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LONDON (Reuters) ? Black-and-white turned to gold again as silent movie “The Artist” took an early lead at the BAFTA awards ceremony in London, with Martin Scorsese’s 3-D family film on the magic of movie-making, “Hugo,” also putting in a strong showing.

Still to come were the most prestigious categories including best actress, in which Meryl Streep was expected to triumph for her portrayal of Margaret Thatcher in “The Iron Lady.”

The Artist, a French-made romance in black-and-white set in Hollywood in the 1920s and 30s, is up for 12 awards, British Cold War espionage thriller “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy” has 11 nominations and “Hugo” has nine.

The Artist quickly notched up three wins in the music, cinematography and costumes categories, while Hugo took the prizes for sound and production design.

The British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) awards are not always an accurate predictor of what is to come at the Oscars, but they are the most coveted film honors outside of the United States.

“This has become a much bigger deal in the past 10 years or so. It really helps films,” said George Clooney on the red carpet before the ceremony, which is taking place at the Royal Opera House in the popular Covent Garden area of London.

Clooney is the favorite to win the leading actor BAFTA for his role as a man steering his family through troubled times while his wife is in a coma in “The Descendants.” He is also up for an adapted screenplay prize for “The Ides of March.”

The Artist, the story of a star of silent movies whose career is destroyed by the advent of “talkies,” has already won big at the Golden Globes and a good night at the BAFTAs would give it a further lift two weeks ahead of the Academy Awards.

Asked to account for the success of a silent movie in black and white, Berenice Bejo, the leading actress in the film and wife of the director Michel Hazanavicius, said: “You don’t need words to say I love you.”

Before the ceremony, bookmakers William Hill gave The Artist odds of 1/6 to win the best film BAFTA, far ahead of Tinker Tailor. The other contenders are The Descendants, “Drive” and “The Help.”

MARGARET THATCHER VS MARILYN MONROE

Streep, who has already won a Golden Globe for her turn as Thatcher, was the 2/7 favorite to win the leading actress BAFTA, according to William Hill.

She was comfortably ahead of Viola Davis, her nearest rival, who plays a maid facing discrimination in The Help, a Civil Rights drama.

Streep has won plaudits in Britain for her portrayal of the country’s first female prime minister, whom she plays both as a firebrand Conservative leader at the height of her power and as a frail elderly woman suffering from memory loss.

But reviews of The Iron Lady have been lukewarm in Thatcher’s home country. The choice to dwell on the subject of her dementia has been criticized, not least by current British Prime Minister David Cameron, who is also a Conservative.

Streep has a long history at the BAFTAs, having been nominated 14 times stretching back to 1979. She won once, for her role in “The French Lieutenant’s Woman” in 1981.

Completing the line-up in the actress category are Bejo as an up-and-coming actress in The Artist, Michelle Williams as Marilyn Monroe in “My Week with Marilyn” and Tilda Swinton as the traumatized mother of a teenage killer in “We Need To Talk About Kevin.”

My Week with Marilyn, set during the filming of the 1957 comedy “The Prince and the Showgirl” starring Monroe and Laurence Olivier, is nominated for six awards including supporting actor for Kenneth Branagh, who plays Olivier.

On the red carpet, Branagh praised Williams’s “transcending performance” as a troubled but intoxicating Monroe. He also shared some advice he had received from Olivier after writing to the acting legend when considering an acting career.

“Just have a bash and hope for the best,” were the words of wisdom from Olivier, according to Branagh.

In the leading actor category, bookies’ favorite Clooney faces a strong challenge from Gary Oldman, who plays the British spy George Smiley in Tinker Tailor, an adaptation of a classic thriller by novelist John Le Carre. The other nominees are Jean Dujardin (The Artist), Brad Pitt (“Moneyball”) and Michael Fassbender (“Shame”).

As well as the nominations for his first family film, Hugo, Scorsese is also up for the documentary prize for “George Harrison: Living in the Material World.”

However his two movies fare at the BAFTAs, Scorsese will not leave London empty-handed after the ceremony at the Royal Opera House. He will receive a BAFTA Fellowship celebrating his life in cinema.

