News

The HFPA is to donate a record $1,567,650 to 50 diverse entertainment-related and charitable organizations this year. The donations, which will be presented at the annual installation and grants luncheon at the Four Seasons Hotel in August,  are for a wide range of projects, including the preservation of films, higher education, training and mentoring and the promotion of cultural exchange through film.

   Two-time Golden Globe nominee Lea Michele is mourning the death of her boyfriend and fellow Glee star Cory Monteith. Cory was at the Golden Globes ceremonies in both 2010 and 2011 when Michele was nominated as the best actress in a musical or comedy television series.

Those Apes are back!  Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is filming in the steamy heat of New Orleans with Andy Serkis back in the role of Caesar the leader of the band of genetically evolved apes. HFPA members visited the set, at an abandoned Magic Mountain amusement park on the outskirts of the city (left)  and watched some of the filming, talking  with director Matt Reeves and some of the cast.

Jack Tewksbury takes a trip down Hollywood's Memory Lane.    Jake Rosenberg was the Waxman and Finke of the 1950-1960s, writing and publishing Hollywood Closeup, a back-stage weekly.

   Guillermo del Toro is a man with robots on his mind. The writer-director of the epic $180 million robots vs.

Liev Schreiber had a tough decision to make when he was offered the title role in Showtime’s new crime drama series Ray Donovan:  Did he want to leave his home in New York and the theater work he loves to move to Los Angeles to appear in a series that, if successful,  could tie him up for several years. ? “It was a very, very difficult decision,” he told HFPA members who met him at Sony Studios back in April when he began filming the series.

Watched by an audience that included a group of HFPA members, Golden Globe winner John Travolta received another Globe when he was presented with the Crystal Globe at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival for Outstanding Contribution to World Cinema. One of the oldest film festivals in the world, KVIFF is considered throughout the industry as a kind of bridge between western and eastern cinema.

Paris Hilton visited the HFPA's West Hollywood offices recently to meet members and chat with them about her life and her career as a highly successful businesswoman. The socialite and entrepreneur, who now has 44 stores around the world, 17 product lines, the fledgling Paris Hilton Beach Club chain and is about the launch her 16th fragrance line, was relaxed and friendly as she sat at the conference table and answered questions.

HFPA members joined other international journalists in Santa Fe, New Mexico, to talk with the director and cast of The Lone Ranger, which is destined for Hollywood history as the most expensive Western ever made. Starring Johnny Depp as Tonto and Armie Hammer as the Ranger and directed by Gore Verbinski, the movie was filmed over seven months across four states in the American Southwest.

Theo Kingma Theo Kingma was elected President of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) for the 2013-2014 year at the organization’s annual election meeting, which was held June 10, 2013. This marks his first presidency for the organization.