Biographies “BBC4 wins with biopics - Variety” plus 2 more

BBC4 wins with biopics - Variety
State Bar can't trace Poochigian leak - Fresno Bee
Allen Barra on Yogi Berra: One of My Favorite Sports Biographies Ever - Huffingtonpost.com

Posted: 29 Dec 2009 10:04 PM PST

Low-budget projects attract high-value celebrities

LONDON -- Asked by a reporter why she had agreed to play English children's writer Enid Blyton in a low-budget BBC biopic based on the storyteller's troubled life, Helena Bonham Carter opted for irony.

I did it for the money," deadpanned the British star.

In fact, Bonham Carter pocketed a fraction of her normal fee for taking the lead role in "Enid."

The film depicts the creator of "Noddy" and "The Famous Five" as a ruthless, self-centred workaholic who ignored her own children and behaved treacherously toward her first husband.

When the pic bowed in the U.K. last fall on the pubcaster's upscale web, BBC4, Bonham Carter's perf received ecstatic reviews. A BAFTA nod for the part looks to be a foregone conclusion.

Enid" was one of the latest offerings in what is shaping up to be an unusually impressive slate of celebrity film biographies masterminded by BBC4 at a time when high-end British TV drama is becoming increasingly difficult to fund or program.

Enid" was part of a mini-season of dramas, dubbed "Women We Have Loved," based on the lives of driven British females, including pre-war film star Gracie Fields and prima ballerina Margot Fonteyn.

John Lennon is the next famous Brit to get the BBC4 biopic treatment. "Lennon Naked," set in the late 1960s as the Fab Four begin to fall apart, stars former "Doctor Who" thesp Christopher Eccleston as Liverpool's most famous son.

With their six-figure budgets, these small-scale films have won much critical kudos in Blighty and a modest, but highly appreciative U.K. audience.

Enid" generated BBC4's third highest audience ever -- a 5.6% share and 1.28 million viewers.

Lennon Naked," a co-production between U.K. shingle Blast! Films and the BBC, may gain much-deserved international traction for these films, which deserve a wider audience than can be achieved on a niche net such as BBC4.

Potentially the Lennon film has the ability to reach a bigger audience because it is a more contemporary story than some of the previous films we've done," says BBC4 controller Richard Klein.

A lot of the things that Lennon is seen dealing with in our story -- coming from a broken family, drugs, divorce, the art world, celebrity -- are very modern subjects that will resonate strongly with today's audience."

What all these films share are strong scripts ("Enid" was written by Lindsay Shapero while the Lennon biopic was penned by Robert Jones) and the opportunity for actors to engage at a deep level with the main character's personality.

Lavish sets, crowd scenes and special effects are conspicuous by their absence.

They are all low-cost films that extract a huge creative dividend," says Ben Stephenson, the BBC's head of drama commissioning.

The focus is on a single, central performance and the script, which makes them incredibly attractive from an actor's perspective. The main actor or actress is on screen for pretty much every scene."

Enid" was shot in 15 days. Says Bonham Carter, "It's sort of ironic but I always find the better the script, the less money you have to do it and the less time."

That may be true, but another reason why these movies have made such a big impact with audiences and critics in the U.K. is because their subjects have usually been extremely well chosen.

Coming so soon after Sam Taylor-Wood's portrayal of Lennon's teenage years in the feature "Nowhere Boy," isn't there a danger of over-dosing on Beatles nostalgia with "Lennon Naked?"

I don't think so," counters Klein. "Our story covers the years from 1967 to 1971 so it shows a completely different period in Lennon's life.

It covers areas that everyone wants to know about, including why did Lennon break up the Beatles and why did he leave London to go and live in New York."

It also promises an intense performance from Eccleston, who may end up rivalling Bonham Carter's interpretation of Blyton.

