St. John’s Caritas Gala To Honor Actor Pierce Brosnan, Surgeon Donald Morton

The trustees of St. John’s Health Center Foundation and the Irene Dunne Guild will host the 18th Caritas Gala, Saturday, Oct. 15 at The Beverly Wilshire.

Actor Pierce Brosnan will receive the Caritas award. The two-time Golden Globe nominee is internationally known for his work both in front of the camera and behind-the-scenes as a producer. “The extraordinary passion Pierce Brosnan brings to his family, his profession and his community reflects the true spirit of Caritas. It is for this and his great friendship to St. John’s that he is being honored with the award,” said Donna Tuttle, foundation chair.

Dr. Donald Morton is being recognized with the Spirit of St. John’s award for his life-saving contributions to cancer research at John Wayne Cancer Institute (JWCI) at St. John’s.

His pioneering innovations, such as the Sentinel Lymph Node Technique, have changed the way cancer is analyzed, detected and treated worldwide, and become the standard of care for melanoma and breast cancer.

As JWCI’s chief of the Melanoma Program and director of the Surgical Oncology Fellowship Program, Dr. Morton started the institute 30 years ago and made it a world-renowned cancer center. So far, JWCI has trained more than 120 young surgeons now serving as leaders at major cancer centers across the nation, providing specialized care and leading research teams.

Proceeds from the gala benefit the health center’s programs and services including the Child and Family Development Center, Women’s Health Services and the Irene Dunne Guild Gift Shop.

For more information or to buy tickets, contact Rosa Hernandez, director of special events, 310-829-8441 or rosa.hernandez@stjohns.org.

“Please join me in urging President Obama to impose tough trade sanctions on Iceland for its illegal slaughter of whales.”

Courtesy of The Natural Resources Defense Council:

“The time has come for Iceland to pay a steep price for its inhumane and illegal slaughter of whales.

But that may only happen if hundreds of thousands of us speak out now with one powerful voice that cannot be ignored.

Let me explain. The U.S. Commerce Secretary has just formally declared that Iceland is defying the international ban on commercial whaling.

That declaration starts the clock ticking on a 60-day period during which President Obama must decide whether or not to impose trade sanctions on Iceland.

Please join me in urging the President to impose tough sanctions and make Iceland pay a real, measurable price for its mass killing of whales.

Iceland has proven that it will thumb its nose at anything less — and will go right on slaughtering whales for profit. In 2004, the United States denounced Iceland in the same manner — but failed to impose sanctions — and Iceland proceeded to ramp up its awful slaughter.

Since 2006, Iceland has killed 280 endangered fin whales and more than 200 minke whales. In the last two years alone, it has exported millions of dollars worth of whale meat, blubber and oil to Japan, Norway, Latvia and Belarus.

Iceland is not only flouting the ban on whaling, it is depleting whale populations at an alarming rate. It’s practically begging to be sanctioned.

Please ask President Obama to make Iceland pay a price at long last — for the sake of whale survival. For starters, he could target imports by those Icelandic seafood companies directly tied to the whaling industry.

But do not assume for a second that such presidential action is a sure thing. In fact, the U.S. has never before imposed sanctions on another nation for whaling. That’s why it’s so important that President Obama feel a groundswell of public support if he is to take this next historic step.

Please make your own voice heard inside the White House.

You can be sure that Iceland will not end the abhorrent practice of whaling until it is forced to do so. Let’s fight ‘em. Again and again.

Sincerely,

Pierce Brosnan
Natural Resources Defense Council”

bag of bones...............

"Bag of Bones" (2011)

The main character, Mike Noonan, is an author living in Derry, Maine who suffers from severe writer's block after the death of his wife, Johanna (called Jo), from an undiagnosed brain aneurism. Particularly disquieting to Mike is that his wife had just bought a home pregnancy test, but never revealed the pregnancy to him. Mike languishes after his wife's death, and finds himself unable to write due to panic attacks. Fortunately, he has four unpublished manuscripts, and using them he keeps his agent and editor unaware of his problem.

Four years after Jo's death, Mike begins to experience nightmares set at his summer house in TR-90, an unregistered township in Maine. He decides to confront his fears and moves to the house, known to locals as "Sara Laughs". On his way to town, Mike encounters a small child, Kyra Devore, walking down the middle of the road. Mike worries that something might happen to the child if she continues walking like that, so he scoops her up and returns to his car with her. A moment later, Kyra's mother, Mattie Devore, comes flying up the road in her old jeep. Mike's initial reaction is that Mattie is a "white trash" mom who will yell at the child and possibly beat it due to her own inattentions, but he is pleasantly surprised when Mattie clutches the child for dear life and begs her never to run off again. The two talk for a few minutes and Mattie drives off.

