Update -
2/22/06:
20th
Century Fox Entertainment has announced its DVD
premieres for 2006 and among them is BEHIND ENEMY
LINES II: AXIL OF EVIL with OC star
Nicholas Gonzalez, Coyote and David Keith, reprising
his role from the original film, which also starred Gene
Hackman and Owen Wilson. Filmed in Bulgaria last
October, the film centers around a North Korean nuclear
conflict. The DVD will be released in either June or
July.
According
to an ABC release late Friday, COMMANDER IN
CHIEF will return on April 18 and run through May.
It was originally scheduled to return in February during
the sweeps. ABC exec Jeff Bader said, "We believe in
'Commander in Chief' and want to do what we think is
best for its long-term prospects. With this new
schedule, the show will return with a healthy run of
seven straight episodes in the spring."
It
was awards night at the plush Bel-Air Hotel in Beverly
Hills on February 7th when AARP The Magazine
presented its 5th Annual Movies for Grownups Awards.
Nearly 200 Hollywood elite filled the ballroom at a gala
dinner celebrating this year’s films that are geared to
a grownup audience. Honored were this year’s winning
directors, actors, screenwriters and designers.
ENRON: THE SMARTEST GUYS IN THE ROOM won Best
Documentary. Since Peter was narrator of the film, he
picked up the award for its director Alex Gibney. And,
by the way, this acclaimed film has received an Oscar
nomination for Best Documentary! Here are some photos
from that evening:
Update -
02/07/06:
According
to WENN: "COMMANDER IN CHIEF Takes a Break - The
presidential drama has been temporarily pulled from the
ABC-TV schedule because network executives are unhappy
with the show's low ratings. The drama has received
critical acclaim and actress Geena Davis, who plays
President Mackenzie Allen won a Golden Globe for her
performance, but that isn't making the show a hit.
Network executives say the series will return later this
spring, insisting it's not unusual to take a show off
the air and try another new show in its time slot."
Update -
01/24/06:
Coyote
was at the Sundance Film Festival last weekend
supporting two of his recent films - he narrated the
18-minute documentary, THE TRIBE, screened in the
short films program, and starred in
A LITTLE TRIP TO HEAVEN.
You can now view the trailer by clicking on the screen
cap. Joseph Beyer, representing the festival, wrote,
"What great crime noir must do is keep you guessing, but
what Icelandic filmmaker Baltasar Kormákur has delivered
is a film that does much more. Returning the genre to a
place of both credibility and true danger, Kormákur
finds as much interest in the ambivalent moral winds of
the story as the mysterious events generating them. In
this richly photographed landscape of frigid loneliness
and desperation, the light and shadows of right and
wrong change as often as the seasons: familiar emotional
territory for the acclaimed director of The Sea."
Here are some photos from the festival:
Update -
01/10/06:
Baltasar Kormákur's
A
LITTLE TRIP TO HEAVEN will not only be screened at Sundance this
month, but will also be among the eight films in the
Nordic competition at the Göteborg Film Festival
(January 27-February 6). According to the Iceland
Review, the film's distribution contracts are bigger
in scope than previously seen for an Icelandic movie.
Sales have increased since it was selected to screen at
Sundance with the film now sold to over 40 countries. A
contract with Spain's Eurocine Films entails that the
film will open in 100 movie theaters and that tens of
millions will be invested in promotions and marketing.
The film has already been sold to all of the Nordic
countries, to countries in the Middle East and to
Brazil. Negotiations are underway with distributors in
the U.S., U.K. and elsewhere. It opened in Iceland on
December 26th.
 Back
in 1989, Peter starred in a British TV mini-series
called ACT OF WILL
with Elizabeth Hurley and Victoria Tenant. Up until now,
it has not been available on VHS or DVD in this country.
Last week the DVD was finally released in Region 1
format (US & Canada). Based on one of Barbara Taylor
Bradford's most beloved novels, the four-hour feature
focuses on three generations of women in a proud,
indomitable family.
Last
month another one of Peter's TV films were released on
DVD. If I asked you to name a movie that starred Peter
and Liam Neeson, you might not think of it right away,
but back in 1987, they starred in a true court drama
called SWORN TO SILENCE.
Peter plays Sam Fischetti, a lawyer who must defend a
man who ultimately confesses three hideous crimes to
him. Dabney Coleman deservedly won an Emmy for his role as
Sam's "boozy" lawyer friend. In an interview Peter
commented, "I see Sworn to Silence
as almost a personal ethical statement. It comes down to the basic
tenet of what it means to be an American. If we choose to throw out our
Constitution and Bill of Rights because it gives us a hard time
sometimes, that's like canceling our commitment to our nation and to
ourselves."
