James Cameron said that  computer generated images will allow 80 year old actors to play the action parts of their youth.

Sigh...

As Magnum PI was fond of saying in every golden episode, "I know what you're thinking. Why is this picture of Christina Hendrick's lovely bustline gracing a post about the Oscars?"

Just because.

No real surprises in the Oscar noms and you probably already know who is gonna win. Pool up at your office; that is, if you still have an office to go to.

2010 Sundance Film Festival Award Winners:

Grand Jury Prize, Dramatic:
Winter’s Bone, directed by Debra Granik (film page).

Grand Jury Prize, Documentary:
Restrepo, directed by Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington (film page).

World Cinema Jury Prize, Dramatic:
Animal Kingdom, written and directed by David Michôd (film page).

World Cinema Jury Prize, Documentary:
The Red Chapel (Det Røde Kapel), directed by Mads Brügger (film page).

Dramatic Audience Award:
happythankyoumoreplease, written and directed by Josh Radnor (film page).

Documentary Audience Award:
WAITING FOR SUPERMAN, directed by Davis Guggenheim (film page).

World Cinema Dramatic Audience Award:
Contracorriente (Undertow), written and directed by Javier Fuentes-Leõn (film page).

World Cinema Documentary Audience Award:
Wasteland, directed by Lucy Walker (film page).

The Best of NEXT:
Homewrecker, directed by Todd Barnes and Brad Barnes (film page).

Directing Award, Dramatic:
3 Backyards, directed and written by Eric Mendelsohn (film page)

Directing Award, Documentary:
Smash His Camera, directed by Leon Gast (film page)

World Cinema Directing Award, Dramatic:
Southern District directed and written by Juan Carlos Valdivia (film page).

World Cinema Directing Award, Documentary:
Space Tourists, directed by Christian Frei (film page).

Waldo Scott Screenwriting Award:
Winter’s Bone, written by Debra Granik and Anne Rosellini.  (film page).

World Cinema Screenwriting Award:
Southern District, written and directed by Juan Carlos Valdivia (film page).

Documentary Editing Award:
Joan Rivers—A Piece Of Work, edited by Penelope Falk

World Cinema Documentary Editing Award:
A Film Unfinished, edited by Joëlle Alexis (film page).

Excellence in Cinematography Award, Dramatic:
Obselidia Cinematographer: Zak Mulligan (film page). 

Excellence in Cinematography Award, Documentary:
The Oath Cinematographers: Kirsten Johnson and Laura Poitras (film page).

World Cinema Cinematography Award, Dramatic:
The Man Next Door (El Hombre de al Lado) Directors and cinematographers Mariano Cohn and Gastón Duprat (film page).

World Cinema Cinematography Award, Documentary:
His & Hers  Cinematographers: Kate McCullough and Michael Lavelle (film page).

Special Jury Prize: Dramatic:
Sympathy for Delicious, directed by Mark Ruffalo (film page).

Special Jury Prize: Documentary:
GASLAND, directed by Josh Fox (film page).

World Cinema Special Jury Prize: Documentary
Enemies of the People, directed by Rob Lemkin and Thet Sambath (film page).

Jury Prize in Short Filmmaking:
Drunk History: Douglass & Lincoln, directed by Jeremy Konner

Jury Prize in International Short Filmmaking:
The Six Dollar Fifty Man, directed by Mark Albiston and Louis Sutherland (New Zealand)

World Cinema Special Jury Prize: Dramatic for Breakout Performance:
Tatiana Maslany, for her role as a starry-eyed teenager in “Grown Up Movie Star.”

Honorable Mentions in Short Filmmaking:
Born Sweet, directed by Cynthia Wade (USA, Cambodia)
Can We Talk?, directed by Jim Owen (United Kingdom)
Dock Ellis & The LSD No-No, directed by James Blagden (USA)
How I Met Your Father, directed by Álex Montoya (Spain)
Quadrangle, directed by Amy Grappell (USA)
Rob and Valentyna in Scotland, directed by Eric Lynne (USA, United Kingdom)
Young Love, directed by Ariel Kleiman (Australia)

Alfred P. Sloan PrizeL
Obselidia, directed by Diane Bell

Sundance/NHK International Filmmakers Awards:
Amat Escalante, Heli (Mexico)
Andrey Zvyagintsev, Elena (Russia)
Daisuke Yamaoka, The Wonderful Lives at Asahigaoka (Japan)
Benh Zeitlin, Beasts of the Southern Wild (USA) (via Indiewire)

Conventional wisdom says have an aperitif before dinner, chat with the grand kids about boring topics, attend a charity event or two, maybe do a revival Q & A on one of your old, better movie roles, get to bed by ten pm, take your meds.

