[1] Hayley Atwell still a cock-tease in The Sweeney:
THE SWEENEY also contains a couple of sex scenes, without any nudity, some crude verbal and visual sex references, and a passing drug reference.
[2] limited display or likely zero/implied nudity by Katharine Isabelle.
American Mary just received censorship rating from British Board of Film Classification (BBFC).
"Contains strong sexual violence, gore and very strong language."
SPOILERS ALERT : Katharine is raped by someone she trusted. It is unknown at the moment how lengthy the scene is or we even get to see Isabelle tits at some point.
[3] nothing from Imogen Poots. We have to wait little bit longer to catch sight of her B-sized English funbags.
‘A Late Quartet’ : Trailer
* the trailer clearly shows 'some sexuality' will come from PSH dalliance with Jewish hottie Liraz Charhi.
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Review : Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning (2012) http://www.moviereporter.de/filme/universal-soldier-day-of-reckoning
Summary (translated) :
The story with some lengthy discussions and terribly bland nature of stripper Sarah (Mariah Bonner), fans of the series but ultimately rewarded with excessive testosterone shower.
Hands and feet are cut, sewn back on, baseball bat smash skulls and Dolph Lundgren's precious brothel - the women there are at least - is a wordless rampage victim.
Confirmed nude :
Mariah Bonner (sex and shower scene : full frontal?)
nude girls/strippers at brothel (nudity by local Louisiana models/actresses?).
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IFC Acquires U.S. Rights to 'Breaking The Girls'
IFC Films has acquired from Myriad Pictures the U.S. distribution rights to director Jamie Babbit’s thriller, “Breaking The Girls” starring Madeline Zima, Agnes Bruckner, and Shawn Ashmore, Myriad announced in a statement on Monday in Toronto. Written by Mark Distefano and Guinevere Turner, the film was produced by Myriad’s Kirk D’Amico and Andrea Sperling. Peter Abrams and Robert Levy of Tapestry Films serve as executive producers. The film will have a limited theatrical in the U.S.
BREAKING THE GIRLS is the story of a university student Sara (Bruckner) who, when slandered by a hostile classmate, is befriended by the manipulative Alex (Zima) who proposes the perfect, untraceable crime – to kill each other’s archenemies. When Alex actually goes through with it, Sara finds herself being framed for murder. The film also stars John Stockwell (CHEATERS), Kate Levering (DROP DEAD DIVA), and Shanna Collins (CINEMA VERITE).
“Myriad is thrilled to continue its long and positive relationship with IFC Films on this project,” said Myriad CEO Kirk D’Amico. “Jamie Babbit and I are looking forward to working with the excellent team at IFC to make this film available to many of Jamie’s admirers who have been waiting to see this film for some time. We loved working with our extraordinary cast and we are blessed with the result of a very provocative and unique film.”
The deal was negotiated by Myriad’s Kirk D’Amico and Arianna Bocco of IFC Films. Myriad is selling the film in Toronto this week.
Jamie Babbit is an accomplished film and television director. She has directed episodes for many hit television series including; “Drop Dead Diva” (which she also produced), “The United States of Tara”, “90210”, “Dirty Sexy Money”, “Gilmore Girls”, “Nip/Tuck” and “Malcolm in the Middle”. Babbit’s film directing credits include the thriller The Quiet, starring Elisha Cuthbert and Camilla Belle, which was released by Sony Screen Gems, and popular cult classic But I’m A Cheerleader, starring Natasha Lyonne.
Madeline Zima began her acting career when she was 7 years old. She has appeared in such hit television series as “Gilmore Girls”, “7th Heaven”, “Grey’s Anatomy” and “The Nanny” with Fran Drescher. Zima had a feature role in the hit series “Heroes”, but it was her role opposite David Duchovny as Mia Lewis in “Californication” that earned her special notices. She appeared in the feature film ensemble comedy The Family Tree and the thriller The Collector and will soon be seen in the feature films Stuck, Long Time Gone, Crazy Eyes and Olivier Dahan’s My Own Love Song, in which she stars opposite Renee Zellwegger.
Agnes Bruckner starred on the daytime television drama “The Bold and the Beautiful” and went on to appear in episodes of “24”, “Law and Order: Criminal Intent”, “Private Practice” and “Hawaii 5-0”. Bruckner starred in the feature film Blood and Chocolate and was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for her performance in Blue Car. She will soon be seen inThe Pact, The Citizen and The Baytown Disco, also starring Billy Bob Thornton.
Shawn Ashmore appeared on numerous television episodes as a child actor, but his break came when he was cast as Bobby Drake, the Ice Man, in the original X-Men movie. His performance earned him larger roles as the Ice Man in X2 andX-Men: The Last Stand. Ashmore appeared in the horror film The Ruins and Frozen, which was released by Anchor Bay Films. He is starring in the horror film The Day, which had its World Premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2011.
John Stockwell is a writer, producer, director, actor who has appeared in numerous feature films including Top Gun, Oliver Stone’s Nixon, and Eddie and the Cruisers. John wrote and directed the surfing movie Blue Crush starring Kate Bosworth and Michelle Rodriguez, and directed Into the Blue starring Jessica Alba. Stockwell received an Emmy® nomination for Outstanding Writing for a Miniseries or Movie for the television movie Cheaters.
Kate Levering began her career as a dancer and starred in the Broadway show “42nd Street”. She was nominated for the Tony Award® for Best Featured Actress in a Musical. She received the Fred Astaire Award® for Best Female Dancer. She began her acting debut in television by guest starring on “CSI: Miami” and “Medium”. She is currently a featured cast member on the Lifetime series ‘Drop Dead Diva’ which is entering its fourth season.
Shanna Collins has appeared on many television programs including “Wildfire” and “Swingtown.” In 2011, Shanna appeared in the HBO Films Emmy Award® winning film “Cinema Verite”. She can next be seen in the indie comedy Sassy Pants starring Haley Joel Osment.
Andrea Sperling, has produced over 35 films, including Gregg Araki’s Kaboom; The Quiet, starring Elisha Cuthbert and Camilla Belle; Harsh Times, starring Christian Bale; But I’m A Cheerleader, starring Natasha Lyonne; D.E.B.S. starring Jordana Brewster and The Doom Generation. In 1999 Sperling was nominated for a Producer’s Award by the Independent Spirit Awards. Sperling produced Like Crazy starring Anton Yelchin which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2011 and Nobody Walks, starring John Krasinski
and Olivia Thirlby.
* Are we finally going to be blessed with a view of Ms.Bruckner perfect boobies in couple of love scenes with Ms.Zima and Shawn Ashmore. Keeping all my fingers and toes crossed for this one. Filmed in Belgrade, Serbia which to me is a good portent. It seems shooting in Eastern Europeans countries brings out the raunchiness in American film-makers and performers.
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Threesomes at the Toronto Film Festival: Critic Karina Longworth Weighs In
By Karina Longworth
This is a blog post about two movies that were screened for the press within the first 24 hours of the Toronto Film Festival, both of which feature three-way sex scenes. In Spring Breakers, characters played by James Franco, Vanessa Hudgens and Ashley Benson "do it" in a swimming pool; in Do Not Disturb, a French remake of the 2009 American indie Humpday, a bisexual couple played by Asia Argento and Charlotte Gainsbourg seduce a drifter played by François Cluzet.
I am mentioning these facts at the beginning of this blog posts in order to attract people who search the internet for information about movie sex scenes -- a segment of the human population which, Google Analytics suggests, far outnumber the segment which actually, like, cares about cinema. To the sex scene searchers, I say, welcome! We will get to what you came here looking for in a moment. But first, a brief primer on French cultural theory.
In the middle of the last century, Situationist International figurehead Guy Debord coined the term "detournement" to refer to the practice of -- to quote, er, Wikipedia -- "turning expressions of the capitalist system and its media culture against itself." In a literal sense, this describes what writer/director Harmony Korine has done with Spring Breakers, his surprisingly moody, savagely satiric and surreal new film starring a trio of barely-legal current and former stars of tween TV (Selena Gomez, Ashley Benson and Vanessa Hudgens) as refugees from an unimpressive college looking to "find themselves" in Florida amidst the annual ritualistic bacchanal, who fall in with a white gangster rapper named Alien, played by James Franco in deep performance (as) art mode.
Reports documenting Breakers' paparazzi-plagued shoot against the backdrop of actual Spring Break 2012 gave the impression that Korine -- the sometime-infant terrible who wrote Kids and last directed the analog video faux-document Trash Humpers - might have been "detourning" the culture that made his stars the bankable names they are by playing it poker-faced, letting the fact that this guy was making a traditional teen party movie serve as some kind of critique in itself of a culture in which, as Franco's character says, Britney Spears "is one of the greatest singers of all time and an angel if there ever was one on earth." Early footage of Franco in character as Alien -- who was inspired by real life rapper Riff Raff, and whose rival is played in the film by Gucci Mane -- suggested Korine might be going the other way, plumbing the artifacts of our moment of easy media opportunism for even easier parody.
The wonderful surprise of Spring Breakers is that, while the film essentially delivers what you might expect from these stars (all of them basically trying to do the Drew Barrymore-in-Poison Ivy vault into adult stardom) and this filmmaker independently of one another, their talents and assets in combination creates something much weirder, deeper, harder to pin down and impossible to write off as "just" a goof, "just" the result of an art filmmaker exploiting stars to skewer the culture they represent, "just" anything.
For one thing, formally Spring Breakers is like no film that its nominal genre has ever seen.The film begins with a luridly saturated, super slow-motion montage of college kids, boys and girls alike mostly topless, cavorting in a spray of booze. It becomes evident that this imagery constitutes the fantasies of Faith (Gomez), Brit (Benson), Candy (Hudgens) and Cotty (Rachel Korine, the director's wife), co-eds who will do whatever it takes to break free of their drab existence for a week in the "paradise" of St. Pete's.
But the opening montage doesn't end when the story begins -- in fact, it comes back again and again in a film which unfolds as an endless montage of repetitions and variations, with "scenes" constantly bleeding into one another, time folding in on itself, memories intruding into fantasies, the present haunted by both past actions and imaginings of the future.
