Celluloid Blonde

LOS ANGELES (November 30, 2010) – Film Independent, the non-profit arts organization that produces the Spirit Awards and the Los Angeles Film Festival, announced nominations this morning for the 2011 Film Independent Spirit Awards. Eva Mendes and Jeremy Renner served as presenters and 2011 Spirit Awards host Joel McHale was also on hand. Nominees for Best Feature include 127 Hours, Black Swan, Greenberg, The Kids Are All Right and Winter’s Bone. Please Give was selected for the Robert Altman Award, which is given to one film’s director, casting director and ensemble cast.

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Described online as a struggling screenwriter who sells flowers to make ends meet, P.J. McIlvaine is now facing the biggest struggle of her life. After creating a free online library of Hollywood movie scripts to assist other screenwriters, she incurred the wrath of Twentieth Century Fox. Without any previous contact, the movie giant sent private investigators to P.J’s home to gather information and has now sued for a mind boggling $12 million. PJOn reading papers just filed in the New York Eastern District Court, it’s clear that Twentieth Century Fox is out to make an example of anyone who makes available any of their copyright material on the Internet, whether it be a movie or the words uttered in them. In their complaint against Patricia McIlvaine (also known as P.J. McIlvaine) and Does 1-10, the Hollywood giant says it is seeking damages and injunctive relief for copyright infringement and contributory copyright infringement. The studio claims that P.J “uploaded and made available to others via the Internet a script of Deadpool, the copyright to which is owned by Fox, and which is a script for a project still in development.” P.J is further accused of uploading and making available “roughly 100 movie and television scripts” during 2009 and 2010, some of them relating to relatively old films such as Aliens, Edward Scissorhands and Wall Street. The actual court papers list 79 movie scripts, only one of which is unreleased. Fox want $150,000 in statutory damages for each and every one.

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As an endless stream of often-absurd observations apropos of nothing much, Twitter might have appealed to the Surrealists of 1920s Paris. Now, film director Tim Burton has adapted their favourite parlour game in an experiment to create a script using lines posted as tweets. Inspired by cadavre exquis, a game similar to Consequences, in which players write lines on folded paper, Mr Burton last week posted the opening line to a new tale, inviting readers to suggest what should happen next. The best submissions, of no more than 140 characters, are selected every few hours and posted at Burtonstory.com —

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Interesting article about James Schamus of Focus Features:

There really isn’t anyone else like Schamus. There’s no precedent for a real academic — he’s a professor of professional practice in Columbia’s School of the Arts, a teacher and scholar who has served on the editorial board of Cinema Journal — to have a first-rate career as a writer, a producer and an executive in the film industry. As Tim Gray put it: “There have been a couple of film scholars who wrote scripts, but he’s the only person in the business I’ve ever seen who said, ‘I can’t go to Cannes because I’ve got to work on my doctorate.’ I liked his book about Dreyer, but I understood about a third of it.” The book, based on Schamus’s dissertation, is a study of the Danish director Carl Theodor Dreyer’s “Gertrud,” a film that Schamus has described as “the single-most obscure Scandinavian formalist failure.”

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Actor Mark Ruffalo has been placed on a terror advisory list by U.S. officials after organizing screenings for a new documentary about natural gas drilling. The “Zodiac” actor arranged showings for “GasLand” earlier this year and voiced his concerns about the practice in relation to the national water supplies. But his efforts to raise awareness and demand a stop to natural gas drilling reportedly attracted the attention of officials from Pennsylvania’s Office of Homeland Security - and he recently discovered it had landed him on a terror alert watchlist.”

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So Amazon decides to form Amazon Studios and to give away $2.7 million to wannabe screenwriters. (Here’s the actual 21-page Amazon Studios Development Agreement contract they have to sign.) Sounds good, right? Not necessarily creatively or financially. It’s easy to understand why Amazon wants to get involved with the creation of entertainment and not just its distribution. Or why filmmakers would want to break into the biz through this contest that gets them noticed, lets them win money, and maybe even lets Warner Bros release their movies. But a growing echo chamber of Hollywood scribes is warning wannabes to beware because of problems with copyright, authorship, Amazon Studios’ free 18-month option on a writer’s work the moment it’s uploaded, and rewriting by Amazon readers. Here’s some of the most confounding language:

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A Long Island screenwriter was slapped with a $15 million federal lawsuit for posting 20th Century Fox movie scripts on the Internet — including a major comic-book flick still in the works, court papers say. Patricia McIlvaine, of Mount Sinai, said she maintains a script database that she was using to help educate other screenwriters. Fox, owned by The Post’s parent company, News Corp., declined comment.

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*Murdoch, apparently not content with making an ass out of himself
with the doomed iPad “Daily” endeavor, is taking out his ire on
struggling screenwriters — suing them for online media fire
libraries.

Nice going, Murdoch, ya douche.

:::This day::: so clearly.

Thanksgiving in Hollywood. Circa 2006. I had places I could be. I wasn’t. I was almost Ground Zero Hollywood & Vine. Walking to the store for some forgotten item —

I remember cold. I remember abandoned pale concrete sidewalks. And I remember silent shadows in doorways. EVERY doorway. All the way down that pale concrete sidewalk. Unmoving. Alone. Forgotten. So still they did not appear human. Except they were. Human. And utterly silent. Unmoving. Uncomplaining about a present and future so bleak it injured me passing it.

When will we change this? When will we feed people? When will we care for people? When will the shame of seeing a fellow American alone, cold and hungry in a doorway on “Thanksgiving” not be enough?

where the art work comes from :
that is crucifiction by robert johnson
i am looking for a more current link

This is a sad, sad reflection on our times, when people must feed off the carcasses of beloved stories from their youths — just because they can’t think of an original idea of their own, like I did with my Avengers idea that I made up myself. 

Obviously I have strong, mixed emotions about something like this. My first reaction upon hearing who was writing it was, “Whit Stillman AND Wes Anderson? This is gonna be the most sardonically adorable movie EVER.” Apparently I was misinformed. Then I thought, “I’ll make a mint! This is worth more than all my Toy Story residuals combined!” Apparently I am seldom informed of anything. And possibly a little slow. But seriously, are vampires even popular any more? 

I always hoped that Buffy would live on even after my death. But, you know, AFTER. I don’t love the idea of my creation in other hands, but I’m also well aware that many more hands than mine went into making that show what it was. And there is no legal grounds for doing anything other than sighing audibly. I can’t wish people who are passionate about my little myth ill. I can, however, take this time to announce that I’m making a Batman movie. Because there’s a franchise that truly needs updating. So look for The Dark Knight Rises Way Earlier Than That Other One And Also More Cheaply And In Toronto, rebooting into a theater near you. 

Leave me to my pain! Sincerely, Joss Whedon.

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