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Free Screenwriting Software Celtx Updates to
Version 2.5.1

post from Filmmaker.com on 07 November 2009 04:19:32 AM. © Filmmaker.com

So a new version of the Celtx screenwriting/pre-production software has been released. Version 2.5 offers several new features, including "Revision Mode" which locks page numbers while you make edits, Text Lock Mode, a Sketch tool to add images to the project, Studio Collaboration which is an integrated text messaging service for Studio users, and new options for PDF formatting. Celtx is available for Mac, Linux, and Windows in over 30 languages at no cost.

Update 11/15/09: 2.5.1 Released. Bugs addressed:

1. Windows crashes when canceling add image dialog. If you cancel the add image dialog when adding an image using the media sidebar or a catalog form Celtx crashes. (Windows only)

2. Using Print Preview disables all subtabs. Once you have select print preview the subtabs are no longer responsive. You have to close and re-open the application to fix this problem. (Windows and Linux)

3. Windows registry not updated correctly for NEW Celtx installations. The windows installer doesn't correctly register the celtxs protocol for new installs. This would prevent first time Celtx user from installing addons and open projects from the studio. (Windows only)

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"Later on she brought more hot bologna, eggs and
gravy...and by now I wasn't quite so hard to please..."

post from Thrilling Days of Yesteryear on 07 November 2009 04:00:00 AM. © Thrilling Days of Yesteryear

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Twisted Pictures Feels SORROW

post from Rama's Screen on 07 November 2009 03:29:35 AM. © Rama's Screen

Happy Friday night! Got plenty of movies to watch this weekend but before I head out and get me some guilty pleasure, real quick now, according to shocktilyoudrop, the company that brought us SAW franchise, Twisted Pictures has bought the screen rights to and is developing a big screen version of the horror graphic novel [...]

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Joe Johnston Says We Are Due For JURASSIC PARK 4

post from Rama's Screen on 07 November 2009 03:15:52 AM. © Rama's Screen

I don’t know about you but The Lost World was one of the worst sequels that Steven Spielberg ever directed, all the movie did was add even more people that would be running away from the Dinosaurs and voila you had yourself a movie, and don’t even get me started on Jurassic Park 3. Once [...]

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New Moon Pics Bella and Edwards Evil Eyes

post from Shockya.com on 07 November 2009 03:12:46 AM. © Shockya.com

Here’s a few wicked new photos of Bella in the forest and Edward’s evil eyes from the upcoming film “The Twilight Saga: New Moon” based on the novel by Stephenie Meyer. New Moon stars Robert Pattinson (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix), Kristen Stewart (Adventureland, The Runaways), Nikki Reed (K-11), Ashley Greene (Skateland), Taylor Lautner, (My Own Worst Enemy), Jackson Rathbone (S. Darko) Dakota Fanning and Kellan Lutz.Click Here for more photos, news and videos from Twilight and New Moon.Movie Synopsis: After Bella recovers from the vampire attack that almost claimed her life, she looks to celebrate her birthday with Edward and his family. However, a minor [...]

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Keep Passing the Open Windows

post from Moon In The Gutter on 07 November 2009 02:52:00 AM. © Moon In The Gutter

Even though he was nearing sixty years old when he shot his adaptation of John Irving's The Hotel New Hampshire in the fall of 1983, Tony Richardson was still artistically at the top of his game with seemingly all of the energy in the world at his disposal. That Richardson had intended to make two films, instead of just the one, from Irving's material shows even clearer that this was a director truly firing on all cylinders in the last period of his remarkable career.
The British born Oscar winning Richardson is unquestionably one of the most important filmmakers who came out of the fifties. His finest works, including the likes of Look Back in Anger (1958), The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1962), Tom Jones (1963), The Loved One (1963), and a brave production of Hamlet (1969) show Richardson as a man of great intelligence and seemingly unending talent.
Starting with Ned Kelly in 1970, Richardson's productions seemed to lose their favor with the critical community that had embraced him in the sixties. This says more about the critics than Richardson though as films like A Delicate Balance (1973), Joseph Andrews (1977) and The Border (1982) are all really fascinating and valuable works. Often cited for his visual style, Richardson is not given enough credit for the performances he is able to bring out of his actors, and yet that is something that is apparent in all of his films. Watch, for example, the subtle and restrained work that Richardson draws out of a post The Shining Jack Nicholson in The Border to see this.

