Find a show you like and click the 
button. The show will be added to your My Playlist page and updated 24/7 with new videos.
Search Results
2 Views
17:36:03 10/22/11
Lone Vet Oct.14 Stop the F-ing War Part 2 of 2 Discussing Occupy Movements"
[LESS INFO] 2 VIEWS | ADDED 17:36:03 10/22/11
Lone Vet Oct.14 Stop the F-ing War Part 2 of 2 Discussing Occupy Movements" This is part 2 from the Lone Vet who is protesting the Wars on the Hawthorne bridge on Friday 10.14.11 in Portland Oregon. He gives his opinion on the Occupation and the General Assemblysand how important it is. He talks about the two party system and the failure of the governement and the 2 ruling parties. The Lone Vet shows his solidarity with the young people in the Occupy Portland movement. And he bring out in the open the concepts about saving war dollars and and using the money here for our communties. The Lone Vet talks about this big "occupy" movement as being the "last peaceful battle' Wallstreet should be worried. The Lone Vet shows his solidarity with the young people who are now out in the streets as being our new future leaders From: zebra334 Views: 1 0 ratings Time: 12:50 More in Nonprofits & Activism My TIP JAR
12 Views
00:30:00 04/20/11
drive it!: The Motor Magazine
[LESS INFO] 12 VIEWS | ADDED 00:30:00 04/20/11
drive it! introduces VW's Eos convertible, compares two classic subcompacts, checks out the latest member of the Mini family, tries to communicate with the help of "hands-free" devices, and discovers that vintage cars can look old, but be very young at heart. present it!: VW Eos CabrioletThe latest generation of the Eos marries the design features of a sporty coupé and an elegant convertible.But it does come with the trademark Volkswagen contouring. The new version comes with a world first: a roof comprising five parts that opens in 25 seconds and features an integrated sunroof and a heated rear window. drive it! tested the 2.0-liter diesel version of the Eos with 103 kW of power. Prices in Germany start at 27.975 euros.compare it!: Citroën C3 versus the Ford FiestaWe pit a French and German-engineered subcompact against each other.The Citroën C3 versus the Ford Fiesta. The Fiesta has been around since 1976, and is now in its seventh generation. The Citroën C3 was launched in 2002 and is in its second generation. Both cars feature distinctive design. The Fiesta is a product of Ford's Kinetic Design philosophy, which gives it a dynamic appearance. A highlight with the Citroën is its front windshield, which stretches back over the driver. drive it! took a closer look at the duo.test it!: The Mini CountrymanWe said we would be looking at a Mini, but is it really?The answer is unequivocally yes, but during the course of its life the design has actually gotten bigger -- especially this time around. The Countryman is Mini's biggest model yet. As Mini's version of an SUV, it is the first to have four doors. Four-wheel drive is available too, but as an optional extra. Still, that's a first in a Mini. But is all that space between the Countryman and the road really necessary? drive it! tests the "big" Mini and discovers that it boasts as much cargo space as a VW Golf. examine it!: Hands-free Devices Square Off In A TestMany people have been told "Don't pick up the phone!" if their cell phone rings while driving.Using a mobile while behind the wheel is dangerous and in some places illegal. Drivers in Germany are fined and given points on their driving record if they get caught. That is why hands-free sets are popular in Germany. And they certainly are a comfortable way to talk and drive at the same time. drive it! tests four different systems -- one that mounts on the rear-view mirror, another that attaches to the steering wheel, a simple Bluetooth device, and finally, one that clips to the sun visor. drive it! finds out which of these works best and is safest.Vintage: the Opel KapitänThere is far more to some vintage cars than meets the eye.Markus Zippert is the proud owner of a 1951 Opel Kapitän. But beneath the staid black fenders and chrome is the heart of a much younger car. The engine, axles and drivetrain are from the Opel Senator, a car that made its debut nearly four decades later. And then there is a 1972 TVR 3000 M that's a real rocket sled. It weighs in at less than a ton and its turbo 360 horsepower engine rockets it from zero to 100 in a mere five seconds. The car originated from TVR Engineering in Blackpool, England, but was souped up in Germany. Join drive it! to see the latest in high-speed technology dressed up in time-honored designs.
9 Views
09:06:49 12/15/10
John Russo On Oakland Gang Injunction and Gangs in Oakland
[LESS INFO] 9 VIEWS | ADDED 09:06:49 12/15/10
This video blogger talked with Oakland City Attorney John Russo about his response to a video featuring Michael Siegel of the Oakland civil rights law firm Siegel and Lee , and the focus of a blog entry of last week. One that got under the skin of Russo and his assistant Alex Katz.
Within two days, John and Alex called to ask for this blogger to come and conduct a video interview to get their side of the Oakland Gang Injunction issue. The result is the 20 minute video.
In 2010 Oakland became the third city in the San Francisco Bay Area to implement injunctions against a specific set of street gangs, the North Oakland Crime Organization and another called The , which, according to Russo, is a terribly violent gang.
What Is A Gang Injunction?
To start, we got out of the way just what a gang injunction is. "A gang injunction is a civil court order that the city pursues against a uh, known criminal enterprise," Russo said. "It's defined, the term "gang" is used - a street gang is the state law. It's a law that was passed in the 1980s by the California Legislature." Russo - who's level of understanding of the details of the history of the gang injunction "tool" shows how involved he's been in the issue - explains that the law was upheld as constitutional by the California Supreme Court in 1997. "It is a civil order in the manner of a restraining order," he says, "It allows a city attorney or a district attorney to bring an injunction against a group of individuals who have conspired to commit crimes or otherwise terrorize innocent people in a community." (Photo by CBS Channel 5, San Francisco.)
Russo says Oakland has had two such injunctions, one approved by the Alameda Superior Court in June after being created in February and is called The North Side Oakland Injunction.
The second injunction request filed in October impacts Oakland's Fruitvale neighborhood and involves a gang called The Nortenos.
Oakland's Better Injunction
Russo asserts that Oakland's injunctions are formed with a concern for due process and civil rights, a bit of a slap at the injunctions of other cities. "The others are constitutional. A city can go to a court and say 'We're going to prove this gang exists,' and leave it to the police to determine on the street, who's part of the gang. By contrast, Oakland uses the court system and what Russo says is "clear and convincing evidence" to say that a person's part of a gang. That, at least is supposed to, eliminate the possibility of racial profiling or at least reduce the chance of such habits working in this case.
In Oakland's system, the objective is to prove that the individual is part of the criminal organization. John says that in many cases the persons of interest self identify via Facebook, YouTube, and other ways.
Are Federal Dollars The Objective?
Michael Siegel contends that the gang injunction is a way to sweep more people of color up into the police prison system and gain Federal dollars in the process. Russo says that the idea that's true springs from Siegel's head. Russo says they don't get Federal or State dollars from using the gang injunctions. Russo blasts both Michael and his dad Dan Siegel for deliberately mis-reporting what the law says.
An Open Door To The Riders Case?
Russo says that the gang injunction is not an open door for another "Riders" case. In that unfortunate year 2000 episode in Oakland's history, four officers - Frank Vazquez, Clarence Mabanag, Jude Siapno and Matt Hornung - were accused of beating gang and crime suspects in West Oakland, and planting evidence on them.
Called "The Riders," their actions were revealed by a whistle-blower Oakland Police Officer, Keith Batt, (who is that no more) and resulted in a $10.5 million payout by the City of Oakland to West Oaklanders who were terrorized by the cops, and a Federal consent decree governing the Police Department that was to remain to 2010.
Again, Russo says that because Oakland's Gang Injunction System calls for in-court identification of suspects using judge, jury, and law, it takes the issue of determining who's part of a gang our of the hands of the Oakland Police on the street.
Injunctions Working?
Russo says the Oakland injunction's will be successful because they're focused on the individual. But the basic point is it's too early to tell if the injunctions are totally successul or not. It's in the process of being applied and is new. Russo says "It's not a be all end all. It's a tool." He says it comes up via the Neighborhood Crime Prevention Councils which are neighborhood watch groups like the one for Lake Merritt's Adams Point we call 14x. That group uses a Yahoo Group to share crime information with the Oakland Police representative for that area.
Gang Injunctions Racist?
On the idea that the Oakland Gang Injunction is racist, focusing on black and brown in poor Oakland neighborhoods, Russo gets pissed. "It's racist," he charges," to allow innocent people to be terrorized," by criminals in the areas that happen to be black and brown, and do nothing about it for fear of being called racist for taking action.
But Russo saves his greatest venom for the Siegels Dan and Michael and their law firm Siegel and Lee, who he says are going to Oakland Schools with bullhorns and openly lying to teenagers about the Oakland Gang Injunction saying that it's directed at them. "There's no one under 18 on the injunction list, and there never will be anyone under 18 on the injunction list," Russo blasts.
A Better Way
To this blogger, the real problem is that Oakland lacks a systems approach to deal with this problem. A crime is more than a police issue, it's an economic development and housing issue too. We should know if the people involved had jobs and if not, why not. Then work to get them employed. Instead, all we do is lock people up. It's massively stupid and only temporarily effective at best. The Oakland Gang Injunction is but one tool, the problem is the City of Oakland doesn't know how to use the other tools at its disposal, like Redevelopment, together with it. And by Redevelopment, I do not mean population removal, but population resource improvement.
Stay tuned.
17 Views
01:38:35 11/19/10
Wintergrasp - Rated BGs - BestBuy DevChat
[LESS INFO] 17 VIEWS | ADDED 01:38:35 11/19/10
Wintergrasp queuing changed in 4.0.3
In patch 4.0.3, Wintergrasp queuing was changed so that each battle attempts to match the factions at a 1-to-1 ratio. This is the exact system being used for Tol Barad in Cataclysm. While we understand that this inflates queue times for factions which are vastly overpopulated on select realms, we prefer this system over using Tenacity. In addition, the new system at least encourages playing on a faction that's better balanced against the opposing faction. With the old Wintergrasp functionality, players were almost encouraged to be on an overpopulated faction, further contributing to realm balance issues.
That said, we'll review realms with significant faction imbalances on a case-by-case basis in the event we need to take further action.
Rated Battlegrounds FAQ
World of Warcraft: Cataclysm is just around the corner -- and that means Rated Battlegrounds will soon be available. While Rated Battlegrounds will only be open to level-85 characters, we know many of you may still have some questions about this new system, so we’ve put together an FAQ to help address some of the more common inquiries we've seen.
Q. What are Rated Battlegrounds?
A. Like the Arena system, Rated Battlegrounds are an alternative way for players to battle against opponents of similar skill levels and accrue rating to purchase powerful PvP gear. Instead of competing in a 2v2, 3v3, or 5v5 bracket, though, you'll be testing your mettle in familiar environments like Arathi Basin and Eye of the Storm, as well as all-new Battlegrounds set to release in Cataclysm.
Q. How are Rated Battlegrounds structured?
A. Rated Battlegrounds are broken down into two brackets: 10v10 and 15v15. These brackets rotate weekly and can be viewed in-game via the calendar by activating the Battleground holiday filter.
Q. What Battlegrounds are eligible for Rated Battleground matches?
A. Warsong Gulch, Arathi Basin, Eye of the Storm, Strand of the Ancients, Battle for Gilneas, and Twin Peaks.
Q. What happened to the 25v25 bracket?
A. We decided to remove this bracket. We don't feel it's feasible to ask players to coordinate a group of 25 players for Rated Battlegrounds. If any player happens to drop group just before a match begins, the raid group would not be able to enter the battle. We anticipate most players or guilds will stick with fairly dedicated 10-player groups, and making the jump to 15-player groups shouldn't be too difficult.
Q. How can I queue for a Rated Battleground?
A. Before entering the queue, you must first create a raid with the full number of players required for the weekly bracket (10 or 15). Any level-85 player on your realm and of your faction may participate in the battle regardless of guild association.
Once you have a raid of the appropriate size, simply open up the PvP window, click on the Conquest tab, highlight "Rated Battleground," and then click "Join Battle."
Q. Can I queue up solo and just be matched with a Rated Battleground team?
A. No. You will need to first join a raid of the appropriate size and level before you can queue up for a Rated Battleground. Individual queuing will not be available for Rated Battlegrounds.
Q. Do all players in the raid group have to be from the same guild in order to queue for a Rated Battleground?
A. No. So long as the raid group size matches the weekly bracket and is comprised of level-85 players, you can queue up for a Rated Battleground no matter what guild you are in. Guild membership has no effect on the formation of Battleground teams.
Winning a Rated Battleground with a team composed of at least 80% guild members, however, will result in the additional benefit of guild experience gain for that guild.
Q. How can I tell if my Rated Battleground team meets the minimum guild requirement?
A. If you join a Rated Battleground with the minimum number of required guild members, a special guild banner will appear in the upper-left corner of the in-game mini-map. This will let you know if you are eligible for the bonus guild experience.
Q. What are the normal benefits of winning a Rated Battleground?
A. When you win a Rated Battleground, you will be rewarded Conquest points, up to your weekly cap. Weekly caps are individual for each player and are based on your highest single PvP rating from the previous week (the cap resets on Tuesdays). This rating can be derived from your 2v2, 3v3, or 5v5 Arena rating or your Rated Battleground rating.
Q. What Rated Battleground rating do players start out with?
A. Players start at zero Rated Battleground rating and progress upward from there. If you lose a battle, your Rated Battleground rating will only be reduced if that rating is currently higher than your Match Making Value (MMV). For the most part, a rating only goes up.
Q. What’s MMV?
A. Match Making Value (or MMV for short) is our best measure of an individual player's skill. MMV is the skill rating per format (2v2, 3v3, 5v5, Battleground) and per character that is used for matchmaking. It exists to help the matchmaking system create great matches as quickly as possible for all players. It's generally not a rating we show, with the exception of an average MMV for Arena teams.
Q. Will my MMV go down in the event of a Rated Battleground loss?
A. Yes; however, unlike Arenas, all players in a Rated Battleground team will win or lose the same amount of Rated Battleground rating per match depending on its outcome.
Q. Does MMV for Rated Battlegrounds function the same as it does in Arenas (i.e. does it go up more when you beat a higher-rated team, and go down more when you lose to a lower-rated team)?
A. Yes. Your MMV will go up faster if you defeat a Rated Battleground team with a higher average MMV.
Q. What’s the plan to prevent your Rated Battleground rating from skyrocketing at high win ratios? If your rating only goes down when it is above your MMV, it seems that ratings will just be high on average (compared to Arena).
A. If your Rated Battleground rating gets inflated much beyond your MMV, you’ll only receive a minimal amount of points when you win. Similarly, you’ll lose many more points after a defeat, until your Rated Battleground rating gets back in line with your MMV. This will prevent inflation.
Q. Can consumables and engineering items be used in Rated Battlegrounds?
A.Yes, but they will follow the same rules and restrictions as Arenas.
Q. Will Rated Battleground teams only be matched against other teams in their Battlegroup?
A. No. Rated Battlegrounds will be region-wide, meaning that when you queue for a Rated Battleground, you will have the opportunity to be matched against a team from any of our North American World of Warcraft realms.
Q. Are there any plans to reward players with the highest Rated Battleground rating, similar to Arenas?
A. Epic ground mounts will be rewarded at the end of each season to the top 0.5% of players according to Rated Battleground rating. Titles are also available as you gain rating in the system. The titles are rewarded directly from achievements earned from gaining the required rating.
Developer Chat Hosted by Best Buy (transcript)
Will the heirloom items scale to 85?
The current plan is to have heirloom items stop at level 80 at the moment.
I was wondering what new and exciting mounts there will be and what your favorite so far is?
Not surprisingly there are all kinds of new mounts, we have spectral wolf/horse mounts, a dark phoenix, a camel, the new alchemy mount that turns you into a drake can ride, among others. Also a scorpion for the horde and a lion for the alliance. My favorite has to be the camel though... i mean really, who doesn't want to be a camel jockey?!
Has Blizzard considered adding a "Tabards Tab" to the UI, so that tabard collectors can switch out tabards more effectively without having to take up bank and bag space? --Thanks! Deathunholy of Galakrond
We have talked about adding a tabard tab. We've talked about doing a closet tab to handle it. It isn't something we are adding for Cataclysm though.
Will it be as long of a wait to fight Deathwing as it was for Lich King?
Hopefully not, we definitely have a goal to get our content patches out more quickly than we have in the past, without sacrificing quality of course, we plan for deathwing to be the most amazing encounter we've ever made! =]
Are there any plans to potentially add queueing to the rated battlegrounds instead of it having to be a pre-made raid team? I was really excited when I first heard about this feature, but after reading the FAQ i was a bit disappointed with that design.
We're currently looking into the possibility of having players in the honor battleground queue be able to be called to action by groups that aren't quite full, but we're going to see how the current queue'ing works out first so, that isn't something that would be available just yet
Will you allow players to fill their quest log with say, 25 dailies, and then turn them in right after Midnight on December 7th to get a quick boost towards 85? This is how it worked in the beta, but some players are confused on whether it will work on Live. Thanks!
Regarding 25 daily quests to turn in when the expansion goes live, this is something players have been able to do for the last 2 expansions and we aren't talking about changing it now.
I understand the decision from an economic perspective but I was wondering if the deveopers were disappointed in the decision to allow race changes immediately following the release of the expansion.
Regarding allowing race/faction change on day one. Actually this wasn't an economic decision at all. This was a decision that the leadership team made. Our priority as a dev team is to allow players to play the game with their friends, the way they want too. We also talked about the fact that this is a week one problem. So we made the decision not to restrict anything.
Will Darnasus be re built to be a real tree or will it always look like a dead stump with trees at the top?
...but now that Deathwing is doing his thing it makes much more sense than it used to! ;]
Deathwing hates trees.
A lot of players I know are trying to plan out what characters to roll for the new expansion, and the big question is: Will there be ANY new realms tagging along with the release of Cataclysm? Some point to low pop realms as a reason against, but surely with the redux'd 1-60 experience and the droves of returning players desiring clean slates, there has never been a better time for a fresh realm or two?
We haven't decided exactly what the new realm decisions are yet, but we open new realms when there is player demand for them. One thing we can't do is plan all realms for day one. The goal is for realms to have good concurrency so everyone has a great game/matchmaking experience.
Could you comment on the plan for raids in Cataclysm? If i remember it was said that there would be smaller raids in cata but more of them. Would that mean like two small raids per patch or more patches in total?
The idea is that we'll have more raid environments, but fewer bosses in each environment, but a similar total number of raid bosses overall... if that makes sense. =] so, for cataclysm launch we have the skywall environment, the twilight bastion environment, and blackwing descent, versus having almost all the bosses in one environment like we did with naxrammas.
With the changes to the game environment itself, what new computer requirements will be optimal to run the game smoothly?
One of the things that is really important to us is a great gaming experience regardless of your hardware. While the system requirements do go up over time, we do want the experience on slower machines to be great. We do this by trying to add a lot of graphical options to allow players to control the experience from "runs fast" all the way to "looks great".
Will there be more than one Legendary weapon in Cata? Will there be a Caster DPS legendary? Any info or plans would be awesome =) Thanks!
It's likely there will be more than one legendary weapon, although it's too early to say for sure. We do, however, have a plan to do a caster dps staff soon.
Where did Uldum come from?
Egypt ;]
The idea with Uldum is that it has always been there, cloaked from the eyes of the players. The emergence of Deathwing has damaged some of the technology that kept it hidden. There is a story in the zone that explains this and what has been happening in the player absence.
With resource systems now broadened to include focus, rage, energy, and runic power as well as mana, and there being conditionals like enrages, holy power, combo points and runes, will classes that just use mana be getting similar treatment or remaining as they are?
Really that decision is made on a class-by-class, talent tree-by-tree basis. If we feel like the talent spec in question needs a broader resource management then we do it, but we don't like to unnecessarily complicate a spec's resource management if it isn't absolutely necessary.
Why is it that we are not able to use Archaeology before the expansion? I thought it was really cool how you guys released Inscription last time and would love to have the opportunity to level it before the expansion drops.
Using archeology before the expansion was something we talked about, but ended up adding everything about the profession to the "post sundered" world. Thus, you won't be able to use archeology before the sundering happens.
The first tier of Cataclysm raiding has 3 separate instances to tackle. Are you guys planning on keeping with the Burning Crusade model (SSC/TK, BT/Hyjal) and having multiple instances per raid tier? Will Deathwing have to share the spotlight with some other instance?
We'll evaluate that on a tier by tier basis. When we have awesome ideas that we can successfully make happen we'll do multiple environments, but it won't necessarily always be the case. We do have a super cool idea for the deathwing tier though... ...or at least so we hope. =]
What happened with the Worgen district in Stormwind?
We decided it didn't really fit very well, it was looking kind of awkwardly forced into the city. Plus deathwing would have destroyed it anyways.
As the world of Azeroth is changing I was wondering if the Death Knight zone will stay the same or will it also be affected by the cataclysm?
The death knight zone doesn't have any changes for Cataclysm.
I have been confused from the different posts for tier gear. Will there be three levels within each tier still or just heroic and normal and in either case will u just be getting them with points or will u still have to get certain things off drops off certain bosses to get the higher more heroic version of the tier gear?
There is still just normal and heroic difficulty for the raid and dungeon content, and the heroic gear has a higher item level than the corresponding normal gear
Do you feel faction imbalance is a problem at the moment? My queue is around 10-15 min at prime time as a member of the Horde and I know this is the case on at least two of the battlegroups. If so, do you think Worgen will fix the problem? And if they do not, will free faction changes ever be a possibility in the future on battlegroups or servers with a major problem?
We are working on some technology to further combine the PVP queues at server sites. This has been going on behind the scenes for a few weeks now in preparation for Cataclysm. Queue time is one of those things that gets a lot of attention and time, but will change significantly post Cata. Really good question.
What would you say was the hardest and/or easiest parts of developing this expansion? After all, many are saying this is the best expansion to date... So, what was the biggest challenge/easiest feat in creating it?
There have been huge challanges with this expansion, unlike any we've seen in the other two expansions. The scale of Cataclyms is huge for us, and something we didn't really expect when we started development. But we certainly feel like the effort has been worth it, and feel it's our best expansion so far.
Why does it seem the scorpion guild mount doesn't have a guild flag where the lion does? I was hoping to see Hordes of scorpions from our guild walking around with our tabard hanging from the tail like a flag behind them.
When riding a scorpion mount, your character displays holding a large standard with your guild symbol on it.
Why did you decide to make 310% mount speed purchasable in 4.0? It's a huge price for such a tiny speed upgrade, and used to work well as a just-above-vanity perk for people who completed the toughest achievements.
The primary reason was to equalize the awesome vanity mounts players had, and change the mechanic to one where you used the mount you were most excited about using. We wanted players to be able to see the mount players want, without considering the speed differential as a factor.
