Print

Mail

wiki links

Reel News

Jim Carey becomes a yes-man. PHOTO: AP

Laszlo Kovacs, a Hungarian refugee and master cinematographer whose stylistic inventions transformed cinema with such movies as Easy Rider and Five Easy Pieces, has died. He was 74.

Kovacs died in his sleep at his home on Sunday, his wife, Audrey, told the Los Angeles Times in Tuesday's edition.

Kovacs made some 70 movies over five decades. His work ranged from the gritty black-and-white portrayal of the Depression in Paper Moon to the saturated glamour of Shampoo. "I think he's one of the great cameraman of the New Hollywood era,'' Paper Moon director Peter Bogdanovich told the newspaper.

Kovacs was able to bring rich composition into the outdoors, using natural lighting and breaking studio conventions.

"Laszlo's success was in taking movies out of the studio and on the road and into real situations. His ability to do that, along with others, changed cinema forever," said James Chressanthis, who is making a documentary about Kovacs and another Hungarian cinematographer, Vilmos Zsigmond.

Kovacs "could film air like nobody I had ever seen," Five Easy Pieces director Bob Rafelson told the Times. "There's something palpable about the air that somehow or other he could make visible on film: You could sense the density of the air, the small particles of color."

Released in 1969, Easy Rider won international acclaim and made a name for Kovacs. He went on to shoot or direct photography for dozens of other movies, including Ghostbusters, The Karate Kid, Frances, Mask, and Miss Congeniality.

Walt Disney Co on Wednesday became the first major Hollywood studio to ban depictions of smoking, saying tobacco use would be off-limits in its family-oriented, Disney-branded films and "discouraged" in films distributed by its Touchstone and Miramax labels. Disney Chief Executive Robert Iger also said in a letter to US Representative Edward Markey, whose committee last month held hearings on the effects of movie images on children, that the studio would place anti-smoking public service announcements on DVDs of any future films that feature cigarette smoking.

While Disney says "No" to cigarettes, Jim Carrey is to star in a movie about a man who decides to answer "yes" to every question he is asked, entertainment industry press reported this week.

The veteran Canadian funnyman will play the lead role in Yes Man, a film adaptation of British writer Danny Wallace's 2005 book of the same name.

In Wallace's book he describes how he spent six months saying "'yes' where [he] once would have said 'no,'" as an experiment.

The book chronicles Wallace's trials and tribulations as he put his policy into practice.

Carrey, whose films include Ace Ventura Pet Detective, The Mask and Bruce Almighty, will begin work on the film next year.

Bollywood star Hrithik Roshan will help pen the script for a sequel to the blockbuster Krrish in which he played a masked superhero who could leap over buildings in a single bound, it was reported this week.

Roshan's father, Rakesh Roshan, directed Krrish and said he and his son were discussing new stunts that could be part of the sequel.

"Hrithik has always taken a keen interest in scripting and has been an intrinsic part in the making of all my films,'' Rakesh Roshan told the Mumbai Mirror. "He will write the script of Krrish 2 along with me.'' He said the two had discussed the story in detail and would begin writing after Hrithik Roshan completes filming the historical romance Jodha Akbar. The father-son team have collaborated on hit movies such as Kaho Na Pyaar Hai, or Say It's Love, and Koi Mil Gaya, or I Found Someone.

A UN agency has ruled that ownership of the domain name thesimpsonsmovie.com must be handed to Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation, which owns the rights to the film and the popular TV series of the same name.

Twentieth Century Fox filed a complaint to the World Intellectual Property Organization over the use of the film's name in the Internet address of a site registered by Keith Malley of Brooklyn, New York.

Malley was using the address to divert Internet users to a Web site that included sexually explicit depictions of several characters from The Simpsons and, later, to his Keith and the Girl Web site. He was demanding a US$50,000 fee from Twentieth Century Fox for the domain name's return, according to the July 22 ruling of the WIPO arbitration panel.

The court found that Malley "has no rights or legitimate interests with respect to the domain name" and ordered its immediate return.

This story has been viewed 1346 times.