International Documentary Association Launches Screening Series, Ends DocuWeeks (Exclusive)
April, 11, 2013 8:34 am | Comments On #Awards, documentaries, DocuWeeks, IDA, International Documentary Association, MoviesThe International Documentary Association is launching an awards-season screening series that will take the place of its annual DocuWeeks theatrical showcase, which is being discontinued after 16 years of qualifying films for the Academy Awards.
The IDA Documentary Screening Series, IDA executive director Michael Lumpkin told TheWrap, will run from September through January and will allow members of the IDA and all other organizations that give out documentary awards to attend special screenings with filmmaker Q&As.
It will not qualify those films for the Oscars, but will help the docs boost their visibility with awards voters.
“The screening series allows us to take the...
Read MorePedro Almodovar's Kinky Comedy 'I'm So Excited!' to Launch L.A. Film Fest
April, 10, 2013 11:12 am | Comments On #film festivals, I'm So Excited, Los Angeles Film Festival, Movies, Pedro AlmodovarPedro Almodóvar’s comedy “I’m So Excited!” will have its North American premiere as the opening-night film of the Los Angeles Film Festival, Film Independent announced on Wednesday.
The LAFF screening will begin the festival on Thursday, June 13 at L.A. Live in downtown Los Angeles, kicking off a program of more than 200 features, shorts and music videos, as well as panels and interview programs.
"Pedro Almódovar is the cinematic gift who keeps on giving," said David Ansen, artistic director of the festival, in a statement. "For four decades he's amazed us with movies that are funny and dangerous, lovable and challenging, subversive and wildly inventive. It's a privilege and pleasure to present his latest comic treasure as our opening night film."
Almódovar’s previous films...
Read MoreEvan Rachel Wood, Bryce Dallas-Howard and Whoopi Goldberg Get Jury Dury at Tribeca
April, 10, 2013 11:00 am | Comments On #film festivals, independent film, indies, Movies, tribeca film festivalBryce Dallas-Howard, Paul Haggis, Evan Rachel Wood, Eva Longoria and Whoopi Goldberg are among the jurors announced on Wednesday by the Tribeca Film Festival, which will present $180,000 in cash and prizes in a number of different categories.
Other jurors will include actresses Blythe Danner, Mira Sorvino, Taraji P. Henson, Abigail Breslin and Christine Baranski, filmmakers Joe Berlinger, Tony Gilroy, Josh Radnor and Naomi Foner, writer/director Kenneth Lonergan, HBO Documentary chief Sheila Nevins, chef Bobby Flay and “Saturday Night Live” cast member Rachel Dratch.
Films chosen by the jurors will be announced at the TFF awards ceremony on April 25. The ceremony will take place at TK and will be streamed live at TribecaFilm.com.
Tribeca also announced juries for the Tribeca All Access Creative Promise Awards,...
Read MoreOndi Timoner Launches Kickstarter Campaign to Train Artists in 'Disruptive' Technology
April, 09, 2013 8:05 am | Comments On #independent film, indies, kickstarter, Movies, Ondi TimonerAward-winning documentary director Ondi Timoner, whose films include the Sundance champs “Dig!” and “We Live in Public,” is launching her first crowd-funding campaign to finance an extension of her A Total Disruption website, which chronicles innovators and entrepreneurs in the tech world.
"You can't just be an artist now," Timoner told TheWrap this week. "You have to be an artist-entrepreneur, and we want to set up a resource to show content creators how it can be done."
For the website, Timoner has produced more than 50 episodes dealing with innovators including Reddit’s Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian,...
Read MoreDavid Geffen Contributes $25 Million to Academy Museum
April, 08, 2013 10:53 am | Comments On #Academy Awards, Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, Awards, david geffen, oscarsDavid Geffen has contributed $25 million to the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, the Academy announced on Monday. Geffen’s gift is the single largest contribution in the Academy’s $300 million capital campaign to raise money for the museum, and will result in the premiere-sized theater at the museum being named the David Geffen Theater.
The museum is located at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in the Wilshire District of Los Angeles. It is slated to open in early 2017, with more than half the $300 million fundraising goal already raised in a campaign co-chaired by Annette Bening and Tom Hanks.
