“Here is how it used to work: aspiring filmmakers playing the cool auteur in hopes of attracting the eye of a Hollywood power broker. Here is the new way: filmmakers doing it themselves — paying for their own distribution, marketing films through social networking sites and Twitter blasts, putting their work up free on the Web to build a reputation, cozying up to concierges at luxury hotels in film festival cities to get them to whisper into the right ears.”
Category: media
3D Shakespeare Movie Musicals For Tweens (Yes, You Read That Right)
A film company “is producing a 3-D musical Hamlet targeting the Harry Potter and High School Musical market. The movie will be the first of six adaptations of William Shakespeare’s plays, based on musical versions created by U.K. theater company Shakespeare 4 Kidz.”
Environmentalism Is All The Rage, But Not At Box Office
“[T]hree years after ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ won over moviegoers and Oscar voters, many new works are suffering the same fate plaguing other intellectually engaging films: moviegoers would rather hug Transformers than trees. … [B]ecause ticket buyers prefer escapist fare these days, it’s not easy being green.”
Never Mind: Emmy Broadcast To Feature All Awards Live After All
“After two weeks of mounting criticism over plans to ‘time-shift’ eight of the Emmy Awards bestowed on the prime-time telecast, the TV academy and CBS have relented. Now all 28 Emmys will be presented live during the Sept. 20 awardscast.”
David Mamet To Write, Direct Anne Frank Film
“The film will be an amalgamation of the famed diary; the stage adaptation by Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich; and Mamet’s own original take on the material that could reframe the story as a young girl’s rite of passage.”
Screenwriting Outreach To Muslims Lands Union In Dispute
“An open invitation to a seminar for Muslim college students and recent graduates interested in Hollywood writing careers has placed the Writers Guild of America, West, at odds with the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which was planning to hold the session on Tuesday.” One point of disagreement: whether the guild was helping the council to set up the program.
Film Series Devotees Get A Meeting With LACMA Director
“[T]he founders of Save Film at LACMA are planning a ‘popcorn summit’ with Los Angeles County Museum of Art Director Michael Govan, who recently made the controversial decision to cancel the institution’s 40-year-old weekend film series. … LACMA officials have said that the film program has lost about $1 million over the last decade and that attendance at screenings has been declining.”
‘Non-Morally-Anguished Jews Dealing Out Spaghetti-Western Justice’ To Nazis
Jeffrey Goldberg talks to Quentin Tarantino talks about how the latter’s new film, Inglourious Basterds, is a giant “Jewish revenge fantasy” in which the director “allow[s] his Jewish characters … to beat Nazis, scalp Nazis, burn Nazis, and carve swastikas into the foreheads of Nazis.”
Out-Of-State Film Tax Incentives Have Domino Effect In LA
“Hollywood’s competition is now states like New Mexico, Arizona, Michigan and Louisiana — states that never had much film and television production before” but now use tax incentives to lure on-location production that used to happen in Los Angeles. “That exodus, in turn, affects the entire Los Angeles economy: the caterers, store owners, dry cleaners, restaurants and even Hollywood’s biggest prop house, 20th Century Props, which went out of business last week with a huge auction.”
For Tech-Evangelist Lawyer, Downloading Defeat Is A Blow
“As co-founder of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at the Harvard Law School, Professor [Charles] Nesson is renowned for his early interest in bridging technology, law and culture, and his ability to inspire generations of students to see the Internet as a force for positive change, not just cables and computers. But when Professor Nesson, 70, took on the recording industry in an eagerly anticipated civil case here over sharing music online, the champion stumbled.”