“Economics and School - New York Times” plus 3 more |
- Economics and School - New York Times
- Brainstorm Media Launches SOMETHING TO TALK ABOUT - TMCnet
- The future of the movies is wearing 3-D glasses - MSNBC
- One-of-a-Kind, Student-Produced Film Festival Merges Filmmaking and ... - TMCnet
Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.
Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.
| Economics and School - New York Times Posted: 11 Feb 2010 08:29 PM PST Message from fivefilters.org: If you can, please donate to the full-text RSS service so we can continue developing it. Below are excerpts from some of the most provocative posts on The New York Times Bay Area blog this week: SUPPLY-SIDE SAN FRANCISCO In recent weeks Mayor Gavin Newsom's staff has been aggressively pitching the liberal wing of the Board of Supervisors its version of supply-side economics, the free-market, business-friendly policies most often associated with — whisper it softly around these parts — the Reagan era. Back in January, the mayor proposed three tax-exemption measures for businesses in his State of the City speech. The most contested caps payroll tax levels for two years, to encourage businesses to hire. Ted Egan, the city economist, said in a study that the tax break would create 1,430 new jobs in 2010 and 2,900 new jobs in 2011. But when San Francisco is straining to close the half-billion-dollar budget deficit, the policy would also cost roughly $72 million in forgone tax revenue over two years. Supervisor John Avalos, the head of the board's budget committee, has not yet set a vote on the measure. GERRY SHIH SCHOOL CHARTER EXTENSION The FAME charter school in Fremont appears to be heading toward a five-year renewal of its charter in March. The Alameda County Board of Education voted unanimously Tuesday to continue offering its support. The school has been the subject of controversy since a state audit uncovered questionable financial practices and the Fremont Unified School District voiced its opposition to the renewal of the school charter. A vocal opponent of FAME on the Board of Education, Yvonne Cerrato, was not present. The board appeared to move past some of the concerns voiced by Fremont officials, as several board members and officials — including the Alameda County official in charge of the FAME investigation, Carlene Naylor, an associate superintendent — sounded firmly in support of the school. The school must meet several conditions by March 1. These include discontinuing the practice of taking high-fee, high-interest short-term loans from either relatives of the director or the school's board members. GERRY SHIH COMPUTER SCIENCE CHEATING On the first day of his "Computer Science 106A: Program Methodology" course at Stanford University in January, the professor, Eric Roberts, told his students: Cheat, and you will be caught. And if you are caught cheating, your classmates will suffer. More weight will be given to the final exam when calculating grades. These are not idle threats in a department where it may be easy to cheat — but just as easy to detect cheating. Jay de la Torre, a senior, was caught and has been suspended this quarter as part of his punishment. Mr. de la Torre was taking the computer science class for a second time in his junior year when he cheated. He resigned from his position as student body vice president in November. "I wasn't even thinking of how it easy it would for me to be caught," he said. In retrospect, "it didn't allow me to show what I was capable of." He added, "It caused me to question myself as a person." Historically, the computer science department accounts for 20 percent to 60 percent of honor code cases. RYAN MAC Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. | |
| Brainstorm Media Launches SOMETHING TO TALK ABOUT - TMCnet Posted: 11 Feb 2010 08:44 PM PST Message from fivefilters.org: If you can, please donate to the full-text RSS service so we can continue developing it. |
LOS ANGELES, Feb 11, 2010 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ -- Meyer Shwarzstein, President of Brainstorm Media, today announced that the company is launching SOMETHING TO TALK ABOUT (www.IndieDocs.net), a new model for distributing documentaries. Attention from the theatrical exhibition is meant to generate awareness and conversation, and the availability of the films via Video on Demand will allow that conversation to be conducted in living rooms across the country. After the screenings, filmmakers, speakers and personalities will engage with the audience and be available for a Q & A. Those discussions will be filmed and distributed via the SOMETHING TO TALK ABOUT social network (http://something2talk.ning.com/), where people will be encouraged to continue to their dialogue and connections. Non-profits will also be involved with the events and the movies. "Docs are great tools to raise money and awareness for non-profits," says Brainstorm Media president, Meyer Shwarzstein. "Movies make ideas accessible. We're not talking about documentaries that require a master's degree