Lorre 'grateful' for 'Men' rebirth

It was a grateful Chuck Lorre that came to TCA on Wednesday to address the rebirth of "Two and a Half Men" after the blowup last year with former star Charlie Sheen. Lorre opened the sesh by emphasizing "we are grateful to be here." He and co-creator Lee Aronsohn also stressed that they knew it was a long shot to relaunch the show with Ashton Kutcher. "It's been a fun, exciting, challenging, terrifying experience," Lorre said. "We've been laughing a lot." The questions about Sheen were kept to a minimum. Of the prospect of a reconciliation, Lorre said: "I wish him well. I'm glad he's sober, happy and healthy." Aronsohn made a point of noting that the talk of strife between Lorre and Sheen during the show's eight seasons of production was misstated. "I never saw that," he said. "All of that came up after Charlie left the show. What's been built up as a feud never really existed." Lorre mostly deferred questions about the show's future next season to CBS execs. He said he felt the show had the legs to continue creatively "based on what's going on now in the writers' room -- absolutely." Kutcher was a little coy when pressed about the question of returning, as he only signed for the current season when he was recruited last spring. He said he was viewing the postseason period as "a hiatus" and said he's "interested in coming back if we can work that out." Contact Cynthia Littleton at cynthia.littleton@variety.com

DGA Nominations 2012: Martin Scorsese, Woodsy Allen, Alexander Payne, Michel Hazanavicius and David Fincher Honored

It appears like "The Lady Using the Dragon Tattoo" is not dead from an honours perspective in the end. Under per week following the film received an unexpected nomination in the Producers Guild of America, David Fincher was designated through the Company directors Guild of America among the five best company directors of 2011 for his focus on the thriller. Fincher's inclusion likely stored Steven Spielberg around the outdoors. The director was among the assumed DGA faves for "War Equine," but his title remained from the final ballot. What this may for Spielberg's Oscar chances remains to appear, but: not great! Other DGA nominees: Michel Hazanvicius for "The Artist," Alexander Payne for "The Descendants," Martin Scorsese for "Hugo" and Woodsy Allen for "Night time in Paris." Tate Taylor -- who directed honours-favorite "The AssistanceInch -- seemed to be snubbed through the DGA, however with a PGA nomination along with an ensemble jerk from SAG, his film ought to be one of the selected ones for the best Picture once the Oscar nominees are introduced later this month. [via DGA] [Photo: Getty] Follow Moviefone on Twitter Like Moviefone on Facebook

Frederica Sagor Maas dies at 111

Frederica Sagor Maas, one of the last surviving screenwriters, if not the last, with credits dating back to Hollywood's silent era, died Thursday in La Mesa, Calif., of natural causes. She was 111. Maas contributed to the screenplays of 15 films from 1925-28. She was an uncredited contributor to the Greta Garbo-John Gilbert classic "Flesh and the Devil" and to the Clara Bow starrer "It," but perhaps most significantly, she earlier co-adapted "The Plastic Age," a 1925 hit film that proved a huge career break for Bow. Maas felt repeatedly misused by the film industry and detailed her unhappy experiences in the 1999 memoir "The Shocking Miss Pilgrim: A Writer in Early Hollywood," published when she was 99. In the wake of the success of "The Plastic Age," she was signed to a contract at MGM, where she claimed others took credit for her work, including "The Waning Sex"; her contract was not renewed. At Tiffany Prods. she drew credits on flapper comedies "That Model From Paris" and "The First Night." She married Fox-based producer Ernest Maas in 1927, after which they teamed on scripts, but she soon found frustration again. She scripted "Silk Legs" for Fox and worked for Paramount on Bow pictures "It," "Red Hair" and "Lula" as well as the Louise Brooks film "Rolled Stockings." But a script they wrote called "Beefsteak Joe" was, she claimed, misappropriated and made into the Victor Fleming-directed Paramount film "The Way of All Flesh" (unrelated to the novel of the same name), and Maas found that her career momentum had slowed considerably after the couple returned from an extended European vacation. She was credited on Fox's rural comedy "The Farmer's Daughter" but hated the assignment. The Maases could only get rewrite work in the early 1930s. In 1935 "Silk Legs" was remade, in Spanish, by Fox, and the couple reviewed plays for the Hollywood Reporter from 1934-37. They continued to write screenplays but couldn't get them produced; in 1941 she wrote "Miss Pilgrim's Progress," a sober treatment of women in the workplace that sold for a song and eventually became Fox's 1947 pic "The Shocking Miss Pilgrim," a lighthearted musical comedy vehicle for Betty Grable. The couple eventually considered suicide, and Frederica Sagor Maas eventually became an insurance adjuster. In her 1999 book, which film historians consider an important reference on the inner workings of early Hollywood, she was harshly critical of legendary figures including Louis B. Mayer and Irving Thalberg and of the pervasive sexism and chicanery she repeatedly encountered in the industry. Born in NY City to Russian immigrant parents, Frederica Sagor attended Columbia College, from which she was hired away in 1920 by Universal Pictures to be an assistant story editor; the job involved attending Broadway plays to determine whether the material was suitable for bigscreen adaptation. She moved to Hollywood, eventually, because she wanted to pen scripts herself. Ernest Maas died in 1986 and the couple had no children. Contact Variety Staff at news@variety.com

