OSCARS: Screen Credits, Music Submission Forms Due 5 PM Thursday, December 1

Beverly Hills, CA Thursday, December 1, is the deadline to submit official screen credits (OSC) and music submission forms to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for 84th Academy Awards consideration. For a feature film to be considered for the 2011 Awards, the films distributor or producer must file an OSC form with the Academy by 5 p.m. PT on December 1. If a feature film is released in Los Angeles County in 2011 and the completed OSC form is not submitted by the deadline, the film will be ineligible for Academy Awards in any year. OSC forms are available online only, at http://aiwosc.oscars.org/aiwosc/. Information about submission and feature film eligibility can be obtained by contacting Credits Coordinator Howard Loberfeld at (310) 247-3000, ext. 1113, or via e-mail at hloberfeld@oscars.org. For an achievement to be considered in the Original Score or Original Song category, the principal music writer(s) for a feature film must submit an official music submission form and other materials by 5 p.m. PT on December 1. To request music submission materials, contact Dave Hanson at (310) 247-3000, ext. 1151, or via e-mail at dhanson@oscars.org. While the credits submission deadline is December 1, feature films have until midnight, December 31, to open in a commercial motion picture theater in Los Angeles County and begin a minimum run of seven consecutive days to be eligible for 2011 Oscar consideration. Entries in the foreign language, animated feature, documentary, and short film categories are subject to special rules and must meet other qualifying criteria. The entry deadlines in these categories have already passed. Complete 84th Academy Awards rules are available at http://www.oscars.org/rules/. The 84th Academy Awards nominations will be announced live on Tuesday, January 24, 2012, at 5:30 a.m. PT in the Academys Samuel Goldwyn Theater. Academy Awards for outstanding film achievements of 2011 will be presented on Sunday, February 26, 2012, at the Kodak Theatre at Hollywood & Highland Center, and televised live by the ABC Television Network. The Oscar presentation also will be televised live in more than 200 countries worldwide.

'Titanic 3D' Trailer: The Ship of Dreams Now Comes in Three Dimensions

One day after Paramount debuted the poster for 'Titanic 3D,' the studio has unveiled the first trailer for the re-release on Facebook, where 'Titanic' fans number 10 million strong. Will those devotees fall in love all over again with the 3D re-release of the second-highest grossing movie of all-time? You bet your Celine Dion CDs they will! "I want to share the new 'Titanic' trailer with you guys first," James Jim Cameron reads awkwardly off a cue card at the start of the trailer. "I hope you enjoy the trailer, and I can't wait for you to experience 'Titanic' like never before, when we release the film in 3D this April. I'm excited to be bringing 'Titanic' back to the big screen again, which is an experience you shouldn't miss." Indeed, Jim. Head over to Facebook to watch the trailer in glorious HD. Have some Kleenex handy in case, y'know, Celine gets to you. Hearts go on, folks! [via Facebook] [Photo: Everett Collection] Follow Moviefone on Twitter Like Moviefone on Facebook

Lawsuit Says Patti LaBelle Threw Water And Cursed At Woman, Tot In NYC Lobby Run-In