(Editing by Paul Casciato)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/movies/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120212/film_nm/us_baftas

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(Credit: New Line Cinema)

By Bill Wine

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) ? Here?s a sequel that?s pretty much the equal of its predecessor.

That is not a compliment.

Journey 2: The Mysterious Island is an escapist action-adventure thriller for kids, a follow-up to Journey to the Center of the Earth in which characters keep asking, ?Are you ready for an adventure??

Well,?whether we are or not, it turns out that?the film itself isn?t ready.

The 2008 original,?a family-adventure remake starring Brendan Fraser, based on the 1864 Jules Verne novel, was a cheesy, clunky movie-as-theme-park-ride, a 1-D movie in the 3-D format, which was the tail that wagged the dinosaur.

Its place in movie history?? It was the first live-action narrative feature film shot entirely in the digital 3-D process.? So, yes, some of us will praise it for starting the trend, while others curse under our breath for unleashing the 3-D dogs.

This one?s a journey too.? Which is perhaps why it?s called Journey 2: The Mysterious Island.? It?s a follow-up loosely based on another Jules Verne novel, The Mysterious Island.? And it?s child-friendly but grownup-alienating.

Josh Hutcherson, who co-starred in the first entry and is the only cast member to return,?is Sean Anderson, a troubled 17-year-old and Jules Verne enthusiast who receives an encrypted distress signal, perhaps from?long-lost adventurer grandfather Michael Caine.

With?Fraser, who played Sean?s uncle in the first film,?gone, the father-figure role goes to Dwayne Johnson, who plays Sean?s Navy vet stepfather and legal guardian, who accompanies him on this exotic trip, which he also bankrolls, hoping it will be a bonding experience that will bring them together.

Together, they take off on their quest with the help of a father-daughter team of tour guides ? thus providing love interest and comic relief in one tandem ? played by?Vanessa Hudgens and?Luis Guzman, a helicopter pilot.

They travel to the South Pacific near Palao, to what they think is the location of Mysterious Island, but are stranded when a freak storm forces them to crash there.

However, who shows up but Sean?s?quirky grandfather,?who has been on the island for years.

What makes the island so mysterious is not just that there are fantastical creatures, but that it seems an upside-down world to the visitors.? Creatures that are tiny in their world back home are enormous here, and vice versa:? here, elephants can fit in the palm of your hand, whereas the butterflies are gigantic.

But this inverted paradise is sinking, so escaping from it will be a race against time.

Canadian director Brad Peyton (Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore), who seems to have little?if any feel for the material, conjures an extravagant?visual spectacle but one that not only includes phony-baloney sets and terribly obvious CGI, but little in the way of suspense, drama, humor, or character delineation.

The?childishly simplistic?screenplay by Brian Gunn, Mark Gunn, and Richard Outten?borrows elements from not only Verne?s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, but Treasure Island, Gulliver?s Travels, and Robinson Crusoe?as well.? But it?s?thin and sloppy, bereft of internal logic.

There?s an implausibility to so much of the film, even allowing for the license afforded any fantasy, that only impressionable and forgiving children (and the younger the better) will gladly go with the flow of a film that exudes kids?ll-buy-anything cynicism in its lazy plotting and half-baked execution.

So we?ll explore 2 stars out of 4 for the fanciful but feeble fantasy film, Journey 2: The Mysterious Island, a bargain-basement?behemoth to take the kids to, as long as you ? and even they ? leave?critical faculties at home.

More Bill Wine Movie Reviews

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Source: http://philadelphia.cbslocal.com/2012/02/09/movie-review-journey-2-the-mysterious-island/

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Rory Kennedy, left, and Ethel Kennedy, from the film “Ethel,” poses for a portrait during the 2012 Sundance Film Festival on Sunday, Jan. 22, 2012, in Park City, Utah. (AP Photo/Victoria Will)

Rory Kennedy, left, and Ethel Kennedy, from the film “Ethel,” poses for a portrait during the 2012 Sundance Film Festival on Sunday, Jan. 22, 2012, in Park City, Utah. (AP Photo/Victoria Will)

Ethel Kennedy, from the film “Ethel,” poses for a portrait during the 2012 Sundance Film Festival on Sunday, Jan. 22, 2012, in Park City, Utah. (AP Photo/Victoria Will)

PARK CITY, Utah (AP) ? Ethel Kennedy prefers coming to the Sundance Film Festival when she’s not the star of a movie.

