Calvet

Calvet focuses on the life and art of painter Jean Marc Calvet. A Dominic Allen & Nicholas Allan, Channel 4 Britdoc Foundation, Evolutions, Palma Pro Audio, One Hand Clapping Post, Firewalk Films, Les Films du Tambour de Soie production. (International sales: Cat & Docs, Paris.) Produced by Dominic Allan. Executive producers, Nicholas Allan, Paul Raphael, Tom Roberts, Maxyne Franklin, Beadie Finzi, Jess Search, Alexandre Cornu, Muriel Sorbo, Flore Cosquer, Christine Tomas, Stephanie Cattiaux, Celine Lafontaine. Directed by Dominic Allan.With: Jean Marc Calvet. (French, Spanish, English dialogue)French-born, Nicaraguan-based artist Jean Marc Calvet recounts a life story as dramatic and colorful as his intense paintings, in Brit helmer Dominic Allan's crisply made docu "Calvet." Already well-travelled since its premiere at the Sheffield docu fest, pic should continue to rack up air miles with trips to further fests wherever there's interest in charismatic characters whose stories have a happy ending. An ancillary afterlife, especially as fodder for niche cable stations, looks assured. A natural raconteur who talks with machine-gun rapidity in both French and Spanish, Calvet acts as guide on a trip to revisit his old haunts. Born in the South of France, he was a junkie runaway and rent-boy who eventually became a crooked vice cop. Work as a bodyguard brought him to Miami to work for a Mafioso, whom Calvet ripped off in order to fund a drug binge in Costa Rica before he finally found a healthier addiction -- to painting. Now a successful artist, Calvet returns to France to look for the son he left behind, leading to a touching conclusion. Nice use of music and time-lapse lensing adds a glossy sheen.Camera (color, HD), Dewald Aukema; editor, Paul Carlin; music, Edith Progue. Reviewed on DVD, Hoveton, U.K., Aug. 29, 2011. (In Sheffield Documentary, Edinburgh, Locarno, Montreal World film festivals.) Running time: 83 MIN. Contact the Variety newsroom at news@variety.com