After the muted reception granted to The Border, Richardson began planning his double film adaption of one of Irving's most complex works. The Hotel New Hampshire, with its complex story lines, large cast of characters and near epic feel, was thought to be un-adaptable but Irving himself praised Richardson's original scripts as brilliant. Irving spoke in an interview about his admiration for Richardson and his excitement about the film with, "I've never felt as flattered as when Tony Richardson told me he wanted to make a movie of The Hotel New Hampshire, my fifth novel. I loved Tony Richardson's films. He had a range like no one else-- violent or austere one minute, wildly comic the next. The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner and The Loved One, Tom Jones and The Border. I had no doubt what Tony Richardson would do with The Hotel New Hampshire--a macabre comedy and a fairy tale, not half as realistic as The World According to Garp. Tony didn't even pretend to be disappointed when I told him I didn't want to write the screenplay; he wanted to write it himself, which he did."

Unfortunately the studio finally balked at the two picture concept and forced Richardson to make just one film. Refusing to lose too much of Irving's witty original, Richardson created a final 110 minute work that is simultaneously brilliant, flawed, frustrating and inspiring. Had he been allowed to do what he originally planned, I believe the two part The Hotel New Hampshire would have been one of Tony Richardson's great works. As it is, it is one of his most imperfect but still overwhelmingly passionate films.

The Hotel New Hampshire, a work centered on the very dysfunctional Berry family, features one of the greatest ensemble casts of the eighties. The core of the film belongs to a really wonderful Jodie Foster as the brilliant but troubled Frannie Berry, a handsome (and I think quite good) Rob Lowe as her brother John, and Beau Bridges as their ambitious dreamer of a father, Win. Also as part of the family are Paul McCrane, Lisa Banes, Jennifer Dundas and a young Seth Green. Throughout the film we meet a large variety of supporting players including most notably Wallace Shawn as a Mr. Freud and Nastassja Kinski as the paralyzingly insecure Susie The Bear.

Working with talented cinematographer David Watkin, Tony Richardson made the epic feeling The Hotel New Hampshire on a relatively small budget in Canada in that chilly fall of 1983. Things seemed troubled from the start as Richardson not only had to deal with merging two films into one, but he was also forced into shooting in some locations he didn't intend to use. On top of those setbacks, he lost the corporation of the band he wanted to score part of the film, namely Queen (Whose "Keep Passing the Open Windows" was to play a key role in the film).

Everything seemed to work against Richardson, his crew and cast but they all persevered on. Many bonds were formed, including a close friendship between Jodie Foster and Nastassja Kinski, and some were broken but Richardson delivered his film on time, and it was set to go in the early part of 1984.

The Hotel New Hampshire is a slightly off putting film at first, as such it demands reviewing to truly fall under its spell. Certainly some of the subject matter, from rape to incest, is tricky to handle at best, but Richardson's film by design becomes more and more defined the more you watch it. With this in mind, it is easy to see why so many critics savaged it back in 1984 when it hit theaters.

The film is an absolute beauty to look at. Watkin's lovely photography is consistent throughout, and I can't imagine too many people having problems with that aspect of it. The much missed Kent born cinematographer David Watkin is among the most important directors of photography in British Cinema history. He has lensed an astonishing number of wildly diverse and legendary films such as Help, The Knack...and How to Get It, The Devils and Out of Africa. Born in 1925, the Oscar winning Watkin initially got his start working as a cameraman in many British documentaries and commercials. A fateful meeting with director Richard Lester would change everything for him and he was hired for Lester's wonderful The Knack...and How to Get It.

Noted for his innovative work with lighting, Watkin always demonstrated that he can shoot any kind of film in seemingly any kind of condition. Chief among my his finest films that he shot are Ken Russell's The Devils and The Boy Friend. The Boy Friend stands as one of the great examples of how well Watkin can use color while The Devils is perhaps one of the ultimate examples of how light should be used in a film.

The Hotel New Hampshire marked the second time that Watkin had shot Nasatassja Kinski, with the first being 1976's To The Devil a Daughter. Watkin's work on To the Devil a Daughter is quite striking and among its most obvious highlights. Much like Robby Muller he seems to have an inherent understanding of how much power Kinski's face could project, and he photographs her wonderfully in both To the Devil a Daughter and The Hotel New Hampshire.

Watkin's work on Tony Richardson's The Hotel New Hampshire features some of the lushest and purest photography of his life. Speaking from a total layman's point of view when it comes to the art of photography, there is just something really warm about his work with Richardson. Kinski's Susie The Bear is one of her great roles and she is photographed wonderfully in the film, with Watkin's understated style helping to bring out all of the vulnerability, doubt and finally emerging self confidence that Kinski projects.

