Fox Orders Ancient Egypt Drama 'Hieroglyph' Straight to Series

Fox is making a big bet on an Egyptian fantasy.

The network is moving forward with a 13-episode straight-to-series order for Hieroglyph, a fantastical action-adventure show. The series, set in ancient Egypt, centers on a notorious thief who is plucked from prison to serve the Pharaoh, navigating palace intrigue, seductive concubines, criminal underbellies and even a few divine sorcerers.

The ambitious drama, which is set up at 20th Century Fox Television and Chernin Entertainment, is being written by Pacific Rim’s Travis Beacham. Chernin Entertainment's Peter Chernin and Katherine Pope, along with Beacham and Fringe’s Miguel Sapochnik, will serve as executive producers. Sapochnik, who helmed Repo Man, also is on board to direct the premiere episode, which is scheduled to begin production in early 2014.

PHOTOS: Faces of Fall TV 2013

“We wanted to do a show about deceit, sex, intrigue in the court and fantastical goings-on -- no better place to set that than ancient Egypt,” Fox entertainment chairman Kevin Reilly said in a statement announcing the news Thursday. “Travis Beacham has an inventive mind, and he has wrapped this all together in this intoxicating new drama.”

Hieroglyph becomes the latest project ordered straight to series this development season. Fox also handed out a series commitment to Gotham, a Batman prequel series revolving around Commissioner Gordon as well as a comedy from 30 Rock trio Tina Fey, Matt Hubbard and Robert Carlock. Fox also handed out a series order to a John Mulaney (Saturday Night Live) comedy originally developed at NBC. CBS, meanwhile, has 13 episodes of the Vince Gilligan and David Shore drama Battle Creek, based on a 2002 spec from the Breaking Bad creator. 

In an executive roundtable published this week in The Hollywood Reporter, Reilly explained his motivation for bypassing the pilot system when the project calls for it.  As he said during a spirited conversation about the state of the television business, making straight-to-series orders is a way to “unwind us off the cycle" in broadcast. Reilly spoke candidly about the inefficiencies of the current development system, which he described as “silly.”

STORY: TV Executive Showdown, Fox's Reilly Calls Development Season 'Welfare State,' Sarandos New Threat

“A lot of this town was sustained by the pilot system, where we were making an enormous and inefficient amount of product,” he said in conversation with Netflix's Ted Sarandos, Showtime's David Nevins and FX's John Landgraf. “Maybe one of the healthier things that could evolve as there are more series opportunities is to get off of that inefficiency of just throwing spaghetti at the wall. But it's very difficult to unwire the town. Even agents are still in this mode of ‘pilot season.’ What the hell is pilot season? It's an artificial boundary that makes no sense, and it makes you do things under duress.”

Beacham, whose other credits include Clash of the Titans, is repped by WME, Anonymous Content and Hansen Jacobson; Sapochnik is repped by WME, Casarotto Ramsay and Sloane Offer.

E-mail: Lacey.Rose@THR.com

Twitter: @LaceyVRose

 

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/live_feed/~3/CJCSr78QESY/story01.htm
Category: Common App   Witches of East End   brandon jacobs   Blackboard   cedar point  

AMD rides semi-custom business back to profitability, cites net income of $48 million in Q3 earnings

We had our doubts when AMD promised to bounce back from its second quarter slump, but the company has held its word, reporting a net income $48 million in its Q3 financial reports. Why the jump? AMD cites growth in its Graphics and Visual Solutions (GVS) division, which is responsible for ...

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/mMrpPYFQuGM/
Similar Articles: Benedict Cumberbatch   Star Trek Into Darkness   K Michelle   lea michele   Tim Hudson  

Wynton Marsalis Goes Back To Church For 'Abyssinian Mass'

Damien Sneed assembled his 70-member Chorale Le Chateau to perform Wynton Marsalis Abyssinian Mass with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra.

Frank Stewart/Jazz at Lincoln Center

Damien Sneed assembled his 70-member Chorale Le Chateau to perform Wynton Marsalis Abyssinian Mass with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra.

Frank Stewart/Jazz at Lincoln Center

Wynton Marsalis is sipping hot tea in a church conference room before the evening's performance. His custom-made Monette Raja trumpet — with its built-in mouthpiece and black opal inlays — sits by his side. He's riffing on one of his favorite subjects: the universality of rhythm.