to watch; these movies convey a feeling, they portray people who are inspiring. It's great to work with this group of filmmakers. They're just as dedicated as their subjects." The first movie to be released under the SOMETHING TO TALK ABOUT banner is Terry Bradshaw Presents Hurricane Season: Walking on Dead Fish, a compelling and touching film about a small-town high school football team forced to adopt players from twenty rival high schools after their schools were destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. Hurricane Season will be presented in association with the Katrina Wildcat Scholarship Fund, a non-profit started by the filmmaker to raise money for college scholarships. "I'm honored to be the first film in this incredible field of documentaries," says filmmaker . "SOMETHING TO TALK ABOUT is a great platform for filmmakers like myself to get the film out, get the word out, and to reach new audiences." Coming in March and April are two documentaries that encourage people to "grow your own". Food Fight, the story of the birth of the local food movement, features famous foodies; Alice Waters, Wolfgang Puck, Michael Pollan, Marion Nestle, and Suzanne Goin. Revolution Green has changed people's minds about bio-diesel. Narrated by Woody Harrelson, it tells the story of mavericks Bob and Kelly King and features biodiesel supporter Willie Nelson. SOMETHING TO TALK ABOUT will be launched at the landmark Majestic Crest Theater in Los Angeles. "The Crest is a historic, lavish theatre and really takes you back in time to a day where seeing a movie was not just an ordinary experience, but an event," noted owner Robert Bucksbaum. "We feel that this is a great partnership that will inform and inspire audiences and enhance the cinematic diversity of what we offer." To bring the films to the broadest possible audience, Brainstorm will make the movies available via Video on Demand on a day-and-date basis. The major VOD providers have agreed to support the program, whether they connect to the home via cable, telephone, satellite or the Internet. SOMETHING TO TALK ABOUT will also be available to schools, churches and other organizations. Loyola Productions has signed on to market educational DVD's to Catholic schools, universities and parishes. Father Eddie Siebert, President of Loyola says, "LPI is thrilled to be working with the team at Brainstorm Media, bringing these informative and entertaining documentaries to a wider audience. Our goal as a media company is to tell stories that matter, and that's what SOMETHING TO TALK ABOUT will do!" "SOMETHING TO TALK ABOUT is like a book club, but without the book or the club," says Shwarzstein. "Buy a ticket and all you need to bring is your opinion." "It's amazing how many good films are out there. I'm grateful to people like Peter Broderick who've brought them to my attention," Shwarzstein continued. "SOMETHING TO TALK ABOUT is an innovative way to brand quality documentaries and make them available across the full spectrum of distribution," said independent film guru Peter Broderick. "Meyer combines decades of experience in television distribution with a passion for exceptional independent films and real excitement about new ways to bring them into the world." About the films: Franklin Martin's Hurricane Season is a heart-felt documentary about a small-town high school football team forced to adopt players from 20 rival high schools after their schools are destroyed by the powerful floods of Katrina. The unlikely teammates learn to put their differences aside to become a team. In doing so they uplift the spirit of a broken community. Chris Taylor's Food Fight looks at how American agricultural policy and food culture developed in the 20th century, and how mavericks in California rebelled against big agribusiness to launch the local organic food movement. Stephen Strout's Revolution Green profiles Bob and Kelly King, who pioneered a waste-to-energy process that created America's first retail biodiesel pump and refinery. Their work inspired Willie Nelson and, together, they are bringing their ideas and the technology to the countryside...and to the big cities. Brainstorm Media Founded in 1995, Brainstorm Media is the largest independent aggregator of feature films for Video on Demand and television in the United States. The company manages a library of hundreds of movies and its clients have included Lions Gate, Blockbuster, BMG, The Samuel Goldwyn Company, and Magnolia Pictures. The company also develops and produces feature films, documentaries and series. Loyola Productions Loyola Productions, Incorporated (LPI), is a nonprofit creative media company that builds on the 450-year-old Jesuit tradition of effective involvement in the communication arts. LPI's mainstream films and TV series grapple with real-world issues, always focusing on the most compelling human stories - stories that entertain while touching minds and hearts. LPI's award-winning documentaries, promotional films and instructional videos reflect the Jesuit commitment to education and social justice.
