The Front Page: June 26, 2008

By Randee Dawn

Mark your calendars now! It's never too early to start planning your parties, getting your dresses, sharpening your pencils! Because today, as Gregg Kilday and Carolyn Giardina's article headline lets us know: "Oscars just 35 weeks away!" Jeez, and thank god for that: Anyone planning, say, an Oscar night baby had better get moving -- you'll be just about on the wire if you deliver a week early.

Anyway, the article that trumpets this revolutionary notion credits the release of "Wall-E" this Friday with kicking off the season, then notes that there aren't a lot of other films that have come out this year which would seem likely candidates. Notably, however, is that Heath Ledger could posthumously get nominated for playing a makeup-winning psychopath, they write: "If critics and fans applaud Heath Ledger's turn as the Joker in 'The Dark Knight' when it is released July 18, Warner Bros. is ready to support a campaign on his behalf."

Timeliness has been a factor between Jack Klugman and NBC for several months now -- according to Leslie Simmons' article, the former "Quincy" actor has a beef with the Peacock, which has been lax in providing him with a copy of his contract from the show. He sued in March to get access to the contracts after NBC reported the series "accumulated over $66 million in net losses," and without the contracts Klugman can't get an audit done to verify those reports. A judge told NBC to give Klugman the darned contracts, but I'm still trying to figure out why he needs them. Does he get extra residuals if the show didn't lose $66 million or something? More information, Mr. Klugman, please!

Finally, Sony's hoping to be ahead of everyone else by "steering vendors to a secret demo suite" at Cinema Expo 2008 to check out something that might be a "watershed," according to Carl DiOrio's article from Amsterdam. That revolutionary item? "A 4K digital projector with easy adaptability to 3-D projection," he writes. "Once considered the next-generation technology for digital cinema, Sony's 4K systems have been struggling to overcome cost and manufacturing woes, and more conventional 2K d-cinema systems have remained the prevalent hardware in the marketplace. So Sony executives -- hoping soon to remedy the additional 3-D headache -- are demonstrating prototypes of the new 4K projectors with the aim of bringing the hardware to market by Christmas."

And hey, Christmas'll be here even before the Oscars! Start shopping now....