She has been to Sundance in the past to see films by her daughter, documentary filmmaker Rory Kennedy. This time, the widow of U.S. Sen. Robert Kennedy is the focus of her daughter’s film, the Sundance premiere “Ethel.”

Ethel Kennedy said she likes it better coming to Sundance “just to see Rory’s films.”

Though initially reluctant when her daughter proposed the documentary, Ethel Kennedy opens up on screen with candid recollections about the family, including falling in love at first sight with her future husband on a ski trip to Canada.

“He was standing in front of an open fireplace,” she said in an interview alongside her daughter. “I walked in the door and turned and saw him, and I thought, ‘whoa.’”

In the film, Ethel Kennedy discusses campaigning for her husband and his brother, President John F. Kennedy, the similarities and differences between her family and the Kennedy clan, and raising 11 children after her husband’s assassination in 1968.

At the time, she was pregnant with Rory Kennedy, her youngest child, who was born six months after her father’s death.

As a widow with such a big family, Ethel Kennedy said she coped simply by going about what she needed to do in tending her children.

“After Rory was born, it was ? life just happened to take care of daily living, which almost had practically nothing to do with me,” she said. “I just started taking carpools in the morning, and by the time I was finished dropping the last child off, I’d pick up the first one. And then, you know, I’m putting on all the galoshes. Well, you get the idea.”

In “Ethel,” airing later this year on HBO, Rory Kennedy coaxes sweet, sad and funny anecdotes out of her mother and her siblings. The Kennedys recollect their mother’s devotion to steeping the children in world affairs, her mischievous sense of humor and her rebellious streak that led to run-ins with the law, such as the time she was charged with rustling horses after freeing some mistreated animals.

Through photos and home movies, the film offers an intimate look at the life of the Kennedys, the family relating how Robert Kennedy and his children slid down a bannister in the White House after his brother was elected and how the president once cautioned his fun-loving sister-in-law not to push his Cabinet members into the swimming pool anymore.

In front of her daughter’s camera, Ethel Kennedy is unable to discuss the grief over her husband’s death.

“When we lost Daddy …” she begins, then tears up and tells her daughter, “Talk about something else.”

Rory Kennedy, whose past Sundance documentaries include the Emmy-winning “Ghosts of Abu Ghraib,” said “Ethel” probably was her most challenging film because it was so personal.

“I know my mother and she is just terrific, and I have such admiration and respect for her. She’s such a character, too. I really think she’s one of the great untold stories, not just because of all of the events she’s lived through,” Rory Kennedy said. “But also because she’s just such a wonderful person, and I hope that comes across in the film. She’s so funny, and she is such an inspiration to me. Our family knows my mother, our close friends know her, but to be able to share her with so many other people I think was important.”

___

Online:

http://www.sundance.org

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/apdefault/4e67281c3f754d0696fbfdee0f3f1469/Article_2012-01-26-Film-Sundance-Ethel%20Kennedy/id-55aa8dd5e9c84024b78593ce4843d221

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LONDON ? It’s spry versus spy as frothy silent movie “The Artist” and moody thriller “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy” lead the race for the British Academy Film Awards, Britain’s equivalent of the Oscars.

“The Artist” received 12 nominations and “Tinker Tailor” 11, with each film up for best picture and director, and best actor nominations for leading men Jean Dujardin and Gary Oldman.

The other best-film nominees, announced at a ceremony Tuesday by actors Daniel Radcliffe and Holliday Grainger, were “The Descendants,” “Drive” and “The Help.”

In a diverse field not dominated by any single film, there are also multiple nominations for “Hugo,” “My Week With Marilyn,” “The Iron Lady” and “The Help.”