Always a filmmaker concerned with how the American experiences of race, class and breeding dictate the expression of desire, Korine tells us this movie is about "the American Dream" via dialogue; his imagery and use of cinematic language make richer, more complicated statements about the nature of that dream, the weird co-existence of piety and indulgence with which it tends to manifest itself, and the rapidly disappearing line between freedom as a dream ideal and a living nightmare in which "freedom" is interpreted as unfettered consumption and total disregard for the sanctity of human life - or really, anything at all. Yes, Spring Breakers is a movie in which a wigged-out James Franco fucks two teen TV starlets in a swimming pool. But, oh -- it's so much more.
The same cannot be said for Do Not Disturb, the inexplicable French remake of Lynn Shelton's film festival hit Humpday. That film helped launch Mark Duplass as a mainstream romantic-comedic lead, and also was one of a number of American indies made in the second half of the last decade to make a persuasive case for improvisation as a micro-budget authoring technique, in addition to an acting exercise; in other words, the dialogue and finer story details were put together in the editing room from the raw material created on-set by the actors.
Do Not Disturb features a cast of A-list French stars (57 year-old Francois Cluzet, aka the old white guy in The Intouchables, has the role originated by Joshua Leonard when he was 34) and was reportedly made on a seven-figure budget (as opposed to Humpday's mid-five figures).
And yet, the remake is slavishly faithful to its source material, both formally (certain shots seem to have been replicated exactly) and textually (the plot has pretty much been transferred wholesale, cultural differences between Paris and the Pacific Northwest be damned). Its big-budget replication of material that was produced through a handmade, organic process is fascinating because it's so uncanny; with the exception of the addition of a WTF? jailhouse musical number, the copy is pretty much the same as the original, and yet something feels lost, in translation or otherwise.
I can't believe I'm typing these words, but a movie in which Charlotte Gainsbourg wears a strap-on in bed with Asia Argento shouldn't feel so lifeless.
Sex and the Disney girls
SARAH NICOLE PRICKETT At last, a reason to have a Kickstarter: I’d like to raise however much it takes to make Caitlin Flanagan and Ariel Levy sit side-by-side watching Harmony Korine’s Spring Breakers. This, of course, is the four-star film – I thought so, anyway – that makes anarchist sex-havers out of Disney Channel princesses Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley Benson and more. No spoilers, but let’s just say the real meaning of irony is reclaimed by setting a mad sex and gun drama to a Britney Spears slow jam.
Flanagan is the author of this year’s Girl Land, a non-fiction nostalgia trip through presexualized feminity. She has infamously written of the “teenage oral-sex craze,” the horrors of “hookup culture,” the vast danger of an Internet connection in your daughter’s bedroom.
Levy, in 2007, wrote Female Chauvinist Pigs about the postsexual revolutionary rise of “raunch culture.” I enjoyed less her premise, which is that women’s self-pornification isn’t truly liberating, than her defence of it.
“Every time I go on the radio I’m asked, aren’t women making a living doing this?” she told The Socialist Review. “Isn’t there a lot of money to made out of this? I say, so what? [Money isn’t] the last word.”
No, it shouldn’t be. But it is. This TIFF, I’ve been struck by the number of films I’ve seen in which girls use their own sexuality, and the welcome complexity of ways they do it. There’s the Canadian flick My Awkward Sexual Adventure, in which Emily Hampshire is a wise-ass stripper. In the soapy, sixties-feminist Ginger and Rosa, the latter’s discovery and love of sex drives the whole plot, and in the forties avant-garde On the Road, Kristen Stewart plays a Marylou as free-loving as the men. The thriller Byzantium has Gemma Arterton working the double night shift as both vampire and whore, while in Laurent Cantet’s faithful adaptation of Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang, the patriarchy-busting heroines turn tricks so tricky they get paid without actually playing. But no film takes pleasure to the extremes of power like Spring Breakers.
Korine’s shockbuster is going to get attention mostly for its leads, but the perverse casting is better than the acting. Disney Channel fantasies meet their late-capitalist fate in Florida? Brilliant. To me, the fact that Hudgens et al. play, or are, teenagers – as are the leads in many of the just-mentioned films – matters nothing. We know that teenagers have sex, and not more sex than they had a decade ago, Flanagan’s book and MTV’s fall schedule notwithstanding. We know that a lot of teenagers are females.
It’s more important that we know girls participate in a culture that asks them to look desirable, but not act on their own desires. Remember how long Britney Spears was a “virgin;” witness now the hysterical shaming of “trampire” Kristen. Wait for the moral orange alert when Selena Gomez fans (or, more accurately, their dads) watch Spring Breakers.
And it’s important to consider why girls have sex – beyond the best reason, which is to get sex. For these new characters, though, getting a man or getting money from men are the main motivations. They’re incompatible: To get money, in our world, is to gain power. To love is to surrender power, or share it.
Love. Or money. You can’t have it both ways, so that old movie chestnut, “the hooker with a heart of gold,” should be taken rather more literally.
“You love to attack the powerful and protect the weak,” says Sam Riley to Arterton at Byzantium’s end. Ditto Foxfire’s prole heroines, who work their illicit magic like a band of merry maids without a Robin Hood. And as wildly different from Foxfire, and from pretty much every film, as Spring Breakers is, it rushes to much the same conclusion: A man, a patriarch, is murdered for money.
One of the very best moments in Spring Breakers comes when the girls turn their guns on the super-G who supplied them, played by James Franco. “We could shoot you right now,” says one, then makes him fellate the fatal ends of two revolvers. (He complies. Later, now that they have power – and not just firepower – of their own, they will be free to say they love him.)
In these films, the Twilight-era reactionary hysteria about girls and promiscuity has met its match. Yes, sex can be dangerous. But when it’s a weapon in feminist class war, it is mostly, finally, dangerous to men.
In a related matter..........
Nicolas Cage stalked Vanessa Hudgens on set, she asked producers to keep him away
I love talking about Nicolas Cage, 48, because he’s such a whack job. The details that came out during his financial crisis of his over the top, cinematic lifestyle were fascinating and I love to revisit them whenever we cover him. (Which is rarely so indulge me.) He owned a fleet of luxury cars, several yachts, a zoo worth of exotic animals and property around the world including two castles, 15 homes, and an island. Of course all of that excess led him deep into debt, so he’s paying it off by selling stuff and starring in movies that somehow get worse every year. Hence his latest movie with Vanessa Hudgens, 23, whom he seems to have developed an inappropriate and unreciprocated crush on. Vanessa and Nic are co-starring in a thriller based on true events in the Robert Hansen serial killer case called The Frozen Ground. (Which I was ready to dismiss as a POS, but it’s got John Cusack and Dean Norris from Breaking Bad in it, so it might be decent.) According to Star Magazine, Nic was hanging around watching Vanessa during filming and being so creepy that she asked producers to keep him off set unless he had scenes to do.
That was the entire story in Star. If this story was about any other well known married male celebrity being inappropriate on set, like Ben Affleck or even Antonio Banderas (to use another guy that isn’t A-list) it would get much more play. But this is Nicolas Cage, and we know he’s a weirdo, so it gets a blurb on a page with another story about how Leonardo DiCaprio’s sex drive has gone down.High School Musical actress Vanessa Hudgens had heard about Nicolas Cage’s reputation for freaking out younger costars. But she had no idea just how much he would make her squirm until the 23 year-old bombshell played a stripper opposite Nic, 48, in the new thriller The Frozen Ground, set for a Nov. 30 release. Nicolas unnerved the starlet so much that she begged directors to banish him from the set. “He constantly watched her and even showed up on days when he wasn’t filming to see her,” a friend tells Star. “Vanessa finally asked the directors to intervene and keep him away because she couldn’t concentrate on her performance.”[From Star Magazine, print edition, September 17, 2012]
Who leaked this news, or did Star make it up? It’s about Nicolas Cage, which makes me think it has a grain of truth in it. Plus they call Vanessa Hudgens a “bombshell” and the source says she needs to concentrate on her performance. You draw your own conclusions. As if the subject matter weren’t creepy enough.
* Maybe Cage was stupid in accepting shitty movies purely for financial reason and subsequently ruining his reputation but he ain't dumb. Who can blame him? Vanessa was so sexy in her strip dance that Cage just had to check it out. Why can't Nico join in the fun if John Cusack, 50 Cent and other crew members have free view of Vanessa shaking her booty? It's a pity Scott Walker couldn't convince Vanessa to go topless. I can't confirm anything right now but Vanessa apparently flash her breasts in Gimme Shelter (to prove she was a girl to a john?) according to an e-mail I received after contacting the person involved in the production. It's possible he could be pulling my leg. The dude sounded way too playful. Like he was toying with me.
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Allison Williams Gets Weird At Peter Som
The actress best known as Marnie on the HBO show Girls attended the Peter Som show in New York on Sept 7th wearing a boxy burgundy cropped sweater thing with a burgundy leather ruffle skirt, both by the designer. Personally I think she looks kind of weird and awesome, which is mostly how I like my fashion served.
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Sarah Shahi : "Maxim" Magazine [2012]October
* nice Persian butt. Was initially skeptical about Sarah's first clear nudity in Sly's Bullet to the Head (2013) but after Piper Perabo's surprise topless scene in Looper...anything is possible for TV-stars. It also means lead stars of on-going family-oriented TV-series are no longer constrained by contractual (or often oral) obligation preventing them from appearing in risque/racy roles for the length of the show. At least it was back in 80's/90's. But the economic meltdown of recent years likely forced many TV-executives to relax the rule (but not all). Still hoping Sly doesn't edit out Sarah's nudity though. That guy have issues with on-screen sex/nude scenes after the traumatic semi-porn experience in his early years.
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Yao Xingtong Wears Shockingly Sheer Dress At Toronto Film Festival
It's a given that the blaring lights of red carpet cameras can make even the most subtly sheer garment look translucent. So we were a little surprised to see how ill-prepared Chinese actress Yao Xingtong was at the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival.For the premiere of "In Conversation With... Jackie Chan" yesterday, the 29-year-old opted for a paper-thin white gown that pretty much revealed... well, what we hope are pasties. Maybe it was just a case of flashing lights, but we suspect that people on the red carpet took notice too because she soon was shielding her chest with a stuffed panda bear.
While we definitely give her points for craftiness (having a stuffed animal handy on the red carpet for wardrobe malfunctions? Genius foresight), we're a little confused how she could have left the house without anyone saying anything. She must have the same stylist as thong-flaunting Sophie Turner, right? Check out the potentially NSFW photos and tell us what you think you're looking at because we're still not sure.
Actors Zhang Lanxin, Jackie Chan and Yao Xingtong @ Yao Xing Tong attend "In Conversation With...Jackie Chan" premiere during the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival at Princess of Wales Theatre on September 9, 2012 in Toronto, Canada.