Watkin would go onto to shoot many films throughout the late eighties and nineties but unfortunately he never worked with Kinski or Richardson again. He shot some lovely underrated films in the nineties including Jane Eyre but he will undoubtedly be most remembered for his work in the sixties and seventies with directors like Lester and Russell. His last film according to IMDB was the little seen Kirsten Dunst feature, All Forgotten. Ironic title for his final film considering the term 'forgotten' will never be used in describing the incredible career of David Watkin.

Back to The Hotel New Hampshire, Richardson's direction has been called erratic here, but I think it is more a case of him embracing once again all of the power and invention that so defined his greatest years in the sixties. Like a free-form jazz musician playing with time signatures and bending notes into something near alien, Richardson's direction of The Hotel New Hampshire is fresh, inventive, purposely sloppy at times, and never dull. It is the penultimate, near great, theatrical work by a very talented filmmaker, and it didn't deserve the savaging it got back in 1984.

The cast of The Hotel New Hampshire is indeed quite extraordinary. Jodie Foster was at a weird transition point in her career but you can already see her developing into America's best actress. She is saucy, sad, funny, and very human in the part of Frannie. I like Rob Lowe a lot here too. He is forced to play kind of the calm at the center of a very electric storm, and his work is very centered and very solid. The likes of Beau Bridges, Wallace Shawn, Matthew Modine, and Anita Morris seem incapable of giving weak performances and that is no different here, as they are all splendid.

The casting of Kinski in the role of Susie The Bear was much talked about, and it remains the most controversial of the film. In the book, the character was short, homely, and dirty. It was easy to see why she would be so insecure as to wear a bear suit to disguise her ugliness...but Nastassja Kinski? Why would Tony Richardson cast one of the most beautiful women in cinematic history in this part?

What could be more devastatingly sad and tragic, than an unquestionably beautiful person so wrapped up with inner turmoil, self doubt and insecurities that she literally hides herself from the world behind a mask? Richardson had the idea that someone who was completely wrong about themselves would be much more effective than someone who was right. Susie The Bear in Richardson's film doesn't hide herself because she is ugly, she hides herself because she thinks she is ugly. There is a big, and profound, difference there. Kinski is asked to do the impossible here, namely to make you believe that she thinks she is so hideous that she should hide inside a bear costume. Kinski delivers on this completely, and gives the most fragile but cutting work of her career. The role had a big impact on Kinski and she would tell The Washington Post that, "...it touched something deep...What is reality and what Susie sees about herself are two different things. Something melts inside Susie so she can take off the bear suit. This happened to me. There is a beauty about myself that I never saw, or I rejected, until recently."

The film had few supporters at the studio but John Irving admitted that, "I liked the movie nonetheless. Tony's interpretation of the novel as sexual cancan is a much more suitable translation of my sense of humor than Steve Tesich's dialogue in The World According to Garp. But, to most audiences, The Hotel New Hampshire was not nearly as successful a film as Garp. Only in some countries in Europe was it more popular, which may have been the result of Hotel being more popular in parts of Europe as a book, too--I mean more popular than Garp."

Many critics had there knives sharpened and out for Richardson and his young cast. Frankly the little respect I had left for critics like Vincent Canby and Rex Reed has vanished completely after reading their incredible rude and sexist comments concerning Jodie Foster's appearance in The Hotel New Hampshire. Canby wrote, "she had better watch those malteds between classes at Yale" while Rex Reed added, "Foster is pasty, pudgy and too asexual to attract gnats". Way to review the film at hand you self absorbed twits.

The film's mixed reception saw mild praise coming from the likes of Shelia Benson, Richard Combs and John Coleman and absolute hatred from the likes of David Denby and Andrew Sarris, who wrote in The Village Voice: ""A funny thing happened on my way to reviewing The Hotel New Hampshire, I encountered some people who actually liked it! Why would, how could, anyone enjoy this botched mess, this shambles of a movie? Kinski, for once pleasantly at home in a wildly disorganized circus in which she does not have to labor in vain to make sense as a character...I would have had serious problems with The Hotel New Hampshire even if it had been a better movie...the wrong reasons for liking it (are) cultural snobbery, generational complacency, moral flabbiness, and the nihilism of convenience."

