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The Oprah Winfrey Network launching Saturday is wary of promising too much of a good thing – Winfrey herself.

In stoking interest in the cable channel, the goal is to exploit Winfrey’s popularity while emphasizing that OWN won’t be all Oprah, all the time.

“We really don’t want to be a niche brand. We want to be a mainstream cable” network with appeal beyond Winfrey’s fan base, said Darren Schillace, vice president of consumer marketing for OWN.

“Phase one” of the marketing effort aims to “manage expectations that it’s not 24/7 Oprah on the network,” Schillace said, with Winfrey committed to appearing in at least 70 hours of programming in 2011.

Helping viewers find OWN on the nation’s various and crowded cable systems is another key goal in spreading the word about the joint venture between Winfrey’s Harpo Inc. and Discovery Communications.

The effort to position OWN as Oprah-plus doesn’t mean barring Winfrey, or her famous pals, from the premiere hoopla. And it hasn’t led to understated promos for the reportedly $189 million gamble by Discovery. Read more…

Jamie Stuart has struck a popular chord with this lovely short shot during the December, 2010 East Coast blizzard. It’s got gorgeous visuals, humor, a slyly organic narrative, and, plus, it’s a tribute to Dziga Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera. We at Filmmaker have touted Stuart’s talents for some time, but now Roger Ebert has weighed in, arguing that this new short should win the Best Short Film Oscar. It’s also been picked up Gothamist, New York Magazine, and the Wall Street Journal, among many others. It’s shaping up to be Stuart’s viral hit.

A short film shot in Astoria, Queens during the blizzard is getting high praise from Roger Ebert, who says it deserves to win the Academy Award for best live-action short subject. The short, titled “Idiot With a Tripod,” is an homage to the 1929 short “Man With a Movie Camera” (which you can see on Ebert’s blog). Read more…

Chris Brown still has anger issues.

The troubled singer and sometimes actor spent Wednesday in a Twitter shouting match with singer Raz-B over some unsolicited comments the former member of the R&B group B2K made.

The first shot was fired by Raz-B earlier in the afternoon when he randomly tweeted, “Im just sittin here Thinking how can n—- like @ebenet [Eric Benet] and @chrisbrown disrespect women as Intelligent as Halle Berry, Rihanna.”

It didn’t take long for Brown to fire back on his own Twitter account.

In several tweets that would best be described as racially offensive, not to mention homophobic, Brown laced into Raz-B, essentially questioning the 25-year-old’s sexuality. Brown referenced allegations Raz-B made about being molested by several of his band’s former managers, including one who was his cousin. Read more…