Unless you're Rip Torn that is. Then you get drunk and rob a bank. You gotta love this guy.

Some of you know we shot a short movie this past summer called Motel. We are nearing the end of post work but in the meantime, here are some shots that Eric snapped on location in Chinatown.

                 Look for info at the Sundance site

           BOOK"EM DANO!

Would you rather go to the Golden Globes or the Oscars? I would prefer the Globes for the laid-back booze factor where at least there is the spectre that somethig crazy could happen. The very funny Mr. Gervais is hosting this year so we can keep our fingers crossed. Maybe some surprises awards-wise but don't count on it.

These things are political you know...:)

Not to make light of Mr. Coleman's health problems, but I might suffer fuzziness too if I had to do full frontal for my latest flick. From Yahoo news: Diff'rent Strokes" actor Gary Coleman is in a Los Angeles hospital after suffering what he believes was a slight seizure. Coleman's agent, Robert Malcolm, says the 41-year-old actor was taken by ambulance to a hospital shortly after 8 a.m. Wednesday after he began feeling "fuzzy" and vomited while resting at a hotel.

Malcolm says Coleman was in town to meet with producers of his latest film about removing a brief scene of frontal nudity that Coleman says was unauthorized. The meeting was rescheduled for Thursday

Indiewood might be a better moniker here than Indie but at any rate, here they are via the wonderful compilers at Indiewire.

Top Grossing Independent Films of the 2000s

1. The Passion of the Christ, 2004 (Newmarket)  $370,274,604
2. My Big Fat Greek Wedding, 2003 (IFC Films)  $241,438,208
3. Juno, 2007 (Fox Searchlight)  $143,395,265
4. Slumdog Millionaire, 2008 (Fox Searchlight)  $141,319,928
5. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, 2000 (Sony Pictures Classics) $128,078,872
6. Traffic, 2000 (USA) $124,115,725
7. Fahrenheit 9/11, 2004 (Lionsgate) $119,194,771
8. Paranormal Activity, 2009 (Paramount)  $107,753,000
9. Brokeback Mountain, 2005 (Focus Features)  $83,043,761
10. March of the Penguins, 2005 (Warner Independent) $77,437,223
11. Coraline, 2009 (Focus Features)  $75,286,229
12. Sideways, 2004 (Fox Searchlight)  $71,503,593
13. Burn After Reading, 2008 (Focus Features)  $60,355,347
14. Little Miss Sunshine, 2006 (Fox Searchlight)  $59,891,098
15. Crash, 2005 (Lionsgate) $54,580,300
16. Atonement, 2007 (Focus Features) $50,927,067
17. 28 Days Later, 2003 (Fox Searchlight)  $45,064,915
18. Lost In Translation, 2003 (Focus Features)  $44,585,453
19. Napoleon Dynamite, 2004 (Fox Searchlight)  $44,540,956
20. Precious: Based on the novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire, 2009 (Lionsgate)  $42,432,006

Paramount is putting one million in the pot in a move designed to place between 10 and 20 projects in development by the end of next year, with no individual budget topping $100,000.

Paramount Film Group prexy Adam Goodman, promoted to the slot in June, cooked up the plan in the successful wake of "Paranormal," made for $15,000 and grossing more than $100 million domestically.

Goodman indicated the funds, which will come out of the studio's overall production budget, will be targeted at both unknowns and established filmmakers, with the goal of increasing the studio's ability to find new voices and ideas. In addition, the initiative's aimed at giving Paramount a more diverse portfolio of titles at a time when Hollywood's devoting most of its resources to megabudget pics, such as Par's "Transformers" and "Star Trek" franchises.

Excellent news.

How has indiewood fared so far in 2009? Well, see for yourself:

1. Paranormal Activity (Paramount) - $106,082,922
2. Precious (Lionsgate) - $21,277,521
3. Capitalism: A Love Story (Overture Films) - $14,266,331
4. A Serious Man (Focus Features) - $7,476,004
5. Coco Before Chanel (Sony Pictures Classics) - $5,288,153
6. Bright Star (Apparition) - $4,390,226
7. An Education (Sony Pictures Classics) - $4,268,905
8. Good Hair (Roadside Attractions) - $4,061,847
9. The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day (Apparition) - $3,552,730
10. New York, I Love You (Sony Pictures Classics) - $1,466,395

Via Indiewire.

