Two Weeks To Go

Barely a smidge over 2 weeks from tomorrow is September 15th. Why is this date important, you ask? It is the date that the schedule of films to be shown at the Mill Valley Film Festival will be announced.

This may or may not be beneficial to Thomas Productions, but it certainly can be! The MVFF has the chance of being the first "adult-level" film festival one of our projects has ever placed in. We have earned status with the National Children's Film Festival before, but that obviously was during the K-12 era.

Whether or not the hope rings true, the festival still permitted another entry into IMDb.com, and also initiated contact with Michael Neverisky for music rights. This festival is noncompetitive, so if At the Core shows up anywhere in the schedule, then it's worth a yipee!

More Site Swappage

While not 100% of this article regards Thomas Productions, enough of it does to talk about it here. The Checkoff List, which is linked to from this very index, is being moved from the 2nd site (jimthzz.bingodisk.com/public) to the 3rd site (directorg.uuuq.com) because the 2nd is becoming more and more difficult to transfer files to without needing to force quit and/or restart the computer!!

Okay, now that my rant is over, I'm merely announcing that the Thomas Productions Checkoff List, which lists oft-updated plans about the goings on regarding our movies and web pages (and also includes additional YouTube postings that may or may not be for Thomas Productions), is now hosted at directorG.uuuq.com/temp/checkoff.html.

Generally speaking, the only true remaining part of the site at the 2nd site address is GPicturama. Due to site space needs, it must stay there for the time being.

400 Views, Pt. 2

At around this time a year ago (on August 19th, in fact), 400 was the highest quantity of views at YouTube any of the movie postings from Thomas Productions had received, and that honor belonged to Part 1 of The Dog of Pompeii. Now, a year later, the bar has been raised!

Scenes from Being John Malkovich currently stands with 3,566 views, holding the new top spot by a long shot. From there downward to 400 views, for a total of 7 full movies above the initial bar, is Part 1 of The Dog of Pompeii (2,592 views), Part 2 of The Dog of Pompeii (958 views), The Last Kiss (669 views), My Teachers Are Aliens (657 views), Lipstick on a Pig? Actually... (515 views), Tons of Sugar Cereal Commercial (425 views), and Photagrizzly Man (420 views).

There are still more that are close to achieving that quantity, with and The King Who Rained and Abrupt being the next closest, with 369 and 358 views, respectively. This is now a comparison year to year; where will we be in 2010?

Telescopic

For the latest GPicturama posting (today's), there is some nature photography that was shot through a telescope!

Not much else to say here... Check it out!

New Prez

No, I'm not talking about Obama this time... Actually, I'm referring to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (the Oscar giver-outers)! For the past 4 years, Sid Ganis held the title of President of that organization. As of yesterday, however, that title has been transitioned over to a new person: Tom Sherak.

Tom Hanks was elected as 1st Vice President, too, and other elected positions went to such names as Kathleen Kennedy and John Lasseter. I recognized all names but the new top dog, which means he must be a behind-the-scenes guy.

Sid Ganis was still responsible for creating the return of 10 Best Picture Nominees... Guess he won't still be in charge when it happens.

Brave New Film

{There are basically 3 topics in this post, so I'll try not to be too verbose.}

It all starts with Brave New World (2002), which I still am unclear as to why it has never been mentioned before in this News Blog. I have always been rather fond of Aldus Huxley's book, and when I first was told to read it back in high school, my class group got to turn it into a movie. We had to be appropriate and all, of course, and we had some portions be live theater, but for the most part, it worked.

But then, as I've mentioned at least once before in these posts, the rolling blackouts of 2003 destroyed my digital masters of anything prior. For Brave New World, though, my only VHS had already been handed off to the teacher, who apparently destroys student work after 6 months. Sad day, for sure.

HOWEVER, in the past two weeks, I have magically come upon a set of old Hi8 mm tapes, at least one of which is labeled as footage for Brave New World! I might review it soon, and give it the go ahead to reedit what I can of the film so that SOMETHING of the project can be posted on YouTube.

I bother to mention this at all because of a news story I read yesterday that just happened to be about an upcoming film of this book! It would star Leonardo DiCaprio, and be directed by Ridley Scott. There may have been prior TV Movie kinda versions before, but never a film. Exciting!

We filmed most of it in San Carlos, which is a stretch for the remaining topic: Kathryn Bigelow. Her latest brave new film, The Hurt Locker, continues to earn critical raves, and I simply had to put her interview from The Colbert Report for all to see.

Nailed It

This blog post takes a side course by talking about the latest upcoming version of "Siskel & Ebert". It's been over a decade since Gene Siskel has sadly passed, and Roger Ebert's been off the air for more than two years due to the results of a poor medical procedure. However, their supposed permanent replacements, Ben and Ben, have ranked nowhere close in comparison, and their platitudes can make one cringe.

Now for the good news: They are soon being replaced again! Critics A.O. Scott and Michael Phillips, who each took turns in Ebert's open seat while Richard Roeper was his sidekick, always sounded spot on in giving detailed, honest movie reviews, praising or scathing when necessary. They've nailed it before; here's to them nailing it again!

Change Has Come

Not to sound too corny by exploiting President Obama's birthday in the title (which is tomorrow, btw), but I've been further exploring the capabilities of Dreamweaver lately, due to other projects than those of Thomas Productions.

As such, I was able to remove A LOT OF code from the stills pages I experimented on, and even made the code more sensical (i.e. not just random numbers and letters). Now, this has been done for Fat is Not a Four Letter Word (for which the CurrentTV clip dimensions were fixed as well), VFX for The Perfect Lie, Whodunit, The 8th Grade Legacy Project, and The Dog of Pompeii. It will be added to more in time.