8 SEPTEMBER 2008.- MEL GIBSON DROPS THE PRICE ON OLD MILL FARM
Source: Luxist
Mel Gibson Drops The Price On Old Mill Farm
Gibson, who has had the property on the market for $39.5 million for over a year now, recently dropped the price to $35 million.
The home is one of Greenwich's treasures. No McMansion, Old Mill Farm is a design by architect Charles Lewis Bowman built in 1926 and is one of the last great manor homes in Greenwich and is significant not just for the architecture but for the fact that it has 77 acres of land which includes formal gardens, a maze, pool tennis court, greenhouse, stable staff houses, log cabin and a pond. The home itself is an Elizabethan-inspired Tudor mansion of 15,800 square feet and the property has 15 bedrooms and 18 bathrooms total. The great hall has a 40-foot cathedral ceiling with a stone minstrel's gallery, walk-in fireplace and leaded glass ceilings. In this real estate climate, will a $4.5 million price cut be enough or does Mel need to lower the price a bit more?
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8 SEPTEMBER 2008.- TILL TAKES CONTROL OF ICON GROUP
Source: Hollywood Reporter
Stewart Till, the former CEO of United International Pictures and current U.K. Film Council chairman, has made his first major move toward an international distribution empire, snapping up Icon Group's international sales arm and distribution companies as well as its Majestic Film and Television library.
Till's Stadium Entertainment, backed by Access Industries, among others, is taking 100% of Icon's distribution and sales operations in a multimillion-dollar deal subject to due diligence.
Till will become president of Icon through the deal, and the company will continue to use the Icon name in the distribution markets and as a sales banner. Mark Gooder will continue to oversee the existing Icon operations, reporting to Till.
The deal, however, does not include Mel Gibson and Bruce Davey's U.S.-based Icon Prods., which remains with the duo.
Till's Icon has sealed a three-year, first-look deal for films produced by Gibson and Davey's label to go through his distribution and sales machine.
The deal is the culmination of months of work by Till, who aims to set up an international distribution network mirroring a modern-day update of the operation he once led at PolyGram Filmed Entertainment.
The Majestic library includes such titles as Oscar winners "Driving Miss Daisy" and "Dances With Wolves."
Till previously talked of his long-burning ambitions to establish a high-end indie international distribution empire to service the top-level filmmakers in Hollywood and beyond.
He has been searching for established operations to buy through his investment company, and Icon is likely to be just the start.
Access Industries was founded and is run by U.S. industrialist Len Blavatnik. Its media division already includes a controlling stake in U.K. digital broadcasting bouquet Top Up TV.
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8 SEPTEMBER 2008.- "EDGE OF DARKNESS" ON THE PUBLIC GARDEN
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9 SEPTEMBER 2008.- THE 15th HOLE AND DE NIRO
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Source: Loaded Gun
The "creative differences" surrounding Robert De Niro's abrupt departure from the Boston-based flick "Edge of Darkness" centers around the Oscar winner's issues with the 15th hole at the Gannon Municipal Golf Course on Wednesday, Sept. 3.
The Daily Item of Lynn reports that observers at the course say the Oscar winner became aggravated after he couldn't lift a shot out a sandtrap dug at least four feet deeper than usual. Director Martin Campbell wanted to fit the actor, the sand trap and the Boston skyline in the shot so he ordered the grounds crew to excavate the pit even deeper.
De Niro, who had admitted that he's never played golf before, walked off the set after a reported 20 takes with a swinging sand wedge. Observers say one PA was tossing a handful of sand near De Niro's ball to simulate a hit.
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9 SEPTEMBER 2008.- EL MIRADOR
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Thanks to Mel Gibson’s latest block buster ‘Apocalypto’, the Mayan empire has enjoyed a recent resurgence in the limelight of the modern world. However, perhaps the largest limestone city of any civilisation long past, still remains vastly unseen by modern man, with only the tips of its temples escaping a remote Guatemalan jungle that has swallowed its mysterious past.
read more,  click here
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10 SEPTEMBER 2008.- LEAVE OUR TV MEMORIES ALONE

Bob Peck
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Source: Guardian.co.uk
If producers see no problem in remaking something as perfect as Edge of Darkness, what other small screen gems are in danger of being disinterred?
Last week's revelation that Robert de Niro had walked away from the US cinematic remake of Edge of Darkness set my teeth on edge. I'm not grinding dental enamel over his exit, but why remake something so perfect to begin with?
De Niro had taken the role of hard-drinking, right-thinking CIA crime-scene clean-up specialist Jedburgh, originally played persuasively by Joe Don Baker (who, appreciating the masterful writing was rumoured to have taken a cut in his usual fee). Six 55-minute episodes of EoD were shown at the end of 1985 on BBC2, and repeated almost immediately on BBC1. EoD is consistently voted one of the best British TV series ever, and was festooned with BAFTAs. Meanwhile, Mel Gibson is still in place as the father played so delicately by the late Bob Peck.
