Rob Green

Nader Hamdan

According to entertainment news website Variety, Legendary Pictures has “officially pulled the plug” on Cooper’s movie Paradise Lost, which was set to film in Australia.

It said budget issues were the reason behind the announcement.

Australia’s Alex Proyas, who directed I, Robot and The Crow, was set to helm Paradise Lost – his film adaptation of John Milton’s 17th-century poem.

Proyas said in July last year that the movie, which was slated for a 2013 release, had a budget in excess of $100 million.

Variety’s report revealed people close to the production had said Proyas had a strong vision for Legendary, but the technology wasn’t up to scratch yet and the filmmakers couldn’t reduce the budget enough.

Cooper was set to play the role of Lucifer and just this month, News Ltd papers had said the 37-year-old star would take up Sydney residency for three months.

The movie was also set to star Casey Affleck, Dominic Purcell and Aussie Callan McAuliffe, with the majority of filming at Sydney’s Fox Studios.

Proyas had said a lot of it would be “created on computer, on sound stages”, as the main locations would have been Heaven, Hell and Eden.

The NSW government, who called the movie a “major coup” for the state last year, said it was a huge disappointment for the filmmakers, cast and crew.

“This is a blow to the NSW film industry,” Deputy Premier and Minister for Trade and Investment Andrew Stoner said in a statement on Friday.

The movie was predicted to bring $88 million to the state and create 1300 jobs, and it was lured to Sydney with financial incentives from the state government.

The NSW government had not yet spent any money on Paradise Lost when Legendary pulled the plug.

Mr Stoner said the government is still committed to attracting international projects and they are in negotiations with major studios for other future projects.

“We will continue to take a proactive approach to marketing the States talent and facilities, especially in light of the high Australian dollar,” he said.

He said production had already begun at Fox Studios Australia on a Warner Bros animated film about children’s toy Lego, which is being made by Oscar-winning Sydney animation studio Animal Logic.

AAP

Source

Body of Proof (Seven)

THERE have been plenty of shows about socially dysfunctional renegade brainiacs but few have been so utterly charmless as Body of Proof. If you’re going to have a lead character who’s constantly getting people offside, you need to give them something to compensate, such as Dr House’s wit. If they’re going to lack basic social skills, they need to make up for it in some way, as Dr Temperance Brennan does with her adorable bemusement. Dana Delany as Dr Megan Hunt was not witty, adorable or, really, anything that explained why one of her colleagues didn’t stuff her in a body bag and seal it tightly halfway through the first episode.

Criminal Minds: Suspect Behaviour (Seven)

IF THERE’S one thing the franchise-crazy Americans should be good at by now it’s police procedurals. Yet this dopey CM offshoot was a travesty of the form. The cringeworthy overacting. The atonal direction. The terrible dialogue. The stupid plots. Everything was wrong but most painful to behold was the sight of brilliant Oscar-winning actor Forest Whitaker slumming it on a show so far beneath him.

Crownies (ABC1)

SURPRISINGLY, given a 22-episode opening order, Crownies had big shoes to fill; no ABC drama had more air time this year. Given such expectations, a show that fluctuated between the blithely lightweight and the merely annoying was always going to disappoint. While the story of a group of young solicitors working for the Office of Public Prosecutions did pick up from early episodes, it continued to value high jinks over moral issues and repeatedly resorted to groan-worthy sexual dialogue.

Dinner Date Australia (Seven)

THIS cheap knock-off of dating show Dinner Date was designed – in probably less time than it takes to make instant soup – to cash in on the popularity of network stablemate My Kitchen Rules and its appealing co-host, Manu Feildel. Each week, three lonely hearts would prepare a home-cooked meal for a man/woman they hoped to impress. The one who didn’t cause food poisoning then took the lucky, or perhaps unlucky, single on a grown-up date. Feildel, whose corny links rhapsodising about food and ze long-wahj of loff had nothing to do with the unfolding dates, about whom it was impossible to care.

