Australian film organization creates Ledger scholarship

LOS ANGELES (AP) Heath Ledger was known for giving aspiring Australian actors a hand in Hollywood. Now, an Australian film organization has established a scholarship fund in the late actor's name to continue those efforts.

"There's an entire tribe of Australians who have all benefited from his generosity," said Susie Dobson, president of Australians in Film, or AiF. "This (scholarship) captures Heath's spirit and serves our mission to help and celebrate Australian filmmakers."

Ledger who died at 28 of an accidental prescription drug overdose in January had served as an ambassador for the film organization and its board wanted to honor him after his death, Dobson said.

Director Gregor Jordan announced the establishment of the Heath Ledger Scholarship Fund last week at AiF's annual Breakthrough Awards, where he read a statement from Ledger's father, Kim Ledger.

"Although reluctant to lend his name to anything commercial, we know Heath would be proud of his attachment to this scholarship," Kim Ledger's statement said. "This scholarship in part does what Heath has done personally during the last 10 years and supported financially or in kind many friends, Australian actors, singers, directors or writers seeking to ply their talents in the USA."

Jordan also said that Michelle Williams, mother of Ledger's daughter, "would be very proud and happy to be the first benefactor" of the scholarship fund.

The first recipient will be announced next year, Dobson said.

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Carell jokes about on-screen kiss with The Rock

Steve Carell, who plays Maxwell Smart in the upcoming spy comedy "Get Smart," says he had a scent-sational time kissing co-star Dwayne Johnson, who most might recognize as "The Rock"

"The Rock has softer lips. I guess I could say that," the 44-year-old actor told AP Television. "He smells like strawberry shortcake. For me, that's why they call him The Rock. He rocks people's worlds."

Johnson countered that he doesn't smell or taste like strawberry shortcake "strawberry shortcake with liver I think."

The 36-year-old wrestler-turned-actor said he was gung-ho about planting a kiss on Carell.

"It was just one of those things where I thought well, you know, `What could be the most entertaining and funniest moment that we could think of that would still make sense and still kind of root in reality?'"

"We came up with a great kiss," said Johnson, who plays Agent 23. "I thought if Jake Gyllenhaal can do it, Will Smith can do it, then I can do it, too. I'm going to own it. I was like, `Give me those lips right now. Right now.'"

Said Carell: "He is such a good guy. We just laughed that whole day. That was a total no-brainer in terms of that scene. There was never one moment of hesitation or awkwardness. He's game for anything, let me put it that way."

"Get Smart," also starring Anne Hathaway as Agent 99, is slated for release June 20.

Source: Movie Interviews

Vin Diesel and girlfriend welcome a daughter

Vin Diesel is a dad.

Diesel, star of "The Pacifier" and "The Chronicles of Riddick," and his girlfriend, model Paloma Jimenez, welcomed a baby girl in Los Angeles on April 2, his representative, Meredith O'Sullivan, said in an e-mail Friday.

O'Sullivan said the 40-year-old action star wasn't releasing the baby's name.

Diesel's screen credits also include "The Fast and the Furious" "Boiler Room" and "Saving Private Ryan." He'll next be seen in the sci-fi movie "Babylon A.D.," slated for release Aug. 29.

Source: Movie Reviews

Wong Kar-wai to head Shanghai film festival jury

Hong Kong director Wong Kar-wai will head the jury at the Shanghai International Film Festival, which will be held June 14-22.

Wong, known for his moody visuals and melancholy soundtracks, won best director at the Cannes Film Festival for "Happy Together."

He replaces filmmaker Anthony Minghella, who died of a hemorrhage in March following surgery.

According to the festival's Web site, the jury will also include veteran Chinese actress Joan Chen, German producer Ulrich Felsberg, Danish director Bille August, Israeli writer Gila Almagor, Japanese director Kaori Momoi and Chinese director Huo Jianqi.

The jury will award the festival's top Jin Jue prize.

This year's competition lineup includes movies from China, Europe, Japan, Argentina, South Korea, Lithuania, Russia, the Czech Republic and New Zealand.

A retrospective of Minghella's work is being planned by the festival, a spokeswoman said earlier this week.

Source: Movies Coming Soon

At Harvard, Rowling stresses role of imagination

J.K. Rowling stressed the crucial importance of imagination during a speech Thursday at Harvard University's spring commencement, saying, "We do not need magic to transform our world."

The "Harry Potter" author also spoke about the benefit of failure, recalling the humiliations of her time in poverty before her career took off with her string of novels about a bespectacled boy wizard.

Before the speech, some members of Harvard's class of 1936 paid tribute to Rowling by carrying brooms during an alumni procession.

President Drew Gilpin Faust also welcomed witches, wizards and Muggles non-magical people in Rowling's books to the commencement. Faust noted that there was a larger number of young children than normally expected for a Harvard graduation and that she knew she was the just "the warm-up act."

Rowling, who was given an honorary doctor of letters degree, urged the Harvard grads to use their influence and status to speak out on behalf of the powerless.

"We do not need magic to transform our world," she said. "We carry all the power we need inside ourselves already; we have the power to imagine better."

Imagination gives one the ability to empathize with others, she said.

"Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation," Rowling said. "In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity; it is the power that enables us to empathize with humans whose experiences we have never shared."

Rowling described a low point seven years after graduating from college, when she was a poor single mother.

"The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are ever after secure in your ability to survive," Rowling said. "You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity."

She called such knowledge "a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more to me than any qualification I ever earned."

Source: Movies In Theaters