Tom Cruise's son playing young Will Smith

Oscars 2008:
 Daniel Day-Lewis wins best actor

Writers strike leaves winners and losers

1 day ago

LOS ANGELES (AFP) — Hollywood writers scored a historic victory in their three-month long strike but the dispute came at a devastating cost for small businesses caught in the cross-fire, analysts said Monday.

Determined to avoid the mistakes of a 1988 deal relating to home videos, writers successfully negotiated a contract that gives them a slice of profits from new media and Internet sales, where previously they received nothing.

The new deal -- which is set to be approved by Writers Guild of America members later this month -- was described as a "groundbreaking" achievement by University of Southern California film industry expert Jason Squire.

"Establishing the principle that the WGA has jurisdiction over Internet and new media is a groundbreaking step forward," said Squire, a lecturer at USC's School of Cinematic Arts and editor of "The Movie Business."

Industry analysts predict that traditional DVD and home video sales and rentals will eventually be rendered obsolete as technology allowing for content bought online to be viewed on television becomes more widespread.

"People are going to be their own programmers, picking and choosing what they want to watch and when they want to watch it. This deal anticipates that new reality," Squire said.

However, while writers were right to stick to their guns during the strike, Squire said, the impact of the dispute upon businesses who indirectly rely on the entertainment industry had been devastating.

"There have been very significant losses for companies that rely on seasonal work. They have lost 14 weeks worth of business," Squire said. "That is a dreadful and damaging impact for smaller companies."

The Los Angeles Economic Development Corporation (LAEDC) estimates that the strike's total cost may be in the region of 2 billion dollars -- most of it coming from service sector industries.

According to LAEDC figures, the strike cost an estimated 733 million dollars in lost film and television production spending.

But LAEDC said an estimated 1.3 billion was lost by companies such as caterers, hoteliers and limousine rental firms that rely heavily on the entertainment industry for business.

Alan Shanedling, president of the Greater California Livery Association, a collective of limousine rental companies, said his firm had lost around 200,000 dollars in January as the strike hit Hollywood award shows.

Total industry losses arising from the cancellation of the Golden Globes alone would run into several hundred thousand dollars, Shanedling told AFP.

"If you look at the Golden Globes there would have been 800 to 1,000 cars rented for eight to 10-hours minimum each, at 50 to 100 dollars hour. That is a very significant amount of money however you look at it," Shanedling said.

Mark Deo, director of the Small Business Advisory Network, told the Hollywood Reporter that businesses hit by the strike would in the future seek to diversify their base instead of relying on a handful of television productions.

Deo cited the example of a husband-and-wife catering firm that closed during the strike with the intention of re-opening once the dispute was over.

"No one is saying, 'I'm outta here for good,' but when they do come back they'll be operating differently."

Studios are also expected to alter past procedures in the post-strike climate, with analysts predicting that writers will increasingly be hired on a job-by-job basis rather than be given lucrative long-term contracts.

Several studios had already fired writers on such contracts during the strike under force majeure clauses, allowing them to make savings of millions of dollars in salaries.

NEW YORK - Jessica Alba and her boyfriend, producer Cash Warren, are expecting a baby. "I can confirm that Jessica and Cash are expecting a baby in late spring/early summer," Alba's publicist, Brad Cafarelli, said Wednesday in an e-mail to The Associated Press.  
The couple met on the set of "The Fantastic Four." Alba co-starred in the 2005 film and Warren was a director's assistant, according to People magazine, which first reported Alba's pregnancy on its Web site.

Alba, 26, stars in the new thriller "Awake," and recently appeared in "Good Luck Chuck" and "The Ten." The sex symbol first gained fame as an action star on TV's "Dark Angel," then in films including "Fantastic Four" and "Sin City."

Cate Blanchett returns to the throne

SHE might be firmly established as a member of Hollywood royalty, but Cate Blanchett admits she was nervous about returning to the throne for her latest screen role.

Nearly 10 years after her portrayal of Queen Elizabeth I helped propel her to international stardom, the 38-year-old Australian actress is reprising her role as the British monarch, in Elizabeth: The Golden Age, opening in Australia next month.

