Network Live: A New Era in Streaming Entertainment?

Live8 producer Kevin Wall is heading up a joint venture between AOL, concert promoter AEG LIVE, and XM Satellite Radio dubbed Network Live. On September 19, Bon Jovi will perform the network’s debut show at the Nokia Theatre Times Square, marking the kickoff of one of the first entertainment companies to rely solely on online distribution.
Network Live hopes to prove that streaming media has distinct advantages over traditional media distribution and that these advantages can be translated into a successful business model. READ MORE...

Casting & Directing Commercial Spots Changed Our Lives

The Staying Alive AIDS Awareness Program “We had to cast 14 spots in three weeks,” says Abesera, a feat that would be daunting under normal circumstances. Throw in the added pressure of finding real people with AIDS between the ages of 15 and 24 from 14 different countries who were willing to share their stories about everything intimate from sex to AIDS to prostitution, and the challenge might begin to look impossible. READ MORE...

HOLODECKS and REALITY

Did you ever wish you could experience the "holodeck," the 3-D virtual environment aboard the Starship Enterprise?

There's a company that believes it's come close, letting video game players play with huge, theater-size high-definition screens that envelop the user.

READ MORE...

HORROR SELLS

THE CAVE
A rescue team is sent down into the world's largest cave system to try to find the spelunkers who first explored its depths. But when the group's escape route is cut off, they are hunted by the monstrous creatures who dwell down below.

SEE THE PREVIEW...

Exorcism of Emily Rose

Horror films are back!
In an extremely rare decision, the Catholic Church officially recognized the demonic possession of a 19 year-old college freshman. Told in flashbacks, 'The Exorcism of Emily Rose' (inspired by the true story of a girl believed to have been possessed) chronicles the haunting trial of the priest accused of negligence resulting in the death of the young girl believed to be possessed and the laywer who takes on the task of defending him.
SEE THE PREVIEW...

CRY WOLF

CHECK OUT THE WAY THIS LOW-BUDGET HORROR FILM IS ADVERTISED AND PROMOTED!

In the new teen thriller CRY WOLF, eight unsuspecting high school students play a game of lies and come face-to-face with their worst nightmare. It's easy to see that nobody believes a liar---not even when he's telling the truth.

CRY WOLF...

DOOM

See Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson in the exclusive trailer for 'Doom,' the long-awaited adaptation of the classic video game.

SEE THE PREVIEW...

THUMBSUCKER

THUMBSUCKER
Justin Cobb still sucks his thumb at 17 but wants to stop. He knows that his thumbsucking is disrupting his family, his love life and his identity. The only thing that changes his behavior is hypnosis therapy administered by his "guru" orthodontist. But while Justin felt this would solve all his problems and he would finally be "normal," his troubles were really just beginning.

SEE THE PREVIEW...

Rare look at a Giant Ape

Univerasl Pictures recreated Manhattan in 1933 and while filming on location at the mysterious Skull Island (near Sumatra) a group of NY filmmakers discover a giant gorilla named Kong.

In theaters this December is Peter Jackson's KING KONG.

SEE THE TRAILER...

Life will never be the same...

LITTLE MANHATTAN is an exquisite and charming story about first love as seen through the eyes of an eleven year old.

SEE THE PREVIEW...

Charlie and Inside the Factory

Exploring one sequence in detail
Bringing the Oompas to life was a primary task awarded to MPC. When 5 to 20 Oompa loompas appeared in a scene, the actor Deep Roy would play them all. Shot in separate takes, and from different positions, he would act out each part in multiple motion capture passes. "I think of it as doing nineteen second takes," offered Roy, whose extensive training for the roles included daily Pilates sessions and dance classes. "It was a lot of rehearsing". All images Copyright, Warners 2005, All rights reserved. READ MORE...

Scream Queen: Stephanie Beaton

Those of us who watch horror films enjoy them of course, but what about the folks who make them? One of the newest of the group of horror actresses who's a horror film fan as well, works in today’s B-horror genre films and has earned the sobriquet of "Scream Queen."
Stephanie Beaton has carved out an interesting career in action and horror-packed cinematic thrills.

READ MORE...

7 Best Endings You Never Saw Coming

The ending of your script is the last thing the audience will remember before leaving the theater, so it better crackle. The tricky part is giving the crowd what they want without letting them see it coming.

READ MORE...

ANTI-HEROES: The Seven Best Examples

Anti-heroes aren't all Clint Eastwood. These six types (yeah, we cheated a little to make this a seven best) show the breadth and depth of just how anti a hero can be -- and how far an anti-hero can rise, given the opportunity.

READ MORE...

