Controversial director Michael Moore is considering legal action against a cable TV company that dropped plans to screen a three hour special of his movie Fahrenheit 9/11 on the eve of the US election.
Moore earlier this week accused the station of bowing to Republican pressure by reneging on an agreement to show the film, which is sharply critical of incumbent US President George W. Bush. The company said it dropped plans for the screening because of "legitimate business and legal concerns."
PHOTOS: AGENCIES
But Moore told US journalists that the company's decision was unjustified.
"We've informed iN DEMAND [the cable station] of its legal responsibility and we informed it that every corporate executive that has attempted to prohibit Americans from seeing this film has failed," he said.
"Apparently people have put pressure on them and they've broken a contract."
The documentary earned over US$100 million at the box office, and is also selling well on DVD.
The pay-per-view channel had planned to charge users US$9.95 to watch the three-hour special that was to include interviews with celebrities with strong political opinions, as well as Moore's movie.
Fahrenheit 9/11 opens on general release in Taiwan today. The Taipei Times review we
previously ran can be accessed on http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/feat/archives/2004/09/10/2003202407.
Shrek heads to Broadway
Broadway beware. That terrifying monster Shrek has his eyes on New York's theater district for a new musical that will be overseen by Sam Mendes, the Oscar-winning director of American Beauty, according to Dreamworks, which produced both Shrek movies.
The play is set to bow in 2006 and will incorporate both the original film and its sequel, Shrek 2.
The films, which tell the story of an ogre falling in love with a princess, have taken in over US$1.4 billion worldwide.
Dali's Disney film
Some 58 years after it was started, the animated film made by artist Salvador Dali for Walt Disney has finally made its debut.
The six minute short Destino made its debut Saturday in New York, after the unfinished work was completed last year by Roy Disney, the nephew of the legendary animator. The completed
version marries Dali's unique surrealist vision and his own storyboards with modern movie techniques, and was nominated for an Oscar last year.
More `Miami Vice'
Actors Colin Farrell and Jamie Fox are in negotiations to star in the film version of the hit 1980s TV show Miami Vice, according to US press reports.
The series, which ran from 1984 to 1989, centered on two fashion- conscious cops played by Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas who took on Florida's drug kingpins.
Spears wants a break
Newly-married pop star Britney Spears is taking a break from her career to spend time with her husband and perhaps start her family, according to her Web site .
Spear's marital bliss seems to have changed her priorities, and she accused her past advisers of taking advantage of her.
"It's amazing what advisers will push you to do, even if it means taking a naive, young, blonde girl and putting her on the cover of every magazine," the site said. "My prerogative right now is to just chill and let all of the other overexposed blondes on the cover of US Weekly be your entertainment ... good luck girls!" the Web site says.
Spears, 22, married Kevin Federline, 26, on Sept. 18. In January she married childhood friend Jason Alexander in a surprise wedding in Las Vegas but annulled the union 55 hours later.
Hopkins on his bike
Sir Anthony Hopkins will star in The World's Fastest Indian, a true story about an intrepid motorcyclist who traveled round the world and set a new land-speed record, according to the Hollywood Reporter.
The US$25 million movie will be shot in Salt Lake City and New Zealand. Hopkins will star as motorcycle legend Burt Munro, who, after perfecting and modifying his 1920 Indian Scout motorcycle, ventured across the world to fulfil his lifelong ambition to race at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah.
He ended up setting a new world land-speed record.
Sheridan on a rap
In America director Jim Sheridan has signed on to direct the Paramount/MTV action-adventure pic Locked and Loaded, according to Daily Variety.
The movie revolves around an inner city drug dealer ,played by rapper 50 Cent, who turns from crime to pursue his passion, rap music. Rap stars Dr. Dre and Eminem may also participate.
Ollie the Otter swims to screen
The hit children's book Ollie the Otter is swimming to the big screen, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Written by Kelly Alan Williamson, the book follows a courageous otter who leads his new friends at a sea park on a wild adventure.
The book will be computer animated by the CritterPix production studio, but there is no word yet on who will star.
Gibson dominates power list
Mel Gibson has emerged as the most powerful man in Hollywood thanks to the extraordinary success of his religious movie The Passion of the Christ, according to Entertainment Weekly's issue earlier in the week.
"What once seemed like a zealous bit of risky business (Gibson even said God was directing the movie through him) has proved farsighted," said the magazine in an editorial.
The Nuremberg trials have inspired filmmakers before, from Stanley Kramer’s 1961 drama to the 2000 television miniseries with Alec Baldwin and Brian Cox. But for the latest take, Nuremberg, writer-director James Vanderbilt focuses on a lesser-known figure: The US Army psychiatrist Douglas Kelley, who after the war was assigned to supervise and evaluate captured Nazi leaders to ensure they were fit for trial (and also keep them alive). But his is a name that had been largely forgotten: He wasn’t even a character in the miniseries. Kelley, portrayed in the film by Rami Malek, was an ambitious sort who saw in
It’s always a pleasure to see something one has long advocated slowly become reality. The late August visit of a delegation to the Philippines led by Deputy Minister of Agriculture Huang Chao-ching (黃昭欽), Chair of Chinese International Economic Cooperation Association Joseph Lyu (呂桔誠) and US-Taiwan Business Council vice president, Lotta Danielsson, was yet another example of how the two nations are drawing closer together. The security threat from the People’s Republic of China (PRC), along with their complementary economies, is finally fostering growth in ties. Interestingly, officials from both sides often refer to a shared Austronesian heritage when arguing for
Late last month the Executive Yuan approved a proposal from the Ministry of Labor to allow the hospitality industry to recruit mid-level migrant workers. The industry, surveys said, was short 6,600 laborers. In reality, it is already heavily using illegal foreign workers — foreign wives of foreign residents who cannot work, runaways and illegally moonlighting factory workers. The proposal thus merely legalizes what already exists. The government could generate a similar legal labor supply simply by legalizing moonlighting and permitting spouses of legal residents to work legally on their current visa. But after 30 years of advocating for that reform,
Among the Nazis who were prosecuted during the Nuremberg trials in 1945 and 1946 was Hitler’s second-in-command, Hermann Goring. Less widely known, though, is the involvement of the US psychiatrist Douglas Kelley, who spent more than 80 hours interviewing and assessing Goring and 21 other Nazi officials prior to the trials. As described in Jack El-Hai’s 2013 book The Nazi and the Psychiatrist, Kelley was charmed by Goring but also haunted by his own conclusion that the Nazis’ atrocities were not specific to that time and place or to those people: they could in fact happen anywhere. He was ultimately
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