[edited photos to bring out you-know-what]
[1] Jackie Chan is true gentleman (only cheats on his wife when shooting outside of US) :
He is used to performing a whole host of death-defying stunts but Jackie Chan had a big challenge on his hands yesterday(Sunday).
According to the Mail report, the 58-year-old stunt man and actor was tasked with saving Yao Xingtong's modesty after the Chinese actress stepped out in a sheer dress and no bra. But Jackie rose to the challenge and gave Yao a stuffed bear to cover her chest.
Yao was dressed in a flowing lace dress, which boasted a sheer panel down the front, and no bra. The dress, which also had puffy sleeves and broderie anglaise detail left her chest on show for all to see and there's little doubt that Jackie hadn't noticed her revealing outfit.
The pair were joined by Zhang Lanxin ahead of the event 'In Conversation With Jackie Chan' as part of the Toronto film festival.
Zhang had opted for something a little more sensible and modest and wore a shiny floor-length gown with sequins. Jackie, who has appeared in more than 150 films was dressed in a simple cream and brown suit for the occasion.
The group brought stuffed pandas with them for the event and Yao covered her chest with the animal toy at one point.
* either Xingtong wearing nip-patch or she is blessed with one of the world biggest nipples. She was nude couple of times in
Amor (2010). Butt and side-boobs filmed tastefully. There was mini backlash among the conservative crowd. And as usual her answer mirrors every Oriental actress who performs nudity and pretends to regret it :
"It was a difficult situation; I only knew nudity was required after we arrived at the snow location. If at that time I had objected, the whole crew would have wasted two days of traveling and filming schedule would be delayed and so I agreed. I feel that this scene has nothing to do with sex. It is an art."
Yoa is also braless but her long gown covers her tits all the way.
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Interview: Ashley Hinshaw Talks About Cherry
written by: Karen Benardello
Sometimes it takes an unexpected, life-altering experience for a person to realize that their existence is falling apart, and they need to overcome whatever obstacles are in their way in order to find their true purpose in life. That’s certainly the case with the title character in the new drama ‘About Cherry,’ which is now available on VOD and digital platforms and opens in a limited theatrical release on September 21. Angelina, a teenager who takes on the name Cherry when she’s lured into working in the porn industry, must over her internal struggles when she realizes her life is spiraling out of her control.
‘About Cherry’ follows Angelina (played by Ashley Hinshaw) as she is on the verge of finishing high school. Rushing to escape her broken family life, she reluctantly takes nude photos, at the urging of her boyfriend (portrayed by Jonny Weston). She soon takes the money she earned and leaves town with her best friend, Andrew (played by Dev Patel), and they end up in San Francisco.
Angelina gets a job as a cocktail waitress in a strip club in order to make ends meet. While working, she meets Frances (portrayed by James Franco), an affluent lawyer who introduces her to a high-class world beyond her wildest dreams.
At the same time, Angelina begins exploring the porn industry in San Francisco, using the moniker Cherry. While she’s taken under the wing of a former performer turned adult film director, Margaret (played by Heather Graham). But her new-found lifestyle soon falls apart at the seams, challenging the assumptions she had about sexuality and pornography, while also addressing the struggle of finding her role in life.
Hinsaw generously took the time to speak with us over the phone recently about the challenges and liberation of taking on a role like Angelina in ‘About Cherry.’ Among other things, the model-turned-actress discussed what drew her to the role of Angelina and the film overall; what it was like working with first-time feature film writer and director, Stephen Elliott, a novel author who has experience in the adult film industry; and what it was like working with some of her more experienced co-stars, including Franco and Graham.
ShockYa (SY): You play Angelina, an 18-year-old who moves to San Francisco and becomes involved in the porn industry, in order to escape her broken family life. What was it about the character and the script that convinced you to take on the role?
Ashley Hinshaw (AH): I think more so than anything else, I was intrigued by the fact that it was a story that seemed very different than the stories I was looking at as an actor, and the scripts that I had been reading. I always wanted to take on someone who was very different than me, as far as the character goes. I’m not like Angelina, that’s definitely for sure.
So I was really able to spend the time and the work trying to transform myself into another character, which, as an actor, is a really exciting venture. It’s a bit of a scary venture, but it was exciting.
That industry, the adult industry, is something I knew absolutely nothing about when I went into ‘About Cherry.’ More so than anything else, what I was attempting to do with ‘About Cherry’ was tell one specific person’s story about getting into that industry, and not tackle the issue in general of the adult porn industry. I wanted to tell one specific story, and have it be more about this girl and what she went through, more so than telling a story about porn.
I think that even though one of the attractions is that that industry is so prevalent in the film, I think when people see the movie, they’ll be surprised. It’s much more about this girl coming of age and discovering herself as she’s growing up than it is about the porn business.
SY: Speaking of transiting into the character, how did you prepare for the role of Angelina? Did you have any reservations about playing a teenager who becomes involved in the porn industry?
AH: You know, I didn’t really. I wouldn’t say I was scared, but I was a little nervous to take it on. I really had no experiences in my life that were really close to what this character was going through. I was really nervous about portraying it in a real way, with no experiences of my own.
I watched a lot of documentaries about the porn industry and girls who had been in the porn industry and all stages of their lives. I spoke a lot with girls working in the porn industry right now. I was trying to get their real stories, instead of adhering to stereotypes we all hear and think about when it comes to the girls in porn. I spent a lot of time trying to get the individual girls’ stories and hear these girls out as real people, instead of having ideas about these girls as porn stars.
SY: ‘About Cherry’ was shot in the San Francisco Armory, the largest adult film studio in the world. What was your experience like filming in the armory, and in San Francisco overall?
AH: Well, the armory is a wacky, wacky place. (laughs) I have never been anywhere quite like that before. But it was, in my opinion, the best possible place to shoot this specific movie. It allowed me to be engrossed in this world. It’s a world, coming into this movie, I knew nothing about. So as much as it was shocking, and jarring in moments, to be surrounded by this everyday, day in and day out. But it became normal to me in a sense.
I felt like I could let go of the reservations I had. I became this character more and more as I was surrounded by it, instead of fabricate it at another location. As much as it was an interesting place to shoot this movie, in my opinion, it was probably the best location that I could even think of to tackle this specific film.
SY: Stephen Elliot both directed, and co-wrote the script for, ‘About Cherry.’ Did the fact that Stephen wrote the screenplay for the film help in his directorial duties once you began shooting?
AH: Yeah, I do. But I think more importantly than the fact that he wrote it was that he has life experience in this industry. So he had a viewpoint that was personal. So that was infused in the script, and it was also his intention to infuse that into the film.
So it definitely felt more real, and I felt that he had a strong connection to it, more so than a story he wouldn’t be able to relate to. So I think having him was incredibly helpful for me, at least, because I could have dialogue with him and discuss what the realities of this world is like. He could give me answers from experience. The best kind of directing, in my opinion, comes from when people can understand what you’re truly trying to accomplish.
SY: ‘About Cherry’ is Stephen’s feature film directorial and writing debut. What was your experience working with Stephen like overall, since he was a first-time writer and director?
AH: It was definitely a learning process, I think, for all of us. This is my first starring role, this was his first movie. I think he made some really smart choices with the people he surrounded himself with, as far as the people on the crew, who have had a lot of experience in the industry. That allowed him to be around people who would help make the best film possible.
It was a learning process-I think he was learning the entire time and I was learning the whole time. So it was exciting to go through that process with someone else who was in a similar point in their career.
SY: ‘About Cherry’ was selected to play at several film festivals this year, including the San Francisco International Film Festival and the Berlin Film Festival. What was your reaction when you found out the movie was chosen to play at these festivals?
AH: I was very excited. I had not seen the movie (before attending the festivals). The way I see it, once we finish filming, my job is kind of over in the process of making the movie. I can’t do much after we wrap.
So I didn’t know what the movie had become in the editing process. So when I had heard that it got into the festivals, I was incredibly excited. I was able to travel to Berlin for the premiere, which was incredibly exciting, and see the movie. It was my first experience at a festival, which was exciting.
I think you hope for the best, but you never know what’s going to happen when you finish a film. You leave it to everyone else, and put your trust in their hands. It was exciting to see that it was getting some good attention and support from some good festivals out there.
SY: In the film, James Franco plays Frances, an affluent lawyer who introduces Angelina to the porn industry, and Heather Graham plays a former performer turned adult film director. What was it like acting alongside James and Heather in the movie?
AH: It was fantastic to work with all four (of my co-stars), James, Heather, Dev (Patel) and Lili Taylor. They all have worked for so long in this industry, and all have respect in the industry. They’re incredibly talented.
I was coming at it as someone who’s basically in the beginning of their career. So I learned an awful lot from everyone I worked with on this film. It was an amazing experience for me. I don’t think many young actors get a chance to work with people who have worked for as long as they have, and have been producing great work for as long as they have. It was definitely a great experience for me.
SY: Besides James and Heather in ‘About Cherry,’ you’ve appeared with several other high-profile stars, including Miley Cyrus and Demi Moore in ‘LOL’ and Wes Bentley and Christian Slater in ‘Rites of Passage.’ Has working with these actors provided you with any acting tips for your own career?
AH: I think more so than anything, I’ve learned from just watching the more experienced actors who I’ve worked with. I watch how their process goes, since they’ve been doing it for so much longer than I have and have had success. But to a certain extent, I want to have my own career. So I emulate people who have had success, and have gotten to do what they love for a very long time.
Everyone who gives their own experience to me was amazing to work with. I worked with Michael Kelly on ‘Chronicle,’ who, in my opinion, is an incredibly talented actor. I learned so much from him. Wes is also an amazing actor.
I’ve gotten very, very lucky with the people I’ve been surrounded by. I think it makes a world of difference when you work with people who bring out the best in you and challenge you.
SY: You’ve starred in several independent films, including ‘Snake and Mongoose’ and ‘Plus One.’ What is it about independent movies that you enjoy acting in them?
AH: I think regardless of whether it’s a studio picture or it’s an indie, I just want to make movies that I believe in. I also want to work with people who are passionate and talented. To me, it doesn’t matter how big the budget is; if you’ve got the right list of ingredients, then you’ve got a great opportunity to make a great film.