TV's Crop of New Fall Shows is Touting Girl Power

NEW YORK (AP) Viewers, it's time to make way for girl power!Among the two dozen shows premiering this fall on the five major networks, women will be standing tall.Of course, a debate already rages whether females are liberated or demeaned on certain new shows, namely ABC's "Pan Am" with all those sleek stewardesses and NBC's "The Playboy Club" with its satin dolls.But that's an argument as old as the term "jiggle TV" harking back to the original "Charlie's Angels" which, 35 years later, returns to ABC in an updated but no less jiggly version starring tough-but-tantalizing Annie Ilonzeh, Minka Kelly and Rachael Taylor.In fact, it's an argument as old as television itself.Premiering 60 years ago this fall, "I Love Lucy" became TV's first enduring scripted series, and it continues to serve as the classic template for sitcoms, despite conflicting views on whether Lucille Ball's zany housewife was a victim of domestic oppression or as she schemed to break into show biz or expand her world in some other novel way a pre-feminist subversive. (Maybe both?)In any case, it's ladies first on the vast majority of new shows this fall an overwhelming display of gender domination and easily the season's biggest trend.Women rule on "Pan Am" and "The Playboy Club," which portray the fairer sex in two high-profile jobs that called for beauty, performance and impeccable service, even while offering women a rare chance to get ahead."Pan Am," set in 1963, is a melodrama that focuses on stewardesses in their snugly tailored blue twill at the dawning of the jet age. It stars Christina Ricci, Kelli Garner, Margot Robbie and Karine Vanasse. "The Playboy Club," set in 1961, is a swanky soap centering on the cotton-tailed, look-but-don't-touch waitresses in the original Chicago club. Starring as those Playboy bunnies are Amber Heard, Jenna Dewan Tatum, Naturi Naughton, Leah Renee and, as the Bunny Mother, Laura Benanti.Neither series has hit the air. But already both shows have been called upon to justify themselves as if, by telling these tales from a half-century ago, they are violating contemporary norms and dealing a retroactive blow to the women's movement as if any of that were usually a standard against which TV shows are measured.Many questions on this topic arose at the recent Television Critics Association conference in Los Angeles. In one response to eye-rolling reporters, Heard said, "I think it's just chauvinistic to deny women their sexuality."Defending her show, "Playboy," and its women characters, she continued, "It comes down ultimately to choices. And just like anything else, if there are choices available and they're making the choice, they're not being exploited."On the New York set of "Pan Am," Garner had a similar message."Men and women are equal in so many ways," she said, "but if there's a way that women have a bit more power over men, it's the power of their sexuality if used smartly. And I just wish more women would be OK with that."Both series celebrate the good life enjoyed even by those who helped serve it up and celebrate escape, even for those women.But whatever the similarities that have linked them thus far in the audience's mind, "Pan Am" and "The Playboy Club" are pretty different from one another. And among the crop of new shows, there are many other varying explorations of girl power, including two series with "girl" in the title.The CBS sitcom "2 Broke Girls" stars Kat Dennings and Beth Behrs as two struggling but plucky waitresses in a down-trodden Brooklyn diner. The Fox sitcom "New Girl" stars Zooey Deschanel as a kookie lass who, seeking solace after a painful breakup, moves in with three single guys whom she drafts as her surrogate brothers.Even CBS' "A Gifted Man" which stars Patrick Wilson as a brilliant but all-business surgeon has a woman at its core: the doctor's dead ex-wife (Jennifer Ehle), who tries to teach him a new brand of compassion from her perspective as a lovely apparition.Mind you, every new show isn't supercharged with estrogen.There's a romantic comedy: NBC's "Free Agents" star Hank Azaria gets equal time with Kathryn Hahn as emotionally damaged co-workers who may or may not fall in love.There's a parenting comedy: NBC's "Up All Night" stars Christina Applegate and Will Arnett as the working mom and stay-at-home dad of a new baby.There's a family-that-travels-back-to-prehistoric-times-and-hangs-with-dinosaurs adventure: Fox's much-anticipated "Terra Nova," with the prominent name Steven Spielberg looming large among its credits.There's Fox's "Allen Gregory," an animated series about a precocious 7-year-old being raised by his father and his father's male life partner.There's a gritty, paranoia-inducing crime thriller, CBS' "Person of Interest," which stars Jim Caviezel and Michael Emerson as unlikely partners in a preventive brand of vigilante justice.And in a category of its own, there's Fox's "The X-Factor," the Simon Cowell-produced singing competition.The elusive nature of manhood is the focus of three new sitcoms.The three chums of ABC's "Man Up!" are happy enough with their comfortable middle-class lives. But they want to reclaim the manliness of their forefathers as they reinvoke their inner Iron John."What do you get a kid turning 13 that says 'I'm a man'?" worries one of the friends, whose son is facing a rite of passage into teenhood.Suggestions from his pals: "What about a couple of hookers? Or a trash bag full of chicken wings?"The same concerns continue to plague Tim Allen in "Last Man Standing," his follow-up to "Home Improvement," which premiered 20 seasons ago. Though the character Allen plays this time feels manly enough, he feels threatened by a world going soft and by his minority status in a household otherwise composed of females.The tagline for the CBS sitcom "How to Be a Gentleman" is "prude meets dude." David Hornsby, playing an overrefined etiquette columnist, joins forces with Kevin Dillon as his loutish life coach to transform him into more of a he-man.The world of fairytales has inspired not one but two new series.NBC's "Grimm" is a police procedural where the bad guys are mythological creatures recognizable as nonhuman only by special criminal profilers such as Nick Burkhardt, a homicide detective in Portland, Ore. (When Little Red Riding Hood goes missing, Nick, played by David Giuntoli, is specially equipped to track down her nonhuman abductor.)In a much different vein, ABC's "Once Upon a Time" has a fantastical, wondrous tone, and a decidedly woman's touch: Snow White (Ginnifer Goodwin) squares off against the Evil Queen (Lana Parilla), who has put a curse on the characters of the fairytale world by imprisoning them in the modern real world namely, the town of Storybrooke, Maine.There, "time will stop and we will be trapped," Rumpelstiltskin warns Snow White. "No more happy endings." At least, not until yet another woman, Snow White's daughter, shows up to help.The CW's "The Secret Circle," too, is sparked by the supernatural. A seemingly ordinary teenage girl (Britt Robertson) moves to a high school where her new friends turn out to be descended from powerful witches and where she discovers her own magical powers.Also on the CW, Sarah Michelle Gellar (formerly Buffy the Vampire Slayer) returns to series TV in "Ringer" as a woman who, after witnessing a murder, goes on the lam and claims the identity of her twin sister only to learn that her sister's seemingly ideal existence is just as imperiled as the life she's trying to evade.And that network's third new series, "Hart of Dixie," stars Rachel Bilson as a brand-new doctor who moves from New York to a tiny Alabama town to take over a family practice amid much culture shock.CBS' "Unforgettable" stars Poppy Montgomery as a police detective with a rare condition that imprints every detail of her life into her memory, where it's available for exact, instant retrieval. This is a help in crime solving, but otherwise a mixed blessing.Talk about girl power! Not only is Whitney Cummings a co-executive producer of "2 Broke Girls," but this young writer-stand-up-comic is also an executive producer and star of her NBC sitcom, "Whitney," which is billed as "a hilarious look at modern-day love" centering on her and co-star Chris D'Elia, "a happily unmarried couple."In the ABC soap "Revenge," Emily Van Camp plays a scheming young woman who returns to the moneyed getaway of the Hamptons on New York's Long Island. Adopting a winsome new identity, she means to settle the score with this privileged class for grievous wrongs inflicted years ago on her and her father.On the ABC comedy "Suburgatory," 16-year-old Tessa (Jane Levy), much to her dismay, is whisked from the temptations of New York City to a new life in the suburbs by her protective father (Jeremy Sisto).The generation gap, female style, is explored in the Fox comedy "I Hate My Teenage Daughter," starring Jaime Pressly and Katie Finneran as single moms who clash with their spoiled offspring.And Maria Bello stars as a New York City homicide detective trying to penetrate a man's world in NBC's Americanized "Prime Suspect," whose 1990s British original, starring Helen Mirren, remains one of TV's best-ever dramas.Detective Jane Timoney is ambitious, abrasive and stubborn qualities that don't endear her to the male-dominated precinct house where she has just been transferred.Surrounded in the squad room by her co-workers, she is subjected to a sneering lecture on the precinct's "beef trust," men who do the real police work: "knock on doors, follow leads, hear the words on the street. Because the beef trust can't flutter their eyelashes. All the beef trust can do is the work."Well, they talk tough. But the beef trust can't overwhelm Timoney. Just one of the TV sisterhood awaiting viewers, she has plenty of company this fall.Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. By Frazier Moore August 29, 2011 "Charlie's Angels" PHOTO CREDIT Bob D'Amico/ABC NEW YORK (AP) Viewers, it's time to make way for girl power!Among the two dozen shows premiering this fall on the five major networks, women will be standing tall.Of course, a debate already rages whether females are liberated or demeaned on certain new shows, namely ABC's "Pan Am" with all those sleek stewardesses and NBC's "The Playboy Club" with its satin dolls.But that's an argument as old as the term "jiggle TV" harking back to the original "Charlie's Angels" which, 35 years later, returns to ABC in an updated but no less jiggly version starring tough-but-tantalizing Annie Ilonzeh, Minka Kelly and Rachael Taylor.In fact, it's an argument as old as television itself.Premiering 60 years ago this fall, "I Love Lucy" became TV's first enduring scripted series, and it continues to serve as the classic template for sitcoms, despite conflicting views on whether Lucille Ball's zany housewife was a victim of domestic oppression or as she schemed to break into show biz or expand her world in some other novel way a pre-feminist subversive. (Maybe both?)In any case, it's ladies first on the vast majority of new shows this fall an overwhelming display of gender domination and easily the season's biggest trend.Women rule on "Pan Am" and "The Playboy Club," which portray the fairer sex in two high-profile jobs that called for beauty, performance and impeccable service, even while offering women a rare chance to get ahead."Pan Am," set in 1963, is a melodrama that focuses on stewardesses in their snugly tailored blue twill at the dawning of the jet age. It stars Christina Ricci, Kelli Garner, Margot Robbie and Karine Vanasse. "The Playboy Club," set in 1961, is a swanky soap centering on the cotton-tailed, look-but-don't-touch waitresses in the original Chicago club. Starring as those Playboy bunnies are Amber Heard, Jenna Dewan Tatum, Naturi Naughton, Leah Renee and, as the Bunny Mother, Laura Benanti.Neither series has hit the air. But already both shows have been called upon to justify themselves as if, by telling these tales from a half-century ago, they are violating contemporary norms and dealing a retroactive blow to the women's movement as if any of that were usually a standard against which TV shows are measured.Many questions on this topic arose at the recent Television Critics Association conference in Los Angeles. In one response to eye-rolling reporters, Heard said, "I think it's just chauvinistic to deny women their sexuality."Defending her show, "Playboy," and its women characters, she continued, "It comes down ultimately to choices. And just like anything else, if there are choices available and they're making the choice, they're not being exploited."On the New York set of "Pan Am," Garner had a similar message."Men and women are equal in so many ways," she said, "but if there's a way that women have a bit more power over men, it's the power of their sexuality if used smartly. And I just wish more women would be OK with that."Both series celebrate the good life enjoyed even by those who helped serve it up and celebrate escape, even for those women.But whatever the similarities that have linked them thus far in the audience's mind, "Pan Am" and "The Playboy Club" are pretty different from one another. And among the