Noah Baumbach on ‘Frances Ha’: Why It Took 40 Takes to Make a Little Story Feel Epic
May, 17, 2013 11:19 am | Comments On #Frances Ha, Greta Gerwig, independent film, indies, Movies, Noah BaumbachNoah Baumbach’s “Frances Ha” seemingly came out of nowhere to charm viewers at Telluride and Toronto last fall.
The Brooklyn-born director, whose previous films include “Kicking and Screaming,” “The Squid and the Whale” and “Margot at the Wedding,” made the made the movie quietly, co-writing it with his “Greenberg” leading lady Greta Gerwig and filming it in luminous black and white on the streets and in the subways and apartments of New York City.
The film follows Gerwig’s title character, a 27-year-old aspiring dancer who’s never quite gotten her life together; by turns funny, sad, touching and cringe-inducing, it approaches the mess that Frances has made with what TheWrap’s Alonso Duralde described as “an optimism and empathy … that feels genuine and earned.”
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Read MoreUSC, Ringling, School of Visual Arts Top Student Academy Award Winners
May, 14, 2013 2:08 pm | Comments On #Academy Awards, Awards, oscars, Student Academy AwardsThe University of Southern California, Ringing College of Art and Design and the School of Visual Arts each placed two films on the list of Student Academy Award winners, which were announced on Tuesday by the Academy.
Other schools represented on the list of 15 winners in five categories include CalArts, Occidental College, the University of Michigan, Columbia, Elon and the University of Texas at Austin.
This year, the Student Oscars' 40th, marks the first wins for Elon, Occidental and the University of Michigan.
In the foreign-film category, the winners came from schools in the United Kingdom, Switzerland and Belgium.
Comedian Bob Saget...
Producers Guild's ProShow Competition Picks 11 Finalists (Exclusive)
May, 13, 2013 3:00 pm | Comments On #Awards, PGA, Produced By conference, Producers Guild, producers guild of america, Producers Showcase, ProShowThe Producers Guild of America announced the 11 finalists in the 2013 Producers Showcase competition on Monday, with five feature films, three reality television projects and three online projects competing for prize packages and development deals.
The competition, also called ProShow, is open to producers who are working to get film, television or online projects off the ground. The finalists will receive award packages worth more than $20,000, along with free admission to the 2013 Produced By Conference, which will take place on June 8 and 9 at 20th Century Fox.
One winner in each category will be announced at the conference, and will receive development deals with Fox International Pictures (feature film category), Ryan Seacrest Productions (reality television category) and Maker Studios (online category).
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Read More'2016: Obama's America' Docu Producer Misses Mark With Oscar Beef
May, 12, 2013 12:42 pm | Comments On #2016: Obama's America, AwardsDocumentary filmmakers are supposed to be devoted to the truth, but Gerald Molen appears to have entered a realm of pure fantasy.
Molen, the producer of the documentary “2016: Obama’s America” (and before that, an Oscar winner for producing "Schindler's List") sent a letter to AMPAS president Hawk Koch last month, blaming the presence of noted liberal Michael Moore on the Academy’s Board of Governors for his film’s failure to be nominated for an Oscar for Best Documentary earlier this year.
Making Moore and his fellow doc-branch governors Michael Apted and Rob Epstein “the gatekeepers in charge of which films get nominated seems patently absurd,” Molen (photo below) wrote, adding that the “assumed bias” caused by Moore’s presence on the board would hurt the Academy.
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Read MoreCzech Films Hit the Road for Moveable Fest
May, 09, 2013 4:21 pm | Comments On #Czech That Film Festival, film festivals, foreign films, MoviesWith apologies to Ernest Hemingway and "A Moveable Feast," you can call this one a Moveable Fest. The Czech That Film Festival, which begins five days of screening in Los Angeles on Friday, is a festival on the go, hitting three cities before stopping in L.A. with another seven on the itinerary afterwards.
From the 1968 Oscar winner “Closely Watched Trains” to last year’s acclaimed Oscar entry “In the Shadow,” and from 1964 Czech musical “The Hop Pickers” to the 2011 rotoscope-animated noir “Alois Nebel,” the festival is taking a cross-section of Czech cinema around the country, with a L.A. stop a collaboration with the UCLA Film & Television Archive.