The nominations are another feather in the cap of “The Artist,” a black-and-white French film about a silent screen star’s fall with the rise of talkies that has become an unlikely hit. On Sunday it won three Golden Globes, including best musical or comedy film.

Director Michael Hazanavicius said Tuesday he and his crew had been “a bit mad to make a black-and-white silent film in 2011.”

“We certainly hoped to find an audience, but the support we have received from so many people in so many different countries was unexpected, overwhelming and quite wonderful,” he said.

The shortlist gives a boost to “Tinker Tailor,” an atmospheric adaptation of John le Carre’s espionage classic that has received rave reviews but has so far been snubbed during the U.S. awards season.

“Tinker Tailor” producer Tim Bevan said the film was a “particularly British cultural phenomenon. It’s great that it’s being recognized at the BAFTAs but that it hasn’t at the Golden Globes is not surprising.”

“‘The Artist’ seems to be the film with the momentum, and rightly so,” he said. “It’s been an OK year but not a brilliant year for movies, and ‘The Artist’ defines what cinema should be. It’s brave, different, it’s got a great shot.”

The best actor contest pits Oldman and Dujardin against Brad Pitt for “Moneyball,” George Clooney for “The Descendants” and Michael Fassbender for “Shame.”

The best actress category includes two performers playing real-life icons ? Michelle Williams as Marilyn Monroe in “My Week With Marilyn” and Meryl Streep as former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in “The Iron Lady.”

Streep, who has been widely praised for her performance, said the nomination was “thrilling news … Not just for me, but for the film of which I am very proud, and for the hundreds of people who worked on it! Thanks, from a (New) Jersey girl.”

The other nominees are Berenice Bejo for “The Artist,” Tilda Swinton for “We Need to Talk About Kevin” and Viola Davis for “The Help.”

The prizes will be awarded at a ceremony at London’s Royal Opera House on Feb. 12. They are considered an important indicator of prospects at the Academy Awards in Los Angeles two weeks later.

In recent years, the awards, known as BAFTAs, have helped small British films gain momentum for Hollywood success.

In 2010, Danny Boyle’s “Slumdog Millionaire” won seven BAFTAs, including best film; it went on to take eight Oscars. Last year “The King’s Speech” won seven BAFTAs and four Oscars, including best picture.

“My Week With Marilyn,” the story of the movie legend’s time shooting an ill-starred comedy in England, received six BAFTA nominations, including a supporting-actor nod for Kenneth Branagh, who plays Laurence Olivier.

He is up against Christopher Plummer for “Beginners,” Jim Broadbent for “The Iron Lady,” Jonah Hill for “Moneyball” and Philip Seymour Hoffman for “The Ides of March.”

The supporting actress category features Carey Mulligan for “Drive,” Jessica Chastain for “The Help,” Judi Dench for “My Week With Marilyn,” Melissa McCarthy for “Bridesmaids” and Octavia Spencer for “The Help.”

The multinational best-director contest pits Hazanavicius against Denmark’s Nicolas Winding Refn, for the turbocharged “Drive,” Sweden’s Tomas Alfredson for “Tinker Tailor,” Britain’s Lynne Ramsay for “We Need to Talk About Kevin” and Martin Scorsese of the United States for “Hugo.”

The best British film category contains “My Week With Marilyn,” racing documentary “Senna,” sex-addiction drama “Shame,” family tragedy “We Need to Talk About Kevin” and “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.”

Steven Spielberg’s equine adventure “War Horse” was overlooked in the major categories but gained five nominations, including cinematography, visual effects and music.

___

On the Net: http://www.bafta.org

Jill Lawless can be reached at: http://twitter.com/JillLawless

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/entertainment/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120117/ap_en_mo/eu_britain_film_awards

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BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. ? The black-and-white silent film “The Artist” led the Golden Globes with three wins Sunday at a show that spread Hollywood’s love around among a broad range of films, including best drama recipient “The Descendants” and its star, George Clooney.

Wins for “The Artist” included best musical or comedy and best actor in a musical or comedy for Jean Dujardin. Along with best drama, “The Descendants” won the dramatic-actor Globe for Clooney.

The dual best-picture prizes at the Globes could set up a showdown between “The Artist” and “The Descendants” for the top honor at next month’s Academy Awards.