Prisa extends $4 bil debt repayment

MADRID -- Prisa, controlling shareholder of Spain's biggest pay TV platform, Digital Plus, has closed a deal with creditor banks to extend re-payment of around Euros2.92 billion ($3.8 billion) in debt to March 2014 at the earliest. Maturity on a $2.6 billion bridge loan, originally made to Prisa in 2007 by a seven-bank syndicate led by HSBC, will be put back to January 2015. Another syndicated loan is extended to March 2014, or December 2014 if Prisa sells bonds or its 17% stake in Mediaset Espana, Bloomberg suggested. Agreed with 35 banks, the debt extensions rep an important vote of market confidence in Prisa, one of the biggest media congloms in the Spanish-speaking world, which also owns Spanish newspaper El Pais, radio network Cadena Ser and Portuguese TV holding Media Capital, owner of broadcaster TVI. As Prisa initiates what it called this week a "growth policy," one affect of the loan extensions may be an heightened appetite for top-notch product at Digital Plus, whose consumer base has languished around 1.8 million subscribers in recent years. "Prisa has a clear commitment to Digital Plus. It will now attempt to improve its content, one way or another," forecast one analyst. This February, Digital Plus acquired Spanish rights to select UEFA Champions League soccer games for the next three seasons. Contact the Variety newsroom at news@variety.com

REVIEW: Glenn Close Explores Female Sexual Repression in Dowdy, Unfinished-Feeling Albert Nobbs

All of the characters in Albert Nobbs, a mild and mildly stirring adaptation of the George Moore short story, are dreamers. Employees in a mid-19th century Dublin inn, they dream of each other, chiefly, and the ways in which they might be set free. They deceive each other, as well, so that their dreams are often projected onto false fronts — of character, of obligation, and — in a couple of cases — of tightly bound breasts. We know, of course, that breasts and more lurk behind the waistcoat of the title character, the hotel’s genteel footman, because he is played by Glenn Close. As Mr. Albert Nobbs, Close wears a discreetly waved cap of cropped ginger hair and the bright, blank expression of a small animal caught mid-nibble. Blanched of make-up, her Edwardian features — balustrade cheekbones, long, straight mouth, and even, almondine eyes — seem to have been pinched from clay. Mr. Nobbs, as his peers call him, is immaculately devoted to his duties, which include hauling baggage, silently conducting the evening’s dinner service, absorbing the indignities of the hotel guests (including a boor played by Jonathan Rhys Meyers), and knowing when to open his palm for that extra shilling. As run by a fatuous hen named Mrs. Baker (Pauline Collins), life at the inn is tightly controlled. Nobbs ends each day by adding his extra earnings to a secret stash he tucks under his bedroom’s floorboards. It’s a vague kind of emancipation Nobbs dreams of: Though he marks his earnings scrupulously each night and has plans to open a tobacco shop, stepping out into the world requires a little more than capital. Meanwhile, cheeky scullery maid Helen Dawes (Mia Wasikowska) is making eyes at the porridge-shoveling handyman (Aaron Johnson), and the house doctor (Brendan Gleeson) — kept by Mrs. Baker — is carrying on with the head chambermaid (Maria Doyle Kennedy). Just passing through on a painting errand is Hubert Page (Janet McTeer), a strapping lad with a suspiciously barreled chest. Mrs. Baker goes sweet on Hubert, Hubert takes note of Miss Dawes’s blonde curls, and Nobbs gives Hubert an eyeful the night he leaps out of their shared bed, trying to root a flea out of his corset. Once the mutually held secret is out, as it were, Nobbs treats Hubert as a role model. The latter has a wife (played, in a vivid cameo, by Bronagh Gallagher) and a stable social identity; whatever is going on behind it seems beyond Nobbs’s concern. And this is where the script, co-written by Close and novelist John Banville, disperses in too many directions to serve any one of them well. It soon becomes obvious that Nobbs may have disappeared entirely behind his mask: Where Hubert admits to his original name, and describes the domestic abuse that pushed him out of a marriage and into an identity that would let him bring home his own bacon, Albert maintains that his “real” name is Albert. And though he recalls his common upbringing with bitterness (“Life without decency is unbearable,” he spits) and tells Hubert of the gang rape that led to his exile, his extreme social and emotional constipation suggest that Nobbs has no past self — or even basic human instinct — to speak of. Across films like Nine Women and Mother and Child, director Rodrigo Garca has developed a neo-women’s picture aesthetic; he brings a human texture and fearlessness to his sisterhood stories. It would seem fortuitous that Close — who has been trying to bring this story to the big screen since some time after she starred in a stage version in 1982 — was paired with Garca when the project’s stars finally aligned. And yet this story of literal and figurative female sexual repression feels curiously unfinished, its many layers rather decorously undisturbed. This is not a story of transgendered triumph or subversion — in both cases abuse and economics are what got the women into bootstraps. Having successfully passed as men, the question of sexuality is treated as academic. Hubert and his wife have an arrangement that suits both of them socially, and Albert seeks the same, awkwardly tilting his hat at the blooming Miss Dawes. What he actually wants — beyond a life of decency — is as opaque as Close’s petrified expression. When Miss Dawes is punished for indulging her own burgeoning sexuality, Albert Nobbs — shot in silky shades of blue with impeccable, period set direction, framed and paced with a precise hand — begins to take a dowdy, rather Victorian shape. It’s all very decent, in other words, when it seems it might have been much more. Follow Michelle Orange on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.

