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From 1921 through 1936, she lived right by the studio and celebrated each year’s Halloween growing up as sort of a combo Hallow’s Eve/birthday, because the latter falls on October 20 (per the headline, she just turned 103). One year, she and her family went the extra mile on the home front, and it paid off:

“I called the Universal Property Department, and they came up, and they rigged everything up for Halloween, you know? All kinds of spooky stuff… They did a beautiful job with lighting effects and everything—very spooky, you know?” The same men who had helped to make Universal the home of horror throughout the 1930s proved their talent that day, too, Laemmle laughs, because “as we were going down the pathway, this skeleton jumped out at one of my guests, and she fainted.”

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Picking up on a brief September Hollywood Reporter item, USC grad Weisman went ahead and contacted Splash News CEO Gary Morgan. To find out exactly why the makers of 2013 biopic Diana starring Naomi Watts would partner with an entity most such productions normally work hard to keep at bay:

“Traditionally, the production company will hire an on-set photographer,” explained Morgan. “And that photographer will take pictures that they want to release over time for the production, to draw attention to it. And they will then take these pictures and give it to a PR company who will then place that picture in what they think are high traffic or important magazines or newspapers. These PR companies are usually territory-based and don’t deal with a mass audience on a day-to-day basis. They’ll deal with the top-tier, like People magazine, or Entertainment Tonight, or someone like that.”

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On the KCET introduction page for this new, grassroots program component, Debeij explains what he’s been going for:

After living here a little while, I gradually started to become aware that there was a Los Angeles which was unknown to me before I was a resident. My eyes were opened to seemingly-hidden places and local gem spots, and to the interesting way different neighborhoods intersect and cause their inhabitants to blend together around the boundaries.

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The valedictory eloquence of Morrison’s thoughtful September 7 farewell stood in stark contrast to KPCC management’s close-mouthed handling of their cancellation of the show. There was, by all reports, no announcement or explanation by the station’s administrators until days after Morrison’s show vanished – literally “into thin air.” Then, on the creaky-voiced Larry Mantel show, which had been re-positioned and extended in the wake of the Patt cancellation, there was a brief, vague reference to the termination by president and CEO Bill Davis, who murmured something about a “change.”

Although KPCC has assured that Morrison will continue in the future to contribute to the station, an online petition was launched urging the Southern California Public Radio operation not to cancel Morrison’s program. Muske-Dukes meanwhile called the station to complain, and to vp of content Russ Stanton’s credit, he returned her call.

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Tobar is the 2012 winner of the Luis Leal Award for Distinction in Chicano/Latino Literature. He is being honored for his two novels as well as the non-fiction tome Translation Nation: Defining a New American Identity in the Spanish-Speaking United States. The intriguing thesis of that one is that because of the work Latino immigrants must engage in today to preserve their Latin American identities, they are “latter-day pioneers.”

“Hector Tobar is one of the most important social and political novelists of his generation,” said Mario T. García, the UCSB Chicana-Chicano studies and history professor who oversees the Leal Award each year. “His writings deal with the hidden lives of Latinos in Los Angeles and the United States. These are the people who live in the shadows due to their immigration status, and yet are very much a part of our contemporary American society. Tobar’s characters reveal themselves as human beings who need to be accepted and integrated by the rest of us. Tobar is their voice.”

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Kennedy points to Disney’s prior success with Pixar and Marvel as a key influencer for the $4.05 billion deal. She also says that Lucas, “her Yoda,” will most definitely be involved in the pass-the-lightsaber process of meeting with screenwriters and determining a basic storyline for the next Star Wars film.

The funniest part of the video conversation occurs at the very end, when Kennedy jokes that a retired Lucas can blog about how his gatekeeper-successors are messing it all up.

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To be fair, Racing Pigeon Pictorial International never ran a creepy, computer-generated image of an aging Princess Diana walking alongside the daughter-in-law she never met.

A slideshow of the magazines profiled can be viewed here.

