The Change Up

Ultimately, many of the photos and cellphone records of Trayvon Martin released online Thursday by George Zimmerman’s defense attorneys – indicating that the slain teenager smoked marijuana, got into fights at school, and had an interest in, and perhaps access to, guns – may be ruled inadmissible in court. But they are already making the rounds in the court of public opinion, which can influence everything from fundraising efforts to the mind-set of potential jurors in Mr. Zimmerman's murder trial.

EXCLUSIVE: We need to qualify Steven Soderbergh‘s self-imposed retirement from the business with an asterisk: feature films only. Just as his final film Behind The Candelabra airs this Sunday on HBO, Soderbergh is in talks to team with Clive Owen on The Knick, a period series set in New York in 1900. I’m told that he and Owen will set this series at Cinemax, which will give him a 10-episode season commitment. Soderbergh will direct all of the episodes. The setting: downtown New York in 1900, a tumultuous time of massive change and great progress. The series centers around the groundbreaking surgeons, nurses and staff at Knickerbocker Hospital, who are pushing the bounds of medicine in a time of astonishingly high mortality rates and zero antibiotics. Jack Amiel & Michael Begler are writers and executive producers on the series. Owen and Soderbergh are also executive producers and so are Anonymous Content’s Michael Sugar and Soderbergh’s longtime producer Gregory Jacobs. Related: Fleming Q&A With Steven Soderbergh: Retirement, Liberace, Legacy While this might make some might look cynically on Soderbergh’s “retirement,” he told me the other day in an interview for the Michael Douglas-Matt Damon Liberace movie that for the moment, he has shut the door on feature films. I can ... Read More »