Other acting winners were Meryl Streep, Michelle Williams, Christopher Plummer, and Octavia Spencer, while Martin Scorsese earned the directing honor.

“I gotta thank everybody in England that let me come and trample over their history,” said Streep, earning her eighth Globe, this time as dramatic actress for playing former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

Williams won for actress in a musical or comedy as Marilyn Monroe in “My Week With Marilyn,” 52 years after Monroe’s win for the same prize at the Globes for “Some Like It Hot.”

The supporting-acting Globes went to Plummer as an elderly widower who comes out as gay in the father-son drama “Beginners” and Spencer as a brassy housekeeper joining other black maids to share stories about life with their white employers in the 1960s Deep South tale “The Help.”

“With regard to domestics in this country, now and then, I think Dr. King said it best: `All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance.’ And I thank you for recognizing that with our film,” Spencer said.

Scorsese won for the Paris adventure “Hugo.” It was the third directing Globe in the last 10 years for Scorsese, who previously won for “Gangs of New York” and “The Departed” and received the show’s Cecil B. DeMille Award for lifetime achievement two years ago.

He won over a field of contenders that included Michel Hazanavicius, who had been considered by many in Hollywood as a favorite for his black-and-white silent film “The Artist.”

Williams offered thanks for giving her the same award Monroe once won and joked that her young daughter put up with bedtime stories for six months spoken in Monroe’s voice.

“I consider myself a mother first and an actress second, so the person I most want to thank is my daughter, my little girl, whose bravery and exuberance is the example I take with me in my work and my life,” Williams said.

Dujardin became the first star in a silent film to earn a major Hollywood prize since the early days of film. He won as a silent-era star whose career unravels amid the rise of talking pictures in the late 1920s.

It’s a breakout role in Hollywood for Dujardin, a star back home in France but little known to U.S. audiences previously. His French credits include “The Artist” creator Hazanavicius’ spy spoofs “OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies” and “OSS 117: Lost in Rio.”

While the musical or comedy categories at the Globes offer recognition for lighter films amid Hollywood’s sober-minded awards season, the winners usually are not serious contenders for the Oscars. The last time the winner for best musical or comedy at the Globes went on to claim best-picture at the Oscars was nine years ago with “Chicago.”

This time, though, “The Artist” and Dujardin have enough critical mass to compete at the Oscars with dramatic counterparts such as “The Descendants” and Clooney.

Both films have a good mix of laughs and tears. “The Artist” could be called a comedy with strong doses of melodrama, while “The Descendants” might be described as a drama tinged with gently comic moments.

Directed by Alexander Payne (“Sideways”), “The Descendants” provided a more down-to-earth role for Clooney, who’s often known for slick, high-rolling characters such as those in his “Ocean’s Eleven” heist capers and or the legal saga “Michael Clayton.”

Adapted from Kaui Hart Hemmings’ novel, “The Descendants” casts Clooney as Matt King, the scion of an aristocratic Hawaiian clan and a neglectful dad suddenly forced to hold together his two spirited daughters after his wife falls into a coma from a boating accident.

Along the way, Matt uncovers a staggering secret about his marriage and comes to reevaluate the principles under which he’s lived his life.

Charming audiences since it premiered last May at the Cannes Film Festival, “The Artist” tells the story of George Valentin (Dujardin), a big-screen superstar known for adventurous comic capers alongside his adorable dog, who’s always at his side on screen and in real life.

As talking pictures take over and the Depression hits, George loses everything ? his career, his marriage, his fortune and his home. Through it all, he has a guardian angel in Peppy Miller (Berenice Bejo, a supporting-actress Globe nominee and Hazanavicius’ real-life romantic partner). A rising talkies star, Peppy got her career going with help from George, and she now aims to repay the favor.

The only time silent films have won best-picture or acting Oscars was in the awards first year, for 1927-28, 16 years before the Golden Globes even started.

