Jack Johnson, best known for his work on films such as Edward Scissorhands, Toys and Jurassic Park III, will receive a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Art Directors Guild’s (ADG, IATSE Local 800) Illustrators and Matte Artists (IMG) Council at the 24th Annual “Excellence in Production Design” Awards. The 2020 ADG Awards will be held at the InterContinental Los Angeles Downtown in the Wilshire Grand Ballroom on Saturday, February 1, 2020. This is the final of four Lifetime Achievement Awards to be announced by the Art Directors Guild.
“Jack’s cinematic eye, combined with his amazing artistic talent, has been an integral part of over 60 critically acclaimed films in his over four decade career. We are thrilled to honor that legacy and his contributions to the craft as this year’s Lifetime Achievement Award recipient,” said Tim Wilcox, ADG Illustrators & Matte Artists Council chair.
Johnson has worked in the motion picture industry as a production illustrator, conceptual artist or art director on more than 60 features including such hit films as Goonies, Edward Scissorhands, Toys, Jurassic Park III, Pleasantville, Big Fish, The Perfect Storm, Jerry Maguire, Independence Day, Beetlejuice, The Color Purple, and Star Trek: The Motion Picture, among others. He started his career as an advertising art director at Foote, Cone and Belding and J. Walter Thompson.
Johnson has also won national acclaim for his personal work and his paintings have been featured in traveling exhibitions throughout the United States. His artwork has won numerous awards in major exhibitions including the National Watercolor Society, American Watercolor Society, and California Art Club.
The ADG Lifetime Achievement Awards are presented to outstanding individuals in each of the guild’s four crafts. As previously announced, Joe Alves will receive the ADG Lifetime Achievement Award from the Art Directors Council (AD), Denis Olsen from the Scenic, Title and Graphic Artists Council (STG) and Stephen Myles Berger from the Set Designers and Model Makers (SDMM) Council. Previous ADG Lifetime Achievement honorees include AD: Jeannine Oppewall (2019), Norm Newberry (2018), René Lagler (2017); STG: Jim Fiorito (2019) John Moffitt (2018), Albert Obregon (2017), Bill Anderson (2016); SDMM: William F. Matthews (2019), James J. Murakami (2018), Cate Bangs (2017); and IMA: Ed Verreaux (2019), Marty Kline (2018), Joe Musso (2017).
The producer of this year’s ADG Awards (#ADGawards) is production designer Scott Moses, ADG. Online nomination voting will be held November 18–December 6, 2019. Nominations will be announced December 9, 2019. Online balloting will be held December 18, 2019–January 30, 2020 and winners will be announced at the dinner ceremony on Saturday, February 1, 2020. ADG Awards are open only to productions when made within the U.S. by producer’s signatory to the IATSE agreement. Foreign entries are acceptable without restrictions.
Additional honorees for Cinematic Imagery and new inductees into the Guild’s Hall of Fame will be announced at a later date.
Supreme Court allows investors’ class action to proceed against microchip company Nvidia
The Supreme Court is allowing a class-action lawsuit that accuses Nvidia of misleading investors about its past dependence on selling computer chips for the mining of volatile cryptocurrency to proceed.
The court's decision Wednesday comes the same week that China said it is investigating the the microchip company over suspected violations of Chinese anti-monopoly laws. The justices heard arguments four weeks ago in Nvidia's bid to shut down the lawsuit, then decided that they were wrong to take up the case in the first place. They dismissed the company's appeal, leaving in place an appellate ruling allowing the case to go forward.
At issue was a 2018 suit led by a Swedish investment management firm. It followed a dip in the profitability of cryptocurrency, which caused Nvidia's revenues to fall short of projections and led to a 28% drop in the company's stock price.
Nvidia had argued that the investors' lawsuit should be thrown out because it does not measure up to a 1995 law, the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act, that is intended to bar frivolous complaints. A district court judge had dismissed the complaint before the federal appeals court in San Francisco ruled that it could go forward. The Biden administration backed the investors at the Supreme Court.
In 2022, Nvidia, which is based in Santa Clara, California, paid a $5.5 million fine to settle charges by the Securities and Exchange Commission that it failed to disclose that cryptomining was a significant source of revenue growth from the sale of graphics processing units that were produced and marketed for gaming. The company did not admit to any wrongdoing as part of the settlement.
Nvidia's recent performance has been spectacular. Even after the news of the China... Read More