Dennis Berardi on 'Four Brothers'

Mr. X president and visual effects supervisor Dennis Berardi chat about how his studio created the climactic car chase sequence for "Four Brothers".
While production was happening, we knew we had to build some photoreal cars in CG. We got into R&D mode and went to the manufacturer's specifications to make two cars, an Oldsmobile and an El Camino.
READ MORE...

CAN-CAN ON THE COUNTERTOP

No one's called me up at 2 a.m. saying "Your screenplay is about to be shot." But I'm dancing in the spotlight, savoring the notion that I'm on the brink of a satisfying career.

Forty-two producers have requested HAPPY, NORMAL including Indies making their first feature up to a guy in LA whose last picture had a budget of fifty million dollars. I'm still getting requests over two months after my win. Plus, I've found an agent.
READ MORE...

Finding a STORY

So you want to make a movie, but even before you have the equipment, you need to have something to light your fire, some idea that resonates from within, a story that needs to be told. The question for some is...where do ideas, specifically low budget ideas, come from? How do you get an idea that is so strong, so compelling, that it pushes you into making a movie?

You don’t go looking for it. It’ll come on its own, just keep an open mind and start absorbing everything around you. And I mean everything. Music. Songs. The news. What people are talking about. Read novels. Watch other movies.
READ MORE...

Pitching to Investors

Anyone starting out without a lot of finished film or expensive equipment needs a good package. Some investors will be satisfied with a well-packaged press-kit with eye catching art, a breakdown of your budget and a brief explanation of your idea and how you are going to make your movie.

The more you can show about your movie before you shoot the film the better off you will be. Once, an investor remarked, "if you can do all of this without any money, I wonder what you could with money."
READ MORE...

Independent Film Make-up FX: Blood

FAKE "FILM" BLOOD
Because this blood is made entirely out of food products, it won't burn sensitive skin like some factory-made imitation blood does, and it can always by used orally. It also washes out of clothing easier (although it could take a few washings).
LEARN HOW TO MAKE YOUR OWN FAKE "FILM" BLOOD

DVD Format Groups Cross Swords

Although the groups behind the different DVD formats want to avoid the market confusion and consternation that came with dueling beta and VHS video cassette formats, both sides also seem willing to take their chances on competing formats.

The two different Blu-ray and HD-DVD camps behind two different next-generation DVD formats are at it again. READ MORE...

Is PASSION Alive and Living in HOLLYWOOD?

In the seemingly cold-hearted and increasingly monopolistic corridors of Hollywood, it’s sometimes hard to find signs of the soft accomodating side of show business and easy to believe that it’s becoming harder to get in!

What happened to those who were always ready to discover tomorrow’s unlikely next star or hot property. It can often appear that most, if not all artistic decisions are increasingly based on power player prerogatives and corporate indulgences.

A senior agent lamented about missing the “old days” when agents made decisions from their instincts and would nurse nascent projects along side of the blue chip priorities. He noted that many of the newer agents of today are too busy “stealing clients,” and otherwise, seeking name-brand product. READ MORE...

Are DVDs Archival?

I always meant to convert, once and for all, my crowded shelves of Beta, U-Matic, Hi-8 and VHS samples of my work I’ve accumulated through the years to a stable, archival digital video medium, namely DVD.

After all, shelf space in Manhattan is precious real estate. A trim, compact row of DVDs would do wonders for my overflowing studio apartment, but is my work safe on DVDs?

READ MORE...

BLOG SIGGRAPH

Just like being there.
Catch up with our SIGGRAPH BLOG, sponsored by Intel, for information on what went down at Siggraph, including unique video from the show floor in Los Angeles. Experience the inside track through the eyes of Milimeter and Video Systems editors and special guest bloggers.
READ MORE...

Getting Critical about Today’s Display Technologies

Today’s display technologies have been around long enough for us to analyze their performance.
The advances in display technology over the past 10 years have been incredible and have opened up a whole range of new applications, especially in allowing large electronic images to be integrated into different environments. Now, we can start being critical of their performance and concentrate on contrast, image sizing, and cost of ownership. READ MORE...

Strings

Take the best portions of Hamlet, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings and Team America and then have stringed puppets act it all out. The result is an epic tale set in a mythical kingdom where the strings that bind play an important role in the life and death of the characters.
READ MORE...

Animated Spokespersons

What do Wilma Flintstone, Spider-Man and the Pink Panther have in common?

These classic characters have all been recruited to promote popular products. Janet Hetherington looks into why animated celebs have become the spokespersons of choice.

The ladies of Hanna-Barbera get an extreme tone makeover courtesy of Dove. Images courtesy of Unilever Canada. © Turner Broadcasting. READ MORE...