SOURCE Brainstorm Media
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| The future of the movies is wearing 3-D glasses - MSNBC Posted: 11 Feb 2010 06:56 PM PST Message from fivefilters.org: If you can, please donate to the full-text RSS service so we can continue developing it. When asked when 3-D with motion capture technology will become the prevailing format for moviegoers, David Edelstein of New York magazine replied, "Not this year, not the following year, but maybe 2012, right before the world ends. Maybe the coming of 3-D is the Mayan prophecy." He was pulling our legs, of course. He doesn't really think the world will end in 2012, because if that were the prevailing opinion among movie people, they'd be selling advanced reserve tickets for "Avatar III." And 3-D has made cameos in the industry over the years before James Cameron dusted off the concept and recharged it with "Avatar." But motion capture has altered the landscape while providing some incredibly creative people with new toys to play with. "What I hope it means is that filmmakers now will be able to tell stories that they weren't previously able to tell," said producer Jon Landau, who shared a Best Picture Oscar with Cameron on "Titanic" in 1998 and worked in the same capacity on "Avatar." "There have been great stories in the minds of filmmakers and in the pages of literature that technology before was not able to find a way to tell," Landau said, "Hopefully this will be a step in the process." Those who have seen "Avatar" know the basics of motion capture technology. It's a process by which cameras and computers are able to mirror a human actor's every nuance and transform the captured images into a digital reproduction. So where do we go from here, short of the Mayan doomsday prophecy? Actors must adapt But that doesn't mean more actors on the unemployment line, he said. "Everybody's profession in the movie industry is changing," he explained. "Being adaptable is important for actors, just like cinematographers, set designers, and most importantly, directors. Actors are not threatened at all. Performance capture allows the actors to directly drive the digital character." Motion capture technology is wondrous, but the process is relatively cumbersome compared to what it will be someday when costs come down and the technology becomes more streamlined. "Lighting, texture, shape, motion of whatever you're filming will merge in the future," said Demien Gordon, chairman of the board of directors of the Motion Capture Society and a pioneer in the field. "Ultimately one day it will all be done with a three-dimensionalized film camera. Right now, filmmakers do each process separately. Eventually, it will all be done with one pass." In order for 3-D to become a widespread phenomenon across the country, more theaters will have to have the proper equipment. "Right now the industry is handicapped by the 24 frames-per-second frame rate," Landau noted. "Someone came up with that arbitrary figure a hundred years ago. That's not the frame rate that human vision sees. It would be great to have in-theater projection that has 48 frames or 60 frames per second. It's feasible. We're already putting in digital projectors that are capable of doing that." 3-D is the future George Lucas' Industrial Light & Magic digitally recreated 100 percent of Michael Bay's "Transformers 2," much of it done with motion capture, and were able to manipulate the images in the computer so that the original footage was no longer needed, Gordon explained. "All the big-ticket effects houses have similar bags of tricks now," he said. But how will motion capture and 3D alter the movie-going habits of average folks? It's a little too soon to tell. "In the 1950s, when television first came out and audiences stayed home rather than go to the movies, Hollywood needed to show something on the big screen that audiences couldn't get on the small screen," Edelstein said. "Now our culture is more and more private, with DVD, instant downloads, even movies that are available on video that are simultaneously opening in theaters. Once again Hollywood is in a position to make the most money with event movies. "With 'Avatar,' you get something you can't get at home, you're immersed in a huge new universe. What the technology is saying is that we're one step closer to virtual reality." Then there's the downside. "My fear is that it will become the only kind of movie that studios spend money on," Edelstein said. That is a completely different doomsday prophecy. For now, at least, when Hollywood looks to the future, it will probably be wearing 3-D glasses. Michael Ventre is a frequent contributor to msnbc.com. He lives in Los Angeles. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. | |
| One-of-a-Kind, Student-Produced Film Festival Merges Filmmaking and ... - TMCnet Posted: 11 Feb 2010 08:44 PM PST Message from fivefilters.org: If you can, please donate to the full-text RSS service so we can continue developing it. |