The Hotel New Hampshire opened up in the spring of 84 and disappeared soon after. The film is currently available on a sharp looking Widescreen DVD, with only the trailer as an extra. It is a rewarding if, at times, gloriously frustrating experience that gets better and better with each viewing. The great Tony Richardson would complete just one more theatrical picture in his life, the Jessica Lange film Blue Sky, before passing away in the early nineties. While The Hotel New Hampshire isn't one of his greatest films, it is one of his most heartfelt and inventive. It occupies its own very special place in Richardson's important filmography...needless to say, it deserves another look.

***I cobbled this piece together from several older ones at Nostalgia Kinky.***

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2012 Movie Clip Do I Look Scared

post from Shockya.com on 07 November 2009 02:38:23 AM. © Shockya.com

Sony Pictures just released this new clip “Do I Look Scared” featuring John Cusack in the upcoming film “2012″ by director Roland Emmerich (All Quiet on the Western Front, Fantastic Voyage) and starring Thandie Newton (W.), John Cusack (Stopping Power, 1408), Amanda Peet and Danny Glover as President Wilson.Click Here for more photos, news and videos from 2012.Synopsis: Disaster movie maven Roland Emmerich (Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow) crafts this apocalyptic sci-fi thriller following an academic researcher who opens a portal into a parallel universe, making contact with his double in an effort to prevent the catastrophic prophecies of the ancient Mayan calendar from coming to pass. According to [...]

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George Clooney as Fantastic Mr Fox Featurette

post from Shockya.com on 07 November 2009 02:35:13 AM. © Shockya.com

Here’s a brand new featurette with George Clooney as Mr. Fox in the upcoming animated film “The Fantastic Mr. Fox” by director Wes Anderson (Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums) is based on the book by Roald Dahl. The film featuring the voices of George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, and Jason Schwartzman.Click Here to get the iPhone App now.Synopsis: “Boggis and Bunce and Bean, One short, one fat, one lean. These horrible crooks, so different in looks, were nonetheless equally mean.”Mr. Fox, Mrs. Fox, and all their fox babies live under a hill under a tree, along with Badger, Rabbit, Weasel, and all of their families. To make ends [...]

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Ladies and Gentlemen, A Word from Werner Herzog

WernerHerzogBadLieutenant

Werner Herzog is crazy and brilliant and German. He’s had a random and illustrious career which has taken him to South America, Bear Country, The End of the World and now lands him squarely in New Orleans. The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans – a remake that’s not a remake with a title that looks like it should either involve Martin Lawrence and John Cusack as buddy cops or be stamped on the front of a DVD in the dollar bin – already has buzz surrounding it because 1) Herzog has never seen the film his title borrows from and 2) there is some crazy shit in the trailer.

I was lucky enough to see the flick last week (to the break of dawn), and while a review is forthcoming, I thought I’d share some things that the esteemed director had to say on some of the more questionable elements.

Feel free to smoke from your lucky crack pipe either before, during, or after.

Or all three.

DIRECTOR WERNER HERZOG?S STATEMENT:

ON THE FILM?S TITLE AND SHOOTING IN NEW ORLEANS:

It does not bespeak great wisdom to call the film The Bad Lieutenant, and I only agreed to make the film after William (Billy) Finkelstein, the screenwriter, who had seen a film of the same name from the early nineties, had given me a solemn oath that this was not a remake at all. But the film industry has its own rationale, which in this case was the speculation of starting some sort of a franchise. I have no problem with this. Nevertheless, the pedantic branch of academia, the so called ?film-studies,? in its attempt to do damage to cinema, will be ecstatic to find a small reference to that earlier film here and there, though it will fail to do the same damage that academia ? in the name of literary theory ? has done to poetry, which it has pushed to the brink of extinction. Cinema, so far, is more robust. I call upon the theoreticians of cinema to go after this one. Go for it, losers.

What the producers accepted was my suggestion to make the title more specific?Port of Call: New Orleans, and now the film?s title combines both elements. Originally, the screenplay was written with New York as a backdrop, and again the rationale of the producers set in by moving it to New Orleans, since shooting there would mean a substantial tax benefit. It was a move I immediately welcomed. In New Orleans it was not only the levees that breeched, but it was civility itself: there was a highly visible breakdown of good citizenship and order. Looting was rampant, and quite a number of policemen did not report for duty; some of them took brand new Cadillacs from their abandoned dealerships and vanished onto dry ground in neighboring states. Less fancy cars disappeared only a few days later. This collapse of morality was matched by the neglect of the government in Washington, and it is hard to figure out whether this was just a form of stupidity or outright cynicism. I am deeply grateful that the police department in New Orleans had the magnanimity and calibre to support the shooting of the film without any reservation. They know ? as we all do ? that the overwhelming majority of their force performed in a way that deserves nothing but admiration.

