HFPA ELECTS DR. AIDA TAKLA O’REILLY AS NEW PRESIDENT – Election Marks Doctor O’Reilly’s 2nd Term in Office

HOLLYWOOD, CA, June 9, 2011 – Dr. Aida Takla O’Reilly was elected President of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) for the 2011 – 2012 year at the organization’s annual election meeting, which was held June 7, 2011.

“I am thrilled and honored to serve as the HFPA’s president once again,” said Dr. O’Reilly. “I believe in the vitality of the membership and what we have to contribute to the future of the industry both here and abroad. Now let’s get to work!”

Dr. O’Reilly was born and raised in Egypt, where she was the youngest woman to become a pilot at the age of 16. A member of the HFPA since 1956, she represents Dubai and was previously the organization’s president from 1994-1996. Dr. O’Reilly received her doctorate in Comparative Literature from The Sorbonne-Paris University in 1969.

Jorge Camara, Serge Rakhlin, and Ali Sar were also elected vice president, executive secretary, and treasurer, respectively. The new Board of Directors is comprised of Philip Berk (Chairman), Yoram Kahana, Yukiko Nakajima, Ruben Nepales, Meher Tatna and Theo Kingma (alternate).

The annual HFPA Installation Luncheon to honor the officers and directors will be held later this summer, at which time the organization makes its annual donations to non-profit organizations and film schools. Last year’s star-studded luncheon presented a record $1,541,000 in financial grants to 41 film schools and non-profit organizations. Guests included Annette Bening, Ian Brennan, Bryan Cranston, Kaley Cuoco, Matthew Fox, Carla Gugino, Nicole Kidman, Eva Longoria, Jane Lynch, Jim Parsons, Ryan Phillippe, John Slattery and Aaron Sorkin.

About the Hollywood Foreign Press Association:
The Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) was founded in the 1940s by Los Angeles based overseas journalists who sought to bridge the international community with Hollywood. Today, members of the HFPA represent 55 countries with a combined readership of 250 million in some of the world’s most respected publications. Each year, the organization holds the third most watched awards show on television, the Golden Globe Awards®, which have enabled the organization to donate more than $12 million thus far to entertainment related non-profits and scholarship programs. For more information, please visit www.goldenglobes.org, and follow us on Twitter (@goldenglobes) and Facebook (www.facebook.com/goldenglobes) for exclusive celebrity videos and up to the minute Golden Globes news!

###

Press Contacts: Keleigh Thomas/Michael Samonte
Sunshine, Sachs & Associates
goldenglobes@sunshinesachs.com
323.822.9300

FIRST ROUND LEGAL VICTORY FOR THE HOLLYWOOD FOREIGN PRESS ASSOCIATION IN THEIR LITIGATION WITH FORMER PUBLICIST MICHAEL RUSSELL

HOLLYWOOD, CA, May 16, 2011 – Judge Kevin Brazile of the Los Angeles Superior Court ruled Wednesday, May 11, 2011, in favor of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) in the action brought against it and President Philip Berk by their former outside publicist, Michael Russell (MRG-CINEPOINT/CASE #BC453017).

When the HFPA did not renew Russell’s contract, he sued the Golden Globes organization for defamation and interference with their ability to retain and recruit clients. These claims, the most critical of Mr. Berk personally, were stricken pursuant to the so-called anti-SLAPP law which protects the right to free speech.

According to the HFPA’s counsel, Joseph Campo of Lewis, Brisbois, Bisgaard & Smith, “As most of the remaining claims concern employment issues, we are confident that we will remove them by demurrer or motion for summary judgment. This baseless complaint will not reach the jury.”

About the Hollywood Foreign Press Association:

The Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) was founded in the 1940s by Los Angeles based overseas journalists who sought to bridge the international community with Hollywood. Today, members of the HFPA represent 55 countries with a combined readership of 250 million in some of the world’s most respected publications.  Each year, the organization holds the third most watched awards show on television, the Golden Globe Awards®, which have enabled the organization to donate more than $12 million thus far to entertainment related charities and scholarship programs. For more information, please visit www.goldenglobes.org, and follow us on Twitter (@goldenglobes) and Facebook (www.facebook.com/goldenglobes) for exclusive celebrity videos and up to the minute Golden Globes news!