First Published: November 14, 2011 9:02 PM EST Credit: Getty Images Caption Patti LaBelle attends the premiere of For Colored Girls at Ziegfeld Theatre, NYC, October 25, 2010NY, N.Y. -- R&B diva Patti LaBelle hurled curses and half a bottle of water at a woman and her 18-month-old daughter after a dust-up over parenting in an apartment building lobby, according to a lawsuit filed Monday and the familys lawyer. LaBelles publicists and lawyer didnt immediately respond to Kevin and Roseanna Monks lawsuit. The couple live in a Manhattan building where the Grammy Award-winning singer stayed for a time while appearing in the Broadway musical Fela! last year, said the Monks lawyer, Samuel L. Davis. He said LaBelle chastised Roseanna Monk for letting the toddler take some steps away from the mother as she grappled with some luggage and a car seat in the buildings lobby on the afternoon of Nov. 11, 2010. After Monk scooped up the child and told LaBelle it was none of her business, the singer threw water on them from a bottle she was carrying and then launched into an obscenity-filled tirade, he said. When the child started wailing, Roseanna Monk made a remark to LaBelle, and the singer charged at her and tried to hit her, Davis said. The Monks filed a complaint with police; no arrests were made. The lawsuit, which seeks unspecified damages, comes five months after a U.S. Military Academy cadet sued LaBelle over a Houston airport scuffle with her bodyguards. He said they attacked him for no reason in March 2010. She countersued the cadet, saying he tried to get into her limousine and was drunk and using racial slurs, which he denied. Davis said Roseanna Monk had asked LaBelle for an apology and a donation to a childrens cancer charity but was rebuffed. The Monks feel someones got to teach her even a diva cant attack and frighten and assault regular people in the building, their lawyer said. LaBelles singing career has spanned more than four decades, two Grammys and several hits, including the 1974 disco smash Lady Marmalade. Copyright 2011 by The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Howard Swartz to Discovery Funnel publish

Howard Swartz has leaped from PBS' "Nova" to Discovery Funnel, where he will act as Vice president of development and production having a particular concentrate on Discovery founder John Hendricks' "Curiosity" series. That series, which opened this fall, seeks to reply to large, philosophical questions (the very first episode was known as "Did God Produce the World?"). The show has much that is similar to "Nova," that also handled scientific difficulties with metaphysical aspects. "Howard is among the most skilled and highly respected professionals within the nonfiction space: an excellent commissioner, an excellent storyteller along with a great collaborator," stated the net's senior veep of development and production, Simon Andrae, to whom Swartz will report. Just before his time at "Nova," Swartz labored in the National Geographic Funnel, where he oversaw "Explorer" and created Emmy those who win including "5 Years on Mars" and "Within the Living Body." Contact Mike Thielman at mike.thielman@variety.com

CNN lays off 50, cites tech changes

CNN announced the elimination of at least 50 staff positions Friday as the company follows through on the results of a three-year review that found technical advances reduced the need for certain posts such as photographers and editors. Layoffs include CNN's Atlanta headquarters, Gotham, Washington, Los Angeles and Miami; at least a dozen cuts come from the news org's D.C. operation. The Turner news cabler has been "analyzing how we utilize and deploy photojournalists," senior VP Jack Womack wrote in an email to staff of the review. "Consumer and pro-sumer technologies are simpler and more accessible," he wrote. "Small cameras are now high broadcast quality. More of this technology is in the hands of more people. After completing this analysis, CNN determined that some photojournalists will be departing the company." A similar paragraph explained that higher-tech editing software allowed more remote editing, and thus called for fewer editors. Worldwide, CNN has had two zero-sum reorgs since August, neither of which resulted in headcount losses. But this latest round differs in that laid-off staffers have not been invited to apply for newly created jobs within the division. In October, the company's Atlanta office eliminated and then immediately hired for roughly the same number of positions -- slightly more, in fact -- and required staffers in flux to either accept severance or reapply for roles with broader job descriptions. A similar restructuring -- also with no resulting loss in headcount -- took place at CNN sister net HLN in August, as that network ramped up to the launch of web initiative HLNtv. HLN topper Scot Safon essentially told staff then not to worry: "(W)e are reorganizing the dayside editorial team to best meet the audience's multiplatform demands," he said in an email. "Those affected by this reorganization have been notified and new opportunities within this team will be posted shortly." A CNN spokeswoman said Friday that while she didn't want to minimize the difficulty of losing a job, the net planned to staff back up in the near future. "We anticipate the number of positions in the overall organization in the next six months will remain roughly flat with what we had this past year," she said. "We cannot begin to thank these individuals enough for their service to CNN," Womack said. "They leave with our respect and our sincere best wishes." Technology is causing newsrooms nationwide to shrink, or at least to require more workproduct from the people employed. Bridget Grogan, who runs the U of Florida's ABC News on Campus (which contributes reporting to the Alphabet's local news bureaus), told Variety last September that new TV reporters were expected to be multidisciplinary. "We're getting calls from newsroom directors who want students who are able to write, post to the web, and blog," she said, so her students are trained to shoot, edit and upload footage, as well. "Our students know how to be a one-man band." Thus, career photographers and video editors are finding that there's less demand for specialization and more jobs for jack-of-all-trades generalists. Contact the Variety newsroom at news@variety.com

