On New Year’s Day of 2003, a neatly handwritten note arrived on the fax machine: “I have a story idea I wanted to run past you. I am sure you are familiar with the subject matter and would welcome your thoughts and suggestions.” The intriguing note came from Eric O’Keefe, a Texas journalist I had met while directing the television western Crossfire Trail. “What do you know about the 2002 Melbourne Cup?,” it read.

Small incidents, to paraphrase director Jannicke Systad Jacobsen, can make large explosions. They can also make telling movies. In her first narrative film, Jacobsen explores a blip in the life of an adolescent girl and how a minuscule event can morph into something that leads to personal and social revelations. Based on the novel by Olaug Hilssen with a screenplay written by Jacobsen, Turn Me On, Dammit! is a sensitive and unapologetically blunt look at the convergence of sexuality and growing up. The film brings to light those many things we’ve been taught to ignore, yet have all thought about and experienced by default of having survived teenagehood.

With all the climate, economic, political and humanitarian crises the world is dealing with right now, it can be easy to get discouraged. But buck up! The world might not be perfect, but at least the government doesn’t kidnap children and force them to fight to the death, like in The Hunger Games, out in theaters today. As bad as things have gotten at any point in recent history, dystopian movies have always been there to remind us of one simple fact: It could be much, much worse. With that in mind, MovieMaker is taking a look at dystopias through the ages—a dystopian classic from each decade (minus one), 1920s to the present.

As the screenwriters behind both The Lorax and 2008's Horton Hears a Who!, Cinco Paul and Ken Daurio have become the go-to guys for bringing Dr. Seuss to the silver screen. As such, they well know the unique challenges presented by adapting the works of one of the most beloved writers of all time. Not the least among these challenges is the pressure put upon them by legions of fans, not to mention the Seuss estate, to get the author's timeless and instantly recognizable stories right.

For Paul and Daurio, staying true to the whimsical-yet-cautionary tale of the Lorax, an environmental guardian ("I am the Lorax. I speak for the trees. I speak for the trees, for the trees have no tongues.") who tries to protect his forest from the corporate greed of the Once-ler, is made at once easier and more difficult by the fact that they are themselves huge fans of Dr. Seuss. "[We] consider him a genius," notes Paul, "and didn't want to do anything to tarnish or water down what he's done."

With t-minus four days until the Oscars, awards season is nearing its official end, and last weekend's glut of awards announcements—with the Motion Picture Sound Editors (MPSE), Cinema Audio Society (CAS), American Cinema Editors (ACE) and Writers Guild of America (WGA) all announcing their winners—brings us ever closer to the light at the end of the tunnel.

When you hear the word “Amazon,” one of two things probably come to mind: Online retailer Amazon.com or (maybe) that river in South America. Well, here’s a third option: Amazon Studios, the online moviemaking arm of Amazon.com, which awards cash prizes to scripts, trailers and test movies submitted by members as a way to help up-and-coming moviemakers get discovered and complete their films.

There are perhaps no two genres less alike than the romantic comedy and the action adventure. Yet when these two seemingly dissimilar genres combine, they have the potential to score big. The latest example to hit theaters, This Means War, stars Reese Witherspoon as a woman caught in a love triangle with two CIA agents who happen to be best friends in addition to romantic rivals. With This Means War hitting select theaters today for a special Valentine’s Day engagement, we're taking a look at some of the best romantic action-comedies from the past 30 years.

Now in its 14th year, Scriptapalooza remains unlike any other screenplay competition. When you submit your script to Scriptapalooza, it will be read by the elite of the film industry: Over 90 producers, managers and agents with the power to turn your script into a feature film. With the next deadline—March 5th—looming on the horizon, MM recently caught up with Scriptapalooza president/co-founder Mark Andrushko to find out more about this year’s competition.

It's like a bad nightmare: Being stranded in the wild with scant resources and no guarantee of survival, your very existence hanging in the balance. What can you eat? How do you make it out alive? How do you manage to hang on to your humanity? This harrowing scenario has provided grist for many movies over the years. The latest of these is The Grey, in which Liam Neeson plays a man stranded in the Alaskan wilderness and hunted by a pack of hungry wolves. With the film hitting theaters today, it seems a perfect time to take a look back at some of the most thrilling man vs. nature movies from the past 40 years.

