By Carolyn Giardina

Appropriately enough, the American Society of Cinematographers paid close attention to the lighting at its annual ASC Outstanding Achievement Awards kickoff dinner, held Saturday night at the ASC Clubhouse in Hollywood. Participating in the county’s "Lights Out LA" energy conservation event, the ASC softly lit its venue by candlelight.
"Lucky the lights are down, so you can’t see me blushing," said visual effects veteran Richard Edlund (pictured), who was introduced by ASC president Daryn Okada as this year’s ASC Presidents Award recipient.
Past ASC president Richard Crudo introduced Stephen H. Burum, who had been previously announced as the recipient of the ASC 2008 Lifetime Achievement Award; and ASC vp Michael Goi presented George Spiro Dibie, who will be honored with the 2008 ASC Career Achievement in Television Award.
"I’m the luckiest guy in the world," Burum told the group. "I got to do my hobby as a career."
Edlund has earned four Academy Awards for his visual effects work on "Star Wars," "The Empire Strikes Back," "Raiders of the Lost Ark" and "Return of the Jedi," as well as six additional nominations for "Poltergeist," "2010," "Ghostbusters," "Poltergeist II: The Other Side," "Die Hard" and "Alien 3." He has also earned three Scientific and Engineering Awards. Earlier this year, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences presented the John A. Bonner Medal of Commendation to Edlund in recognition of his significant contributions to the organization.
Edlund has also earned an Emmy for creating visual effects for the original television miniseries “Battlestar Galactica,” and an additional nomination for Mike Nichols’ "Angels in America." He’s working again with Nichols on Universal Picture’s upcoming "Charlie Wilson’s War."
Said ASC president Daryn Okada: "Richard Edlund is an ASC member who continues to contribute to the progress of visual effects from purely photographic methods to today’s digital techniques. He uses his cinematographer’s eye in the creation of his work. He has earned the respect of our members for his artistic achievements, role in developing new technologies, generosity with knowledge, and collaborative spirit."
Roughly 50 attended Saturday night’s dinner. The 22nd Annual ASC Outstanding Achievement Awards will be presented Jan. 26 at the Hollywood & Highland Grand Ballroom.

By Gregg Kilday

Compared to its star-studded curtain raiser, Friday’s closing night of the 12th Pusan International Film Festival was a relatively casual affair. After nine days and a full slate of 271 films, everyone seemed ready to kick back and relax a bit.
The closing ceremonies at the huge, open-air theater constructed at the Busan Yachting Club moved quickly through the requisite speechifying. Indefatigable fest direct Kim Dong-ho took a well deserved bow as he accepted UNESCO’s Federico Fellini Medal, recognizing PIFF “for defending cultural diversity.” The big winner among the film-makers present was Malaysian director Seng Tat Liew, who took home both the both a prize in the competitive New Currents category as well as the audience award for “Flower in the Pocket,” a touching tale of a father re-connecting with his two young songs. “I came here with a film and a suitcase, and I’m returning home with a suitcase full of dirty clothes and this award,” Liew said. “I’ll make more films, I promise.”
There was a flurry of fireworks, and then on to the closing night film. And that’s where things got quirky. Instead of closing on a note of high seriousness, PIFF chose to showcase, “Evangelion 1.0: You Are (Not) Alone,” a new, big-screen version of the Japanese anime TV series, “Neon Genesis Evangelion,” first created in 1995. It’s actually the second time that the TV series has been turned into a movie — the first film version was produced in 1997. Director Hideaki Anno created “Evangelion 1.0” as the first installment in a four-party series. And so the PIFF crowd — a number of whom had brought along their kids — settled in for a cartoon battle between Angels, robot-like creatures laying waste to a futuristic Toyko and the Evangelion, human-controlled secret weapons piloted by wide-eyed teens. With the screening taking place outdoors, the volume was turned up to mega-levels. And though there were a few walk-outs, most of the crowd was into it, letting out a collective gasp as part one reached its climax and the words “to be continued” flashed on the screen.

By Gregg Kilday

Stateside, Jodie Foster’s revenge drama, “The Brave One,” had pretty much played out by last weekend, when its domestic boxoffice stood at a disappointing $34.4 million, which, in turn, led a number of commentators to bloviate that when it comes to the American marketplace, female stars and guns just don’t mix. But as the movie rolls out internationally, Jodie and her gun are even more front and center than they were in the American ad campaign. In the U.S. — where the MPAA frowns on ads where guns strike too threatening a pose — the main image featured Foster, looking distraught, her head bowed and her gun hanging limply by her side. But in its foreign make-over, “The Brave One’s” poster — as seen here outside a megaplex in Busan, South Korea, where the movie opened Thursday — features a full head shot of Foster with her gun raised, aiming to kill. Nothing shy about it. As of Oct. 7, the movie had scored $14.6 million abroad, where, to date, audiences in Germany and Spain have been the most receptive.