Will you allow players to change their login screen? I'd love to be able to use the Classic login screen, the unreleased one that was shown at Blizzcon, or perhaps a login screen of a previous expansion.
Players are not able to change their login screen.
How would a person get a Guild Mount? Would it be guild rep? If so how would that be calculated or obtained?
Once your guild gets to a high enough level and unlocks the guild mount, any player in the guild with a high enough guild reputation is able to buy the mount.
Will heirloom items work for goblins and worgens leveling from 1-80 at release?
Heirloom items will work perfectly for Worgen and Goblin characters! Enjoy!
Has there been any discussion of changing the heirloom items to true "Bind on Account" instead of the bind on server limitation that it has currently?
That is something we would like to do. Currently the servers mail carriers refuse to work together, and haven't worked out the economic terms from transferring mail from one server to another. One day we hope to resolve the union issues.
Will the option ever be available to change ones class, contingent upon what's currently available to the race restrictions at the time?
Never say never, but we don't currently have plans to do that.
There's any through about making account wise achievement, like Starcraft ones? It a reason for many players to not reroll/change mains since its look like a lot of work wasted when you switch your main char. Even changing to another char to help with one fight look a bit wrong now, if you are after achievements.
We do have plans to solve this problem, as it is limiting people from re-rolling for sure. This is something we want to solve, but don't have a good solution on how to do it at the moment.
Was there anything you guys regret not being able to include at launch? Possibly something that didn't have enough polish to it that me way see in the future? (You don't need to mention the Dance Studio at this point, really, it's okay)
Well... there is the dance studio. ;] There are of course always things we'd hoped to get into any patch/expansion that get pushed out until later. One example would be the idea to have a built-in atlas that details every encounter in each dungeon/raid. We're not super happy about the fact that the first time anyone encounters a new boss, the only way to learn about it (other than looking up strategies on the web) is to charge in and die a lot.
We'd love to give players some idea of what they're about to fight before they engage the boss. =]
Do honor points and Badges roll over into CATA, or do they reset to zero?
Yes, honor points and justice points carry over into cataclysm. Stock up now!
Is there any talks of maybe some faction cooperative campaigns? Since the cataclysm is threatening to destroy all life of azeroth, to me a logical response from the heroes of azeroth would be to set aside their differences and be able to work together in a raid. An Idea to maybe lessen the frequency of such groups is make the raid difficulty increase by choosing to work with the other faction, a sort of Heroic mode. Possibly even dual faction specific raids. Has there been any talks of such poss...
This is a common request, but not something we are looking to do. While there is a singular main bad guy in this expansion, the Horde and Alliance have their own unique challenges and agendas, and typically don't look to team up. After all it's the World of Warcraft, not the World of Peacecraft.
When designing expansions and content patches, do you have a list of new features to choose from that are planned out in advance or is there more of a brain storm session?
The feature set for each patch is determined by a combination of doing things (or finishing things) that we've been wanting to do for a while, along with completely new ideas that emerge as a result of the immediate needs of the game
The primary things you won't be able to do if you don't have Cataclysm are create a new Goblin/Worgen, level to 85, and fly in the orld world.
We like to stay as flexible as possible, so it's important to us to make sure that we aren't "over planned" into the future even though the real needs players have are changing
With the previous two expansions, the new content was actually on other continents, so if you didn't have the expansion, you just couldn't visit the continent. Since Cata is largely reworking of old-world content, however, how do you differentiate between someone with or without the xpac? What kinds of things will and won't be available to players don't have the upgrade?
See my answer above!
Will the 80 to 85 experience be closer to the 18hr mark or the 5 day mark that was 70-80?
That totally depends on the player to be honest, you'd be amazed by the differences in play patterns. That being said, somebody usually finds a way to level up very quickly.
What new feature(s) in WoW: Cataclysm are you guys most proud of?
I would have to say the 1-60 revamp, it's a ton of fun to play through the zones and an incredible amount of new content.
I'm most happy with the new Worgen and Goblin starting experiences. I think they are the best starting experience we've ever done, and that includes the death knight.
I have is why not have this latest expansion as a new territory like a Southrend similar to Northrend or a Moon body like Outlands instead of destroying Azeroth and Kalimdor? Were there limitations to expanding outwards or was this just to facelift the original game?
We make decisions like this on a case by case basis.. again depending on the needs of the game. In the case of Cataclysm, the world was due in for an overhaul, and we wanted to make everything fly-able, so it was important to flesh out any areas that were originally unfinished.
Can you clarify and confirm what will be available to players when 4.0.3a hits and what will be unavailable until 7th Dec?
4.0.3a will be the patch that actually causes the world to shatter and change forever. At that point you will be able to experience the new 1-60 leveling experience, as well as the new race/class combinations.
Is there an alternative mount for worgens that other races can ride
Worgen can ride the other mounts in the game, if that's what you're asking. They're not limited to their feral run.
With the level 1-80 Heirloom items, when Cataclysm is released will the xp gain work while leveling until you hit level 81? Or will XP gain be disabled for those on release?
They will not. Heirlooms stop granting their XP bonus at level 80. Not level 80.999999.
Will achievement points ever be able to be used to purchase any perks?
We have no plans to allow this. Achievements are a badge of honor only.
Druid
Is the Moonkin form for troll and worgen on the beta and ptr the final form or is it just a placeholder?
Final!
Mage
Right now, up to 50% of Ignite damage disappears due to the technical limitations of spells critting within certain timeframes. This has implications for Mage dps and the value of Mastery as a stat. Is overall damage being balanced to compensate and can we expect a solution in the near future?
We're resolving that by rolling up any "lost" ignite damage into the next ignite that overwrote it
Warlock
Are there any plans for a new Lock mount? I would love to see a possible flying mount for Locks..
One of the things we look at with mounts is broad appeal. While we do specific class mounts from time to time, most of the time we look to have mounts that all classes can use.
Warrior
Is Hit rating intended to tramp all other stats but Str for Fury till the 27% hardcap? Seems excessive
Generally speaking, we do balance hit rating to be the "best" stat until you're at the hit rating cap
21 Views
01:33:49 11/03/10
Due Date Starring Robert Downey Jr. and Zach Galifian
[LESS INFO] 21 VIEWS | ADDED 01:33:49 11/03/10
Due Date Starring Robert Downey Jr. and Zach Galifianakis This 1sr Look brought to you by Stevn Samblis www.icPlaces.com
THE IDEA
From director Todd Phillips, “Due Date” stars Robert Downey Jr. and Zach Galifianakis as two unlikely companions thrown together on a road trip that turns out to be as life-changing as it is outrageous.
Downey plays Peter Highman, an expectant first-time father whose wife's due date is only days away. As he hurries to catch a flight home to Los Angeles from Atlanta to be at her side for the birth, his best intentions go completely awry when a chance encounter with aspiring actor and disaster-magnet Ethan Tremblay (Galifianakis) leads to the two of them being tossed off the plane and placed on a no-fly list...while Peter's luggage, wallet and ID take off without him.
With no alternatives in sight, Peter is forced to hitch a ride with Ethan and his canine traveling companion on what turns out to be a cross-country road trip that will destroy several cars, numerous friendships and Peter's last nerve.
The comedy “Due Date” also stars Michelle Monaghan (“Made of Honor”), Juliette Lewis (“The Switch”) and Academy Award® winner Jamie Foxx (“Ray”).
Directed by Todd Phillips (“The Hangover”), the film is produced by Phillips and Dan Goldberg (“The Hangover,” “Old School”), from a screenplay by Alan R. Cohen & Alan Freedland and Adam Sztykiel & Todd Phillips, story by Alan R. Cohen & Alan Freedland. Thomas Tull, Susan Downey and Scott Budnick serve as executive producers.
“Due Date” reunites Phillips with key members of his filmmaking team from “The Hangover,” including director of photography Lawrence Sher, production designer Bill Brzeski, editor Debra Neil-Fisher, composer Christophe Beck and costume designer Louise Mingenbach.
ABOUT THE PRODUCTION
“If you're going to travel with me to Los Angeles I have to give you a couple of guidelines. Number one: don't ask me a single question.” - Peter Highman
“It's a simple idea—two mismatched guys forced to go on a road trip together,” declares “Due Date” director and co-writer Todd Phillips. “Robert Downey Jr. is Peter Highman, an architect on his way back to L.A. from a business trip in Atlanta. He's on a tight schedule because his wife is expecting their first child and the date is all set. Everything is fine until he gets tangled up at the airport with a wannabe actor named Ethan Tremblay, who somehow gets the both of them booted off the plane and grounded for the foreseeable future.”
At that point, “simple” flies right out the window.
Stranded without cash, credit, ID or time, Peter finds himself in the galling position of having to hitch a ride home with a guy he'd rather take a swing at—Ethan. The person he holds responsible for his predicament in the first place is now behind the wheel of a rental car and offering him the passenger seat.
Though clearly not his best option, it's Peter's only option.
At first grateful for the company, Ethan soon learns that his tightly wound traveling companion is not going to be any fun at 20 Questions, nor generally receptive to the concept of going with the flow. Meanwhile, Peter realizes he's just joined forces with a guy who can casually ruin his life in more ways than he could ever imagine.
“If there really was somebody like Ethan around, he'd have been strangled in his sleep long ago,” Downey attests. “He's like a laser beam that focuses on the one thing that will drive you crazy the most, the kind of guy who will eat a whole plate of waffles before mentioning he's allergic to waffles. I'm sure a lot of people know someone like this, someone who is perfectly wired to activate all of their irritation buttons.”
Granted, Peter has a short fuse to begin with. “He's kind of an edgy, controlling, judgmental guy with some anger-management issues. And who better to help him explore those issues than Ethan Tremblay? High-strung as he is normally, Peter is now facing the birth of his first child and is thrown into this nightmare, so it's all amped up,” Downey adds.
Ethan, by comparison, gives new meaning to the term laid-back. Zach Galifianakis, who stars as the human lightning rod for trouble, observes, “Nothing affects him, no insult seems to penetrate. Ethan lives in his own head. He has no talent, and he's on his way to Hollywood to capitalize on that. These two guys meet through a series of unfortunate circumstances that are entirely Ethan's fault, to which he is completely oblivious. And every bad thing that happens from that point on is Ethan's fault. Everything.”
Says Phillips, “People always cite chemistry in these kinds of movies. They say it's the chemistry between the two lead actors that make it work. I believe what makes ‘Due Date' work is anti-chemistry; it's two guys with zero connection and zero rapport, constantly butting heads, that generates both the tension and the comedy.”
Dan Goldberg, who has produced all of Phillips' feature films since their 2000 collaboration on the hit comedy “Road Trip,” says, “The ride develops its own momentum as one thing after another happens to impede their progress.”
At the same time, their cross-country trek takes Peter and Ethan on another, more unpredictable journey than what they face geographically—one that leads them to discover as much about themselves as each other.
Provided that they survive it.
Scott Budnick, an executive producer on the film, says, “There's real emotional substance to the story and real issues, and Robert and Zach do a phenomenal job in delivering both the humor and the emotional stakes. My favorite comedies are always the ones that have heart.”
As infuriating as Ethan can be, whether mismanaging his funds, missing potty breaks or launching their car off an overpass, Phillips concedes he has his good points, citing “honesty, innocence and a humanity that makes you connect with him and root for him despite it all. Ethan is a complex character. He has just lost his father, who was his best friend, and is having a tough time dealing with that. There's an underlying desperation in everything he does and an eagerness to please to the point where just making friends means trying too hard.”
“A lot of what he does is to avoid being lonely,” says Galifianakis.
Peter, on the other hand, may come across like a self-assured, aggressive control freak but, says Phillips' “Due Date” screenwriting partner Adam Sztykiel, “You sense that his behavior comes from an emotional place and from issues he has yet to work out, that are revealed in the story. Not far beneath the alpha male posture is his own vulnerability and how terrified he is to be responsible for a child.”
“As a parent,” Downey offers, “I know the big question is how are you going to manage and protect something that you have no experience with?”
Playing on that theme were screenwriters Alan R. Cohen and Alan Freedland, who also have story credit on “Due Date.” “Peter's comfort zone is when he's in control. And everything that happens in this movie is about losing control; from his inability to get back home to the larger issue of his impending fatherhood—and whether or not he's ready for it,” Cohen says.
“We wanted to put him into a situation where he had to travel across the country with someone who was effectively a child,” adds Freedland.
Not that it would lessen Peter's pain, stress and frustration if he knew it might be pain, stress and frustration with a purpose. Still...
“When I read the script, I was moved,” recalls executive producer Susan Downey. “It's so funny and yet so human. You want a comedy to have that grounding, in the way that you want a drama to have some humor. In ‘Due Date,' though his experience with Ethan, Peter finds his human side and gets ready for the birth of his own child. It's about him becoming a man before becoming a father.”
“Guess who's got the Subaru Impreza? Me! Guess who's got the winning personality? Me! What do you have? You have a nice hairline. Fine. You have a strong jaw. But I gotta tell you, mister, your personality needs some work.” - Ethan Tremblay
Despite the “anti-chemistry” Phillips had in mind for their characters, Galifianakis and Downey generated some genuine positive chemistry from the start.
Downey vividly recalls their first meeting. “I was in Venice, California, and some weird guy walks by and says, ‘Hi, I think I'm doing a movie with you.' And I was thinking, ‘I might have to punch this guy.' Then I realized, ‘Oh my God...that's Zach.'
“Later, he came over for dinner so we could talk about the script,” Downey continues. “I asked if he had any dietary restrictions and he sent me a note detailing everything he'd need, like bottled water flown in from Barstow. It's one of my favorite things. I read it to people at parties.”
“We kind of took care of each other on the set—very different from what was going on in the movie. We'd talk every morning about how to make a scene work. It was great. Funny how hanging out with a legitimate actor raises your game,” Galifianakis returns.
“I always respond to projects based on the casting potential,” says Phillips. “I immediately start seeing a movie from the standpoint of casting it. For ‘Due Date,' I knew that if I could get Robert and Zach we could go full out.”
Phillips marks his second collaboration with Galifianakis on “Due Date,” following the comedian's breakout starring role in last year's international blockbuster hit “The Hangover,” that became the highest-grossing R-rated comedy of all time. He says, “Zach and I click because he knows I really get his humor, which can be pretty outrageous.”
In “Due Date,” however, Galifianakis creates a character that calls for a great deal of subtlety. Notes Budnick, “Every little nuance of personality and each detail—the way he walks, the way he talks, the way he thinks—Zach has figured out how Ethan Tremblay would do these things and it's reflected in every single moment he's on screen.”
At the same time, there is a core of unpredictability to the performance. “Zach brings a sense of spontaneity and danger and I think comedy is best with an undercurrent of danger so that you never know exactly what's going to happen or what someone will say or do. In that sense, he's the perfect comedic actor,” says Phillips.
And “Due Date” gives him a worthy antagonist in Downey.
“Not only is Robert a world-class actor but he's naturally funny. I wouldn't think of casting Robert Downey Jr. as anyone's straight-man,” says Phillips. “In ‘Due Date' there is no straight-man because they're both screwed up in their own ways. And the beauty of Zach and Robert playing off each other is that they're both funny but their humor comes from such different places and their styles are so different that you're not mining the same vein.”
Downey, Galifianakis, Phillips and Sztykiel “took the script apart and put it back together,” says Goldberg. “Every day there were new things that touched me and made me laugh. I believe ‘Due Date' audiences will see aspects of Robert and Zach that they haven't seen before and things that will surprise them. As a filmmaker, I'm always looking for that.”
It's a philosophy and a process that Phillips respects. “So much of comedy happens on the day you shoot,” he says, and offers the example of the airplane luggage bin scene. “It just happened as we were looking at the seating and the overhead bin and realized how that could bring them really close in a small space. Zach said, ‘What if I rub up against him while I'm reaching into the bin?' And I said, ‘What if you pull your shirt up first to wipe your glasses so it's just your bare stomach?' Comedy isn't math; it's jazz.”
Says Robert Downey Jr., “I start every day thinking here's what will happen if you do it by the book and here's what can happen if you bend yourself over backwards and forwards again and try to invite the unimagined into the situation. The set had energy like a living being; it was evolving all the time. And what's great and so funny about Todd is that sometimes, with him, it's so wrong, it's right.”
That point of view resonates with Galifianakis, who admits to being right alongside the director in appreciating “the inappropriate,” adding, “Todd and I have the same sense of humor. We like stuff that has a bit of a taboo element—things that are funny specifically because you're not supposed to laugh at them. As a stand-up comic, I love it when audiences laugh before they realize maybe they shouldn't have, and then start to question themselves.
“That's not to say that you can't be offended by something Todd or I do in a film,” he continues with mock concern. “I'm often offended by the things I do in movies.”
“You'd better check yourself before you wreck yourself.” - Ethan
“What I like about road trip movies is that essentially your characters are working without a net. You just throw them out into the elements and say, ‘Deal with it,'” says Phillips. “You don't have the support system of friends and family. People come in and out of your life for intense but fleeting moments.”
To help facilitate that, ‘Due Date' features a stellar supporting cast of characters who offer Peter and Ethan a range of memorable and often thought-provoking encounters along the way.
The first of these is Heidi, a freelance medical supplier with questionable parenting skills, tracked down by Ethan at her Birmingham home to restock his supply of “glaucoma medication.” It's one of many detours that takes them miles out of their way.
Heidi is played by Juliette Lewis, in her third screen role for Phillips. Lewis was touring in London with her band when the director called. “We worked it out so that between London and Helsinki I made a pit stop in a place I didn't even know existed—Las Vegas, New Mexico—for a couple of days, to play a pot dealer,” she recounts. “When Todd calls it's a game of trust. I don't know the role, I don't know what he wants me to do, but I know it's going to be good and it's going to be funny.”
Oscar® winner Jamie Foxx, who recently starred with Downey in “The Soloist,” comes aboard in the role of Peter's old college buddy, Darryl, now living in Dallas.
“It was a real coup to get Jamie to come in as Peter's friend—and, according to Ethan, possibly the real father of his soon-to-be-born child,” says Robert Downey Jr., alluding to yet another way in which Ethan manages to get under Peter's skin.
Within minutes of entering Darryl's home, Ethan spots a few photos, asks a few questions, adds two and two, and comes up with five. “He learns that Darryl is very close with Peter's wife and jumps to all kinds of conclusions. Then, he plants the seed of doubt in Peter's mind,” says Phillips.
“Darryl comes into the picture to do these guys a favor and it's all great...until it's not. Then things get very weird, very fast,” Foxx says of the ensuing scene that lands Peter and Ethan back on the pavement. “Working with Robert, Zach and Todd, you'd never know what to expect, but you could always count on it being a crazy, creative, collaborative experience.”
The travelers also run afoul of an ill-tempered Western Union clerk, played by Danny McBride; a paragon of Airport Security, played by Grammy Award-winning hip hop producer/musician and actor Rza; and an exceptionally indifferent TSA agent, played by Matt Walsh, the ER doc from “The Hangover.”
Meanwhile, back home anxiously awaiting Peter's return is his wife, Sarah, played by Michele Monaghan, reuniting with Downey for the first time since they teamed in the 2005 comedy thriller “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.”
“Sarah is just about 8 months and 29 days pregnant with her first baby and obviously very anxious,” Monaghan offers. “Her husband is not only m.i.a but is also traveling cross- country with a wild man whose only concern is if she has any ‘recommendations for someone who could give him a perm'?!? Clearly, the baby's arrival looks more promising than daddy's.”
“Sonny, stop. Sonny...No. Stop. Good boy.” - Ethan
Before circumstances force these two to share a rental car, Ethan already has a traveling companion: a French Bulldog named Sonny, who becomes the pair's third wheel and a point of calm amidst the escalating mayhem.
The role of Sonny, though indisputably male, was played almost entirely by a young female Frenchie trained by Mark Harden, of Boone's Animals for Hollywood.
The introduction of a dog into the script came about as Phillips sought to further ratchet up the tension between his two leads and decided that one of them should be a dog person and the other...not so much. After perusing renowned animal trainer Boone Narr's company website, he spotted what he was looking for in Bodie, an adult male French Bulldog with the big ears and wide-eyed comical expression typical of the breed.
Unfortunately, at 26 pounds, Bodie was too heavy to be constantly toted around on one arm, so, with only weeks before filming started, Harden launched a full-scale and very specific search for a six-to-10-month-old, cream-colored, slightly undersized French Bulldog. He first tried the rescue agencies, then tapped into a nationwide network of breeders before finding someone who had a full-grown female weighing in at 15 pounds.
Though Galifianakis jokes that Sonny was trained to fall asleep at the word ‘action,' Harden takes no credit for the animal's relaxed demeanor, conceding, “She's just a very settled and well-adjusted dog. She doesn't get worked up. I think she just learned early on that most of her scenes were going to take awhile and she might as well catch a nap.”
Galifianakis, who bonded with his canine co-star despite an allergy to dogs, says, “I was kind of envious at her ability to fall asleep at work. And she snores like me.”
But as much as the camera loved Sonny, there was one special trick she just couldn't manage, that required a one-day command performance from Bodie.
Harden carefully describes how the trick serendipitously made its way into the story. “French Bulldogs are unable to groom themselves in certain areas as other dogs do. I don't know if it's a combination of their short neck and wide shoulders, but they can't twist backwards.”
Consequently, some of them use their paws, “a natural behavior that Bodie spontaneously offered in front of Todd at that first meeting, while we were talking,” the trainer recalls. “As soon as he saw it, there was no turning back. He said, ‘Oh my God, can you train him to do that?”
“Am I okay? Do I look okay? I have a broken arm. I have three cracked ribs. I have seven stitches in my armpit. Does that answer your question? - Peter
“I love physical comedy,” says Phillips, who happily extends the parameters of physical comedy in “Due Date” to include a multi-vehicle freeway chase, an end-over-end car flip and a shoot-out with some seriously t'd-off border security agents.
“For me,” Phillips continues, “It's fun to include shocking moments that make you say, ‘Whoa, where did that come from?' We shot the car sequence in Las Cruces, New Mexico. They let us break through the overpass and land on the road below. We closed the highway for several days to prepare and execute it but, frankly, you never know how a stunt is going to land, so we set up four or five cameras and let it happen. The car flipped back up on its wheels, but we were prepared for it to do anything.” Filming “Due Date” was a road trip in itself. Location shooting began in and around Atlanta and moved generally westward with the story, touching upon Dallas and the Texas interior and various locations in New Mexico, including Las Vegas and Santa Fe, which the filmmakers covered from a base of operations in Albuquerque, before touching down in California.
“The way the script breaks down, they have to get across the country. in a couple of days so you really need to take the southern route, which is not as long as the northern, so it makes sense in terms of driving time,” says production designer Bill Brzeski.
