Dawna Lee Heising of Eye on Entertainment Covers the 2009 Newport Beach Film Festival Opening

John Cox Directs Show on the Red Carpet at the 10th Annual Newport Beach Film Festival at the Lido Theatre

Dawna Lee Heising and John Cox of “Eye on Entertainment” on Time Warner Cable covered the red carpet for the Opening Night of the fabulous Newport Beach Film Festival. The Festival kicked off its eight-day run with the screening of Screen Media Film’s “Lymelife”, which was co-written by brothers Derick and Steven Martini and directed by Derick Martini. “Lymelife” is a bright story about the dark side of suburban paradise from executive producers Martin Scorsese and Leonard Loventhal. The movie stars Alec Baldwin, Kieran Culkin, Rory Culkin, Jill Hennessy, Timothy Hutton, Cynthia Nixon and Emma Roberts.

More than 42,000 visitors are expected to attend the 10th Annual Newport Beach Film Festival, which is held at Edwards Big Newport in Fashion Island and the LidoTheatre. The Festival will showcase more than 450 films from 37 countries during its eight day run, and will feature nightly special events, post-screening receptions and conversations with filmmakers. The Festival is proud to present the “The Art of Filmmaking” seminars, which are a series of FREE interactive panels that focus on the art of filmmaking.

McG is the “Honorary Chairperson” for the 2009 Newport Beach Film Festival. Film director McG was dubbed “Hollywood’s Rogue Mogul” on the May cover of Fast Company Magazine. He is a proven quadruple threat – director, producer, writer and songwriter. His blockbuster winning streak as a Hollywood director includes the hit films “Charlie’s Angels”, “Charlie’s Angel’s: Full Throttle” and “We Are Marshall”.

The Newport Beach Film Festival was founded in 1999 by Gregg Schwenk, the executive director and CEO, and Leigh Steinberg, the super sports agent who was the inspiration for the film “Jerry Maguire”. The 2006 Newport Beach Film Festival featured the United States premiere of the Academy Award-winning Best Picture “Crash.” In these tough economic times, the revenue that will be generated by the Festival is important to the city of Newport Beach. The 2009 Festival is seeing its largest restaurant participation in history, and Schwenk says that local restaurant owners are appreciative of the huge audience the Festival draws to the city.

One of the film’s that will be shown during the festival is “SPOONER”, which premiered at Slamdance in Park City, Utah, and won the Jury Award for Best Feature at the 12th annual Sonoma International Film Festival. “SPOONER” was directed by Drake Doremus, produced by Jonathan Schwartz and written by Lindsay Stidham. The film stars Matthew Lillard. The Newport Beach Film Festival will close on April 30th with the West Coast premiere of Fox Searchlight’s “(500) Days of Summer”. Marc Webb makes his feature film directorial debut in (500) Days of Summer, which was written by Scott Neustadter and Michael Weber.

“Eye on Entertainment”, a division of Eye on Excellence™ Productions, is a high-energy, high-impact television program focusing on extraordinary individuals and the entertainment industry. The show is aired on Time Warner Cable in Orange and Los Angeles Counties, and covers entertainment events and awards shows and features powerhouse interviews with successful people in all walks of life, exploring the traits that they have in common. Dawna Lee Heising is the executive producer and host of EOE. Dawna is also Ms. Universe Ambassador 2009 and is a long-standing member of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG). The show is produced and directed by John Cox, an educator in the film and video department at Orange Coast College. John Alsedek is the director of cinematography and also works on movies for Robert Michael Conrad and James Nestor.