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The production of One Piece Live Action Season 2 is underway at full throttle. This week, we got a series of announcements regarding the new cast. Nefertari Cobra, Nefertari Vivi, and Dr. Kureha are some of the characters whose star cast has been announced. Surprisingly, one character who doesn’t appear in the manga until Chapter 705, might be there in season 2 of the live action.

Luffy and Bartolomeo | Credits: Toei Animation

Reportedly, Nahum Hughes has been cast as Bartolomeo. Although, there’s no official announcement regarding this yet. An important character appearing before they’re canonically supposed to is bound to spark numerous questions. But for Bartolomeo, this is a lore accurate decision.

Nahum Hughes’ Casting as Bartolomeo Bartolomeo cries while looking at Luffy | Credits: Toei Animation

In the manga and anime, Bartolomeo made his first appearance during the Dressrosa Arc of One Piece. It was revealed that he was present...

John Wick: Chapter 4 and All Quiet on the Western Front were the top winners tonight at the 10th annual Location Managers Guild International Awards, which were handed out tonight in Santa Monica.

TV winners recognized by the Location Managers Guild International included 1923, The White Lotus and The Last of Us. See the full list below.

The Lmgi Awards honor international features, television and commercials in which the creative use of filming locations set the tone, enrich the character and enhance the narrative. The hardware was handed out at The Eli and Edythe Broad Stage as the Lmgi celebrated its 20th year.

Multiple Oscar winner Steven Spielberg received the Lmgi’s Eva Monley Award, which is given to an individual who has made an extraordinary contribution to the art and craft of filmmaking through their commitment to the use of real locations. His Oscar-winning collaborator, production designer Rick Carter, presented the award.

Celebrated British filmmaker Steve McQueen’s Oscar-winning “12 Years A Slave” was released almost a century after D W Griffith’s “The Birth of a Nation”, the first film ever to be screened at the White House, writes ‘Variety’. McQueen’s film, however, was not shown at the US President’s official residence. The director, who’s also a Camera d’Or winner for his 2008 film “Hunger”, spoke about it at an in-conversation event at the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR).

“It was just after that situation with Skip Gates,” said McQueen, recalling, according to ‘Variety’, the arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis ‘Skip’ Gates by Sergeant James Crowley. It was a suspected case of racial profiling that stirred a major controversy for then-President Barack Obama, who was accused of having allegedly taken sides by going public with his view that the local police department had acted “stupidly”.

“So,...

Steve McQueen’s Oscar-winning “12 Years a Slave” was released almost a century after D. W. Griffith’s “The Birth of a Nation,” the first film ever to be screened at the White House. McQueen’s film, however, was not shown at the U.S. President’s official residence. The British director spoke Saturday about this issue while at an in-conversation event at the International Film Festival Rotterdam.

“It was just after that situation with Skip Gates,” said McQueen, referring to the arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis “Skip” Gates by Sergeant James Crowley, a suspected case of racial profiling that stirred great controversy for then-President Barack Obama, who was alleged to have taken sides after publicly stating the local police department had acted “stupidly.” “So, at that time, everything Obama was doing was being scrutinized,” continued the director, “and that was the theory of why ‘12 Years a Slave’ was...

This year marked the 50th anniversary of Star Trek, and while we saw a new movie hit theaters, for many fans, the best Trek-related entertainment ever created will always be the classic episodes of Tos (The Original Series). If you're looking for a last minute way to celebrate the series' anniversary, BoingBoing points out a good method for paying tribute to the show: visit the set of the USS Enterprise in upstate New York.

No, it's not the exact same set that was used for filming, but it's the next closest thing. James Crowley, a fifty-year-old Elvis impersonator from Ticonderoga, NY, was friends with William Ware Theiss, who worked as Gene Roddenberry's costume designer on the original Star Trek series. When Theiss passed away, he left the original blueprints for the Trek set to Crowley in his will, and Crowley apparently rented out an old 13,000 square foot supermarket and...

Gotta dig the sense of humor President Obama has as he makes an Obama Slurpee joke that made wakes a couple days after the "shellacking" that the Democrats experienced during the November elections.

Sources close to political things such as this say that hours after the leader of the free world jokingly suggested at Wednesday's day-after-election press conference that he might hold a "Slurpee Summit" with the new Republican leadership, the brand of slushy soft drinks is in overdrive to make the summit real.