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State Bar can't trace Poochigian leak - Fresno Bee

Posted: 29 Dec 2009 10:26 PM PST

Panel rates Poochigian 'not qualified' for state court

SACRAMENTO -- A state bar committee has rated Fresno's Chuck Poochigian as "not qualified" for an appointment to the state appellate court because "he lacks legal practice experience," according to a letter made public Tuesday.

The letter by the Commission on Judicial Nominees Evaluation confirms rumors that have swirled in the legal community since August, when Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger nominated the former state lawmaker for a seat on the 5th District Court of Appeal in Fresno.

The unfavorable rating is only advisory and is one of several factors to be considered by the Commission on Judicial Appointments, a three-member panel that will vote on Poochigian's nomination Thursday in San Francisco.

Poochigian, never a judge, could be appellate justice

SACRAMENTO - If Fresno's Chuck Poochigian is confirmed to a seat on the state's second highest court, he will join a select group.

Only seven of the 101 sitting appellate court justices did not previously serve on a superior court. And only four of the justices, like Poochigian, had no judicial experience at all, according to a Bee review of justice biographies posted on the court's Web site.

There's no doubt that Poochigian, a lawyer and former Republican state lawmaker, has an impressive résumé - and he enjoys strong support in the Valley. But some in the legal community are questioning how Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger could give such a coveted appointment to someone who's never presided over a trial.

Poochigian falls in AG race

Oakland mayor and former Gov. Jerry Brown easily defeated Fresno's Chuck Poochigian in the race for state attorney general Tuesday.

Poochigian, a state senator who was an underdog in the contest, was trailing by double digits with well over half of votes tallied.

Poochigian all but conceded defeat about 10:30 p.m. as he addressed supporters at a banquet room in Pardini's in north Fresno.

Report: Guinea massacre 'crime against humanity'

U.N. investigators say there is sufficient reason to believe that Guinea's wounded junta leader is directly responsible for the mass killings and rapes of protesters in September, which they consider crimes against humanity, a U.N. diplomat said Monday.

The U.N. investigators also concluded that there are reasonable grounds to suspect that junta leader Capt. Moussa 'Dadis' Camara, the army officer who shot him in a dispute Dec. 3, and Guinea's anti-drug chief bear "individual criminal responsibility" for the events of Sept. 28 and the following days, the diplomat said.

The 60-page report, in French, was transmitted to the U.N. Security Council, Guinea's government, the African Union and the Economic Community of West African States this weekend. Its contents were first reported by Le Monde, the French daily newspaper.

Poochigian prevails in costly, combative supervisor race

A bitter and expensive campaign ended Tuesday night as political newcomer Debbie Poochigian won a seat on the Fresno County Board of Supervisors.

With 100% of precincts reporting, Poochigian received 54% of the votes. Her opponent, Clovis City Council Member Nathan Magsig, had 45%.

"It's a great night. I'm just thrilled," Poochigian, 55, said late Tuesday night. "It's been a long 14 months. I'm looking forward to hitting the ground running."

SACRAMENTO -- The State Bar of California said Tuesday it was unable to discover who leaked a confidential rating of Chuck Poochigian, who earlier this year overcame the "not qualified" score to be confirmed to a state appeals court seat in Fresno.

The rating by the bar's Commission on Judicial Nominees Evaluation was leaked in August to a Southern California legal newspaper called the Metropolitan News Enterprise.

Under bar rules, the rating is not supposed to be made public until a couple days before a judicial candidate appears before the Commission on Judicial Appointments, which includes the state attorney general and chief justice of the state Supreme Court.

Poochigian, a former state senator, was confirmed by the commission in late September and Chief Justice Ronald George went out of his way to criticize the state bar ranking, which had found Poochigian "not qualified" because of a lack of legal experience.

State Bar President Howard Miller in September appointed a committee to investigate the leak. But the panel could not uncover who was responsible, despite a "detailed, intensive," review, including interviews of more than 70 people, the bar said in a statement.