crop of new shows, there are many other varying explorations of girl power, including two series with "girl" in the title.The CBS sitcom "2 Broke Girls" stars Kat Dennings and Beth Behrs as two struggling but plucky waitresses in a down-trodden Brooklyn diner. The Fox sitcom "New Girl" stars Zooey Deschanel as a kookie lass who, seeking solace after a painful breakup, moves in with three single guys whom she drafts as her surrogate brothers.Even CBS' "A Gifted Man" which stars Patrick Wilson as a brilliant but all-business surgeon has a woman at its core: the doctor's dead ex-wife (Jennifer Ehle), who tries to teach him a new brand of compassion from her perspective as a lovely apparition.Mind you, every new show isn't supercharged with estrogen.There's a romantic comedy: NBC's "Free Agents" star Hank Azaria gets equal time with Kathryn Hahn as emotionally damaged co-workers who may or may not fall in love.There's a parenting comedy: NBC's "Up All Night" stars Christina Applegate and Will Arnett as the working mom and stay-at-home dad of a new baby.There's a family-that-travels-back-to-prehistoric-times-and-hangs-with-dinosaurs adventure: Fox's much-anticipated "Terra Nova," with the prominent name Steven Spielberg looming large among its credits.There's Fox's "Allen Gregory," an animated series about a precocious 7-year-old being raised by his father and his father's male life partner.There's a gritty, paranoia-inducing crime thriller, CBS' "Person of Interest," which stars Jim Caviezel and Michael Emerson as unlikely partners in a preventive brand of vigilante justice.And in a category of its own, there's Fox's "The X-Factor," the Simon Cowell-produced singing competition.The elusive nature of manhood is the focus of three new sitcoms.The three chums of ABC's "Man Up!" are happy enough with their comfortable middle-class lives. But they want to reclaim the manliness of their forefathers as they reinvoke their inner Iron John."What do you get a kid turning 13 that says 'I'm a man'?" worries one of the friends, whose son is facing a rite of passage into teenhood.Suggestions from his pals: "What about a couple of hookers? Or a trash bag full of chicken wings?"The same concerns continue to plague Tim Allen in "Last Man Standing," his follow-up to "Home Improvement," which premiered 20 seasons ago. Though the character Allen plays this time feels manly enough, he feels threatened by a world going soft and by his minority status in a household otherwise composed of females.The tagline for the CBS sitcom "How to Be a Gentleman" is "prude meets dude." David Hornsby, playing an overrefined etiquette columnist, joins forces with Kevin Dillon as his loutish life coach to transform him into more of a he-man.The world of fairytales has inspired not one but two new series.NBC's "Grimm" is a police procedural where the bad guys are mythological creatures recognizable as nonhuman only by special criminal profilers such as Nick Burkhardt, a homicide detective in Portland, Ore. (When Little Red Riding Hood goes missing, Nick, played by David Giuntoli, is specially equipped to track down her nonhuman abductor.)In a much different vein, ABC's "Once Upon a Time" has a fantastical, wondrous tone, and a decidedly woman's touch: Snow White (Ginnifer Goodwin) squares off against the Evil Queen (Lana Parilla), who has put a curse on the characters of the fairytale world by imprisoning them in the modern real world namely, the town of Storybrooke, Maine.There, "time will stop and we will be trapped," Rumpelstiltskin warns Snow White. "No more happy endings." At least, not until yet another woman, Snow White's daughter, shows up to help.The CW's "The Secret Circle," too, is sparked by the supernatural. A seemingly ordinary teenage girl (Britt Robertson) moves to a high school where her new friends turn out to be descended from powerful witches and where she discovers her own magical powers.Also on the CW, Sarah Michelle Gellar (formerly Buffy the Vampire Slayer) returns to series TV in "Ringer" as a woman who, after witnessing a murder, goes on the lam and claims the identity of her twin sister only to learn that her sister's seemingly ideal existence is just as imperiled as the life she's trying to evade.And that network's third new series, "Hart of Dixie," stars Rachel Bilson as a brand-new doctor who moves from New York to a tiny Alabama town to take over a family practice amid much culture shock.CBS' "Unforgettable" stars Poppy Montgomery as a police detective with a rare condition that imprints every detail of her life into her memory, where it's available for exact, instant retrieval. This is a help in crime solving, but otherwise a mixed blessing.Talk about girl power! Not only is Whitney Cummings a co-executive producer of "2 Broke Girls," but this young writer-stand-up-comic is also an executive producer and star of her NBC sitcom, "Whitney," which is billed as "a hilarious look at modern-day love" centering on her and co-star Chris D'Elia, "a happily unmarried couple."In the ABC soap "Revenge," Emily Van Camp plays a scheming young woman who returns to the moneyed getaway of the Hamptons on New York's Long Island. Adopting a winsome new identity, she means to settle the score with this privileged class for grievous wrongs inflicted years ago on her and her father.On the ABC comedy "Suburgatory," 16-year-old Tessa (Jane Levy), much to her dismay, is whisked from the temptations of New York City to a new life in the suburbs by her protective father (Jeremy Sisto).The generation gap, female style, is explored in the Fox comedy "I Hate My Teenage Daughter," starring Jaime Pressly and Katie Finneran as single moms who clash with their spoiled offspring.And Maria Bello stars as a New York City homicide detective trying to penetrate a man's world in NBC's Americanized "Prime Suspect," whose 1990s British original, starring Helen Mirren, remains one of TV's best-ever dramas.Detective Jane Timoney is ambitious, abrasive and stubborn qualities that don't endear her to the male-dominated precinct house where she has just been transferred.Surrounded in the squad room by her co-workers, she is subjected to a sneering lecture on the precinct's "beef trust," men who do the real police work: "knock on doors, follow leads, hear the words on the street. Because the beef trust can't flutter their eyelashes. All the beef trust can do is the work."Well, they talk tough. But the beef trust can't overwhelm Timoney. Just one of the TV sisterhood awaiting viewers, she has plenty of company this fall.Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Adam Levine Slams MTV VMAs