LOS ANGELES --(Business Wire)-- The current economic climate is the focus of the third annual Southern California Business Film Festival (Feb. 16-21, 2010), sponsored by the USC Marshall School of Business and the Center for Investment Studies. Inspired filmmakers and executives from across the country will come together for the event, which explores the intersection of commerce and culture. On the festival's agenda: panel discussions, film screenings, lectures, networking events, and a student film competition offering up to $20,000 in prizes. February 16: Screening of 2081 Time: 6:00 - 6:45 P.M. / Location: SGM 123 SCBFF kicks off with a short film adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut's sci-fi story "Harrison Bergeron," 2081. The film is a poetic tale of triumph and tragedy about a broken family, a brutal government and an act of defiance that changes everything. February 17: PA Boot Camp: Your First Step into the Entertainment Industry Time: 4:00-5:50 P.M. / Location: JKP 210 Jody Brockway and her team of industry production assistants lead a workshop showing what it takes to be a PA in Hollywood. An essential panel for anyone trying to break into film production, PA Boot Camp will help you perform like an industry pro. February 17: Do As I Say Screening with Director Nick Tucker Time: 7:30-10 P.M. / Location: SGM 123 Plunging headfirst into the hypocrisy of American business and politics, award-winning full-length documentary Do As I Say follows filmmakers Nicholas Tucker and Lucas Abel in their cross-country mission to expose the double lives of prominent Americans. February 18: Filling the Seats: A Film Marketing & PR Conversation* Time: 6:30 - 8:00 P.M. / Location: THH 201 A panel of entertainment-marketing executives and esteemed public relations professionals discuss the ways in which a finished film reaches its audience. Our guests will debate and discuss the factors that determine a profitable marketing campaign, while sharing personal stories of both successful and unsuccessful campaigns for past films. Guests include Laura Kim, former head of marketing for Warner Independents, and David Weitzner, former President of Worldwide Marketing for 20th Century Fox. February 18: Screening and Q&A of HUNTER PREY Time: 7:00 - 10:00 P.M. / Location: SCA 108 2009 sci-fi thriller Hunter Prey follows a group of elite intergalactic commandos that have crash-landed on a harsh and unknown planet while transporting an alien prisoner. The film was shot on the RED One, the Digital Cinema camera that's revolutionizing Hollywood. The film will be followed by a Q&A with the director, two producers, and the DP. It will be moderated by CEO of LightIRON Digital Michael Cioni. February 19: How to Produce a Documentary, Spotlight: Indoctrinate U Time: 6:00 - 9:00 P.M. / Location: SGM 124 Indoctrinate U explores the unwritten rules, speech codes, and censorship that exist under the radar at hundreds of America's top colleges and universities that claim to advocate an open-minded attitude. The screening will be followed by a discussion of the successful documentary film business model with Executive Producer Blaine Greenberg. February 20: The Money You Never See: Film Financing & Packaging* Time: 2:00 - 5:00 P.M. / Location: Davidson Conference Center Have you ever wondered what factors determine whether a film is green-lit or not? A panel of distinguished creative executives, agents, and producers discuss how the financing, packaging, and distribution of a film are mapped out. This event will feature a seminar followed by a Q&A with the panel, concluding with a networking opportunity with the guests. "The Money You Never See" will feature keynote speaker Arthur Axelman, former senior vice-president of William Morris Agency. Axelman will be joined by an esteemed panel including: Nguyen "Wyn" Tran (Thank You for Smoking), Tommy Papa and Todd Burns (The Stoning of Soraya M.). February 21: Finalist Showcase and Awards Ceremony* Time: 3:00 - 8:00 P.M. / Location: Bovard Auditorium SCBFF culminates with a student film competition celebrating the work of some the nation's top collegiate filmmakers. Screenwriter Allan Loeb (Wall Street 2) and producer Teddy Zee (Hitch) are among the judges who will vote on selected films. The 16 award categories boast $20,000 in cash and prizes for the winning filmmakers. Student films scheduled to be screened include: Plots of Heaven When a life insurance agent dies, he goes to work selling reservations into the pearly gates. All goes well until his former girlfriend comes looking for a ticket to Heaven. Glass Half Full: The John Hovac Story A mockumentary about a man whose family recipe for vodka rubs the Bush administration the wrong way…and pays the consequences. Kavi The 2010 Academy Award-nominated short film follows a boy in India who faces a life as a modern-day slave worker. Complete prize list available at www.scbff.com. * Denotes door prizes including Johnny Rockets gift cards will be offered to some attendees.
All locations are on the University of Southern California campus. For more information, or to request an interview, contact Alex Wilk at pr@scbff.com.
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