A lot of indie projects that I’ve read have spoken to me, more so than the big studio movies. A lot of times, you tackle issues in a stronger way, and they’re a lot less commercial. Every movie that I’ve done has been a completely different experience. I hope to continue doing some exciting and challenging and fun indies.
But at the same time, I want to do more studio and commercial movies, as they have their appeal as well. So I hope to continue having a combination of both in my career.
SY: Besides films, you’ve also appeared on several television shows, including ‘Fringe’ and ‘Gossip Girl.’ Do you have a preference of acting in films over television, or vice versa, or do you enjoy working in both mediums?
AH: Well, my experience in TV has been limited, as they’ve all been guest starring roles. So I really like the idea of being on a TV show and being able to stay with one character for a length of time longer than a movie. So I really like the idea, but I haven’t had the chance to really experience it and try it out. But I’m always open to the idea.
I recently did a role on the HBO series ‘Enlightened’ with Luke Wilson and Laura Dern. That was amazing, and shows like that I would love to be a part of on a bigger scale.
So I don’t really know which direction I’ll really turn to more. It depends on what comes to me and what I respond to, in terms of how the story goes and the character goes.
But with films, you get more opportunities to travel and work with more people, so that’s always exciting. But if the right TV project comes along, I would be really excited to be a part of it.
SY: You started your career as a teenager modeling for some of the world’s largest companies, including Abercrombie and Fitch. What was the transition like, going from modeling to acting in films and on television?
AH: In my opinion, I was always an actor. I happened to get very lucky, and met some influential people in the modeling industry. I got my foot in a door that if I hadn’t otherwise, I wouldn’t have been able to become involved in the film industry.
But I was very lucky, and I was able to travel and had some mild success in the modeling industry. But at the end of the day, I still always knew that I wanted to act. That’s what I felt that I should be doing.
So after a few years in the modeling industry, I decided that I had an amazing time doing all of this. I had awesome experiences, but knew I didn’t want to waste some precious years and opportunities, as far as the acting world goes.
So I completely stopped one day, and decided that I would start studying film and acting, and give it a go. I definitely got lucky with how quickly I was able to start working and begin a career in this industry. I know a lot of people who have tried to make the transition from fashion to acting, and it takes a long time for many people. So I’m definitely grateful for the fact that it was such a quick transition period for me.
SY: Do you have any upcoming projects lined up, whether in films or on television, that you can discuss?
AH: I’m going to Morocco, and will be filming a movie for six weeks. I’m prepping that right now, and I’m really excited to focus on that. I think that will be an experience that I will definitely enjoy. But after that, who knows?
‘About Cherry’ follows Angelina (played by Ashley Hinshaw) as she is on the verge of finishing high school. Rushing to escape her broken family life, she reluctantly takes nude photos, at the urging of her boyfriend (portrayed by Jonny Weston). She soon takes the money she earned and leaves town with her best friend, Andrew (played by Dev Patel), and they end up in San Francisco.
Angelina gets a job as a cocktail waitress in a strip club in order to make ends meet. While working, she meets Frances (portrayed by James Franco), an affluent lawyer who introduces her to a high-class world beyond her wildest dreams.
At the same time, Angelina begins exploring the porn industry in San Francisco, using the moniker Cherry. While she’s taken under the wing of a former performer turned adult film director, Margaret (played by Heather Graham). But her new-found lifestyle soon falls apart at the seams, challenging the assumptions she had about sexuality and pornography, while also addressing the struggle of finding her role in life.
Hinsaw generously took the time to speak with us over the phone recently about the challenges and liberation of taking on a role like Angelina in ‘About Cherry.’ Among other things, the model-turned-actress discussed what drew her to the role of Angelina and the film overall; what it was like working with first-time feature film writer and director, Stephen Elliott, a novel author who has experience in the adult film industry; and what it was like working with some of her more experienced co-stars, including Franco and Graham.
ShockYa (SY): You play Angelina, an 18-year-old who moves to San Francisco and becomes involved in the porn industry, in order to escape her broken family life. What was it about the character and the script that convinced you to take on the role?
Ashley Hinshaw (AH): I think more so than anything else, I was intrigued by the fact that it was a story that seemed very different than the stories I was looking at as an actor, and the scripts that I had been reading. I always wanted to take on someone who was very different than me, as far as the character goes. I’m not like Angelina, that’s definitely for sure.
So I was really able to spend the time and the work trying to transform myself into another character, which, as an actor, is a really exciting venture. It’s a bit of a scary venture, but it was exciting.
That industry, the adult industry, is something I knew absolutely nothing about when I went into ‘About Cherry.’ More so than anything else, what I was attempting to do with ‘About Cherry’ was tell one specific person’s story about getting into that industry, and not tackle the issue in general of the adult porn industry. I wanted to tell one specific story, and have it be more about this girl and what she went through, more so than telling a story about porn.
I think that even though one of the attractions is that that industry is so prevalent in the film, I think when people see the movie, they’ll be surprised. It’s much more about this girl coming of age and discovering herself as she’s growing up than it is about the porn business.
SY: Speaking of transiting into the character, how did you prepare for the role of Angelina? Did you have any reservations about playing a teenager who becomes involved in the porn industry?
AH: You know, I didn’t really. I wouldn’t say I was scared, but I was a little nervous to take it on. I really had no experiences in my life that were really close to what this character was going through. I was really nervous about portraying it in a real way, with no experiences of my own.
I watched a lot of documentaries about the porn industry and girls who had been in the porn industry and all stages of their lives. I spoke a lot with girls working in the porn industry right now. I was trying to get their real stories, instead of adhering to stereotypes we all hear and think about when it comes to the girls in porn. I spent a lot of time trying to get the individual girls’ stories and hear these girls out as real people, instead of having ideas about these girls as porn stars.
SY: ‘About Cherry’ was shot in the San Francisco Armory, the largest adult film studio in the world. What was your experience like filming in the armory, and in San Francisco overall?
AH: Well, the armory is a wacky, wacky place. (laughs) I have never been anywhere quite like that before. But it was, in my opinion, the best possible place to shoot this specific movie. It allowed me to be engrossed in this world. It’s a world, coming into this movie, I knew nothing about. So as much as it was shocking, and jarring in moments, to be surrounded by this everyday, day in and day out. But it became normal to me in a sense.
I felt like I could let go of the reservations I had. I became this character more and more as I was surrounded by it, instead of fabricate it at another location. As much as it was an interesting place to shoot this movie, in my opinion, it was probably the best location that I could even think of to tackle this specific film.
SY: Stephen Elliot both directed, and co-wrote the script for, ‘About Cherry.’ Did the fact that Stephen wrote the screenplay for the film help in his directorial duties once you began shooting?
AH: Yeah, I do. But I think more importantly than the fact that he wrote it was that he has life experience in this industry. So he had a viewpoint that was personal. So that was infused in the script, and it was also his intention to infuse that into the film.
So it definitely felt more real, and I felt that he had a strong connection to it, more so than a story he wouldn’t be able to relate to. So I think having him was incredibly helpful for me, at least, because I could have dialogue with him and discuss what the realities of this world is like. He could give me answers from experience. The best kind of directing, in my opinion, comes from when people can understand what you’re truly trying to accomplish.
SY: ‘About Cherry’ is Stephen’s feature film directorial and writing debut. What was your experience working with Stephen like overall, since he was a first-time writer and director?
AH: It was definitely a learning process, I think, for all of us. This is my first starring role, this was his first movie. I think he made some really smart choices with the people he surrounded himself with, as far as the people on the crew, who have had a lot of experience in the industry. That allowed him to be around people who would help make the best film possible.
It was a learning process-I think he was learning the entire time and I was learning the whole time. So it was exciting to go through that process with someone else who was in a similar point in their career.
SY: ‘About Cherry’ was selected to play at several film festivals this year, including the San Francisco International Film Festival and the Berlin Film Festival. What was your reaction when you found out the movie was chosen to play at these festivals?
AH: I was very excited. I had not seen the movie (before attending the festivals). The way I see it, once we finish filming, my job is kind of over in the process of making the movie. I can’t do much after we wrap.
So I didn’t know what the movie had become in the editing process. So when I had heard that it got into the festivals, I was incredibly excited. I was able to travel to Berlin for the premiere, which was incredibly exciting, and see the movie. It was my first experience at a festival, which was exciting.
I think you hope for the best, but you never know what’s going to happen when you finish a film. You leave it to everyone else, and put your trust in their hands. It was exciting to see that it was getting some good attention and support from some good festivals out there.
SY: In the film, James Franco plays Frances, an affluent lawyer who introduces Angelina to the porn industry, and Heather Graham plays a former performer turned adult film director. What was it like acting alongside James and Heather in the movie?
AH: It was fantastic to work with all four (of my co-stars), James, Heather, Dev (Patel) and Lili Taylor. They all have worked for so long in this industry, and all have respect in the industry. They’re incredibly talented.
I was coming at it as someone who’s basically in the beginning of their career. So I learned an awful lot from everyone I worked with on this film. It was an amazing experience for me. I don’t think many young actors get a chance to work with people who have worked for as long as they have, and have been producing great work for as long as they have. It was definitely a great experience for me.
SY: Besides James and Heather in ‘About Cherry,’ you’ve appeared with several other high-profile stars, including Miley Cyrus and Demi Moore in ‘LOL’ and Wes Bentley and Christian Slater in ‘Rites of Passage.’ Has working with these actors provided you with any acting tips for your own career?
AH: I think more so than anything, I’ve learned from just watching the more experienced actors who I’ve worked with. I watch how their process goes, since they’ve been doing it for so much longer than I have and have had success. But to a certain extent, I want to have my own career. So I emulate people who have had success, and have gotten to do what they love for a very long time.
Everyone who gives their own experience to me was amazing to work with. I worked with Michael Kelly on ‘Chronicle,’ who, in my opinion, is an incredibly talented actor. I learned so much from him. Wes is also an amazing actor.
I’ve gotten very, very lucky with the people I’ve been surrounded by. I think it makes a world of difference when you work with people who bring out the best in you and challenge you.
SY: You’ve starred in several independent films, including ‘Snake and Mongoose’ and ‘Plus One.’ What is it about independent movies that you enjoy acting in them?
AH: I think regardless of whether it’s a studio picture or it’s an indie, I just want to make movies that I believe in. I also want to work with people who are passionate and talented. To me, it doesn’t matter how big the budget is; if you’ve got the right list of ingredients, then you’ve got a great opportunity to make a great film.