The Event (Seven)

IN THE wake of Lost’s detailed, often magisterial, arc there was a small burst of paranoid conspiracy television series, although the only question that ultimately mattered was whether they could get through an entire season without being cancelled. Rubicon is quietly screening on Nine but The Event arrived first with some fanfare but soon appeared at ever-later hours. Beset by ludicrous cliffhangers and stakes-raising revelations, it ultimately ignored Lost’s lessons: take your time to get the characters right before it all goes haywire.

The Family (SBS)

FROM the start, this local adaptation of the acclaimed British program was defined by what it was not: not Big Brother, not Sylvania Waters and not a cynical reality show in which the contestants were prodded and provoked for your viewing pleasure. Rather, it was a fly-on-the-wall documentary series in which Melbourne’s Cardamone family were instructed to act as normal and ignore the little cameras dotted about their house. Unfortunately, the comfortable ordinariness of their lives made for, well, ordinary viewing. Not awful, just dull.

Four Weddings (Seven)

THIS is one of those shows about which you wondered whether the people who agreed to appear in it had any inkling of how they would appear once the show’s producers and editors had their way with them. Four brides attended and rated each other’s weddings for the prize of an all-expenses-paid honeymoon. Cue the bridezilla, the bride who bought a $50 dress on eBay, the bride who thought she was just that little bit special, the overweight bride whose plan to shed 20 kilos for her big day didn’t pan out – and, once the cameras were rolling when the bitchy comments flew, bingo, you had one of the most crass and nasty shows we’ve seen on TV for some time.

Hardcore Pawn (7mate)

THIS series was unpleasant from the outset, focusing as it did on an unlikeable pawnshop owner and his two equally unpleasant offspring. Les Gold made Shylock look like a sweetheart and the decision by the producers to focus alternately on him and on the people who frequented his store, rather than the objects they brought, might have created a ratings hit (relatively speaking) but it also created uncomfortable viewing. The whole purpose was to be entertained by Detroit’s most downtrodden trying to raise cash by hocking their few remaining possessions and it was when someone tried to sell one of their gold teeth that Hardcore Pawn went on the ”banned” list.

Housos (SBS)

FROM Roseanne to Shameless, there’s a whole host of groundbreaking comedies about life on the wrong side of the tracks. This wasn’t one of them. Dragging out gags that were tired when the Wog Boy films ran with them, hammering lifeless cliches, resorting to shouting f— in a fruitless effort to disguise the complete absence of wit or insight, Housos was so lazily awful it was impossible even to muster enthusiastic contempt. Every 25-minute episode merely felt like an hour of your life you would never get back.

Jersey Shore (MTV and 7mate)

HIDEOUS people talking loudly in grating voices, having sex with each other and occasionally vomiting. That’s really all you need to know about Jersey Shore, yet it became a breakout hit. (It’s MTV’s highest-rating show in history and the cast made Barbara Walters’ 10 Most Fascinating People list.) Why? That remains one of the great mysteries of 21st-century television, along with why anyone cares about the Kardashians and why Deadwood was cancelled after three seasons. So much on telly represents a real golden age. Jersey Shore is its Stone Age.

Junior MasterChef (Ten)

IT’S one thing to have a bunch of consenting adults attempting to brulee on national TV while weeping about their ”food journey”. It’s quite another to witness steely-eyed Alannah from Surrey Hills (names have been changed to protect the innocent) determined to out-hollandaise her rivals. Ambitious upper-middle-class parents hothousing their precocious little angels in Larousse and the complete works of Elizabeth David are the new tennis mums and dads. Oh yes, it’s all in good fun – until little Jackson ends up in therapy when his souffle doesn’t rise. Aren’t there laws to protect children from this sort of thing?

Kyle and Jackie O’s Night with the Stars (Seven)

THE King of Vile and his snivelling sidekick spread like a virus from the airwaves to the TV screen with their misnamed chat show Night with the Stars. Stars? They must have meant preternaturally preserved former model Janice Dickinson, retired Playboy bunny Kendra Wilkinson and Jersey Shore himbo Mike ”the Situation” Sorrentino (feel free to Google them; we had to). Proving there is a TV god, viewers turned off in droves, prompting the chivalrous Sandilands to commit what we can only pray is career suicide by calling a female entertainment reporter a ”fat slag”.

