Recently added articles from Variety:

Cents and sensibility: toon marketing budgets soar ...

Jun 23, 2008; Graser, Marc ... The characters may be cute. The plots may be funny. But Hollywood isn't finding anything hilarious about marketing animated movies. Over the last five years, toons were the most expensive movies to promote, easily costing tens of millions more than the average pricetag to promote ...

... As specialty arm sells its art smart.(Sony Pictures Classics markets The Wackness)

Jun 23, 2008; Miller, Winter ... The Wackness," which opens July 4, is a low-low-budget movie about a kid who sells dope to finance his visits to his shrink, who then becomes a dealer too. The movie includes a scene in which Mary-Kate Olsen makes out with Ben Kingsley, of all people. During a season when the ...

Schwartz leads own.(Robin Schwartz as president of Oprah Winfrey Network)(Brief article)

Jun 23, 2008 ... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Regency TV topper Robin Schwartz has been tapped to serve as president of the ...

Tonys scale 'Heights'.(Tony Awards, In the Heights)(Brief article)

Jun 23, 2008 ... Big winners at the Tony Awards on June 15 included "August: Osage County" for best play, "In the Heights" for tuner, ...

Lee makes 'Time'.(Spike Lee's Time Traveler)(Brief article)

Jun 23, 2008 ... Spike Lee will co-write and direct "Time Traveler," a feature adaptation of a memoir by Ronald Mallett, one of the nation's first African Americans to ...

Nick clicks online.(My Noggin.com )(Brief article)

Jun 23, 2008 ... Nickelodeon's Kids and Family arm launched two gaming divisions and tapped Dave Williams to head the Games Group where he will grow educational gaining site My ...

Fox borrows from brit hits.(Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp. deal with ITV PLC)(Brief article)

Jun 23, 2008 ... Twentieth Century Fox sealed a production and programming pact with top-rated U.K. commercial network/producer ITV. Under the deal, ...

Perry there for 'Steve'.(Matthew Perry will work on The End of Steve)(Brief article)

Jun 23, 2008 ... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Matthew Perry will star in and take co-creator/exec producer credit on Showtime's "The End of ...

The exit of a Lifetime.(Lifetime Television Network's Susanne Daniels will leave her post as president)(Brief article)

Jun 23, 2008 ... Susanne Daniels is ankling her post as president of entertainment at Lifetime. Daniels, who has led the network since 2005, will ...

Twain Prize for Carlin.(George Carlin will receive the Mark Twain Prize for Humor)(Brief article)

Jun 23, 2008 ... Comedian George Carlin has been selected to receive the Kennedy Center's Mark Twain Prize for Humor. The award and festivities will be ...

Pulver joins variety music.(Judi Pulver as director of music advertising)(Brief article)

Jun 23, 2008 ... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Judi Pulver has joined Variety as director of music advertising. She's responsible for all music-related print and online sales, and she's tasked with developing new ...

'Net traffic signs suggest TV offramp.(market share of online video viewing)(Brief article)

Jun 23, 2008; Littleton, Cynthia ... More signs of the Internet apocalypse for TV's old guard: U.S. Web surfers viewed some 11 billion online videos in April, a gain of 33% from the same month last year. According to just-released Web traffic stats from comScore, the most ominous stat is how ardently the next ...

Foreign exchange: H'w'd has iffy history of o'seas investors.(foreign investment in Hollywood)

Jun 23, 2008; Frater, Patrick ... For all the excitement that greeted the news last week that India's Reliance ADA Group was in advanced talks to bankroll a major chunk of DreamWorks, allowing the company to free itself from Paramount, there was a requisite degree of skepticism. Hollywood is a melting pot of ...

The art of deal breaking.(American Federation of Television and Radio Artists and Screen Actors Guild's contracts)

Jun 23, 2008; McNary, Dave ... Hollywood's dreams of a midsummer resolution of its ongoing labor woes are melting away. The latest reality check: No deal until July 8. At the earliest. That's when voting closes for AFTRA's tentative deal on about 10 primetime shows. Rather than negotiate its own ...

DreamWorks deal: Yippee for rupees?(DreamWorks L.L.C.'s negotiation deal with Reliance Big Entertainment of India)

Jun 23, 2008; Bart, Peter ... Plus: Tween-teen scene growing up fast THE DEAL BETWEEN Anil Ambani, the Indian billionaire, and DreamWorks provoked a great deal of debate last week. Under terms of the deal. which still is being refined, the Indian company, Reliance Big Entertainment of India, would invest ...

Pixar finds park place.(Pixar Animation Studios' influence of theme parks)

Jun 23, 2008; Graser, Marc ... They were once a contented couple, then they threatened a divorce. Now they're back together, happier than ever, and the union is producing offspring. Theme park offspring. Disney has reaped hundreds of millions of dollars of benefit out of Pixar, but theme parks were the one ...

A bitter stop for hip-hop.(Lethal Bizzle received racial verbal abuse by rock fans)(Brief article)

Jun 23, 2008; Barraclough, Leo ... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Fans of hip-hop and rock have never been the best of buddies, but attempts by music fest chiefs to bring the two tribes together has sparked ugly incidents in Blighty. When rapper Lethal Bizzle recently appeared at heavy-metal event Download, ...

Ferrara has few 'Bad' things to say.(Abel Ferrara's Bad Lieutenant)(Brief article)

Jun 23, 2008; Vivarelli, Nick ... Abel Ferrara just can't be a good boy, not when it comes to the soon-to-shoot Werner Herzog-directed remake of his "Bad Lieutenant" with Nicolas Cage in the title role. During a June 18 Rome press conference for Ferrara's "Go Go Tales," Italo journos asked the famously ...

Mexican army gets starstruck.(army offers use of vehicles for the television program, El Pantera)(Brief article)

Jun 23, 2008; Young, James ... As Mexicans watch ever-bloodier stories on the evening news, some heads turned after it was revealed that military officials loaned troops and expensive equipment to the superhero crime drama "El Pantera" for a storyline involving the capture of a fictional drug lord. El ...

Spirited short.(David Arquette's The Butler's in Love)(Brief article)

Jun 23, 2008; Saperstein, Pat ... After the 2006 stoner horror pic "The Tripper," thesp David Arquette is taking another shot at directing--this time with the first entry in a series of "absinthe genre films" for French absinthe maker Le Tourment Vert. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] His 10 minute short ...