LOS ANGELES, Calif. -- Dont expect to see Adam Levine rubbing elbows with Britney Spears and Beyonce at Sundays MTV Video Music Awards in Los Angeles. The Maroon 5 frontman and The Voice mentor took to Twitter over the weekend slamming the annual awards show. the VMAs. one day a year when MTV pretends to still care about music. Im drawing a line in the sand. [expletive] you VMAs, Adam wrote on Saturday. He also told his Twitter followers not to expect him to backtrack on his outspoken Tweet. still waiting to have my jerry macguire mission statement moment of deep regret not happening. phew!, he wrote in another Tweet, followed by, i may be a pop singer. but every once in a while the angsty teenager in me just blurts out some raw honesty. its a reflex. MTV hoped that the singer, whose band, Maroon 5, took home the Best New Artist Moonman award in 2004, would at least watch the big show. Soooo youll be tuning in at 9/8C tomorrow right? (BTW, bonus points if you TwitPic your 2004 Moonman!), the network Tweeted to the singer. Copyright 2011 by NBC Universal, Inc. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Men Of A Certain Age Creators End Efforts To Find New Home For Canceled Series

Men of a Certain Age is officially dead. Following the dramedy’s cancellation by TNT, series creators Ray Romano and Mike Royce had shopped the series around. Now they took to the “Save Men of a Certain Age” Facebook page, whose online petition has garnered more than 10,000 signatures, to announce that those efforts have been unsuccessful and they are reluctantly throwing in the towel. Here is Romano and Royce’s gracious open letter to fans titled Hold Your Head Up: Hi folks, Sorry I haven’t been in touch. Unfortunately there’s been nothing to report. And at this point, since we want to be straight with youguys, I have to tell you that we’ve kind of reached the end of the road. Hard to admit, but it’s true. If you can think of a network, we called them. Of course, “Men of a Certain Age”doesn’t really belong on certain networks. But we called them too. We called everybody. We tried online, satellite, alternate content providers, corporate sponsorship, Taxi TV, filmstrips… everything. We’ve exhausted every possibility and then some. I was certainly hoping – actually, naivelyexpectinga different outcome. I thought somebody would pick us up. Ray and Ifeel strongly that there are places where MOACA would not only be an excellent fit, but a home run. But we couldn’t persuade others to see it that way. And at a certain point, you gotta move on. Sure, a miracle could still happen somehow. So please don’t “unlike” this page or unsign the petition. It’s still good to be able to show the world how much you guys care about the show. We can’t thank all you enough. So many of you have worked your asses off to help us find the show a home. To see the support continue to pour in now weeks and weeks later is really incredible. It’s also hard to express how grateful we are to the awesomely talented 200+people who made the show. The cast and the crew were not only the best but made it a joy to come to work each day. And we also want to thank TNT. I know it’s natural to look at it like “they’re the ones who cancelled it,” but a more accurate viewpoint is “they’re the ones who put it on.” Honestly, the notion that a show about the lives of three 50 year olds was on television at all in this day and age is a miracle. It shouldn’t be, but it is. On top of that TNT gave us the rare opportunity to do the show the way we wanted. The end result is, we’re proud of the work, proud of the critical response and mostly proud that the show seems to have secured a deep place in people’s hearts that isn’t always reached. Like some of you, we feel a little like we’ve lost a friend. But the good news is, the 22 episodes live on. They even end in a good place (if too soon). So think of us as not as a cancelled show but a “mini-series by accident.” Because really that’s our biggest hope: if you are a fan, turn other people on to it. We want it to live on. Hey, for better or for worse, the ratings tell us there are plenty of people out there who haven’t seen “Men of a Certain Age.” We hope they check it out. Thanks, and see you on the hill. —Mike Royce & Ray Romano

