Film News

Far out, man. Comedy stalwarts Jason Segel and Ed Helms have signed the dotted line to star in stoner comedy Jeff Who Lives At Home.

Written by the Duplass brothers - the indified filmmakers who directed Marisa Tomei, Catherine Keener and Jonah Hill in this year’s fest-hit laugh-fest Cyrus - the film “chronicles a day in the life of two brothers, one a loser (Segel) who lives at home and the other (Helms) more together but overbearing”.

Judy Greer is also in talks to play Helms’ wife, while the role of their mother is still going through casting (Kathy Bates, anyone?).

Shooting kicks off next month in Louisiana, and Paramount are producing the film.

Helms is best known for showing up in last year’s big hit The Hangover, while Segel has been in everything from Forgetting Sarah Marshall to much-loved cult gem of a TV show Freaks And Geeks.

Will this be as explosive as Pineapple Express? We can but dream...

You’d think the old fella would be winding down considering he’s set to celebrate his 80th birthday this May.

But Clint Eastwood is still cranking out the classics like they’re going out of style. And, frankly, we’re grateful that he is. Especially when he’s signing onto projects like new biopic Hoover.

Yep, it’s about former FBI director J Edgar Hoover, who worked there from 1935 until his death in 1972.

Originally scribbled by Milk screenwriter Dustin Lance Black for Ron Howard to direct, Eastwood has taken on the project after Howard’s Imagine Entertainment decided to forego it.

But we can’t imagine it will be long before Eastwood’s favourite Warner Bros swoop in to the rescue and offer to foot the bills on the guy’s new flick - he's made his last 11 movies there.

Eastwood’s next film, the mysterious supernatural drama Hereafter, is set for release at the tail end of 2010, and stars Matt Damon and Bryce Dallas Howard.

Think you'll Hoover this one up?

You either loved or loathed him as a co-host at this year’s Oscars, so it’ll be a relief for some to hear that Steve Martin is retreating from the stage and returning to movies.

Not only that, but his latest project mercifully isn't another kid-themed atrocity ala Cheaper By The Dozen.

This time, Martin’s thinking about taking up bird-watching with Jack Black and Owen Wilson in The Big Year.

It’s a comedy set to shoot in Canada this May, and will be directed by David Frankel – who gave us other Owen Wilson vehicle Marley & Me, and Meryl Streep as a rich bitch in The Devil Wears Prada.

The flick’s based on the book The Big Year: A Tale Of Man, Nature, And Fowl Obsession by Mark Obmascik, and has been adapted for the big green by Someone To Watch Over Me scribe Howard Franklin.

Martin would play one of three men who embark on a bird-watching competition in North America, attempting to out-bird each other by spotting rare breeds. It mixes in themes about life and stuff.

Would it be too much to ask for something as funny and moving as Martin's buddy comedy Planes, Trains And Automobiles? The comedy talent's certainly there, and Frankel has decent experience in balancing the catty, the comedy and the cuddles. Here's hoping.

Bird-watching? Lame or awesome?

Universal Pictures have pulled out all the stops with their final two and half minute trailer for Robin Hood.

Having previously released teasing, flashy glimpses that everybody instantly likened to Ridley Scott and Russell Crowe’s previous Gladiator, the studio have here revealed a glut of new footage and information.

More of the film’s plot is revealed, which seems to adhere pretty strictly to the pre-existing legend, while we get a good look at Mark Strong’s villainous Sir Godfrey.

“In the name of King John, pay or burn!” Godfrey yells in demand of the peoples’ taxes. It’s set in 13th century Nottingham, where expert archer Robin and his band of marauders refuse to be pushed around by the new king’s corrupt forces.

But as he attempts to overthrow King John, Robin has to earn the trust of Lady Marion, who is sceptical of his motivations.

Cate Blanchett channels her Elizabeth mettle into Lady Marion (she sleeps with a dagger, evidently), and there are fights in woods, in castles, and on the beach.

Take a look here...

Yep, it still looks like Gladiator In Tights, but what’s wrong with that? We loved Gladiator, which means we’re likely to love this as well. And Cate Blanchett in a suit of armour is always cool. Let’s just hope Russell Crowe isn’t forced to give too many rousing speeches.

Robin Hood hits screens on 14 May.

Gonna head to Hood in May? Give us a shout...

Good news, everyone! No, sorry, nothing Futurama related, we just had a feeling and went with it.