Strangely enough, this new version is being overseen by the original TV director: Martin Campbell. An intense, off-kilter creation, the original EoD depicted an international world of self-serving, duplicitous, governmental interests and environmental nightmares. Bob Peck won a career-defining role as the brooding, mystical police detective, pole-axed with grief for his assassinated eco-warrior daughter (Joanne Whalley). Writer Troy Kennedy Martin accurately depicted the psychological effects of grief, where mourners frequently see visions (or ghosts) of their dear departed. It also deployed James Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis, a beguiling theory which suggests Earth as an entity will ensure her own survival despite the poisonous output of mankind.
Kennedy Martin's magical script was intelligent, claustrophobic, and captured brilliantly the tense mid-80s, when the government favoured both nuclear power and weaponry, and environmental concerns were heeded for the first time, causing civilians to bristle with apocalyptic foreboding. When it displays such obvious contemporary relevance and integrity, why not rerun the original? There's nothing to be gained from a bigger budget, other than bigger stars. The series format allowed dark, intellectual ideas to emerge gradually, and for twists and reversals to seem natural.
Let's not spoil the ending. But with such a title and synopsis, you won't be surprised to learn that all does not end well. What else will be hauled from the Brit TV vaults for some bankable US star to emote in, and probably ruin? I fear for the excellent Warriors, or Our Friends In The North. Brad Pitt for Geordie anyone?.
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10 SEPTEMBER 2008.- "EDGE OF DARKNESS"
Source: Boston Herald
We're told that "Edge of Darkness" director Martin Campbell has scrapped plans to shoot a scene tomorrow at the Framingham Service Plaza on the Mass Pike. Campbell is coping with the sudden departure of Robert De Niro, who up and quit last week. While producers try to find a replacement, Campbell is filming scenes with Mel Gibson and costars Danny Huston, Shawn Roberts, and Bojana Novakovic.
Source Beantown Bloggery
Yesterday, the set was on West 5th Street in Southie. According to a crew guy, they said they will be filming in/around Boston until around Thanksgiving.
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11 SEPTEMBER 2008.- LIST OF AMERICA'S LEADING PHILANTHROPIC CELEBRITY
Source: Parade
Oprah Winfrey has topped a new list of America’s Leading Philanthropic Celebrity.
The media queen topped the list of generous stars, compiled by The Giving Back Fund and America’’s Parade magazine, after handing over more than 50 million dollars to charities in the past year.
Winfrey’’s personal donations to The Oprah Winfrey Foundation and Oprahs Angel Network have helped to provide education and healthcare for women and children worldwide.
Music mogul Herb Alpert was palced second after handing out 13 million dollars to music education programmes and musician Barbra Streisand comes in third.
Paul Newman landed the fourth spot while Mel Gibson round off the top five.
The Most Generous Stars list. Here are the top 10 (out of 30):
1. Oprah Winfrey — $50,200,000: The Oprah Winfrey Foundation and Oprah's Angel Network - education, health care, and advocacy for women and children worldwide.
2. Herb Alpert — $13,000,000: The Herb Alpert Foundation - music education, including the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music.
3. Barbra Streisand — $11,000,000: The Streisand Foundation - the environment, women's issues, civil rights, AIDS research and advocacy.
4. Paul Newman — $10,005,000: Scholarship for Kenyon College, his alma mater, in Gambier, Ohio.
5. Mel Gibson — $9,899,654: his Holy Family Church in Malibu, Calif.
6. Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt — $8,400,000: The Jolie-Pitt Foundation - New Orleans reconstruction, refugee aid, cross-cultural understanding.
7. (tie) Lance Armstrong — $5,000,000: The Lance Armstrong Foundation - cancer research, education and advocacy.
7. (tie) Michael Jordan — $5,000,000: Hales Franciscan High School, a historically black all-boys school in Chicago.
7. (tie) Eric Lindros — $5,000,000: London Health Sciences Centre, a Canadian hospital where the former hockey player was treated.
10. Rush Limbaugh — $4,200,000: Financial assistance to the children of Marines and law-enforcement officers killed in the line of duty.
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11 SEPTEMBER 2008.- "EDGE OF DARKNESS", MEL GIBSON FILMING IN BOSTON COMMON
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11 SEPTEMBER 2008.- VIDEO, MEL GIBSON ON THE SET IN BOSTON
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12 SEPTEMBER 2008.- RAY WINSTONE WILL REPLACE ROBERT DE NIRO
Source: Variety
Ray Winstone will replace Robert De Niro in "Edge of Darkness," starring alongside Mel Gibson in the Martin Campbell-directed drama produced by Graham King's GK Films.
Shooting began in Massachusetts on Aug. 18.
After two days on set, De Niro left the project over "creative differences" (Daily Variety, Sept. 5).More than one option(Co) Daily Variety
Winstone is negotiating to play an operative sent to clean up evidence in the murder of a woman. Gibson plays her detective father, who wants answers after his daughter is shot on his doorstep.
Danny Huston, Shawn Roberts and Bojana Novakovic also star. The film's based on the Campbell-directed 1985 BBC miniseries. King is producing with Michael Wearing and the BBC.