Million Dollar Drop (Nine)

REALITY TV meets game show: a couple are given $1 million, then asked eight questions whose answers are written on trap doors. They place money on the doors, the amounts reflecting their confidence in the answer. But they can use only three, meaning they can lose it all in one go. It held promise but the more you watched, the worse it got as the novelty wore off and the naked avarice and – it must be said – stupidity of the contestants turned Million Dollar Drop into an experiment in game-show sadism. Whatever happened to quiz shows in which people were rewarded for their intelligence, not punished for their greed?

My Kitchen Rules (Seven)

THE initial promo looked promising – Ke$ha’s track Tik Tok playing over visions of laughing contestants dabbing cream on the ends of each other’s noses – but as soon as they were in their respective kitchens, it just got dull. Professional chefs and judges Manu Feildel and Pete Evans never looked entirely comfortable, either. The word ”passion” was thrown about a lot but it was rarely felt.

The One (Seven)

IF YOU are making a show about home renovations, you wouldn’t cast people who don’t know one end of a screwdriver from the other. By the same measure, it would help if a show that promises to find Australia’s most gifted psychic included people with at least a modicum of sixth-sense nous. In what was almost an unintended spoof, a clutch of psychics undertook a series of challenges designed to test their mettle. Week in, week out they’d fail abysmally, though the very concept of a TV show that sets out to ”test” paranormal abilities is risible anyway.

The Only Way Is Essex (LifeStyle You)

WE DON’T like the show but we dislike ourselves more for watching past one episode of this ”reality” series about a bunch of over-tanned, vapid twentysomethings and a miniature pig named Mr Darcy. Blonde Lydia, who has trouble walking and talking – at the same time – does nothing to dispel the cliche. The rest of them – man-child James ”Arg”, Mark, who has some interesting things to say about his sister’s boob job, and beautician Amy – party, fight, make up and … we’ve lost interest.

The Renovators (Ten)

TOO many people, too many nail guns, too many trucks. The small moments that help viewers connect with a contestant were smothered by the scale of the production. Every episode looked the same and the show’s heart got lost in a cloud of plaster dust.

Sea Patrol (Nine)

Proclaiming itself to be the most expensive Australian drama made, Sea Patrol was a classic case of over-promising and under-delivering. At times it felt more like a recruitment ad for the navy – replete with eye-glazing chunks of nautical jargon – than an action-based drama. Making matters worse was its stodgy dialogue, lack of chemistry between the romantic leads and the tendency of characters to spend hours standing on deck, staring into the distance. Perhaps they were looking for a decent script. Or an offer from another network.

Sarah Palin’s Alaska (TLC)

Even by the standards of Discovery (owner of TLC), this was an egregiously cynical, content-free cash-in on a fleeting public infatuation. To pick a nadir at random, how about the episode where Sarah Palin decides to restock the freezer the traditional Alaskan way – by chartering a plane to fly 800 kilometres so she could kill a caribou she took six shots to hit?

Silent Witness (ABC1)

Its Friday-night slot on ABC1 suggests a middle-aged audience fortified by milky tea and sweet biscuits – the kind that would get all hot and bothered by gratuitous TV nudity. But, curiously, they can’t seem to get enough of Silent Witness’s stomach-churning gore. Each episode generally features a blend of rape, dismemberment and rotting corpses being sliced open on cold metal tables. For those who can handle such graphic depictions, the series offers tightly written, layered storylines. Those with a normal gag reflex are advised to take anti-nausea medication before viewing.

Today Tonight (Seven)

It’s hard to say what hurts most: that TT continues to sit high on the list of most-watched shows most weeknights or that it should do so in the face of the lively, thoughtful current affairs so bravely attempted by Ten and George Negus earlier this year. The weird thing is, even people who watch these shows think they’re crap. Yet they watch. Sigh.