Later, while in town, Mike learns from the locals that Mattie's late husband, Lance, was the son of Max Devore, a rich and influential man from the town who didn't approve of his son's marriage to Mattie. Max, now well into his 80's and bound to a wheelchair, wants custody of his granddaughter, and is using his money and influence to paint Mattie as an irresponsible mother. Through his caretaker, Bill, Mike learns of Mattie's past, her marriage, and her custody woes.

When Max finds out that Mike ran into Mattie and Kyra, he threatens him via telephone. Despite the threats, or perhaps because of them, Mike hires John Storrow, a custody lawyer, for Mattie as an act of kindness, and he gradually develops feelings for Mattie despite the almost twenty-year age difference between them. Through his various crooked connections, Max manages to drag Mike into the custody battle even further by forcing him to make a deposition for the impending custody hearing. Accompanied by a local lawyer, Romeo Bisonette, Mike makes the custody lawyer hired by Devore look foolish by beating him at his own game and calling his bluff.

Mike begins to write again, while both Kyra and Mike experience hauntings in their homes. The author realizes that the ghost of Jo is assisting him in solving the mystery of Sara Tidwell, a blues singer whose spirit is haunting Mike's house. Mike asks the locals about what happened to Sara Tidwell, and is warned to refrain from digging in old scandals. He also learns that Jo frequently returned to the town in the year before her death, without telling him.

Max Devore threatens Mike again, and in an encounter with Mike, Max and his personal assistant, Rogette, almost succeed in drowning him. It's only due to the help from his wife's spirit that he's able to survive the attack. Then, in an unexpected turn of events, Max Devore commits suicide, which seemingly leaves Mattie and Kyra free from his influence.

Mike, Mattie, John, and Romeo Bissonette, the lawyer that assisted Mike during his deposition and a detective are having a party when a gunman shows up and shoots everyone in sight, Mattie fatally. Mike, the only adult not hit, takes Kyra back to Sara Laughs as a huge storm breaks. He is acting under the influence of the ghost of Sara Tidwell and finds himself preparing to drown Kyra and commit suicide himself, going so far as to give Kyra cocoa and Benadryl to make her sleep, and drawing the bath. But there are still pieces to the mystery that Mike doesn't understand, and the ghost of Jo is trying to prevent him from doing what he is doing.

As Kyra sleeps, Mike goes to Jo's studio to search for answers. He discovers documents that Jo had hidden away before her death, and among the papers is a genealogy showing Mike's blood relationship to one of the town families. Several had firstborn children with "K" names who had been murdered or died under suspicious circumstances. The genealogy shows that Mike and Jo's child (who was going to be named Kia) would have been the next firstborn child with a "K" name in the family line, had she been born.

Mike realizes this must be Sara Tidwell's curse for something that had been done to her. He returns to the house, checks on the still-sleeping Kyra, and drains the bath meant for her drowning. He can feel Sara's influence to take Kyra to the lake, but he fights it off. He leaves the house once more with a shovel and a bottle of lye to search for Sara's grave, knowing that the only way to break the curse and keep Kyra safe will be to destroy Sara's bones. On his way to where Mike suspects Sara is buried, the ghosts of Max Devore's grandfather and several other town men appear to him and try to block him from getting to the grave. Mike learns through a vision that these men had viciously raped and killed Sara, and drowned her son Kito in the lake. Furthermore, all the "K" children who had died were descendants of those men. Mike makes it to the grave site, but Sara's ghost doesn't want the curse ended prematurely. She tries to stop Mike, and attempts to assume corporeal form to do so. Jo appears in corporeal form herself and tells Mike he must hurry as Sara has enlisted the help of "The Outsider" to harm Mike and prevent him from reaching Sara's bones. Jo struggles to fight off The Outsider while Mike digs up and destroys Sara's bones with the lye, ending the curse.

Returning to the house, Mike discovers that Max Devore's assistant Rogette has kidnapped Kyra. Mike follows Kyra and Rogette to a neighboring property, arriving just as Kyra bites Rogette and attempts to escape onto a dock heaving in the waves from the storm. Mike tries to hit Rogette and keep her away from Kyra when Mattie's ghost appears and knocks Rogette into the Lake. Rogette attempts to pull Mike into the lake with her, but she is impaled by wreckage from the dock. Mattie's ghost says her goodbyes to Mike and Kyra, and she tells Kyra that she is now Mike's daughter.

The story ends with an epilogue in which Mike has retired from writing, and is attempting to adopt Kyra. His status as a single, unrelated male complicates things, and the adoption has taken longer than Mike anticipated. Still, the state has allowed Mike to visit Kyra, and she has been allowed overnight stays with him. The outcome of the adoption is left unresolved at the end, but there is hope that it will be a positive outcome.

