TV / Film News

3-D Revolution: From Nitrate to Digital

Source: Michael Ricci
May 2, 2010

The film landscape is changing so quickly these days with lively debates over whether to shoot in 3-D or 2-D or use digital or traditional film cameras. But a new UCLA Film and Television Archive series, “From Nitrate to Digital: New Technologies and the Art of Cinema," illustrates that technological change is the norm in Hollywood. The program, which opens Saturday at the Billy Wilder Theater, “is about reminding people that the industry has been through these changes before and ...

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Rush: Documentary This Summer

Source: JamBase
April 28, 2010

BIG SUMMER TOUR AND CAREER SPANNING FILM

“It's true that Rush doesn't mean today what it did in '76 or even '96. It may mean more." - Rolling Stone

The Rush documentary Rush: Beyond The Lighted Stage will be in theaters nationwide in June. Exact cities and dates to be announced later.

This exciting news comes on the heels of the worldwide film premiere at Tribeca Film Festival on April 24 as well as the recent announcement of a 40-city ...

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Latest Protester of Comcast - NBC Deal Plays Race Card and Has Ex-FCC Chairman on Board

Source: Michael Ricci
April 27, 2010

A recently formed advocacy group has some pretty harsh words for cable giant Comcast Corp. and has hired a former FCC chairman as its counsel. “For decades Comcast has shut the door to African American ownership of cable channels," said Stanley E. Washington, president and chief executive of the National Coalition of African American Owned Media. He even charged Comcast investors with “supporting apartheid right here in America." The coalition, which appears to be a relatively new group, says its ...

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The Restoration Of 'Metropolis'

Source: Michael Ricci
April 27, 2010

It's often been said that silent films are a lost art twice over. Not only are movies without sound not being made anymore, but many of the classics of the period also no longer physically exist. That, however, is not the end of the story. For what's less well known is that pictures long thought to be lost forever, key works unseen for decades, have a remarkable tendency to regularly turn up in ways as exciting and dramatic as the ...

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Popularity of 3-D is Affecting How Screenplays Are Written

Source: Michael Ricci
April 27, 2010

When Matt Pitts, a writer on “Fringe" and a former assistant to J.J. Abrams, recently began shopping his first film script to movie studios, he knew he had a marketable idea on his hands.

The title of his screenplay, after all, was “ Spring Break Zombie Cruise" and its storyline followed, well, just that. But the prospect of flesh-eating creatures stalking beautiful young bodies wasn't his script's main hook. The element to catch a studio mogul's eye? A plan to ...

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Uplifting 'Treme' Has Potential to Surpass 'Wire'

Source: All About Jazz
April 26, 2010

Hurricane Katrina was a devastating, depressing debacle whose ramifications are still felt today. Lives were lost, homes were destroyed. You'd think “Treme," a new HBO series that takes place in New Orleans in the months after Katrina, would be a downer, that viewers would be treated to a humbling, depressing television experience. You'd be wrong. “Treme," through two episodes, is among the most uplifting TV series I've ever seen. This is one reason why Treme has the potential to be ...

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Top Scribes Reap Pic Rewrite Riches

Source: All About Jazz
April 26, 2010

Once upon a time, the ultimate Hollywood ambition was to direct. Nowadays, clients are more likely to tell their reps: “What I really want to do is polish scripts." For Hollywood's dozen or so top-tier script doctors, that means commanding $250,000- $300,000 a week, being booked months in advance and keeping their efforts largely cloaked in anonymity. Script rewrites have been part of the filmmaking process since the days when Irving Thalberg kept a stable of scribes competing for his ...

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3-D Hollywoods Latest Hot Trend

Source: Michael Ricci
April 26, 2010

On a recent afternoon, a dozen cinematographers, directors and camera assistants huddled inside a sound stage on the Sony Pictures lot in Culver City, wearing black plastic glasses as they watched a monitor. The object of their gaze: the body movements of a USC acting student sitting at a kitchen table on a set a few yards away. “Hold up one finger,” bellowed the instructor, cinematographer David Drzewiecki. The student obliged as a technician several yards away used a remote-control ...

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