Shock Over 'Hunger Games' Directorgate: New Captain Needed Fast!

Which Hollywood heavy-hitter will step in to take helm of 'Catching Fire'?
By Jason Kaufman


Jennifer Lawrence in "Hunger Games"
Photo: Lionsgate

The big "Hunger Games" news this week wasn't how much cash continued to pour in, but the director who was on his way out. Gary Ross released a statement saying he would not be back for the sequel.

"Despite recent speculation in the media, and after difficult but sincere consideration, I have decided not to direct 'Catching Fire,' " Ross said. "As a writer and a director, I simply don't have the time I need to write and prep the movie I would have wanted to make because of the fixed and tight production schedule. I loved making 'The Hunger Games' — it was the happiest experience of my professional life."

"Hunger Games" studio Lionsgate expressed remorse at Ross' departure. "We're very sorry that Gary Ross has chosen not to direct 'Catching Fire.' We were really looking forward to making the movie with him. He did an incredible job on the first film and we are grateful for his work."

MTV Movies Managing Editor Eric Ditzian thought something was up. "I am frankly surprised he's not coming back, but in retrospect, I could see the implication when he was speaking to us, he was very reluctant to talk about 'Catching Fire,' " Ditzian told the panel on the latest edition of MTV News' "Talk Nerdy."

Watch Gary Ross on "Hunger Games" Sequels"

"Nerdy" host Josh Wigler expressed the need for urgency on the part of Lionsgate to make their hire soon. "Whoever they get to direct 'Fire' needs to have started yesterday. They really need to make this hire pretty fast; production is moving in August."

Who will step in for Ross? On Ditzian's wish list: Darren Aronofsky. "Great with the hand-held camera, great with these intimate first-person narratives. But it's not going to happen. He's busy."

Ditzian's pick for the auteur to drive Katniss' next chapter is Oscar-winning Danny Boyle, who's no stranger to hand-held cameras himself and has proved time and time again, from "Trainspotting" to "127 Hours," that he's a master of first-person tales as well.

The MTV Movies staff also predicts the short list of directors will include Steven Soderbergh, John Hillcoat and J.J. Abrams.

Best Picks for the "Catching Fire" Director Job

"The movie can survive," Ditzian said.

Jennifer Lawrence Tells MTV News About Planning Ahead for "Catching Fire."

Check out everything we've got on "Catching Fire."

For young Hollywood news, fashion and "Twilight" updates around the clock, visit HollywoodCrush.MTV.com.

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HTC Golf allegedly appears in press shot sporting ICS and Sense 4

Image
The HTC Golf, as it's known by codename, has been rumored to be in the works for quite some time now, but today marks our first virtual encounter with the device. Thanks to a leaked press image acquired by PocketNow, we can finally get an idea of what HTC's alleged entry-level slab may look like. Aside from being coated with a fresh version of Sense, the 3.5-inch Golf is also said to be packing an underwhelming 480 x 320 display, a single-core CPU, 512MB of RAM and 4GB of onboard storage (expandable via microSD). Additionally, word on the web has the Golf as being an eventual member of the outfit's Wildfire family, though we'd hold off on giving it a different dub just yet. Either way, perhaps this one will be good enough to wave goodbye to that ChaCha of yours.

HTC Golf allegedly appears in press shot sporting ICS and Sense 4 originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 14 Apr 2012 12:51:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Early 'Avengers' Reviews Point To Fan And Box-Office Gold

Talk Nerdy asks, 'Will the superhero all-star flick live up to the hype?' Fans who got an early peek seem to think so
By Eric Ditzian


Chris Hemsworth in "Avengers"
Photo: Marvel

"The Avengers," apparently, rules.

After a string of Los Angeles screenings, nerdy tastemakers have been squealing all over Twitter about what director Joss Whedon has delivered for this loooooong-in-development superhero all-star flick. "Like, double plus awesome," declared Seth Green. "Lost" guru Damon Lindelof came up with a Twitter hashtag that's a little too colorful to reprint here without a tweaking: .

