Breezy acting complements fine singing in Opera San Jose production of a Mozart gem

FedEx chief Fred Smith still believes in the movie business--Is he nuts?

While several of Hollywood's financially strained independent production companies have either gone under or drastically scaled back operations over the past year, Fred Smith -- the founder and chief executive of FedEx Corp. -- says he's still committed to his side business: investing in movies.

For more than a decade, the Hollywood outsider who lives in Memphis, Tenn., has quietly bankrolled Alcon Entertainment, the boutique production outfit behind such films as "My Dog Skip" and "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants" series. His company may not be known for any blockbuster success and has had some box-office losers like the romantic comedy "Chasing Liberty" and its debut movie, "Lost & Found." But Smith claims that, thanks to solid performers such as the romantic drama "P.S. I Love You," starring Hilary Swank and Gerald Butler, and continued financial discipline, Alcon has been a profitable venture.

He attributes the company's stamina in what he readily acknowledges is "a very tough business" to the cost-conscious "no-limos" philosophy guiding Alcon's two chief executives, Andrew Kosove and Broderick Johnson. Despite being a Yalie, Smith hired the two Princeton alums after meeting them in 1994 and being impressed with their 220-page business plan for launching a movie company.

Smith said the duo's success lies in the fact that the pair has stuck to their original strategy for lowering risks inherent to the unpredictable movie business: Keep film budgets tight and overhead low; focus on specific genres like family films; and have a strong studio partner to help market and distribute the pictures (Alcon has a multi-year distribution deal with Warner Bros. and typically sells off the international rights in its films to help finance them).

"Those three things have proven that we're the exception to the rule," Smith said when he dropped by The Times to talk about the toll that the bad economy is taking on his main business --delivering packages.

Smith ducked a question about how much of his own money he's invested in the movie business. "It's mostly been done with borrowed money," he says, noting Alcon's good fortune last year in securing a $500-million bank loan before those kind of "slate-financing" deals dried up. Smith says he used his own FedEx stock to secure the loan.

The entrepreneur, who leaves the day-to-day running of Alcon to his two movie chiefs, says he reads the occasional script and rarely visits the set of his company's movies.

His personal Alcon favorite? Smith says its Jay Russell's family movie, "My Dog Skip," based on Willie Morris' World War II memoir about a boy and his dog growing up in a small Southern town. Made for $7 million, the 2000 release grossed $35 million at the worldwide box office and did well on video. Smith said he defies anyone to watch the movie "without a tear in their eye."

Smith insists he doesn't regret his own failings as a would-be movie star. He jokes that any ambitions he may have harbored were "left on the cutting-room floor" when his three-minute cameo in Fox's 2000 "Cast Away," starring Tom Hanks as a FedEx executive in a modern-day version of Robinson Crusoe, was "so bad, so atrocious, it was cut to 18 seconds."

--Claudia Eller

Demetri Martin unveils his surreal and 'Important' comedy show

In the first episode of his feather-light, funny show, "Important Things with Demetri Martin" (9:30 p.m. Wednesday, Comedy Central; three stars), Martin shares some of his child-like drawings with a studio audience.

One page of his sketch pad shows a collection of polka dots. The next page shows a series of tubes and says, “Polka dots, side view.”

The image is as amusing as it is unexpected. And that’s the strength of Martin’s comedy: It comes at you from the side, so to speak.

Important Things with Demetri MartinWed 10:30pm / 9:30cPreviewTime GigoloJoke of the Day
Stand-Up ComedyGet Funny Ringtones
More Funny Videos

“Important Things” shares a sensibility with HBO’s similarly dry yet silly “Flight of the Conchords,” on which Martin has appeared (he has also been the “youth correspondent” for “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart”).

Neither “Conchords” nor Martin’s show beg for your approval, yet they get it because at their best, there’s something fresh and infectious about their sly, inventive daffiness. Check out the "Time Gigolo" clip above to see what I mean.

If nothing else, Martin deserves credit for, in the first two episodes of his show, not mining the tired women-sex-relationships material that every other comic seems to feel the need to weigh in on. "Important Things" comes from the production company of "Daily Show" host Stewart, and therefore it assumes that its target audience has grown out of the frat-boy humor that flavors a number of Comedy Central's other offerings.

Each episode of Martin’s show is organized around a theme, such as “Timing” or “Power,” and segments taped in front of an audience are interspersed with sketches and animated bits. The surreal comedy of Steven Wright is clearly an influence on Martin (one of Martin’s jokes: “I wonder if there were any Goths in Gothic times”), but “Important Things” also has a boldly silly streak, as evidenced by an effective skit about a superhero called the Revenger.

The Revenger makes his first appearance in the excellent second episode of "Important Things," the one that dwells on "Power." In that outing, Martin helpfully supplies a way to make someone else sound less powerful: Put "DJ" in front of his or her name (i.e., DJ Abraham Lincoln. It works, doesn't it?).

Speaking of power, some comedians attempt to hold on to their audiences by bellowing loudly or otherwise shocking them. Martin's subversive approach is to implant his witty concepts deep in your brain, so that you're still thinking about them hours later.

Breezy acting complements fine singing in Opera San Jose production of a Mozart gem
Opera San Jose's new production of 'Cosi fan tutte' is a winner. It's about love, lust and sexual manipulation: Mozart's opera is a modern opera, and the new production gets that. It's classy and outrageous, more than a little bit randy, while making the most of Mozart's perfect, celestial music.

Questions Loom In Chris Brown Case

Over the weekend, the 19-year-old singer was arrested in Los Angeles on a felony charge of making a criminal threat after the LD responded to a report of domestic violence. The alleged victim was reported to be Brown's girlfriend, singer Rihanna. Richard Winton, staff writer for the Los Angeles Times, talks about the latest developments in the case.

JAMAICA: Women Cheer Ban on Sexually Degrading Song Lyrics
KINGSTON, Feb 11 (IPS)It's the new dance craze here and many artists have hopped on the bandwagon. But when the latest "daggering" song hit the airwaves, government, broadcast regulators, civil society and others in Jamaica said enough is enough.