At that first Oscar ceremony, when the transition to the sound era was just under way, the silent winners included the war story “Wings” as outstanding picture and the marital betrayal tale “Sunrise” as most unique and artistic picture, the only time that category was used. Janet Gaynor won as best actress for “Sunrise” and two other silent films, while Emil Jannings was picked as best actor for the silent films “The Last Command” and “The Way of All Flesh.”

Other than some short silent films and one silent foreign-language nominee in 1983, it’s been all talkies among contenders for top honors during Hollywood’s awards season in the 83 years since the first Oscars.

“The Artist,” which led the Globes with six nominations, also won the musical-score prize for composer Ludovic Bource.

Among its losses was for screenplay, a prize that went to Woody Allen for his romantic fantasy “Midnight in Paris,” the filmmaker’s biggest hit in decades. Never a fan of movie awards, Allen was a no-show at the Globes.

Steven Spielberg’s “The Adventures of Tintin” won for best animated film, while the Iranian tale “A Separation” was named the foreign-language winner.

Ricky Gervais, who has ruffled feathers at past shows with sharp wisecracks aimed at Hollywood’s elite and the Globes show itself, returned as host for the third-straight year. He started with some slams at the Globes as Hollywood’s second-biggest film ceremony, after the Oscars.

Gervais joked that the Globes “are just like the Oscars, but without all that esteem. The Globes are to the Oscars what Kim Kardashian is to Kate Middleton. A bit louder, a bit trashier, a bit drunker and more easily bought. Allegedly. Nothing’s been proved.”

He also needled early winners, saying the show was running long and stars needed to keep their speeches short.

“You don’t need to thank everyone you’ve ever met or members of your family, who have done nothing,” Gervais said. “Just the main two. Your agent and God.”

___

Online:

http://www.goldenglobes.org

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/topstories/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120116/ap_on_en_mo/us_golden_globes

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WASHINGTON ? It’s become a case of the unsubstantiated vs. the discredited.

Mitt Romney’s never-supported boast to have created more than 100,000 jobs as a venture capitalist has been countered by an attack film so flawed that the Republican presidential rival it was meant to help, Newt Gingrich, has asked the sponsoring political action committee to correct it or take it out of circulation.

Meanwhile, voters are no farther ahead in knowing whether Romney’s work at Bain Capital ? a complex record of company start-ups, revivals, flops and shutdowns ? cost more jobs than it created, though there is gathering evidence it was not as rosy as he has portrayed.

Into the mix: “King of Bain: When Mitt Romney Came to Town,” a dark tale casting Romney as a rapacious profiteer who makes vultures look like songbirds.

The 28-minute film, bankrolled by the Gingrich-friendly Winning Our Future super PAC, blames Romney for company shutdowns he had no part in and twists interviews with laid-off factory workers to convey resentments against him that didn’t exist.

Just as Romney ignored the negative side of the ledger in his bragging, the film ignores the positive side. It does not back up its claim that “nearly every US state experienced job loss from the actions of Bain Capital under Mitt Romney.” That assertion might be true if the closure of a national toy retailer counts, but Romney left Bain’s management before it purchased, much less dismantled, KB Toys.

“King of Bain” presents four case studies of plants or companies shut by Romney and Bain, but three of the closures happened after he left.

Despite Gingrich’s appeal to correct or take down the ads, by law he can’t direct the actions of a super PAC. Ads drawn from “King of Bain” stand to benefit him ? by denigrating Romney ? for as long as they are running in the South Carolina primary campaign. The PAC said it will fix any errors if Romney answers several questions to help determine what is wrong, an approach that buys time for the ads.

Absent Romney’s response, “we stand by the film” and “absolutely” will keep running it, Rick Tyler, senior adviser to Winning Our Future, said on “Fox News Sunday,” even while acknowledging “hyperbole” in one claim it makes.

A look at some of the film’s claims and how they compare with the facts.

UNIMAC CORP.: “Romney and Bain upended the company and gutted the workforce.”

THE FACTS: Romney left Bain management a year after his company bought the Marianna, Fla., plant and seven years before it was shut. Moreover, Bain didn’t do it. Bain sold the plant to a Canadian concern in 2005. A year after that, the new owners closed the plant and moved operations ? manufacturing commercial laundry equipment ? to Wisconsin, where it remains in business. Romney ceased operational control of Bain in February 1999, when he left to run the 2002 Olympics, and severed remaining legal ties with the company in 2001.