To Lindelof, I say right back: F---yeah! Because, honestly, what a relief! For a while now on "Talk Nerdy," Brian Phares and I have been expressing worries like:

» There are too many heroes! With Iron Man fighting for screen time with Captain America, with Thor potentially chaffing against Loki as much in a brother-vs.-brother brouhaha as in matters of plot-point development, "Avengers" is simply going to be overstuffed. No character or storyline will be given room to breathe.

» Is the Hulk going to look hokey? Can the CGI beast hold his own next to his flesh-and-blood compatriots and not come off looking like a cartoon?

» Are 2011's good-but-not-great Marvel installments ("Captain America" and "Thor") a sign of good-but-not-great things to come?

And so on. Now, though, our cautious, please-Joss-don't-hurt-us approach to the film appears to be unfounded. "Avengers" hasn't yet screened in New York, so we can't throw our own nerdy support behind the film, but the future is looking superheroically bright.

Moviegoers are taking notice too. Early box-office tracking suggests the movie will open north of MTV News recently, "and we want the audience to be with them every step of the way and come out of it going, 'That was an extraordinary experience, and now I want to pay to see it again.' "

Are you planning on seeing "The Avengers"? Leave your comment below!

Check out everything we've got on "Marvel's The Avengers."

For breaking news, celebrity columns, humor and more — updated around the clock — visit MTVMoviesBlog.com.

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This Gives Hiding Your Gaming Controller in the Coffee Table a Whole New Meaning

Instead of hiding your Nintendo gaming controller in your coffee table with your remotes, the Nintendo Controller Coffee Table from TheBohemianWorkbench Etsy shop is the controller.? This table is made of maple, mahogany and walnut with dovetail joinery and mid century modern legs, and it functions as a Nintendo NES controller.? A floating glass top [...]

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Mobile Social Startup CrowdOptic Raises Another $500K, Plans Consumer Launch

photo 1CrowdOptic, a startup trying to create a new way for people to interact via line-of-sight "clusters", has raised another $500,000 in debt financing. CEO Jon Fisher says this brings the company's total funding to $2.5 million (including $500,000 that Fisher himself invested in January), and that the round serves as a bridge to CrowdOptic's profitability, which he plans to reach next quarter. Fisher isn't disclosing the source of the new funding. CrowdOptic creates clusters of people based on what you're looking at through your smartphone camera. If multiple people are looking at the same thing, CrowdOptic will send a notification asking if they want to create a discussion group, where they can share photos and comments.

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Scarlett Johansson Speaks on "Devastating" Divorce, Nate Naylor and More


Scarlett Johansson will soon star in The Avengers as Black Widow. Which is appropriate because, in many ways, the actress is still in mourning over her divorce from Ryan Reynolds.

"It’s horrible. It was devastating. It really throws you," Johansson says in the latest issue of Vogue. You think that your life is going to be one way, and then, for various reasons or whatever, it doesn’t work out."

Johansson and Reynolds finalized the paperwork last summer in "comically amicable" fashion," the gorgeous star adds.

Scarlett Johansson Vogue Cover

Does she regret the marriage? Not at all. It's "nice to know that you’re capable of loving somebody in that way," Scarlett says. But it still hurts.

“This was something I never thought I would be doing. And there’s no way to navigate it. Nobody can give you the right answer. It’s never anything you want to hear. It’s a very lonely thing. It’s like the loneliest thing you’ll ever do, in some way.”

Since the split, Johansson has been linked to Sean Penn ("We were seeing each other," she admits. “He’s a remarkable person.") and is now dating advertising executive Nate Naylor.

She's also been the victim of a phone hacker who unleashed every guy's dream upon the Internet: Scarlett Johansson nude pics.

It's "terrible," the actress says of imagining strangers looking at her naked body, adding: "You know what I mean? You can’t not think that. Even if they haven’t, you’re paranoid."