A separate helicopter unit covered the Grand Canyon for a key scene with Peter and Ethan perched on its rim, overlooking the Colorado River snaking its way through, far below. Between takes, busloads of visitors from all over the world arrived to tour the area and there was some concern on the part of the crew that they might forget to watch where they were going once they caught sight of Downey and Galifianakis.
The film's opening airport scenes were a combination of several elements. The plane cabin mockup was constructed on Stage 11 at Warner Bros. Studios; the curb where Peter's and Ethan's cars pull up was shot at Ontario Airport in California; and the screening area and other terminal interiors were built inside the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta.
Other practical locations in Georgia included a construction site in Atlanta's Buckhead neighborhood; a Waffle House and portions of Highway 27 in Bremen; various locations along I-75 and I-675, GA-route 20 and the Metropolitan Parkway; the Gwinnett Medical Center in Lawrenceville; the 1010 Condos on Atlanta's historic Peachtree Street; and a recently closed rest stop along I-985.
Darryl's home in Dallas was an amalgam of exteriors captured in Buckland, Georgia, and interiors shot in Encino, California. “You're never really anywhere you're supposed to be,” Brzeski says. “Las Vegas, New Mexico was built around the turn of the century and doesn't look like what you'd expect to see in New Mexico. There's a lot of Victorian architecture that doesn't match the typical Santa Fe look so buildings can substitute for almost any American small town, be it Texas or Ohio. We used it as Alabama for Heidi's house.”
The southwestern city also provided the site for one of the film's larger set pieces; a checkpoint at the U.S./Mexico border that was constructed on a bridge spanning a portion of Route 25 in Las Vegas, under which Brzeski and his team formed an encampment of Federali trailers based on actual Mexican Customs vehicles. Interiors of the office and a trailer, as well as a gimbal rig that figures into the action, were built on stage and another rotating rig, dubbed “car-on-a-spit” by one crew member, was designed for the scene in which Peter and Alan take their rented Subaru for a real spin.
All this action takes its toll on the luggage-deprived Peter, forced to spend the entire journey in one increasingly rumpled, torn, stained and slept-in suit. For costume designer Louise Mingenbach, that meant maintaining 20 versions of the suit in five basic stages of deterioration. “Definitely, the story evolves through Peter's clothes,” she says.
With Ethan's wardrobe she was able to have more fun, brainstorming with Galifianakis, who, she says, “has no vanity. Some actors want to look beautiful all the time but that's not Zach. He will wear whatever works for his character, even if it's acid-washed jeans two sizes too small.”
“I really like to look bad in movies,” Galifianakis agrees. “Originally Ethan was dressed like a hippie but I wanted him to be more arty—or, what he would think is arty. He has a perm, he has his dance shoes and his really bad tight jeans and the scarf as an accessory; he wants to be an actor and this is how he thinks actors dress.”
“Due Date” marks Mingenbach's fifth collaboration with Phillips, who says, “I have a great team. I've worked with essentially the same people throughout my career. We write some crazy thing and then I turn to my guys and say, ‘Can we pull this off?'”
Among those previous colleagues rejoining the director on “Due Date” were cinematographer Lawrence Sher, editor Debra Neil-Fisher and composer Christophe Beck.
Scott Budnick points out, “‘Due Date' marks the 10-year anniversary of ‘Road Trip,' Todd's first movie and my first job out of college. We filmed ‘Road Trip' from September to December 1999, and ‘Due Date' from September to December of 2009.”
For Phillips, it's a genre full of possibilities.
“I've been in some strange situations on the road,” confesses screenwriter Sztykiel, a Los Angelino who identified in some ways with Peter. “Here's a guy who's a little sheltered and doesn't have exposure to the 3,000 miles that exist east of his home, and it was fun to force him out of his bubble. It's uncomfortable, but you come away with a better sense of your place in the world. My advice for travelers? Go to the bathroom. Make sure your traveling partner has gone to the bathroom. Don't spend all your money on illegal substances. Don't say ‘bomb' on an airplane. Don't open your car door in traffic. Pretty simple stuff.” Sure. In hindsight.
“There's something about a road trip that brings out the extremes of human reactions and emotions,” says Phillips. “It's a great opportunity for surprises and for people to learn things about themselves or each other that they'd never see if they weren't being pushed to their limits, or having to make the kinds of quick, instinctive decisions you have to make on the road.”
At the same time, the road itself can be almost incidental. “No matter where we are in ‘Due Date,' no matter what's kind of chaos they're going through,” he concludes, “it all comes down to these two guys working out their issues.”
ABOUT THE CAST
ROBERT DOWNEY JR. (Peter Highman), a two-time Academy Award® nominee, earned his most recent Oscar® nomination, for Best Supporting Actor, for his work in Ben Stiller's comedy hit “Tropic Thunder.” His performance as Kirk Lazarus, a white Australian actor playing a black American character, also brought him Golden Globe, BAFTA Award and Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Award® nominations. Downey was honored with his first Oscar® nomination, in the category of Best Actor, for his portrayal of Charlie Chaplin in Richard Attenborough's acclaimed 1992 biopic “Chaplin,” for which he also won BAFTA Award and London Film Critics Awards and received a Golden Globe Award nomination.
Earlier this year, Downey received another Golden Globe nomination for his performance in the title role of the 2009 hit “Sherlock Holmes,” under the direction of Guy Ritchie. Downey returns to the role of the legendary detective in a new Sherlock Holmes adventure, currently slated for release in December 2011.
In summer 2008, Downey received praise from critics and audiences for his performance in the title role of the blockbuster hit “Iron Man,” under the direction of Jon Favreau. Bringing the Marvel Comics superhero to the big screen, “Iron Man” earned more than $585 million worldwide, making it one of the year's biggest hits. Downey reprised his role in the successful sequel, which was released this past spring. He returns to the role in Josh Whedon's upcoming actioner “The Avengers,” which teams Iron Man with other Marvel Comics superheroes.
Downey's other recent films include “The Soloist,” opposite Jamie Foxx; “Charlie Bartlett”; David Fincher's “Zodiac,” alongside Jake Gyllenhaal and Mark Ruffalo; Richard Linklater's “A Scanner Darkly,” with Keanu Reeves, Winona Ryder and Woody Harrelson; “Fur,” opposite Nicole Kidman in a film inspired by the life of revered photographer Diane Arbus; and “Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang.” He also shared in a SAG Award® nomination as a member of the ensemble cast of George Clooney's true-life drama “Good Night, and Good Luck,” and in a Special Jury Prize won by the ensemble cast of “A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints,” presented at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival.
Downey's long list of film credits also includes “Gothika”; “The Singing Detective”; Curtis Hanson's “Wonder Boys”; “U.S. Marshals”; Mike Figgis' “One Night Stand”; Jodie Foster's “Home for the Holidays”; “Richard III”; Oliver Stone's “Natural Born Killers”; Robert Altman's “The Gingerbread Man” and “Short Cuts,” sharing in a Golden Globe Award for Best Ensemble for the latter; “Heart and Souls,” “Soapdish,” “Air America,” “Chances Are,” “True Believer,” “Less Than Zero,” “Weird Science,” “Firstborn,” and “Pound,” in which he made his debut under the direction of Robert Downey Sr.
On the small screen, Downey made his primetime debut in 2001 when he joined the cast of the series “Ally McBeal.” For his work on the show, he won the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor in a Series, Miniseries or Motion Picture Made for Television and a Screen Actors Guild Award® for Outstanding Actor in a Comedy Series. In addition, Downey was nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series.
On November 23, 2004, Robert Downey Jr. released his debut album, “The Futurist,” on the Sony Classics label. The album, containing eight original songs, showcased his singing talents.
Downey and his wife, Susan, just formed Team Downey, a production company based at Warner Bros.
ZACH GALIFIANAKIS (Ethan Tremblay) moved to New York City after failing his last college course by one point at North Carolina State University. He got his start performing his brand of humor in the back of a hamburger joint in Times Square, graduating to doing stand-up at night in clubs and coffee houses in the city. While working as a bus boy, he got his first acting job on the NBC sitcom “Boston Common.”
Galifianakis' breakout role came in Todd Phillips' blockbuster hit “The Hangover,” the highest-grossing R-rated comedy of all time. He will reunite with Phillips and cast-mates Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms and Justin Bartha in “The Hangover 2,” slated for a 2011 release.
He also stars in “It's Kind of a Funny Story,” which premieres at the 2010 Toronto Film Festival and opens this fall. Recently, he also co-starred with Steve Carell and Paul Rudd in Jay Roach's comedy “Dinner for Schmucks.” Galifianakis' additional film credits include the Jerry Bruckheimer-produced hit “G-Force”; the indie feature “Youth in Revolt,” with Michael Cera, Steve Buscemi and Ray Liotta; a cameo in Jason Reitman's Oscar®- nominated film “Up in the Air”; “What Happens in Vegas,” with Cameron Diaz and Ashton Kutcher; and the critically acclaimed true-life drama “Into the Wild,” from director Sean Penn.
On the small screen, Galifianakis just started the second season of the HBO comedy “Bored to Death,” with Jason Schwartzman and Ted Danson. In addition, he hosted the critically acclaimed VH1 talk show “Late World with Zach,” and also wrote and starred in “Dog Bites Man” for Comedy Central.
Zach also has an internet talk show entitled “Between Two Ferns.” He has interviewed such guests as Steve Carell, Natalie Portman, Conan O'Brien and Charlize Theron.
When not filming, Galifianakis lives on his farm in North Carolina.
MICHELLE MONAGHAN (Sarah Highman) most recently starred to great critical acclaim in the independent film “Trucker,” which world premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival. She received the Best Actress Awards from the San Diego Film Critics Society, Ft. Lauderdale International Film Festival and Vail Film Festival. Monaghan also served as executive producer on the film.
She will next been seen in Sofia Coppola's “Somewhere,” “Source Code,” opposite Jake Gyllenhaal for director Duncan Jones and “Machine Gun Preacher,” opposite Gerard Butler for director Marc Forster.
Monaghan made her feature film debut in “Perfume,” directed by Michael Rymer, then played Richard Gere's secretary in Adrian Lyne's “Unfaithful.” She followed with supporting roles in Fred Schepisi's “It Runs in the Family,” with Michael Douglas; “Winter Solstice,” with Anthony LaPaglia; Paul Greengrass' “The Bourne Supremacy”; and Doug Liman's “Mr. & Mrs. Smith.”
It was her starring role in “Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang,” opposite Robert Downey Jr. and Val Kilmer, which brought Monaghan to the attention of audiences around the world. She also received rave reviews for her performance in the film, directed by Shane Black. Next, Monaghan joined Charlize Theron and Frances McDormand in “North Country” for director Niki Caro. She then starred in “Gone Baby Gone,” with Casey Affleck and Morgan Freeman; “The Heartbreak Kid,” opposite Ben Stiller; “Mission: Impossible III,” with Tom Cruise and Philip Seymour Hoffman for director J.J. Abrams; opposite Patrick Dempsey in the romantic comedy “Made of Honor”; and in D.J. Caruso's hit thriller “Eagle Eye,” alongside Shia LaBeouf.
JULIETTE LEWIS (Heidi) received Best Supporting Actress Oscar® and Golden Globe nominations for her layered performance as adolescent Danielle, opposite Robert De Niro, in Martin Scorsese's thriller “Cape Fear.”
She reunites with Todd Phillips on “Due Date,” having previously collaborated on “Old School” and “Starsky & Hutch.”
Lewis was most recently seen alongside Hilary Swank, Melissa Leo, Minnie Driver and Sam Rockwell in the independent drama “Conviction,” which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival and opened in October. Prior to that, Lewis appeared in the romantic comedy “The Switch,” alongside Jennifer Aniston, Jason Bateman and Patrick Wilson. She also starred alongside Orlando Bloom, Mark Ruffalo and Laura Linney in Ruffalo's directorial debut, “Sympathy for Delicious,” which took home the US Dramatic Special Jury Prize at this year's Sundance Film Festival. Last year, she played roller derby girl Dinah Might opposite Ellen Page, Marcia Gay Harden, Kristen Wiig, Jimmy Fallon and Eve in Drew Barrymore's directorial debut, “Whip It.”
Among Lewis' many other films are Gary Marshall's “The Other Sister”; “Evening Star,” with Shirley MacLaine; Quentin Tarantino's vampire tale “From Dusk Till Dawn,” opposite George Clooney; the sci-fi actioner “Strange Days,” alongside Ralph Fiennes and Angela Bassett; Nora Ephron's comedy “Mixed Nuts,” opposite Steve Martin and Adam Sandler; Oliver Stone's controversial “Natural Born Killers”; “What's Eating Gilbert Grape,” with Johnny Depp and Leonardo DiCaprio”; “Romeo Is Bleeding”; “Kalifornia”; Woody Allen's “Husbands and Wives”; “Crooked Hearts” and “National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation,” with Chevy Chase.
At 12, Lewis landed her first leading role in the Showtime miniseries “Home Fires.” At 16, her performance in the critically acclaimed longform “Too Young to Die?” led to film roles. Lewis' other television credits include Showtime's “My Louisiana Sky,” for which she received an Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Performer in a Children's Special, and Mira Nair's HBO film “Hysterical Blindness,” alongside Uma Thurman and Gena Rowlands. She also had recurring roles in several series.
In addition to film and television, Lewis's music career continues to evolve. Her third studio album, Terra Incognito, was released in fall 2009.
JAMIE FOXX (Darryl) won an Academy Award® for Best Actor in 2005 for his portrayal of the legendary Ray Charles in the Taylor Hackford-directed biopic “Ray.” Foxx also won a Golden Globe Award, a Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Award®, a BAFTA Award, and an NAACP Image Award, as well as numerous critics' association awards, and shared in a SAG Award® nomination received by the film's ensemble cast.
Also in 2005, Foxx garnered Oscar®, Golden Globe Award, SAG Award®, BAFTA Award, and Image Award nominations, in the Best Supporting Actor category, for his work in Michael Mann's dramatic thriller “Collateral,” in which he starred with Tom Cruise. That same year, Foxx also earned Golden Globe Award and SAG Award® nominations and won an Image Award for Best Actor in a Television Movie for his portrayal of condemned gang member-turned-Nobel Peace Prize nominee Stan “Tookie” Williams in the FX Network movie “Redemption.”
Foxx has a number of films upcoming, including the Seth Gordon-directed comedy “Horrible Bosses”; F. Gary Gray's action thriller “Kane & Lynch,” opposite Bruce Willis; and the comedy “Skank Robbers,” which he also wrote and is producing. His recent film credits also include Garry Marshall's hit ensemble romantic comedy “Valentine's Day,” the thriller “Law Abiding Citizen,” Joe Wright's drama “The Soloist,” the thriller “The Kingdom” and Bill Condon's screen adaptation of the Broadway musical “Dreamgirls.” Foxx also executive produced the film “Life Support,” starring Queen Latifah, which closed the 2007 Sundance Film Festival.
Foxx's big-screen break came in 1999 when Oliver Stone cast him as a star quarterback in “Any Given Sunday.” In 2001, he co-starred with Will Smith in Michael Mann's acclaimed biopic “Ali.” His additional film credits include Michael Mann's “Miami Vice,” with Colin Farrell; Sam Mendes' Gulf War drama “Jarhead,” with Jake Gyllenhaal; “Stealth”; Antoine Fuqua's “Bait”; “Booty Call”; “The Truth about Cats & Dogs”; and “The Great White Hype.”
Foxx first came to fame as a comedian. After spending time on the comedy circuit, he joined Keenan Ivory Wayans, Jim Carrey, Damon Wayans and Tommy Davidson in the landmark Fox sketch comedy series “In Living Color.” In 1996, he launched his own series, “The Jamie Foxx Show,” which was one of the top-rated shows on The WB Network during its five-year run. Foxx also served as co-creator and executive producer, and directed several episodes. His first HBO Comedy Special, “Jamie Foxx: I Might Need Security,” premiered in February 2002.
In addition to his acting success, Foxx has also achieved a thriving music career. His first album, Unpredictable, topped the charts in late 2005 and early 2006 and spawned the NBC special “Unpredictable,” in which he performed with such artists as Mary J. Blige, Common, Snoop Dogg, The Game and Angie Stone. He has been nominated for eight Billboard Music Awards, three Grammy Awards, a Soul Train Music Award, and two American Music Awards, winning for Favorite Male Artist. Foxx's latest album, 2008's Intuition, debuted at number three on the Billboard 200 chart and spawned the chart-topping single “Blame It.” Foxx recently wrapped up his “Blame It Tour” in support of the album. On January 31, 2010 Jamie Foxx and T-Pain's “Blame It” won in the category of Best R%B performance by a duo/group with vocals at the 52nd Annual Grammy Awards.
ABOUT THE FILMMAKERS
TODD PHILLIPS (Director/Screenwriter/Producer) most recently directed and produced the 2009 blockbuster hit comedy “The Hangover,” starring Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, Zach Galifianakis and Justin Bartha. The film became the highest grossing R-rated comedy of all time and won a Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture – Comedy or Musical. He is currently in production on the much-anticipated sequel, “The Hangover 2,” which reunites the cast.
Phillips started his career as a documentary filmmaker, inspired by humor taken from everyday reality and the belief that the truth is often stranger than fiction.
His first film, “Hated,” portrayed the revolting antics of extreme punk rocker G.G. Allin and became an instant underground sensation. It was released in the summer of 1994 and went on to become the highest grossing student film of its time.
He followed that in 1998 with “Frat House,” a documentary that he produced and directed for HBO's popular “America Undercover” series. “Frat House” premiered at the 1998 Sundance Film Festival and won the Grand Jury Prize for documentary features. The unflinching exposé of life in fraternities created a public controversy that eventually caused the film to be shelved by HBO. Phillips still hopes to release it in the future.
After meeting producer Ivan Reitman at Sundance, Phillips made his crossover to features with 2000's “Road Trip,” which established him as a new force in comedy. He simultaneously produced and directed “Bittersweet Motel,” a documentary on musical cult phenomenon Phish.
In one way or another, Phillips' films explore the nature of male relationships, and in doing so he has worked with some of Hollywood's biggest comedic actors, writing and directing such films as “Old School” in 2003, “Starsky & Hutch” in 2004, and “School for Scoundrels” in 2006. Phillips was nominated for a 2006 Academy Award® for Best Adapted Screenplay for his work on “Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.”
DAN GOLDBERG (Producer) marks his fifth film collaboration with Todd Phillips on “Due Date.” Previously, he served as producer on Phillips' “Old School,” “Road Trip,” “School for Scoundrels” and most recently, “The Hangover,” which won a Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy and is the highest grossing R-rated comedy of all time. Goldberg will next produce “The Hangover 2” with Phillips, releasing in 2011.
Goldberg also produced the outrageous comedy “Howard Stern's Private Parts” and the animated comedy adventure “Space Jam,” starring Michael Jordan, and was an executive producer on Ivan Reitman's romantic adventure “Six Days Seven Nights,” starring Harrison Ford.
His screenwriting credits include the classic comedies “Stripes” and “Meatballs,” both of which he also produced; “Feds,” which he also directed; and the enduring cult favorite “Heavy Metal.”
ALAN R. COHEN & ALAN FREEDLAND (Screenwriters, Story) are best known as Emmy Award-winning writers from the Fox animated show “King of the Hill” and often referred to as “the Alans.”
Among numerous other writing and producing credits, the duo also co-created the Comedy Central cult hit “Kid Notorious,” starring Robert Evans. They are currently co- executive producers on Seth MacFarlane's “American Dad.”
Prior to “Due Date,” the Alans wrote feature scripts for various studios. They currently have several television and film projects in development, including the feature comedy “The Reunion,” for producer Brian Grazer.
A George Washington University graduate, Cohen originally hails from Pittsburgh and worked for several years as a reporter in The Baltimore Sun's Washington, D.C. bureau.
Freedland graduated from the University of Michigan. He grew up in the Detroit area and worked in advertising in Chicago.
ADAM SZTYKIEL (Screenwriter)'s most recent writing credit was the comedy “Made of Honor,” starring Patrick Dempsey and Michelle Monaghan.
He is currently working on a film adaptation of the best-selling memoir “The Game” by Neil Strauss, and has numerous other film and television projects in development.
Sztykiel is a graduate of the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts.
THOMAS TULL (Executive Producer), Chairman and CEO of Legendary Pictures, has achieved great success in the co-production and co-financing of event movies. Since its inception in 2004, Legendary Pictures has teamed with Warner Bros. Pictures on such hits as Bryan Singer's “Superman Returns”; Zack Snyder's “300” and “Watchmen”; and Christopher Nolan's “Batman Begins” and award-winning phenomenon “The Dark Knight,” which earned in excess of $1 billion worldwide.
More recently, this highly successful partnership produced Ben Affleck's “The Town”; Christopher Nolan's summer blockbuster “Inception”; the worldwide hit “Clash of the Titans”; Todd Phillips' “The Hangover,” which is the highest-grossing R-rated comedy of all time; and Spike Jonze's “Where the Wild Things Are.” Legendary's upcoming releases include Bryan Singer's “Jack the Giant Killer,” Todd Phillips' “The Hangover 2,” and Zack Snyder's “Sucker Punch.” Legendary is also developing a number of promising film projects in-house, including “Warcraft,” “Godzilla,” “Gravel,” “Paradise Lost,” and a sequel to “300.”
Before forming Legendary, Tull was President of The Convex Group, a media and entertainment holding company headquartered in Atlanta, on whose Board of Directors he also served.
SUSAN DOWNEY (Executive Producer) is a principal partner of Team Downey, the production company she formed with her husband, Robert Downey Jr. A prolific film producer, she has collaborated with some of the industry's most noted talents on films ranging from action blockbusters to dramas to comedies to horror thrillers.
Downey also produced the global hit “Sherlock Holmes,” which opened on Christmas Day 2009 and grossed more than $516 million worldwide. Directed by Guy Ritchie, the film starred Robert Downey Jr., Jude Law, Rachel McAdams and Mark Strong in an action adventure mystery that brought Arthur Conan Doyle's legendary detective to the big screen as never before. She is currently producing the sequel, which again stars Downey Jr. and Law under the direction of Ritchie.
Downey also recently served as an executive producer on the action hit “Iron Man 2,” which earned more than $620 million at the worldwide box office. The follow up to “Iron
Man” reunited director Jon Favreau with returning stars Robert Downey Jr. and Gwyneth Paltrow, and also starred Don Cheadle, Mickey Rourke and Scarlett Johansson.
