18th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards Sunday
Best Acting Awards, voted on by only peer actors in the union, SAG awards show for 2011 best acting in TV and film airs this Sunday January 29, 2012, 8:00 pm Eastern Standard Time, 5:00 pm Pacific Time California. Screen Actors Guild Awards shows on channels TNT and TBS.
Specials to watch on the Internet: red carpet and stuntman / stunt woman honors at 6ET/3PT on TNT.tv, TBS.com, and People.com.
Read more at:
SAG Awards
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THE HELP cleans house at the awards. See WINNERS here: http://www.sagawards.org/awards/nominees-and-recipients/18th-annual-screen-actors-guild-awards
Best Screenplay Best Picture Oscar Nominations Announced for the 84th Academy Awards
Best Screenplay, Best Picture, Best Film Shorts,
Oscar Nominations Announced for the 84th Academy Awards!
Represented here by these movies and scripts are what the Academy deems the biggest and best screenwriters of 2011.
Jaden’s picks are in green, winners will be in red.
THE IRON LADY written by Abi Morgan is curiously not nominated for Best Picture or Best Screenplay. Written by a woman, it is the story of the first female Prime Minister of the UK, politically conservative Margaret Thatcher. The Iron Lady script is the most profound, meaningful, interesting, multi-dimensional, and story tight of all the movies I’ve seen this year — I’d say the Best Screenplay! The Iron Lady has two Oscar nominations: one for Makeup and one for Acting, but how can it be nominated for acting without a sensational script to act? Every year, it seems a superior script is mysteriously left out of the game, while inferior scripts prevail; this year, it’s The Iron Lady that has been bumped.
The nominees for the 2012 Academy Awards are…
Best Picture
- “The Artist” Thomas Langmann, Producer
- “The Descendants” Jim Burke, Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor, Producers
- “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close” Scott Rudin, Producer
- “The Help” Brunson Green, Chris Columbus and Michael Barnathan, Producers
- “Hugo” Graham King and Martin Scorsese, Producers (Click here for Jaden’s review)
- “Midnight in Paris” Letty Aronson and Stephen Tenenbaum, Producers
- “Moneyball” Michael De Luca, Rachael Horovitz and Brad Pitt, Producers
- “The Tree of Life” Nominees to be determined
- “War Horse“ Steven Spielberg and Kathleen Kennedy, Producers
Writing (Adapted Screenplay)
- “The Descendants” Screenplay by Alexander Payne and Nat Faxon & Jim Rash
- “Hugo” Screenplay by John Logan (Click here for Jaden’s review)
- “The Ides of March” Screenplay by George Clooney & Grant Heslov and Beau Willimon
- “Moneyball” Screenplay by Steven Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin; Story by Stan Chervin
- “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy” Screenplay by Bridget O’Connor & Peter Straughan
Writing (Original Screenplay)
- “The Artist” Written by Michel Hazanavicius
- “Bridesmaids” Written by Annie Mumolo & Kristen Wiig
- “Margin Call” Written by J.C. Chandor
- “Midnight in Paris” Written by Woody Allen (Click here for Jaden’s review)
- “A Separation” Written by Asghar Farhadi
Short Film (Animated)
- “Dimanche/Sunday” Patrick Doyon
- “The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore” William Joyce and Brandon Oldenburg
- “La Luna” Enrico Casarosa
- “A Morning Stroll” Grant Orchard and Sue Goffe
- “Wild Life” Amanda Forbis and Wendy Tilby
Short Film (Live Action)
- “Pentecost” Peter McDonald and Eimear O’Kane
- “Raju” Max Zähle and Stefan Gieren
- “The Shore” Terry George and Oorlagh George
- “Time Freak” Andrew Bowler and Gigi Causey
- “Tuba Atlantic” Hallvar Witzø
Ryan Gosling to Play 49ers Quarterback Alex Smith ?
Am watching the epic NFL Championship football game today, the New York Giants against the San Francisco 49ers. Score is currently tied 7 to 7.
Can’t help but notice how much Hollywood’s sweetheart Ryan Gosling looks like 49ers quarterback Alex Smith.
Gosling played a football character in an independent film called The Slaughter Rule (2002) written and directed by none other than brothers Andrew and Alex Smith! (A different Alex Smith of course.)
If anyone makes a movie about Niner Alex Smith, Ryan Gosling has to play the part.
Go Niners!!!
…
Ok now, the Giants-Niners score is tied again at 17 to 17! Suspense.
…
Giants won.
Guess there won’t be a movie with Gosling playing Alex Smith.
‘Tis fate.