Still, Johansson concludes of both the divorce and this picture scandal: “I don’t want pity."

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Stephanie Vanderslice: Setting the Record Straight on Creative ...

Coauthored by Dianne Donnelly, Anna Leahy, Tim Mayers, Dinty W. Moore, Stephanie Vanderslice

Last month, this group of six creative writers and teachers argued "Creative Writing Can Be Taught" and answered the question "What is Creative Writing Anyway?"
Too often, detractors of creative writing as an academic field (like Anis Shivani here at The Huffington Post) use a small part of what we do to make a sweeping generalization. Or nay-sayers use a straw man to poke fun at something that doesn't really exist widely in practice. And some critics either have little experience with creative writing programs and courses or have actually benefited from them before turning on them.

As a group, we represent a large swath of the field. In this two-part post, we let readers in on what really happens inside our creative writing programs and classrooms. We consider the charge that the MFA in creative writing is a closed guild system, and we go into more detail about what happens in these programs.

So, is the graduate degree in creative writing, the MFA, a guild system?

DINTY W. MOORE: The MBA familiarizes students with the current methods in the business world and helps them make connections with firms and individuals. Nursing and medical degree programs familiarize students with medical knowledge and procedures and also with how and where medicine is practiced, allowing the students to connect, often through internships and residencies, with hospitals and medical groups. Architecture degrees do this. Social work degrees do this. Law degrees do this. A graduate writing student learns from visiting writers and editors who come to the program for a few days or a month and from meeting other writers and editors at conferences. Sometimes professional connections are made. There is nothing secretive or corrupt about this, no hidden handshakes that make or break a career. It is simply the way the world works -- the world of commerce and the world of art.

STEPHANIE VANDERSLICE: Old-school creative writing may have operated more like a guild system, but with the advent of Web 2.0 and the flattening of the publishing world, all bets are off. The best elements of what might be considered a guild system remain, namely aspiring writers mentored by practicing writers, but programs are realizing that they must teach students how to succeed in the world into which they're graduating, not the world into which the teachers themselves graduated, often generations ago.

ANNA LEAHY: A guild focuses on craft, so in that sense, creative writing adopts useful guild-like principles. The act of writing is done in isolation, but studies of creativity (see work by Nancy Andreasen, Steven Johnson, and others) indicate that community is important too; in the sense of shared interests and goals, our programs are guild-like. That said, because the field of creative writing is relatively separate from the publishing industry (and because creative writing is often part of a nonprofit university), our field doesn't actually establish the insider-outsider elitism, the rigid seniority, or the trade secrets of a guild system.

TIM MAYERS: I strongly disagree with the assertion that creative writing is a guild system. Many of those who make this assertion seem motivated by frustration -- perhaps that their own work is not getting published or, if it is getting published, that it is not getting enough attention. Ever since the advent of widespread literacy in the English-speaking world (starting around the middle of the eighteenth century), writers have been dealing with an unpleasant reality: there are usually more competent-to-excellent writers than readership to support all of them. Creative writing programs today may exacerbate this reality by putting a greater number of competent or excellent writers out there, but it does not follow that creative writing constitutes a closed and undemocratic guild system. Perhaps some who rail against creative writing programs should turn that critical attention toward our increasingly bottom-line-oriented publishing industry.

So how does an MFA program in creative writing work?

STEPHANIE VANDERSLICE: A creative writing MFA works very much the same way as an MFA in any other art, say, the visual arts or music. Aspiring writers are brought together with other aspiring writers and taught by practicing writers. This community of people with a shared passion for the written word is critical to accelerating a novice writer's development. Beyond the coursework, MFA students, depending on the given program, learn by attending (and helping to produce) reading series, by serving as graduate assistant editors on literary journals, and by teaching writing to undergraduates. All these experiences, as well as some experiences that more entrepreneurial students create themselves, teach emerging writers how to sustain themselves after they graduate. In this way, a generation of writers is established.

