Oscar winning documentary filmmaker Michael Moore needs help next month for his Traverse City Film Festival. He just posted this on Facebook:

“This is a note to fellow cinephiles and movie lovers who live outside the U.S.:

“Each summer I put on a film festival in my home state of Michigan. This summer is its 10th anniversary. To celebrate I thought I would invite the rest of the world to join us. So, on one day of the festival (August 1), people in 7 theaters — one each on all 7 continents — will join us in Traverse City, Michigan watching the same film we’re watching at that same exact moment. And when the film is over, all 7 audiences will be beamed up onto all 7 screens where we can see each other and have a live discussion and a live Q & A with the filmmakers.

“I’ve got the film picked out — it’s one of the best documentaries I’ve seen this year, entitled “1971” — but I don’t have all the cinemas. So this is where you come in. Do you run or work at a movie theater that you think might like to be part of this grand experiment? I need one for each continent. Can you help me out? My goal is that by sometime tomorrow I’ll have all the cinemas I’ll need for to pull it off. (This request is also an experiment — to see if social media can immediately make something like this happen! I think it can and will.)

“Contact your local cinema — you know the one, the one that shows mostly the cool, smart films. All they have to have is the ability to project digitally and have a good internet connection in the theater.

“What do you think? Can I show this movie to you and your friends on August 1 in your town? Let me know! Just post your message to me here and I’ll check it out.

“Btw, you’ll love this movie. It’s about a group of people breaking into an FBI office and stealing the records that exposed the government’s secret domestic spying program — over 40 years ago. Some things never change. But the cool thing about this group of protesters is that not a single one of them were ever caught. They reveal themselves for the first time in this movie.

Thanks for helping me — and I hope to see you from the Traverse City Film Festival on August 1st.

The Hollywood Foreign Press has settled– er, surrendered– to NBC and Dick Clark Productions. The Golden Globes will continue to be produced by the network and DCP after a judge ruled in favor of them. The HFPA appealed, and were about to lose everything. The HFPA also spent in excess of $12 million in legal fees, lots more, on a losing proposition.

This is on the eve of the annual HFPA lunch where they donate a million bucks or so to various charities, announce their officers– usually the same ones as last year– and try to put a good face on their various scandals.

However: since January I’ve been waiting for an explanation of where $1.5 million went in the summer of 2012. The HFPA parked the money in a charitable trust that is no longer registered with the government as a 501 c 3. They may have done the same thing in the summer of 2013, but that tax filing isn’t available yet. I broke this story in January and asked for an explanation.

Meantime the folks at GuideStar, which monitors charities and foundations, is looking into it.  Giving money to charity is the way the HFPA maintains its primary 501 c 3, and gets away with paying no taxes on the $7 million plus it receives from NBC.

More: now comes another interesting part since the HFPA officers are all supposedly receiving big raises this summer. President Theo Kingma, a photographer, I’m told will get bumped up to $100,000. Kingma is a nice guy, but really, this whole thing is insane. Critics groups around the country arrive at the same nominations as the Globes without any pay whatsoever. And those groups are composed of professional critics with real credentials, unlike a lot of the goofy HFPA.

“Dawn of the Planet of the Apes” made $73 million this weekend. So you’d think the box office was booming But this past weekend was down 25% from last year at this time, and overall the box office is off 45% from last year. “Apes” was the last best hope to save the summer of 2014 as we head into specialty films like Richard Linklater’s “Boyhood” and Woody Allen’s “Magic in the Moonlight.”

But my favorite news is that John Carney’s “Begin Again” is a box office winner. The charming music-oriented romantic comedy led the indie films this week with almost $3 million added to its box office. The total now is $5.3  million.

The Weinstein Company is now using Maroon 5’s “Maps” as the background music in the TV commercial. But the real Adam Levine hit of the summer is the song the Maroon 5 singer performs in “Begin Again” called “Lost Stars.” Call your local radio station and insist on them playing “Lost Stars” ASAP.

And “Boyhood” took in almost $400,000 at 5 locations. Have you seen it yet? As soon as the World Cup is over, get up and go!