# # #

Press Contacts:

Ken Sunshine/Michael Samonte

Sunshine, Sachs & Associates

goldenglobes@sunshinesachs.com

323.822.9300

HOLLYWOOD FOREIGN PRESS ASSOCIATION ANNOUNCES ELECTION OF THREE NEW MEMBERS

Kirpi Uimonen Ballesteros, Barbara Gasser and Mirai Konishi Join the HFPA

HOLLYWOOD, CA, May 9, 2011 – Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) President, Philip Berk, announced today that three journalists have been elected as new members of the organization: Kirpi Uimonen Ballesteros, Barbara Gasser and Mirai Konishi.

Ballesteros, who writes for the Ilta-Sanomat, Kouluainen, and Suosikki (Finland), Gasser, who writes for M-Starmedia Verlag and Maxima (Austria), and Konishi, who writes for CUT and eiga.com (Japan), were voted in at the membership meeting on May 6, 2011. The three new members join the association’s current roster of 82 active members.

About the Hollywood Foreign Press Association:

Founded in the 1940s during World War II, the HFPA was originally comprised of a handful of LA based overseas journalists who sought to bridge the international community with Hollywood, and to provide distraction from the hardships of war through film.  Sixty-eight years later, members of the HFPA represent 55 countries with a combined readership of 250 million in some of the world’s most respected publications.  Each year, the organization holds the third most watched awards show on television, the Golden Globe Awards, which have enabled the organization to donate more than $12 million to entertainment related charities and scholarship programs. For more information, please visit www.goldenglobes.org, and follow us on Twitter (@goldenglobes) and Facebook (www.facebook.com/goldenglobes) for exclusive celebrity videos and up to the minute Golden Globes news!

# # #

Press Contacts:

Keleigh Thomas/Michael Samonte

Sunshine, Sachs & Associates

goldenglobes@sunshinesachs.com

323.822.9300

HFPA ANNOUNCES TIMETABLE FOR THE 69th ANNUAL GOLDEN GLOBE® AWARDS

HOLLYWOOD, CA, April 28, 2011 – Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) President, Philip Berk, announced today the timetable for “The 69^th Annual Golden Globe® Awards.”

The deadline for Motion Picture and Television submissions is Friday, November 4. Nominations will be announced Thursday, December 15.  Rules and submission forms may be obtained online at www.goldenglobes.org/entryforms/index.html.

Golden Globes Keeps a Genre Alive

By Philip Berk

If we go back half century, long before the emergence of the blockbuster, when moviegoing was an essential part of American life, we discover an amazing fact: the one genre that consistently attracted the biggest audiences was musicals.

In the forties, the musicals of Bing Crosby, Esther Williams, Gene Kelly, Judy Garland, and Betty Grable were consistently among the top money earners.

In the fifties and sixties musicals still dominated but essentially they were Broadway adaptations (South Pacific, Funny Girl, Oklahoma!, Guys and Dolls, and The Music Man) not surprisingly the work of composers who cut their teeth working in Hollywood.

And during those years no less than three best picture Oscars and Golden Globes went to musicals: West Side Story, My Fair Lady, and of course The Sound of Music.

But then in the seventies they almost completely disappeared. Fortunately the Hollywood Foreign Press had created a separate category for musicals/comedies in 1952. The first movie to win that Golden Globe was a Hollywood original, American in Paris. (Unfortunately the following year that honor went to With a Song in My heart, not Singing in the Rain generally considered the best musical of all time. But even the Academy overlooked that one.) But the rest of the decade went to Hollywood versions of Broadway hits. Thus began the steady decline of the Hollywood musical, which reached its nadir in mid 70s when musicals more or less disappeared.