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pierce brosnan Bag of Bones (TV Series 2011)

Brosnan, 58, will play the role of Mike Noonan, a novelist mourning the death of his wife. In King's horror story, her spirit returns to help Noonan uncover dark secrets hidden in the quiet Maine community where the couple owned a summer home.

Actress Annabeth Gish, known for playing Special Agent Monica Reyes on "The X-Files" TV show, will also star in the series, which premieres in late 2011.

Director Mick Garris, who has worked on several King projects including "The Shining," "Riding the Bullet" and "Sleepwalkers," will direct the TV movie that will be filmed in Nova Scotia, Canada.

First Look At Susanne Bier’s ‘The Bald Hairdresser,’ Set For August 2012 Release

First Look At Susanne Bier’s ‘The Bald Hairdresser,’ Set For August 2012 Release

While Susanne Bier is best known for her tough dramas like “Open Hearts,” “After The Wedding,” “Brothers” and most recently, the Oscar winning “In A Better World,” the director is using her Academy Award to go and do something completely different. Make a romantic comedy.

First announced earlier in the year under the title “All You Need Is Love” with Pierce Brosnan set to star, production company Zentropa have revealed some (admittedly microscopic) first look photos, a new title for the film as well as the cast. First up, the movie is now being titled “The Bald Hairdresser” (uh, not so hot) and in addition to Brosnan, the cast is rounded out by Sebastian Jessen, Molly Egelind, Paprika Steen, Kim Bodnia, Line Kruse and Trine Dyrholm (who also starred in “In A Better World”).

Details on the actual story are being kept close to the chest, but filming on the Amalfi coast in Italy, and centered around a Danish family, Brosnan described it earlier in the year as a “delightful love story….which has punch and deals with loss and a great love.” We also chatted with Bier back in March, and while she was reluctant to say too much about it, she did reveal the movie would be “bilingual, partly Danish and partly English.”

Zentropa is readying the film for an August 2012 release (likely in Europe), so expect it to hit our shores sometime after that. And this can move way up the list of potential Cannes 2012 films. We’d imagine they will want to premiere the film there—surprisingly, Bier has never unspooled a film in the main selection—and they might be eager for a Danish helmer who isn’t Lars Von Trier for a change. And yeah, we’ll update the photos once some higher res versions come in.

Kevin Jagernauth posted to Actors, Pierce Brosnan, Directors, Foreign Directors, Susanne Bier, Foreign Films, All You Need Is Love, The Bald Hairdresser at 10:09 am on June 9, 2011 | Permalink | Comments (0)

pierce brosnan(march 17th,2011)

March 17th, 2011

Dear Friends,

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

Please join me tonight in raising a glass of good cheer to all our Irish brothers and sisters! I will be spending an enchanting evening filled with music, song, dance and poetry readings at Royce Hall with my fellow countrymen and conductor /composer Eimear Noon. Yours truly will be reading W.B. Yeat’s, Easter 1916.

I have just returned home after completing principal photography on "I Don’t Know How She Does It" in New York City with the lovely and incomparable Sara Jessica Parker. Based on Allison Pearson’s bestselling book and directed by Douglas McGrath, the talented cast of this romantic comedy also includes Greg Kinnear, Olivia Munn and Kelsey Grammer.

I was also in Ireland recently to introduce Her Excellency Mary McAleese at the Irish Film and Television Awards (where I happily collected an award for Best Supporting Actor for "The Ghostwriter"). I then had the privilege of speaking to a group of Irish film students associated with Cinemagic (a Belfast-based organization) at Pepperdine University. It is inspiring to watch the next generation of artists come up through the ranks.

Next up, I will be working in Italy on a film tentatively titled "All You Need Is Love," with Susan Bier who won an Oscar this year for the Best Foreign Language Film, "In a Better World." This delightful love story mixes the lighthearted with serious and humorous and begins production on the Almalfi coast this spring. I encourage you check out Susan’s movies, including "After the Wedding" and "Open Hearts" to name a few.

This summer look for "Salvation Boulevard" in theatres near you. Based on a novel of the same name, Salvation Boulevard written by Larry Beinhart and directed by George Radliff, follows a former Deadhead-turned-born-again-Christian who finds himself on the run from fundamentalist members of his mega church who will do anything to protect their larger than life pastor (yours truly). Greg Kinnear, Ed Harris, Marisa Tomei, Sam Elliot, Jim Gaffigan, and Jennifer Connolly contributed to this hilarious all-star cast.

I am deeply saddened and distressed by the tragedy, loss of life, suffering and hardship that has befallen Japan. There are no words to adequately express my feelings of sorrow. Life turns in a moment and always reminds us what a gift each day truly is. My thoughts and prayers are with our Japanese friends at this difficult time.

Love and only love,