It is the latest stop on a career that has seen Blanchett emerge as one the most versatile actresses of her generation, whether it's a daring portrayal of Bob Dylan in a biopic or the latest Indiana Jones blockbuster.

Blanchett's performance in Indian director Shekhar Kapur's Elizabeth opened the door to superstardom, earning her the first of four Academy Award nominations and landing her a Golden Globe statuette.

Yet even though Blanchett might have been born to play Elizabeth, the actress says she was nervous about re-teaming with Kapur and fellow Australian Geoffrey Rush for the sequel.

"It was very daunting, and I was a bit nervous about returning to a character that had allowed me to walk through a door into an international film career," Blanchett told reporters in Beverly Hills.

"You don't ever want to feel like you're going backwards. But once I'd perceived that I could progress forwards by playing it then I could proceed with it."

Whereas the first film focused on Elizabeth's ascent to the throne, The Golden Age uses the conflict with Spain as its backdrop and imagines a love triangle involving the queen and British explorer Sir Walter Raleigh.

Blanchett says the plotlines of the story persuaded her to revisit the character.

"I found that the notion of the love triangle, the structure of the narrative was quite different," she said.

"I always said that if I did another one, Elizabeth shouldn't be the central character and because it's an unabashedly romantic film, I think was quite different. So it didn't feel like treading the same ground."

While the stories of the two movies are distinct, they remain similar in one respect: both take numerous liberties with history. There is for example, no record of a romantic element to Elizabeth and Raleigh's relationship.

Blanchett however remains unapologetic for the use of artistic license in The Golden Age.

"In the end when you only have a couple of hours to tell an incredibly dense period of history, by a process of selection you're automatically telescoping the events," she says. "It's never going to be like reading the letters and the court documents, or reading a biography of Elizabeth. It's not the same experience, and going to see a film shouldn't be.

"You're being told a fable, and a fable through the eyes of that director. So hopefully the film has a contemporary quality.

"Like all good stories you're able to connect to the current collective unconscious, what we're all thinking about, about what it means to be female now and what it meant to be female then."

And speculating on the desires that may have driven Elizabeth is half of the fun, she adds.

"There were a lot of male courtiers that Elizabeth had strong connections with, and I think she was fascinated by the freedom that was afforded to, not only an adventurer like Raleigh, but men who were able to travel. She never left the shores of England," she said.

While Blanchett's portrayal of Elizabeth has become the gold standard for all future portrayals, the actress believes Hollywood's fascination with the monarch will endure.

"There's a long and glorious legacy of actresses who've played Elizabeth I, from Flora Robson, Glenda Jackson, Bette Davis, to Helen Mirren.

"She's ripe for reinvention because she's such an enigma and also when you think about the Elizabethan age, when so much of English culture was crystalised, it's a fascinating period of history.

"So I think there will be many more Elizabeths, long after this film."

Blanchett, who won an Academy Award in 2005 for her portrayal of Katharine Hepburn in Martin Scorsese's The Aviator, is already attracting Oscar buzz for her performance as Dylan in Todd Haynes' I'm Not There, which earned her a best actress prize at the Venice film festival in September.

The prospect of playing a man was impossible to turn down, Blanchett revealed.

"I run 100 miles an hour away from projects all the time and in the end the ones that stick are the ones that pursue you, that you can't say no to," she said. "And the idea of playing Bob Dylan was just so utterly ludicrous - I had to say yes."

Meanwhile, Blanchett has recently been on set with Steven Spielberg for work on the fourth Indiana Jones film, which will see Harrison Ford return as the whip-cracking archeologist next year after a 19-year absence.

Working on the film - Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull - had been a fantastic but surreal experience, Blanchett said.

"It's such an iconic franchise, one in which I grew up with. On the first day of shooting it was extremely surreal," she said.

"I was watching the monitor as Steven set up the frame and I knew the iconography of the frame. It was instantly recognisable to me - I knew the trucks, I knew the layout, I knew the way these things were lit.

"And then I was supposed to enter the frame. It's been fantastic, so much fun. And my boys have had an absolute ball."

AFP