Why? You could blame it on rock ‘n roll, MTV, or the changing public taste. But thanks to the Hollywood Foreign Press Assn. the genre was kept alive. During that period best picture Golden Globes were awarded to Coalminer’s Daughter, Yentl, Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King, and Evita.

But in the twenty years following Hello Dolly! which at the time of its release (1969) was mourned as the last of the expensive studio musicals, there were but a handful of screen musicals, among them, Man of La Mancha (a resounding flop) Paint Your Wagon, Finian’s Rainbow, Mame, and The Wiz, all sorry failures. And one blockbuster Grease, which even though it was based on a Broadway musical, derived its success not from the genre but from its star, the overnight phenomenon, John Travolta.

But then with he new millennium there was an unexpected resurgence of the musical starting with Moulin Rouge, and quickly followed by Chicago, Dreamgirls and Sweeney Todd, all Golden Globe best picture winners. Hopefully the musical will continue to thrive…

One final irony, almost every musical currently playing on Broadway is adapted from old movies including Catch Me if You Can, Priscilla Queen of the Desert, Billy Elliot, La Cage au Folles, Mary Poppins, The Addams Family, and Phantom of the Opera.

What comes round goes round.

LEGEND ELIZABETH TAYLOR REMEMBERED

Legendary actress Elizabeth Taylor passed away this morning due to congestive heart failure. She was 79.

The Golden Globe winner and Cecil B. DeMille recipient starred in such classic films as Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf and Giant, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Cleopatra.

In her later years she was mostly involved as co-founder and ambassador for the charity organization AMFAR and widely credited for being one of the first high profile celebrity activists to take up the cause to find both a cure for Aids and help those dealing with the disease.

In 1992 she told members of the HFPA: “AIDS is not an American disease. There’s no corner of the earth that hasn’t been touched by AIDS, and 30% of AIDS patients are women and heterosexuals.”

Throughout the years Taylor would raise millions of dollars for AMFAR. “I became involved with AIDS when it was a very unpopular thing to do, no one was doing anything.”

She then recalled her close friendship to actor Rock Hudson. “I didn’t know that Rock Hudson had AIDS, but I knew him, and I had doctor friends that told me about the effects of the disease, the depth of the disease and how it was going to become an epidemic.”

“There was a definite social stigma attached to it and I was outraged, so I put together the first fundraiser for APLA (Aids Project Los Angeles), and I was so blown away by the non-reaction of people that I spoke to and tried to get involved. Eventually, after Rock Hudson announced (he had AIDS), people did come, but it took seven months to get that dinner (organized). I have never felt so rejected and I took it personally, so I thought “I’ve got to try and make a difference,”that’s why I became involved with AIDS.”

“I travel all over the world and some countries are still in denial, where there’s so much promiscuity and such obvious needle exchange, needles being shared (by drug addicts). I think America and England are doing a good job.”

In 2001 when Elizabeth Taylor was the “grand finale” of that season’s Golden Globes announcing the “best motion picture winner,” she inadvertently started to announce the winner before even listing the nominees.

Always possessing a quick wit, when Dick Clark frantically called to her from offstage during the live telecast alerting her to the gaffe, she calmly smiled and said: “Oh, I guess I’m more used to receiving awards rather than giving them.”

Following the sad news of Elizabeth Taylor‘s passing, longtime friend George Hamilton told the HFPA, “The whole world has been in love with Elizabeth Taylor and I was fortunate enough to be one of them.”

Debbie Reynolds added, “It was a long productive career and she was the most glamorous and sexual star of our generation. No one else could equal Elizabeth’s beauty and sexuality. Women liked her and men adored her and her love for her children is enduring. She was a symbol of stardom. Her legacy will last.”

Joan Collins agreed. “I am so terribly sad about the death of Elizabeth Taylor. Although everyone here in Hollywood knew that her end was near we are all shocked. She was the last of the true Hollywood icons, a great beauty, a great actress and continually fascinating to the world throughout her tumultuous life and career. There will never be another star who will come close to her luminosity and generosity, particularly in her fight against AIDS. She will be missed.”