A lot of indie projects that I’ve read have spoken to me, more so than the big studio movies. A lot of times, you tackle issues in a stronger way, and they’re a lot less commercial. Every movie that I’ve done has been a completely different experience. I hope to continue doing some exciting and challenging and fun indies.
But at the same time, I want to do more studio and commercial movies, as they have their appeal as well. So I hope to continue having a combination of both in my career.
SY: Besides films, you’ve also appeared on several television shows, including ‘Fringe’ and ‘Gossip Girl.’ Do you have a preference of acting in films over television, or vice versa, or do you enjoy working in both mediums?
AH: Well, my experience in TV has been limited, as they’ve all been guest starring roles. So I really like the idea of being on a TV show and being able to stay with one character for a length of time longer than a movie. So I really like the idea, but I haven’t had the chance to really experience it and try it out. But I’m always open to the idea.
I recently did a role on the HBO series ‘Enlightened’ with Luke Wilson and Laura Dern. That was amazing, and shows like that I would love to be a part of on a bigger scale.
So I don’t really know which direction I’ll really turn to more. It depends on what comes to me and what I respond to, in terms of how the story goes and the character goes.
But with films, you get more opportunities to travel and work with more people, so that’s always exciting. But if the right TV project comes along, I would be really excited to be a part of it.
SY: You started your career as a teenager modeling for some of the world’s largest companies, including Abercrombie and Fitch. What was the transition like, going from modeling to acting in films and on television?
AH: In my opinion, I was always an actor. I happened to get very lucky, and met some influential people in the modeling industry. I got my foot in a door that if I hadn’t otherwise, I wouldn’t have been able to become involved in the film industry.
But I was very lucky, and I was able to travel and had some mild success in the modeling industry. But at the end of the day, I still always knew that I wanted to act. That’s what I felt that I should be doing.
So after a few years in the modeling industry, I decided that I had an amazing time doing all of this. I had awesome experiences, but knew I didn’t want to waste some precious years and opportunities, as far as the acting world goes.
So I completely stopped one day, and decided that I would start studying film and acting, and give it a go. I definitely got lucky with how quickly I was able to start working and begin a career in this industry. I know a lot of people who have tried to make the transition from fashion to acting, and it takes a long time for many people. So I’m definitely grateful for the fact that it was such a quick transition period for me.
SY: Do you have any upcoming projects lined up, whether in films or on television, that you can discuss?
AH: I’m going to Morocco, and will be filming a movie for six weeks. I’m prepping that right now, and I’m really excited to focus on that. I think that will be an experience that I will definitely enjoy. But after that, who knows?
The Fall TV Preview
Now that we're almost in the middle of September, it's time for regular-season television shows to come back into our lives. So let's take a look at what's coming up and begin preparing our DVRs for all the hard work they'll soon be doing.SUNDAY
Boardwalk Empire — After a plodding, uninspiring first season, Boardwalk Empire roared back with a second round of episodes that were complex but not incomprehensible, moody but not turgid, and above all else surprising as hell. So we're pretty excited for the upcoming third season, even though (SPOILER ALERT) one of our favorite characters, petulant brat Jimmy, now has a few extra holes in his face. The promos offer us a few tantalizing glimpses of what's to come, including more of the terrific Gretchen Mol and the arrival of the, well, terrific Bobby Canavale as some sort of volatile gangster. Let's hope they can keep up the momentum. (9/30, HBO)Homeland — OK, so this isn't a perfect show. For a series trying to be sober and serious about national security, it strains credibility on an almost routine basis. And yet it's still such an entertaining little thriller; it's a paranoid spy drama and a domestic potboiler all rolled up into one lumpy but satisfying package. Who knows where the show is heading now that we know the truth about Sgt. Brody and Carrie's had her brain zapped, but we're confident that no matter the intrigue, Homeland will serve it up well. The first twenty minutes of the premiere are available online if you simply can't wait. (9/30, Showtime)
666 Park Avenue — While this new show is probably going to be deeply silly, it still looks kind of fun, right? The basic premise is that a young couple moves into a too-good-to-be-true Manhattan apartment building that is, as it turns out, run by the devil and his wife. That Terry O'Quinn and Vanessa Williams play Mr. and Mrs. Lucifer is a big part of the draw, as is the possibility that they're not actually the devil and his bride, they're maybe just working for him. This show ought to pair up well with its network partner for the night, the sensationally silly but inexplicably addicting Once Upon a Time. With all this other heavy stuff clunking around on Sunday night, choosing to end the weekend with something dumb but fun instead could be refreshing. (9/30, ABC)
Elsewhere: ABC's soapy thriller Revenge moves to its new night (9/30) ... CBS' nifty lawyer drama The Good Wife returns for a fourth season (9/30) ... HBO's low-key drama Treme heads back to New Orleans (9/23) ... Don't forget to watch TV's most important night, the Primetime Emmys (9/23, ABC) ... Dexter finally deals with the matter of Deb this season, which is very exciting (9/30, Showtime) ... The Walking Dead lurches back onto the airwaves after a grim second season (10/14, AMC)
MONDAY
The Mob Doctor — Fans of TBS' short-lived sitcom My Boys (there was more than one of us, right?) might be surprised to find that show's tomboy lead Jordana Spiro in a dramatic role here, playing a doctor forced to do bad things for the Mafia because of her brother's gambling debts. We had this idea a while ago (see: Mary Stuart Masterson) so are curious to see how these shameful copycats executed it. We're not too optimistic about Fox dramas in general, but Justified's Michael Dinner is an executive producer and directed the pilot, so there might be something interesting here. Plus, Zach Gilford! Saracen! (9/17, Fox)Revolution — We've already covered the pilot, an unsatisfying muddle of genre cliches, but maybe you'll still want to give this show a chance. These adventure/mystery series can be kind of fun once you get into them, so Revolution might bear consideration past the pilot. Not too much consideration, as that pilot is pretty darn bad, but another episode or two at least. If for no other reason than to support the great Giancarlo Esposito in his post-Breaking Bad career. Though, he does pop up on occasion on Once Upon a Time, so maybe that's enough? (9/10, NBC)
Dancing With the Stars: All Stars — As others have noted, this show really should be called Dancing With the Stars of 'Dancing With the Stars', but oh well. The point is if you missed Bristol Palin on this radioactively cheesy competition show during her first go-around, she's back to enthrall and entertain once more. As are Joey Fatone, Apolo Anton Ohno, Kirstie Alley, Pamela Anderson, and various raggedy others. We've never been able to stomach this show, but if you're a fan, this seems like the most important season yet. (9/24)
Elsewhere: CBS' all-male (plus Sophia Bush) version of Will and Grace, Partners, looks not so good (9/24) ... Gossip Girl struts back for its blessedly final season (10/8)
TUESDAY
The New Normal — NBC has been promo blitzing the heck out of this thing, a Ryan Murphy sitcom about a gay couple, their dippy surrogate, and her bitchy mom. Oh plus there's NeNe Leakes from Real Housewives of Atlanta, because why not. The whole pilot is up online and, to us, it's a perfectly likable half-hour that could stand to be a little bit, y'know, funnier. It's got that nice Ryan Murphy bite to it, but there's also a treacly element that's threatening to overtake the show a lot sooner than Glee's inherent schmaltz sunk that once promising series. Still, Andrew Rannells, discovered from Broadway's The Book of Mormon and here playing the flamboyant half of the main couple, is a charmer, and Barkin brings some new pizazz to a creaky stock character. (9/11, NBC)Ben and Kate — Oscar-winning screenwriter Nat Faxon plays a galumphy ne'er-do-well who moves in with his sister to be a nanny to his niece in this sitcom from "Fempire" member Dana Fox. The ads have not been terribly enticing, but maybe Faxon's oafish antics actually aren't as annoying as they seem in those brief clips? And hey, Lucy Punch is in it, and she's very funny! Plus we get to see if series lead Dakota Johnson, daughter of Don Johnson and Melanie Griffith, has what it takes to make it in the family business. (9/25, Fox)
Vegas — In this ambitious period piece, Dennis Quaid plays the reluctant sheriff of a 1960s Las Vegas that's overrun with mob activity, most of it overseen by Michael Chiklis. The Matrix's Carrie-Anne Moss plays a district attorney, which seems a little improbable given that it's the West in 1960, but whatever. Of course the sheriff has a steady number-two man in his brother (played by Terra Nova's Jason O'Mara, who I guess escaped the dinosaurs) and an impetuous son named Dixon (Taylor Handley). This could be a rollicking yarn through an interesting time and place in American history, or it could be The Playboy Club. Only one way to find out! (9/25, CBS)
Elsewhere: Matthew Perry's sad sitcom about sad people, Go On, is sad (9/11, NBC) ... Mindy Kaling's new sitcom The Mindy Project is not so good so far (9/25, Fox) ... Comedy Central is debuting Daniel Tosh's new rape-heavy animated series Brickleberry (9/25) ... Meryl Streep's daughter Mamie Gummer tries her hand at another doctor series after her failed Off the Map, this one a dramedy called Emily Owens, M.D. (10/16, The CW) ... Increasingly likable sitcom Happy Endings is worth checking out in its third season (10/23, ABC)
WEDNESDAY
Nashville — Wonderful, lovable Connie Britton gets outta that damn ghost house and heads to Tennessee, where she plays an aging country star vying with a new upstart (Hayden Panettiere) for the spotlight. Lots of other colorful country characters pop up on this primetime soap, which was written by Thelma and Louise screenwriter Callie Khouri. It looks like chintzy fun, even if it is basically the same exact thing as Country Strong, and Country Strong was not good. Who can resist big hair and bitchery? (10/10, ABC)Chicago Fire — Hunky fireman fight fire and act like hunks in this Third Watch-esque drama. House hunk Jesse Spencer and The Vampire Diaries hunk Taylor Kinney are the main hunks here, with some lady hunks popping up as EMTs, nurses, and even one firefighter. Oh and Steve from Sex and the City is in it! Sure he's not exactly a hunk per se, but he's still a familiar face. This show is from Dick Wolf, so it could actually have some credibility to it, but we're pretty sure Rescue Me will have done it better no matter what. (10/10, NBC)
American Horror Story: Asylum — Season two of this horror anthology show brings us to a creepy New England mental hospital in the 1960s. Returning company member Jessica Lange plays a creepy nurse while Joseph Fiennes is a creepy doctor, and Chloe Sevigny, Jenna Dewan, and Adam Levine, of all people, are their presumably creepy patients. We're not sure we like all this talk about Nazis and aliens, but the first season of this show was so morbidly good that we're holding out hope for another season of gross-out scares and clever surprises. (10/17, FX)
