David Carr of THE NEW YORK TIMES on Keith Olbermann.

Two Keith Olbermann profiles by David Carr--the first post-MSNBC, the second during Olbermann's Current tenure:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/19/magazine/olbermanns-rage-is-all-the-rage.html?pagewanted=all
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/09/business/media/at-current-tv-keith-olbermann-is-trapped-inside-his-show.html?pagewanted=all

Not everyone is overjoyed by the SAG/AFTRA merger.

Yielding the floor to film reviewer/blogger David Poland, who had this to say in a series of tweets yesterday on Twitter:
"March 30, 2012 will be remembered as the day SAG gave up on actors making a basic living as actors and handed the keys to the union to AMPTP.
Apologists for AFTRA and the SAG leadership that crafted this disaster will blame the problems with residuals & pension on industry changes.--
The truth will be that Roberta Reardon [AFTRA head] killed SAG w/disloyalty & a turf grab & that 81% of SAG thanked her for having broken the union.--"

Keith Olbermann fired by Current.

This was just announced a few minutes ago, so very little is known about the reasons for Current's decision.  My theory is that the channel wants to be more centrist Democrat, so I'm thinking that Cenk Uygur of THE YOUNG TURKS--someone not afraid to disagree with President Obama--may be vulnerable to pressures from above.
In Keith Olbermann's case, he allegedly tends to fight Authority until Authority shows him the door.
[UPDATE] Via THE NEW YORK TIMES, Current TV's side of the story:
http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/30/current-tv-dismisses-keith-olbermann/
Here's a post from the entertainment site THE WRAP:
http://www.thewrap.com/media/article/keith-olbermann-fired-current-tv-36679?page=0,0
[UPDATE]  Olbermann, via Twitter, tells his side of the story:
http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entries/olbermann-to-take-legal-action-against-current-tv

TRIBUTE TO BRENDAN CONSTANTINE'S CALAMITY JOE

TRIBUTE TO RICK LUPERT--"Tired Dogs, Uninterested Cats"

Tim Burton explains for you why DARK SHADOWS is being served with a twist of parody.

For those who don't keep up too often with THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, Geoff Boucher is the designated chronicler of all things Fanboy-friendly.

So, here's an excerpt from his talk with filmmaker Tim Burton on what looks to be Burton's Barnabas-meets-BEETLEJUICE take on Dan Curtis' gothic DARK SHADOWS (a durable property which became a daytime soap from 1966-71, two theatrical films in 71-72 and a short-lived prime-time series in 1991).

Boucher and Burton discuss the appeal of the daytime version.  Let's join Burton here--highlighting and bracket comments by me:

"It's a different animal," Burton said. "If I go back and watch something like STAR TREK, it's not that hard
to analyze what the appeal was, and even if the show is dated you identify what it was that made it work.  The DARK SHADOWS appeal was a little more abstract.  What I loved about it was the fact that it was a melodramatic soap opera, and, well, that flies in the face of any modern studio's interests as far as moviemaking [unless it's a recently-generated source of material such as the TWILIGHT books/films].  But what we've gone for is a mixture, and that's always what I've been interested in.  I think most of my movies are mixtures of light and dark and serious things and things that have humor in them. [what Burton is really saying is that old, unfamiliar TV series now get greenlighted as movies if they're played for laughs a la 21 JUMP STREET--but not in their original form]."

A few comments on THE HUNGER GAMES.

Yes, I broke down and saw THE HUNGER GAMES.  And, no, I haven't seen the BATTLE ROYALE films--so I had no existing bias about comparing one battle-to-the-death vision to another.

It wasn't excellent and it wasn't terrible, either.  Just another opening film of a young-person's-book series (don't like using the word "franchise"), carried handily by Jennifer Lawrence and much of the supporting cast.

Given Gary Ross' track record as a MOR writer-then writer/director (BIG, DAVE, PLEASANTVILLE, SEABISCUIT), I wasn't expecting an action classic like the just-opened THE RAID: REDEMPTION, but THE HUNGER GAMES a la Ross is a proficient-enough film which suffers from some conceptual timidity.

Not having read the Suzanne Collins trilogy of books, I'm not completely aware of how much watering down was accomplished to make the current, reach-for-smelling-salts, edition of the MPAA grant a PG-13 rating.  But it was too easily noticeable that a key violent sequence (beginning of the Games) was cut in such a way that it looked like someone had presssed a Fast Forward button on a VCR/DVD player to avoid dwelling on messiness and particular details of murders (presuming this was the sequence subjected to additional editing by the British Board of Film Censors to achieve the UK equivalent to PG-13).

More on the editing---because a film can be edited digitally on computers doesn't mean that most of the shots have to be chopped to the length of time it would take a person to snap a frail wishbone.  Granted, Gary Ross isn't Michael Bay and the goings-on are intelligible, but it doesn't hurt to hold a shot/shots in a sequence more often for greater effect (such as in the scene involving Katniss and Peeta the night before the games begin).

In terms of the depictions of terror/anguish amongst the young people waiting to see if they will be asked to kill and/or die, I'm assuming that intensity was muted during the scripting stage to avoid uncomfortable parent/child conversations and/or screening walkouts.  And, in a film which depicts a lottery system for choosing participants not unlike the Vietman-era draft, the young people's reactions tend towards the stoic, it's-better-to-obey-than-rebel variety (with Katniss' younger sister being the major exception).  Perhaps to Lionsgate execs, it's a sensible creative decision given that THE HUNGER GAMES, on the day I saw it, played in a multiplex running a US Marines commercial exhorting potential applicants to run towards dangerous situations.

Kudos to Tom Stern (usually a cinematographer for Clint Eastwood) for not overindulging in the desaturated-color-during-shooting-or-in-postproduction process that he went to town on in Eastwood's recent J. EDGAR.

Finally, a footnote: Peter Watkins' 1971 film PUNISHMENT PARK isn't great as human drama (it's intended more as antiwar/antiauthority social commentary), but it's worth a DVD rental as a 60's Counterculture ancestor to THE HUNGER GAMES (the game the youthful participants play in PUNISHMENT PARK is a variant on Capturing the Flag).

Upscale West L.A. film audiences say the darndest things: reaction to THE DEEP BLUE SEA.

Pieced together from various Twitter posts I wrote late last night:

So I saw Terrence Davies' remake of THE DEEP BLUE SEA at upscale Landmark multiplex in West L.A. and audience generally hated it.
I didn't hate THE DEEP BLUE SEA--fine performances from Rachel Weisz and Tom "Loki" Hiddleston. But audience [despised] Terence Davies'....
.....attempts at 40s/50s stylization of the Terrence Rattigan play. So, the kind of laughing at the film and dialogue you wouldn't expect..
....from ostensibly sophisticated West L.A. young/middleaged/older audiences. My wife heard two younger women in restroom wondering aloud..
....how Daniel Craig could have allowed Rachel Weisz to play such a role. Wondering if the women saying this work in Hwd..
Wife and I both wondered if Terence Davies' earlier films (DISTANT VOICES STILL LIVES, LONG DAY CLOSES, HOUSE OF MIRTH) forgotten....
....or if Davies is super out-of-fashion with today's arthouse audiences.
Two elderly women were talking about THE DEEP BLUE SEA--but just about the use of songs by Jo Stafford/Eddie Fisher on the soundtrack.