YouTube & Your Chance at the Venice Film Festival
The one thing I am always pushing on Screenwriting for Hollywood is that screenwriters make their own movies and show them wherever they can, especially on YouTube where the world is your audience.
Now YouTube has partnered up with Scott Free, the Venice Film Festival, and Emirates Airlines to award someone, anyone, a great unknown filmmaker from anywhere in the world, $25,000 director salary and $475,000 to make a film!
50 finalists will be voted on YouTube and the top 10 will be shown at the Venice Film Festival; one will win the grand prize.
This is the longest shot of long shots, but if you believe in yourself and you were uploading your films to YouTube already, why not go for the gold?
There are few requirements. It has to be new since January 1, 2010 and it has to be under 15 minutes. You must be over 18 years old.
Free, no entry fee.
Remember what I talked about in Make a Movie with No Money? It is extremely important for this competition that you SAY SOMETHING, that your story develops and surprises viewers, and that your character goes through some kind of change. If you don’t have story arch and development, if you just have some nonsensical pretty footage, I can assure you, you will not win this competition. This is about storytelling, first and foremost, and then your acting and visuals need to also be stunning.
Watch the above video about some filmmakers who have launched their careers through YouTube. They each have very different styles and tales to tell, but the public liked what they had to show.
Read more about the film festival competition here: http://www.youtube.com/user/yourfilmfestival
Location Location Location
by Jaden
“Location, location, location,” is a real estate property motto, meaning to say that it is not about the house itself that has value, but rather the land on which it sits that determines how much the house is worth.
A little shack with a small garden out in the middle of Kansas has very little value, whereas the same exact house and garden could be worth millions if it was on Manhattan in New York.
Location is equally important when writing your screenplay. The choice of your location settings in your scripts could also mean the difference between millions of dollars or your script never selling.
Location gives mood and setting to your story. It is part of the story. By choosing famous locations, your readers and viewers already know certain things, so it saves you a lot of time in explaining them in your story.
Woody Allen has famously used New York as his backdrop to many screenplays and movies. He has not only used New York to augment his stories, but he has also added to the general public’s knowledge of what is New York and what it is to be a New Yorker.
Woody Allen more recently has chosen to branch out and spotlight Paris and Barcelona, even using the cities’ names in the movie titles, which brought great film success by city association. People like me who love Paris or long to go to Barcelona will pay money to see the movie just based on the title and city alone.
Each time you tell a story, your use of a location adds to the world knowledge of information about that location.
Perhaps you will choose your hometown as a backdrop to your story and maybe your script will be the only movie ever featuring that town. As long as there is something special about that town, something that separates it and makes it unique, then your story would probably be the authority providing information about that town.
On the other hand, maybe your hometown is exactly like hundreds of other towns, and for that reason, for being nondescript, you might tell an ironic or dark humor story.
In the current show Once Upon a Time, the Any Town is a witch’s fairytale curse.
Characters are what drive most TV shows through the seasons, not the location. Television sitcoms capitalize on the nondescript Any Town America so that they can focus on the distinctions or parallels of their characters.
For movies, you want to do something different than TV. David Lynch specializes in taking the Any Town and making it creepy with all sorts of dark secrets and strange characters.
Alcatraz is an exciting new TV show coming out tomorrow night January 16. Picked up by Fox, the TV pilot episode was based on a screenplay by Elizabeth Sarnoff, Steven Lilien and Bryan Wynbrandt. The Alcatraz title and story immediately enthrall you because of the history and mystery of its real life location, the high security island prison in the San Francisco Bay. The Alcatraz prison location comes with boatloads of intriguing real and fictitious characters from which to select.
If you are having writer’s block, studying locations is wildly inspiring.
When I study a new location, there seems to be a serendipity of interesting facts that play perfectly into my story.
If you are struggling to find a location for your story, do a search using mood and theme keywords that express what kind of story you are trying to write. You can do searches for “romantic city” or “scary country” or “mysterious place” or “strangest architecture” or “roughest river” or “highest mountain”. Look at the locations of what each of your searches brings. You just might find the exact right place to encapsulate your story.
Say your movie title was “Highest Mountain,” a general location: what it implies is hope and achievement. Wouldn’t it be interesting to flip that upside-down and tell a story about failure and sinking to all time lows?
I could go on forever about the importance of location and all the ways in which it can liven up or sell your story, but hopefully you get the idea now.
In researching a location, ideal ingredients and missing links present themselves to you and help take your story in a new direction that may have otherwise eluded you. Respect and always consider location in your screenplays.
Note: Remember, when writing screenplays, the goal is to be as tight and clear as possible, using the least words to say the most; continue to do that with your locations and scene headings: short and to the point!