What is OpenHD?

Learn why industry leaders Adobe, HP, Intel, Microsoft, and Dell have assembled and certified a line of open, scalable, desktop HDV and HD solutions, called OpenHD Certified Solutions. These solutions benefit from the wide variety of industry standard choices available for Windows-based computing, allowing customers to get the best price/performance and reliability possible.

Learn more about these OpenHD Certified Solutions: CLICK HERE...

TIME PASSES

The early directors "inventing" the language of film photographed movies in straight progression just like a stage play. Everything happened in orderly sequence. The "lap-dissolve" or "montage" was first used to indicate the passage of time.
Royalty free HD TV (a great name---but nothing is really free---is it?) offers many stock shots that you can peruse and view online. Check out and view their library of transition shots including the shots that indicate the passing of time (usually where light changes over an object). Some scenes are very poetic and they might just give you a new slant to use in your cinematic endeavors. SEE THE TIME PASSAGES...

PBS tries to stay relevant in a 500-channel world

Is PBS as much a dinosaur as Barney?
PBS, was birthed in a three-network world but has hit middle age amid hundreds of cable channels, including more than a few that could be considered competitors.
Between undying battles with Congress and a highly public conflict with its parent company, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, PBS has experienced a tumultuous 12 months. READ MORE...

Not to be Missed: OVER THERE

OVER THERE is about a dramatic show sergeant and his platoon stationed in Iraq and how their lives and the lives of their families are affected at home. While the show is enjoying success because of its reality, many Iraqi veterans point out its inaccuracies.

Mark-Paul Gosselaar Plays a War Reporter SEE THE CLIP...

Photoreality and Faux Reality

Will rendering’s next frontier revolutionize filmmaking?
Twelve experts offer their opinion as to what the future holds.
Many of this year's movies are brimming with hairy CG creatures, from realistic-looking digital Wookiees in Star Wars to the jungle critters of Madagascar. PDI/DreamWorks' Hendrickson points to what he calls “the sheer volume and complexity of rendering today.”
READ MORE...

HDTV Veterans Offer Insight

Even though the television world’s transition toward an all-HD acquisition paradigm is far from finished, it is complete enough for a small group of HDTV production veterans to have emerged.
These vets are experts at all levels—from network programming suites to various production jobs on sets—in transitioning shows, budgets, pipelines, crews, and workflows into the HD universe. READ MORE...

Foreign Undead: Top 10 Vampire Movies

After seeing a lot of vampire movies and reading a lot of vampire books while preparing to write my own vampire manuscript 'Liquid Diet', I researched so my undead opus wouldn't be like other vampire books and movies. After I started writing my script, I ended up satirising and doing parodies of all the vampire books and movies anyway... READ MORE...

Top 10 Vampire Movies

Christopher Lee made a memorable hissing monster in several Hammer horrors, Frank Langella made a great handsome matinee idol variant on both stage and screen, while Coppola arguably portrayed Dracula's life and times in the most lavish style, regarding the Count's romantic tragedy. But vampire movies set in the modern age tend to differ, often radically, from those of their costume-drama cousins in period settings - nowadays, the ungrateful undead are more than just a pain in the neck.
So, lock your doors, and bar the windows. In chronological order, here are some children of the night you'd better watch out for... READ MORE...

Laying Naked on the Page!

"If you really want to do it: never give up, never give up, never, ever give up." -Winston Churchill

Writing a screenplay is easy, writing a good one is harder, but selling one is a major league bitch. I’m been up to my pits trying to turn my 120-page opus into a million-dollar check. While trying to crack the system, I talked to agents, producers, directors, studio execs, and development people. And what I learned is this: Hollywood is under siege. There are so many scripts coming at them from every direction that it’s like trying to hold back the ocean with a spoon.

READ MORE...

INTERVIEW: MONICA BELLUCCI (THE BROTHERS GRIMM)

Monica Bellucci is an absolutely stunning woman and it made every male reporter (and maybe even some of the ladies) go a bit gaga just being close to her.

Q: To take someone as stunningly beautiful as you are and then turn you into a shriveled prune... what was that like?
READ MORE...

Please Hold For Mr. Spielberg

Right now, I’m staring down both barrels of a potential million-dollar jackpot. It’s an eerie feeling because it could happen for real. I’m just not so sure I know why?

About a year ago, I signed with a well-respected literary agent in Hollywood who handles some top writers and directors. He liked my screenplay called Whispering Pines. He felt that it was one of the best scripts he had read in months and I quote, "treasured every moment and thought the writing was phenomenal." Or something like that. I wanted to direct and he sent it out to a bunch of places. We sat back and waited. And waited. And waited. READ MORE...