"David's support of this project is transformative," said Academy Museum Campaign Chair...
Read MoreHollywood Directors Remember 'Legend' Roger Ebert
April, 05, 2013 1:38 pm | Comments On #danny boyle, Darren Aronofsky, Martin Scorsese, Movies, Paul Weitz, Roger Ebert, Steven SpielbergRoger Ebert influenced generations of film critics and helped millions of movie fans discover films they might not otherwise have seen. But Ebert is also a hero to directors, who saw in him a champion with the clout to rescue movies from obscurity, make pointed criticisms or spread his passionate appreciation far and wide.
TheWrap asked a number of directors for their thoughts on Ebert, and received these comments:
Darren Aronofsky:
“For all film lovers, he was a legend. I can remember looking forward to his and Siskel's show as a kid, on local channel 11 – or was it 9? That empty balcony. The teasers at the start, the movie you really wanted to hear about at the end. Rooting for a disagreement, a respectful yet stinging argument.
“I ended up meeting him and his charming wife in...
Read MoreDanny Boyle: Never Mind the Olympics, Here's the Bloody, Kinky 'Trance'
April, 05, 2013 12:03 pm | Comments On #danny boyle, Movies, TranceWhen Danny Boyle burst on the scene in the mid 1990s with the dark crime film “Shallow Grave” and the jarring drug comedy “Trainspotting,” savvy viewers might have been able to predict that someday he’d make a movie like the new “Trance.”
A violent, kinky, sexually explicit and mind-bending thriller about an art dealer (James McAvoy), a thief (Vincent Cassell, below) and a hypnotist (Rosario Dawson) who tries to retrieve McAvoy’s memories, it has the drive and darkness characteristic of Boyle’s early work.
But it would have been harder to predict that in between his first movies and his new one, the 56-year-old British-born...
Read MoreAcademy Asks Members to Sound Off on Oscars Future
April, 04, 2013 1:01 pm | Comments On #Academy Awards, academy of motion picture arts and sciences, Awards, dawn hudson, hawk koch, oscarsThe agenda for the Academy’s first-ever coast-to-coast meeting of all its members just got a little clearer.
An invitation was sent to the near-6,000 members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences on Thursday afternoon, detailing more about a May 4 meeting at which the AMPAS membership is invited to sound off on matters of concern to the 86-year-old organization.
“We want more member engagement,” AMPAS President Hawk Koch told TheWrap on Thursday. “I’ve been a member of the Producers Guild and the Directors Guild for years, and they always had meetings where everybody got together to mix and mingle and talk to each other about what’s going on.
“We’...
Read MoreWake Up and Embrace the Technology, Urges Napster Documentary 'Downloaded'
April, 02, 2013 6:17 pm | Comments On #Alex Winter, Downloaded, henry rollins, independent film, indies, Movies, NapsterIt was perhaps inevitable that at the Q&A that followed a screening of Alex Winter’s Napster documentary “Downloaded” on Monday night, one audience member would ask if the movie was going to be available on the internet for free.
The film, after all, chronicles the rapid rise and equally rapid fall of the file-sharing service that fundamentally changed the music industry, ushering in a generation of music fans who got their music for free online rather than paying for it in record stores.
To admirers, it was a revolution that put power in the hands of the fans; to the record industry, it was an assault on copyright and intellectual property, a case of organized piracy on a scale...
Pioneering Rock Journalist Paul Williams Dies at 64
March, 28, 2013 3:25 pm | Comments On #Bob Dylan, Crawdaddy, music, Obituaries, Paul Williams, rock 'n' rollPaul Williams, a pioneering music journalist who started the first magazine devoted to rock ’n’ roll criticism, died on Wednesday in Southern California. He was 64.
Williams was the founder of Crawdaddy! magazine and the author of more than two dozen books about music, popular culture and new-age philosophy. He died of complications related to Alzheimer’s, which came on after he suffered a brain injury in a 1995 bicycle accident.
Williams was a 17-year-old student at Swarthmore College when he launched Crawdaddy in 1966. At a time when the mainstream media looked askance at rock music and the only magazines devoted to the sound were teeny-bopper publications like Tiger Beat, Williams wrote...
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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."