Previously, Downey held the dual posts of Co-President of Dark Castle Entertainment and Executive Vice President of Production at Silver Pictures. Joining Silver Pictures in 1999, she oversaw the development and production of feature films released under both banners, including “Thir13en Ghosts” and “Swordfish.”
In 2002, she made her producing debut as a co-producer on “Ghost Ship” and then co- produced the 2003 release “Cradle 2 the Grave.” Downey went on to produce the features “Gothika” and “House of Wax,” and also served as an executive producer on the critically acclaimed comedic thriller “Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang.”
Downey later produced Neil Jordan's acclaimed psychological drama “The Brave One,” starring Jodie Foster and Terrence Howard; Guy Ritchie's widely praised crime comedy “RocknRolla,” starring Gerard Butler, Tom Wilkinson, Thandie Newton, Idris Elba, Chris Bridges and Jeremy Piven; the horror thriller “Orphan,” starring Vera Farmiga and Peter Sarsgaard; and the thriller “Whiteout,” starring Kate Beckinsale. She was also an executive producer on the Hughes brothers' post-apocalyptic drama “The Book of Eli,” starring Denzel Washington and Gary Oldman.
Prior to her tenure at Dark Castle and Silver Pictures, Downey worked on the hit films “Mortal Kombat” and “Mortal Kombat: Annihilation.”
Downey is a graduate of the University of Southern California's School of Cinema- Television.
SCOTT BUDNICK (Executive Producer) is Executive Vice President of Production for Green Hat Films, overseeing the development and production of a varied slate of projects including the upcoming “Project X,” set for release in 2011. He most recently executive produced the blockbuster hit “The Hangover,” which won a Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy and is the highest grossing R-rated comedy of all time.
Budnick began his entertainment career in local casting while at Emory University in his hometown of Atlanta, Georgia. Upon graduation, he relocated to Los Angeles, serving as casting assistant on Todd Phillips' “Road Trip” and then as associate to the director on “Old School,” starring Vince Vaughn, Luke Wilson, Will Ferrell and Jeremy Piven. Budnick served associate producer on Phillips' following films, “Starsky & Hutch,” starring Owen Wilson and Ben Stiller and “All The King's Men,” starring Sean Penn and Jude Law, which Phillips executive produced; and was co-producer on “School for Scoundrels,” starring Billy Bob Thornton.
LAWRENCE SHER (Director of Photography) reunites with Todd Phillips on “Due Date,” having previously collaborated on the Golden Globe-winning blockbuster comedy “The Hangover.” His work will next be seen in Greg Mottola's sci-fi comedy “Paul,” with Jason Bateman and Seth Rogan, and David Frankel's comedy “The Big Year,” based on Mark Obmascik's book and starring Owen Wilson, both releasing in 2011.
Sher's other recent credits include “I Love You, Man,” “Trucker,” “The Promotion,” “Dan in Real Life,” “The Dukes of Hazzard” and “The Chumscrubber.”
He worked as director of photography on several smaller films and music videos earlier in his career, coming to the fore in 2001 with the award-winning independent film “Kissing Jessica Stein,” followed by director Zach Braff's “Garden State.”
Born and raised in New York City, Sher studied economics at Wesleyan University where, in his junior year, he turned an interest in still photography into a fascination with motion pictures. Upon graduation, he moved to Los Angeles and began his career as a camera assistant.
BILL BRZESKI (Production Designer) previously collaborated with Todd Phillips on the 2009 Golden Globe Award-winning blockbuster comedy “The Hangover,” for which he received an Art Director's Guild Award nomination for Excellence in Production Design. Brzeski re-teams again with Phillips for “The Hangover 2,” releasing in 2011.
Brzeski's other recent credits include “Flipped,” which reunited him with Rob Reiner, having previously served as production designer on Reiner's “The Bucket List”; and re- teaming with Rob Minkoff' on “The Forbidden Kingdom,” having previously worked on the director's groundbreaking CGI movie “Stuart Little” and its sequel, “Stuart Little 2.” Some of the designer's additional credits include “Deck the Halls,” “Blue Streak,” James L. Brooks' Oscar®-winning “As Good As It Gets” and “Matilda.”
Brzeski received his undergraduate degree from Miami University and his MFA in Design from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. Originally interested in designing for the ballet and opera, he began his career in the theatre before moving to Los Angeles from New York City and designing more than 800 episodes of television series.
Brzeski also designs commercial spaces, most notably the award-winning Susina Bakery in Los Angeles.
His production design workshops at graduate and undergraduate levels have been hosted by New York University School of the Arts, Miami University, Clemson University and Loyola University Film School.
DEBRA NEIL-FISHER (Editor) re-teams with Todd Phillips on “Due Date,” having served as editor on his blockbuster hit “The Hangover,” the number one R-rated comedy of all time. The film won a Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy and Fisher was honored with an Eddie Award by the American Cinema Editors for Best Edited Feature Film.
Among Neil-Fisher's other feature credits are the hit comedies “Baby Mama,” “Semi- Pro,” “Role Models,” “You, Me and Dupree,” “Without a Paddle,” “Saving Silverman,” and two hugely successful Austin Powers films, “Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery” and “Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me.” She has collaborated three times with director Donald Petrie on “Just My Luck,” “Welcome to Mooseport” and “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days.” Her work also extends to other genres, including the dramas “Fried Green Tomatoes,” “The War” and “Up Close and Personal,” as well as the thrillers “Teaching Mrs. Tingle” and “Dr. Giggles.”
In 1991 Neil-Fisher won a CableACE Award for her work on TNT's telefilm “Heat Wave,” for director Kevin Hooks. Among her earlier television credits are “The Amy Fisher Story,” “The Case of the Hillside Strangler” and the TNT thriller “Breaking Point.”
LOUISE MINGENBACH (Costume Designer) marks her fifth project with director Todd Phillips on “Due Date,” a collaboration that began on the feature film “Starsky & Hutch,” followed by “School for Scoundrels” and the 2008 telefilm “The More Things Change...” In 2009, her designs were seen in Phillips' mega-blockbuster “The Hangover,” which won a Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy and is the highest R-rated comedy of all time.
The upcoming actioner “Battleship,” based on the classic board game, reunites Mingenbach with Peter Berg, with whom she worked on “Hancock,” starring Will Smith.
Mingenbach also designed costumes for the 2009 action epic ““X-Men: Wolverine.” Previously, she earned a Saturn Award and a Costume Designers Guild Award nomination for her work on Bryan Singer's “X-Men.” She has teamed with Singer on four other films, including the 1995 thriller “The Usual Suspects,” “X2,” “Apt Pupil” and “Superman Returns,” as well as the pilot for “House M.D.”
Mingenbach's additional feature credits include the Farrelly Brothers' “The Heartbreak Kid,” “Spanglish,” “The Rundown,” “K-PAX,” “Gossip,” “Permanent Midnight,” “Nightwatch,” “The Spitfire Grill” and “One Night Stand.”
CHRISTOPHE BECK (Composer) previously collaborated with Todd Phillips on “The Hangover,” which won a Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture – Comedy or Musical.
He has composed scores for 50 feature films and nearly 20 television shows. With more than 15 years of experience, Beck has scored a wide array of projects, including such action films as “Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief,” “The Sentinel” and “Elektra”; the comedies “Date Night,” “Charlie Bartlett,” “The Pink Panther” and “Bring It On”; and such dramas as “We Are Marshall,” “Under the Tuscan Sun” and “Year of the Dog”; as well as the Davis Guggenheim documentary, “Waiting For Superman.”
Beck most recently composed music for the comedies “Death at a Funeral,” starring Chris Rock, Martin Lawrence and Tracy Morgan; “Date Night,” with Steve Carell and Tina Fey; “Hot Tub Time Machine,” starring John Cusack; and Chris Columbus' fantasy adventure “Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief.”
His additional credits include “All About Steve,” “The Greatest,” “What Happens in Vegas,” “Phoebe in Wonderland,” “The Seeker: The Dark is Rising,” “Saved!,” “American Wedding” and “Just Married.”
Beck began his scoring career on the Canadian television series “White Fang,” and from there went on to score three seasons of the hit television series “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” for which he won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Music Composition.
8 Views
01:33:49 11/03/10
Due Date Starring Robert Downey Jr. and Zach Galifian
[LESS INFO] 8 VIEWS | ADDED 01:33:49 11/03/10
Due Date Starring Robert Downey Jr. and Zach Galifianakis This 1sr Look brought to you by Stevn Samblis www.icPlaces.com
THE IDEA
From director Todd Phillips, “Due Date” stars Robert Downey Jr. and Zach Galifianakis as two unlikely companions thrown together on a road trip that turns out to be as life-changing as it is outrageous.
Downey plays Peter Highman, an expectant first-time father whose wife's due date is only days away. As he hurries to catch a flight home to Los Angeles from Atlanta to be at her side for the birth, his best intentions go completely awry when a chance encounter with aspiring actor and disaster-magnet Ethan Tremblay (Galifianakis) leads to the two of them being tossed off the plane and placed on a no-fly list...while Peter's luggage, wallet and ID take off without him.
With no alternatives in sight, Peter is forced to hitch a ride with Ethan and his canine traveling companion on what turns out to be a cross-country road trip that will destroy several cars, numerous friendships and Peter's last nerve.
The comedy “Due Date” also stars Michelle Monaghan (“Made of Honor”), Juliette Lewis (“The Switch”) and Academy Award® winner Jamie Foxx (“Ray”).
Directed by Todd Phillips (“The Hangover”), the film is produced by Phillips and Dan Goldberg (“The Hangover,” “Old School”), from a screenplay by Alan R. Cohen & Alan Freedland and Adam Sztykiel & Todd Phillips, story by Alan R. Cohen & Alan Freedland. Thomas Tull, Susan Downey and Scott Budnick serve as executive producers.
“Due Date” reunites Phillips with key members of his filmmaking team from “The Hangover,” including director of photography Lawrence Sher, production designer Bill Brzeski, editor Debra Neil-Fisher, composer Christophe Beck and costume designer Louise Mingenbach.
ABOUT THE PRODUCTION
“If you're going to travel with me to Los Angeles I have to give you a couple of guidelines. Number one: don't ask me a single question.” - Peter Highman
“It's a simple idea—two mismatched guys forced to go on a road trip together,” declares “Due Date” director and co-writer Todd Phillips. “Robert Downey Jr. is Peter Highman, an architect on his way back to L.A. from a business trip in Atlanta. He's on a tight schedule because his wife is expecting their first child and the date is all set. Everything is fine until he gets tangled up at the airport with a wannabe actor named Ethan Tremblay, who somehow gets the both of them booted off the plane and grounded for the foreseeable future.”
At that point, “simple” flies right out the window.
Stranded without cash, credit, ID or time, Peter finds himself in the galling position of having to hitch a ride home with a guy he'd rather take a swing at—Ethan. The person he holds responsible for his predicament in the first place is now behind the wheel of a rental car and offering him the passenger seat.
Though clearly not his best option, it's Peter's only option.
At first grateful for the company, Ethan soon learns that his tightly wound traveling companion is not going to be any fun at 20 Questions, nor generally receptive to the concept of going with the flow. Meanwhile, Peter realizes he's just joined forces with a guy who can casually ruin his life in more ways than he could ever imagine.
“If there really was somebody like Ethan around, he'd have been strangled in his sleep long ago,” Downey attests. “He's like a laser beam that focuses on the one thing that will drive you crazy the most, the kind of guy who will eat a whole plate of waffles before mentioning he's allergic to waffles. I'm sure a lot of people know someone like this, someone who is perfectly wired to activate all of their irritation buttons.”
Granted, Peter has a short fuse to begin with. “He's kind of an edgy, controlling, judgmental guy with some anger-management issues. And who better to help him explore those issues than Ethan Tremblay? High-strung as he is normally, Peter is now facing the birth of his first child and is thrown into this nightmare, so it's all amped up,” Downey adds.
Ethan, by comparison, gives new meaning to the term laid-back. Zach Galifianakis, who stars as the human lightning rod for trouble, observes, “Nothing affects him, no insult seems to penetrate. Ethan lives in his own head. He has no talent, and he's on his way to Hollywood to capitalize on that. These two guys meet through a series of unfortunate circumstances that are entirely Ethan's fault, to which he is completely oblivious. And every bad thing that happens from that point on is Ethan's fault. Everything.”
Says Phillips, “People always cite chemistry in these kinds of movies. They say it's the chemistry between the two lead actors that make it work. I believe what makes ‘Due Date' work is anti-chemistry; it's two guys with zero connection and zero rapport, constantly butting heads, that generates both the tension and the comedy.”
Dan Goldberg, who has produced all of Phillips' feature films since their 2000 collaboration on the hit comedy “Road Trip,” says, “The ride develops its own momentum as one thing after another happens to impede their progress.”
At the same time, their cross-country trek takes Peter and Ethan on another, more unpredictable journey than what they face geographically—one that leads them to discover as much about themselves as each other.
Provided that they survive it.
Scott Budnick, an executive producer on the film, says, “There's real emotional substance to the story and real issues, and Robert and Zach do a phenomenal job in delivering both the humor and the emotional stakes. My favorite comedies are always the ones that have heart.”
As infuriating as Ethan can be, whether mismanaging his funds, missing potty breaks or launching their car off an overpass, Phillips concedes he has his good points, citing “honesty, innocence and a humanity that makes you connect with him and root for him despite it all. Ethan is a complex character. He has just lost his father, who was his best friend, and is having a tough time dealing with that. There's an underlying desperation in everything he does and an eagerness to please to the point where just making friends means trying too hard.”
“A lot of what he does is to avoid being lonely,” says Galifianakis.
Peter, on the other hand, may come across like a self-assured, aggressive control freak but, says Phillips' “Due Date” screenwriting partner Adam Sztykiel, “You sense that his behavior comes from an emotional place and from issues he has yet to work out, that are revealed in the story. Not far beneath the alpha male posture is his own vulnerability and how terrified he is to be responsible for a child.”
“As a parent,” Downey offers, “I know the big question is how are you going to manage and protect something that you have no experience with?”
Playing on that theme were screenwriters Alan R. Cohen and Alan Freedland, who also have story credit on “Due Date.” “Peter's comfort zone is when he's in control. And everything that happens in this movie is about losing control; from his inability to get back home to the larger issue of his impending fatherhood—and whether or not he's ready for it,” Cohen says.
“We wanted to put him into a situation where he had to travel across the country with someone who was effectively a child,” adds Freedland.
Not that it would lessen Peter's pain, stress and frustration if he knew it might be pain, stress and frustration with a purpose. Still...
“When I read the script, I was moved,” recalls executive producer Susan Downey. “It's so funny and yet so human. You want a comedy to have that grounding, in the way that you want a drama to have some humor. In ‘Due Date,' though his experience with Ethan, Peter finds his human side and gets ready for the birth of his own child. It's about him becoming a man before becoming a father.”
“Guess who's got the Subaru Impreza? Me! Guess who's got the winning personality? Me! What do you have? You have a nice hairline. Fine. You have a strong jaw. But I gotta tell you, mister, your personality needs some work.” - Ethan Tremblay
Despite the “anti-chemistry” Phillips had in mind for their characters, Galifianakis and Downey generated some genuine positive chemistry from the start.
Downey vividly recalls their first meeting. “I was in Venice, California, and some weird guy walks by and says, ‘Hi, I think I'm doing a movie with you.' And I was thinking, ‘I might have to punch this guy.' Then I realized, ‘Oh my God...that's Zach.'
“Later, he came over for dinner so we could talk about the script,” Downey continues. “I asked if he had any dietary restrictions and he sent me a note detailing everything he'd need, like bottled water flown in from Barstow. It's one of my favorite things. I read it to people at parties.”
“We kind of took care of each other on the set—very different from what was going on in the movie. We'd talk every morning about how to make a scene work. It was great. Funny how hanging out with a legitimate actor raises your game,” Galifianakis returns.
“I always respond to projects based on the casting potential,” says Phillips. “I immediately start seeing a movie from the standpoint of casting it. For ‘Due Date,' I knew that if I could get Robert and Zach we could go full out.”
Phillips marks his second collaboration with Galifianakis on “Due Date,” following the comedian's breakout starring role in last year's international blockbuster hit “The Hangover,” that became the highest-grossing R-rated comedy of all time. He says, “Zach and I click because he knows I really get his humor, which can be pretty outrageous.”
In “Due Date,” however, Galifianakis creates a character that calls for a great deal of subtlety. Notes Budnick, “Every little nuance of personality and each detail—the way he walks, the way he talks, the way he thinks—Zach has figured out how Ethan Tremblay would do these things and it's reflected in every single moment he's on screen.”
At the same time, there is a core of unpredictability to the performance. “Zach brings a sense of spontaneity and danger and I think comedy is best with an undercurrent of danger so that you never know exactly what's going to happen or what someone will say or do. In that sense, he's the perfect comedic actor,” says Phillips.
And “Due Date” gives him a worthy antagonist in Downey.
“Not only is Robert a world-class actor but he's naturally funny. I wouldn't think of casting Robert Downey Jr. as anyone's straight-man,” says Phillips. “In ‘Due Date' there is no straight-man because they're both screwed up in their own ways. And the beauty of Zach and Robert playing off each other is that they're both funny but their humor comes from such different places and their styles are so different that you're not mining the same vein.”
Downey, Galifianakis, Phillips and Sztykiel “took the script apart and put it back together,” says Goldberg. “Every day there were new things that touched me and made me laugh. I believe ‘Due Date' audiences will see aspects of Robert and Zach that they haven't seen before and things that will surprise them. As a filmmaker, I'm always looking for that.”
It's a philosophy and a process that Phillips respects. “So much of comedy happens on the day you shoot,” he says, and offers the example of the airplane luggage bin scene. “It just happened as we were looking at the seating and the overhead bin and realized how that could bring them really close in a small space. Zach said, ‘What if I rub up against him while I'm reaching into the bin?' And I said, ‘What if you pull your shirt up first to wipe your glasses so it's just your bare stomach?' Comedy isn't math; it's jazz.”
Says Robert Downey Jr., “I start every day thinking here's what will happen if you do it by the book and here's what can happen if you bend yourself over backwards and forwards again and try to invite the unimagined into the situation. The set had energy like a living being; it was evolving all the time. And what's great and so funny about Todd is that sometimes, with him, it's so wrong, it's right.”
That point of view resonates with Galifianakis, who admits to being right alongside the director in appreciating “the inappropriate,” adding, “Todd and I have the same sense of humor. We like stuff that has a bit of a taboo element—things that are funny specifically because you're not supposed to laugh at them. As a stand-up comic, I love it when audiences laugh before they realize maybe they shouldn't have, and then start to question themselves.
“That's not to say that you can't be offended by something Todd or I do in a film,” he continues with mock concern. “I'm often offended by the things I do in movies.”
“You'd better check yourself before you wreck yourself.” - Ethan
“What I like about road trip movies is that essentially your characters are working without a net. You just throw them out into the elements and say, ‘Deal with it,'” says Phillips. “You don't have the support system of friends and family. People come in and out of your life for intense but fleeting moments.”
To help facilitate that, ‘Due Date' features a stellar supporting cast of characters who offer Peter and Ethan a range of memorable and often thought-provoking encounters along the way.
The first of these is Heidi, a freelance medical supplier with questionable parenting skills, tracked down by Ethan at her Birmingham home to restock his supply of “glaucoma medication.” It's one of many detours that takes them miles out of their way.
Heidi is played by Juliette Lewis, in her third screen role for Phillips. Lewis was touring in London with her band when the director called. “We worked it out so that between London and Helsinki I made a pit stop in a place I didn't even know existed—Las Vegas, New Mexico—for a couple of days, to play a pot dealer,” she recounts. “When Todd calls it's a game of trust. I don't know the role, I don't know what he wants me to do, but I know it's going to be good and it's going to be funny.”
Oscar® winner Jamie Foxx, who recently starred with Downey in “The Soloist,” comes aboard in the role of Peter's old college buddy, Darryl, now living in Dallas.
“It was a real coup to get Jamie to come in as Peter's friend—and, according to Ethan, possibly the real father of his soon-to-be-born child,” says Robert Downey Jr., alluding to yet another way in which Ethan manages to get under Peter's skin.
Within minutes of entering Darryl's home, Ethan spots a few photos, asks a few questions, adds two and two, and comes up with five. “He learns that Darryl is very close with Peter's wife and jumps to all kinds of conclusions. Then, he plants the seed of doubt in Peter's mind,” says Phillips.
“Darryl comes into the picture to do these guys a favor and it's all great...until it's not. Then things get very weird, very fast,” Foxx says of the ensuing scene that lands Peter and Ethan back on the pavement. “Working with Robert, Zach and Todd, you'd never know what to expect, but you could always count on it being a crazy, creative, collaborative experience.”
The travelers also run afoul of an ill-tempered Western Union clerk, played by Danny McBride; a paragon of Airport Security, played by Grammy Award-winning hip hop producer/musician and actor Rza; and an exceptionally indifferent TSA agent, played by Matt Walsh, the ER doc from “The Hangover.”
Meanwhile, back home anxiously awaiting Peter's return is his wife, Sarah, played by Michele Monaghan, reuniting with Downey for the first time since they teamed in the 2005 comedy thriller “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.”
“Sarah is just about 8 months and 29 days pregnant with her first baby and obviously very anxious,” Monaghan offers. “Her husband is not only m.i.a but is also traveling cross- country with a wild man whose only concern is if she has any ‘recommendations for someone who could give him a perm'?!? Clearly, the baby's arrival looks more promising than daddy's.”
“Sonny, stop. Sonny...No. Stop. Good boy.” - Ethan
Before circumstances force these two to share a rental car, Ethan already has a traveling companion: a French Bulldog named Sonny, who becomes the pair's third wheel and a point of calm amidst the escalating mayhem.
The role of Sonny, though indisputably male, was played almost entirely by a young female Frenchie trained by Mark Harden, of Boone's Animals for Hollywood.
The introduction of a dog into the script came about as Phillips sought to further ratchet up the tension between his two leads and decided that one of them should be a dog person and the other...not so much. After perusing renowned animal trainer Boone Narr's company website, he spotted what he was looking for in Bodie, an adult male French Bulldog with the big ears and wide-eyed comical expression typical of the breed.
Unfortunately, at 26 pounds, Bodie was too heavy to be constantly toted around on one arm, so, with only weeks before filming started, Harden launched a full-scale and very specific search for a six-to-10-month-old, cream-colored, slightly undersized French Bulldog. He first tried the rescue agencies, then tapped into a nationwide network of breeders before finding someone who had a full-grown female weighing in at 15 pounds.
Though Galifianakis jokes that Sonny was trained to fall asleep at the word ‘action,' Harden takes no credit for the animal's relaxed demeanor, conceding, “She's just a very settled and well-adjusted dog. She doesn't get worked up. I think she just learned early on that most of her scenes were going to take awhile and she might as well catch a nap.”