DIANNE DONNELLY: In our program, writers celebrate with other artists and perform their work at multiple locations on campus. Some programs engage students in more immersive community work and enter into programs with off-campus partners (local libraries, state arts councils, etc.) to foster a commitment to the arts. The impetus of community as the prime mover of discourse has significant potential for our field to connect with other entities within the university and within the global network.

DINTY W. MOORE: There exists a vast network of institutions supporting writing, editing, and reading, far beyond MFA programs. These include independent literary centers, such as The Loft or The Hugo House; community projects such as Writers in the Schools, InsideOut Detroit, and 826 National; a staggering array of magazines, agents, small book presses, and large publishers; and on and on. All of these efforts support one another and depend on one another to survive. While most of what is taught in a writing program pertains to the craft of writing itself, a secondary but important aspect of these programs is to create knowledgeable, sophisticated literary citizens.

ANNA LEAHY: Stephanie, Cathy Day, and I wrote about literary citizenship as part of "Where Are We Going Next?" in Fiction Writers Review. Most creative writers recognize we're part of a local, national, and global culture of arts and literature, and we're continuously rethinking what we do in our programs and classrooms as a result. The Director's Handbook recently out from the Association of Writers and Writing Programs reflects this shift toward literary citizenship for graduate programs.

Coming up: part two of our discussion: Should Mamas Let Their Babies Grow up to Study Writing? De-mystifying what writing students do and learn as undergraduate and graduate students.

AUTHORS:

Dianne Donnelly, Ph.D., is the editor of Does the Writing Workshop Still Work?, the author of Establishing Creative Writing Studies as an Academic Discipline, and co-editor of Key Issues in Creative Writing. She teaches at the University of South Florida.

Anna Leahy, M.F.A., Ph.D., is the editor of Power and Identity in the Creative Writing Classroom and author of Constituents of Matter, which won the Wick Poetry Prize. She teaches in the MFA and BFA programs at Chapman University and co-writes the Lofty Ambitions blog.

Tim Mayers, Ph.D., is the author of (Re)Writing Craft: Composition, Creative Writing, and the Future of English Studies. He teaches at Millersville University of Pennsylvania.

Dinty W. Moore, M.F.A., is the author of Crafting the Personal Essay and The Mindful Writer: Noble Truths of the Writing Life. He directs the graduate creative writing program at Ohio University.

Stephanie Vanderslice, M.F.A., Ph.D., is the author of Rethinking Creative Writing in Higher Education and the co-editor of Can It Really Be Taught? She directs the Arkansas Writers M.F.A. Workshop at the University of Central Arkansas.

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Follow Stephanie Vanderslice on Twitter: www.twitter.com/wordamour

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First Dedicated Biorefinery Could Wean Hawaii Off Imported Oil

News | Energy & Sustainability

New technology converts all kinds of plant waste into useable fuel--and is part of a growing array of technologies aimed at island energy independence


hawaii-biorefineryBIOREFINERY: Much like a typical oil refinery, this demonstration facility will take raw plant material, treat it, turn it to oil and, ultimately, turn it into a full suite of transportation fuels. Image: Courtesy of Honeywell / UOP

On former pineapple fields outside of Honolulu, an industrial tube has been erected, ensconced in a steel scaffold. Dwarfed by the nearby oil refinery, the modest tube represents an attempt to one day wean Hawaii from imported oil. It is the nation's first dedicated biorefinery, employing high heat to turn plant matter into oil, followed by chemical catalysis to upgrade that oil into a useable fuel, just like the much larger refinery down the road.

The biorefinery "makes a fuel which is usable in generator sets, boilers and also possibly in marine engines," says chemical engineer Jim Rekoske, vice president of renewable energy and chemicals at Honeywell's UOP, the company responsible for building and operating the facility. By next year, UOP hopes to have the full biorefinery in place, which will be able to make almost any transportation fuel.