"That rolling 6/8 rhythm is in African religious music, it's in Anglican religious music," he says, humming a complicated pattern and tapping his fingers on his notebook. "In a slower tempo it would be 'Greensleeves.'" He scats the melody. "Now stay in that time, here's the African 6/8 ... now let's go into the jazz shuffle." More tapping. "It's the same rhythm."

"So all the musics are related," he concludes.

Marsalis is going back to church. The 52-year-old Grammy- and Pulitzer-winning trumpeter, the artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center, has created a sprawling work called Abyssinian: A Gospel Celebration. The piece, which amalgamates secular and sacred music, is currently on a 16-city tour.

"All the musics are related." That's a good way to get into the Abyssinian Mass — nearly two-and-a-half hours long, with intermission. This composition digs deeply into what Marsalis would call "the soil" of the black church: its shouts, its dirges, its spirituals, its hymns of praise. With this work, he celebrates the seminal influence the church has had on the music of black Americans, and the continuing pull it exerts on his own artistic and spiritual life.

Marsalis used the joyful stylings of the African-American gospel tradition to deliver a musical message of universal humanity. He says he tried to put it all in there: God and Allah, exultation and the blues, Saturday night and Sunday morning.

"The Abyssinian Mass tries to cover a lot of different types of music and put them together and show how they come from one expression," he says, "as the mass itself is about everyone has a place in the house of God."

Back In Church

Marsalis was commissioned to write this piece for the 2008 bicentennial celebration of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem.

YouTube

A clip from the 2008 performance of Abyssinian: A Gospel Celebration.

His composition follows the progression of a Roman Catholic service. When he was growing up in New Orleans, his mother, Delores, would take him to St. Francis Catholic Church, where he remembers the order of the mass from the Devotional through the Gloria Patri to the Benediction.

"I love the form of the Mass because when I was younger I was always wondering when would it be over?" he says. "I started to notice the form — 'OK, when they get to this part, it's almost over.' "

Every section of Marsalis' musical mass, like the Catholic Mass, is distinct from the other parts. His lithe, 15-piece band charges into the spaces in between, playing complex sectional counterpoint — horns against reeds — that would make Duke Ellington smile down from heaven.

The musicians say Marsalis' creations are challenging. They always contain at least one passage that requires virtuosic playing.

"We're so used to playing Wynton's extended works we're always looking for that in the music," says Vincent Gardner, the trombone section leader. He has played with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra for 13 years. "So when we get a new piece, the first thing we do is flip through it and find the part that has all the notes. Because you know it's in there somewhere. It's just a matter of finding it and getting it under your fingers and then you can play it."

'The Breath Of God'

The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra — regarded as one of the world's best big bands — is surrounded onstage by the 70-voice Chorale Le Chateau. It takes its name from Damien LeChateau Sneed, the 34-year-old choir director and conductor of the mass. Sneed is a producer, arranger, conductor, teacher, keyboardist and sought-after gospel music director. He handpicked 70 of the top gospel and opera singers in the country — ranging in age from 21 to 70 — just for this tour. He says he plans to re-assemble this dream team for future projects.

"The choir brings the fire and the choir brings the truth to the Abyssinian Mass," he says. "The choir brings the spirit, it's like the haaaaaa, the breath of God."

YouTube

Wynton Marsalis and Damien Sneed discuss the Abyssinian Mass.

One evening concert in Charlotte, N.C., took place in an African-American mega-church, the Friendship Missionary Baptist Church. That made it special for many of the singers and players, whose first exposure to music was in a church pew. Sneed, for instance, grew up in the Baptist church in Augusta, Ga.

"I think every note, every phrase, every rest, every chord will have more meaning just because of the fact that we are allowed to express ourselves, not just in a performance hall, but in a place of worship," Sneed says.

The choristers, in their burgundy robes, sing a capella hymns in lush seven- and eight-part harmonies one minute; the next minute they're swaying and hand-clapping to a swinging gospel number while the trombones growl in assent.