Everything Else: Britney Spears and Demi Lovato make their debut as judges on the retooled The X Factor (10/12, Fox) ... Survivor heads to the Philippines with Blair from Facts of Life in tow (9/19, CBS) ... Justin Kirk's sad monkey sitcom Animal Practice makes its regular season debut (9/26, NBC) ... Anthony Anderson and the kid from Swimfan are guys who have kids in Guys With Kids (9/26, NBC) ... Modern Family returns for some more good-natured chuckles (9/26, ABC) ... The truly bizarre-looking aliens-in-suburbia sitcom The Neighbors might be the year's strangest show (10/3, ABC) ... The CW tries its hand at a superhero series with The Arrow (10/10)
THURSDAY
Last Resort — Andre Braugher and Scott Speedman make off with a nuclear submarine and create their own little island nation in this beyond ambitious thriller series. This is one of those shows that kinda sounds like it'd make a better movie or miniseries than actual show, but that problem has never seemed to stop the networks in the past. It's certainly an intriguing concept, Crimson Tide with some political drama on shore and a deserted island narrative, plus it features the wonderful Autumn Reeser from The O.C. and was co-crated by The Shield's Shawn Ryan. So it's got some good names involved. We're holding out hope that this will actually be smart and suspenseful instead of soggy and silly, like so many action-dramas in the recent network past. (9/27, ABC)Elementary — Witnessing PBS' success with its BBC import Sherlock, CBS decided it wanted in on the sleuth game and came up with this project. Jonny Lee Miller plays a modern-day Sherlock Holmes who has relocated to New York after a stint in rehab, while Lucy Liu plays Joan Watson, Holmes' sober companion who becomes his trusted righthand woman. And hey, that's Aidan Quinn as a normal New York City cop. This show will likely be a bit flat, with lots of supposedly brilliant detective work that actually isn't that brilliant (like with The Mentalist), but for the interesting Liu factor alone we're planning to give it a look-see. We could be surprised by what we discover! (Probably won't be, though.) (9/27, CBS)
Beauty and the Beast — Instead of just re-airing the camptastic Linda Hamilton/Ron Perlman series from the late '80s, which it should have done, The CW has freshened up the idea of a modern-day, urban Beast and made him a CW-worthy dreamboat. He's also a bit werewolf-y/Hulk-y, in that the transitions into the Beast only when angry. The rest of the time he's just some handsome regular dude. This show of course has the potential to be an unmitigated disaster, but hey, if the late-'80s version bizarrely worked, maybe this can too. (10/11, The CW)
Elsewhere: Glee comes bouncing back with a whole New York-set plotline featuring Kate Hudson (9/13, Fox) ... For some reason we're getting another season of Real Housewives of Miami, only with mostly different Housewives (9/13, Bravo) ... Saturday Night Live runs a couple of election specials (9/20, NBC) ... The Office starts its final season, as does 30 Rock (9/20 and 10/4, NBC) ... Parks and Recreation starts what is hopefully not its last season (9/20, NBC) ... Now that Elena's a vampire, what will she be writing in her Vampire Diaries? (10/11, The CW) ... Yay! More It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia! (10/11, FX)
FRIDAY
Made in Jersey — A British actress plays a tough Jersey chick who goes to work at a high-class white collar Manhattan law firm in this Working Girl-esque drama. Why they cast a British person in this incredibly region-specific role (it's right in the title!) is beyond us, but the accent that keeps getting praised in the promos? It's not so good. Oh well. It's Friday night, whaddaya want. This Brit is joined by Kyle MacLachlan as her boss, Stephanie March as her nemesis, and, rather improbably, Donna Murphy has her mom. Strange cast for a decidedly un-strange show.(9/28, CBS)Malibu Country — Reba McEntire heads back to TV playing a country woman who moves to California following a messy divorce. Lily Tomlin comes along with her, as do her teenage kids. Then there's Queer Eye for the Straight Guy's Jai Rodriguez for some reason? Who knows. Mostly this show is exciting because, well, of course because of Reba, but also because it kind of marks the beginning of a new TGIF. ABC has paired it up with Tim Allen's Last Man Standing in a way that seems reminiscent of the 1990s Friday family sitcom bloc. Sure that doesn't mean quality, but it does mean tradition. And that counts for something. (11/2, ABC)
Community — Banished to a terrible Friday slot following Whitney, what will this last, Dan Harmon-less season of the beloved cult show be like? Will its rabid fans be pleasantly surprised or even more outraged than anticipated? Will anyone even watch it? We're curious to see how this troubled show ends its troubled story. We don't see things going all that well, frankly. Which is a bit sad. But it's also, if we're honest, strangely satisfying. Not because of the show itself, but because of those smug fans. Haha, take that, Community fans! Your nice thing is ruined. (10/19, NBC)
Elsewhere: NBC's biggest unexpected hit, fairy tale procedural Grimm, might be its only hope (9/21) .. Fringe takes one last inter-dimensional trip before disappearing forever (9/28, Fox) ... Nikita was somehow given another shot, which means more work for Devon Sawa (10/19, The CW)
SATURDAY
Get out of the house! There's no TV on Saturdays. Except Saturday Night Live, which beings its season on 9/15. But otherwise, turn the TV off and go see your friends.
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10 Things Learned from the Telluride Indie Cinema Master Class with James Schamus, Laura Linney and More
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| Greta Gerwig, Annette Insdorf and James Schamus at the Telluride Film Festival. |
Below are ten notable things we learned while listening to these major players talk about the current state of affairs in our industry:
1. Laura Linney explains the major difference between working on an independent and Hollywood film set.
"The major difference is that everyone from the executive level and production side is much more involved with the making of the movie...People come from a much more similar origin. People have an arts background. People are aware of what everyone's jobs are. There's a lot more mutual education. It makes the experience of making the movie different, not better not worse but different."
2. For Alessandro Nivola, the difference between independent film and Hollywood is symbolized in hair styling.
"The main difference between working on indie and studio films is that my hair doesn't need to be in place for indie movies, which seems like a trivial thing but has bigger implications. There's a feeling of freedom that you have making an indie movie that you don't always have in a certain kind of studio film. Things can be messier, less clean and less careful, and sometimes because of that more spontaneous. The challenge of course is that you're not pampered as much. You have to find ways to keep your concentration in trying circumstances."
3. James Schamus explains why Hollywood films are also independent, and are funded in the service of investors' desire for a good party.
"Has anybody here ever met anyone who described themselves as a dependent producer? These are all very weird dichotomies - the vast majority of Hollywood studio movies are technically independent. They're financed by major consortium banks and hedge funds out there ripping off their clients and getting them into parties. So that's the studio system, you can imagine what it's like in the independent world. It's really a race as to which party is best in terms of investment decisions."
4. James Schamus explains the Focus Features business model: Buy films that 95% of humanity will hate.
"At Focus for example, the definition of a Focus movie is something that would be hated by at least 95% of humanity. But the other 5% love it and we make a lot of money. We have the freedom to piss off a lot of people. whereas the studio system, you don't have the freedom to piss anyone off. You can't make everyone happy."
5. According to Schamus, the model of cultivating directors that Roger Corman perfected has gone by the wayside, and cable television is the game changer.
"Back in the day folks like Roger could take someone like Francis Ford Coppola as an assistant director and say can you get some pick up shots by the beach. And of course this is Francis Ford Coppola's first moment behind the camera doing a pick up shot. And he ends up going three days over scheudule. [Roger] kept him on. These days, independent filmmakers don't have time to hone their craft before going on to really become geniuses. Everyone has to show up to Sundance as a bona fide genius. Nobody has that kind of background. To me that's a really weird thing that's happening. I want to see their second movies as much as I want to see their first films. And right now a lot of [their work after they debut at Sundance is] on cable television."
6. Greta Gerwig attributes her success to doing things the old-fashioned way.
"I always loved acting, but i never had a sense it would work out necesssarily. By the time i was in college, I knew I wanted to work in theater or film, but I figured the chances of being a working actor were low. I was a stage manager and I hung lights and I started writing a lot which I really loved. I wanted to get in any way I could. Independent doesn't even describe how these films were -- $5,000 films with people in a house in Chicago. This sounds self-depricating, but if I were given opportunity on opportunity, maybe i wouldn't push myself to write. Because I haven't been offered those amazing roles all the time, there's a need. I've been lucky with those people who've been willing to collaborate."
7. According to Roger Corman, had his segregation film "The Intruder" been successful, he probably would have made more serious films.
He went on: "It's an example of the difference between a studio film and an independent film. I was fairly young in my career at that time. the films i had made had been for these mini majors and any idea I would give to any one of these companies, they'd say yes. I was interested in integration, and I bought this book, "The Intruder" and wanted to make it into a movie. They all said no, i was really surprised, so I financed it myself. It was a truly independent film, because it was not what the studios thought would be successful. It's an example of so many of us who work with studios and independently. The independent film is often the film the studio turns down."
8. Nivola -- who has worked with many of the more established women directors -- notices a feisty trend in the older generation.
"I think things are changing a lot in movies. Young women are given the opportunity to direct more than they used to be. That earlier generation of women had to fight to be directors, and so they all have in common a directing style. They made all different films and they have different styles and personalities, but they all have in common that they're really tough, they're nobody's fool they've grown up not having men endow them with that authority naturally. They had to grab it for themselves -- that's changing now bc everyone assumes that a woman would have as much right to direct a film as a man."
9. James Schamus is often the youngest person at a matinee at Lincoln Plaza Cinemas.
"There are a lot of young people here [at Telluride] today...You're weird! We hope that you will grow, that your numbers will grow. Frankly, the audience for indie film is aging. When i go to matinees at the Lincoln Plaza Cinemas, one of the great independent theaters in New York, I'm everyone's grandson. I'm literally the youngest dude there. That's at one time great, because it shows that old people are open to all these new and crazy different things, but the valence of the culture has changed. It's also opened up into a suburban zone and the zone of affluence.
10. Contrary to Roger Corman's lamentation that multiplexes are crowding out indie films, one of Focus Features' biggest box office theaters is a multiplex in Paramus, New Jersey.
Says Schamus: "With narratively driven independent cinema, the biggest numbers are coming to multiplexes. One of my biggest screens for Focus films is in Paramus, NJ. And that's how it works these days. [Distribution has] become decentralized because of the Internet. If you're in Kansas City, or in...a suburb there, you're able to get news instantaneously about releases at the IFC Center in New York. But that makes us speed up. And that's good news.