Galifianakis, who bonded with his canine co-star despite an allergy to dogs, says, “I was kind of envious at her ability to fall asleep at work. And she snores like me.”
But as much as the camera loved Sonny, there was one special trick she just couldn't manage, that required a one-day command performance from Bodie.
Harden carefully describes how the trick serendipitously made its way into the story. “French Bulldogs are unable to groom themselves in certain areas as other dogs do. I don't know if it's a combination of their short neck and wide shoulders, but they can't twist backwards.”
Consequently, some of them use their paws, “a natural behavior that Bodie spontaneously offered in front of Todd at that first meeting, while we were talking,” the trainer recalls. “As soon as he saw it, there was no turning back. He said, ‘Oh my God, can you train him to do that?”
“Am I okay? Do I look okay? I have a broken arm. I have three cracked ribs. I have seven stitches in my armpit. Does that answer your question? - Peter
“I love physical comedy,” says Phillips, who happily extends the parameters of physical comedy in “Due Date” to include a multi-vehicle freeway chase, an end-over-end car flip and a shoot-out with some seriously t'd-off border security agents.
“For me,” Phillips continues, “It's fun to include shocking moments that make you say, ‘Whoa, where did that come from?' We shot the car sequence in Las Cruces, New Mexico. They let us break through the overpass and land on the road below. We closed the highway for several days to prepare and execute it but, frankly, you never know how a stunt is going to land, so we set up four or five cameras and let it happen. The car flipped back up on its wheels, but we were prepared for it to do anything.” Filming “Due Date” was a road trip in itself. Location shooting began in and around Atlanta and moved generally westward with the story, touching upon Dallas and the Texas interior and various locations in New Mexico, including Las Vegas and Santa Fe, which the filmmakers covered from a base of operations in Albuquerque, before touching down in California.
“The way the script breaks down, they have to get across the country. in a couple of days so you really need to take the southern route, which is not as long as the northern, so it makes sense in terms of driving time,” says production designer Bill Brzeski.
A separate helicopter unit covered the Grand Canyon for a key scene with Peter and Ethan perched on its rim, overlooking the Colorado River snaking its way through, far below. Between takes, busloads of visitors from all over the world arrived to tour the area and there was some concern on the part of the crew that they might forget to watch where they were going once they caught sight of Downey and Galifianakis.
The film's opening airport scenes were a combination of several elements. The plane cabin mockup was constructed on Stage 11 at Warner Bros. Studios; the curb where Peter's and Ethan's cars pull up was shot at Ontario Airport in California; and the screening area and other terminal interiors were built inside the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta.
Other practical locations in Georgia included a construction site in Atlanta's Buckhead neighborhood; a Waffle House and portions of Highway 27 in Bremen; various locations along I-75 and I-675, GA-route 20 and the Metropolitan Parkway; the Gwinnett Medical Center in Lawrenceville; the 1010 Condos on Atlanta's historic Peachtree Street; and a recently closed rest stop along I-985.
Darryl's home in Dallas was an amalgam of exteriors captured in Buckland, Georgia, and interiors shot in Encino, California. “You're never really anywhere you're supposed to be,” Brzeski says. “Las Vegas, New Mexico was built around the turn of the century and doesn't look like what you'd expect to see in New Mexico. There's a lot of Victorian architecture that doesn't match the typical Santa Fe look so buildings can substitute for almost any American small town, be it Texas or Ohio. We used it as Alabama for Heidi's house.”
The southwestern city also provided the site for one of the film's larger set pieces; a checkpoint at the U.S./Mexico border that was constructed on a bridge spanning a portion of Route 25 in Las Vegas, under which Brzeski and his team formed an encampment of Federali trailers based on actual Mexican Customs vehicles. Interiors of the office and a trailer, as well as a gimbal rig that figures into the action, were built on stage and another rotating rig, dubbed “car-on-a-spit” by one crew member, was designed for the scene in which Peter and Alan take their rented Subaru for a real spin.
All this action takes its toll on the luggage-deprived Peter, forced to spend the entire journey in one increasingly rumpled, torn, stained and slept-in suit. For costume designer Louise Mingenbach, that meant maintaining 20 versions of the suit in five basic stages of deterioration. “Definitely, the story evolves through Peter's clothes,” she says.
With Ethan's wardrobe she was able to have more fun, brainstorming with Galifianakis, who, she says, “has no vanity. Some actors want to look beautiful all the time but that's not Zach. He will wear whatever works for his character, even if it's acid-washed jeans two sizes too small.”
“I really like to look bad in movies,” Galifianakis agrees. “Originally Ethan was dressed like a hippie but I wanted him to be more arty—or, what he would think is arty. He has a perm, he has his dance shoes and his really bad tight jeans and the scarf as an accessory; he wants to be an actor and this is how he thinks actors dress.”
“Due Date” marks Mingenbach's fifth collaboration with Phillips, who says, “I have a great team. I've worked with essentially the same people throughout my career. We write some crazy thing and then I turn to my guys and say, ‘Can we pull this off?'”
Among those previous colleagues rejoining the director on “Due Date” were cinematographer Lawrence Sher, editor Debra Neil-Fisher and composer Christophe Beck.
Scott Budnick points out, “‘Due Date' marks the 10-year anniversary of ‘Road Trip,' Todd's first movie and my first job out of college. We filmed ‘Road Trip' from September to December 1999, and ‘Due Date' from September to December of 2009.”
For Phillips, it's a genre full of possibilities.
“I've been in some strange situations on the road,” confesses screenwriter Sztykiel, a Los Angelino who identified in some ways with Peter. “Here's a guy who's a little sheltered and doesn't have exposure to the 3,000 miles that exist east of his home, and it was fun to force him out of his bubble. It's uncomfortable, but you come away with a better sense of your place in the world. My advice for travelers? Go to the bathroom. Make sure your traveling partner has gone to the bathroom. Don't spend all your money on illegal substances. Don't say ‘bomb' on an airplane. Don't open your car door in traffic. Pretty simple stuff.” Sure. In hindsight.
“There's something about a road trip that brings out the extremes of human reactions and emotions,” says Phillips. “It's a great opportunity for surprises and for people to learn things about themselves or each other that they'd never see if they weren't being pushed to their limits, or having to make the kinds of quick, instinctive decisions you have to make on the road.”
At the same time, the road itself can be almost incidental. “No matter where we are in ‘Due Date,' no matter what's kind of chaos they're going through,” he concludes, “it all comes down to these two guys working out their issues.”
ABOUT THE CAST
ROBERT DOWNEY JR. (Peter Highman), a two-time Academy Award® nominee, earned his most recent Oscar® nomination, for Best Supporting Actor, for his work in Ben Stiller's comedy hit “Tropic Thunder.” His performance as Kirk Lazarus, a white Australian actor playing a black American character, also brought him Golden Globe, BAFTA Award and Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Award® nominations. Downey was honored with his first Oscar® nomination, in the category of Best Actor, for his portrayal of Charlie Chaplin in Richard Attenborough's acclaimed 1992 biopic “Chaplin,” for which he also won BAFTA Award and London Film Critics Awards and received a Golden Globe Award nomination.
Earlier this year, Downey received another Golden Globe nomination for his performance in the title role of the 2009 hit “Sherlock Holmes,” under the direction of Guy Ritchie. Downey returns to the role of the legendary detective in a new Sherlock Holmes adventure, currently slated for release in December 2011.
In summer 2008, Downey received praise from critics and audiences for his performance in the title role of the blockbuster hit “Iron Man,” under the direction of Jon Favreau. Bringing the Marvel Comics superhero to the big screen, “Iron Man” earned more than $585 million worldwide, making it one of the year's biggest hits. Downey reprised his role in the successful sequel, which was released this past spring. He returns to the role in Josh Whedon's upcoming actioner “The Avengers,” which teams Iron Man with other Marvel Comics superheroes.
Downey's other recent films include “The Soloist,” opposite Jamie Foxx; “Charlie Bartlett”; David Fincher's “Zodiac,” alongside Jake Gyllenhaal and Mark Ruffalo; Richard Linklater's “A Scanner Darkly,” with Keanu Reeves, Winona Ryder and Woody Harrelson; “Fur,” opposite Nicole Kidman in a film inspired by the life of revered photographer Diane Arbus; and “Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang.” He also shared in a SAG Award® nomination as a member of the ensemble cast of George Clooney's true-life drama “Good Night, and Good Luck,” and in a Special Jury Prize won by the ensemble cast of “A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints,” presented at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival.
Downey's long list of film credits also includes “Gothika”; “The Singing Detective”; Curtis Hanson's “Wonder Boys”; “U.S. Marshals”; Mike Figgis' “One Night Stand”; Jodie Foster's “Home for the Holidays”; “Richard III”; Oliver Stone's “Natural Born Killers”; Robert Altman's “The Gingerbread Man” and “Short Cuts,” sharing in a Golden Globe Award for Best Ensemble for the latter; “Heart and Souls,” “Soapdish,” “Air America,” “Chances Are,” “True Believer,” “Less Than Zero,” “Weird Science,” “Firstborn,” and “Pound,” in which he made his debut under the direction of Robert Downey Sr.
On the small screen, Downey made his primetime debut in 2001 when he joined the cast of the series “Ally McBeal.” For his work on the show, he won the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor in a Series, Miniseries or Motion Picture Made for Television and a Screen Actors Guild Award® for Outstanding Actor in a Comedy Series. In addition, Downey was nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series.
On November 23, 2004, Robert Downey Jr. released his debut album, “The Futurist,” on the Sony Classics label. The album, containing eight original songs, showcased his singing talents.
Downey and his wife, Susan, just formed Team Downey, a production company based at Warner Bros.
ZACH GALIFIANAKIS (Ethan Tremblay) moved to New York City after failing his last college course by one point at North Carolina State University. He got his start performing his brand of humor in the back of a hamburger joint in Times Square, graduating to doing stand-up at night in clubs and coffee houses in the city. While working as a bus boy, he got his first acting job on the NBC sitcom “Boston Common.”
Galifianakis' breakout role came in Todd Phillips' blockbuster hit “The Hangover,” the highest-grossing R-rated comedy of all time. He will reunite with Phillips and cast-mates Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms and Justin Bartha in “The Hangover 2,” slated for a 2011 release.
He also stars in “It's Kind of a Funny Story,” which premieres at the 2010 Toronto Film Festival and opens this fall. Recently, he also co-starred with Steve Carell and Paul Rudd in Jay Roach's comedy “Dinner for Schmucks.” Galifianakis' additional film credits include the Jerry Bruckheimer-produced hit “G-Force”; the indie feature “Youth in Revolt,” with Michael Cera, Steve Buscemi and Ray Liotta; a cameo in Jason Reitman's Oscar®- nominated film “Up in the Air”; “What Happens in Vegas,” with Cameron Diaz and Ashton Kutcher; and the critically acclaimed true-life drama “Into the Wild,” from director Sean Penn.
On the small screen, Galifianakis just started the second season of the HBO comedy “Bored to Death,” with Jason Schwartzman and Ted Danson. In addition, he hosted the critically acclaimed VH1 talk show “Late World with Zach,” and also wrote and starred in “Dog Bites Man” for Comedy Central.
Zach also has an internet talk show entitled “Between Two Ferns.” He has interviewed such guests as Steve Carell, Natalie Portman, Conan O'Brien and Charlize Theron.
When not filming, Galifianakis lives on his farm in North Carolina.
MICHELLE MONAGHAN (Sarah Highman) most recently starred to great critical acclaim in the independent film “Trucker,” which world premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival. She received the Best Actress Awards from the San Diego Film Critics Society, Ft. Lauderdale International Film Festival and Vail Film Festival. Monaghan also served as executive producer on the film.
She will next been seen in Sofia Coppola's “Somewhere,” “Source Code,” opposite Jake Gyllenhaal for director Duncan Jones and “Machine Gun Preacher,” opposite Gerard Butler for director Marc Forster.
Monaghan made her feature film debut in “Perfume,” directed by Michael Rymer, then played Richard Gere's secretary in Adrian Lyne's “Unfaithful.” She followed with supporting roles in Fred Schepisi's “It Runs in the Family,” with Michael Douglas; “Winter Solstice,” with Anthony LaPaglia; Paul Greengrass' “The Bourne Supremacy”; and Doug Liman's “Mr. & Mrs. Smith.”
It was her starring role in “Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang,” opposite Robert Downey Jr. and Val Kilmer, which brought Monaghan to the attention of audiences around the world. She also received rave reviews for her performance in the film, directed by Shane Black. Next, Monaghan joined Charlize Theron and Frances McDormand in “North Country” for director Niki Caro. She then starred in “Gone Baby Gone,” with Casey Affleck and Morgan Freeman; “The Heartbreak Kid,” opposite Ben Stiller; “Mission: Impossible III,” with Tom Cruise and Philip Seymour Hoffman for director J.J. Abrams; opposite Patrick Dempsey in the romantic comedy “Made of Honor”; and in D.J. Caruso's hit thriller “Eagle Eye,” alongside Shia LaBeouf.
JULIETTE LEWIS (Heidi) received Best Supporting Actress Oscar® and Golden Globe nominations for her layered performance as adolescent Danielle, opposite Robert De Niro, in Martin Scorsese's thriller “Cape Fear.”
She reunites with Todd Phillips on “Due Date,” having previously collaborated on “Old School” and “Starsky & Hutch.”
Lewis was most recently seen alongside Hilary Swank, Melissa Leo, Minnie Driver and Sam Rockwell in the independent drama “Conviction,” which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival and opened in October. Prior to that, Lewis appeared in the romantic comedy “The Switch,” alongside Jennifer Aniston, Jason Bateman and Patrick Wilson. She also starred alongside Orlando Bloom, Mark Ruffalo and Laura Linney in Ruffalo's directorial debut, “Sympathy for Delicious,” which took home the US Dramatic Special Jury Prize at this year's Sundance Film Festival. Last year, she played roller derby girl Dinah Might opposite Ellen Page, Marcia Gay Harden, Kristen Wiig, Jimmy Fallon and Eve in Drew Barrymore's directorial debut, “Whip It.”
Among Lewis' many other films are Gary Marshall's “The Other Sister”; “Evening Star,” with Shirley MacLaine; Quentin Tarantino's vampire tale “From Dusk Till Dawn,” opposite George Clooney; the sci-fi actioner “Strange Days,” alongside Ralph Fiennes and Angela Bassett; Nora Ephron's comedy “Mixed Nuts,” opposite Steve Martin and Adam Sandler; Oliver Stone's controversial “Natural Born Killers”; “What's Eating Gilbert Grape,” with Johnny Depp and Leonardo DiCaprio”; “Romeo Is Bleeding”; “Kalifornia”; Woody Allen's “Husbands and Wives”; “Crooked Hearts” and “National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation,” with Chevy Chase.
At 12, Lewis landed her first leading role in the Showtime miniseries “Home Fires.” At 16, her performance in the critically acclaimed longform “Too Young to Die?” led to film roles. Lewis' other television credits include Showtime's “My Louisiana Sky,” for which she received an Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Performer in a Children's Special, and Mira Nair's HBO film “Hysterical Blindness,” alongside Uma Thurman and Gena Rowlands. She also had recurring roles in several series.
In addition to film and television, Lewis's music career continues to evolve. Her third studio album, Terra Incognito, was released in fall 2009.
JAMIE FOXX (Darryl) won an Academy Award® for Best Actor in 2005 for his portrayal of the legendary Ray Charles in the Taylor Hackford-directed biopic “Ray.” Foxx also won a Golden Globe Award, a Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Award®, a BAFTA Award, and an NAACP Image Award, as well as numerous critics' association awards, and shared in a SAG Award® nomination received by the film's ensemble cast.
Also in 2005, Foxx garnered Oscar®, Golden Globe Award, SAG Award®, BAFTA Award, and Image Award nominations, in the Best Supporting Actor category, for his work in Michael Mann's dramatic thriller “Collateral,” in which he starred with Tom Cruise. That same year, Foxx also earned Golden Globe Award and SAG Award® nominations and won an Image Award for Best Actor in a Television Movie for his portrayal of condemned gang member-turned-Nobel Peace Prize nominee Stan “Tookie” Williams in the FX Network movie “Redemption.”
Foxx has a number of films upcoming, including the Seth Gordon-directed comedy “Horrible Bosses”; F. Gary Gray's action thriller “Kane & Lynch,” opposite Bruce Willis; and the comedy “Skank Robbers,” which he also wrote and is producing. His recent film credits also include Garry Marshall's hit ensemble romantic comedy “Valentine's Day,” the thriller “Law Abiding Citizen,” Joe Wright's drama “The Soloist,” the thriller “The Kingdom” and Bill Condon's screen adaptation of the Broadway musical “Dreamgirls.” Foxx also executive produced the film “Life Support,” starring Queen Latifah, which closed the 2007 Sundance Film Festival.
Foxx's big-screen break came in 1999 when Oliver Stone cast him as a star quarterback in “Any Given Sunday.” In 2001, he co-starred with Will Smith in Michael Mann's acclaimed biopic “Ali.” His additional film credits include Michael Mann's “Miami Vice,” with Colin Farrell; Sam Mendes' Gulf War drama “Jarhead,” with Jake Gyllenhaal; “Stealth”; Antoine Fuqua's “Bait”; “Booty Call”; “The Truth about Cats & Dogs”; and “The Great White Hype.”
Foxx first came to fame as a comedian. After spending time on the comedy circuit, he joined Keenan Ivory Wayans, Jim Carrey, Damon Wayans and Tommy Davidson in the landmark Fox sketch comedy series “In Living Color.” In 1996, he launched his own series, “The Jamie Foxx Show,” which was one of the top-rated shows on The WB Network during its five-year run. Foxx also served as co-creator and executive producer, and directed several episodes. His first HBO Comedy Special, “Jamie Foxx: I Might Need Security,” premiered in February 2002.
In addition to his acting success, Foxx has also achieved a thriving music career. His first album, Unpredictable, topped the charts in late 2005 and early 2006 and spawned the NBC special “Unpredictable,” in which he performed with such artists as Mary J. Blige, Common, Snoop Dogg, The Game and Angie Stone. He has been nominated for eight Billboard Music Awards, three Grammy Awards, a Soul Train Music Award, and two American Music Awards, winning for Favorite Male Artist. Foxx's latest album, 2008's Intuition, debuted at number three on the Billboard 200 chart and spawned the chart-topping single “Blame It.” Foxx recently wrapped up his “Blame It Tour” in support of the album. On January 31, 2010 Jamie Foxx and T-Pain's “Blame It” won in the category of Best R%B performance by a duo/group with vocals at the 52nd Annual Grammy Awards.
ABOUT THE FILMMAKERS
TODD PHILLIPS (Director/Screenwriter/Producer) most recently directed and produced the 2009 blockbuster hit comedy “The Hangover,” starring Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, Zach Galifianakis and Justin Bartha. The film became the highest grossing R-rated comedy of all time and won a Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture – Comedy or Musical. He is currently in production on the much-anticipated sequel, “The Hangover 2,” which reunites the cast.
Phillips started his career as a documentary filmmaker, inspired by humor taken from everyday reality and the belief that the truth is often stranger than fiction.
His first film, “Hated,” portrayed the revolting antics of extreme punk rocker G.G. Allin and became an instant underground sensation. It was released in the summer of 1994 and went on to become the highest grossing student film of its time.
He followed that in 1998 with “Frat House,” a documentary that he produced and directed for HBO's popular “America Undercover” series. “Frat House” premiered at the 1998 Sundance Film Festival and won the Grand Jury Prize for documentary features. The unflinching exposé of life in fraternities created a public controversy that eventually caused the film to be shelved by HBO. Phillips still hopes to release it in the future.
After meeting producer Ivan Reitman at Sundance, Phillips made his crossover to features with 2000's “Road Trip,” which established him as a new force in comedy. He simultaneously produced and directed “Bittersweet Motel,” a documentary on musical cult phenomenon Phish.
In one way or another, Phillips' films explore the nature of male relationships, and in doing so he has worked with some of Hollywood's biggest comedic actors, writing and directing such films as “Old School” in 2003, “Starsky & Hutch” in 2004, and “School for Scoundrels” in 2006. Phillips was nominated for a 2006 Academy Award® for Best Adapted Screenplay for his work on “Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.”
DAN GOLDBERG (Producer) marks his fifth film collaboration with Todd Phillips on “Due Date.” Previously, he served as producer on Phillips' “Old School,” “Road Trip,” “School for Scoundrels” and most recently, “The Hangover,” which won a Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy and is the highest grossing R-rated comedy of all time. Goldberg will next produce “The Hangover 2” with Phillips, releasing in 2011.
Goldberg also produced the outrageous comedy “Howard Stern's Private Parts” and the animated comedy adventure “Space Jam,” starring Michael Jordan, and was an executive producer on Ivan Reitman's romantic adventure “Six Days Seven Nights,” starring Harrison Ford.
His screenwriting credits include the classic comedies “Stripes” and “Meatballs,” both of which he also produced; “Feds,” which he also directed; and the enduring cult favorite “Heavy Metal.”
ALAN R. COHEN & ALAN FREEDLAND (Screenwriters, Story) are best known as Emmy Award-winning writers from the Fox animated show “King of the Hill” and often referred to as “the Alans.”
Among numerous other writing and producing credits, the duo also co-created the Comedy Central cult hit “Kid Notorious,” starring Robert Evans. They are currently co- executive producers on Seth MacFarlane's “American Dad.”
Prior to “Due Date,” the Alans wrote feature scripts for various studios. They currently have several television and film projects in development, including the feature comedy “The Reunion,” for producer Brian Grazer.
A George Washington University graduate, Cohen originally hails from Pittsburgh and worked for several years as a reporter in The Baltimore Sun's Washington, D.C. bureau.
Freedland graduated from the University of Michigan. He grew up in the Detroit area and worked in advertising in Chicago.
ADAM SZTYKIEL (Screenwriter)'s most recent writing credit was the comedy “Made of Honor,” starring Patrick Dempsey and Michelle Monaghan.
He is currently working on a film adaptation of the best-selling memoir “The Game” by Neil Strauss, and has numerous other film and television projects in development.
Sztykiel is a graduate of the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts.
THOMAS TULL (Executive Producer), Chairman and CEO of Legendary Pictures, has achieved great success in the co-production and co-financing of event movies. Since its inception in 2004, Legendary Pictures has teamed with Warner Bros. Pictures on such hits as Bryan Singer's “Superman Returns”; Zack Snyder's “300” and “Watchmen”; and Christopher Nolan's “Batman Begins” and award-winning phenomenon “The Dark Knight,” which earned in excess of $1 billion worldwide.
