Film Industry

"It's absurd!" blasts Louis Malle. "They keep telling you it's not censorship, but clearly it is. To release a film in this country with an NC-17 rating is a kind of kiss of death. You won't get a wide release, some newspapers won't even carry your advertisement. So what can you do? You're forced to make changes to fit into the system. " The director pauses, searches for further fuel for his tirade, and then can only laugh when he repeats himself. "I tell you, the NC-17 rating is absurd!"

Pennsylvania's lawmakers are proposing to slash the state's film tax credit, and the local film industry is crying foul. The Pennsylvania film tax credit, begun in 2004, covers certain production expenses for state-sited films, TV series, and shows. Funds for the credit stand at $75 million, but in cash-strapped Pennsylvania, budgeteers are talking about slicing it to $49 million, according to the Greater Philadelphia Film Office. It is the first time a dollar amount has been put on the proposed cut. "That's just crazy," said Sharon Pinkenson, executive director of the film office.

Umbrella-toting pedestrians fought the rain yesterday on South 21st Street, across from two orange cranes looming over a brownstone at Delancey Place. Then they stopped, turned around, and retraced their routes. Again and again. A production company was shooting a television pilot for NBC inside the house on the corner. As technicians on the cranes shined lights through the windows, the actor Jimmy Smits was emoting for a one-hour untitled drama, in which he plays a Supreme Court justice named Garza who returns to private practice so he can pursue cases involving constitutional law. The shoot has given more than 100 film-industry locals jobs for about three weeks.

For years, Faye Sevilla Smith, a wardrobe supervisor in the film industry, lived life on the road. Though she and her husband, John, had a base in Los Angeles and, for a brief time, in New Orleans, the two called home wherever a film's location took them. For some of that time, John Smith, 35, was working on his dissertation for a doctorate in economics. Then, three years ago, Rutgers University in Camden offered him an associate professor's position, and Sevilla Smith, also 35, became pregnant with their son, Max. The couple needed a permanent address.

Since the release of La Balance four years ago, Bob Swaim has been what Hollywood calls a hot director. But the truth is that he first got into movies just to stay warm. The Paris winter of 1965 is remembered with some feeling by Swaim for its exceptional ferocity. He was a poor anthropology student caught up by Hemingway visions of the romance of being an American in Paris. The reality was chillingly different. "It was freezing, and I had so little money that I couldn't even appreciate how cheap it was to live in the city back then," said Swaim with a rueful laugh.

It's the climax of Major Saab, a feature produced by and starring Amitabh Bachchan, an icon of the Indian film industry, the leading man in the 1970s and 1980s. In a comeback role as a major at a military academy, Bachchan has just taken a cadre of cadets past the ed goons guarding the mansion of an underworld king. Their mission is not political, but romantic. Rifles cocked, the cadets watch as the gangster's son circles a fire, seven times, with a woman hidden under the folds of a pink sari.

The walls of Le Julyann, a neighborhood cafe, are covered with storefront pictures that look to be as old as photography itself. Fish peddlers and cheese merchants sip their espressos before switching to young red wine. And the clerk at the bar dispenses Gitane cigarettes with the deftness of a blackjack dealer. But hold on. What's that Jurassic Park pinball machine doing in here? Denise Marraccin, the manager, flashed a smile of resignation. It was her children's idea, she said.

There is a brief scene in Boomerang, the new Eddie Murphy film, that stopped test audiences cold. And the scene doesn't even involve Murphy. Halle Berry is saying goodnight to a suitor at her door. The two exchange charming farewells in several languages, until Berry confuses her date by saying something in Korean. "That means, 'I'm sorry I shot you, but I thought you were robbing my store,' " she says smiling, translating for her guest. "Every time that scene plays, you can hear a little gasp from the audience," producer Warrington Hudlin says proudly.

Television's treatment of the pornographic film industry is usually so moralistic, so quick to condemn while making sure you get a peek at the naughtiness, as to be useless. Tonight's edition of Frontline, titled "Death of a Porn Queen" (Channel 12 at 10), is better than that, if only because interesting details have managed to squeak past the filmmakers' meticulous high-mindedness. "How does an ordinary small-town girl become a porn queen?" asks the narrator in the opening moments of the investigation into the life of Colleen Applegate.

As dusk falls over a drab city street, the marquee of the New Age Cinema switches on its lights and glows like a beacon. Students from the nearby University of Tehran mill about expectantly, clutching tickets they've bought for 2,000 rials - about 50 cents. There is precious little entertainment for the youth of Tehran - no discos, few cafes, hardly any music. But, ah yes, there are movies, plentiful, cheap and of a quality that is increasingly winning Iran international acclaim.