Top Design (Nine)

This tacky attempt to cash in on the perceived appetite for home renovation shows and the appeal of Jamie Durie failed to do justice to either. Durie’s star power appeared distinctly faded as he struggled to generate excitement in yet another design competition that pitted people against each other under the pressure of ridiculous deadlines. Competitors predictably bickered about budgets and taste as they endeavoured to construct and decorate, say, an inviting outdoor living area in the middle of a multistorey car park. And the show was overloaded with clumsy product placements and sponsor promotions.

The Undercover Princesses (ABC1)

The contract we enter into with some reality TV shows is: we’ll relax critical faculties in return for something fun, fast and cheesy. Undercover Princesses welshed on the deal. Could have been fun, funny, illuminating. It was slow and stodgy.

Written and compiled by Frances Atkinson, Larissa Dubecki, Debi Enker, Melinda Houston, Paul Kalina, Michael Lallo, Craig Mathieson, Bridget McManus, Andrew Murfett, Brad Newsome and Jim Schembri

THE controversial documentary series Go Back To Where You Came From would need to be ”the new benchmark for SBS content” as the multicultural broadcaster strove to prove it remained relevant, the network’s chief Michael Ebeid said yesterday.

Speaking at the Screen Producers Association of Australia conference, the Egyptian-born Mr Ebeid, who has been at the helm since Englishman Shaun Brown’s tenure expired in June, promised to make SBS distinctive by returning the broadcaster to its roots.

”We need to be clear about who we are and what we stand for. Our purpose is simply to inspire all Australians to explore and appreciate our multicultural world, our diverse world, and, importantly, to contribute to an inclusive society,” he said.

Advertisement: Story continues below Leading the charge would be a second series of the documentary in which a group of Australians had their views on immigration challenged by retracing the journeys that brought refugees to this country. The series was SBS’s most successful ever, and the format has since been sold by production company Jigsaw to a number of European countries for localised versions.

Promising to be similarly challenging is the three-part documentary series Once Upon a Time in Cabramatta, the Sydney suburb that is home to a large Vietnamese population and, for a period, a burgeoning heroin trade.

It is also where ALP MP John Newman was shot in 1994, in what is sometimes labelled Australia’s first political assassination.

”From a community that was once paralysed by fear, Cabramatta has really become a migrant success story,” said Mr Ebeid.

Spearheading SBS’s pitch for the youth audience is Danger 5, a six-part adventure-comedy series featuring sexy ’60s spies, dinosaurs and Adolf Hitler. The show goes to air on Monday, with an online-only prequel being released on Sunday.

SBS has struggled in recent times as its programming drifted from the multicultural remit.

It has also dropped drama production entirely, claiming its $220 million annual funding simply was not enough.

In spite of that, Mr Ebeid expressed a goal of tripling the level of Australian-made content on SBS.

Source

An actress is suing Amazon in federal court in Seattle for more than $US1 million ($978,569) for revealing her age on its Internet Movie Database website and refusing to remove the reference when asked.

The actress is not named in the lawsuit that refers to her as Jane Doe. It says she lives in Texas and is of Asian descent and has an Americanised stage name.

The lawsuit accuses IMDb of misusing her personal information after she signed up for the industry insider IMDbPro service in 2008. Shortly thereafter, she noticed her legal date of birth had been added to her public acting profile. She requested that it be removed and IMDb refused, the lawsuit says, filed last Thursday in the US.

“If one is perceived to be ‘over-the-hill’, i.e., approaching 40, it is nearly impossible for an up-and-coming actress, such as the plaintiff, to get work as she is thought to have less of an ‘upside’, therefore, casting directors, producers, directors, agents-manager, etc. do not give her the same opportunities, regardless of her appearance or talent,” the lawsuit states.

While she loses opportunities because of her age, she’s also missing work because of her youthful appearance, the lawsuit says.

“Plaintiff has experienced rejection in the industry for each ’40-year-old’ role for which she has interviewed because she does not and cannot physically portray the role of a 40-year-old woman,” the lawsuit says.

The online retailer and its movie database subsidiary, both based in Seattle, are accused of breach of contract, fraud, and violation of privacy and consumer protection laws.

The lawsuit seeks $US75,000 ($73,392) in compensatory damages and $1 million ($978,569) in punitive damages.

Amazon has a long-standing practice of not commenting on active litigation, spokeswoman Mary Osako said.

