The Men Behind NINE - Harvey Weinstein [5/5]

Harvey Weinstein was born on March 19, 1952, in Flushing, Queens, New York. By the mid '70s, he and younger brother Bob had acquired a run-down theater in Buffalo, where they presented rock bands as well as bizarre B-movies. The venture proved profitable enough for the Weinstein brothers to further indulge their passion for cinema, as they co-founded their own independent movie distribution and production compan

y, Miramax Films, in 1979.

In 1988, Harvey Weinstein and Miramax landed their first major success with the release of The Thin Blue Line, a documentary that recounts the true story of a wrongfully convicted death row inmate. Publicity from the film helped win convict Randall Adams his release, and put Miramax on the map. By 1989, Harvey Weinstein's company had emerged as the most profitable independent studio in the U.S. thanks to releases such asPedro Almodovar's Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!, Oscar winners My Left Foot and Pelle the Conqueror, and Steven Sod

erbergh's sex, lies, and videotape.

With an executive producer credit on films such as Madonna: Truth or Dare (1991) and The Crying Game (1992), Harvey Weinstein's stock in Hollywood was on the rise during the early 1990s. In 1993, he and his brother agreed to an offer of $70 million from the Walt Disney Company for ownership of their studio. The Weinsteins would continue to head Miramax for another dozen years, as their company's successes continued with releases such as Clerks, Il Postino, and Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction, the studio's first bona fide blockbuster.

In 1999, Harvey Weinstein won an Oscar as coproducer ofShakespeare in Love, and he collected an additional Academy Awardand Golden Globe for the musical Chicago in 2003. In 2005, the Weinstein brothers left Miramax to form The Weinstein Company, which has released Oscar-nominated pictures such as Transamerica,Mrs. Henderson Presents and 2008's The Reader. Inglourious Basterds, directed by Quentin Tarantino and starring Brad Pitt and Melanie Laurent, made its debut at Cannes in May 2009. The World War II-set drama, executive produced by Harvey Weinstein, is set for an August 2009 release date in the U.S. Nine, directed by Rob Marshall,starring Nicole Kidman, Marion Cotillard and Daniel Day Lewis is set for december 2009 release date un the US.

The Men Behind NINE - Anthony Minghella [4/5]

Anthony Minghella was born on January 6, 1954. After graduating from the University of Hull, Minghella took a position as a university lecturer, but quit academia to focus on the theater and songwriting. He oversaw the music in many of his movies.

Minghella was employed as a scriptwriter on the

British TV series "Maybury" (1981) and "Inspector Morse" (1987) and, as a script editor on the British TV series "Grange Hill" (1978), before succ

eeding as a dramatist in the West End, London's equivalent of Broadway. In 1984, the London Theatre Critics named him Most Promising Playwright of the Year and, two years later, his drama "Made in Bangkok" won the the London Theatre Critics' award for best play.

An Anthony Minghella film assured movie-goers would enjoy a film blessed with a literate script, superlative performances and first-rate production values. His great craftsmanship was apparent fromthe beginning, with the bittersweet 1990 comedy Truly Madly Deeply

(1990), in which the ghost of Alan Rickman comes back to his lady loveJuliet StevensonJ, with unintended consequences. The theme of a ghostly love also was present in The English Patient(1996) his greatest success.

It is for that film he will be best remembered. Minghella claimed that with The English Patient(1996), which won nine Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director, that he had reached the heights of his directing career.

Anthony Minghella died of a hemorrhage on the morning of March 18, 2008 at Charing Cross Hospital in London, England. The 54-year-old Minghella had undergone an operation to remove a growth on his neck the previous week. He was survived by his wife, Carolyn Choa, and their two children, Max Minghella, who is an actor, and Hannah Minghella, who worked as a production assistant.

The Men Behind NINE - Rob Marshall [3/5]

Rob Marshall (born October 17, 1960) is an American theater, film director and choreographer. He is a six-time Tony Award nominee, Academy Awardnominee, Golden Globe nominee and Emmy winner whose most noted work includes the 2002 film Chicago and the 1998 Broadway revival of Cabaret.