The film has interviews with three former plant workers, who are presented as if they lost their UniMac jobs under Bain. But all three told The Wall Street Journal they received pay raises and multiple promotions while Bain owned the plant and hold no grudge against Romney or his old company. They said they were paid for the interviews, not told of its purpose and had their words taken terribly out of context.

___

KB TOYS: “Romney and Bain bought the 80-year-old company in 2000, loaded KB Toys with millions in debt, then used the money to repurchase Bain stock. The debt was too staggering. … Romney and Bain’s profits at the expense of 15,000 jobs was described by the Boston Herald as `disgusting.’”

THE FACTS: Romney was in no position to plunder the toy company because he left Bain before it bought KB Toys in 2000. The retailer was finally liquidated in 2009, a decade after he moved on. Fierce competition from superstore chains was a factor in KB’s collapse, not just debt.

The Boston Herald did not brand Bain’s profits “disgusting,” as the film claims. Instead, a story in the newspaper quoted a former worker as saying so. He was criticizing another Bain executive-turned-politician, Stephen Pagliuca, who ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic nomination to replace the late Sen. Edward Kennedy in 2009.

___

DDi CORP.: Romney and Bain wrung “enormous financial gain” out of the California tech manufacturing and engineering company by firing employees and dumping stock before it went into bankruptcy.

THE FACTS: The transactions charted in the film come after Romney’s tenure at Bain, though he is believed to have profited from DDi stock sales after his departure. Viewers aren’t told the Anaheim company blamed the bursting of the dot-com bubble for its fall, that it emerged from bankruptcy and is in business today.

___

AMPAD: “That hurt so bad, to leave my home, because of one man that’s got 15 homes.”

THE FACTS: That comment was from an interview in the film with a Marion, Ind., woman identified as a former American Pad & Paper worker, and it captures authentic grievances against Romney and Bain over the closure of the plant there in 1995. But Romney doesn’t have anywhere near 15 homes, a fact the filmmakers did not feel obliged to explain.

“It was hyperbole,” Tyler said Sunday. “Are we going to fact-check hyperbole?”

Romney says he owns three homes. He also has a Lake Huron cottage in Canada that has long been in the family.

Ampad is the only example in “King of Bain” that substantially overlaps Romney’s tenure, and it is one he has needed to deal with before.

After Bain acquired the company in 1992, it cut 385 jobs and closed two U.S. plants, moves that became the subject of Democratic campaign ads against him when he ran unsuccessfully against Kennedy for the Senate in 1994. The episode also was in an issue in his successful 2002 race for Massachusetts governor.

___

Associated Press writer Jim Drinkard contributed to this report.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/politics/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120115/ap_on_bi_ge/us_romney_bain_fact_check

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by Adam Chitwood????Posted:December 15th, 2011 at 6:50 pm

How?s this for a success story: after making his feature directorial debut with the low-budget financial crisis drama Margin Call, director J.C. Chandor is set to helm a man vs. nature drama as his follow-up and legendary actor-director Robert Redford is in talks to star. Deadline reports that Chandor will next direct All Is Lost, a drama that mainly focuses on a single character and takes place on the water. The film is described as a ?one man show? in which the lead braves the elements in order to survive. Chandor premiered Margin Call this past January at the Sundance Film Festival, and the writer-director was apparently so taken with the festival?s founder Redford that he wrote All Is Lost just for him.

I?ve yet to see Margin Call but I?m intrigued by this success story. It?ll be interesting to see how Chandor sets the film apart from the similarly plotted Cast Away. They?ve apparently scouted Baja Film Studios in Mexico as a possible filming location. James Cameron and Michael Bay have both previously used the studio for Titanic and Pearl Harbor, respectively, obviously (though one wonders what James Cameron?s Pearl Harbor and Michael Bay?s Titanic would have looked like), and it?s a prime location for extended water shoots. Zachary Quinto?s Before the Door will produce and they hope to start filming by next May.