Shirley MacLaine treasured her decades long friendship. “I don’t know what was more impressive her magnitude as a star or her magnitude as a friend. Her talent for friendship was unmatched. I will miss her for the rest of my life and beyond.”

HFPA MAKES DONATION TO JAPAN EARTHQUAKE RELIEF

The Hollywood Foreign Press Association announced a donation of a quarter of a million dollars to the International Rescue Committee to help aid relief in Japan following the devastating 8.9 earthquake and tsunami.

On behalf of all HFPA members, president Philip Berk said: “What happened to Japan is unimaginable. We hope that our contribution will help those affected during this difficult time.”

If you like to learn more about the International Rescue Committee, just visit the http://www.rescue.org link.

YOUNG ARTIST FOUNDATION RECOGNIZES THE YOUNG AND TALENTED

On Sunday March 13, 2011 the 32nd annual Young Artist Awards were held in Studio City, California. This year’s winners in the Feature Film categories include Joey King (“Ramona and Beezus”) for Best Leading Young Actress 10 and under, and for Young Ensemble Cast:Laine MacNeil, Robert Capron and Karan Brar (“Diary of a Wimpy Kid”).

Launched in 1978 by Hollywood Foreign Press Association member Maureen Dragone, the Young Artist Foundation recognizes young talent often overlooked in other awards shows and offers scholarships for young artists in need.

The HFPA proudly donates to this and other non-profit organizations that support the arts.

For a complete list of 2011 winners go to http://www.youngartistwards.org

Robert Altman Shares his Filmmaking Philosophy

From the vaults: Arriving at the 59th Annual Golden Globe Awards in 2002, Robert Altman explains his filmmaking philosophy.

Robert Altman Honored

“COME BACK TO THE FIVE & DIME, JIMMY DEAN, JIMMY DEAN” RESTORED WITH HFPA FUNDING

Cher always considered it her best work in film, still a trove full of her fondest memories as an actress. On March 3rd, 2011, 7:30 pm, at the Billy Wilder Theater in the Hammer Museum, UCLA Film & Television Archive will present the restored version of Robert Altman‘s 1982 classic “Come to the Five & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean”, his big screen adaptation of Ed Graczyk’s play. The film, beautifully polished and re-mastered thanks to the generous funding of Martin Scorsese‘s The Film Foundation and The Hollywood Foreign Press Association, is part of the 2011 UCLA Festival of Preservation. Kathryn Altman will attend the premiere along with Karen Black, who acted in the all-girls cast along with Cher, Sandy Dennis and Kathy Bates, among others.

The restoration of Altman’s ode to middle-aged women is just the first step in a longer and larger project to preserve Mr. Altman’s entire body of work and his artistic legacy. “Come Back to the Five & Dime” tells the reunion of a group of friends at the same five-and-dime store they use to hang out in a small Texas town 20 years back, at a time when the young, sexy and already legendary actor – Dean – was shooting “The Giant”, and they founded “The James Dean Fan Club”. The women are now melancholic and jaded about life, passions, aspirations, and Altman skillfully captures their insecurities, their rants for how things turned out, their anger for all the lost opportunities.

Cher, who came back as well after many years to the big screen with the musical “Burlesque”, played the same character on stage, before being cast by Altman in the movie adaptation of “Jimmy Dean”. “I loved doing the play and I loved doing the film,” Cher said at the time of release of the movie in her Hollywood Foreign Press conference, in 1982. “I realized that singing on stage is not that different than acting on stage, and very different from television because there is not a lot of depth in television and you don’t have to go very far into yourself. To do the play and to do the film was a lot more gratifying for me because I wanted to see if I could go any further than I had always gone.” More recently she said, in talking about “Come Back to the Five & Dime”: “Altman guided us through the plot and the vagaries of the various characters like a magician wearing a hat full of tricks. His quiet sensibility inspired me, making me wanting to work more in the movies, thus becoming a better actress – a more patient one for sure.”