Michael Jackson Estate Slams MSNBC Over Conrad Murray Documentary

On the heels of Dr. Conrad Murray's guilty verdict, MSNBC has readied a documentary that has Michael Jackson's Estate up in arms.our editor recommendsConrad Murray Addresses Michael Jackson's Death in NBC News InterviewMSNBC to Air Documentary About Conrad Murray Trial Four Days After Guilty VerdictConrad Murray Found Guilty in Death of Michael Jackson PHOTOS: 10 TV Trials That Shook the World "Like so many of Michael's fans, the Estate is also disgusted by MSNBC's irresponsible and inexplicable decision to air a Conrad Murray 'documentary,'" said the Estate in a statement, obtained by TMZ. "The Co-Executors, John Branca and John McClain, are sending a letter to the top executives at Comcast, NBC Universal and MSNBC to express their disdain for their actions," the statement continued. Michael Jackson and the Doctor: A Fatal Friendship is slated to air on Friday, Nov. 11 and focuses on the highly publicized trial from the defense team's perspective. The doc is said to give "an exclusive look into the past two years of Murray's life." PHOTOS: Hollywood's Notable Deaths The project is an October Films and What's It All About? Productions co-production in association with MSNBC. Zodiak Rights controls worldwide distribution rights to the documentary and has already secured pre-sales with broadcasters around the world, including Channel 4 in the U.K. and Nine Network in Australia. NBC also nabbed an exclusive interview with Murray prior to his Nov. 7 conviction, which is scheduled to air in two parts on Nov. 10 and 11 on the Today show. STORY: What Hollywood Is Saying About the Conrad Murray Verdict Jackson died June 25, 2009, of acute propofol intoxication after suffering cardiac arrest in his home. Murray, Jackson's personal physician, had been charged with administering the fatal dose. Following the reading of the verdict, Murray was remanded to custody without bail. He will be sentenced on Nov. 29 at 8:30 a.m. PT and could face up to four years in prison and lose his medical license. Related Topics Michael Jackson Conrad Murray