It’s pretty much impossible to escape vampires these days. The Twilight movies are as insanely popular as ever, the HBO series “True Blood” has a large and dedicated fanbase and Justin Cronin’s best-selling novel The Passage looks poised to kick off the next must-read vampire series. The newest piece of vampire pop culture to sink its teeth into movie audiences’ necks is Underworld: Awakening, out in theaters today. With so many blood-suckers baring their fangs, vampires have started to feel a bit tired and clichéd. But never fear, MM is here to save the day. We’ve come up with a selection of ten films that put wonderfully original spins on vampire mythology.

In Coriolanus, out in theaters tomorrow, director and star Ralph Fiennes brings to the screen one of Shakespeare's least-adapted plays. Replete as it is with guns, tanks and army fatigues, Fiennes' directorial debut is a decidedly modern take on a story that was originally set in pre-Imperial Rome. Still, even with all its modern accoutrements, Coriolanus is actually fairly traditional adaptation of the Bard's work... at least compared to some of the more off-the-wall approaches that other directors have taken in years past.

My documentary Old School New School explores the nature of creativity, all within the context of storytelling through various crafts, including acting, cinematography, music, theater, dance and poetry. The film is an extension of many conversations I’ve had over the years with my artist friends. We’d meet in a café to talk about life, art and philosophy. They were stimulating discussions that ultimately segued to the obligatory question all serious artists eventually examine: How can we, as creative people, grow in the direction we want to grow?

Though Tomas Alfredson's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy has been notably absent from much of the awards season hoopla, the spy drama's dry spell may now be over. Its 11 nominations in this year's British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) Awards, announced today, place it on the top of the heap; the only film to receive more nominations is The Artist, with 12. Martin Scorsese's Hugo also cleaned up with nominations in 11 categories, including Best Director.

At last night's Golden Globes, it was Oscar frontrunner The Artist that came out on top, winning three awards, including Best Picture—Comedy or Musical. Still, it's probably best to keep the film's name written in pencil on your Oscar ballot for now; though it was one of only two films to win multiple awards, the winner in the Best Picture—Drama category (this year, The Descendants) historically has a better chance at victory come Oscar night. Additionally, The Artist missed out in both the Best Screenplay and Best Director categories, in which Midnight in Paris and Hugo, respectively, walked away with the gold.

Tuesday saw the nominations for the 2012 Producers Guild Awards announced, and today, it's the writers' turn; the Writers Guild of America, West and the Writers Guild of America, East have announced the nominees for its 64th annual Writers Guild Awards, taking place on February 19th, 2012 in simultaneous ceremonies in Los Angeles and New York. Among the films nominated are Bridesmaids, which continues its impressive (especially for an R-rated comedy) streak of awards nominations, and Young Adult, written by Diablo Cody, who won the Writers Guild Award for Best Original Screenplay in 2008 for Juno.

At the end of 2008’s Forgetting Sarah Marshall, actor-scribe Jason Segel inserted a Dracula puppet musical as both a touching coda to his witty comedy and a good excuse to showcase a longtime passion. Having gotten Jim Henson’s Creature Shop to create the puppets and help stage his mini-tribute, Segel asked if he could meet Kermit and Miss Piggy, only to learn that his old friends had been sold to Disney.

“I just got a little fire in my belly,” Segel recalls. “The Muppets are such a great group of characters. I just couldn’t stand the thought of it going fallow. I went to Disney and pitched the idea of a Muppet movie.”

So began the next chapter in the charmed life of the 31-year-old Los Angeles native—and the resurrection of Henson’s internationally beloved pantheon. “I don’t think anyone saw it coming,” admits Segel.

In the darkly comic filim Another Happy Day, hitting theaters this Friday, Ellen Barkin plays Lynn, a high-strung woman whose interactions with her family at her estranged eldest son's wedding make it pretty clear to the audience why family reunions aren't something this clan does often. The exceedingly high caliber of Another Happy Day's cast (which includes Barkin, Ellen Burstyn, Demi Moore, George Kennedy, and Ezra Miller), combined with the fact that it won the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award when it debuted at the Sundance Film Festival in January, makes it even more amazing the film is writer/director Sam Levinson's first. But as charmed as Levinson's life as a moviemaker may seem at first, making Another Happy Day was no easy task. Levinson took the time to chat with MovieMaker about his debut film and how he "wake[s] up every day and thank[s] Sundance for their film festival."

