Freeman Tops Busiest of A-List Celebrities

By LAUREN STREIB

Forbes.com

Published as "Hollywood's Hardest-Working Actors"

We looked at all movies released since January 2005 that earned more than $20 million at the U.S. box office (439 films in total). From there we tallied which actors had the most starring or significant supporting roles during that period. Ties were broken by cumulative box-office totals.

The list ranks how hard an actor works not only in terms of output but with the financial consideration of box-office earnings; it measures how effective the actor's work is for the bottom line of the studios and the theater operators. It continues a constant debate: Is an A-list star worth the cost? Sometimes even the biggest stars attached to the largest megaplex vehicles fail to recoup the projected returns, leaving the studio to redeem outlays from a long tail of foreign, DVD and cable returns.

No. 1 on our ranking of Hollywood's hardest-working actors: Morgan Freeman. Now known to many as Lucius Fox, the unmasked man behind Wayne Enterprises in the latest screen versions of the Batman epic, Freeman has been in nine films that grossed more than $20 million since 2005, including "The Bucket List," "Evan Almighty" and "Lucky Number Slevin."

Directly behind Freeman is Seth Rogen. With eight films earning at least 20 million box-office bucks, he's the hardest-working comedic actor on our list. His films earned a total of $1.2 billion, more than any other star on the ranking. Since his frontman debut with "The 40-Year-Old Virgin" in 2007, he's become Judd Apatow's go-to goof with roles in "Knocked Up" and "Superbad."

"When you've created a persona and there's an appetite for it, that's an appetite you want to feed as long as people have it," says Robert Thompson, pop culture expert and Syracuse University professor. "If it disappears for too long, the character begins to fade away from the high-voltage territory of popular culture."
Going beyond the character type for which an actor is known is a familiar test in Hollywood. Audiences can become easily bored with the same comedic or dramatic character if he or she continually resurfaces in different films. An actor who can successfully embody a range of dramatic, comedic and action roles will have more parts to choose from and more fans to bring into the theaters.

"The question is whether an actor has consistent box-office draw from film to film," says Bock. "Ultimately, that's the mark of a successful and long career."

One actor who carries both comedic and action roles is Shia LaBeouf, No. 10 on our list. LaBeouf rose from Disney Channel fame, where he portrayed lighthearted Louis Stevens on Even Stevens, to action flick front-runner in just four years. LaBeouf's films "Transformers," "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" and "Eagle Eye" were included in his total of six starring roles in the last four years, with a cumulative total of $952 million. (More of this story)

Hollywood Box Office Figures Up Despite Writers' Strike

Agence France-Presse

Hollywood recovered strongly from a devastating screenwriters walkout in 2008 and finished the year anxiously battling to avert a blockbuster sequel that few want: The Actors Strike Back.
The paralyzing 100-day work stoppage by writers ended in February with a historic deal that gave writers a slice of profits from new media and Internet sales, an area where they had once received nothing.

The deal negotiated by the Writers Guild of America (WGA) and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) was described as a "groundbreaking" achievement by movie industry experts.

"Establishing the principle that the WGA has jurisdiction over Internet and new media is a groundbreaking step forward," said Jason Squire, a lecturer at University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts.
Yet the result, hailed as a victory by the writers union leaders, came at a price, with some economists putting the cost of the dispute at around two billion dollars in losses.

Among the hardest hit were owners of Los Angeles-based limousine companies: with actors boycotting awards shows such as the Golden Globes in support of writers, chauffeurs were left idling in their busiest months of the year.

But with the US economy sliding into a recession of epochal severity, the film and television industry is now anxiously contemplating the possibility of another walkout, this time by Hollywood's biggest actors union.
A tense standoff has been in place between the 120,000-strong Screen Actors Guild and the AMPTP after negotiations to replace a contract which expired in June foundered with no agreement.

Ominously, SAG's leaders have adopted a hawkish stance over the possibility of calling a strike.

The union announced plans to conduct a strike authorization ballot on January 2, however they later postponed the vote to mid-January after a storm of protest by heavyweights including George Clooney, Matt Damon and Tom Hanks. "We support our union and we support the issues we're fighting for, but we do not believe in all good conscience that now is the time to be putting people out of work," said more than 130 stars in a joint letter to SAG.