"The piece just has so many parts to it," says mezzo soprano Patricia Eaton. "It was an extraordinary experience, it is an extraordinary experience. I'm excited and yet I am lifted to another place as a religious experience."

The Abyssinian Mass sold out all 3,500 seats in the sanctuary of Friendship Missionary Baptist Church. The audience was also a congregation. They amen-ed and shouted encouragement and interrupted the performance with standing ovations.

After it was over, Dr. Clifford Jones, longtime senior minister at the church, searched for words big enough to express his reactions.

"Exhilarating, powerful, inspirational, affirming of both religion and culture," he said, beaming.

An elderly African-American woman, who did not give her name, when asked what she thought of jazz and blues being played in her church, answered simply: "This is where it started, so it's good to have it back home."

Source: http://www.npr.org/2013/10/19/237141507/wynton-marsalis-goes-back-to-church?ft=1&f=1039
Similar Articles: how i met your mother   joe flacco   made in america   Madden 25   huntington beach  

Russia: Court Decides Not To Imprison Navalny

KIROV, Russia (AP) — A Russian court on Wednesday suspended a five-year prison sentence for a top opposition leader but upheld his conviction for theft, preventing him from running in future elections.

Alexei Navalny was convicted on embezzlement charges and sentenced to prison on July 18, but was released the next day in what some considered a ploy to make the Moscow mayoral race, where he was registered as a candidate, look as competitive as possible.

Navalny garnered an unexpected 27 percent against the Kremlin-backed incumbent. His growing public profile has made it increasingly risky for the Kremlin to put him behind bars.

A judge in the court in Kirov, 760 kilometers (460 miles) east of Moscow, read out the decision Wednesday. According to Russian law, even a suspended sentence would eliminate Navalny from political office for life.

Navalny lambasted the trial, saying during the Wednesday session that the original sentence had been handed down "on instructions from Moscow" and that the "political motivation of this case is absolutely clear."

The charges against Navalny date back a few years to when he worked as an unpaid adviser to the provincial governor in Kirov. Prosecutors said he was part of a group that in 2009 embezzled 16 million rubles' ($500,000) worth of timber from the state-owned company Kirovles. He has denied the charges.

Navalny, who spent much of the court session tweeting, was characteristically sarcastic and upbeat.

___

Mills reported from Moscow.

Source: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=235217712&ft=1&f=
Related Topics: Manny Machado   chicago fire   detroit lions   college football   evelyn lozada  

20 must-see products at Demo 2013

Sorry, Readability was unable to parse this page for content.

Source: http://podcasts.infoworld.com/slideshow/124683/20-must-see-products-demo-2013-229061?source=rss_infoworld_top_stories_
Related Topics: calvin johnson   FXX   college football   Vma 2013 Miley Cyrus   Moto X  

Boston Police Officer Adds His Name To American Lexicon

Maybe you've seen Steve Horgan, the cop on duty as the Red Sox played the Tigers in the league championship series. Boston's David Ortiz hit a home run. Video caught Officer Horgan, arms in the air, celebrating even as Detroit's Torii Hunter flipped over the wall in a vain effort to catch the ball and tumbled near the officer's feet. In Boston, that triumphant pose is now called Horganing.

Source: http://www.npr.org/2013/10/16/235266288/boston-police-officer-adds-his-name-to-the-language?ft=1&f=3
Similar Articles: Scandal   taylor swift   school shooting   amanda bynes   geraldo rivera  

Entourage Movie May Never Get Made

By Lex October 15, 2013 @ 1:47 PM

Fuck no. If there’s something that needs to get done right now, it’s a movie based off a mediocre TV show that became downright unwatchable in its final few seasons. But Marky Mark says the Entourage movies is on hold because ‘them guys are being greedy’. To which I think he’s referring to the Entourage actors who want a big payday to make a movie since it’s likely going to be their only source of income for the next forever. I’d ask for bank too. Marky Mark still gets $12 million plus backend to make his two to three crappy movies a year. You know the next and only project Kevin Connolly, Adrian Grenier, and Kevin Dillon have listed on their schedules? Yeah, Entourage the Movie.

Source: http://www.wwtdd.com/2013/10/entourage-movie-may-never-get-made/
Similar Articles: columbus day   Mike Wayans   Never Forget 9/11