The ABC could lose the ability to foster and discover new talent, such as The Chaser, due to cutbacks at the national broadcaster’s internal television program production operations, the public sector union has warned.

Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU) ABC section secretary Graeme Thomson says there needs to be a full and open inquiry into the issue.

“It loses the ability for the new Chasers, the new Andrew Dentons to actually be found and actually be developed and I think that’s sad,” he told a Senate hearing on Monday in Canberra.

The Senate environment and communications references committee is holding public hearings into ABC television management’s August announcement of cuts to jobs, and program production and numbers.

GRUEN PLANET, which starts its eight-week season this week, applies the framework of The Gruen Transfer – discussing and illustrating the power of persuasion – to the world of spin, public relations and branding.

Where The Gruen Transfer considers a product or service – say, the carbon tax, toothpaste or bottled water – and examines the advertising strategy surrounding it, Gruen Planet will escalate that conversation.

The core trio of host Wil Anderson and slightly combative panellists Russel Howcroft and Todd Sampson remain and their mission, once again, is to get insiders to explain how something is sold.

”Persuasion is persuasion,” Sampson says, pointing out that the techniques used in PR and damage control are not much different to those used to persuade consumers to buy a product.

Gruen Planet will focus on real-world, real-time issues. All eight episodes will be taped just 24 hours before they go to air. As with The Gruen Transfer, outside agencies will pitch ads to the panel.

Topics in the mix include a proposal to run an ad during grand final week asserting that footballers should not be role models, the rebranding of Rupert Murdoch and a pitch to persuade Australians they hate the Melbourne Cup. If the show was on last week, Anderson says, Samantha Stosur would have been an obvious talking point. Who is knocking on her door after winning the US Open? Who protects her? What sort of offers are on the table? What sort of brand is she? What sort of brands would you associate with her? And how long would her marketing window stay open?

In fact, potential topics are seemingly endless.

”You look at the debate over whether Shakespeare wrote his plays,” Anderson says. ”That might be the first instance of somebody using a brand. It might have been four or five different people writing those plays under the Shakespeare brand.”

The concept of people marketing themselves as brands divides the show’s protagonists. Anderson, who has more than 100,000 followers on Twitter, could be seen as a particularly sturdy brand and he concurs, to a point, noting that after his controversial tweeting at the 2010 Logies, the number of people following him soared by 10,000 overnight. ”It was good for my brand,” he says.

The ad men are more cautious. Howcroft finds the trend of referencing oneself as a brand grating. ”Individuals are much more complex characters than simply a brand,” he says. ”It’s far too simplistic.”

Sampson agrees – to an extent. ”When somebody refers to themselves as a brand, I think it’s embarrassing because you obviously have tickets on yourself. But I think people are brands. Shane Warne is a brand. They are people but they build a perception around them that’s sometimes different to the reality.”

The Gruen Transfer is one of the great ABC success stories and the election spinoff Gruen Nation was even more popular. The success of Gruen Planet, however, is not a given. ”This new show could be our Renovators moment,” Anderson says, only half-joking.

Producer Jon Casimir is less theatrical. ”We’ve got a ‘Broadway’ timeslot on the ABC,” he says. ”So it has to be as entertaining as possible. We want to celebrate when something is marketed well and mock it when it’s done [poorly].”

Regardless, the Gruen brand and its franchises have already created an impressive legacy.

Mad Men may have glamorised the ad world but Gruen has presented it as a sharp, forward-thinking and intelligent contemporary workplace. ”It has put a spotlight on the industry,” Sampson says.

”It has increased the number of people wanting to be in the industry. Applications to tertiary ad schools have gone up dramatically. It has shown another perspective.”

Asked whether they have any concerns about divulging commercial secrets, Howcroft and Sampson scoff.

”This is a creative business,” Sampson says. ”As fast as we think through the techniques being used, new ones are being developed to replace them. That is our job. Every day we are learning better ways to persuade people.”

Source
]]> http://townsendmanagement.com.au/2011/09/25/sultans-of-spin-smh-25-sep-11/feed/ 0 townsend1