"This is a rare opportunity for a brand," says Margaret Chabris, a spokeswoman for 7-Eleven, which owns 44-year-old Slurpee. "We don't want to be opportunistic, but nothing has ever been this big for Slurpee."

This is what brands dream about. Bud Light got a big PR lift after Obama drank a Bud Light at the White House "Beer Summit" in July 2009. That brought together Harvard professor...

PBS is set to air "Faces of America - With Henry Louis Gates Jr." beginning February 10, 2010. The series is part of a trend of smallscreen programming that was highlighted last year by National Geographic Channel's Human Genome Project, and is mirrored by the current NBC effort "Who Do You Think You Are?" beginning March 5. Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. was involved in a publicized scuffle in 2009 with a Boston police officer, Sgt. James Crowley, that was mediated by President Barack Obama in what the press dubbed the "beer summit," where the two men were joined by Obama and his VP Joe Biden in a fence mending chat over a pitcher of suds. Now Prof.

While I was in Pasadena for the TCAs, I got a chance to have a very interesting talk with Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. He was at the press tour to promote his new PBS series 'Faces of America,' which debuts on Wednesday, February 10.

In the four-part follow-up to his 'African-American Lives' series, Gates traces the lineages of a number of celebrity guests via the use of both old-fashioned digging -- documents, genealogical investigations -- and cutting-edge genome research. Some of the guests include Eva Longoria, Yo Yo Ma, Stephen Colbert, Malcolm Gladwell, Dr. Oz and Meryl Streep.

Professor Gates and I talked mostly about what he found surprising about his research, and what guests were most surprised by their lineages. Of course, I also asked him about the aftermath of the "beer summit" with President Obama and James Crowley, the Cambridge police officer who arrested him for...

This is the first year that I've attended panels during the conference portion of Austin Film Festival (Aff). Overall I'd say that I was not disappointed, other than the disadvantage of having to miss some screenings I'd really wanted to see such as the screening of Texas Weather at the Texas Spirit Theater.

I thoroughly enjoyed the honest and informative "Texas Film Incentives" panel with Paul Alvarado-Dykstra, Central Texas Representative of the Texas Motion Picture Alliance (Txmpa), along with filmmakers James Crowley (The Rookie, Hidalgo) and Dominic Cancilla (Hope Floats, A Scanner Darkly).

James talked about the high quality of production crews in Texas, with Dominic pointing out that Dicky Deats is the only key grip ever to win an Academy Award, for Hope Floats. During the discussion it was also confirmed that Whip It, which shot primarily in Michigan, is still waiting for incentives because funds are depleted in some other states' incentive programs.

Last Thursday, when Barack Obama, Henry Louis Gates, and Sergeant James Crowley gathered at the White House for the most-anticipated summit since Yalta, I was prepared. I could have told you the brands of beer the participants had indicated they would drink (Bud Light for Obama, Red Stripe for Gates, and Blue Moon for Crowley), the companies that produce them (Anheuser-Busch InBev Nv, Diageo Plc, and SABMiller), and the countries where their corporate headquarters are located (Belgium, England, and England). I could have told you the planned venue for the summit (a picnic table near Sasha and Malia Obama’s swing set) and where it was relocated to (a wrought iron table in the Rose Garden). And I even could have told you that the 40-year-old woman who called 911 on Professor Gates in the first place does not like to drink beer—although this did not really matter, because she...

• Little more than a month after they split up, might Billy Joel be trying to get back together with his soon-to-be ex-wife, Katie Lee Joel? “Billy is obsessed with her,” according to “friends” of the couple. [Nyp] • Jude Law has apparently not spoken to his baby mama since she discovered in February that she is pregnant. A friend of Samantha Burke, a 24-year-old former model who is pregnant with Law's fourth child, described their dalliances as “purely sexual.” [Nydn] • America's newest BFFs: Henry Louis Gates and the officer who arrested him, Sgt. James Crowley. At his first public appearance since his arrest, Gates said Sunday that he and Crowley are planning a lunch date, a trip to a Celtics or Red Sox game, or perhaps a family dinner. “I offered to get his kids into Harvard if he doesn't arrest me ever again,” Gates said. [Cape Cod Times] • Judging by its performance at the box office,...

