Also in Wednesday morning's news briefs: Lee Daniels finds his Jacqueline Kennedy for The Butler, Harvey Weinstein and Karl Lagerfeld seek a star at amfAR auction, Cannes Film Market reports an increase in attendance and screenings, and more...
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Remember The Artist, that silent, black-and-white homage to classic Hollywood and awards-season juggernaut that you thought you might have heard the last of after Uggie (and his book deal) went hamming it up down the red carpet at the White House Correspondents' Dinner, or after summer movie season commenced in record-breaking fashion? Ha. Guess what's getting a re-release in theaters — just in time for Mother's Day?
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Welcome to Biz Break, Movieline's inaugural roundup of film news that comes our way and other highlights from publications worldwide. Among today's stories: Harvey Weinstein will celebrate his Legion of Honor award in New York, Willem Dafoe lands a role in an upcoming thriller, Ridley Scott gets a career retrospective, and more...
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Are the Central Park Five the next West Memphis Three? The teenagers wrongfully convicted in the vicious 1989 rape and beating of jogger Tricia Meili — and only released after the actual attacker came forward in 2002 — will be showcased in a forthcoming Ken Burns documentary entitled, appropriately enough, The Central Park Five. And while the film was funded in part by Burns's longtime patrons at PBS, the two-time Oscar nominee and four-time Emmy winner (who co-directed the project with his daughter Sarah Burns and son-in-law David McMahon) is taking the film to Cannes next month with the hope of finding a theatrical distributor: "We want to do it [theatrically] because the running time makes it manageable, and there's something urgent about it," he told TV Guide this week. This sounds... familiar?
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For the 14th consecutive year, the folks at Time Magazine have once again passed me over when considering their annual roster of the world's 100 Most Influential People. Heretics! So be it — even an incomplete list is worth visiting judgment upon. Let's check out (and rank, naturally) the film personalities included this year. And to my publicist: You're fired!
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As usual, South Park has looked into the abyss of self-serious cultural absurdity and spotted a gleaming beacon of common sense. That Trey Parker and Matt Stone applied it to Bully's manufactured ratings "controversy" — and Harvey Weinstein's blatant hucksterism — only makes the payoff sweeter.
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Mmm-hmm: "'I am not being Harvey Weinstein, showman,' he said in a separate interview on Friday. 'I am not using the ratings system for publicity. Yes, I’ve done it in the past. Mea culpa for that.' But, he said of Bully, 'this is completely out of passion.'" [NYT]
You don't need me to explain to you how Harvey Weinstein is half huckster-genius and half megalomaniac witch doctor (even though I have, again and again and again). Find all the evidence you need in Thursday's announcement that Bully — the "controversial" documentary chronicling America's bullying epidemic — would finally receive the PG-13 rating it so conspicuously sought from the MPAA. The best part: It won't even have to trim the offending scene at the heart of all the publicity to date. Surprise! Suckers.
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So did all that MPAA ratings nonsense and media outcry pay off for Bully? What do you think? Lee Hirsch's film achieved the year's best documentary opening to date with $115,000 on five screens in New York and Los Angeles — a $23,000-per-theater average that amounted to the best of the week by nearly $10,000 over The Hunger Games. But now that The Weinstein Company has to take its unrated baby out of the doc-friendly megamarkets and into the mainstream wilds, a new report suggests that Harvey Weinstein may be preparing to make the cuts required for a PG-13. Surprise!
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The schoolyard bully may be a stock character, a cliché, but in the world of Lee Hirsch’s earnest documentary Bully, he’s very real: The picture tells the stories of several kids — all of them from fairly rural parts of the United States — who suffer daily at the hands of their classmates, fielding everything from hurtful taunts to physical assault.
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It has come to this for "unaccompanied" teenagers desperate to see the unrated Bully: "An AMC spokesman said it will indeed allow that, but only if the child presents a signed permission slip from a parent, either via a form letter made available by the theater or an improvised note on a standard piece of paper. The move is an apparent attempt to support the film -- AMC executive Gerry Lopez has two teenagers and has been vocal about its importance -- while still paying deference to the Motion Picture Assn. of America and its ratings system." Related: Is Harvey Weinstein just recycling tricks from his Kids playbook? [LAT]
For many, the Weinstein brothers' inescapable awards-season carpet bombing was mere insult added to an even more grievous seasonal injury: moving Piranha 3DD from its original November 2011 release date to the notorious TBD associated with so many well-known Weinstein projects. What did you expect, though? Madonna/W.E. Golden Globe campaigns don't pay for themselves, right?
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While the latest chapter in the rapidly expanding mythology of Harvey Weinstein involves the mogul shooting down a pitch from President Obama ("I sent him an e-mail back saying he was the most overqualified book scout I've ever had"), I remain preoccupied with the saga surrounding Bully, the Weinstein Company doc still embroiled in a battle with the MPAA ratings board to overturn its R for strong language. The publicity clamor continued Wednesday with a young bully victim dropping off a petition with a reported 200,000 signatures to MPAA HQ and Ellen Degeneres discussing the "controversy" on her show. But it's what quietly came the day before that seems the most intriguing.
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Their five-time Oscar winner The Artist may have just experienced its most lucrative weekend at the box office to date, but newly installed Legionnaire of Honor Harvey Weinstein and his Weinstein Co. minions remain firmly focused today on the Great Bully Ratings Non-troversy of 2012. How do we know? To Twitter, where #BullyMovie is this morning's highest-ranking (promoted, ahem) trending topic.
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This just in: "French President Nicolas Sarkozy has named Harvey Weinstein, Co-Chairman of The Weinstein Company (TWC), a recipient of the 2012 Légion d'Honneur, in recognition of Weinstein’s contributions to cinema and his decades of work producing some of the most highly regarded films of our time." And those are just the ones on his shelf! Read on for the full release.
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