Update -
12/15/05:
Peter
has narrated another audiobook called "The Voice of
Knowledge," the abridged edition of the book by Don
Miguel Ruiz. The CD was released by Amber-Allen
Publishing this year. The synopsis reads as follows: "In this book about personal growth, Don Miguel Ruiz
argues that we need to get rid of the voice in our heads
that contaminates and sabotages us, which he calls "the
voice of knowledge." This voice of others, which we
accumulate over our lifetime, makes us insecure. He
draws on several key growth points in his own life, as
well as on his own reworking of Toltec philosophy, to
show how we can, instead, learn to hear the true and
healthy inner voice of the spirit. He offers a framework
of storytelling for self-empowerment, and shows how we
can use the four agreements from his previous book to
expand our personal freedoms and transform our lives."
In 1999 Peter also narrated Ruiz's book, "The Four
Agreements," which is now available as a CD.
Peter
has also lent his voice to the two-hour documentary,
IMAGINING AMERICA: ICONS OF 20TH CENTURY AMERICAN ART,
which will air on PBS on Wednesday, December 28, 2005,
9:00-11:00 p.m.(ET). The film is a journey through the
transformations that took place in 20th century America,
told through the words and work of some of the century's
most significant artists. Through images and interviews
with an array of American artists and art historians,
IMAGINING AMERICA traces how art, over the course of the
century, provided a place in which to re-imagine
America, to visualize what we were and what we felt
about our country, our society and ourselves. By
examining the lives and work of such seminal artists as
Georgia O'Keeffe, Jackson Pollock, Robert Rauschenberg
and Andy Warhol, this documentary illuminates the
evolution of 20th century American art, from pictorial
explorations of our vast natural and industrial
landscapes, to abstract depictions of our collective
psyches, to complex explorations of lives lived in a
noisy barrage of visual, aural, technical and cultural
data.
Good
news! The ABC drama, COMMANDER IN CHIEF, has
received three Golden Globe nominations!
Best Television Series - Drama:
|
|
Commander in Chief -
ABC
Grey's Anatomy - ABC
Lost - ABC
Prison Break - FOX
Rome - HBO |
|
|
|
Best Performance by an Actress in a
Television Series - Drama:
|
|
Patricia Arquette in
Medium
Glenn Close in The Shield
Geena Davis in Commander in Chief
Kyra Sedgwick in The Closer
Polly Walker in Rome |
|
|
|
Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting
Role in a Series, Mini-Series or Motion
Picture Made for Television: |
|
Naveen Andrews in Lost
Paul Newman in Empire Falls
Jeremy Piven in Entourage
Randy Quaid in Elvis
Donald Sutherland
in Commander in Chief |
The
DVD of LE GRAND ROLE
(in French with English subtitles) was released by First
Run Features on November 22. It is available in Region 1
format (US and Canada). Jewish News Weekly says that
Grichenberg, the tall, imposing director in the film, is
"deliciously played by Marin County's Peter Coyote. The
director is clearly intended to be Steven Spielberg, not
because we recognize any of his mannerisms but because
no other filmmaker has the clout to finance a
Yiddish-language movie." Variety calls it "a
crowd-pleasing dramatic comedy about love, friendship,
role-playing and Jewish pride…sprightly pace, sunny
thesping, fine comic timing.” For more information on
the film, click on the above link.
 This
week the 1991 film CROOKED
HEARTS was also released on DVD. It's the
story of a dysfunctional family that cheers failure. It
seems to be the only way they know how to express
interest in each other. Peter plays the father, Edward
Warren, and his three sons are played by Chicago Hope
star Peter Berg, ER star Noah Wyle, and Law &
Order: Criminal Intent star Vincent D'Onofrio. His
only daughter is played by Juliette Lewis before her
breakthrough performance in Cape Fear. Jennifer
Jason Leigh plays Berg's kooky girlfriend and Cindy
Pickett stars as the mother who tries to bring calm to
the family. Crooked Hearts is both humorous and
tragic. It's a film worth seeking out for those who are
tired of sentimental family movies.