ZOMBIE HONEYMOON

“In sickness and in health; till death do us part.”

So vowed the two honeymooners before taking off for an idyllic retreat on the Jersey shore. A major independent horror film, "ZOMBIE HONEYMOON" will soon be released theatrically and will then be shown on Showtime and available on DVD in early 2006.

SEE THE TRAILER...

Take the MOVIE QUOTE QUIZ

Take the MOVIE QUOTE QUIZ and see how good you are. Archived quiz questions really challenge and test your knowledge of movie trivia.

TAKE THE QUIZ...

Voices of THE SIMPSONS

Listen and watch this famous clip from INSIDE THE ACTOR'S STUDIO. And learn more about this fascinating interview show.

Hear them...

don't miss!!! FIVE MEN Voice Over (created by Aspect Ratio)

FIVE MEN Voice Over (created by Aspect Ratio) is a thrilling James Bond ride with five "simple men in a complicated world".

In one short limo ride, meet the Five Golden Voices we know so well.

SEE ALL FIVE MEN...

MAKING Three Samurai on Horseback

I loved how the old black and white comedies like ‘The Three Stooges' had a humor that was universally understood. I wanted to portray that same kind of humor through the simple shapes and silhouettes of the three samurai. Fat samurai are funny, since we think of samurais as being athletic and fit, rather than being out-of-shape and overweight. The Three Samurai on Horseback mixes samurai martial arts with The Three Stooges.
READ MORE...

Last Call to Enter eDward 2005

The Visual Effects Society has issued a last call for entries for the eDward, the 6th eDIT Film Award. The event is an international newcomer competition, intended to give young filmmakers a stage for their talent and to open up career opportunities.
The competition is worldwide and is open to young creatives under 30. The theme for eDward VI is Artificial Humans. Entries should be not longer than 30 seconds and must be submitted by Wednesday, Sept. 7, 2005. ENTER NOW...

Trailers Abound In The Theatrical Release Database

COMING SOON!
For your clip cravings, you can view new trailers for SAW 2, OLIVER TWIST, AEON FLUX, JARHEAD, DOOM and BARNYARD. Films with a switch in release date include ZU WARRIORS, THE OMEN 666, UNDERDOG and GARFIELD 2. As for new pages, we have GENBOT, WESTWORLD and SPLINTER CELL. Listing 338 projects in production, with release dates. READ MORE...

Mobile Gaming Doubles Again

TRENDS IN ELECTRONIC GAMING
Ziff Davis Media's annual "Digital Gaming in America" survey of more than 1,500 randomly selected U.S. households, indicates that cell phone gaming continued its meteoric rise in 2005.
The number of households engaged in cell phone gaming nearly doubled again, jumping from 16.3 million last year to 27.9 million this year. READ MORE...

10 Things You Need to Know about Writing Screenplays

The myth about screenwriting is just that! It's the only profession that truly matters to our generation.
For the past dozen years or so, I've pounded the streets, the keyboard and my head against the wall searching for the skeleton key to unlock the great American screenplay. I found that writing a script is easy, but writing a good one is much harder. What follows is a short list of precious but unpolished nuggets that I've managed to unearth. What you do with them will be of more than passing interest to us all. READ MORE...

Promoting Your Short Film

How many moviemakers out there have started a project and not finished it?
Okay, now how many of you out there have finished your movie? Of you, how many submitted to film festivals? Then what? What happened to your movie? Is it sitting on a shelf collecting dust, or languishing without any views on a website? What can you do to promote it?
Getting your movies seen is good. It increases the likelihood that people will know about the films you made and also realize how good your moviemaking skills are.
READ MORE...

The Top 100 MOVIE QUOTES

"Great movie quotes become part of our cultural vocabulary. When you consider that any phrase from American film is eligible, you realize this is our most subjective topic to date. We expect nothing less than a war of words as we reignite interest in classic American movies." READ THEM...

Valiant Takes Off

Christopher Harz interviewed Vanguard Animation’s John Williams asking what it took to make the studio’s first 3D CG feature, Valiant, fly.
Williams (who also produced Shrek and Shrek 2) produced the tale of a brave-but-undersized pigeon named Valiant (voiced by Ewan McGregor), who realizes his dream of joining the elite Royal Homing Pigeon Service (RHPS) in Great Britain during World War II. READ MORE...

NEW CANON OPTURA CAMCORDER OFFER BEST OF BOTH WORLDS

Lightweight, Low Cost Hi Resolution with one LARGE chip
Customers can double their pleasure with the newest two Canon Optura Mini-DV camcorders which offer stunning digital video and still performance in stylish form factors that beg to be held. Estimated prices $799-1099.