As the company has demonstrated elsewhere in the world, it is possible to make jet fuel from plant oils?whether they come from jatropha seeds, the flowering weed camelina or any other oil-producing plant. The same is true for other forms of transportation fuel, whether corn ethanol for cars or algal oil to power ships. The new facility in Hawaii will be the first integrated biorefinery dedicated to churning out bio-based versions of the full range of fuels more commonly made from petroleum.

Island state
Hawaii relies almost entirely on oil for its energy, whether it be gasoline for its cars, jet fuel for the planes that shuttle tourists in and out or even heavier oil to burn in its power plants. All of that oil comes in by supertanker, and even the island's most defensive inhabitant?the U.S. military?is nearly completely reliant on shipped-in fuel. All told, the state imports 45 million barrels of oil a year, nearly a third of which goes to run power plants.

The new biorefinery is a first step to changing that. It will take in biomass?the generic term for the leaves, stems and other bits of plants not typically used for food for humans and livestock. That will include inedible components of Hawaiian crops, such as macadamia nuts and sugarcane, as well as guinea grass and eucalyptus. The oil-rich jatropha plant and other so-called "energy crops" being grown on the island may also pass through the industrial plant, as long as growers are willing to part with it for free (though that may prove unlikely). "We're going to use whatever we can get our hands on," Rekoske says, in a bid to demonstrate the flexibility of the technology.?

The biomass is ground into tiny bits and dried to drive out the water that can make up as much as half of the weight of fresh plant material. The plant flecks fly through the tube where ordinary sand heated to 500 degrees Celsius flashes them to an oil vapor in less than 800 milliseconds in a process called pyrolysis. What is left is the sand and the bits of biomass that cannot be vaporized, such as various salts and some residual char. The vapor exits and the solid bits drop to the bottom, where the char is burned to reheat the sand. "There is enough heat in the combustion of the char to heat the sand up to a high enough temperature to run the pyrolysis," Rekoske claims.

The oil vapor, meanwhile, is condensed into a liquid fuel, which is then further upgraded and processed to make a green fuel similar to the bunker fuel that is used in cargo ship engines and industrial boilers, for example, except it lacks the pollution-causing sulfur common to the bunker fuel refined from petroleum. Potential partners thus range from the U.S. Pacific Command (USPC), based in Honolulu, to local electricity cooperatives. And next year, when the full biorefinery is complete, UOP will be able to make everything from gasoline to jet fuel. "The idea is to make a whole barrel of product out of the biorefinery," Rekoske says.

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Hey, Instagram, Here?s $1 Billion for Your Cool Photos

Because for Facebook, this isn?t just about improving its photo-sharing app. It?s about domination. Facebook doesn?t want to be one among a number of options for sharing your personal content with friends and strangers. It wants to be the only option. Just as Google rakes in revenue by ruling search, Facebook?s business model depends on monopolizing sharing on the Web. Not just sharing status updates, or likes, or memes, or even photos?but sharing, as an activity. To secure that kind of ubiquity, Facebook will wield its pocketbook to take startups like Instagram out of play. If it doesn?t, someone else might scoop them up.

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Truckers are delivering better fuel efficiency

Diesel prices are at their highest level in nearly four years, topping $4 a gallon, but trucking company executive Fred Johring is taking it in stride.

Johring's Golden State Express has bought low-emission, fuel-efficient diesel and natural gas rigs to comply with a clean-truck mandate at Southern California's twin ports ? with the fortunate side effect of easing the pain of high-priced diesel.

"We went from having one of the oldest local fleets to one of the newest," said Johring, whose Rancho Dominguez company sends trucks mainly on short-haul trips to and from the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. "We have been somewhat insulated from the changing diesel prices."

Since getting hammered by expensive diesel in 2008, Johring and many other transport specialists have altered their businesses to reduce diesel use. Coca-Cola Co. is using electric and hybrid vehicles and training drivers to reduce idling time. FedEx Corp. has adopted sophisticated software to improve truck loading and route planning with an eye toward fuel efficiency.