Werner Herzog on Acting, Americana, and Journeys Into the Abyss

The hardest-working filmmaker on Earth was back in NY last week, making the latest of what have basically become semiannual tours in support of his movies. Thus what felt like a continuation of last spring’s chat with Werner Herzog, whose latest documentary, Into the Abyss, finds the endlessly curious director exploring one of American society’s darkest. sparsest frontiers: Capital punishment. But don’t call it an issue film. Herzog doesn’t make those, and indeed, Into the Abyss is not without his customary wit, openness and inquisitive fervor. They abide throughout the story of condemned killer Michael Perry, who, along with his lighter-sentenced accomplice Jason Burkett, rended the fraying small-town fabric of Conroe, Texas, in 2001 with a brutal triple homicide. Herzog talks to parties on all sides of both the crime and its punishment — the convicts, the victims’ families, a police investigator, a death-row chaplain, a prison bride, a retired executioner and more — in search of his cherished “ecstatic truth” of nonfiction filmmaking. That’s not all he’s up to. Herzog’s forthcoming Hollywood acting debut as the villain in Tom Cruise’s One Shot follows another whirlwind of directing projects that would prostrate even Tyler Perry with fatigue. We spoke last week about his agenda, his ambition, and the grave urgency of Into the Abyss. Another press day already! Amazing. I am doing my duty. I wouldn’t complain. Does this get any easier over the years? No, but it is part of your duty as a filmmaker — to somehow bring across a film to an audience. That’s why the media are there. It’s a natural concomitant of what I’m doing. Let me say one thing: I hear filmmakers often complain about it, but I’m not in the culture of complaint. So we have about 15 or 20 minutes to talk, which isn’t a lot less than you had with some of the subjects of this film. How did you get what you needed to get for this film in that time? Well, I’m a filmmaker. I’m not just a fly on the wall. Sometimes you hear filmmakers postulating, “We should be like flies on the wall.” I don’t want to be the security camera in Wal-Mart and record hundreds of hours of something where nothing ever happens. We are storytellers. I get involved. I focus. By the way, when you have 50 minutes only with someone, you have to hit the right tone instantly. So, in a way, you have to know the heart of men to find the right tone. For example, I’m [interviewing] the death-row chaplain — who appears at the beginning of the conversation almost like a TV preacher — and I crack him open. All of the sudden he starts to unravel, and I ask him to tell me about an encounter with a squirrel. And he unravels. And all of the sudden you can look deep inside of him. So… How can I say it? That’s why I’m a filmmaker. The flipside are these long, silent, lingering shots that are so customary in your documentaries: The chaplain, the detective, the wife… The captain of the tie-down team. There’s a long moment of complete silence where he really looks anguished. There’s a written caption before that: He quit his job working in the death house as a tie-down captain at the cost of losing his pension. And I didn’t even put it under his face. I put it on black. Now you are watching his face and there’s nothing — only silence. But the silence is so significant and so anguished. Other filmmakers wouldn’t do that, but I do it. You see, I’m a storyteller, and this is in the story. All of the sudden you have a silent inner story — the parallel story that looks deep inside the human condition. You also chose not to apply your trademark narration to this film. What was your thinking behind that? You have to make your decisions according to the subject. The subject dictates the form. I think it wouldn’t have been right — me as the one who asks questions and has discourse, and then the same voice commenting. And it doesn’t need commentary. Sometimes you have a few written captions to let the audience know some fundamental things: that one of the inmates committed his crimes as an 18- or 19-year-old teenager, and now, 10 years later, he’s facing execution. It’s OK that you know that as audience, but that you know it through captions. What’s the perspective of the film? You state very early on that you are steadfastly against capital punishment, but— Which is OK! I also say I respectfully disagree with the practice of capital punishment. I am a guest of your country, I do not have voting rights. I have a different historical background, and I’m speaking of the Nazi [era] with the genocide and euthanasia and everything. And I would be the last one — I would be the last one — in the position to tell the American people how to handle criminal justice. So that’s why I say, “I have a different opinion, and I respectfully disagree with the practice.” Are you still trying to work out your feelings about America after all these years? Yes. In a way, it’s kind of about Americana — much of what I’ve done. Grizzly Man is Americana in a way, and that’s why it somehow struck a chord with audiences here in the United States. This film, I hope, will strike some sort of a chord, but of course I’m somebody from outside. I have a fresh and different look, but a fascination about Americana — about Conroe, Texas, about an American Gothic, about criminal justice, about families of victims of violent crimes, and on and on. I think the question comes up in another film I made on a death-row inmate. There’s Into the Abyss, which is a feature-length theatrical film, but parallel to that, I have filmed with other death-row inmates for a series of shorter films for television. Those are more focused on just one person. One of them, who was 23 minutes away from execution, got a stay. He tells me about his last trip from death row — which is in Livingston, Texas, but they don’t have a death chamber. So they’re transported 43 miles to Hunstsville, to Walls Unit, where they have a death house. And for the first time in 17 years, he sees trees. He sees other cars; he’s riding in this van. Actually, I did this trip now with a camera, because he says something very, very beautiful: Seeing an abandoned gas station, for example, or seeing a cow in a field is something very magnificent. And he says for him, it was like Israel — it was like the Holy Land. All of the sudden I look at America — the forlorn, kind of bleak part of Texas between Livingston and Huntsville — and everything appears like the Holy Land. You see, because of this project and talking to death-row inmates, my perspective has shifted somehow. And it’s not just America. If I travel from Munich to the village where I grew up, this is holy land. I’ve asked a few people about this recently, but what is it with the enduring preoccupation with America — particularly Texas, or these forlorn stretches — for foreign filmmakers? To visit, to explore— But I’m not a visitor; I live here in America. Of course, but before that. Or, say, something like Stroszek. I am a guest, but I am still a Bavarian deeply entwined in my culture. I have moved to a different country, but I’m still attached to my own culture. I guess I’m wondering if there’s something to reconciling the European experience with the American experience. I don’t have to reconcile with America. I love the country. Otherwise I wouldn’t live here. And I love my wife. Otherwise I wouldn’t live in America, let’s face it. Of course in some questions I have an ambivalent feeling, like probably every citizen has some ambivalence about his home country. And I respectfully disagree with certain things that I see. It’s as simple as that. And you can have a very civil discourse about capital punishment with people in Texas. It’s very easy, and the respectfully differ from my opinion. But America is such a fascinating country, and I’ve looked at it with more and more fresh eyes recently. What have you seen, aside from what’s presented in Into the Abyss? Well, for example, talking with every single death-row inmate, I ask them, “How should we conduct our lives — we outside? How should we do it right? You have not done it right.” And it always comes down to something I have almost overlooked in recent years: Family values. Small family values. In a way, almost like Hollywood movies are insisting on small family values. They prevail at the end of a movie; there has to be a happy end, and they prevail. I kept looking down at it a little bit, and all of the sudden, it moves dead center: These guys are right. Yes. And then I look at family values with great intensity — with much more sympathy, with much more attention than ever before. Does any of that have to do with your age? Getting older? No. No, it has nothing to do with age. It has to do with insight. And insight doesn’t come from me — from thinking. It comes because I have been in intense contact with men and one woman on death row.