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While the AVP won the award in 2010 and was nominated again in 2011, this year’s National Entertainment Journalism Awards category of Entertainment Publication has whittled the nominees down to just them and The Hollywood Reporter. An odd sight, to say the least.

For Entertainment Publication this year, there’s no Deadline (they boycotted), no Variety (they didn’t enter), no TheWrap, no LA Weekly, no Entertainment Weekly and no Vanity Fair. Just a Palmdale-Lancaster paper launched in 1915 and a Hollywood trade founded in 1930.

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Reviewing the TV movie for ESPN magazine, Sam Alipour suggests that MWPT (Metta World Peace Thespian) comes off as “pretty solid.” Although the reporter admits he quickly had to fast-forward his screening copy to MWP’s scenes:

The first thought that jumps to mind: The artist formerly known as Ron Artest isn’t coasting in this. He’s given a sizable role as Garlan Fincher, a police detective and BFF of the film’s prosecutor in distress, played by Jennie Garth of Beverly Hills 90210 fame.

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The Neon Museum will rank as must-see for many LA visitors the next time they hit the Strip. Among the attractions is this one as highlighted by Glionna:

Outside the museum sits the refurbished silver slipper that legend says once spooked Howard Hughes. The billionaire reportedly suspected the slipper that revolved outside the Silver Slipper casino was being used as a government surveillance ploy because it often paused momentarily, pointing at his Desert Inn penthouse. (Some say Hughes just didn’t like the sign’s light shining in his window, but he eventually bought the casino and slipper, which he had filled with concrete.)

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Blake Griffin, the other big man in town, continues to find new ways to make me laugh.

We’ve seen him attempt to dunk over a Kia Optima and take a stroll on Sesame Street.

Now the Los Angeles Clippers forward is going back to 1995 in his latest Kia commercial, which dropped days before the 2012-13 NBA season got underway. Griffin is turning into a shining star with each national TV spot.

Plus, you have to love a player that’s not afraid to poke fun at his own flaws on the court.

But in all seriousness, I really hope Blake worked on his free throws over the summer – - just brutal at the line his first two seasons.

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Thanks to an honorary degree acceptance speech given over the weekend at the University of the West Indies by Los Angeles Times Media Group executive vice president and editor Davan Maharaj (pictured), it’s also now our favorite new expression to describe a main challenge of the digital news gathering age. From a report in the Trinidad and Tobago Guardian:

“We all heard of mauvais langue, a penchant for gossip, for spreading lies, hearsay, or in my world as a journalist, to report a story without the full set of facts, a half-story,” Maharaj said. “It is something my grandmother, growing up in Palmyra, warned me about.”

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In my opinion, the LA Press Club seems more interested in collecting entry fees and selling gala tables to its entertainment awards contest than in rewarding high standards of journalism or conducting a competition with integrity. Tabloid media outlets which engage in ‘checkbook journalism’ are allowed to enter and in fact won NEJ categories last year.

Finke goes on to make a couple of valid points. Although the NEJ Awards have the word “National” in the title, this work-in-progress is still – perhaps inevitably – very much a SoCal-centric affair. Today’s list of nominees includes only a handful of non-LA outlets, most notably People magazine and Bloomberg Businessweek. Also, as Finke suggests, the NEJ Awards would benefit from a more transparent explanation of how the first place winners are chosen.

In response to a query from FishbowlLA, LA Press Club executive director Diana Ljungaeus and president Will Lewis have provided the following joint statement of response to Finke’s post:

Unlike Deadline.com, the Los Angeles Press Club is a non-profit organization (that barely breaks even!) not only dedicated to quality journalism but also here to support and bolster the morale of journalists.

Despite Nikki Finke’s attack on the integrity of the LA Press Club’s National Entertainment Journalism Awards, the 2012 NEJ’s attracted a record of close to 300 entries, from more than 45 news organizations across the nation. This is reflected in the affiliations of the finalists.

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