Former William Morris Headquarters Sold for $47.8 Million (Exclusive)

Christiane Amanpour is stepping down from the anchor chair at ABC's Sunday news program This Week. She has hosted the program for a year and a half and will continue to report for ABC via various news specials as well as launch a new global affairs program on CNN International.our editor recommendsMusical Chairs: ABCs Christiane Amanpour Hires Ousted Katie Couric Exec ABC's Christiane Amanpour Comes Under Attack in Cairo Same Day as Anderson CooperChristiane Amanpour to anchor 'This Week' Amanpour stepped into the This Week position following George Stephanopoulos' move to Good Morning America. Stephanopoulos will return as This Week's anchor and remain at GMA, reports the Associated Press. Amanpour said in a statement Tuesday, "This is an exciting and unique opportunity for me to take my love of story telling to primetime at ABC News with multiple specials, as well as becoming a roving Global Affairs anchor across all ABC platforms. PHOTOS: The Most Talked About TV News Faces "I am looking forward to getting back into the field to report stories on global issues that matter greatly to the American people. At the same time, I will be broadcasting once again to millions of people across the world with a weekday show on CNN International.This role is groundbreaking, bold and very different! I am thrilled and honored. "It's been an incredible experience to have had a ringside seat to democracy in action at This Week. It's been an incredible honor to anchor such a prestigious program and I thank all of you who have helped me on that journey." With Amanpour as anchor, This Week was down one percent in ratings from last year and remained the No. 3 Sunday political affairs talk show behind NBC's Meet the Press and CBS' Face the Nation, notes AP. PHOTOS: 10 Entertainers Democrats and Republicans Love to Hate Prior to her ABC gig, Amanpour spent 27 years at CNN where she served as chief international correspondent and anchor of Amanpour. CNN Worldwide president Jim Walton said, "Christiane Amanpour has been synonymous with international reporting and with CNN for many years. We could not be happier that through this unique arrangement with ABC News her experience and global perspective are returning to a nightly news broadcast for our international audience." PHOTO GALLERY: View Gallery The Most Talked-About TV News Faces Related Topics International ABC News

Abud upped at Telemundo

Telemundo Media has promoted longtime company exec Manuel Abud to prexy of the Telemundo Station Group. Abud, who was most recently prexy and general manager of Telemundo Dallas KXTX, will oversee 15 Telemundo-owned local stations in the U.S. and Puerto Rico. He replaces Ronald Gordon who was named chairman at ZGS Communicaitons, which owns and operates the largest group of Telemundo affiliates. Gordon was prexy and CEO of ZGS before joining Telemundo in 2009. In 2010, Abud combined his role at Telemundo Dallas to serve as interim general manager of indie TV station KWHY in Los Angeles. Prior to that, he was VP and general manager of Telemundo LA, prexy of Telemundo Cable and launched sister channel mun2. Abud was also prexy of CBS Telenoticias, which he relaunched as Telemundo Intl. Before Telemundo, Abud was chief financial officer of Mexico's media company Grupo Medcom, director of investor relations at Grupo Televisa and general treasurer of Grupo ICA. Contact the Variety newsroom at news@variety.com