Sunset 5 To Seal As Laemmle Exits Sundance Cinemas To Reopen After Update

Robert Redford’s Sundance Cinemas will need inside the Sunset 5 complex in West Hollywood after Laemmle Movie theaters was unable to be ready for the dog owner around the new lease. The theater will near the coast the conclusion of November, the LA Occasions reported, and will also reopen in the finish of spring after dealing with refurbishments.The venue happen to be a typical feature of indie and art movies for two-and-a-half decades, nevertheless the glossylure of Off-shoreline’s Grove, Arclight Hollywood as well as the Landmark in West L.A. progressively siphoned specialized fare in the Sunset 5.Laemmle leader Greg Laemmle conceded “we started seeing much less” indie and arty hits because “distributors were pressurized to find yourself in the Arclight. It'll be interesting to determine which Sundance does having its entrance to the La market. Its other venues in San Francisco Bay Area, Houston and Madison, Wisconsin, present alternative programming, lectures and special screening series that match while using Sundance Film Festival and related activities. The brand new the new sony Pictures Classics’ Tom Bernard lamented the departure of Laemmle as “the finish in the era. Our movies eventually experienced the Sunset” but suggested that”a facelift round the theater may attract new audiences and transform it into a place to become.”

Report: Taylor Lautner and Gus Van Sant to Make Indie Film Together

It looks like the Australian edition of GQ finally knows why Taylor Lautner and Gus Van Sant were having dinner together. THR reports that the two will team up for an unknown indie based on a NYer article that Lautner himself optioned. Mysteries! Also: great career move, Tay-tay! Per THR, Lautner is determined to only work top directors and writers in his quest to "define himself as an actor." So far, so good. Both parts of 'Breaking Dawn' were directed by Bill Condon -- Oscar nominated as a director for 'Dreamgirls' and a winner for Best Adapted Screenplay for 'Gods & Monsters' -- and Van Sant is an Oscar nominee as well. Said Condon to Moviefone last week, "[Lautner] is as serious an actor as anybody I've ever worked with." High praise considering he's also worked with Jennifer Hudson, Eddie Murphy, Jamie Foxx, Sir Ian McKellan, Laura Linney and Liam Neeson among others. This new project will reportedly be announced in full later this week; the idea is to get it in front of cameras sometime in the first quarter of 2012. [via THR] [Photo: Getty] 'The Twilght Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1' Image Gallery From weddings to werewolves, Moviefone has the complete collection of images from the upcoming romance saga. See All Moviefone Galleries » Follow Moviefone on Twitter Like Moviefone on Facebook RELATED