With the new Canon Optura 600 camcorder users get high-quality 4.3-megapixel image reproduction for crisp video and photos in a sleek but elegant design. The Optura 600 and Optura S1 models are the smallest* 4.3 megapixel and 2.2 megapixel camcorders, respectively, on the market. READ MORE...

9/11 dramas head for big, small screens

Four years have passed without dramatizing the tragedy but now studios and networks will re-create the Sept. 11 attacks in two movies and three television projects.

Although movies and TV documentaries have dealt with Sept. 11 (including a National Geographic documentary this Sunday), these will be the first major projects that re-create the events of the day. READ MORE...

Developing characters who don’t age

Emotional reality turns up in the most unlikely places. It exists on primetime TV, where a handful of animated series are delivering surprisingly sophisticated characters who not only entertain, but stand up emotionally, year in and year out, with admirable consistency.

Cartoon characters that do not grow older and therefore shift naturally into new story territory cannot easily add on or change major components like a marriage, a new baby or a career shift. READ MORE...

Comic-Con International 2005 Report

The 2005 San Diego Comic-Con International event drew a record 96,300 attendees and 7,700 exhibitors for a grand total of 104,000 individual people. Attendees included not only fans of comics, sci-fi, fantasy and animation, but many entertainment industry types and press.

The studios were out in full force, previewing movies, games, and animation amongst the comic publishers and collectors, as well as creative development execs looking for their next hit. No big deals were announced during or immediately after but undoubtedly many were spawned for future consumption. READ MORE...

Hollywood's New Backlot? The U.S.

For nearly three decades Danny Retz has been a Hollywood film editor. His 50 features include "RoboCop," "Cutthroat Island" and "Collateral Damage." For the last several years, though, steady work has proven very elusive. He longed for a place where work was plentiful and life was affordable.

A few days before he boarded a plane for Louisiana, where he was born 57 years ago Retz said, "I was bleeding money." He wasn't returning to New Orleans just to be close to good food and extended family. He was chasing Hollywood.
READ MORE...

What’s the job of the casting director?

The job of the casting director is not actually to cast a show. The person who really casts the show is the director, and the production team. The casting process starts off with their ideas, what they’re looking for… their interpretation of the various roles.

And the job of the casting director is to choose which people will audition for a show, and run the auditions. We book the space, hire readers if needed, do the breakdown for the agents, make sure everything is running smoothly throughout the process. Sometimes we do the initial screening of actors before the director sees them.

READ MORE...

Actors: Do You need a website?

How effective is developing a web site for actors? I created one and the comments I am getting are very good, but in the biz is it a thing you need now or is it something for the future?

Can this electronic calling card / marketing tool be useful considering the time it takes a casting director to do his or her job on any given project? If nothing else I find it a great way to keep track of what I have been doing and to distribute my demo reel. What say you?

READ MORE...

Kung Fu Hustle

Probably one of the best kung-fu movies ever made, Kung Fu Hustle follows the adventures of Sing (Stephen Chow, creator and star of Shaolin Soccer) amid the gang warfare of Shanghai in the 1940s.

Sing once believed that he could attain kung fu mastery by following the instructions in a booklet he was handed by a beggar in the street, but he's quickly disillusioned when he's beaten up by a gang of kids. What follows is the stuff that dreams are made of...

READ MORE...

Filmmaking: Film Flams and Scams

I’ve dealt with all kinds of delusions, lies, and cheats: I don’t know where to begin.
One of the most common stories in Indie Filmmaking, especially in the feature length genre is that of the “Promise of funding that turns out to be a dead end” scenario. How many of us have been approached by someone that claims to have access to investors and capital that will fund a movie, and after months of working, for free I might add, it turns out to not be true?

READ MORE...

The BEST MOVIES in the world

What makes a film good?
"A lot of people I talked to, think that movie history started with Star Wars"(Roger Ebert, film critic)

Films can be much more than just mainstream action and Hollywood melodrama. Don't miss the many old films just beacuse they are in black and white and sparse on computer generated special effects.
What follows is a list of great and recommendable movies selected by Jacob Crawfurd. Artistic masterpieces, film historic milestones or films that are simply refreshingly different, daring or challenging - in my opinion. SEE THE LIST...

Die Zweiter Heimat

The 26 hour film is something really special. The 13 chapter film portrays a group of young students in München during the 60's. "Die Zweiter Heimat" is a giant landmark film production by German director Edgar Reitz.
According to the book about the production it had: a script of 2,143 pages written over a six years period. 372 kilometer film was recorded during the 557 shooting days.
READ MORE...