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Alyssa Campanella : American Express At Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Spring [2012]
* peculiar dress.....
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Chernick hopes 'My Awkward Sexual Adventure' stands out amid serious TIFF fare
Nick Patch, The Canadian Press
TORONTO - Writer-star Jonas Chernick wants to make sure he's clear on one point about his new film, "My Awkward Sexual Adventure."
"It's not autobiographical," he said with a laugh during a recent interview.
Phew. Now that that's out of the way, the film - which is being featured at the Toronto International Film Festival - follows a repressed accountant (Chernick) whose longtime girlfriend dumps him after their latest fumbling sexual misadventure.
Devastated, he eventually embarks on a mission of sexual education with help from a stripper (Emily Hampshire) who needs his assistance with a crushing debt load.
The 39-year-old Chernick describes the raunchy, raucous film (directed by Sean Garrity) as a "romantic" comedy, but don't expect the artful love scenes that usually populate those kinds of movies.
"Most films, the way they depict sexuality is usually very graceful, very elegantly lit," said Chernick, best known for his Gemini Award-winning role on "The Border."
"But I think sex is really funny and embarrassing and vulnerable and it can be awkward, and I really wanted to explore that. So we have a character who really has to face his fears and confront his own hangups in a way that I think we can all relate to, even though no one wants to talk about these things.
"And I really wanted it to be honest - and explicit at times - but really just true, and hopefully that's what we've achieved."
Of course, Chernick knows that the Toronto film fest primarily showcases more serious, thoughtful fare. And he hopes that works in his film's favour.
"At the Toronto film festival, you see great movie after great movie, but most of them are darker - they're dramas, social dramas, and we are a sex comedy," said Chernick, who shot and set the movie in his native Winnipeg.
"This is the one that you'll want to see as a break from the awesome Iranian movie that's going to win all the awards. It's a romp. You're going to laugh. You're going to watch the movie through your fingers I think, because it really does unveil a lot of sad, funny truths about human sexuality that you don't see very often."
The Toronto International Film Festival wraps up Sept. 16.
"It's not autobiographical," he said with a laugh during a recent interview.
Phew. Now that that's out of the way, the film - which is being featured at the Toronto International Film Festival - follows a repressed accountant (Chernick) whose longtime girlfriend dumps him after their latest fumbling sexual misadventure.
Devastated, he eventually embarks on a mission of sexual education with help from a stripper (Emily Hampshire) who needs his assistance with a crushing debt load.
The 39-year-old Chernick describes the raunchy, raucous film (directed by Sean Garrity) as a "romantic" comedy, but don't expect the artful love scenes that usually populate those kinds of movies.
"Most films, the way they depict sexuality is usually very graceful, very elegantly lit," said Chernick, best known for his Gemini Award-winning role on "The Border."
"But I think sex is really funny and embarrassing and vulnerable and it can be awkward, and I really wanted to explore that. So we have a character who really has to face his fears and confront his own hangups in a way that I think we can all relate to, even though no one wants to talk about these things.
"And I really wanted it to be honest - and explicit at times - but really just true, and hopefully that's what we've achieved."
Of course, Chernick knows that the Toronto film fest primarily showcases more serious, thoughtful fare. And he hopes that works in his film's favour.
"At the Toronto film festival, you see great movie after great movie, but most of them are darker - they're dramas, social dramas, and we are a sex comedy," said Chernick, who shot and set the movie in his native Winnipeg.
"This is the one that you'll want to see as a break from the awesome Iranian movie that's going to win all the awards. It's a romp. You're going to laugh. You're going to watch the movie through your fingers I think, because it really does unveil a lot of sad, funny truths about human sexuality that you don't see very often."
The Toronto International Film Festival wraps up Sept. 16.
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Kaya Scodelario in Robbie Williams 'Candy' Music Video
Filmed earlier this month in East London, Robbie appears as an angel-type figure following his love interest played by Kaya Scodelario, running over cars, getting into fights, and even jumping off the top of a building.
"It's a summer song about a girl who thinks she's great. And she might be, but she's a bit nefarious with her ways," Robbie recently said of the track.
'Candy', which premiered yesterday, was co-written by Robbie's Take That bandmate Gary Barlow, and features on his forthcoming new album, Take The Crown.
Watch the music video below...
"It's a summer song about a girl who thinks she's great. And she might be, but she's a bit nefarious with her ways," Robbie recently said of the track.
'Candy', which premiered yesterday, was co-written by Robbie's Take That bandmate Gary Barlow, and features on his forthcoming new album, Take The Crown.
Watch the music video below...
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Passion : review by Jordan Cronk
Summary:
After undercutting Isabelle with a particularly evil display of public embarrassment, the movie shifts tones from corporate drama to psychosexual thriller, with canted angles, split-screen dioramas, and dramatically shadowed sequences of violence and eroticism (though it's surprising how little actual sex is on display here). De Palma utilizes Rapace's blank features as another surface from which to refract the drama, while McAdams's glowing visage is exploited to its fullest extent, transforming from plastic grin to a unchecked rage to outpourings of tears, sometimes within the same scene. Their hair, wardrobe, even postures, are in direct contrast to one another, and in typical De Palma fashion, their varying states of mental stability are questioned and eventually collapsed as visions fold into dreams and dreams engage with waking life, to the point where one is nearly inseparable by the time the film closes.
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FrightFest The 13th : Dario Argento Tribute Reel
Video tribute for Dario Argento that was played before his on-stage interview at FrightFest The 13th [August 2012].
* it must be the effects of growing old but violent scenes pretty much revolts me now. My favorite Dario flick always be Deep Red. Loved the score. Dario have a knack for selecting the perfect soundtrack for his horror shows.
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Celebrity Skin : Daniel Craig’s Dick
The size queens amongst you might as well go and revisit this post about Michael Fassbender‘s penis or this post about Jon Hamm‘s dick outline, because Craig won’t hang as low as you’d wish we would. Meanwhile, the rest of you will appreciate this rare glimpse of a handsome, talented actor in the buff… Enjoy?
- Dewitt
Click through to see Daniel Craig do full-frontal nudity:
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MPAA Tells Candidates That Anti-Piracy Measures Remain A “Critical” Priority
Hollywood moguls haven’t given up on their goal of persuading Congress to adopt anti-piracy initiatives. But their lobby group the MPAA is promoting the controversial issue gingerly, issuing today its first-ever election-season memo of stats and talking points for candidates and “interested parties.” It extols Hollywood’s multibillion-dollar contribution to the economy and employment, as well as technological innovation. But it also promotes the need for new copyright protection strategies and opens the door to legislation similar to the Stop Internet Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA), which were beaten back in January following vigorous opposition by the tech industry and free speech advocates. The document (read it here) says that copyright protection “is critical to ensuring” that entertainment companies can “benefit from their creations” online. It also says there’s no need to fear that the government might use new anti-piracy powers to crack down on dissident speech or legitimate Internet businesses. “We can protect creative works while ensuring that the Internet works for everyone,” the MPAA says.The friendly approach is a contrast to the anger many in Hollywood showed after SOPA and PIPA were rebuffed. (Remember Rupert Murdoch’s tweets about President Obama siding with “Silicon Valley paymasters who threaten all software creators with piracy, plain thievery”?) The new memo follows MPAA statements applauding the Republicans’ and the Democrats’ party platforms positions on intellectual property and the Internet freedom; MPAA CEO Christopher Dodd spent a day at each of the parties’ conventions. The former Democratic Senator from Connecticut has run the MPAA since March 2011. All 435 members of the House of Representatives plus 33 Senate seats are up for election this year.
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Big Court Decisions Coming Soon for Hotfile, Vimeo
The responsibilities of websites to deal with copyright will be further shaped by two judges in the near future.
It's been five months since the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals revived Viacom's lawsuit against YouTube and handed down a major ruling on the liability of websites which host copyrighted material. In the immediate aftermath of that decision, both Viacom and YouTube were quick to proclaim some victory as legal observers fussed over how to make sense of a decision notable for its vagueness on such sensitive ground as an ISP's “right and ability to control” infringing activity under the safe harbor provisions.
The next wave of big copyright decisions will probably be coming in a matter of weeks. In two cases -- one involving cyberlocker Hotfile and the other involving UGC site Vimeo -- judges are being asked to interpret what the 2nd Circuit said in Viacom v. YouTube and apply it to analogous situations.
In the Hotfile lawsuit, the major Hollywood studios are looking to score a big summary judgment victory against a cyberlocker that it perceives as "more egregious" than Napster and "indistinguishable" from Megaupload.
At the end of Aug., the parties had a hearing before Florida federal judge Kathleen Williams, and the plaintiffs including Disney and Warner Bros. followed it up with a memorandum intended to stress some key points.
According to the memo, the studios say that "Hotfile is ineligible for DMCA safe harbor" -- the portion of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act that allows internet service providers to escape copyright liability if they follow certain conditions --"because it failed to reasonably implement a repeat infringer policy."
Hotfile is said to have received 8 million infringement notices from copyright owners, including the identification of nearly 25,000 "blatant repeat infringers," and Hotfile allegedly terminated just 43 users thanks to lawsuits or threats of litigation. The Hollywood plaintiffs also say that Hotfile's revenue fell by 94 percent when Hotfile was forced to begin terminating repeat infringers as a result of this lawsuit, and that 90 percent of Hotfile downloads were of infringing content.
"Eight million infringement notices, together with the other ample evidence of Hotfile’s knowledge of pervasive infringement, more than establish sufficient constructive knowledge for purposes of common law contributory copyright infringement," continues the memo.
The studios point to the YouTube ruling, which it reads as disqualifying a service provider from being shielded from inducement liability over the issue of "control" of a system. "Plaintiffs have already demonstrated that Hotfile both has the ability to control infringement on its system and receives a financial benefit from that infringement," say the plaintiffs. "Thus, if the Court finds that, in the post-Complaint period, Hotfile continued to induce infringement, Hotfile would not be eligible for DMCA safe harbor."
For the flip side, how ISPs are reading the YouTube decision to find a legal advantage, turn to what Vimeo is saying in a different case.