Icelandic
director Baltasar Kormákur's premiered his film,
A
LITTLE TRIP TO HEAVEN, starring Forest Whitaker, Julia Stiles,
Jeremy Renner and Coyote, at the Toronto Film Festival
in September. Now 15 minutes shorter than its previous
screening, it is among the 17 films selected for the
prestigious Premiere Section at the
Sundance Film Festival, held January 19-29 in Park
City, Utah. Sold internationally by Katapult Films, the
film was released last September in Poland by Swiat and
it will open in 2006 in Scandinavia through Sandrew
Metronome, in the Netherlands (March 16) through A-Film
and in Switzerland through Monopole Pathé. Steve
Gravestock from TIFF praised it with "Gorgeously shot
and distinguished by a flare for capturing the surreal
nature of small-town America, A Little Trip to Heaven
abandons noir genre conventions like the femme fatale,
the easily corrupted hero and the pervasive sense of
moral decay. Instead, Kormákur places his film in a
morally nuanced world; here, the insurance companies are
as unethical as the con artists - only more monolithic
and powerful."
 Also
being shown at Sundance will be the Coyote-narrated
documentary short called
THE TRIBE. When the film premiered in San
Francisco on December 3, a question-and-answer period
following the screening, Coyote, having been asked to
describe Jew-Buddhists, provided a rationale for a film
like "The Tribe'' and, in general, for the search for
cultural identity: "If you're not working on yourself,
the world is eroding you.'' Athough the Barbie doll may
seem to be an Aryan ideal, the doll was the brainchild
of a Jewish woman named Ruth Handler. San Francisco
filmmaker Tiffany Shlain, founder of the Webby awards,
considers Handler's role in creating Barbie one of pop
culture's great ironies and explores that notion in her
new film, written with her husband, UC Berkeley
Professor Ken Goldberg.
Last
month a luncheon was held at the Ritz-Carlton in San
Francisco when the Dalai Lama honored 48 people
for their work around the globe. Coyote opened the
proceedings and spent some time chatting with one of the
honorees, 11-year-old Ben Duskin, who created an
Internet video game for children just like him - kids
with cancer. Since then, Ben's Game has received 443,000
hits and been translated into nine languages. According
to the SF Chronicle, at one point Coyote yanked
out his cell phone to show Ben the nonviolent video
game, Jawbreaker, which resulted in Coyote and Ben
taking turns playing the game, which you can see in the
above photo.
Update - 11/28/05:
Last
July several PBS TV stations aired the three-part series
"Guns, Germs and Steel" narrated by Peter. It is
now available at
Amazon.com as a two-disc DVD. The documentary
features Jared Diamond's sometimes controversial
theories about the course of human civilization.
Diamond's Pulitzer Prize-winning work offers a revealing
look at the rise and fall of societies through the lens
of geography, technology, biology and economics - forces
symbolized by the power of guns, germs and steel. The
series spans five continents and uses historical
re-enactments to illustrate Diamond's theories,
explaining why societies developed differently in
different parts of the world - why some became
conquerors and others the conquered.
Another take on Barbie...
Barbie as a metaphor for assimilation and Jewish
identity?
Sounds odd, but that's the theme
running through "The Tribe: An Unorthodox, Unauthorized
History of the Jewish People and the Barbie Doll ... In
About 15 Minutes."
Tiffany Shlain's explain-all documentary will receive
its world premiere at 8 p.m. December 3 at the Herbst
Theater, 401 Van Ness Ave., San Francisco. Peter, who
narrates the film, will join
Shlain and
others in a panel discussion after the
screening.
Admission is $18.
Shlain, founder of the Webby Awards, brings in archival
footage, animation, graphics, dioramas and slam poetry
for her picture, which reaches back to the creation of
the anatomically incorrect icon by Ruth Handel, an
American Jew.
She created the film to explore the dichotomy between
her generation's wariness of organized religion and its
yearning for meaning and connection.
Audience members will receive a DVD of "The Tribe" and
its companion guide, "The Guide for the Perplexed."
For tickets or information, visit
http://www.tribethefilm.com.
Last
week a documentary called "The Sacramento: River of
Life" was aired on Sacramento public TV station
KVIE-Ch.6. Narrated by Peter, the film is a one-hour
journey into California's past and future. It includes
the work of two UC Davis
scientists - UC Davis geologist Jeff Mount, who says,
"The future of California is joined at the hip with the
Sacramento River," and UC Davis Cooperative Extension
fish biologist Lisa Thompson.
It was inspired by UC Davis alumnus and ardent supporter
Charley Soderquist, who lived on the Sacramento River
and had deep affection for the Delta region. Before his
death in 2004, Soderquist urged David Hosley, KVIE
general manager, and Lisa Lapin, a UC Davis assistant
vice chancellor, to make such a documentary.
New
additions include more photos from the
E.T. 20th Anniversary Premiere
and a new gallery for
Events of 2005. Two more film pages have been
completed - BITTER MOON
and EXECUTION OF JUSTICE.
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