Even the look of the rigs has changed. To improve aerodynamics on the road, a cutting-edge cab these days sports deflectors on the roof and sides as well as extenders to close the gap with the trailer behind. The trailer might feature side skirts or angled trays underneath so that the air flows easily past and doesn't drag on the vehicle, reducing the mileage a driver can get per gallon of fuel.

"Years ago, we preferred a classic style, rigs with tall front hoods," said Corey England, executive vice president of his family's trucking operation, C.R. England Global Transportation Inc., which operates as many as 320 rigs in California at any given time.

"Running those will lose you half a mile on every gallon," England said. "It just doesn't pencil out to do that."

England recalled the day in 2008 when diesel prices had soared so high that the Utah company's drivers started causing electronic service station pumps to crash as they filled up because the pumps weren't designed to go above $999.99. This time around, the company was determined to be better prepared for high prices.

Every quarter, for instance, the most efficient of its 4,000 drivers wins a new Harley-Davidson motorcycle for accomplishments such as best mileage per gallon or lowest idling time. The company has turned some of its trucks into mobile test stations to assess potential technologies in the field.

"It has allowed us to hone the edge and put the best trucks and best drivers on the road," England said.

Trucking companies and businesses with significant transportation costs were mostly caught unprepared in 2008, when diesel prices jumped more than 46% from January to July to a record national average of $4.76 a gallon. Then the global recession hit.

As hundreds of trucking companies folded, the industry shed nearly 178,000 jobs from January 2008 to December 2009, falling to a total of 1.2 million, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

This time around, with the U.S. average diesel price at nearly $4.15 a gallon as of Monday, trucking industry employment has held steady at 1.3 million since the beginning of the year.

Part of the improved performance can be attributed to a stronger economy and fewer companies competing for business, industry officials say, but also to the extraordinary lengths that companies have gone to reduce their exposure to high fuel prices.

"For trucking companies, $4 diesel is a tipping point," said Sean McNally, spokesman for the American Trucking Assn.

Since 2008, fleets have been overhauled to include the latest diesel trucks, which are more fuel efficient than older models, or have moved to electric or natural-gas rigs, according to a recent analysis by the London research firm Eyefortransport.

Trucking companies have turned to software programs to log speed and engine performance, improve routing and even shut down engines after a pre-determined amount of stationary time to reduce idling, the firm's study found. Drivers are put through training programs that encourage efficient and conservative driving over other considerations.

Double-deck trailers allow more cargo without greatly increasing fuel use. Wide-profile tires offer less rolling resistance, and automatic systems ensure the proper tire inflation. Auxiliary power runs heaters and air conditioners during trucker rest breaks, the report said.

"It has paid off," said Katharine O'Reilly, executive director of Eyefortransport, resulting in fuel savings of 3% to 10%. "They are in a much better position now in terms of financial viability."

Atlanta-based Coca-Cola saved about 1 million gallons in 2011, or about 4.8% of annual fuel consumption, said Steven Saltzgiver, group director of Coca-Cola's North American fleet. More fuel-efficient trucks, including electric and hybrid vehicles, have helped, as has Coca-Cola's "smart driver" education program.

"Before we did this, our trucks were idling 30% of the time," Saltzgiver said. "We first went down to idling 20% of the time. Now we are down below 10%, with an ultimate goal of getting down to 5%."

FedEx is making greater use of "route operations support software" that helps the company save on fuel costs by loading trucks efficiently and mapping optimal delivery routes, spokesman Scott Fiedler said.

FedEx, which uses about 1.5 billion gallons of petroleum-based fuels a year, has improved fleet mileage 15% since 2005, Fiedler said.

"There's no one solution," Fiedler said. "We need to use the right vehicle and the right fuel on the right route."

ron.white@latimes.com

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