Articles tagged with movies

Actor Zach Braff wants to raise $2 million to make a sequel to his cult hit “Garden State.”
But instead of going to Hollywood producers or a studio with his idea, the star of the TV show “Scrubs” went directly to fans on the money-raising website Kickstarter.
Cash those fans can shell out for the forthcoming flick – “Wish I Was Here” – but for which …

The Motion Picture Association of America is making some tweaks to its movie-rating system. The changes announced this week in Las Vegas at the movie theater industry’s CinemaCon gathering are being promoted as a way to give parents more information about potentially objectionable content – so they can make better choices about what their children watch.
But not everyone is impressed. L.A. Times staff writer …

A Mouseketeer, A Film Critic & A Documentarian
They say that celebrities die in threes. We’ll leave Margaret Thatcher out of it and instead look at three people who inhabited three very different areas of the entertainment business.
This morning  famed Mousketeer Annette Funicello died after years of living with Multiple Sclerosis. She was in the original “Mickey Mouse Club” of the 1950s and went on …

Documentary filmmaker T.J. Martin won the Academy Award for Best Documentary in 2012 for his film “Undefeated,” which follows a high school football team from Memphis. The film chronicles the life of underprivileged teenagers on and off the field.  Martin says that having Oscar on his mantel hasn’t changed his life. ” I’m not flying to Tahiti,” says Martin, but winning  Oscar does help him get meetings. “In a …

Children’s book author and animator William Joyce talks to KCRW’s Saul Gonzalez about his life after winning the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film. “Making movies is the hardest thing in the world, making animated movies is twice as hard,” Joyce says. He says that taking home Oscar has opened many doors for him, and made him happy. “I’ll be smiling until the …

Film editor Kirk Baxter has a good gig going. He works almost exclusively with in-demand director David Fincher.  Baxter co-won Oscars for “The Social Network” and “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” with partner Angus Wall. Taking home the last two Best Editing Academy Awards hasn’t changed his professional life all that much, but when it comes to life outside the editing room, that’s …

Pilot Season Takes Off
Pilot season has begun and every one who has ever wanted to be in TV has descended on LA to get a job on a show– maybe even more than one– in hopes that their pilot will get picked up and put on a fall schedule. Some familiar TV creators have gotten pilot orders.  J.J. Abrams, Chuck Lorre, Bill Lawrence, and Joss Whedon …

Busy weekend for Hollywood industry awards
Over this past weekend, two of Hollywood’s labor organizations — the Producers Guild and the Screen Actors Guild — named their picks for 2012′s best in Film and Television. “Argo” won big: Both the PGA and the SAG awards named “Argo” the Best produced and the Best Cast in a feature, respectively.
These precursor awards (along with the upcoming Directors …

The Sundance Film Festival is about halfway through its run in Park City, Utah. And one of the trends that’s emerging is that a number of this year’s movies deal with sex. Now the idea that sex sells is nothing new in the entertainment business, but some of these movies are being criticized for being unusually frank. Los Angeles Times film reporter John Horn says one of the …

More than 30 years after it first started, is the Sundance Film Festival still relevant? Should we still care?  L.A. Times film reporter John Horn says yes on both counts, and not just because he needs to justify his assignment for the next 10 days. In an interview with KCRW’s Chery Glaser, Horn makes the case that Sundance plays a crucial curatorial role in …

Last night NBC aired The Golden Globes and for those who stuck around instead of switching over to watch “Downton Abbey” or the series premiere of “Girls” you may have actually enjoyed yourselves. Tina Fey and Amy Poehler hosted the show and by all accounts they didn’t disappoint. The irreverence and wit was in full force not just from the hosts but from presenters like Will …

Oscar nominations are out. There were some surprises, and some not-so-surprising developments from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences as they released their list of those up for awards this year. That ceremony coming up on Sunday, February 24th.
Stephen Galloway from The Hollywood Reporter spoke to Steve Chiotakis with his thoughts on the nominees. The two discussed that, among several surprises this …

Is Zero Dark Thirty Fact or Propaganda?
The movie “Zero Dark Thirty“, directed by Kathryn Bigelow and written and produced by Mark Boal tells the story— or a version of the story— of the CIA’s hunt for Osama bin Laden. Many consider it among the best films of 2012. And the filmmakers come to the material off of tremendous critical success– if not box-office boffo– …

Making it big on the silver screen has never been easy, but Kickstarter is trying to change that. The world’s largest funding platform for “creative projects” hosted roughly 82,000 project pitches online last year, receiving a total of $450 million dollars in pledged donations. In the past three years, $100 million dollars has been donated to filmmakers. (Kickstarter updates their stats here).
“This would be …

 We asked eleven of our sharpest local observers what they thought were the most important stories and trends of the year. From politics and music to faith, literature and film, they weigh in on the one thing that shaped 2012.
Editor at large for the Hollywood Reporter and Host of The Business, Kim Masters says the one thing she’ll remember from 2012 was the acquisition of Lucasfilm …

Golden Globe nominations were announced today, and “Lincoln” took the lead with seven nominations. That film was well-received, but what about Nicole Kidman’s nomination for “The Paperboy?”
The Golden Globes may not be taken as seriously as other awards ceremonies, but it carries a lot of weight “because of the TV show,” says Steven Pond, who covers awards and indie films for TheWrap.com, and is the …

TV Ratings: NBC on Top

For years the network that coined the phrase “must see TV” has been anything but. NBC has consistently been at or near the bottom of the ratings race that’s the constant source of angst for TV execs and fodder for TV journalists. But this season is different. Thanks to two genres of entertainment ‘the peacock’ is crowing—or doing whatever peacocks do. Between …

Film: Word of Mouth Movie Hopes
It’s common practice to look at box office numbers on Mondays— especially the Monday after Thanksgiving weekend. But what’s most striking today isn’t the massive success of the final installment in the Twilight series or of Bond’s “Skyfall,” it’s the relatively small number that “Silver Linings Playbook” did. The film was directed by David O. Russell, who also adapted …

Defining marriage. The U.S. Supreme Court could jump into the fray over the same-sex marriage this week. The justices will consider several cases, including one stemming from Prop. 8, which outlawed gay marriage in California. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals struck down Proposition 8 earlier this year – saying that the 2008 ballot measure was unconstitutional because it took away an existing right, …

For years, California’s been trying to stem runaway film and TV production to other states and countries. Is the effort a failure? A new report says LA County has lost 16,000 jobs since 2004, the year of peak production. Another study says the state as a whole lost $3 billion in wages from the decline. We get the latest on what’s still a major …