Oliver Stone ("Platoon," "Wall Street") will receive the Lifetime Achievement Award along with Academy Award-nominated, Golden Globe-nominated, Emmy Award-winning actress Lily Tomlin ("9 to 5," "All of Me") at the 14th annual Savannah Film Festival. The festival, which will take place Oct. 29 to Nov. 5, will also honor Golden Globe-nominated, Emmy and Tony award-winning actress Ellen Barkin ("The Big Easy," "Ocean's Thirteen") with an...

Okay, so music videos are out, and concert films like "U2, 3-D", "Shine a Light", and "Lou Reed's Berlin", are in. There are actually a lot of pro's and con's to live concerts, the pro's being, 1. The cost. It is definitely a lot cheaper than paying "Ticketmaster" prices, 2. if it is shot in a documentary style, you may see and learn from new and old, never seen before footage and interviews, and 3. you don't have to worry about a tall person standing in f...

Okay, so music videos are out, and concert films like "U2, 3-D", "Shine a Light", and "Lou Reed's Berlin", are in. There are actually a lot of pro's and con's to live concerts, the pro's being, 1. The cost. It is definitely a lot cheaper than paying "Ticketmaster" prices, 2. if it is shot in a documentary style, you may see and learn from new and old, never seen before footage and interviews, and 3. you don't have to worry about a tall person standing in front of you. :) The only con I could thi...

80th Academy Awards Announced CategoriesPerformance by an actor in a leading roleGeorge Clooney in "Michael Clayton" (Warner Bros.)Daniel Day-Lewis in "There Will Be Blood" (Paramount Vantage and Miramax)Johnny Depp in "Sweeney Todd The Demon Barber of Fleet Street" (DreamWorks and Warner Bros., Distributed by DreamWorks/Paramount)Tommy Lee Jones in "In the Valley of Elah" (Warner Independent)Viggo Mortensen in "Eastern Promises" (Focus Features)Performance by an actor in a supporting roleCasey ...

"Juno," "Michael Clayton," "The Savages," "Knocked Up" and "Lars and the Real Girl" have received WGA nominations for original screenplay, while "No Country for Old Men," "There Will Be Blood," "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly," "Into the Wild" and "Zodiac" have taken adapted screenplay nods. Documentary noms went to "The Camden 28," "Nanking," "No End in Sight," "The Rape of Europa," "Sicko" and "Taxi to the Dark Side." Winners will be announced Feb. 9. ...

And we're off.....the awards season has kicked off in high gear this past week, with the announcement of the Gotham Awards in New York, the nominations for the Film Independent Spirit Awards and now the National Board of Review, the first of the end-of-the-year critics groups to bestow prizes. NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, Joel and Ethan Coen's nouveau Western, was named Best Film of the Year. The film also won a Best Adapted Screenplay prize for the Coens, as well as an award for Best Ensemble Cast, ...

“Atonement”, the wartime drama from the director of Pride & Prejudice led the Golden Globes charge with seven nominations. Charlie Wilson's War received 5 while Michael Clayton, No Country for Old Men, Sweeney Todd and American Gangster received 4 each.Focus Features received 11 nominations and lead the pack followed by Paramount Vantage 11, Miramax Films 10, Warner Bros. Pictures 10, Universal Pictures 9.Find below the nominations for the 65th Annual Golden Globe Awards which were just ...

“Atonement”, the wartime drama from the director of Pride & Prejudice led the Golden Globes charge with seven nominations. Charlie Wilson's War received 5 while Michael Clayton, No Country for Old Men, Sweeney Todd and American Gangster received 4 each.Focus Features received 11 nominations and lead the pack followed by Paramount Vantage 11, Miramax Films 10, Warner Bros. Pictures 10, Universal Pictures 9. Find below the nominations for the 65th Annual Golden Globe Awards which were just re...

 Tuesday, December 11----------With the announcement over the past two days of the winners of the Los Angeles and New York Film Critics Associations, the leading contenders for the Oscar have finally crystallized. Prize winners from the two most prestigious film critics societies in the United States have definitely turned both films and talents into the frontrunners…..in other words, the ones to beat come Oscar night.  The first to announce, on Sunday afternoon, was the Los Angeles Film Cri...

 Wednesday, December 5--------And we're off.....the awards season has kicked off in high gear this past week, with the announcement of the Gotham Awards in New York, the nominations for the Film Independent Spirit Awards and now the National Board of Review, the first of the end-of-the-year critics groups to bestow prizes. NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, Joel and Ethan Coen's nouveau Western, was named Best Film of the Year. The film also won a Best Adapted Screenplay prize for the Coens, as well as an...

The director Julian Schnabel talks about films that inspired him and the challenges he faced in adapting the script for The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.Let's start from your new new film, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. I've read somewhere that it took about 200,000 of Bauby's blinks to write the whole book and writing down each word took approximately 2 minutes. What were your first thoughts when you decided to adapt the script? Well, I didn’t know all those facts, but I know that once...

 Sunday, October 21--------It has been a busy weekend on the Red Carpet at the London Film Festival. Friday night saw the UK Premiere of three exciting new films, which could not be more different. First was the Cannes Film Festival Palme d’Or winner 4 MONTHS, 3 WEEKS, 2 DAYS, directed by current hot Romanian director Cristian Mungiu. The film, which is the current frontrunner for the Oscar for Best Foreign Film, is a harrowing account about one woman’s odyssey of desperation in 1980s Roman...

The exhibition Summer by the artist and film director Julian Schnabel (Brooklyn, New York, 1951) will open in the Tabacalera International Centre of Contemporary Culture in Donostia - San Sebastian on July 27th. The exhibition includes over sixty paintings and sculptures, with works from the 1980s to the present, and will occupy most of the ground floor of the building. The artist has prepared the exhibition in dialogue with the building itself which remains more or less intact from its original...

The awards ceremony concluded a fortnight of sunny star crowded Croisette. Power block busters came to make an impression along with glamourous stars, while the competition films from non commercial cinematographies made an impact with the critics.The Roumanian 4 months... Palme D'Or Winner and Persepolis were among the ones much discussed after their official screening.INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION JURY Palme d’Or: "4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days," Cristian Mungiu, (Romania)Grand Prix : "The Mournin...

Presented in Competition at this 60th Cannes Festival, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is Julian Schnabel's third feature-length film, following Basquiat (1996) and Before Night Falls (2000). The film is an adaptation of the book by Jean-Dominique Bauby, whose life changed completely in 1995 when he had a massive stroke. The 43-year-old journalist, father of two children, spent twenty days in a deep coma. When he woke up, he found the damage to his brain stem had resulted in a rare form of...