The behind-the-scenes industrial disputes did not have a noticeable effect on the box-office figures, however, where a slew of comic-book adaptations and the return of Indiana Jones ensured some solid numbers.

The star performer was Batman sequel "The Dark Knight", which recorded a record opening weekend of 158.4 million dollars before going on to become the second highest grossing movie of all time with 530 million in North America.

Preceding "The Dark Knight" had been one of the year's surprise hits, "Iron Man", a superhero vehicle featuring Robert Downey Jr, which finished with 318 million dollars.

"Iron Man" ended up squeezing ahead of cinema's favorite swashbuckling archeologist in "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal", taking 317 million dollars.

By early December, overall North American box office figures were up on year-on-year by some 1.4 percent at 8.96 billion dollars, but it was unclear if the year would manage to surpass 2007's total haul of 9.66 billion dollars.

Australia Gives Ledger Posthumous Best-Actor Award

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Yahoo! News

MELBOURNE, Australia – The Australian Film Institute has posthumously given a best-actor award to Heath Ledger for his performance as the Joker in "The Dark Knight."

Ledger's father, Kim; mother, Sally; and sister Kate accepted the award in ceremonies held Saturday night in Melbourne.

The Australian Film Institute said: "It was this swaggering, psychopathic clown that turned his career into a legacy and the name Heath Ledger into an ongoing inspiration for actors everywhere."

Ledger's performance in the Batman blockbuster is regarded as having a solid chance for a posthumous Academy Award for best supporting actor.

Bell Tolls as Legend Throws in Towel

ASSOCIATED PRESS
The Austratian


MANNY Pacquiao dominated his bigger and more famous opponent from the opening bell in Las Vegas yesterday, giving Oscar De La Hoya such a beating he declined to come out of his corner after the eighth round.

The fight was so lopsided and De La Hoya looked so inept that it could spell the end for boxing's richest and most marketable star.

It was only the second time in De La Hoya's 16-year professional career that he was stopped in a fight, and it was made even more shocking because it came at the hands of a fighter who fought at just 58.5kg months earlier. At the age of 35, he seemed not only well beyond his prime, but unable to offer any answer to the punches that Pacquiao was landing almost at will.

De La Hoya's left eye was closed shut as he sat on his stool after the eighth round and the ring doctor, referee and his cornermen discussed his condition.

De La Hoya offered no complaints when his corner decided he had had enough, getting up from his stool and walking to the centre of the ring to congratulate Pacquiao.

Two of the three ringside judges scored all eight rounds for Pacquiao, while a third gave De La Hoya only the first round.

The fight was lopsided from the beginning, with Pacquiao landing punch after punch while De La Hoya chased after him, trying to catch him with a big punch.

Pacquiao was winning convincingly before the seventh round, when he was pounding De La Hoya against the ropes in his corner and catching him with huge shots that knocked him across the ring.

De La Hoya remained upright, but with one eye closed and his reflexes seemingly gone there was no chance he was going to land the big punches he needed to turn the fight around.

"He's just a great fighter," De La Hoya said. "I have nothing bad to say about him. He prepared like a true champion."

Pacquiao came up two weight classes to fight for his biggest purse, while De La Hoya dropped down to meet him at 66.8kg. Though De La Hoya towered over Pacquiao and had a big reach advantage, Pacquiao had no trouble getting inside what few jabs De La Hoya threw to land his shots.

"We knew we had him after the first round," Pacquiao's trainer Freddie Roach said. "He had no legs, he was hesitant and he was shot."

Roach trained De La Hoya in his last big fight a year ago and said De La Hoya simply couldn't throw punches when needed in that fight. That was magnified even more against Pacquiao, who not only was as elusive as Floyd Mayweather Jr but threw punches that kept De La Hoya off balance.

"Freddie, you're right," De La Hoya told the trainer after the fight. "I just don't have it any more."

If De La Hoya's career is over, it will be the end of a remarkable story that began when he won the Olympic gold medal in Barcelona in 1992 and went on to become the biggest box office attraction in the sport.

But there were whispers long before the fight that he had nothing left.

De La Hoya not only dropped down to fight for the first time at 66.8kg in seven years, but actually came into the ring unofficially weighing less than Pacquiao.