Budd was the best Catholic never baptized; or perhaps that’s precisely why he was such a brilliant and courageous “mouthpiece” for Pete Corridan and the waterfront rebels. Corridan was a powerful speaker, but Karl Malden’s cinematic rendition of “Christ in the Shapeup”–a fiery address originally delivered by Corridan on the Jersey City waterfront in 1948–represents simply the finest moment in the representation of Catholic social justice teachings witnessed anywhere, at any time, in any medium. Budd had the gift and he shared it: the magnificent film is Budd’s, and that of his comrade Pete Corridan; this alone enshrines him as a towering figure of the century he nearly covered in his life and art. Budd wrote it best himself on the occasion of Pete Corridan’s death in early July 1984, a quarter century to the day preceding the recent death of their mutual friend Karl Malden: Ave Atque Vale Budd. Forget Charley Malloy for the moment; it was you Budd: you created this magnificent work, inspired by Pete. To borrow from what your friend Eddie Futch said to Joe Frazier on that night in Manilla when he stopped the fight with Ali before the bell sounded the fifteenth round: you will never be forgotten for what you created–with your amigo Elia Kazan–amid the wintry streets and wind-swept piers of Hoboken in that most memorable late autumn 1953.

 The Journal of Short Film released Volume 15 today. The JSF is a quarterly DVD that, to date, has published over 150 filmmakers from over a dozen countries.

Volume 15 includes a head-spinning variety of experimental, documentary, narrative, and animated work. The collection traverses territory from Guyana to Hiroshima and from young romance to gritty survival.Here is the complete list:

She was always my Dad's favorite. He loved his coffee cup with her picture on it more than his cigarrettes and the coffee inside of it. She was not a bad actress, was capable of good performances. Bon Voyage.

Clint Eastwood's new film is named after Henley's 1875 poem.

Would you buy a collection of short stories from the gentleman on the left? Before you start snorting, keep in mind that James Franco is studying hard to become a writer and at the very least deserves a chance to get critically basted like the rest.

Chris Heath spoke with him about his writing ambitions

When I ask him what he is proud of that he has done so far, he seems incredulous that I might mean any of his movies and instead offers, “I got a poetry honorable mention at UCLA,” but when I try to ask him more about the poetry, he seems to shiver a little and is unwilling to elaborate. He knows how these things can seem. “It just sounds like, ‘Oh, the actor’s doing poetry,’ ” he demurs. “In that sense, it seems ridiculous to me. But I’m taking it as seriously as I can. I’m not calling up some café and saying, ‘Hey! I’m James Franco, I’m going to read the poetry I wrote about my motorcycle.’ I mean, I’m working with real poets. I’m doing it in as serious a way as I can.”

Hmm, while it could go in the direction of Ethan Hawke or Madonna, the stories might turn out to be pretty good as well. I'm sure he will have no problem selling them at any rate.

Somewhere in between newspapers and television, there was radio. And for a country kid with religious parents who did not allow television, radio was my second source of storytelling. The first was, and still is, books. Movies would come much later when I was old enough to rebel against the tyranny of Backwoods Baptists. When my eyes could take no more printed words however, many of them stolen from forbidden books on hot summer nights down South, I would turn to Paul Harvey to hear the news and "The Rest of the Story" on AM radio

To this day, Backwoods Baptists allow AM radio and I don't think they ever took issue with the editorial content of Paul's unique brand of storytelling. I now have a bound copy and a few recordings of Paul's broadcasts to remind me of some of the better times of me childhood.

Goodbye Mr Harvey. I hope we never hear the end of your story.

Indie Writer/Director Alex Ferrari (BROKEN, Red Princess Blues) has been featured in the current issue of MovieMaker Magazine. He has been working on bringing his latest project Red Princess Blues to the big screen for sometime now.Check out the trailer and learn more about what Alex and his team are doing to raise financing by developing the project in various platforms.

http://www.redprincessblues.com/rpb_video_game.html

Sujewa is a guest on The Obenson Report podcast tonight (show is hosted by one of the bloggers featured in the doc - Tambay Obenson) - starts at 8 PM (i\'ll be on at 8:40 PM). Will be discussing the doc, the upcoming 2/17 nyc premiere, other distribution plans, etc. Check it out if you get a chance: http://obensonreport.blogspot.com/2009/02/podcast-attention-attention.html Highly reccomended to DIY filmmakers everywhere. Sujewa has been a tireless DIY-fer for quiet awhile now and has some good info to share.

Oh, by the way the Grammys were last night and I think Carrie Underwood won a few...yawn.