Showrunners From Power, Veep, Louie & More at NYTF’s Creative Keynote Panel
Last night at the New York Television Festival creative keynote panel "Running the Show: A Big Picture Conversation on Creating for the Small Screen," Power showrunner Courtney Kemp Agboh expressed her frustration with gender politics in the entertainment industry.
“I’d like for it not to be a thing when there are a bunch of women showrunners,“ she said. “And also not for it to be pointed out all the time,
Talking to Julianne Moore & Ellen Page About Freeheld
Part love story, part evolution of reluctant activists, Freeheld represents a personal and professional turning point for producer/actress Ellen Page.
“It is pretty mind-blowing how much my internal journey went along with getting this movie made. I wasn’t out when I signed on to produce the film and play Stacie. I remember thinking, ‘there is no way you can make this movie and not be out. There’s just no way,’”
Watch Kathleen Kennedy Promise Female Director for Star Wars
Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy, one of the driving forces behind Star Wars: The Force Awakens, recently spoke at Fortune Magazine’s Powerful Women Summit. Among the topics she touched upon was how the majority of the people on her Star Wars executive team and in her story group are women. She also pointed out that of the two films already cast,
Kathleen Kennedy Reveals Star Wars: The Force Awakens Continues Skywalker Saga
Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy dropped a few very interesting tidbits in a recent interview with Costco Connection magazine about Star Wars: The Force Awakens. When George Lucas handpicked Kennedy to succeed him after the sale of Lucasfilm to The Walt Disney Company in 2012, Kennedy was stunned. “When George asked me I was completely unprepared and surprised because we had just gone out to have lunch together, I thought,”
“The Truth IS Still Out There” in this new The X-Files Trailer
The first 24-seconds of the trailer begins with a man’s voice in a low staccato rhythm, “It will probably start on a Friday. What will seem like an attack on America by terrorists or Russia, driven by a well oiled, well armed and multinational group of elites, using alien technology the government’s been hiding for seventy years.” If we heard nothing else but this, punctuated by a single base note, we could guess which dynamic duo is returning after an almost fourteen year absence –
Female Directors Shone at the Toronto International Film Festival
One of the surprises and highlights of this year’s Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) was the number of films about women and the number directed by women. Sure, most were small indies. But in an industry where only 1.9 percent of the 100 top-grossing fictional films distributed in the United States from 2007 to 2014 were directed by women, according to a report released in August by the University of Southern California, the news at TIFF was encouraging.
The Martian, Spotlight, Sicario, & Room Wow at TIFF
The Toronto International Film Festival is celebrating its 40th year with one of its most diverse and adventurous programming slates, from blockbusters to high-prestige, likely awards contenders to small films from directors from all parts of the globe.
Generating early buzz among the much-anticipated Hollywood films was The Martian, Ridley Scott’s adventure in space that had its world premiere at TIFF. Starring Matt Damon as an astronaut stranded on Mars while a dedicated ground crew (played by a cast including Jessica Chastain,
Post Apocalyptic Animated Comedy Cassius and Clay Will be Awesome
Have you ever watched Archer? If the answer is no, rectify this situation immediately. Comedy Central’s genius animated comedy, created by Adam Reed, is consistently hilarious. This animated spy thriller follows Sterling Archer (H. Jon Benjamin) and his often bloody, absurd exploits with his fellow operatives (which includes Chris Parnell, Aisha Tyler and Jessica Walter, the latter best known as Lucielle Bluth on Arrested Development).
Now Archer creator Adam Reed is teaming up with writer and executive producer Megan Ganz,
HBO Teases Westworld & Amy Schumer Live at the Apollo
It almost looks like a conventional western, which wouldn’t be a bad thing for HBO considering the last time they tackled the genre they gave us Deadwood. Only Westworld is hardly a proper western, as many of those cowboys and cowgirls aren’t actually human.
