Thompson on Hollywood

While Disney was promoting the Blu-ray and DVD release of Cars 2 on November 1, the day Disney/Pixar animation czar John Lasseter happened to get his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, it was still a happy day and a well-deserved honor. Disney's Rich Ross and Sean Bailey, Pixar's Ed Catmull, Bob Peterson and Pete Docter, voice talent Owen Wilson, Bonnie Franklin, Patton Oswalt, John Ratzenberger and Don Rickles, as well as composer Randy Newman, all showed support for the guy Emily Mortimer called a "genius."

The Producers Guild of America will honor Don Mischer with their 2012 Norman Lear Achievement Award in Television, marking the first time the award has been given to a live-event producer. Mischer will accept the award at the annual Producers Guild Awards on January 21 at the Beverly Hilton Hotel. Mischer is directing and producing the Oscar telecast again this year, this time with producing partner Brett Ratner.

One of the surprises of the season is Roland Emmerich's Anonymous, which opens Friday amid ongoing controversy over its premise: that William Shakespeare did not write his plays and poems, and the Earl of Oxford did. Screenwriter John Orloff has been obsessed with this mystery since his college days; the screenplay served as his ticket of admission to Hollywood. First, Shakespeare in Love put Anonymous on the back burner, to be resurrected decades later by German digital master Emmerich, best known for such action adventures as Day After Tomorrow and 2012. Emmerich helped, for better or for worse, to turn Orloff's identity crisis into a rip-roaring Elizabethan succession drama, with Queen Elizabeth --played by the always riveting Vanessa Redgrave--at the center of dangerous head-lopping court intrigue. Emmerich was able to deploy his considerable digital filmmaking chops to shoot this elaborate period piece in Germany with an ensemble of character actors-- led by Redgrave and Rhys Ifans, in an uncharacteristically glamorous role--for just $30 million (think George Lucas or Zack Snyder). Emmerich even filmed one scene with three actors at different times and locations and merged them seamlessly. (We reveal the scene below, with trailer.) The movie could nab some tech nominations. Here's Orloff's Q & A for Sneak Previews.

French composer Alexandre Desplat is having a busy 2011. He's racing to finish the score for one of several still-unfinished year-end releases, Stephen Daldry's Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, over the next few weeks. (The composer took over from Nico Muhly, who scored Daldry's The Reader.) Of course, music is always the last contribution to any movie, figuring in the final mix.