Winstone is repped by ICM.
Ray Winstone
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Biography:
Frequently cast as a working-class hard man, British actor Ray Winstone gained his first dose of international recognition for his brutal portrayal of an abusive, alcoholic family patriarch in Gary Oldman's Nil by Mouth (1997).
Born in Hackney, London, on February 19, 1957, Winstone spent much of his youth as an amateur boxer. He first stepped into the ring at the age of 12 and over the course of the next several years won over 80 medals and trophies. Reportedly deciding to give acting a try because he was tired of getting hit, Winstone studied drama for a couple of years at the Corona School. He got his first break when director Alan Clarke cast him in the BBC's televised production of Scum (1977), a harsh depiction of life in a Borstal for young offenders. Due to its content, the film was banned before being released theatrically two years later. Winstone began appearing in other films that same year, notably the Who's Quadrophenia.
Winstone continued to work in both film and television throughout the next decade, doing most of his work in countless TV series. In 1994, he earned strong notices for his starring role in Ken Loach's Ladybird, Ladybird. Three years later, Winstone's harrowing performance in Oldman's Nil by Mouth garnered him a Best Actor BAFTA nomination, as well as recognition on both sides of the Atlantic. He subsequently could be seen in a number of diverse projects, ranging from Face, Antonia Bird's 1997 crime drama, to the romantic comedy Martha, Meet Frank, Daniel and Laurence (1998) to Tim Roth's The War Zone (1999), in which Winstone earned further acclaim as the abusive patriarch of a wildly dysfunctional family. Also in 1999, he could be seen playing a loan shark who gives Anjelica Huston a hard time in Huston's Agnes Browne.
Winstone gained wide international notice for his starring role in 2000's Sexy Beast, holding his own opposite Ben Kingsley, who earned an Academy Award nomination for his performance. He followed that up with a well-received part in 2001's Last Orders and parlayed his success into a supporting role in Anthony Minghella's 2003 star-studded Civil War drama Cold Mountain. Rebecca Flint Marx, All Movie Guide
Other Films: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008), Beowulf (2007, Breaking & Entering (2006), The Departed (2006), The Proposition (2006), The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005
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12 SEPTEMBER 2008.- WHY ROBERT DE NIRO WALKED AWAY OF "EDGE OF DARKNESS"
Source: Boston Herald
It has been more than a week since Robert De Niro up and left the set of “Edge of Darkness,” the made-in-Boston Mel Gibson thriller, and the intrigue is still swirling about the superstar’s departure.
Although the official word on De Niro’s exit - after just one day of shooting - was the old Hollywood saw “creative differences,” insiders have been spinning a series of scenarios to explain the superstar’s abrupt departure.
One spywitness tells us that the two-time Academy Award winner left Boston after a disagreement with Martin Campbell over how many takes the director had De Niro do out at the Gannon Golf Course in Lynn last week.
According to that source, Campbell had Bobby D. repeatedly shoot and re-shoot a scene where his character tries to hit a ball out of a sand trap. At the end of the day, the actor reportedly approached the director to discuss the long day, and the discussion degenerated into a shouting match that culminated with De Niro hitting the road.
Yet another snitch reports that De Niro was asked to leave after he arrived on the set “unprepared.”
“That was the difference - they wanted him to know his lines and he didn’t,” said that source.
But others close to the matter scoff at that scenario, saying De Niro certainly would have been given more than just one day to rectify any preparedness problems, given his importance to the film.
“That dog don’t hunt,” said the actor’s spokesman Stan Rosenfield.
And still others suggest that the two leading men, De Niro and Gibson, weren’t getting along - with some going so far as to say that the “Taxi Driver” star was still miffed at Mel over the anti-Semitic remarks Gibson made during that ugly drunk-driving arrest in 2006.
But that also makes no sense, as Gibson and De Niro hadn’t even shot a scene together up to that point.
Producer Graham King, who brought “The Departed” to Boston and knows a little something about working with A-List talent, swears that there is nothing more to the story than real-life “creative differences.”
“The issue really was that Bob saw the character one way and we saw it another,” King told the Track. “And it was hard for Martin, especially, to get his head around how Bob wanted to portray the actor.”
Campbell, who most recently directed the James Bond flick “Casino Royale,” directed six episodes of the BBC miniseries that “Edge of Darkness” is based on.
“After a couple of conversations and after a couple days it wasn’t working the way we wanted it to go and it wasn’t working the way Bob wanted it to go and we just decided to shake hands and go our separate ways,” King said.
“At the end of the day it breaks my heart that Bob is not in the movie, but it’s all about the script and the character. There was no middle ground, so something had to give.”
“Mel is a pure professional and I love seeing him back in front of the camera,” King added.
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12 SEPTEMBER 2008.- PHOTOS , MEL GIBSON ON THE SET
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12 SEPTEMBER 2008.- VIDEO, STING-CLAPTON "It´s probably me"
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13 SEPTEMBER 2008.- "EDGE OF DARKNESS", PHOTOS AND VIDEO
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