Director Reza Badiyi dies

Film and television director Reza Badiyi, who won a DGA Award for the most overall hours of television directed, died Saturday, Aug. 20, of natural causes in Los Angeles. He was 81. Badiyi began his American career as a cinematographer, working in New York, Kansas City and finally Los Angeles. He worked with directors including Robert Altman, who became a mentor and lifelong friend, and Sam Peckinpah. He directed over 430 episodes of television and several movies beginning in 1963. By the late 1960s he was regularly directing series television, including multiple episodes of "Get Smart," "The Doris Day Show," "Mission: Impossible," "The Six Million Dollar Man," "Mannix," "Baretta," "The Rockford Files," "Hawaii Five-O," "The Incredible Hulk," "T.J. Hooker," "Cagney and Lacey," "Falcon Crest," "Jake and the Fatman," "In the Heat of the Night," "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" and "Baywatch." " 'Mission Impossible' came about at a time where we were using images differently than before," Badiyi told Iran Times Intl. in 2009. "We would use extreme focusing and closeups in order to accurately convey to the audience the actors' feelings, thoughts and actions. It was also a time of breakthrough visual effects, so I had the opportunity to do things I hadn't done before; it was great. I let my imagination run wild." More recently he helmed episodes of "La Femme Nikita" and "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." He was also credited with the title visualization for "Get Smart," "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" and "Hawaii Five-O," among several other series. It was Badiyi who devised the notion of having Moore toss her tam o'shanter into the air for the famous opening sequence of "The Mary Tyler Moore Show." Badiyi also directed more than 60 documentaries. In 2006 he directed the family drama "The Way Back Home," with Julie Harris and Ruby Dee. His last screen credit was as technical adviser on the 2008 film "Lady of the Roses," directed by Mojtaba Mirtahmasb. Born in Arak, Iran, Reza Sayed Badiyi graduated from the Academy of Drama in Iran and received the prestigious golden medal of art from the Shah of Iran. In 1955 he was invited by the U.S. government to pursue a film career and subsequently graduated from Syracuse U. in Audiovisual Studies. In 2010 the Iranian-American community and actors from some of the shows Badiyi directed honored him on his 80th birthday at UCLA's Royce Hall. Badiyi was married three times, the second time to actress, writer and producer Barbara Turner. He is survived by his third wife, actress Tania Harley, and three children, including actress Mina Badie. Contact Variety Staff at news@variety.com