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Source: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1924157/news/1924157/

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By msnbc.com staff and news services

BEIJING?– “Batman” star Christian Bale was roughed up by?security guards who stopped him visiting a blind activist living under house arrest in China.

Video footage of the scuffle was shot by a camera crew?traveling with the Hollywood actor as he promoted a film he has made in the country.

CNN posted scenes of the confrontation between Bale and the guards on its website Friday.

The run-in and publicity is likely to cause discomfort in China’s government-backed film industry, which hopes Bale’s movie “The Flowers of War” will be a creative success at home and abroad.

The star’s actions are sure to focus attention on the plight of Chen Guangcheng, guarded around the clock by plain-clothed and uniformed workers who have blocked dozens of reporters and fellow activists trying to see him in the past.

Bale was to leave China on Friday and his representatives could not immediately be reached for comment.

Mark Ralston / AFP – Getty Images

Oscar-winning actor Christian Bale and his wife Sibi are escorted by security guards as they arrive for the premiere of the “Flowers of War” in Beijing on Dec. 12.

Bale, who won a best supporting actor Oscar for last year’s “The Fighter,” traveled Thursday with a crew from CNN to the village in eastern China where Chen, the blind lawyer, lives with his family in complete isolation.

They were stopped at the entrance to Dongshigu village in Shandong province by unidentified men.

‘An inspiration’
The video footage shows Bale asking to see Chen, with a CNN producer providing interpretation, but being ordered by one of the guards to leave. He then asked why he was unable to pass through. The guards responded by trying to grab or punch a small video camera Bale was carrying.

“What I really wanted to do was to meet the man, shake his hand and say what an inspiration he is,” Bale was quoted as saying by CNN.

Chen’s case has been raised publicly by U.S. lawmakers and diplomats, including Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, all to no response from China.

CNN said Bale first learned of Chen from news reports when he was in China filming “The Flowers of War,” China’s official submission this year for best foreign language film Oscar.

“Chen Guangcheng is a newsworthy figure … and as such it is in the interest of CNN’s global viewers to hear from him,” CNN said in a statement. “Mr. Bale reached out to CNN and invited us to join him on his journey to visit Chen.”

Chen, a self-taught lawyer who was blinded by a fever in infancy, angered authorities after documenting forced late-term abortions and sterilizations and other abuses by overzealous authorities trying to meet population control goals in his rural community. He was imprisoned for allegedly instigating an attack on government offices and organizing a group of people to disrupt traffic, charges his supporters say were fabricated.

Although now officially free under the law, he has been confined to his home in the village eight hours’ drive from Beijing and subjected to periodic beatings and other abuse, activists say.

While Bale’s visit focuses new attention on Chen’s case, CNN’s role raises questions about activism and advocacy among reporters, said David Bandurski, editor of the China Media Project website at the University of Hong Kong.

“It made me instantly uncomfortable, wondering how it all came together. It raises questions about where the lines are drawn,” Bandurski said.

Politically sensitive subject
The incident also drew strong interest ? most of it highly positive ? on social networking sites such as Twitter and its Chinese equivalent, Weibo.

Having their star’s name pinging across the Internet in connection with such a politically sensitive subject puts promoters of “The Flowers of War” in a bind. The film opens in China on Friday and next week in the United States.

Directed by the renowned Zhang Yimou, it is also the most expensive Chinese movie ever made, at $94 million, some of which came from the state-owned Bank of China.

The movie centers on the 1937 sacking of the eastern city of Nanjing, a central event in China’s pre-revolutionary “century of humiliation” and has been described by some critics as hewing to official propaganda portraying Chinese as heroic victims and Japanese as one-dimensional cartoon villains.

While China has the world’s third-largest film industry ? both in box office and output ? it has made relatively little global impact. Story lines are often heavily influenced by the ruling Communist Party, whose culture commissars must approve scripts and have final say over whether a film gets released.

More from msnbc.com and NBC News:

The Associated Press and msnbc.com staff?contributed to this report.

Source: http://entertainment.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/12/16/9487825-christian-bale-scuffles-with-chinese-activists-guards

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