More recently, this highly successful partnership produced Ben Affleck's “The Town”; Christopher Nolan's summer blockbuster “Inception”; the worldwide hit “Clash of the Titans”; Todd Phillips' “The Hangover,” which is the highest-grossing R-rated comedy of all time; and Spike Jonze's “Where the Wild Things Are.” Legendary's upcoming releases include Bryan Singer's “Jack the Giant Killer,” Todd Phillips' “The Hangover 2,” and Zack Snyder's “Sucker Punch.” Legendary is also developing a number of promising film projects in-house, including “Warcraft,” “Godzilla,” “Gravel,” “Paradise Lost,” and a sequel to “300.”
Before forming Legendary, Tull was President of The Convex Group, a media and entertainment holding company headquartered in Atlanta, on whose Board of Directors he also served.
SUSAN DOWNEY (Executive Producer) is a principal partner of Team Downey, the production company she formed with her husband, Robert Downey Jr. A prolific film producer, she has collaborated with some of the industry's most noted talents on films ranging from action blockbusters to dramas to comedies to horror thrillers.
Downey also produced the global hit “Sherlock Holmes,” which opened on Christmas Day 2009 and grossed more than $516 million worldwide. Directed by Guy Ritchie, the film starred Robert Downey Jr., Jude Law, Rachel McAdams and Mark Strong in an action adventure mystery that brought Arthur Conan Doyle's legendary detective to the big screen as never before. She is currently producing the sequel, which again stars Downey Jr. and Law under the direction of Ritchie.
Downey also recently served as an executive producer on the action hit “Iron Man 2,” which earned more than $620 million at the worldwide box office. The follow up to “Iron
Man” reunited director Jon Favreau with returning stars Robert Downey Jr. and Gwyneth Paltrow, and also starred Don Cheadle, Mickey Rourke and Scarlett Johansson.
Previously, Downey held the dual posts of Co-President of Dark Castle Entertainment and Executive Vice President of Production at Silver Pictures. Joining Silver Pictures in 1999, she oversaw the development and production of feature films released under both banners, including “Thir13en Ghosts” and “Swordfish.”
In 2002, she made her producing debut as a co-producer on “Ghost Ship” and then co- produced the 2003 release “Cradle 2 the Grave.” Downey went on to produce the features “Gothika” and “House of Wax,” and also served as an executive producer on the critically acclaimed comedic thriller “Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang.”
Downey later produced Neil Jordan's acclaimed psychological drama “The Brave One,” starring Jodie Foster and Terrence Howard; Guy Ritchie's widely praised crime comedy “RocknRolla,” starring Gerard Butler, Tom Wilkinson, Thandie Newton, Idris Elba, Chris Bridges and Jeremy Piven; the horror thriller “Orphan,” starring Vera Farmiga and Peter Sarsgaard; and the thriller “Whiteout,” starring Kate Beckinsale. She was also an executive producer on the Hughes brothers' post-apocalyptic drama “The Book of Eli,” starring Denzel Washington and Gary Oldman.
Prior to her tenure at Dark Castle and Silver Pictures, Downey worked on the hit films “Mortal Kombat” and “Mortal Kombat: Annihilation.”
Downey is a graduate of the University of Southern California's School of Cinema- Television.
SCOTT BUDNICK (Executive Producer) is Executive Vice President of Production for Green Hat Films, overseeing the development and production of a varied slate of projects including the upcoming “Project X,” set for release in 2011. He most recently executive produced the blockbuster hit “The Hangover,” which won a Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy and is the highest grossing R-rated comedy of all time.
Budnick began his entertainment career in local casting while at Emory University in his hometown of Atlanta, Georgia. Upon graduation, he relocated to Los Angeles, serving as casting assistant on Todd Phillips' “Road Trip” and then as associate to the director on “Old School,” starring Vince Vaughn, Luke Wilson, Will Ferrell and Jeremy Piven. Budnick served associate producer on Phillips' following films, “Starsky & Hutch,” starring Owen Wilson and Ben Stiller and “All The King's Men,” starring Sean Penn and Jude Law, which Phillips executive produced; and was co-producer on “School for Scoundrels,” starring Billy Bob Thornton.
LAWRENCE SHER (Director of Photography) reunites with Todd Phillips on “Due Date,” having previously collaborated on the Golden Globe-winning blockbuster comedy “The Hangover.” His work will next be seen in Greg Mottola's sci-fi comedy “Paul,” with Jason Bateman and Seth Rogan, and David Frankel's comedy “The Big Year,” based on Mark Obmascik's book and starring Owen Wilson, both releasing in 2011.
Sher's other recent credits include “I Love You, Man,” “Trucker,” “The Promotion,” “Dan in Real Life,” “The Dukes of Hazzard” and “The Chumscrubber.”
He worked as director of photography on several smaller films and music videos earlier in his career, coming to the fore in 2001 with the award-winning independent film “Kissing Jessica Stein,” followed by director Zach Braff's “Garden State.”
Born and raised in New York City, Sher studied economics at Wesleyan University where, in his junior year, he turned an interest in still photography into a fascination with motion pictures. Upon graduation, he moved to Los Angeles and began his career as a camera assistant.
BILL BRZESKI (Production Designer) previously collaborated with Todd Phillips on the 2009 Golden Globe Award-winning blockbuster comedy “The Hangover,” for which he received an Art Director's Guild Award nomination for Excellence in Production Design. Brzeski re-teams again with Phillips for “The Hangover 2,” releasing in 2011.
Brzeski's other recent credits include “Flipped,” which reunited him with Rob Reiner, having previously served as production designer on Reiner's “The Bucket List”; and re- teaming with Rob Minkoff' on “The Forbidden Kingdom,” having previously worked on the director's groundbreaking CGI movie “Stuart Little” and its sequel, “Stuart Little 2.” Some of the designer's additional credits include “Deck the Halls,” “Blue Streak,” James L. Brooks' Oscar®-winning “As Good As It Gets” and “Matilda.”
Brzeski received his undergraduate degree from Miami University and his MFA in Design from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. Originally interested in designing for the ballet and opera, he began his career in the theatre before moving to Los Angeles from New York City and designing more than 800 episodes of television series.
Brzeski also designs commercial spaces, most notably the award-winning Susina Bakery in Los Angeles.
His production design workshops at graduate and undergraduate levels have been hosted by New York University School of the Arts, Miami University, Clemson University and Loyola University Film School.
DEBRA NEIL-FISHER (Editor) re-teams with Todd Phillips on “Due Date,” having served as editor on his blockbuster hit “The Hangover,” the number one R-rated comedy of all time. The film won a Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy and Fisher was honored with an Eddie Award by the American Cinema Editors for Best Edited Feature Film.
Among Neil-Fisher's other feature credits are the hit comedies “Baby Mama,” “Semi- Pro,” “Role Models,” “You, Me and Dupree,” “Without a Paddle,” “Saving Silverman,” and two hugely successful Austin Powers films, “Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery” and “Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me.” She has collaborated three times with director Donald Petrie on “Just My Luck,” “Welcome to Mooseport” and “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days.” Her work also extends to other genres, including the dramas “Fried Green Tomatoes,” “The War” and “Up Close and Personal,” as well as the thrillers “Teaching Mrs. Tingle” and “Dr. Giggles.”
In 1991 Neil-Fisher won a CableACE Award for her work on TNT's telefilm “Heat Wave,” for director Kevin Hooks. Among her earlier television credits are “The Amy Fisher Story,” “The Case of the Hillside Strangler” and the TNT thriller “Breaking Point.”
LOUISE MINGENBACH (Costume Designer) marks her fifth project with director Todd Phillips on “Due Date,” a collaboration that began on the feature film “Starsky & Hutch,” followed by “School for Scoundrels” and the 2008 telefilm “The More Things Change...” In 2009, her designs were seen in Phillips' mega-blockbuster “The Hangover,” which won a Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy and is the highest R-rated comedy of all time.
The upcoming actioner “Battleship,” based on the classic board game, reunites Mingenbach with Peter Berg, with whom she worked on “Hancock,” starring Will Smith.
Mingenbach also designed costumes for the 2009 action epic ““X-Men: Wolverine.” Previously, she earned a Saturn Award and a Costume Designers Guild Award nomination for her work on Bryan Singer's “X-Men.” She has teamed with Singer on four other films, including the 1995 thriller “The Usual Suspects,” “X2,” “Apt Pupil” and “Superman Returns,” as well as the pilot for “House M.D.”
Mingenbach's additional feature credits include the Farrelly Brothers' “The Heartbreak Kid,” “Spanglish,” “The Rundown,” “K-PAX,” “Gossip,” “Permanent Midnight,” “Nightwatch,” “The Spitfire Grill” and “One Night Stand.”
CHRISTOPHE BECK (Composer) previously collaborated with Todd Phillips on “The Hangover,” which won a Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture – Comedy or Musical.
He has composed scores for 50 feature films and nearly 20 television shows. With more than 15 years of experience, Beck has scored a wide array of projects, including such action films as “Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief,” “The Sentinel” and “Elektra”; the comedies “Date Night,” “Charlie Bartlett,” “The Pink Panther” and “Bring It On”; and such dramas as “We Are Marshall,” “Under the Tuscan Sun” and “Year of the Dog”; as well as the Davis Guggenheim documentary, “Waiting For Superman.”
Beck most recently composed music for the comedies “Death at a Funeral,” starring Chris Rock, Martin Lawrence and Tracy Morgan; “Date Night,” with Steve Carell and Tina Fey; “Hot Tub Time Machine,” starring John Cusack; and Chris Columbus' fantasy adventure “Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief.”
His additional credits include “All About Steve,” “The Greatest,” “What Happens in Vegas,” “Phoebe in Wonderland,” “The Seeker: The Dark is Rising,” “Saved!,” “American Wedding” and “Just Married.”
Beck began his scoring career on the Canadian television series “White Fang,” and from there went on to score three seasons of the hit television series “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” for which he won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Music Composition.
24 Views
12:46:39 11/09/09
GBTV #657 (HD) | Motorola Droid Review
[LESS INFO] 24 VIEWS | ADDED 12:46:39 11/09/09
As you know, the hugely anticipated launch of the Motorola Droid was on Friday. I went to a press event held at a Verizon store to get a hands on with the Droid and some footage to share with you guys. Boring, but I'll take what I can get. Surprise, surprise, Verizon was nice enough to let me hang on to a Droid for two weeks so I'm able to give you a more in-depth review. The Droid runs Android 2.0. Android is an open source mobile operating system, originally developed by, and heavily supported by Google. If you use Google apps like Gmail, Calendar, or Google Voice, having Android is a very good thing. It means those apps are going to run smoothly and you'll get more out of them. More on that in a minute. Verizon has put a lot of effort into their network, and the hope here is that you don't get the amount of dropped calls or inconsistent service a lot of people complain about with AT%T. In my experience with iPhones on AT%T, dropped calls are less of an issue than calls I have to drop because I can't understand the person on the other end of the call or they can't understand me. The Motorola Droid provides vastly better sounding calls than my iPhones. In a perfect world both phones would be available on both networks so I could tell if it's a hardware issue or a network issue. The Motorola Droid has the best screen on any handheld device I've ever seen. It's a 3.7 inch touchscreen with a resolution of 854x480. That's over 400,000 pixels, and you can definitely tell a difference. We're showing you The Droid playing a movie in HD. The Droid screen is brighter and richer and point 2 inches bigger. The downside? No multitouch in the US. It's capable of multitouch, and the GSM version in Europe has multitouch enabled, but we're not allowed here in the US. Instead, you double tap to zoom or use the plus and minus buttons on the screen to zoom in or out. If you've been using an iPhone, you're going to natually want to pinch the screen. The Droid's method of zooming isn't bad. It has nice animation, but precise pinch and zoom is better. The best part about the 5 megapixel camera isn't the additional pixels. What I liked was the software based zoom. I was taking a picture of some Thai soup when I discovered the feature by accident. Just double tap the screen to get up close and personal. You can snap the photo from the screen, or use the physical button on the side of the phone. Just like on a regular camera, hold the button half way down to focus, then click to take your photo. The Droid has both an onscreen keyboard and physical slider keyboard. iPhone users tend to agree with Apple that physical keyboards are overrated and I'm in that camp. However, there is a large market for whom the iPhone is off the table just because it lacks physical keys. No amount of Apple evangelism is going to convince someone who insists on a keyboard that they really don't need it. I say Motorola was smart to zig where Apple zagged. It's important to point out, though, since the keys are flush, there isn't really any tactile difference between the virtual keyboard and the one with real buttons. The biggest advantage of the slider keyboard, whether you think it's necessary or not, is that you can type and enjoy the full screen at the same time. One of my favorite things about the Droid is that it allows you to run up to six applications at once. This is one of the main complaints from power users about the iPhone. Being able to listen to Pandora while browsing the web or tweeting is HUGE for me. I do it on my laptop, and that desire doesn't change just because I'm using a smaller device. Apple doesn't allow that because having six applications all processing data at the same time puts the phone at risk of a crash. I totally get that! However, I'd rather have the choice to take that risk. I mentioned Google apps before, and I want to get back to that. I don't know how many of you are in the same situation as me. I can't use the Mail app on the iPhone or any mail app on any phone because I use Gmail. That wouldn't be a problem (the iPhone supports Gmail) except I use labels and filters like crazy! Most of my mail is sorted automatically and doesn't even see the inbox, so any time I can't easily see and use my labels on the go, I'm severely crippled. Since Google supports Android, they've made it possible for me to use the Gmail app successfully without having to go into the browser. There are 10,000 apps in the Android store, called Market. There are 100,000 apps in the iPhone store. No surprise there. Apple has a head start. That said, there are plenty of Twitter apps, if nothing else!! With the ability to run apps in the background, you're able to set up Twitter apps, for example, to notify you when something new arrives in your feed or Direct Message inbox. This is a great way to save on SMS costs if you don't have an unlimited plan. One thing I was super excited about was the turn by turn navigation with voice commands. No need to pay for an app - it's already installed when you buy the phone. The voice is very synthetic, but it works AND speaks in complete sentences! One of the coolest possibilities you get with the Motorola Droid requires an additional purchase. It's just $30, though and it's a dock for charging the phone. What's special about it is that it turns the phone's display into a digital photo frame, a widget display and an alarm clock. When you set the phone on the dock and use it as an alarm clock, you can dim the time and set the alarm. Motorola promises 6.5 hours of battery life when used continuously. I'm getting close to 10 or 11 hours of normal use. If you're ready to buy one, let's talk price. It'll be $199 with a 2 year agreement. This is after a mail in rebate, but David Pogue from the NY Times says that if you buy it from Best Buy, you'll get an instant rebate. Voice plans start at $40/month for 350 minutes and data plans start at $30/month. The mainstream media keeps looking for an iPhone killer. That's not me. I want the iPhone to continue to succeed, but I want other alternatives to succeed too. I haven't been looking for an iPhone killer. I've been looking for a smartphone that plays effectively on the same field. The Motorola Droid does that. Will I buy one? I have a couple weeks to decide so I'm going to take advantage of that. My sense so far, though is that moving from iPhone to Droid will not be a downgrade and in a few ways, like call quality and Google Voice integration it will be an upgrade. I'll write more about my experience with the Droid on my blog at www.calilewis.me. This episode was brought to you by SquareSpace.com. The actor and chat show host Kevin Pollak is using Square Space for his site, kevinpollak.tv. It's the easiest way to build a great looking Web site and my promo code GEEK will save you 12%.
1 Views
00:10:01 10/28/07
Nmu Ek Students Want University To "Do The Right Thing" Save Enviro Research Project
[LESS INFO] 1 VIEWS | ADDED 00:10:01 10/28/07
NMU President meets for an hour with students trying to save environment research project; Dr. Les Wong given ongoing petition with nearly 900 signatures to stop Native Plants Project from being uprooted to build dormsDr. Wong impressed with students knowledge, preparation: NMU is "producing young scholars who want us to do the right thing"Students to explain effort to save the Native Plants Project at Lake Superior environment conference(Marquette, Michigan) - Students presented an ongoing petition with nearly 900 signatures to Northern Michigan University President Les Wong during a one-hour meeting today and left his offices with renewed hope to save an environment research project from being uprooted to build dorms. The Native Plants Project will be destroyed to build dorms if the proposed NMU Master Plan is not changed. NMU student Michael Rotter, a senior biology major spearheading the petition drive, and representatives of three other student environment organizations attended the meeting with NMU President Les Wong that lasted about an hour on Thursday (Oct. 25, 2007). NMU Student Michael Rotter is leading the fight to protect the Native Plants Project that has involved the blood, sweat and tears of hundreds of students"I found the meeting encouraging," said Rotter, adding the students presented Dr. Wong with petitions signed by nearly 900 NMU students who hope to save the Native Plants Project from being destroyed to build dorms. Five students met with Dr. Wong including Amber Masters, social chair for the Environmental Science Organization; Cory Howes, president of the Students Against Sulfide Mining; Eric Miller, president of the Superior Geography Club; and NMU senior Emily Wessels, an NMU senior and environmental science major. "Dr. Wong seemed very supportive and open to our opinions - but no promises were made," said Rotter, a member of the Northern Michigan University EarthKeeper Student Team. "We showed him maps of the area and we talked to him about future ideas for the study area," Rotter said. The five-acre Native Plants Project is located on the northside of the Northern Michigan University campus. (NMU Native Plant Project Photos by Professor Dr. Ronald Sundell)NMU President Wong has stressed the master plan is a proposal and a final decision has not been made. Dr. Wong said he "was thoroughly impressed with the students' knowledge and preparation." "Their ideas have merit and their proactive manner in helping me think through the issues was deeply appreciated," Dr. Wong said. "I'm proud of the role NMU played not only in their education but in producing young scholars who want us to do the right thing." "I look forward to future meetings with them," Dr. Wong said. Students are learning a great deal about the environment as the work inside and out on the Native Plants Project at NMU Dr. Wong was presented with future plans for the Native Plants Project including planting white pine and red oak trees to protect students from bitter winter weather in an area of the five acre Native Plants Project that Rotter described as "a wind tunnel that channels the wind through the buildings." "He really liked some of ours ideas to reduce the winds in the area during the winter and to rearrange the sidewalks for students to have better access to classes and other areas of campus," Rotter said. Rotter said some of the white pine trees will be 10-feet tall when planted so there is an immediate effect that will provide increasing protection with the growth of branches. Northern Michigan University students are trying to save their four-year-old Native Plants project that will be a valuable seed tool for other northern Michigan environment efforts and help attract students to the campus along Lake Superior in the Upper Peninsula if its not destroyed to make dorms "Dr. Wong gave us some advice on who we can talk to in the administration about keeping out native plants study area intact," Rotter said. "Dr. Wong was very open and very inviting to our ideas on the native plants area," Rotter said. "He could not guarantee us anything but it was very encouraging none-the-less." Rotter said the students were given information on how to be put on the agenda of the December NMU Board of Trustees meeting to make a presentation about the native plants. The students will continue the petition drive and other efforts to spare the Native Plants Project from being uprooted. "Our next step is to continue to meet with members of administration and talk to the Board of Trustees and to continue collecting signatures on our petitions," Rotter said. Students have gathered about 900 signatures in an attempt to stop NMU from removing the Native Plants Project that has received $24,000 in state and federal funding, said Rotter, who spent many hours protecting the plants from this summer’s drought and is spearheading the petition drive with help from other students. Thousands of students hours have gone into making the project a success and it includes The project includes field sampling of vegetation, insects, birds, small mammals, and is expected to attract reptiles and amphibiansNMU President Wong said that "there is no clear consensus on the location of the residence halls and there is considerable opinion that any structure that impinges on the Native Plant Project would not have campus-wide support." If the native plants project is taken off the chopping block, President Wong and other members of the NMU administration will prove the university is sincere when it uses the slogan "Northern Naturally" to promote the campus, Rotter said. The native plants outdoor classroom will include a northern open pine barrens, a retention pond/wetland area, upland mesic forest and shrub types representing various northern Michigan habitats. The project has attracted insects, birds, and small mammals and is expected to attract amphibians and reptiles. Over the past four years, hundreds of NMU students have worked hard to build the Native Plants Project that will soon become a beautiful part of campus if it's not destroyed by NMU dorm plannersThe outdoor classroom is used to study ecological modeling, plant identification, native plant propagation, restoration techniques and water quality. Dr. Sundell said that campus planners have other areas to build dorms instead of destroying the native plants area. "We understand the work that has gone into the planting project, and that some of the plants may not do well if moved," said Dr. Wong, who has toured the project. "We want feedback on the big ideas." Rotter is receiving support from student organizations including the NMU Environmental Science Organization, Superior Geography Club, Sustainable Agriculture club, and the Students Against Sulfide Mining. Native plants help keep waterways clean, build habitat for animals and other organisms, Rotter said. The student founders of the project hope to be able to show to their children what they helped start. "I have always told my students that the project they started is part of a long term green-scaping of the campus," Sundell said. "The university has started an environmental sustainability committee to make our campus greener and address other issues like reducing our energy requirements, and less pesticide and fertilizer use." Beautiful flowers are part of the project that is coming of age and will soon have many flowering plants in brilliant colors"Our Native Plants Project is a prime example to the university committee and the general community on how to develop more sustainable systems on campus and the U.P.," Sundell said. "In the plan they state this a would be a green corridor - this is already a green corridor," Sundell said. "If they carry through with the plan they have a building that would block that green corridor. "The native plants are part of a current green corridor that stretches north from classrooms in the new science building to the existing dorms," Sundell said. Hundreds of students from the student environmental science organization and NMU classes have assisted in development of the Native Plants Project site, Sundell said. NMU students who have helped Professor Sundell develop and manage the Native Plant Project over the past four years are Mike Stefancic, Jason Woodhull and Michael Rotter. The three students each spent a summer managing the native plants including planting, maintaining and developing of the site Sundell said. This map shows the five acre project at NMU that is growing each year but now faces destruction to make way for dorms and other student housing.Despite the worst drought in U.P. history the student volunteers added about 11,000 native plants to the project this summer, Sundell said. "This Native Plants Project is valuable as an educational and research site and a native seed bank for future environmental restoration project in the central U.P.," said Sundell. "As the project moves forward NMU will become a major seed source for environmental restoration projects in the central U.P." The Native Plants Project is coming of age and will add beauty to the campus including flowering plants and grasses in various shades of white, yellow, pink and purple, Sundell said. NMU students put loving care into the five-acre Native Plants Project on the north side of campus (NMU Native Plant Project Photos by Professor Dr. Ronald Sundell)Student Michael Rotter can be reached by calling 231-250-3061 email: mrotter@nmu.eduThe NMU EK Student team can be reached by calling 906-475-5068 email: earthkeeper@charter.netProject Prof. Dr. Ronald Sundell can be reached at 906-227-1359 email: rsundell@nmu.edu
0 Views
14:30:15 07/06/07
Promo for "E4: Station to Station"
[LESS INFO] 0 VIEWS | ADDED 14:30:15 07/06/07
I am very happy to announce that I will be presenting a video installation as part of a group show at Transformer . Transformer is a very cool gallery space in Washington, D.C. that shows experimental and conceptual work.