Student Services

Laura is really a 19-year-old college newcomer who frantically really wants to prosper in class. She works a component-time job but cannot pay the bills. One evening by which she's lacking funds, she solutions an individual ad online by "Joe," 57, who seeks a lady student for "tender moments." The pay is 100 pounds each hour. Laura promises to get this done only once, and 72 hours later, she would go to hotels with Joe. After which her spiral starts.

Susan Sarandon, Julie Christie And Richard Jenkins Keep 'Company' With Robert Redford

EXCLUSIVE: Robert Redford has set Susan Sarandon, Julie Christie and Richard Jenkins to star in The Company You Keep, the drama Redford is directing and starring in alongside Shia LaBeouf, Nick Nolte and Brit Marling. The films a co-production between Voltage Pictures and Wildwood Enterprises. The film is an adaptation of the Neil Gordon novel, scripted by Lem Dobbs. Its the story of an ex-Weather Underground militant wanted by the FBI for 30 years who must go on the run when his true identity is exposed by a young, ambitious reporter. Redford plays the former radical at the center of this nationwide manhunt, and LaBeouf is the determined journalist. Sarandon and Christie play former Weather Underground members who were accomplices in the bank robbery, and Jenkins plays a college professor who is a link to former radicals in hiding. Redford, Bill Holderman and Nicolas Chartier are producing, and Craig J. Flores is the executive producer. Voltage Pictures is selling the picture internationally and the film begins production in Vancouver next month. Sarandon's repped by ICM, Christie by WME and Jenkins by Gersh.

Watch John Cho Shoot Father Christmas within the Amusing Harold & Kumar three dimensional Christmas Trailer

Should you’re already tired of seeing exactly the same happy holiday movie previews (which could be unfortunate because it’s only August), behold: a yuletide trailer which get your cynical juices flowing. How am I so sure? Because Harold & Kumar three dimensional Christmas provides the only preview clip within the good reputation for guy (and movie trailers) to start with what, “I shot Father Christmas hard. He’s real and that i shot him hard.” Jump ahead to look at the stoner-on-Santa violence and also to see what goes on when Neil Patrick Harris incurs Jesus in a bar. (It’s amusing, I guarantee). As this has everything I search for inside a movie — Neil Patrick Harris playing a lecherous version of themself, self-effacing 3-D jokes, 12-year-olds who play beer pong, Texas whorehouse humor, small children with “the munchies” — I'll be seeing this in theaters your day it premieres, November 4. VERDICT: Yes please. [via Yahoo!]