M. Night Shyamalan and wife Bhavna hosted a party at their Chester County home Saturday to honor Sharon Pinkenson, head of the Greater Philadelphia Film Office, on her 20 years running the local film commission. Overbrook native superstar Will Smith and son Jaden , who are in the area starring in Shyamalan's "After Earth," helped celebrate as did locally raised actresses Kim Delaney of "Army Wives" and Rebecca Creskoff of "Hung. " Phylicia Rashad , who is in town shooting the NBC pilot "Do No Harm," (now on location at the School District of Philadelphia headquarters)

Ralph McQuarrie, 82, the artist who developed the look of the first Star Wars trilogy's signature characters, sets, and spaceships, died Saturday at his home in Berkeley, Calif. John Scoleri, coauthor of a book on Mr. McQuarrie's art, told the Los Angeles Times that he had suffered from Parkinson's disease. In a statement on the official Star Wars website, George Lucas said that Mr. McQuarrie was the first person he hired to help him envision what would become some of the top-grossing movies of all time.

IT WAS A dark and possibly stormy night. OK, it probably wasn't stormy; Daniel Radcliffe can't remember. But the "Harry Potter" star was in bed expecting to drift off to sleep when he started hearing strange sounds coming from inside his flat. What's a former boy wizard to do? He popped up out of bed and grabbed "the nearest, bluntest thing" and charged what could have possibly been vengeful spirits from the netherworld. "I literally came out of my room brandishing a cricket bat [bellowing]

ORLANDO, Fla. - Michael Fassbender's name seems to pop up most any time a new film project is announced. "Prometheus," Ridley Scott's prequel to "Alien"? Jim Jarmusch's new vampire movie? Danny Boyle's "Trance"? A film industry hungry for a hunky, young leading man with action-hero potential is taking a hard look at Fassbender. He was Rochester in the recent "Jane Eyre," a Roman soldier on the run in ancient Britain in last year's "Centurion. " And this weekend, he is Erik Lehnsherr, the tormented Holocaust survivor who will become Magneto in "X-Men: First Class.

HONG KONG - Some of Asia's top filmmakers screened their new movies to kick off the 35th Hong Kong International Film Festival yesterday, although the mood was subdued because of Japan's earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disasters. Japan's crisis cast doubt on whether its actors and directors would attend the Hong Kong festival. Popular Japanese director Shunji Iwai, a native of the hard-hit city Sendai, has canceled his appearance at the Asian premiere of his first English-language movie, "Vampire.

Gov. Corbett has joked about how he resembles the late comedy actor Leslie Nielsen. While Corbett is clearly the straight man, it was good to see the governor back a tax credit for the film industry. The tax credits help attract film crews and Hollywood stars to the state. That helps create thousands of jobs and millions of dollars in spending. Corbett approved roughly $49 million in tax credits for 60 film, television, and commercial productions in the state. Former Gov. Edward G. Rendell had approved the credits before he left office, but they were held up for review by the Corbett administration.

Jamaican-born writer-director Tanya Hamilton caused quite a sensation last year at the Sundance Film Festival with her feature debut Night Catches Us , an intense political-and-romantic drama set in Philadelphia. Anthony Mackie stars as Marcus, a former member of the Black Panther Movement who returns to his working-class neighborhood in 1976, many years after he left town as a very young man. Marcus is branded as a traitor by his former comrades. He's offered comfort by his best friend's widow, Patricia (an incandescent Kerry Washington)

ORLANDO, Fla. - The movies already have a Hollywood and a Bollywood, but some local filmmakers see Central Florida staking its claim as "Holywood. " A single faith-based movie filmed here last year has led to a handful of like-minded movies being shot from Ocoee to Mount Dora. "The Whisper Home," based on the biblical parable of the prodigal son, was filmed in Ocoee last winter. It has its Florida premiere today at the Ocoee-based Central Florida Film Festival. An adaptation of a Christian children's fantasy novel, "Ryann Watters and the King's Sword," just wrapped location filming in Mount Dora.

Former Villanova forward Taylor King announced Wednesday that he would transfer to the University of Southern California, where he would have to sit out the upcoming season before using the final year of eligibility in 2011-12. King, 22, will be making his third collegiate stop after playing one season at Duke and another at Villanova, where he reportedly left the program amid a violation of team rules, though the university said in statement in June that he would remain to complete his degree requirements.

Umbrella-toting pedestrians fought the rain yesterday on South 21st Street, across from two orange cranes looming over a brownstone at Delancey Place. Then they stopped, turned around, and retraced their routes. Again and again. A production company was shooting a television pilot for NBC inside the house on the corner. As technicians on the cranes shined lights through the windows, the actor Jimmy Smits was emoting for a one-hour untitled drama, in which he plays a Supreme Court justice named Garza who returns to private practice so he can pursue cases involving constitutional law. The shoot has given more than 100 film-industry locals jobs for about three weeks.