So, reports of Christopher Nolan’s involvement in the being-written Superman movie, rumoured to be titled Man Of Steel (yes, it’s still a rumour), were denied by DC Entertainment a few weeks back. But now Nolan himself has confirmed that go-to comic book geek David Goyer is currently writing the script based on a story idea cracked by the duo.

Nolan tells The LA Times that Goyer pitched him a few Superman movie ideas when they were stuck for where to take Batman 3.

Says he:

“It’s very exciting, we have a fantastic story. And we feel we can do it right. We know the milieu, if you will, we know the genre and how to get it done right…[it] is a way of approaching the story I’ve never seen before that makes it incredibly exciting.

“I wanted to get [producer and wife] Emma and I involved in shepherding the project right away and getting it to the studio and getting it going in an exciting way.

“We’re approaching it in a not dissimilar way [to the Batman films] in terms of trying to find an incredible story in a way that audiences can engage with it the way they engage with contemporary action films.”

Nolan wouldn’t confirm if he was tempted to take Superman on as a directing gig. But seeing as Richard Donner’s original film is what got him interested in Batman, we bet his palms are feeling a little itchy for the super-camera.

Meanwhile, brother Jonathan Nolan is “now doing hard work” on the Batman 3 script, working from a story idea broken by Chris and Goyer. And it looks like it’s a trilogy closer. Says Chris:

“The key thing that makes the third film a great possibility for us is that we want to finish our story. And in viewing it as the finishing of a story rather than infinitely blowing up the balloon and expanding the story…

“I’m very excited about the end of the film, the conclusion, and what we’ve done with the characters. My brother has come up with some pretty exciting stuff. Unlike the comics, these thing don’t go on forever in film and viewing it as a story with an end is useful.

“Viewing it as an ending, that sets you very much on the right track about the appropriate conclusion and the essence of what tale we’re telling.

But even if Chris Nolan now has his fingers in two comic book franchise pies, don’t expect anything like a Bat/Supes crossover.  “Each serves to the internal logic of the story,” he says. “They have nothing to do with each other.”

Wish you had this guy's job?

FilmNewsBriefs had the opportunity to sit down with Watchitoo CEO, Rony Zarom to discuss this incredible two-way live video platform and its many applications.

FilmNewsBriefs: Tell me a little bit about your background.
Rony Zarom: I have a Bachelor and Masters degree in Computer Science. When I finished school I joined the NSI, Neuro Science Institute. It was amazing; it’s the kind of institute that does big simulation of brain neuro metrics. I remember we did the first simulation on the N cube computer, which is a super computer based on 1024 CPUs running in parallel, back in 1992 or ‘93. It was amazing to see these huge computers doing the largest simulation of the brain. That’s where I started. At one point I said forget about doing the academic work. It was really amazing, but it was geared more towards research and finding the architecture of the new brain on a super computer. I decided to move more in the direction of business and actually joined the first high speed Internet provider in Israel, called Elronet. It was then merged into Netvision and is now the most dominant high speed ISP in Israel. I was the entrepreneur in residence with Elron — which is when I came across the Elronet initiative. I created a few other companies, one which was sold to Converse for $600 million at the time. Since then I’ve invested in different start ups and some of them were my ideas, including Watchitoo.

FNB: Could you tell us where the idea came from?
RZ: It started when I wanted to communicate with my kids, specifically Itai, my son. I couldn’t find an easy to communicate and share content with him. There were some applications out there that allowed you to have video conferencing, but if you wanted to share content, like photos and videos, there was no trivial way to do that. I decided to do that initially-I had enough wealth, so I did it for the sake of communicating with my family. Then I saw the opportunity and the other needs that existed in the market, especially the media that is missing in the Internet environment. Until now you mostly saw people engaging on the Internet with text, via different platforms, like Facebook, Twitter, but you didn’t see interaction that’s visual and audio based within the context of sharing content. It was just video conferencing, which has been around for a long time. Sharing and presenting content wasn’t really interactive. We created a real time social collaboration platform that gives users the opportunity to voice their ideas. Eventually, we envision that our platform will provide new TV show formats that take advantage of the live collaborative aspect of our platform to provide a new and exciting experience.  With Watchitoo, you can create a whole show similar to a reality TV show, but unlike TV media, the shows is fully interactive and will allow users to interact in real time.  Viewers will be able to appear on the show, be interviewed, and share their photos and videos with the rest of the viewers. All of this does not require a significant budget except for a webcam and internet connection.  That opens endless opportunities for people to voice their opinions in ways never seen before.  The platform was build with scalability in mind and can serve large scale events.