Here is a description of the show from Transformer’s website –
“Transformer is very proud to present E4: Station to Station, an exhibition resulting from the fourth installment of our unique peer critique and mentorship program, The Exercises for Emerging Artists. Featuring four dynamic DC area based artists - Rebecca C. Adams, Carolina Mayorga, Rob Parrish, and Fereshteh Toosi - and guest curated by Niels Van Tomme, E4: Station to Station consists of four individual artist projects at Transformer incorporating video, sound, performance art, and conceptual mixed media installation.
Each of this year's Exercises artists will take over the Transformer project space for one-week, beginning July 11, 2007, to present new work resulting from their peer-critique and mentorship experience at Transformer. Opening events including performances and artist talks will take place each Thursday, July 11 - August 5, 2007 from 6:30 - 8pm.”
My piece is called “Jack”. It mixes elements from the television series "24", the Department of Homeland Security's Homeland Security Advisory System, and archival footage. The installation explores the sensation of being an object of manipulation.
Please come out to each opening event if you are in the D.C. area. Here is the schedule – Carolina – 7/12; Rob – 7/19; Rebecca – 7/26; and Fereshteh 8/2.
0 Views
17:36:15 06/08/07
What is a Virtual Desktop?
[LESS INFO] 0 VIEWS | ADDED 17:36:15 06/08/07
http://live.pirillo.com/ - We've discussed having more than one monitor on your computer, but we have not talked about having multiple desktops on one monitor. Virtual desktops accomplish this.
Why would you want to use a virtual desktop? They allow you to have multiple desktops, allowing you to organize multiple windows in a logical order. You can keep your internet applications open in one desktop while your test editing can be in another desktop, and so on.
Linux has a fantastic virtual desktop program called Beryl , which is helping Linux make Windows and OS X "look like crap." >
Beryl is an OpenGL accelerated desktop that seeks to provide a free, open source desktop experience to the community that reflects the wishes of the users. Above all else, the project seeks to listen to and respond to the requests of the user base.
Chris recommends VirtuaWin for Windows, which lets you simply move the mouse to the edge of the screen to switch between desktops. While it's not as pretty as Beryl, it's functional, open source, and free. >
VirtuaWin is a virtual desktop manager for the Windows operating system (Win9x/ME/NT/Win2K/XP). A virtual desktop manager lets you organize applications over several virtual desktops (also called 'workspaces'). Virtual desktops are very common in Unix/Linux, and once you get accustomed to using them, they become an essential part of a productive workflow.
Do you have any recommendations for virtual desktop software?
Want to embed Virtual Desktops video in your blog? Use this code:
http://live.pirillo.com/ / http://chris.pirillo.com/media/
113 Views
03:43:16 04/28/07
Northern Michigan Residents Turn In Tens Of Thousands Of Pharmaceuticals Weighing Over One Ton
[LESS INFO] 113 VIEWS | ADDED 03:43:16 04/28/07
Narcotics Have Estimated Street Value of $500,000Third Annual Earth Keeper Clean Sweep Targeted All MedicinesEarth Day: 2007 Pharmaceutical Clean Sweep(Marquette, Michigan) - Northern Michigan residents honored Earth Day by turning in tens of thousands of pills plus narcotics with an estimated street value of half a million dollars during the third annual Earth Keeper Clean Sweep.The 2007 Pharmaceutical Clean Sweep targeted out-of-date and unwanted medications of all kinds, according to Carl Lindquist, executive director of the Superior Watershed Partnership.Earth Keeper TV will soon have an updated videos and stories about the pharmaceutical collection.Lindquist estimated that over one ton of pharmaceuticals and personal care products were turned in by the public.The "controlled substances" turned in have an estimated street value of $500,000 including narcotics in pill and liquid form, clean sweep organizers said.Several police officers estimated that each one of the narcotics and other controlled drugs had a street value ranging from $5 to $25 per pill.“We had a great public turnout, a lot of people showed up with old medications,” said Lindquist said. “We are again breaking records for the Great Lakes and maybe the nation.”Lindquist said the exact number of controlled substances turned in was still being tallied.About 2,000 people turned in items but the many had also collected pharmaceuticals from other family and friends, organizers said.The 2007 clean sweep went off without a hitch thanks to the U.P. chapter of the Michigan Pharmacists Association, and numerous law enforcement agencies including the DEA and Michigan Sheriff's Association, organizers said. Pharmacists and law enforcement officers were present at all collection sites to ensure security and proper collection of the pharmaceuticals, Lindquist said.The third annual Earth Keeper Clean Sweep was coordinated by the Superior Watershed Partnership and the Cedar Tree Institute, both Marquette-based non-profit environmental groups.The clean sweep was again sponsored by nine U.P. faith communities with 130,000 members (60 percent of U.P. residents), the Superior Watershed Partnership, the Cedar Tree Institute, and the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community.The project involves the congregations of over 140 churches and temples representing nine faith communities (Catholic, Episcopal, Lutheran, Presbyterian, United Methodist Church, Unitarian Universalist, Baha'i, Jewish, and Zen Buddhist).The clean sweep had over 400 volunteers including 150 members of Thrivent Financial and 40 Northern Michigan University (NMU) students.Financial sponsors again this year include the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and $15,000 from Thrivent Financial for Lutherans, a not-for-profit financial services membership organization and fraternal benefit society.Rev. Jon Magnuson, Earth Keeper Initiative founder, said "one of the gifts that the faith community brings to the environmental movement is that the external damage done in the environment is a reflection of what is going on in the human condition, in the human heart - so as we heal and cleanse the Earth, we are also healing the human heart.”“We are in trouble with the way we live with the Earth, we have lost our balance" but projects like the clean sweeps are one example of humans correcting man-made problems, said Rev. Magnuson, co-organizer of the clean sweeps and the head of Lutheran Campus Ministry at NMU.Lindquist said the pharmaceuticals will be taken to an EPA-licensed incinerator at Veolia Environmental Services near St. Louis, Missouri.The EPA is funding the collection of pharmaceuticals and personal care products because trace amounts of chemicals from those substances are turning up in America’s drinking water.EPA official John Perrecone from Chicago visited several of the collection sites and praised the Superior Watershed Partnership and the Earth Keeper team for its organization and success pulling off the largest geographical pharmaceutical collection in U.S. history.“From the EPA’s prospective this is an ideal approach for grassroots community members and the faith-based community to work with the federal government, American Indians and others to achieve environmental gain,” said Perrecone, Ecosystem Projects Manager at the Midwestern Region office of EPA located in Chicago.The 19 Earth Keeper sites collect “the whole gamut” of over-the-counter and prescription medications including a wide range of narcotic pain killers, sleeping pills, syringes/needles, and antibiotics.The public also turned in a wide range of personal care products like shampoo, lotions and soaps.Although an environmental project, the pharmaceutical collection had several great side-effects like removing drugs that could be accidentally consumed by children thinking the pills were candy, and preventing diversion of controlled substances such as narcotics by people addicted to prescription medications.Some of the medication was over 100 years old, including 18 large dust-covered antique bottles filled with liquids and powders that Lutheran Mary Sloan Armstrong of Harvey brought to the Messiah Lutheran Church collection site in Marquette.Armstrong said the medicines - some with Latin labels - belonged to her late father J.K. Sloan, who ran Sloan’s Pharmacy in Galva, Illinois for decades prior to his death.“These are drug bottles that were in the basement of my dad’s pharmacy,” said Armstrong. “We’ve had them for about 30 years (since her father’s death) and haven’t done anything with them. We thought this would be a good chance to get rid of the contents.”Pharmacists gathered around Armstrong’s car to get a look at the century old drugs that had a variety of deteriorating cork-like lids.“This stuff goes back about one hundred years, “ said Marquette pharmacist Dave Campana, while lifting several of the bottles out of an old wooden crate.“These are really old powders that they used to make up medications - you don’t find these in pharmacies anymore because they don’t have a need for it. But they used it years ago,” Campana said. “These powders and liquids are considered hazardous waste but they are drugs.”A member of Prince of Peace Lutheran Church in Harvey, Armstrong said some of the bottles have pre-civil war patents and her family plans to search her late father’s basement for more bottles after learning the importance of proper disposal of medicines through the clean sweep.Meanwhile at the St. Peter Catholic Cathedral collection site in Marquette, one person dropped off a “turn-of-the century” black folding case containing eight small bottles filled with powders.“This is what would have been a doctor’s traveling pharmacy,” said Marquette pharmacist Kent Jenema, while showing the leather zippered case to an EPA observer. “This has a lot of old patent type medications from mostly natural sources that predates some of the pharmacy that we know today.”The third annual Earth Keeper Clean Sweep was praised by America’s Drug Czar, law enforcement officers and prosecutors."Prescription drug abuse is a serious problem across the Nation, increasingly affecting families who have been untouched by illegal drug use," said U.S. Drug Czar John Walters, the director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) and a member of the President's CabinetWalters cited the 2007 Pharmaceutical Clean sweep across northern Michigan as an example of “community engagement in properly disposing of pharmaceuticals (that) will help us stop and prevent prescription drug abuse, and the harm it can cause.”Remote areas like Michigan’s Upper Peninsula are not immune to prescription drug abuse.About 14 percent of students in Alger and Marquette counties admit using prescription medication to get high, according to a 2006 survey by the Great Lakes Center for Youth Development."And in our own community here in the U.P., it's an under-reported problem and a lot of times prescription drugs that are suitable for abuse can be stolen from people for whom they are prescribed,” said Paul Olson, a licensed social worker who works for the Great Lakes Center for Youth Development in Marquette.Katherine Geier removed all the narcotics from her home, delivering OxyContin and other medication to the collection site at St. John the Evangelist Catholic Church in Ishpeming.“My mother had become addicted to prescription pain killers and sleeping pills, so I ended up hiding them from her,” Geier said. “So I had all these narcotics and I did not know what to do with them.”“I did not want to flush them down the toilet,” Geier said. “So I finally found a proper was to dispose of them.”Drug addicts and burglars “will break into people’s homes and steal these narcotic drugs for their own personal gain - they will either use it themselves or sell it on the streets,” said Ishpeming Police Officer Robert Sibley, one of dozens of law enforcement officers stationed at the 19 collection sites. “This is a big problem and we are working on it all the time.”Police were pleased the clean sweep prevented lots of “controlled” drugs from possible diversion to the street.“This is great,” said Marquette Police officer Brandon Boesl, while transferring counted narcotics to a special holding container during the collection at the Messiah Lutheran Church in Marquette.“Some of the most abuse things in the area are prescription drugs and a lot of people after they get their prescription refilled don’t use them - and other family members or children can get a hold of them - and this is a great way to get rid of them,” officer Boesl said.Marquette General Hospital Pharmacist Bob Hodges said “these are controlled drugs and we are inventorying them so that we will have a better record of the drugs that are being collected - it’s required by law.” After counting pills from a dusty bottle filled with narcotics, Ishpeming pharmacist Steve Lyford said “to dispose of these medicines in a safe way is a real good idea.”Over 100 people dropped off pharmaceuticals at the First Presbyterian Church in Escanaba, MI. Including over 3,700 (controlled substance) pills.Some participants held medications "for many years after the death of a relative because they did not know what to do with it," said Jill Wiese Martin, site manager and a member of the First Presbyterian Church in Escanaba, MI."Most people were relieved to be able to bring this material in without any hassles and many were very aware that this material should not be just flushed," said Wiese Martin, adding many participants were frustrated that left over medicine goes to waste when it is replaced by new treatment."We need a systematic way to routinely and safely dispose of unused and unwanted medications," said Wiese Martin, an environmental scientist. "An organized means for collection and disposal just does not exist."Removing pharmaceuticals and personal care products is important to protect the many rivers in the Escanaba area, and on Lake Michigan bays that are world renown walleye fisheries."Little Bay de Noc is a very rich ecosystem, one of the richest due to it's complex geology, geography and the many surface water streams that discharge in to it," Wiese Martin said.In addition to being an environment professional, Wiese Martin says protecting the water is important part of her Presbyterian faith."We need to protect and preserve God's creation for all, even to the extent that future adverse outcomes can be avoided and minimized," Wiese Martin said. "It provides an another mission opportunity in God's world and hope to our children that we care about the world we are leaving them."The city of Escanaba, Bay de Noc Community College and public school educators are "actively promoting a number of issues" including "the importance of wetlands to the entire bay ecosystem," creating "a walkable community" and reducing the "human/consumer waste stream," Wiese Martin said.At the First Lutheran Church in Gladstone, about 75 people dropped off medicines and security was provided by Michigan State Police and Gladstone Public Safety Officers, including some in plain clothes."This was a wonderful event - a perfect marriage of two concerns - care of the environment and the need to remove drugs that might otherwise be abused from the community," said Pastor Jonathan Schmidt.Delta County Prosecutor Steve Parks visited the Gladstone clean sweep location and told the site manager he was pleased to see narcotics and other prescriptions drugs removed from his community.Northern Michigan University student Miranda Revere said while volunteering at the First Lutheran Church in Gladstone she learned how severe the prescription drug abuse problem is from the Delta County prosecutor and the pastor.“Delta County has a problem with teens abusing prescription drugs, so finding people to help at the pharmaceutical collection was not difficult at all,” said Revere, a 21-year-old business management major from Clio, MI.“The county prosecuting attorney discussed the committee that has been put together to help this problem,” said Revere, who has attended NMU for three years.For the year in a row, 10-year-old Eve McCowen volunteered at the Messiah Lutheran Church in Marquette and was assigned the task of taking bags full of personal care products and non-prescription medications and dumping them into large holding containers. “We came here to collect the vitamins, pills and any other medicines - so they won’t pollute the earth anymore,” said McCowen, a fourth grader, who volunteered with her parents and other members of the Marquette Baha'i Spiritual Assembly.“There has been a lot of stuff and I have been dumping them into this barrel,” said McCowen with a huge grin.The Northern Michigan University EarthKeeper (NMU EK) Student Team sent volunteers literally hundreds of miles to all 19 collections sites.NMU EK project director Jennifer Simula said the students really enjoy doing their part to protect the environment.“They are wearing green T-shirts and they all have smiles on their faces,” said Simula as three students each emptied several large shopping bags full of medicines and person care products.“The students are greeting everybody as they come in, providing hospitality and letting everyone know what’s going on and that they are involved in a great project,” said Simula, who is a student leader in Lutheran Campus Ministry at NMU.The students have many projects and are working on setting up chapters at three other U.P. universities while still keeping up with classroom assignments.“The pharmacists brought knowledge of all the things we collect, the law officers praised us for getting these drugs in a secure place and out of the potential of being abused,” said Michael Rotter, a senior majoring in botany.“The amazing thing about the clean sweep, is me being a 21-year-old Buddhist college kid can sit down and talk to a 30 year old pharmacist father and we can both relate to the 50-year-old Methodist pastor,” Rotter said.The Earth Keepers “had people from the community drop off pharmaceuticals for friends and family members” adding it was such a “beautiful day” many walked to their collection site, said NMU EK Student Team member Ashley Ormson of Negaunee, a sophomore with a double major in International Relations and French.“I was very happy that everything went smoothly for the three hours, and we didn't encounter any complications,” said Ormson, a member of Messiah Lutheran Church and student leader with Lutheran Campus Ministry at NMU.NMU EK Student Team member Matt Nordine, who volunteered at the UMC church in St. Ignace, did not mind the four-hour round trip drive because “it was good to actively participate in Earth Day.”NMU EK team member Lauren Murphy said it is easy to mix her studies and getting good grades with several environmental projects because “we keep a good balance - on the weekends we go to our projects and help out and during the week we go to the Earth Keeper meetings after class.”“We collected a lot of medicines, old suntan lotions, eye drops, cosmetics and other stuff like that,” said NMU EK team member Kristy Knutson, while going thru bags of items dropped off by Marquette residents.“Lots of controlled substances came through that won't get sold or end up in the water,” said Rev. Tari Stage-Harvey, pastor of the Zion Lutheran Church in St. Ignace and Trinity Lutheran Church in Brevort (combined 100 parishioners).Rev. Jim Balfour, pastor of United Methodist of St. Ignace, said he was “happy to see people from so many churches help” with the clean sweep."It is wonderful to work in a community where the churches come together easily to address the threats to God's world," Pastor Balfour said.Pastor Balfour thanked Earth Keepers for the clean sweeps and literature that was passed out to the public because it helps "people understand how many of the common items of our daily lives can be a threat to the environment when they have out lived their usefulness."Presbyterian Earth Keeper team member Sue Piasini of Sagola said she "saw a flock of geese when I was going to the clean sweep and I thought ‘we are going to take care of the water for you' and it was such a nice sunny day."Three pharmacists from two retail stores "never stopped counting pills during the entire three hours," said Piasini, who volunteered at the Salvation Army Bread of Life Center in Iron Mountain."One plastic bag had over 2,000 pills and they had to sort them all out," said Piasini, a member of Grace Presbyterian Church in Sagola, MI.Members of several faith communities were among the volunteers and everyone was in a great mood "joking and having a fun time," said Piasini.Earth Keeper surveys were filled out by all 94 people, mostly senior citizens, who dropped off pharmaceuticals and many brought in drugs collected from family and friends, Piasini said."One person brought a full duffel bag" of pharmaceuticals, said Piasini, who has two grandchildren and is the mother of four grown children.Bishop Alexander K. Sample, Roman Catholic Diocese of Marquette, said he is “thrilled” with the results and was especially happy about the large youth involvement in protecting the environment and taking prescription drugs off the streets.“It is wonderful to see that the younger generation is at the heart of this Earth Keepers effort,” said Bishop Sample, who oversees 97 U.P. parishes and missions with 65,400 members. “They understand better than many, the connection between faith and care for creation, God's gift to us.”“We have to be concerned about our young people and the world we will hand on to them,” Bishop Sample said.“It is a way for us, as people of faith, to show our concern for the world that our Creator has entrusted to our care and stewardship,” Bishop Sample said.Catholic Earth Keeper team member Kyra Fillmore, a 29-year-old mother of two small children, said “people were unloading medicines from deceased relatives or from past illness.”"This collection was a quieter, more personal event," said Fillmore, a member of St. Louis the King Catholic Church in Harvey. “I'm grateful that Earth Keepers could provide a comfortable place for people to - in a sense - release past pains and help keep our water clean as well.”Catholic Earth Keeper Linda of Marquette, who drove five hours round trip to volunteer at the Our Lady of Peace Catholic Church in Ironwood, MI, called the clean sweep "a most spiritual event for cleansing the soul of medicinal toxins."O'Brien believes participants "shed the reminder of pain from loved ones or oneself physical medicinal needs.""Residents were able to make their home environment safer by disposing of unused or unwanted medicines and old health care products in an ethical way," O'Brien said. "They responded knowing that they are also contributing to the health and safety beyond their own doorstep."Retired steelworker Don Flint of Ironwood said his wife, Betty, cleaned out their medicine cabinets "to get rid of medications that we don't want any more" because "we've become more aware that it's not the right thing to do to flush pharmaceuticals down the toilet."A Lutheran, Flint, 64, dropped off old antibiotics, arthritis pain medicine, aspirin, Tylenol and lotions at the Our Lady of Peace Catholic Church collection site in Ironwood.The Flints are members of the (ELCA) Salem Lutheran Church in Ironwood, which recently formed the Christ Lutheran Parish with 3 other ELCA churches in Ironwood.Episcopal Diocese of Northern Michigan (EDNM) Bishop James Kelsey, who brought several old medications to a Catholic collection site, said he hopes that others will follow the example of the Earth Keeper team and that the clean sweeps are “a catalyst for a movement much bigger than our demographics” in remote northern Michigan with a population of about 260,000 people spread across hundreds of square miles.“Care for the environment is an expression of love for God and one another," said Kelsey, who serves as Bishop for 27 Episcopal congregations with 2,500 members in the U.P.Evangelical Lutheran Church of America Lutheran Bishop Thomas A. Skrenes of the Northern Great Lakes Synod (NGLS), who volunteered at the Fortune Lake Lutheran Bible Camp in Crystal Falls, said the public was happy to participate and had an “eagerness about being a part of the solution.”“It was a morning of solutions to difficult problems and I am proud of my church," said Bishop Skrenes, the head of 91 U.P. Lutheran congregations with 40,000 members.The NGLS also includes Finlandia University in Hancock and the Northland Lutheran Retirement Community in Marinette, WI.Jewish Earth Keeper Jacob Silver of Negaunee Township said future health of the planet will depend on how youth are motivated by adults - and protecting nature is clear in the annual teachings and observations of Tikkun Olam and Passover. “It is important that adults and parents are seen by youth to be carrying out the moral obligation for Tikkun Olam,” said Silver, one of 70 members of Temple Beth Sholom in Ishpeming, MI. “This creates a reality for the youth - thus, it spreads the message to care for the environment across generations.”Silver said “for Jews, the Earth is all we have.”“There is no mention, thus no concept, of existence after death in the five books of Moses, our Torah,” Silver said. “So, the welfare of the planet is always a prime commitment for Jews.”“There is nowhere else, and if we foul the Earth, we can be left ultimately homeless,” Silver said.Silver added that “the welfare of the Earth, and its parts, is a primary commitment for Jews.”“The Earth Keepers provide, not only an opportunity to help heal the Earth, but also collaboration with members of faith communities in the area - it is a wonderful organization,” Silver said.For the third year in a row, northern Michigan Zen Buddhists volunteered at the Grace United Methodist Church in Marquette, and the head priest said it is "the beginning of a tradition and it felt good to be back there on Earth Day" with UMC Rev. Charlie West and "his hospitable crew doing something for the earth and raising consciousness about yet another hazard that is degrading and poisoning our environment.""Each year during the Clean Sweeps, I see wider involvement and more publicity, and each year I see more evidence of young people participating, which is absolutely a necessity over the long haul," said Reverend Tesshin Paul Lehmberg, leader of the Lake Superior Zendo - a Marquette Zen Buddhist temple.Rev. Lehmberg said his 15-year-old daughter, Freya, and Rev. West’s 13-year-old son, Christopher, were excited to volunteer."We're passing along our enthusiasms, and our worry" over the environmental condition of the earth and that youth concern for nature and involvement is essential to the future of the planet, Rev. Lehmberg said.Dr. Rodney Clarken, chair of the Marquette Baha'i spiritual assembly who volunteered at a Lutheran church, said "the interfaith aspect of this project has given it a unique energy and power - when you see the results over the past three years" adding that he hopes people will see the connection between protecting the Earth and their spiritual beliefs."The environmental crisis is foundationally a spiritual crisis, and until you address those spiritual issues you will not have significant impact on the environment. ," said Clarken, NMU interim associate dean of Teacher Education and director of School of Education, adding there are about 40 members of Baha'i in Marquette (about 100 in Upper Peninsula) , and 144,000 in the United States (about 6 million world wide)."In our world of rapid and accelerating change, protecting our environment, both physically and spiritually, is increasingly critical and challenging," Clarken said. "Baha'is believe that only in seeking spiritual solutions to our material problems will we be able to sustain and advance civilization."Clarken said that Baha'ullah - the Prophet-Founder of Baha'i - wrote: "The earth is but one county, and mankind its citizens."United Methodist Church (UMC) Marquette District Superintendent (DS) Grant R. Lobb said the words "cleaner water" kept popping into his mind as he stood in "the warm parking lot watching a number of individuals and couples bringing in their outdated pills, tablets and syringes" into the basement of the Grace United Methodist Church in Marquette.The clean sweep means "cleaner water for all of us," said Lobb, DS of the Marquette District of the Detroit Annual Conference UMC, which has 8,372 parishioners and 60 northern Michigan congregations.Supt. Lobb said he is "impressed by the participation of our senior citizens, who not only took the time to look through their cupboards and cabinets for outdated medicines, but also made the effort to drive to the collection sites in order to turn in their items."Catholic Earth Keeper team member Kelly Mathews of Big Bay, and her husband, Chris Mathews, 45, brought numerous medicines bottles to the collection including 18-year-old prescription sinus medication they found while recently cleaning out their medicine cabinet.Mathews said she “could not believe the amount of unused medication” adding America’s medical system needs to find a way to prevent the waste of these drugs.