ON FILM NOIR AND NICOLAS CAGE:

New Orleans. This was fertile ground to stage a film noir, or rather a new form of film noir where evil was not just the most natural occurrence. It was the bliss of evil which pervades everything in this film. Nicolas Cage followed me in this regard with blind faith. We had met only once at Francis Ford Coppola?s, his uncle?s, winery in Napa Valley almost three decades ago when Nicolas was an adolescent, and I was about to set out for the Peruvian jungle in order to move a ship over a mountain. Now, we wondered why and how we had eluded each other ever since, why we had never worked together, and it became instantly clear that we would do this film together, or neither one of us would do it. There was an urge in both of us to join forces.

Film noir always is a consequence of the Climate of Time; it needs a growing sense of insecurity, of depression. The literature of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett is a child of the Great Depression, with film noir as its sibling. I sensed something coming in the months leading up to the making of the film: a breakdown which was so obvious in New Orleans, and half a year before finances and the economy collapsed, the signs were written on the wall. Even films like Batman turned out to be much darker than anyone expected. What finally woke me up was a banality: when attempting to lease a car I was confronted by the dealership with the unpleasant news that my credit score was abysmal, and hence I had to pay a much higher monthly rate. Why is that, I asked ? I had always paid my bills, I had never owed money to anyone. That was exactly my problem: I had never borrowed money, had hardly ever used a credit card, and my bank account was not in the red. But the system punished you for not owing money, and rewarded those who did. I realized that the entire system was sick, that this could not go well, and I instantly withdrew money I had invested in stock of Lehman Brothers while a bank manager, ecstatic, with shuddering urgency, was trying to persuade me to buy even more of it.

ON THE SCREENPLAY:

As to the screenplay: it is William Finkelstein?s text, but as usual during my work as a director it kept shifting, demanding its own life, and I invented new scenes such as a new beginning and a new end, the iguanas, the ?dancing? soul (actually this is Finkelstein?s, who plays a very convincing gangster in the film), the childhood story of pirate?s treasure, and a spoon of sterling silver. I also deleted quite a number of scenes where the protagonist takes drugs, simply because I personally dislike the culture of drugs. Sometimes changes entered to everyone?s surprise. To give one example: Nicolas knew that sometimes after a scene was shot I would not shut down the camera if I sensed there was more to it, a gesture, an odd laughter, or an ?afterthought? from a man left alone with all the weight of a rolling camera, the lights, the sound recording, the expectant eyes of a crew upon him. I simply would not call ?cut? and leave him exposed and suspended under the pressure of the moment. He, the Bad Lieutenant, after restless deeds of evil, takes refuge in a cheap hotel room, and has an unexpected encounter with the former prisoner whom he had rescued from drowning in a flooded prison tract at the beginning of the film. The young man, now a waiter delivering room service, notices there is something wrong with the Lieutenant, and offers to get him out of there. I kept the camera rolling, but nothing more came from Nicolas. ?What, for Heaven?s sake, could I have added,? he asked. And without thinking for a second I said, ?Do fish have dreams?? We shot the scene once more with this line, and it looked good and strange and dark. But it required being anchored in yet an additional scene at the very end of the film, with both men, distant in dreams leaning against the glass of a huge aquarium where sharks and rays and large fish move slowly as if they indeed were caught in the dreams of a distant and incomprehensible world.

I love cinema for moments like this.

Editor’s Note: I do, too.

What do you think?

Clash of the Titans Medusa Poster

Here’s another awesome new poster for the upcoming film “Clash of the Titans” by director Louis Leterrier (The Incredible Hulk, Transporter 2) and starring Sam Worthington (Rogue, Avatar), Liam Neeson (The Red Circle, Five Minutes of Heaven), Ralph Fiennes (Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part II) and Gemma Arterton (Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, Quantum of Solace).Synopsis: Mikkelsen is playing Draco, a skilled fighter and leader of the Praetorian Guard that accompanies Perseus. Davalos is Andromeda, the captured princess, and Arterton is Io, who is instrumental in bringing the winged horse Pegasus to Perseus.Matt Manfredi and Phil Hay (Bug, Crazy/Beautiful, The [...]

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