Marshall was born in Madison, Wisconsin and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He debuted in the film industry with the TV adaptation of the m

usical Annie by Charles Strouse and Martin Charnin. After that he went on to direct the much anticipated adaptation of the Kander and Ebb musical Chicagoin 2002

for which he received his first Academy Award nomination for directing. More recent work of his include the Geisha dramaMemoirs of a Geisha based on the best-selling book of the same name by Arthur Golden. The film went on to win six Academy Awards including best picture from thirteen nominations. Marshall's next film,due December 2009, is the adaptation Nine from the Broadway

production with the same name starring amongst others Nicole Kidman, Judi Dench and Daniel Day-Lewis. Marshall entered negotiations to direct the fourth chapter of Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean film series starring Johnny Depp and Geoffrey Rush.

The Men Behind NINE - Maury Yeston [2/5]

Maury Yeston (born October 23, 1945) is an American composer, lyricist, educator and musicologist.

He is best known for writing the music and lyrics to Broadway musicals, including Nine in 1982, and Titanic in 1997, both of which won Tony Awards for best musical and best score. He also won a Drama Desk Award for Nine.Yeston also wrote a significant amount of the music and most of the lyrics to the Tony-nominated musical Grand Hotel in 1989, which was nominated for best score. His musical version of the novel The Phantom of the Operacalled Phantom has enjoyed numerous productions in the U.S. and around the world. He has also written a number of other off-Broadway musicals, a song cycle, a Cello Concerto, and other pieces.

Yeston serves on the Board of the Songwriters Hall of Fame. He is also President of the Kleban Foundation, serves on the editorial boards of Musical Quarterly and the Kurt Weill Foundation Publication Project and on the advisory board of the Yale University Press Broadway Series. He was the Director of the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theater Workshop in New York City for two decades beginning in 1982.

The Men Behind Nine - Federico Fellini [1/5]

Born into a middle-class family, a promising artist from a tender age, by 1938 Fellini was already working in Rome for several satirical magazines.

His directorial debut was as co-director along with Alberto Lattuada of"Variety ligths " (1951). In "The white sheik" (1952) which followed, he abandoned the neorealist tradition, depicting characters suspended between the fantastic and the ironic. The following year, "The young and the passionate" (1953) earned him the Silver Lion award at Venice as well as much public and critical acclaim: the film, partly autobiographical, sees Fellini return to the provincial town of his youth amid a mixture of nostalgia and repulsion. The years to come brought one success after another: the limpid poetry of "La strada" (1954)

won him a well-deserved Oscar, as did another work, the intense"Nights of Cabiria"" (1957). While "The swindlers" (1955) was never destined to be one of his greatest efforts, "La dolce vita" (1960) was to define an age: it starred Marcello Mastroianni, who became the filmmaker-demiurge’s favourite actor. Preceded by the thought-provoking segment "Le tentazioni del dottor Antonio" (1962), the superb "Federico Fellini 8 1/2 " (1963) won him his third Oscar and is widely considered his best film. For Fellini the return to his native town of Rimini in "Amarcord" (1973) has palingenetic effects, and here again the director is at his best; another work whose mastery induces a sense of reverence is Fellini’s "Fellini's Casanova" (1976), a dark, hypochondriacal work of extraordinary surrender. The menacing tale of " Orchestra rehearsal" (1979), the unnecessary journey into the subconscious of "City of women" (1980),the pretentious allusions of "And the ship sails on " (1983)

all point to an inspiration block: Fellini sought refuge from this crisis in the placid anti-consumerist diatribe of "Ginger and Fred" (1985) and in the amusing, melancholic notes of "Fellini's intervista" (1987). Lastly there is the testamentary "The voice of the moon " (1990), with its razor-sharp reflections on the ugliness of the present day seen through the eyes of two social outcasts: a flawless little tale that closes with a subdued invitation to silence. That we might understand better.