FNB: And you can see the viewers?
RZ: Not only can you see the viewers, but you can also interact with them. That is the main difference between our platform and TV, or other broadcasting services on the Internet.  We are the first to stream multiple people at large events while allowing them to interact with each other and with the viewers at the same time.

FNB: How long did it take you from the inception of the idea to where you are now?
RZ: Right now we have a production site that’s free, and we are in advanced beta with a professional platform. In the professional platform we have more features than the free version. Overall, it took us about two years to get here.  Most of the two years were spent on creating a scalable real time messaging platform.

FNB: Will you describe how it works?
RZ: The whole concept was to make it as simple as possible for users. For you to moderate and create your own show, you click into the site. There’s one button to start a new show, a few clicks to activate your web cam, and another one to invite people see you and to share photos as well as videos and other documents.  Additional features like screen sharing, recording, chatting, tweeting, and more are easily accessible from the simple UI we provide.  I would also recommend you setup the content you want to share ahead of time so, you don’t have to search for it while interacting with viewers. Since we target a few market verticals like online live events, corporate, and education, our application is rich in features including those that are common and those that are specific to these verticals.

FNB: On the business end of the film industry there’s constant interaction around content with a set of people on location and a set at the office or studio. Decisions about locations, casting, daily footage would be easier if they were to all watch it together rather than having to pass it around. One of the major concerns is keeping your content very secure. Are they able to watch these items but keep them very private to those who are invited?
RZ: Absolutely.  The professional version will provide added layers of security. One of them is a password protected show; only those who are invited and have the password will have access to the show. So in practical terms, everything you do in the application is private and only accessible by those who were invited or have the password.

FNB: One of things that I’ve noticed with the entertainment industry is that they can be hesitant to adopt new technologies mostly because everyone speaks in different languages. Even the simplest thing, like pointing and clicking can sound scary, because of the language. One of the things I wanted to discuss is how it can be adopted for filmmakers.
RZ: I think when you build a new application, you need to speak the same language as your target audience.  If you don’t speak the language then people can’t figure out what you’re talking about. The problem with not speaking the same language is that people don’t have a lot of time to spend on anything on the Internet. They are very quick to make a decision about whether they want to spend time here or there.  To make them stay with your application, you must make sure that the same terminology is used and that they speak the same language.

FNB: When I was an assistant, my boss worked in New York and the rest of the studio was in LA, and I had to set up video conferences for her to be in the team meetings but it was always very disjointed. She couldn’t see what they were talking about, and it was always very complicated to set up. This tool would change that completely.
RZ: We spoke with some movie producers and editors, and they were impressed with the platform.  With this platform we are changing an old paradigm in which you needed an IT person to run these types of meetings.  Well, not anymore.  With Watchitoo you can easily use it to share and express your ideas with other colleague without being tangled up in the complexity that exist with other applications.   People are busy, and they don’t want to spend time on unproductive technical issues.  Instead, they would like to spend time focused on the urgent subject matter that needs to be addressed.

FNB: Some of the ways they can use the platform for their everyday work is pretty obvious once you log in and play on the site, but you also mentioned using it as a portal, to interact with your audience. Could you explain that further?
RZ: What we actually created is a platform that provides social interactions, social collaboration, and social networking. I think the most interesting part of it is that it’s totally embeddable. You can place it in any page allowing you to give it the look and feel that you want. If you look at CES (Consumer Electronic Show), watchitoo.com/pro/ces you can get an example of branding. We also recently did a Red Carpet Oscars show.

FNB: Can anyone log in and interact with that?
RZ: Exactly, the idea is that anyone can register for the event.  Those who access the page will be able to see other people on the show and will able to talk to them.  You can embed our show in any web page on any computer.  Viewers will be then able to access the page and participate in the show within this page.  By encapsulating and embedding our platform into any web page, it enables users to integrate Watchitoo into their sites while maintain their own sites’ look and feel.

FNB: So, it’s like if Conan O’Brien is looking for a new studio audience for an online project, he’s got the globe… Will you be streaming live from SXSW?
RZ: Yes, it’s watchitoo.com/pro/sxsw. You can have a page like that for FilmNewsBriefs if you’d like as well.