Pacman Gives Up Crown

ABAC CORDERO
PhilStar News Service

LOS ANGELES - Manny Pacquiao is letting go of the lightweight crown he won over David Diaz last June.

The Filipino superstar, all set to face the great Oscar dela Hoya at 147 pounds, told Filipino scribes Wednesday he'd never fight again in the 135-pound division.

"Actually I think I'd never go back down to 135," said Pacquiao when asked about the possibility of him trying to defend the WBC lightweight crown.

"It's too difficult for me to get to 135 pounds now. I walk around at 155 when there's no fight, and 135 is too much a distance for me," he said.

Pacquiao said whatever happens in his "Dream Match" with Dela Hoya, he'd rather stay at 140 or 147 pounds where he feels a lot more comfortable now.

"There are great fighters at 140 and Ricky Hatton is just one of them," he said, as he enjoyed a plateful of chicken lollipops, fried salmon and crab rice.

Pacquiao saying he's giving up the lightweight crown also means that he no longer has to pay the WBC an extra $100,000 as sanction fee for the Dela Hoya fight.

A couple of weeks ago, the WBC said Pacquiao owed the body $30,000 in sanction fees for a previous fight and that he needed to pay the extra $100,000 for Dela Hoya bout.

Pacquiao was given 15 days to pay up or he gets stripped of the 135-pound title. He did pay the $30,000 but not the bigger amount.

He no longer had plans of defending the crown, actually the fourth world title the Filipino southpaw had won next to the flyweight, super-bantam and super-featherweight.

Pacquiao is the only Asian boxer to have won four world titles in different weight classes, and also the only fighter from the Philippines to be crowned lightweight champion. (Read more...)

Jackson: Because of Crack

BANG
MSN News
Published as "Samuel L. Jackson's Hollywood Break"

Samuel L. Jackson's drug habit helped him break into Hollywood.

The actor revealed his battle with illegal substances in the 80s helped him play a convincing crack cocaine addict in 1991's 'Jungle Fever'.

He said: 'I got my big break when I had smoked enough crack to do all the research. And then I won the New York Film Critics' Film Award and suddenly Hollywood was going, 'Who is that?' And I got invited to lunch.'
Jackson, who had quit drugs by the time he landed the role as Gator in the movie, claims he was so believable producers asked to meet with him to ensure he wasn't still an addict.

The 59-year-old star has also spoken about the racism which is still rife in America, saying police have stopped him and pulled out their guns because of the expensive car he is driving.

Jackson added to Britain's Times 2: 'I have been pulled over legitimately and I have been pulled over because I was black and in the wrong place and my car was too nice.

'Cops are looking at me and saying, 'You look familiar.' And you just have to say, 'oh, OK'. Because you don't know if he is talking about a wanted poster that he saw today or he actually saw a movie of mine. I have had guns pulled on me, of course I have.'

Jackson can next be seen in thriller 'Lakeview Terrace', in which he plays a police officer who terrorises an interracial couple who have moved in next door to him.

Miguel Syjuco's Ilustrado Wints the 2008 Man Asian Literary Asian Literature Prize

The Man Asian Literary Prize 2008

13 November 2008

Hong Kong--A panel of three internationally acclaimed authors and experienced literary judges named Filipino author Miguel Syjuco winner of the 2008 Man Asian Literary Prize for his novel Ilustrado, a fictional account of a young Filipino caught within a notorious scandal spanning over the Philippine history.

The panel of judges for the 2008 prize praised Ilustrado: "The shortlist for the Man Asian prize testifies to the great vitality of the novel in Asian societies undergoing hectic and unexpected transformations. In the end, we had to choose; and Ilustrado seems to us to possess formal ambition, linguistic inventiveness and sociopolitical insight in the most satisfying measure. Brilliantly conceived, and stylishly executed, it covers a large and tumultuous historical period with seemingly effortless skill. It is also ceaselessly entertaining, frequently raunchy, and effervescent with humour."

The prize winner was announced at a celebratory dinner at The Peninsula Hong Kong. Miguel Syjuco was awarded USD 10,000. Ilustrado was selected from shortlist of five:
Kavery Nambisan, The Story that Must Not be Told

Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi, The Lost Flamingoes of Bombay

Miguel Syjuco, Ilustrado

Yu Hua, Brothers

Alfred A. Yuson, The Music Child

For complete details, please see the press release.