The Writers Guild of America, the most prestigious membership organization for television and film writers, announced its nominations this week for top scribes of the year. The nominees, an indicator of the Oscar nods due later this month, are not without controversy. Several of the year's most celebrated films have had their scripts disqualified due to the WGA's convoluted "minimum basic agreement" rules. The injunctions are rather hard to explain but disqualify film scrip...
By Quendrith Johnson, Los Angeles Correspondent
Just went you thought it was all fun and games and 3D at the movies, the WGA today announced its top choices for Screenwriting -- in advance of their WGA Award Show coming up in February. There are so many award-worthy movies, but as always, the comedy category gets a big snub.
What about THE OTHER GUYS?
And the nominees are...
2011 WRITERS GUILD AWARDS SCREEN NOMINEES BUT COMEDY OVERLOOKED?
Still No Name?: ...
The Virginia Film Festival has announced that Josh Radnor's happythankyoumoreplease has captured the Audience Favorite Award for Best Narrative Feature for the recently-wrapped, and record-setting, 2010 Festival.
The Virginia Film Festival, which smashed previous records for both attendance and box office sales by 25% this year, is presented by the University of Virginia and its College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences.
Radnor's happythankyoumoreplea...
The Virginia Film Festival has announced that Josh Radnor’s happythankyoumoreplease has captured the Audience Favorite Award for Best Narrative Feature for the recently-wrapped, and record-setting, 2010 Festival.The Virginia Film Festival, which smashed previous records for both attendance and box office sales by 25% this year, is presented by the University of Virginia and its College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences.Radnor’s happythankyoumoreplease, which played to a full house at th...
The capacity crowds suggested it. The enthusiasm around town supported it. And now the numbers prove it! The Virginia Film Festival, which wrapped up an extraordinary, jam-packed weekend featuring 132 films and events for the whole community to enjoy, has shattered its all-time records in both attendance and sales.The Virginia Film Festival is presented by the University of Virginia’s College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences.By the time the final credits rolled on its last film late Sund...
As the days lengthen, so the Nantucket Film Festival fires up for its 15th annual storytelling blowout, June 17 to 20, 2010. The Festival, which celebrates screenwriters, screenwriting and the art of the raconteur in today's cinema, boasts "The Writers are Coming" as its motto.
Wordsmiths aren't the only ones to wash ashore. Once again, 4,000 screenwriters, producers, agents, development executives and lay cinephiles are due on the Massachusetts island -- along with some 6,000 l...
The South by Southwest (SXSW) Film Conference & Festival is happy to announce its complete slate of panels and workshops for the 15th annual event in Austin, Texas. The SXSW Film Conference will take place in the Austin Convention Center during March 8-11, and is open to all SXSW Film, Gold, and Platinum registrants. In addition, the SXSW Film Conference will co-host joint sessions with the SXSW Interactive Conference. Nearly 200 industry veterans and experts are on tap as speakers for the panel...
Festival do Rio, the Rio de Janeiro International Film Festival, which opens its doors to public and industry this coming Thursday, September 20, has confirmed that it will top and tail with world premieres.Thursday’s opening night (20th) will see the first public screening of the final cut of José Padilha’s highly anticipated Elite Squad (Tropa de Elite).The true story of two childhood friends employed in Rio de Janeiro’s military police special unit has been the subject of local contro...
You haven’t seen anything…until you see the marvelous films coming to the 1st International Blues Film Festival. Mississippi Action for Community Education (MACE) will co-host the affair with The Sunflower County Freedom Project, during BLUES WEEK 2007, at the Nelco Cineplex, on Hwy I Greenville, on Tuesday, September 11, 2007; the films begin at 12p.m. 1st International Blues Film Festival will be showcase an array of films, peculiar to the Mississippi Delta and address some issues that are...
Wednesday, March 21-----Acclaimed actors Carrie Fisher and Richard Dreyfuss are serving as the co-chairs of the Jury at the 2007 Bermuda International Film Festival. The Jury is charged with the duty of deciding the winning films in three categories: Mary-Jean Mitchell Green Award for Best Narrative Feature, Best Documentary, and the M3 Wireless Bermuda Shorts Award. Carrie Fisher is the actress/novelist/television personality daughter of singer/actress Debbie Reynolds and singer/actor...
The Bermuda International Film Festival marks its tenth anniversary with a lineup that includes 85 films from 32 countries, including several award-winning entries from other fests. The BIFF opens Mar. 16 with Paul Verhoeven's recent best foreign language film Oscar shortlist entry "Black Book," and closes with Taika Waititi's comic love story from New Zealand, "Eagle vs. Shark." Carrie Fisher, Richard Dreyfuss and documentary filmmaker Stanley Nelson are among the six jurors who will select...
In recent years, the documentary film has taken flight in terms of commercial interest. At the heart of this trend, the Miami International Film Festival (MIFF), presented by Miami Dade College (MDC), remains one of the premiere festivals for celebrating non-fiction filmmaking from around the world, as recently announced in their 2007 program. “We are always compelled by the art of storytelling in the documentary form,” said Festival Director Nicole Guillemet. “Non-fiction filmmaking borr...