By Borys Kit

"Superbad" catapulted its stars Jonah Hill and Michael Cera to star status. Now it’s also given them A-list friends. Grown-up A-list friends. Hill was spotted partying at hotspot Lubitch Tuesday night with none other than Sacha Baron Cohen and Quentin Tarantino. The trio were apparently supposed to go to a concert of "Justice," the hot Parisian Christian DJ duo of Gaspard Auge and Xavier de Rosnay, but never quite made it.

By Steven Zeitchik

Add Tommy Lee Jones to the list of Hollywood players flogging the Cormac McCarthy horse. In addition to starring in the "No Country for Old Men," the Coen Bros. bloody adaptation of McCarthy’s West Texas morality tale, Jones confirmed at the New York Film Festival this weekend that he at one time tried his hand at an adaptation of McCarthy’s "Blood Meridian."

The actor, who tried directing for the first time with the Spanish-language "Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada," would have joined the Scott Rudin project that has been stuck in development for years. At the moment, William Monahan is attached to write and Ridley Scott attached to direct the tale of a runaway in the 19th century Wild West.

McCarthy’s work, long thought unfilmable, continues to ride a hot streak in Hollywood. Joe Penhall has come on board to pen (and Viggo Mortensen to star in) the Nick Weschsler-produced adaptation of McCarthy’s latest bestseller "The Road," marking potentially the third McCarthy bigscreen version after 2002’s "All the Pretty Horses" and "No Country."

A "Blood" adaptation would also be part of the larger renaissance in the Western genre — but don’t tell Jones. "I have a hard time even figuring out what the term ‘Western’ means," Jones said. "I think it means big hats, horses and dust, but I don’t know."

Noah Baumbach made his name with the 2005 divorce drama “The Squid and the Whale” — and the media-fueled perception that he had based it on his own parents’ failed marriage. But the writer-director is tired of his movies being confused with his life. And he has a special place in his heart (and his scripts) for reporters who continue to do that. In his new film “Margot at the Wedding” — about the frayed family relationships of the troubled novelist of the title (Nicole Kidman) — Baumbach has Margot fielding a cartoonishly obnoxious question about whether her fiction is based on her family.

“It was one interview too many (for “Squid”) that triggered me to write that scene,” Baumbach told reporters this weekend at the New York Film Festival, where Paramount Vantage’s “Margot” made its U.S. debut. (Read THR’s review of “Margot” here.) Baumbach then added that “Squid” was “a lot less autobiographical than people wanted it to be, or insisted it was.” Viewers will make up their own mind about whether art is imitating life, or whether it matters. But “Margot” offers a hint on how Baumbach — or at least his family — feels about the whole enterprise: Kidman’s character is repeatedly balled out by her sister for borrowing from their childhoods. (Steven Zeitchik)

It was chilly Friday night, but no one on this Pacific Palisades hillside backyard felt it. Crickets chirped, but they were ignored. That is the kind of spell former Vice President Al Gore had on the audience gathered at the home of Jena and Michael King for the annual Oceana Awards gala, where he accepted the environmental organization’s Partner’s Award. Gore talked about a recent meeting he had with scientists in Colorado about the latest findings about the Arctic Ocean, which said the ice could melt in 20 years, maybe even as soon as six, on the same day as the headlines were blaring Britney Spears losing custody of her kids and Paris Hilton’s appearance on Letterman. Yet here was a study, whose impact he said was the equivalent of the discovery of the ozone hole, “and no one pays attention!” he said, in frustration. Gore summed up today’s situation using an African proverb: “If you want to travel quickly, go alone. If you have to travel far, go together. We have to go far. Quickly.” (Borys Kit)

“This is not a very big market, but I’m here to remind buyers here to come visit my booth at AFM, where buyers often forget to come visit the Asian booths,” said Virginia Leung, head of distribution for Mandarin Entertainment Holdings of Hong Kong, which is preselling Tsui Hark’s “Missing” and readying Donnie Yen-starrer “Flash Point” for its first market screening in Los Angeles next month. (Jonathan Landreth)