HBO dropped the teaser right before the True Detective finale last night, and it’s a creepy little number. Loosely based on the 1973 film written and directed by Michael Crichton,
Actress/Producer Miranda Bailey on The Diary of a Teenage Girl
As CEO of Cold Iron Pictures, Miranda Bailey believed strongly in Marielle Heller’s directorial debut, The Diary of a Teenage Girl, itself an adaptation of the critically acclaimed graphic novel by Phoebe Gloeckner. As a producer, Bailey had already proven herself to have a keen eye—she executive produced Noah Baumbach’s The Squid and the Whale, and more recently, Time out of Mind,
Comic-Con 2015: Star Wars: The Force Awakens Panel
There were a ton of major moments for film and TV fans at Comic-Con, but it's inarguable which panel was the most hotly anticipated. So fans got to properly freak out in Hall H when Star Wars:The Force Awakens director J.J. Abrams, producer and Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy and writer Lawrence Kasdan sat down to dish some dirt on the film, bringing the cast up on stage—Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Adam Driver, Oscar Isaac, Domhnall Gleeson,
This Sneak Peak at AMC’s Fear the Walking Dead Raises One Huge Question
AMC’s zombie ratings colossus, The Walking Dead, wrapped up arguably their best season to date this past March with their season five finale. So it was hardly surprising when word came they’d be expanding the franchise with Fear the Walking Dead, a companion series set in Los Angeles and featuring new storylines and characters.
So what have we gleaned from the feautrette AMC just released today?
Maya Forbes on her Highly Personal, Illuminating Infinitely Polar Bear
Behind the scenes, writer/director/producer Maya Forbes has helped directors and filmmakers tell a lot of stories, but in her directorial debut Infinitely Polar Bear, she’s telling her own.
Her new drama chronicles the eighteen months that Forbes and her sister lived with their bipolar father in Boston in the 1970s while their mother attended graduate school in New York. Although that period was sometimes tumultuous, it also gave her a lot of beautiful memories about her dad—
Dana Nachman on the Phenomenon of her Doc Batkid Begins
When Miles Scott told the Make-A-Wish Foundation that he wanted to be “the real Batman” no one could have predicted how epically his dream would be fulfilled. The documentary Batkid Begins, which premiered at this year’s Slamdance Film Festival, goes back to November 15, 2013, when, with the help of the Mayor, the Chief of Police and thousands of volunteers, San Francisco became Gotham City, to the delight of a five-year-old boy battling leukemia.
Battle of the Titans: Robert Gordon on William Buckley vs. Gore Vidal in Best of Enemies
Playing at the BAMcineamaFest in Brooklyn and AFI Docs in Los Angeles tonight, Magnolia Pictures' Best of Enemies is a riveting behind-the-scenes account of the explosive 1968 televised debates between liberal Gore Vidal and conservative William F. Buckley Jr., where these two intellectual heavyweights clobbered each other over their views about God, sex, and politics.
We spoke with co-director and producer Robert Gordon about how this film came to be,
Aligning Past, Present & Future in Terminator Genisys
Director Alan Taylor and writers Laeta Kalogridis and Patrick Lussier had a lot to juggle when they went to work on Terminator Genisys. With the four previous Terminator films and their corkscrewing stories, the filmmakers had to find a way to honor the universe the franchise has already built while setting off on their own, singular path. At what part of the saga of man's battle with machines would they pick up,
Meet the Crew That Worked on Both Jurassic Park & Jurassic World
Universal's new Jurassic World is being heralded as a proper folllow-up to Steven Spielberg's 1993 classic Jurassic Park, the film that raised the bar for what CGI could accomplish and blew the minds of kids and adults alike. When director Colin Trevorrow took the helm of Jurassic World, the first film in the franchise in 14-years, both he and executive producer Steven Spielberg wanted to recapture the magic of that first film.
Karl Bushby Attempts 36,000 Mile Trek in The Walk Around the World
Karl Bushby had two rules when he set out to walk an unbroken path around the world: No form of transport to advance, and he couldn’t go home, to Hull, England, until he arrived on foot.
He made this pact with himself nearly two decades ago, and Bushby's still walking. He's walked across 25 countries, over seven mountain ranges, from the southern tip of Argentina up through South and Central America,
Celebrating the 70th Anniversary of V-E Day Through Film
May 8th marks the 70th anniversary of Victory in Europe (V-E Day). For those fortunate enough to be spending this Friday in the Washington, DC, an event call "Arsenal of Democracy: World War II Victory Capitol Flyover" will feature more than 40 vintage WWII aircraft flying over our nation’s Capitol between noon and 1 p.m. The path will start along the Potomac River; turn left at the Lincoln Memorial to follow Independence Avenue along the Mall,
From Robert Mugabe to Ray Liotta – That’s a Wrap at the Tribeca Film Festival
New York took center stage in the opening and closing films of the 14th annual Tribeca Film Festival, however the winning films rounded things out with stories from much further afield.
The Saturday Night Live documentary Live From New York! kicked off the proceedings, demonstrating how the landmark comedy show has both responded to the times and occasionally had a hand in shaping them over the 40 years it’s been on air.