Filed under: News, OpEd, Reality-Free

Morning news shows are a goldmine of cringe-inducing moments and epic fail goodness. The title alone makes me laugh because only half of it is accurate due to the fact that it airs in the morning.

By far the unintentionally funniest show is that morning cup of crazy on Fox News, Fox and Friends. They truly cover news stories that no one else does as their on-air promos suggest because no one in their right mind would consider it news. I'm finally starting to understand Walter Cronkite's distrust of the 24-hour news network model: you'll call anything news to fill time.

Hosts Steve Doocy, Gretchen Carlson and Brian Kilmeade actually took President Barack Obama to task for ordering a Budweiser instead of an American-brewed beer during his recent "Beer Summit" with Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Sgt. James Crowley.

Continue reading Fox & Friends call shenanigans on Obama.

• The Wall Street bonus debate flares up again as New York attorney general Andrew Cuomo reports that nine of the bailed out banks paid their employees more than $1 million a piece for 2008. “If the bank lost money, where do you get the money to pay the bonus?” Cuomo said. [Nyt] • Sienna Miller just can't seem to break up those married men. Her latest boy-toy, Balthazar Getty, appears to be back together with his wife. [Nydn] • President Obama sat down to discuss racial profiling over beers with Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Cambridge policeman James Crowley. "I have always believed that what brings us together is stronger than what pulls us apart," Obama said. "I am confident that has happened here tonight." [HuffPo] • If you can't afford to dress like Daphne Guinness, at least you can smell like her: the heiress is launching a signature scent in September. [Wwd] • Is your doorman judging you?...

I know we should all just get along, but something about President Obama’s beer summit tonight makes me sad. Leave aside, for the moment, whether Obama really has time to be playing peacemaker in the great Gates arrest debate; I salute his graciousness in offering to let Sergeant James Crowley and Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. air their differences over a cold one. It would take the skills of that great home-brewer and sage from Baltimore, H.L. Mencken himself, to do justice to the manufactured spectacle of this media event. In his day, Mencken was famous for mocking the requirement that commanders-in-chief console every grieving widow of a World Series hitter, or welcome to the White House the champions of various games of skill and chance, or indulge in so much of the rest of the ceremonial foofaraw that has come to characterize the modern presidency. Even at the height of Prohibition,...

Today, President Barack Obama hosts a rather unorthodox event at the White House. He will welcome embattled scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr., the Harvard professor who was arrested for disorderly conduct following an incident in his home. When Gates raised the idea that it was possible that his arresting officer, Sergeant James Crowley, may have been racially motivated (Gates is black, Crowley is white), the President commented on the case and seemed to draw the conclusion that it was indeed a case of racial profiling. He accused Crowley of "acting stupidly" when asked about the incident.

However, Obama later walked back his statements when he realized they were slightly more inflammatory than he initially intended. As a way of diffusing the situation, Crowley and Gates will meet with Obama today for a beer at the White House. The President will quaff a Bud Light, Gates will sip a Red Stripe...

Today's the day that President Obama will attempt to share a "teachable moment" with Sgt. James Crowley and Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. I'm not sure what food and beverage will be served -- I'll leave that up to the White House Mess. But we all know there's nothing like some good tunes to really set the right mood. In order to avoid any awkward teachable moments, I've intentionally left off some more provocative police songs from N.W.A. or Body Count, and even "I Shot The Sheriff" by Bob Marley & The Wailers and "Piggies" by those dangerous gangsta rockers The Beatles. So here's my playlist for a "Teachable Moment." Please reply with your far more arresting ideas for some songs to really get this potentially uncomfortable party of three started. "Police On My Back" - The Clash "State Trooper" -...

“I am not a racist.” Somehow, I knew that’s what we were going to hear from Sergeant James Crowley when he finally decided to speak up about his role in arresting Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. at his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The officer has been vilified, ridiculed, and, as of last night, indirectly condemned by President Obama, who said the Cambridge Police Department acted “stupidly” in arresting Gates. All of which, I suspect, will do nothing but harden Sergeant Crowley’s sense of victimhood. Well, here’s my message to Sergeant Crowley: you are a victim. Racism deprives black Americans of opportunity, dignity, and more, but white Americans suffer in their own way for being part of an unjust system. Black Americans cope with the plague every single day; white Americans, for the most part, are free to ignore it, until one day they do something, yes,...