In New York, Vimeo is being sued by the major record labels for infringing copyrights on sound recordings, particularly in regards to "lip dubs," where users choreograph elaborate lip synching spectacles to popular music. The lawsuit was actually delayed pending the outcome of the appeal in Viacom v. YouTube, and now that the decision has come out, the UGC service made a motion on Friday for a summary judgement ruling to dismiss the plaintiffs' case.
"Plaintiffs have advanced a number of theories in support of their copyright claims, including the notion that service providers like Vimeo must affirmatively monitor all content uploaded by their users and remove supposedly infringing content before even being requested to so do," says Vimeo in its motion. "But the courts—including recently the Second Circuit in Viacom Int’l Inc. v. YouTube, Inc., have repeatedly held that the DMCA does not require a service provider to do any such thing."
Vimeo, which has more than 12 million registered users, says that it has a system that allows others to report videos for suspicions of violating terms of service, that it has automated tools that identify and remove content that does not comport with website policies, and has a staff that manually reviews flagged videos. The company also says it has implemented a policy for terminating the accounts of repeat infringers.
In the original lawsuit, filed in 2009, the record companies identified 199 videos that were allegedly infringing. Several months later, the plaintiffs amended their legal papers to add more than 1,000 additional infringing videos. Vimeo says that in both instances, the information prompted them to remove the videos within 48 hours.
Nodding to the recent appellate decision in the YouTube case, Vimeo asserts that "mere generalized knowledge" of likely infringing activity is not cause to deny safe harbor. Vimeo says that it can't be punished for any infringements that it is not specifically told about. The company says that users upload 43,000 unique videos each day and that its database now contains more than 31.7 million videos. To require constant attention would bring the service to a "grinding halt," it says. Further, it says that it isn't in position to determine whether material is protected by copyright.
"Many recording artists, musicians, and bands have Vimeo accounts through which they post videos containing music," says the motion. "Indeed, Plaintiffs’ own artists have posted videos on Vimeo containing the very same songs that Plaintiffs have complained about."
And as for the "right and ability to control" infringing activity -- which Hollywood studios hope to use to disqualify Hotfile from any safe harbor defense -- Vimeo has its own interpretation.
"The right and ability to control allegedly infringing activity focuses on a service provider’s legal and practical control over the specific infringing activity at issue," it says in the motion. "The mere ability of a service provider to remove content after it has been uploaded is insufficient as a matter of law to establish the right and ability to control the infringing activity required by [the DMCA's safe harbor provisions]. Indeed, to hold otherwise would eviscerate the DMCA’s safe harbor protections by imposing liability on service providers for the very act of complying with the DMCA’s provisions in taking down infringing content."
Vimeo concludes by telling New York federal judge Ronnie Abrams that it can't control what its users post and calls pre-screening of content "an impossible task."
Decisions in both court cases should be forthcoming very soon. It's one thing to get a big opinion like what happened in April in the YouTube case. It's another to see how judges interpret the new standards.
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File-sharers' details logged with copyright companies 'within three hours'
- University's three-year study shows an average of 'three secretive monitors' watching you download
- 'Almost everyone that shares popular films and music illegally will be connected ... and will have their IP address logged'
- '...What is done with this information in the long-term only time will tell'
If you use popular file-sharing programs to download films and music from the internet, the chances are that your computer's virtual address has been logged, a study has claimed.
Computer scientists at the University of Birmingham monitored what is perhaps the largest file sharing site, The Pirates Bay, over the last three years.
The team discovered that the most popular files on the site, often illegal copies of hit TV shows or films, were monitored by, on average, three secretive parties - including copyright enforcement agencies, security companies and even government research labs.
The monitors are believed to be logging the IP address of the user - potentially identifying where the file is downloaded to.
However, for anyone now worried about a knock at the door, the researchers say it is unlikely the evidence gathered would be sufficient to lead to court proceedings.
When a user chooses to download a file, the users join a 'swarm' of other users who are either downloading the file, of have successfully received it.
But by downloading a file, the user's IP address is available to other members of the swarm, and the Birmingham University team found monitors actively grabbing this information.
The researchers found that:
- Massive monitoring of all of the most popular illegal downloads from the PirateBay has been taking place over the last three years.
- On average an illegal file sharer, using BitTorrent to download the most popular content, will be connected to and have there IP address logged within 3 hours of starting a download.
- Poor collection methods mean the evidence collected by monitors may not stand up in court.
The team say careful analysis of the logs revealed the presence and behaviour of file-sharing monitors.
The report said: 'Most large-scale monitors hide their identity by using third party hosting companies to run the searches for them, but other monitors are identifiable as copyright enforcement organisations, security companies and even government research labs.
'The researchers also found that the use of third party hosting companies allowed the monitors to avoid "block lists",that attempted to stop known monitors from connecting to file sharers.'
Dr Tom Chothia, researcher at the School of Computer Science, said: 'This work reveals the full scale of the monitoring of illegal file sharers.
'Almost everyone that shares popular films and music illegally will be connected to by a monitor and will have their IP address logged. What is done with this information in the long term only time will tell'.
With the number of prosecutions of file sharers increasing there is a legitimate concern of the standard of evidence used in these cases.
Dr Chothia added: 'All the monitors observed during the study would connect to file sharers believed to be sharing illegal content and verify that they were running the BitTorrent software, however they would not actually collect any of the files being shared.
'Therefore, it is questionable whether the monitors observed would actually have evidence of file sharing that would stand up in court.'
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Hail the woman power in BollywoodMinakshi Saini, Hindustan Times
Femme fatales are here to change your notion about Bollywood being male dominated. In a departure from the norms, at least four big Bollywood movies have taken the bold step to not just lead with a woman as the central character but also highlight them on the publicity posters. While Bipasha Basu’s latest release Raaz 3 that also stars Emraan Hashmi did a good opening this Friday, all eyes are now on Kareena Kapoor’s Heroine releasing on September 21. Preity Zinta’s Ishkq In Paris on October 5 and Rani Mukerji’s Aiyaa on October 12, follow. Trade pundits see this as a positive trend. “The audience has become intelligent as now they don’t watch a film just for the hero. Instead, they swear by the content,” says Taran Adarsh, trade analyst.
Vidya Balan seems to have set the ball rolling with solo hits such as No One Killed Jessica, Kahaani and her national award winning The Dirty Picture. “Indeed Vidya set this trend, otherwise filmmakers were wary of taking female actors as lead in their films.Because Bollywood mein picture chalti hain aur trend banta hai… agar flop hui to back to square one,” says film expert Atul Mohan.
The male counterparts in these movies, barring Emraan Hashmi in Raaz 3 who is an equally big name, are not just missing from the promotional activities but also from the publicity material. “The male actors knew well before signing these films that the heroine is going to hog all the limelight and they’ll have to take the backseat. This is the reason why they are missing from the scene,” adds Mohan. “I didn’t even know Arjun Rampal also stars in Heroine,” says media professional Aakriti Sharma, referring to Madhur Bhandarkar’s flick that focusses solely on Kareena Kapoor.
TV actor Rehan who is paired opposite Preity, and Malayalam actor Prithviraj who plays the male lead opposite Rani, remain as much in oblivion. Raaz 3, too, was sold as a Bipasha-starrer until the distributors raised objection and fresh publicity material was released giving due emphasis to Emraan Hashmi. “I am humbled that there’s a demand for my solo posters too,” says Hashmi.
“It is as much Bipasha’s film as it is Emraan’s,” maintains the director of Raaz 3, Vikram Bhatt.
“I’m glad we are no longer being seen as mere showpieces,” says Kareena.
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Two Koreas See Abuse of Power for Sex
By Kang Mi Jin
First there was the case of a female university student in the provincial South Korean city of Seosan who took her own life after being sexually abused by her employer, and more recently there has also been the case of a girl who fell victim to sexual assault by a colleague.
Needless to say, sexual assault and abuse of authority for sexual favors take place in both Koreas in much the same way. Testimonies from defectors reveal that in most cases of sexual assault in the North it is also threats and blackmail that force victims to acquiesce, implying that people in power are abusing their authority on both sides of the 38th Parallel.
The phenomenon of sexual assault in North Korea grew in the mid-1990s following the famine. The protracted economic difficulties from that period forced many women into work in the market, often relatively far from home. This made the marketplace and long-distance trains particularly dangerous places for vulnerable working women.
North Korea’s myriad rules and regulations provide plenty of opportunities for abuse. Women who are found selling products from South Korea or other sorts of contraband regularly find themselves being extorted for sex by gate-keeper officials. Then there is trying to board a train with excessive luggage, being found in possession of controlled items or riding without a travel permit.
In the marketplace, groping and other forms of sexual molestation are so common that single cases don’t bear mentioning. Most incidences are dealt with on the spot; rarely are they punished.
Child abuse is equally common. However, if there is no complaint from the victim or her family then an investigation by the authorities cannot, or does not, take place. “In August 1996 the naked body of a 10-year old girl was found in the woods of North Hamkyung Province,” 40-year old defector Choi Seong Ho recalls. “However, there was never a proper investigation. There were people who said that they saw the girl being taken into the woods, but the authorities said they couldn’t conduct a proper investigation and closed the case.”
Silence is another problem. One defector who settled in South Korea last year, 45-year old Yeom Choon Wol commented to Daily NK, “When an unmarried woman falls pregnant to a married man, the young woman’s parents will demand money to have an abortion, saying that otherwise both families will suffer a loss of face. Even still, rumors tend to get out and the woman finds it hard to find a man to marry thereafter.”
According to Yeom, parents tend to be very strict on daughters for their safety, and try to make any issues that could adversely affect the family’s reputation go away quietly. In the case of unwanted pregnancies, this can mean spending a small fortune getting an obstetrician to come to the house to perform an illegal abortion. For those without money, however, it means becoming a single mother, with the stigma that this still entails in North Korea.
Another defector, Kim In Sook commented, “I don’t know if there’s a law in North Korea that is supposed to protect women, but the reality is pretty terrible. There is a more important issue than food in North Korea and that is human rights. Sexual abuse is a violation of human rights, and the human rights situation in North Korea is in desperate need of improvement."
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You have read this article Agnes Bruckner /
Allison Williams /
Alyssa Campanella /
Ashley Hinshaw /
Boardwalk Empire /
Imogen Poots /
Katharine Isabelle /
Kaya Scodelario /
Rachel McAdams /
Vanessa Hudgens
with the title stars, sex and nudity buzz : 09/11/2012. You can bookmark this page URL http://duk78.blogspot.com/2012/09/stars-sex-and-nudity-buzz-09112012.html. Thanks!