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Allen Barra on Yogi Berra: One of My Favorite Sports Biographies Ever - Huffingtonpost.com

Posted: 22 Dec 2009 12:23 AM PST

There's no question that Allen Barra is one of the best long-form sports journalists working today. (One I'd put near him is L. Jon Wertheim, whose Running the Table, rating: 90, and Blood in the Cage, rating: 79, are among the best books ever written about billiards and mixed martial arts, respectively.) His 2005 book The Last Coach, a biography of Paul "Bear" Bryant, considered by many to be the greatest college football coach of all time, was simply masterful (rating: 90); I loved it even though I have no interest in college football. His new book, Yogi Berra: Eternal Yankee, a biography of his near-namesake, is just as good. Yogi's one of the most famous living athletes, author of numerous World Series highlights, a number of memoirs, and scores of half-remembered quotes, and Barra's book is the first comprehensive biography of the man; it's also one of the quintessential baseball biographies. Any Yankee fan, any baseball fan, will enjoy it.

Long-form baseball writing is harder than ever these days because of the widening rift in the baseball writing community over the merits and proper use of advanced statistics. It's a generational thing: old-school sportswriters are still attached to newspapers, and are dwindling as newspapers shed staff, and they're an aging bunch. They're getting more and more outnumbered by internet professionals and bloggers like me who pontificate about sports in other media. This also frequently leads to disdain for advanced baseball research performed by fans and laymen. Barra gracefully tiptoes through this minefield. In deference to the sportswriting of the time, he characterizes Yogi's year-to-year performances with standard stats like home runs, RBI, and batting average. But in an absorbing, thoughtful appendix, he quotes the work of well-known baseball researchers and sabermetricians like Bill James, Pete Palmer, Eddie Epstein, Rob Neyer, and more, to put Yogi's career in proper context. Unlike most of his contemporaries, Barra is an old-school writer comfortable with the new world of baseball statistics.

The author starts the book with the audacious claim that his subject, one of the most famous men in America, is vastly underrated as a player -- that his reputation as a quotable clown obscures his career as arguably the greatest catcher in baseball history. But he also gives a sense of Yogi the man. He was a shy, humble, devout Catholic who still carried photos of his late parents in his wallet well into his '60s, who has been married to his wife for 60 years, and who is far happier to talk about his grandchildren than himself. But he was a fierce competitor supremely confident in his own abilities and self-worth. He threatened holdouts for a higher salary from the Yankees' famously skinflint general manager, George Weiss, until he got the amount of money that he wanted. And, in 1985, after George Steinbrenner fired him as manager of the Yankees without telling him personally, he swore he'd never again set foot in Yankee Stadium as long as Steinbrenner was manager, an oath he kept for 14 years until Joe Dimaggio convinced Steinbrenner to personally apologize.

Of course, Berra's era is the golden age of the Yankees -- he won ten World Series from the late '40s to the early '60s, and was the undeniable leader of ten different World Champion teams. (That's a record. By a lot.) It's also the tentative, rocky, hesitant period of integration in baseball. Of course, the 1950s are perhaps the most-written about decade in baseball, so while Barra on Berra yields new, interesting details, the atmospherics of the era are a bit more warmed-over -- so he often tends to fast-forward through the seasons to get to the parts that really matter, the World Series. And that's fine. Barra's obviously fond of his protagonist, so if you have a real problem with the Yankees winning every year, you're not going to find much of a sympathetic voice on the page. Berra runs into a little more trouble after he retires, as political upheaval in the Yankee front office resulted in his being fired as Yankee manager on two different occasions, despite relative success with the team. He went through further drama, which Barra touches only lightly, when his son Dale Berra, also a major leaguer, was implicated in the 1980's cocaine scandal.

Yogi's a man who's lived a full life and lived it well. The book doesn't exactly read like a hagiography, but Barra clearly doesn't have much bad to say about the man -- nor does anyone else. I couldn't help smiling while reading it. And I'm already hungry for Barra's next.

Rating: 93

Crossposted on Remingtonstein.

Follow Alex Remington on Twitter: www.twitter.com/alexremington

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Biographies

Wednesday, December 30, 2009