and Jennifer Connelly. In 1996, Egg presented the award-winning French film Hate (L’Haine) in the United States. Foster and Egg Pictures also produced The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys (2001).

The 70^th Annual Golden Globe® Awards will be seen in more than 192 countries worldwide and is one of the few awards ceremonies that span both television and motion picture achievements. The special will be produced by dick clark productions in association with the Hollywood Foreign Press Association.

Dr. Aida Takla-O’Reilly is president of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. Allen Shapiro, CEO of dick clark productions, Orly Adelson, president of dick clark productions and Barry Adelman, EVP of Television at dick clark productions will executive-produce the special. Bob Bardo is the executive in charge of production.

About the Hollywood Foreign Press Association:

Founded in the 1940s during World War II, the HFPA was originally comprised of a handful of LA based overseas journalists who sought to bridge the international community with Hollywood, and to provide distraction from the hardships of war through film. Sixty-eight years later, members of the HFPA represent 55 countries with a combined readership of 250 million in some of the world’s most respected publications. Each year, the organization holds the third most watched awards show on television, the Golden Globe Awards, which have enabled the organization to donate more than $12 million to entertainment related charities and scholarship programs. For more information, please visit www.goldenglobes.org, and follow us on Twitter (@goldenglobes) and Facebook (www.facebook.com/goldenglobes) for exclusive celebrity videos and up to the minute Golden Globes news!

About dick clark productions, inc.:

Founded in 1957, dick clark productions, inc. (dcp) is a leading independent producer of television programming. dcp produces perennial hits such as the “American Music Awards,” “Golden Globe Awards,” “Academy of Country Music Awards,” and “Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve with Ryan Seacrest.”  dcp also produces popular weekly television programming, including “So You Think You Can Dance,” and owns and maintains one of the world’s most unique and extensive entertainment libraries, which includes more than 30 years of “American Bandstand” footage.  For additional information about dcp, please visit .

]]> http://www.emanuellevy.com/profile/jodie-foster-honored-with-demille-award-from-hollywood-foreign-press/feed/ 0 http://www.emanuellevy.com/profile/tony-scott-dead-at-68/ http://www.emanuellevy.com/profile/tony-scott-dead-at-68/#comments Mon, 20 Aug 2012 20:12:53 +0000 admin http://www.emanuellevy.com/?p=55821 Tony Scott, the prolific director and producer of action-thrillers, committed suicide Sunday night, after having been diagnosed with inoperable brain cancer.

She directed eight films, the most recent of which was 2009′s well-regarded Meryl Streep-Amy Adams starrer “Julie and Julia.”
Ephron was Oscar nominated three times, for writing “Silkwood,” “When Harry Met Sally” and “Sleepless in Seattle,”

Ephron picked up her first Oscar nomination in 1984 for the script she wrote with Alice Arlen to “Silkwood,” also starring Streep. She was then nominated in 1990 for the romantic comedy “When Harry Met Sally,” a huge box office hit that starred Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan. With David S. Ward and Jeff Arch, she shared an Oscar nom in 1994 for “Sleepless in Seattle,” starring Tom Hanks and Ryan.

At the time of her death, Ephron had film projects in development including a biopic on singer Peggy Lee that she had penned and was to direct, with Reese Witherspoon starring and Marc Platt to produce at Fox 2000, and “Lost in Austen,” which she had adapted and signed on to direct in April for Mammoth Screen and Sony.

“Nora, as a writer, director and producer, is a legendary triple threat in entertainment’s great trifecta: Broadway, Hollywood and publishing. With her passing, many lights have been extinguished — studio lights, theater lights, of course. But mostly, the light from the chandelier above her dining table where so many gathered to share, with Nick and her sons, her extraordinary life. So many friends will miss her terribly and no longer know who to call, what to see, what to listen to, where and what to eat, and often, what to think. Such is her energy, her enthusiasm and her gift for friendship,” said Sony Corporation chairman Howard Stringer.

“We are devastated and heartbroken. We all loved Nora very much,” added Sony Pictures Entertainment co-chair Amy Pascal.