“Some people brought in bottles with 50 to 80 more pills,” said Mathews, a 36-year-old mother of two who says her family switched to natural remedies years ago because they believe those medications are usually safer than prescription medicines.“I found the financial waste was totally unnecessary; those drugs were paid by someone - who would have thought that there would be so much going to waste,” Mathews said. “Many people commented on how much the drugs had cost and that they never actually used them. I wonder, why the excess?”Marquette Unitarian Universalist Congregation (MUUC) Earth Keeper team member Gail Griffith of Marquette agreed with Mathews that the waste of medicine in America is sad.“The pharmacist at Grace United Methodist told me that a drug I turned in, with an expiration date in 1992, was worth over $600,” Griffith said. “It had been prescribed but not completely used.”“It's too bad that so much money is used to buy pharmaceuticals that end up as trash, but we need to insure that trash doesn't end up harming our waters,” Griffith said.Presbyterian Earth Keeper team member Lynnea Kuzak, who volunteered at the First United Methodist Church in Manistique, said she was thanked by a resident who lost her husband to cancer last September and wished that all his medication had been properly disposed."Another person told me ‘I didn't like putting them down the toilet,’ " said Kuzak, 28, the director of Christian Education at First Presbyterian Church in Marquette.Presbyterian Pastor Dave Anderson of Iron Mountain is thankful for the interfaith clean sweeps because “I worry about the legacy our generation will leave for future ones, but it is good to know that we are doing something about it through opportunities like this.”Rev. Anderson, who serves as the chaplain for the Dickinson County Health Care System, added that “we all need to realize that the pick up and disposal of polluting waste like electronic equipment and outdated pharmaceuticals is making a big difference now and for future generations.”"As God's children, we feel like we are provided a concrete, tangible way to make a difference in our environment,” said Rev. Anderson, who is pastor of the Grace Presbyterian Church in Sagola.”Lutheran Joy Ibsen said on the Sunday morning following the clean sweep her Lutheran congregation sang “We Gather at the River-- the beautiful, the beautiful river.”I couldn't help but think how perfectly that song was for us on Earth Day,” Ibsen said. "To me, there is a special symbolism in this year's Clean Sweep--preventing pharmaceuticals from entering our water systems.”Ibsen said she was struck by how many prescriptions were thrown away because of serious side effects despite advances in medical care.“So many of our environmental problems come from the side effects of our advanced society - and every prescription has side effects,” said Ibsen, the organist at Trinity Lutheran Church in Trout Creek, MI.“One woman told me she had paid $140 for a certain prescriptions which gave her nothing but welts - she could not take it because of her allergic reaction, said Ibsen, lay minister, vice president of the church council at Trinity Lutheran.Ibsen said, like people, “the earth and water is allergic to many powerful prescriptions and chemicals.”Mary Klups of Ontonagon County brought in several types of pain and blood pressure medication, including two bottles of morphine, leftover from her late husband’s cancer treatment.“I had several drugs I have kept, waiting to dispose of in the right way,” said Klups, while dropping off pharmaceuticals at the White Pine Community United Methodist Church.“I also have several of my own medications including some very expensive medicine that did not work out because I had an allergic reaction to it,” Klups said. “I really appreciate having a way to get rid of all this.”White Pine pharmacist Chuck Blezek said “for years we told people to flush old prescriptions down the toilet - it is only lately that we have found out that it is the wrong thing to do.”“This is a very worthwhile thing Earth Keepers is doing,” Blezek said.Wayne Sparks of White Pine said he dropped off drugs “because I don’t have any other good way of disposing of these medications.”UMC Earth Keeper team member Rev. Charlie West said that church members “felt really good about providing this service for the community.”“These chemicals should not be loose in the creation - we're glad they will be disposed of carefully," said Rev. West, pastor of the Grace UMC in Marquette and project director of the first clean sweep. "We had some over the counter medicine from 20 years ago - and we saw a lot of the same people we have seen over the past two years” at the previous clean sweeps.Two weeks after a lengthy blizzard that dumped over five feet of snow, those participating enjoyed sun with temperatures in the 70's, that Rev. West described as “a good day to be disposing of chemicals carefully - so the creation will continue to be healthy and wholesome.”Messiah Lutheran Church Pastor Nancy Amacher praised the police for standing watch, pharmacists “who utilized their knowledge and expertise,” NMU students that “helped wherever needed” and others for “helping out on a sunny Saturday morning when they could have been sleeping in or doing their own thing.”“As people of faith we believe the earth is God's created gift and part of our stewardship is to care for ourselves as well as the forests, waterways, and their inhabitants,” said Rev. Amacher.Munising United Methodist Church site coordinator Phil Hansen said many participants collected from family and friends and “almost all people brought in large quantities of items” filling plastic grocery bags.“We had more controlled substances turned in than we expected,” said Hansen., adding security was provided by Munising Police Chief Steven Swanberg and Lt. Mike Nettleton. “People were happy that a pharmacist was on duty and their privacy was protected.”Hansen said many people were previously “unaware that throwing away medicine or flushing it was harmful and they will not do that in the future.”Gee Petruske collected items from his community in remote Grand Marais and made an hour-long special trip to Munising to deliver the items. Background:The EPA and Lindquist said the clean sweep targeted medicines because trace amounts of pharmaceuticals are turning up in America's rivers, lakes, and drinking water.The EPA says most treatment plants are not designed to filter out these medications.When pills or liquid medicines are poured down the sink or flushed down the toilet they remain diluted in the water supply after treatment and these trace amounts are suspected of causing a range of health problems, according to the EPA.As leftover and waste pharmaceuticals get flushed down drains, research is showing that they are increasingly being detected in our lakes and rivers at levels that could be causing harm to the environment and ecosystem," said Elizabeth LaPlante, senior manager for the EPA Great Lakes National Programs Office in Chicago, Ill"Specifically, reproductive and development problems in aquatic species, hormonal disruption and antibiotic resistance are some concerns associated with pharmaceuticals in our wastewater," LaPlante said."The Earth Keeper Pharmaceutical Collection event, therefore, is an excellent opportunity to prevent the introduction of these chemicals into Lake Superior and other water bodies," LaPlante said.Lindquist said that recent national studies have documented that over 80 percent of the rivers sampled "tested positive for a range of pharmaceuticals including antibiotics, birth control hormones, antidepressants, veterinary drugs and other medications."Lindquist said some urban centers have even detected "traces of pharmaceuticals in their tap water."Pharmaceuticals in some rivers have also been linked to behavioral and sexual mutations in species of fish, amphibians and birds, according to EPA studies.Pharmaceutical compounds known as endocrine disruptors have even been linked to neurological problems in children and increased incidence of some cancers, Lindquist said.There were 19 drop off sites across a 400 mile area (and in all 15 counties) of Michigan's Upper Peninsula that open Saturday, April 21, 2007 from 9 a.m. to noon local time on Earth Day eve.In 2006, over 320 tons of electronic waste (old/broken computers, cell phones etc.) were dropped off in just three hours by an estimated 10,000 U.P. residents. It took 9 semi trucks to haul the e-waste to an EPA approved recycling centers in the Lower Peninsula.In 2005, the first clean sweep collected 45 tons of household poisons and vehicle batteries. The hazardous waste, including over two pounds of mercury, were properly disposed of in various ways according to EPA and state guidelines.Both previous clean sweeps broke EPA collection records for the Great Lakes, organizers said.Thrivent Financial for Lutherans donated $5,000 for the 2006 clean sweep.Thrivent Financial also awarded a $75,000 Youth Leadership Initiative grant to Northern Michigan University’s Lutheran Campus Ministry in 2006 for development of an on-going program for college students to become involved in the ecological stewardship of the environment. Three other universities are also involved in the program, including Michigan Tech, Finlandia University and Lake Superior State University.Partners who helped make the clean sweep a success include U.S. Senator Carl Levin's Office, U.S. Senator Debbie Stabenow, the NMU Environmental Science Program and many others.Last fall, the Earth Keeper Initiative and its partners were honored with three international awards.The Earth Keeper Initiative received several prestigious awards in 2006 including an international Environmental Stewardship award from the Lake Superior Binational Program and the State of the Lakes Ecosystem Conference (SOLEC) Award.The Earth Keeper Clean Sweep was named one of the 15 hardest working non-profit projects in America in 2006 by World Magazine, an international religious publication.The NMU EK team was created last April as the student wing of the Earth Keeper Intiative. The In addition to assisting in the annual clean sweeps, the NMU EK Student Team has numerous projects including (Adopt-A-Watershed) cleaning, testing, and developing a plan for six tributaries to three of the Great Lakes, recruiting students for chapters at three other U.P. universities, plus youth and adult outreach on practical everyday ways people can reduce human impact on the environment.The Superior Watershed Partnership has on-going programs that including Adopt-Your-Watershed, public environmental education, summer youth programs, land conservation, habitat restoration, energy conservation and numerous opportunities for volunteers to get "hands-on experience" in their communities, national parks, national forests and their local watershed, Lindquist said.For more information on the clean sweep (or the other projects) contact the Superior Watershed Partnership at 906-228-6095 and Greg at 906-475-5068, or email: earthkeeper@charter.netEarth Keeper TV:http://earthkeepers.blip.tv/Earth Keeper related website addresses are:The Superior Watershed Partnershiphttp://www.superiorwatersheds.orgThe Cedar Tree Institute:http://www.cedartreeinstitute.com/The Lake Superior Interfaith Communication Network:http://www.lakesuperiorinterfaith.com/
27 Views
00:30:00 04/19/07
Mercan Topkara, "Hiding the Message Behind the Words: Advances in Natural Language Watermarking"
[LESS INFO] 27 VIEWS | ADDED 00:30:00 04/19/07
The Internet has become one of the main sources of knowledge acquisition, harboring resources such as online newspapers, web portals for scientific documents, personal blogs, encyclopedias, and advertisements. It has become a part of our daily life to search and access this immense amount of online information, and more recently we have also started to contribute to this pool of information our own creativity in the form of text, images and video. Unfortunately, it is still an open question as to how we, as authors, can control the way that the information we create is distributed or re-used. Rights management problems are serious for text since it is much easy for other people to download and manipulate copyrighted text from Internet and later re-use it free from control. There is a need for a rights protection system that ``travels with the content''. Digital watermarking is an information hiding mechanism that embeds the copyright information in the document. Besides traveling with the content of the documents, digital watermarks are also imperceptible (i.e., seamless) to the user, which makes the process of removing them from the document challenging. Using linguistic features for information hiding into natural language text is an exciting and new idea. This talk begins with a short survey of existing technologies in natural language watermarking, and then focuses on a recently developed natural language watermarking system that is practical, easy-to-use and provides resilience to attacks through the use of ambiguity in natural language. The talk is aimed for a general audience, and will be self-contained covering the necessary background information.
6 Views
04:52:31 02/19/06
Video: Government Bypasses Press
[LESS INFO] 6 VIEWS | ADDED 04:52:31 02/19/06
Video essay in response to Jay Rosen's "Dick Cheney Did Not Make a Mistake By Not Telling the Press He Shot a Guy" bog post -- featuring Chris Nolan, Mindy Finn, Hugh Hewitt, John H. Brown, Don Beck, Steve Rubel, Merrill Brown, Tom Rosenstiel, Congressman Rob Simmons, and a virtual Jay Rosen.
You can listen to the full entire audio for some of the interviews -- and read the full transcript for the others.
Subscribe to this feed for future videos .
Subscribe to this feed to download all audio interviews posted so far.
Music: On The Moon (Trip Hop mix) by disharmonic
Here's a Windows Media version.
Full Transcript and Further thoughts are down below...
>
KENT BYE: The fact that Dick Cheney decided to inform the local newspaper instead of going through the national press when he accidentally shot a man -- this indicates that there's a fundamental shift in the power dynamic between the press and the government.
Now NYU Journalism Professor Jay Rosen says that, "Cheney took the opportunity to show the White House press corps that it is not the natural conduit to the nation-at-large; and it has no special place in the information chain."
This is a trend that Chris Nolan first observed during the 2004 election
CHRIS NOLAN (Spot-on.com): The idea that you can talk directly to voters past big media was a big, big part of the Republican campaign this past year. I think that that's a very little noticed and a very little appreciated fact. They treated the media as another constituent group like the tobacco lobby or whatever.
MINDY FINN (Republican National Committee, Deputy eCampaign Director): Where our opportunities are -- are through talk radio and through the Internet. And we found that was our best means for communicating our message -- to kind of cut through the mainstream media filter. And also, that there are so many cable channels now that those stations don't have the reach that they used to. And certainly the major networks don't have the reach that they used to.
CHRIS NOLAN (Spot-on.com): To a large extent, people bought it. And the people that were the most upset -- the people who complained the loudest were the big media people, and nobody really took up their cause. So I'd say that's a sign that something's changed in a big way.
KENT BYE: Something has changed -- The mainstream media is seen as less relevant, and politicians are more powerful.
HUGH HEWITT (Talk Radio Host & Blogger): What the blogosphere and the Internet have done to the Mainstream Media is just what Luther did to Rome, which was to -- not only to go around the gates, but to shatter them. There are no more gates. Now it's just a question of "What's true?" and "What's objective?" -- not what is an elite's understanding of the former.
KENT BYE: What's True and What's Objective is still a really big open question in our society. And I think it's going to come from some combination of traditional journalism, but also blogging -- and even collaborative media which is what I'm working on.
So let's take a look at this issue from the perspective of a politician.
CONGRESSMAN ROB SIMMONS (R-CT): If you look at the American media, and how it covers politics -- you basically interview a politician, take -- if it's TV -- take one or two sound bites, and build a story around that sound bite. If you look at radio, you allow that same political figure 15 or 20 minutes perhaps on a radio show -- a call-in to explain their position on a certain issue. If you look at the print media, depending on the nature of the interview, the journalist will take some quotes and build a story around it. But it's all based pretty much on what that one individual is saying, and then on how those words are interpreted by the journalist.
KENT BYE: So talk radio and new media provide politicians an opportunity to talk at length without having to be
filtered through the lens of an objective news story.
Well, that's great for them, but what about the public interest?
Who's going to be holding the politicians accountable when the only organizations they're going to be talking to are going to be those who are sympathetic to their message.
Steve Rubel talks about the dynamic between public relations and journalism.
STEVE RUBEL (MicroPersuasion.com): The public interest is important, but I think that that's more important to a journalist than it is to the PR professional. PR professional is less concerned with public interest, and more concerned with doing results that are going to get paid for. And where the journalists and the folks in this room where I stand here, they're definitely worrying about the public interest. And ultimately, they're going to decide what's best for the public, not us.
KENT BYE: But now that the politicians can completely bypass the journalists, they're free to focus on their own self-interest, which is mainly to preserve their political power. This has created a very polarized political culture, which is then amplified by the mainstream media.
DON BECK (National Values Center): The Mainstream Media is simple a reflection of the mainstream value structures in a society, particularly in our political class, which is obviously is the "Win at any costs" and be reelected, using often "Us versus Them" polarity -- "From the Left / From the Right," "Conservative/ Liberal" to divide people in like Blue States and Red States, and so forth. So when one looks at the problems in a society, obviously the dominant media will convey those codes, and when it looks like many of those behaviors tend to make things worse.
MERRILL BROWN (Media Consultant): What this country needs, from my point of view, in addition to a skeptical, hard-working news media, is a political system in which members of party in power feel free and have the political courage to stand up and speak up when things aren't going well in their parties. And this applies to both Democrats and Republicans. Democrats who were unwilling to speak up about the failures of the Clintons -- the Clintons in particular, and the administration more generally. Same thing is true now. There's a lot of Republican -- members of the Republican leadership who realize how inept this administration has handled some number of issues, and yet the political dissent and the dialogue from those people in places of power in the Republican party doesn't happen.
KENT BYE: Without this internal dissent, our political system has turned into an all-out cultural war where short-term political gains for either the Democrats or the Republicans is more important than anything else.
JOHN H. BROWN (State Department Employee who Resigned to Protest Iraq War): These are people who think in narrow, political, day-to-day terms -- who are absolutely parochial in their thinking. What’s important is "Winning The Game", and the game is American Politics.
KENT BYE: We have a political culture where winning trumps compromise, where debate trumps dialogue, where polarization trumps consensus.
STEVE RUBEL (Micropersusasion.com) The political environment for PR is much more about spin & influence, and the message of the day, and "How do you get it out?" It's very reactive. It's trying to take what's already coming at you -- and issues -- and then making sure that you shape your position on it.
ARCHIVAL FOOTAGE: On the Federal Level, the war between government and press is one of unequal firepower. The government spends nearly half a billion dollars a year, and employs thousands of people in Public Relations, Public Information, Public Image Making, and Public Obfuscation. In the Executive Branch, all of them -- all of those people, all of that torrent of information, all of those Xerox machines -- can be controlled by the White House. A President's personal power to dominate the news is beyond measure.
TOM ROSENSTIEL (Committee for Concerned Journalists): They understand our tendencies better than we understand them ourselves. They understand our weaknesses better than we understand them ourselves.
KENT BYE: So the media is being manipulated by politicians who understand how the media work better than they do themselves.
Jay Rosen agrees by saying that the White House "correctly guessed that if it changed the game on you, you wouldn’t develop a new game of your own, or be able to react... They sensed that the old press system was weakened." And that essentially, "they knew you wouldn’t react because to do so would look 'too political.”"
So politicians currently have an upper hand over the media as far as setting the terms of the discourse for the country.
So where do we go from here?
I think collaborative media actually has a lot of potential in this area, and that's what I'm working on here at The Echo Chamber Project.
But the question is, "Can new media put the power back into the hands of citizens?"
MERRILL BROWN : So I don't think there's going to be fundamental political change any time soon. But I do think -- as in all things -- we go through cycles. And we're in a cycle today where the political discourse is of a certain kind. And I think we're moving -- and will move very quickly between now and the next Presidential election to have a much broader discussion about our national sensibility, our national priorities, the nature of political discourse, dissent and dialogue. And I think media, the blogosphere, and the democratization of thought in this country has a lot to offer in that regard.
THEORY OF THE COLLABORATIVE MEDIA SOLUTION
I believe that collaborative media that is able to mediate the relative truths and falsehoods within the many different perspectives has the potential to overcome the anomalies within the existing journalistic paradigm.
What I've done is to interview as broad and diverse range of experts talking about a particular issue (i.e. pre-war performance of the media), and then my intention is to have an even broader and more diverse range of participants participate in adding context and meaning to this gathered knowledge
Facts and information do not become knowledge for individual citizens until they have put within a personalized context. The intention behind the use of the information will determine how it is processed and applied, and there have been many innovations over the last couple of years that are able to make these contexts more explicit on an individual level while also yielding significant network effects of social behavior.
This is specifically achieved through mechanisms of folksonomy tags, comment threads, allowing users to dynamically remix audio and video into playlists, allowing people to listen to the entire interviews as podcasts, as well as allowing the reuse of the material through liberal Creative Commons-licensing.
So the three practical steps for journalism would be: >
* Collect interviews from experts on issues that are of importance
* Parse the information into granular sound bites.
* Publish these sound bites online in a way that they can be easily sequenced and recontextualized into larger meanings.
This is what I've been building with this collaborative filmmaking infrastructure , and all of the puzzle pieces now exist -- but they still need to be put together.
So I've gathered 86 interviews up to this point , and I have quite a body of sound bites from knowledgeable experts -- You can download the 40+ interviews that I've posted already with this feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/EchoChamberProjectInterviewAudio
I hope that this video comment can demonstrate the capacity for creating a system that allows other people to easily juxtapose streams of facts and sound bites together to achieve a larger meaning.
23 Views
05:00:00 11/09/05
Anna Squicciarini, "Privacy and anonymity in Trust Negotiations"."
[LESS INFO] 23 VIEWS | ADDED 05:00:00 11/09/05
Trust negotiation is an emerging approach for establishing trust in open systems, where sensitive interactions may often occur between entities with no prior knowledge of each other. Although several proposals today exist of systems for the management of trust negotiation, none of them provides a comprehensive approach to the problem of privacy preservation. Trust negotiation systems, however, by their very nature may represent a threat to privacy. Credentials, exchanged during negotiations, often contain sensitive personal information that thus needs to be selectively released. As we believe that trust negotiation systems must effectively address privacy issues to be widely acceptable, we have investigated privacy in the context of trust negotiations. In this talk, we will propose the main results obtained so far in the area of trust negotiation as part of the Ph.D. activity. We propose a set of privacy preserving features to be included in any trust negotiation system, such as the support for the P3P standard, as well as a number of innovative features such as a novel format to encode digital credentials specifically designed for preserving privacy. Finally, we illustrate techniques for supporting anonymous trust negotiations as part of a privacy-preserving trust negotiations, to carry on trust negotiations without revealing identity related information.