Saturday/Sunday, November 25/26----The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) has announced the "short list" of feature documentaries that will compete for Best Documentary honors at the 79th Academy Awards in February, 2007. The AMPAS Documentary Screening Committee viewed 81 eligible documentary features, shortening the list to 16 contenders. From this group will come the 5 films that will be compete for the final Best Documentary Oscar. Films on the "short list" include such r...
Friday, November 24----The Independent Feature Project (IFP), the membership organization that represents the interests of independent filmmakers across the United States, has announced the nominees for its 16th IFP Gotham Awards, which will be given out at a gala Awards Ceremony on November 29th in New York City. The event, which was begun in 1991 as a way of recognizing New York-based independent producers and distributors and their films, also serves as a major fundraiser for the organizat...
- International Competition Documentary Film | Traditions, Families, Political IssuesA total of 19 films from 15 countries have made it into this year’s International Competition Documentary Film. Productions come also from countries rather exceptional for documentary film-making, such as Myanmar or Thailand ("Buddha's Lost Children", "The Longest Day"). Just as in 2005, the selection committee for the category documentary film was made up of festival director Claas Danielsen, film-maker Matt...
Friday, September 15---One of the key human tragedies and human mysteries of the 1970s was the mass suicide of 900 followers of the Peoples Temple, a fundamentalist group that originated in San Francisco and eventually moved into refuge in Guyana. The group's charismatic leader, Jim Jones, was a true enigma....a spiritual leader of immense charisma who had an amazing hold over his followers. Why hundreds of them were willing to commit mass suicide on his orders is one of the mysteries explored...
Thursday, June 15----One of the tenets of the American system of governing is a strict separation of church and state. It is very clearly written into our Constitution, and was certainly the intention of our "founding fathers", who had experienced the persecutions of state religions in Europe. This seperation between church doctrine and the rule of law has been scrupulously followed but that wall is definitely crumbling.
A number of documentaries premiering at the SILVERDOCS festival this week,...
The parking was impossible. But the weather gloriously balmy by the bay for the San Francisco International Film Festival’s Golden Gate Awards held this evening in the Cowell Theater at Fort Mason Center. Appropriately, the Golden Gate Bridge itself could be glimpsed in the distance from the lobby windows. During the cocktail reception, Richard Hershowitz, director of the Virginia Film Festival and Skyy Prize juror, joked about giving the new San Francisco Film Society executive director his s...
The 23rd Annual Miami International Film Festival will take placeMarch 3 - 12, 2006 In March of 2006, the Miami International Film Festival (MIFF), presented by Miami Dade College (MDC), will launch a new program, MIFF Abroad, which will celebrate the filmmaking of one Latin American country each year, starting with Chile at this year’s festival. The announcement was made today by Festival Director Nicole Guillemet.“For the first year of MIFF Abroad, we have chosen Chile. It is a logical and...
SILVERDOCS June 14-19, June Silver: Spring, MarylandBlame it on Michael Moore. The filmmaker provocateur of FAHRENHEIT 911 created a tidal wave of audience and media interest in documentary film that has not yet crested. The truth is that documentaries have escaped from their restricted niche and now can generate the kind of publicity and audience interest that was once reserved for fiction features.Documentaries are suddenly hot, and the financials of making and distributing them have made them...
Miami International Film Festival Announces Special ProgramsMiami International Film FestivalThe mission of the Miami International Film Festival is to bring the best of world cinema to South Florida. MIFF uses the unique geographical and cultural position of Miami to make the festival a premiere venue for the exhibition of international and U.S. films, with special focus on Ibero-American cinema. Both juried and audience awards are given in dramatic and documentary categories.The Miami Internat...
The National Black Programming Consortium (NBPC), in partnership with the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, announces the 2004 New York debut of the Prized Pieces Film Festival commencing October 8th through October 11, 2004. The four-day festival, held for the first time in New York City at Harlem’s famed Schomburg Center, celebrates the 25th Anniversary of the NBPC and its long-standing commitment to the preservation, funding, production and promotion of independent films and ...
A Place of Our Own Director - Stanley Nelson Born into BrothelsDirectors - Ross Kauffman and Zana BriskiChisholm ’72 - Unbought & Unbossed Director - Shola Lynch DeadlineDirectors - Katy Chevigny and Kirsten JohnsonDIG!Director - Ondi TimonerFarmingville Directors - Catherine Tambini and Carlos Sandoval The Fight Director - Barak GoodmanHeir to an ExecutionDirector - Ivy Meeropol Home of the Brave Director - Paolo di Florio I Like Killing Flies Director - Matt Mahurin Imelda Director - Ramona ...
Sundance, Park city, Salt Lake City
Opening
Night
Riding Giants
will open Sundance festivities in Park City, January
15th
A documentary by Stacy Peralta (the skateboarder-turned-filmmaker who won the
director's prize at Sundance 2001 for the extreme-sports documentary "Dogtown
and Z-Boys). Screenwriters - Stacy Peralta and Sam George. The first docu to
open Sundance ever.
"Watching
a 90-foot wave coming across the screen at the Eccles is somethi...