Ephron began as a journalist in New York, scoring a scoop in 1966, while working for the Post, that Bob Dylan had secretly married. She raised her profile further with a 1972 essay, “A Few Words About Breasts,” and became a widely known humorist through her perch as a columnist at Esquire, essays for other outlets and a series of essay collections. Her pointed, witty essays captured the zeitgeist of the times, often focusing on sex, food and New York City.

Her second marriage, to journalist Carl Bernstein, led indirectly to her career as a filmmaker. William Goldman penned the screenplay to “All the President’s Men,” based on the book by Bernstein and Bob Woodward; “Carl and Bob weren’t happy with it,” she told the U.K.’s Guardian newspaper in 2007, “and decided they should redo it, which was not something they should have decided. So Carl and I rewrote William Goldman’s script. It was a great way to learn, because Goldman was such a great screenwriter that just typing his stage directions taught me a huge amount.” Their work was not used, but it did lead someone to offer her the job of penning a TV movie.

After just two TV credits in the 1970s, for writing an episode of “Adam’s Rib” and the telepic “Perfect Gentleman” in 1978, Ephron saw the “Silkwood” script she wrote with Alice Arlen made into a highly regarded film in 1983. The Mike Nichols-directed drama — based on the true story of a whistleblower in the nuclear power industry who met a suspicious death — was a far cry from the romantic comedies with which Ephron would later become associated.

The real-life infidelity of husband Bernstein inspired Ephron’s 1983 novel “Heartburn,” which she adapted into the script for the 1986 Nichols film that starred Streep and Jack Nicholson. Continuing her interest in food, the novel included recipes from the main character, a magazine food writer.

The success of “When Harry Met Sally,” directed by Rob Reiner in 1989, vastly increased Ephron’s standing in Hollywood. The film included many lines of memorable repartee between Crystal and Ryan, though the most-quoted, “I’ll have what she’s having,” was said to have been improvised by thesp Estelle Reiner.

Her long history in Hollywood — and the way she saw her screenwriter parents treated — led her to try directing, encouraged by Nichols. She made her directorial debut on a smaller film she also wrote, “This Is My Life,” starring Julie Kavner as a standup comic with two young daughters, in 1992. The next year she directed the much higher-profile film “Sleepless in Seattle,” a box office winner. “Sleepless” was the quintessential romantic comedy for some, though Variety and others found it “purposefully schmaltzy.”

She scored at the B.O. once more in 1998, writing and directing “You’ve Got Mail” and again working with Hanks and Ryan.

Ephron and her sister wrote several projects together, including the Nora Ephron-directed adaptation of sitcom “Bewitched” in 2005, but the effort, starring Nicole Kidman and Will Ferrell, was a disaster both critically and commercially.

But her keen observations about aging in the 2006 essay collection “I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Reflections on Being a Woman” was a No. 1 bestseller. In 2010, another essay collection, “I Remember Nothing: And Other Reflections,” was published.

Born in New York City, Ephron was the daughter of screenwriters Henry and Phoebe Ephron, with whom she moved to Beverly Hills at the age of 4.

Ephron made a foray into stagework with the 2002 play “Imaginary Friends,” about the caustic rivalry between writers Lillian Hellman and Mary McCarthy. More recently, she wrote the play “Lucky Guy,” about New York tabloid columnist Mike McAlary, and Tom Hanks was in talks to star in the production on Broadway next year.

She received the DGA Honors in 2011, and Ephron was recognized several times by the Writers Guild of America, drawing original-screenplay nominations for “Silkwood,” “When Harry Met Sally” and “Sleepless in Seattle,” an adapted screenplay nom for “Julie and Julia” as well as the guild’s Ian McLellan Hunter Award, presented to a WGA member in honor of his/her body of work as a writer in motion pictures or television, in 2003.

Ephron was married three times, the first time to writer Dan Greenburg, the second to Bernstein.

She is survived by her third husband, the writer Nicholas Pileggi; two sons by Bernstein, Jacob and Max, the latter an occasional actor; and sisters Delia and Amy, both screenwriters.