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Barney's On the Beat
Writers' Roundtable: When Helen (The Queen) Mirren was asked at the Arlington the other night how she went about choosing a role, she replied: First she read the script. Then she checked out the director. Writers have long been the low man and woman on Hollywood's totem pole, but at a Saturday screenwriters' panel, six of them got cheers and rousing applause when they walked onto the Lobero stage. Starstruck audiences hanging on every word uttered by their idols normally have little interest in who put those words in the actors' mouths. But for the Santa Barbara International Film Festival panel discussion, movie mavens packed the Lobero to hear what screenwriters of such films as The Queen, Little Children, and Little Miss Sunshine had to say about their role in the moviemaking process. “Writing is a very lonely profession," confessed Guillermo Arriaga, Mexican director, teacher, and screenwriter of Academy Award nominee Babel.
CODY RAPOL -- 20
The resident of Roseville, about 65 miles east of Columbus, gained popularity with his humorous videos. His offering called "How (Not) To Conduct a Job Interview," watched almost 30,000 times on YouTube.com, won an Internet contest. Lights, webcam, action! the true spoken words of every teen and young adult trying to make it big with the new way to become famous: Internet video. Fame in this day and age is not what it used to be. No longer is it limited to the starving actor trying years to break into the scene, getting by with wages earned from being a waiter. Fame today can be achieved by flipping on your webcam or writing a small script and acting with your friends. To be famous, you dont have to be on television or in big-production movies; you simply need an outlet to showcase what you can do, and Web sites such as LiveVideo.com and YouTube.com offer that.
'Borat' improv script lands Oscar nom
NEW YORK -- Wa Wa Wee Wah? Borat Sagdiyev himself might have exclaimed that catch phrase upon hearing that the largely improvised "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan" had been nominated Tuesday for a best adapted screenplay Oscar. The majority of the movie, starring Sacha Baron Cohen as Borat, is fueled by Cohen's interactions with real people - most of whom weren't reading from a script. Needless to say, if they had been supplied dialogue, many of the unwitting actors wouldn't have sued (as they have) over their inclusion in the film. And still a team of four writers was nominated for the Oscar: Baron Cohen, Anthony Hines, Peter Baynham and Dan Mazer. The same four, plus Todd Phillips, were credited with the story. What in the name of Kazakhstan is going on here? When "Borat" was introduced to the press last fall, the production notes from studio 20th Century Fox said "there was no script" for the film, which it explained was "a new form of filmmaking for an age in which reality and entertainment have become increasingly intertwined." Does a film need a screenplay to be considered for best screenplay? Can anyone beside Yogi Berra answer such a question? Bruce Davis, executive director of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, says the academy defers to the Writers Guild when it comes to writing credit.
Proposal against Bush Iraq plan gains in US Senate
WASHINGTON, Feb 1 (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate moved a step closer to repudiating U.S. President George W. Bush's Iraq strategy on Thursday when a key Democrat backed a Republican-crafted proposal opposing a troop increase. The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations committee, Delaware Democrat Joseph Biden, endorsed the Republican plan although he had written a competing, more bluntly worded resolution against Bush's recent decision to add 21,500 more troops in Iraq. Biden said he and his co-authors could support Virginia Republican Sen. John Warner's measure after Warner made clear he was not merely calling for a smaller troop increase in his proposal. "Now we have a real opportunity for the Senate to speak clearly" on Bush's plan, said Biden, a candidate for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination.
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