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Read More10 Emerging Cinematographers Get a Hollywood Showcase
May, 09, 2013 12:58 pm | Comments On #Awards, cinematography, International Cinematographers Guild, MoviesThe International Cinematographers Guild has been handing out its Emerging Cinematographers Awards since 1996, honoring aspiring directors of photography who have gone on to shoot films like "Hustle and Flow" and "Eve's Bayou" and television shows that include "CSI: Miami," "The X-Files" and "24."
The event has grown significantly over the years – and on Thursday night at the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood, it will take another step forward with a public screening of last year’s eight winners and two runners-up, followed by a panel discussion with six of the honorees.
"We've never done this before," ICG president Steven Poster told TheWrap...
5 WTF Moments from Baz Luhrmann (Even Before 'Great Gatsby')
May, 09, 2013 10:31 am | Comments On #Australia, Baz Luhrmann, Movies, strictly ballroom, The Great GatsbyBaz Luhrmann’s version of “The Great Gatsby” will no doubt raise a few eyebrows with some scenes of such over-the-top extravagance that even its hero, an obsessed social climber desperate to show off his wealth, might think Luhrmann went too far.
But that’s nothing new for the Australian director, who throughout his career has been enamored with excess and thrills and extravagant artifice. So yes, the first party scene in “Gatsby” may cause a few jaws to drop with its 3D bacchanalia of epic proportions, set to a soundtrack that ranges from floor-rumbling organ (think Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor on steroids) to an unholy disco/hip-hop hybrid to a pumped-up take on Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue.”
But Luhrmann has been responsible for plenty of dropped jaws in the past, so nobody should be too surprised to...
Read More'Man of Steel,' 'Monsters University' Added to L.A. Film Fest Lineup
May, 08, 2013 10:12 am | Comments On #film festivals, Los Angeles Film Festival, man of steel, Monsters University, Movies, PixarThe Los Angeles Film Festival has added screenings of Zack Snyder’s “Man of Steel” and Pixar’s “Monsters University” to its 2013 lineup, supplementing the previously-announced lineup of indie films with a couple of likely Hollywood blockbusters.
“Monsters University,” the sequel to the 2001 film “Monsters Inc.,” will screen on June 18 as part of the official festival lineup. “Man of Steel,” Snyder’s reboot of the “Superman” franchise, will take place on June 12 and is being billed as a pre-Festival screening. It takes place two days before the release of the film by Warner Bros. and Legendary Pictures.
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Read MoreLongtime Cannes President Gilles Jacob to Step Down in 2015
May, 08, 2013 8:40 am | Comments On #cannes film festival, film festivals, Gilles Jacob, MoviesCannes Film Festival president Gilles Jacob, who has presided over the fest for 36 years, will be leaving his position as president when his term expires in 2015, Cannes told TheWrap on Wednesday.
Jacob revealed his intention to leave the job in an interview with the French newspaper Nice Matin, saying that he promised his wife “several times” that he would retire. His remarks (in French) appeared in a one-paragraph note on the paper’s website on Wednesday.
"Mr. Jacob confirmed he will not be a candidate to renew his position as the...
Read MoreAcademy Celebrates Heavy Voter Turnout, But Most Members Still Chose Paper Ballots
May, 05, 2013 3:27 pm | Comments On #Academy Awards, Awards, online voting, oscarsAcademy voters are an active, engaged group who cast their ballots at a remarkably high rate – but the last time they voted, twice as many of them used old-fashioned paper ballots as embraced AMPAS’s new online voting system.
That’s the inescapable conclusion from the figures that Academy president Hawk Koch revealed for the first time on Saturday, and it’s hardly surprising given that the organization is largely 50 and older.
In a press release announcing changes in the Best Foreign Language Film voting process, Koch lifted the usual veil of secrecy to reveal that a full 90 percent of the Academy’s eligible voters cast ballots for February’s Academy Awards.
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Description
Steve Pond, author of the L.A. Times bestseller The Big Show, has been covering entertainment for more than two decades. He also writes on the awards circuit for TheWrap, in his column "The Odds."