People on the move

Creative content and branding company Gravity named Roy Eventov as creative director for its Digital Group. In his new position Eventov will provide creative direction digital clients. He joins Gravity from MRM Worldwide. The announcement was made today by Shemi Levi, Gravity's chief digital officer. "During the course of the last 10 years, Roy has been running teams of high-end designers, 3D artists, animators, motion graphics artists and editors for a diverse range of major clients and high profile projects," said Gravity CEO Zviah Eldar. "He sees the web from a user's perspective, and is proficient working out of his comfort level." Gravity has offices in New York, Los Angeles, and Tel Aviv. * * * Encore, a Deluxe Entertainment Services Group company, hired Armen Kevorkian for its growing visual effects department. Kevorkian will be working as an in-house vfx supervisor. Earlier - as a client - he collaborated with the members of Encore's vfx team several times, most recently on the pilot for "Unforgettable," which was picked up by CBS for the fall season and will continue to utilize Encore as its vfx vendor. "Armen has extensive experience in all aspects of the vfx workflow," said Bill Romeo, senior veep of TV for Deluxe in Los Angeles. "He understands vfx creation from conception to on-set supervision to overseeing teams of animators and compositors. And as a former VFX supervisor on the production side, he has a unique sense of the client's needs on a show." Previously, Kevorkian served as vfx supervisor for four seasons of "The Ghost Whisperer" and on a number of other series and made-for-TV movies including "Studio 60," "Brothers and Sisters," SyFy Channel thriller "Mammoth" and ABC's "Invasion." * * * Production shingle Mothership has named Scott Gemmell head of production. With a background in live action, motion graphics, animation, vfx, online media and creative branding, Gemmell will oversee day-to-day production of commercial projects flowing through the company. He was formerly head of production at Motion Theory and has spent over 12 years in commercial production on projects for AT&T, Audi, Budweiser, EA Sports, Nike and Sony - among other companies. "Scott is an excellent leader with experience in shaping and developing directors' careers to help take them to the next level," said Ed Ulbrich, Mothership president and exec veep of sister company Digital Domain Productions. * * * Film and video integration firm Advanced Systems Group added Morgan Siegel to its sales team. She is focused on providing software solutions for ASG clients, specifically Autodesk 3D content creation and creative finishing products. * * * LipSync Post appointed Connan McStay as senior editor and compositor. He joins LipSync after six years at Molinare and brings over 18 years of experience in DI editing, compositing, grading, online and offline editing and vfx supervision, for both film and television. McStay was DI Editor on "The King's Speech," among other projects. Contact Peter Caranicas at peter.caranicas@variety.com

Was Heather Mills Part Of UK Hacking Scandal?

LONDON, U.K. -- Heather Mills on Wednesday accused a senior journalist with Britains Trinity Mirror group of newspapers of boasting that her phone messages had been intercepted. In an interview with the BBCs Newsnight program, the ex-wife of former Beatle Paul McCartney claimed that she was called several years ago by a senior editorial figure with the Mirror who quoted word-for-word the phone messages left by McCartney on her answering machine. Mills said that the journalist in 2001 told her: Oh, I hear youve had a big argument with your boyfriend. Mills and McCartney got married only in 2002. And I said: Why would you know this? And he started quoted verbatim the messages from my machine, she said. Mills added that when she accused the journalist of hacking into her phone, he laughed and admitted that the conversations had indeed been lifted from her voice messages. When she threatened the journalist with legal action he promised not to write a story based on the intercepts, she said. Messages left for Mills on a number associated with her website were not immediately returned. Trinity Mirror PLC has consistently refused to answer questions about the past conduct of its journalists, saying only that its employees follow the law. The publisher which puts out Britains left-leaning Daily Mirror and its sister-paper, the Sunday Mirror has come under increased scrutiny following revelations that the now-defunct News of the World tabloid of its rival News International eavesdropped on a host of prominent figures. Particular attention has been focused on the Daily Mirrors former editor, Piers Morgan, who has long maintained that phone hacking was widespread across the British newspaper industry and that he was well-aware of the practice. Morgan has denied that he himself hacked into phones or that he knowingly put out stories based on hacked conversations. Mills named the journalist in her interview, but the BBC bleeped out his name, citing legal reasons. The BBC did say, however, that the journalist was not Morgan. Copyright 2011 by Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

TraiNZ Bro

From New Zealand, its rare to see graffiti on trains in Aotearoa (New Zealand), they are taken out of service and cleaned within hours of being painted. This movie is a collection of trains with graffiti on them, caught on film before being buffed clean. Straight from the Aotearoa graffiti underworld comes traiNZ bro, a hardcore graffiti movie, with exclusive footage of painted trains and live painting missions, from 1998-2009. Including 20+ wholecars and Aotearoas first running whole train