FNB: What are you using on the other end? To film as a host?
RZ: She just uses an exterior web cam. We’ve really simplified it down so anyone can do it. You don’t really need that much preparation to have a real time broadcast with multiple participants. The main difference between what we do and other streamers like Ustream or Livestream, is that while they provide you with one stream, it’s usually not live and has an eight or ten second buffer. We provide multiple streams in real time so people can interact with that medium.

FNB: What are some of the other uses?
RZ: The other day, NYU let us come into a classroom to record them debating a specific subject. It was really incredible. We didn’t activate the audio but it was really interesting to watch the class interact. It’s a different type of interaction.

FNB: Did the classroom environment change?
RZ: One of the interesting remarks from the professor in the classroom was that this media created a renewed interest in the subject matter.

FNB: Yes! They’re ‘On Camera!”
RZ: Exactly. The students actually saw themselves on the white board so it kept them really engaged throughout the entire class.

FNB: With the live events, I’m assuming they have to have a microphone?
RZ: It’s really simple. All they need is a microphone, a camera, and some sort of connection to the Internet.

FNB: Will you talk about what a pro account adds and what the cost tiers are?
RZ: Yes. We have three different segments that we’re addressing with this application: Entertainment/Social media, corporate, and the education. Our philosophy is that we need to be very competitive in terms of pricing, feature list, and ease of use.   In conjunction to the professional version, we’ll provide our users with the free version. The free version will include a lot of the features we have on the pro version, but will exclude some of the major features that are usually required for business use.

FNB: Can people sign up and pay for the pro version now?
RZ: It will be available within the next month. The free version is already there, and people can get in and use most of the tools now.

FNB: What are some of the added tools in the pro version?
RZ: You can scale to thousands of users, screen sharing, moderating capabilities, recording, tweeting, multi-streaming, embedding, whiteboard, HD movie sharing, office documents, and more.  We do all this without requiring users to download a client, which enables them to consume the events from anywhere.

FNB: Explain screen sharing?
RZ: There’s a simple button that allows you to share your screen. A producer in LA can see what’s on your computer screen while you’re talking.

FNB: Oh. So if I’m editing on my Macbook Pro, I can share and edit live with my producers, by simple pressing the screen share button?
RZ: Yes, exactly.  In one click you can share your editing application’s screen with your producer.  In the Pro version you’d also have the ability to ask the show’s host questions. The host/moderator can drag the questions on to the screen for all the viewers to what is being asked.  There’s also Twitter integration with the pro version.  In addition, the pro version allows users to embed the show in their site.  Basically, this version is a feature rich, easy to use, highly capable collaboration platform.

Watchitoo Live Events: Sarah Austin Reports live from SXSW: HERE and below:

Branded content production shingle Radical Media (”Iconoclasts”) is ramping up its TV development, starting with a series version of the bestselling book “Freakonomics.” Bob Friedman, Radical’s president of media and entertainment, said the company is working with author/journo Stephen Dubner (who partnered with economist Steven Levitt to produce the book and its sequels) to develop several variations on the title. Levitt will appear on the show, which is being shopped to nets. Company is also behind the Planet Green series “The Kamen Code,” centering on inventor Dean Kamen. Kamen came up with the Segway and the first insulin pump, among other creations. Project reunites Radical with Planet Green topper Laura Michalchyshyn, who formerly ran Sundance Channel (where “Iconoclasts” runs). For new cabler Centric, Radicalis working on a new docu-style, celeb-driven series from Lauren Lazin (”Tupac: Resurrection”). Other projects being developed at Radical include a docusoap set inside the Miami City Ballet. Production shingle is also developing a show based on Randy Jones’ business tome “The Richest Man in Town,” documenting the rags-to-riches stories of the self-made wealthy. As previously announced, Radical is producing one of the new Oprah Winfrey Network’s signature shows, “Masterclass” — hosted by Winfrey herself. And Radical is still developing “Pigs and Panthers,” based on the life of undercover LAPD detective Ronald Farwell, at Showtime. At MTV, Radical is behind the longform doc “Summit on the Summit,” which runs next week. Project follows stars, such as Jessica Biel and Emile Hirsch, who climb Mt. Kilimanjaro for charity. Radical produced “Summit” with Procter and Gamble, which is integrating messages for its new Pure water purification system.

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118016329.html?categoryId=2431&cs=1