“If you’re doing well, send the elevator back down,” legendary actor Jack Lemmon once told Kevin Spacey, one of the most acclaimed actors of our day. These words served as an inspiration behind the partnering of Spacey's Trigger Street Productions with Jameson Irish Whiskey to create the visionary Jameson First Shot short film competition, which is designed to discover talented screenwriters and directors from the United States, Russia and South Africa. The winning artist from each of the three countries will have their script made into a short film. But here's the kicker: Each of the three shorts will be produced by Trigger Street Productions and will star two-time Oscar winner Spacey himself.

2 Fast 2 Furious. Catch That Kid. 3:10 to Yuma. Wanted.

Michael Brandt and Derek Haas are no strangers to what audiences want when it comes to action-packged moviemaking. But the longtime writing partners, who met as students at Baylor University, aren't content to keep things get too comfortable in their collaboration. For their latest co-venture, the duo decided to shake things up as Brandt stepped into the director's chair and Haas took on the role of producer for The Double, a spy tale starring Richard Gere and Topher Grace.

What is it about the combination of horror and comedy that’s so irresistibly entertaining? Mixing macabre humor with bountiful bloodshed has lead to some horror-comedy classics over the years. One of the earliest, 1948’s Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, proved that comedy and scares could be achieved in equal measure. And the sub-genre has continued to prove endlessly entertaining today—already this year we’ve gotten such treats as Tucker & Dale vs. Evil and the Fright Night remake, both of which provide an unsettling but satisfying blend of yucks and yuks. With Halloween just around the corner, MM thought it a perfect time to take a look back at some of the most spooktacular horror comedies of the last 30 years.

I was on page 60 of my first draft when I got the bad news. I was in a groove. The story was flowing out of me. My fingers could barely type fast enough, and I wanted nothing more than to get the whole thing down on paper. I was right in the middle of a major set piece when the phone rang. My managers, Aaron and Sean, were on the line. “Got some bad news for you," they said. “Chris Columbus just sold a screenplay to Warner Bros. about a guy who lives his life out of order.” I was two-thirds of the way through the first draft of my screenplay for Shuffle... about a man who begins experiencing his life out of order.

Two Hollywood legends and 300-plus pages of nightmare fuel—check out MM's reviews of the newly-released Dennis Hopper: The Wild Ride of a Hollywood Rebel, John Huston: Courage and Art and Monsters in the Movies.

Imagine you’re a guidance counselor working in a city where your life consists of teaching elementary students how to beat the odds in their community to achieve success. Your typical day involves going into classrooms and teaching kids to cope with their environmental pressures and helping them to use social skills to articulate their ideas, goals and fears. Though I didn't know it when I started working on my script for Go For It!, the title of my first movie would be my anthem during my quest to get that movie made.

Dani Faith Leonard and Alex Cirillo know how important it is for independent artists to have a sense of community. To that end, the two moviemakers created Big Vision Empty Wallet, an organization that gives artists the chance to network and share their talents.

It’s hard to regain one's faith once you’ve lost it. Director Tracy Trost explores this spiritual struggle in his latest film The Lamp, in which he offers viewers a much-needed message of hope.

The novel Brighton Rock, written by Graham Greene in 1938, is one of the most cherished classics of British 20th-century fiction. Ten years later it was adapted by Greene himself into what is widely regarded as the one of the best British films ever made. So why did I adapt the book again? The truth is, there were lots of reasons. Some were sound, some were quite irrational. In retrospect, this is the "advice" I would hesitantly give to anyone considering adapting a book for the big screen.

The 18th annual Austin Film Festival is fast approaching, and with preparations for the festival in full swing, the festival has announced the 2011 Script-to-Screen Panels that will take place during the conference. This year, the panel discussions include examinations of Fight Club with screenwriter Jim Uhls, The Graduate with screenwriter Buck Henry and “Veronica Mars” with creator Rob Thomas.

When Greg Mottola, the New York-based moviemaker behind such naturalistic, character-driven comedies as Superbad, Adventureland and The Daytrippers, was asked by Shaun of the Dead co-creators Simon Pegg and Nick Frost to direct Paul, their “pop culture mash-up” homage to the golden age of sci-fi blockbusters, even Mottola admits he wasn’t the most obvious guy for the job.

Ah, the road trip. A small group of people are forced to cohabit a confined space as they journey through strange locales and encounter eccentric people, all in an effort to achieve some goal before time runs out. Is there any scenario better suited for the silver screen? Much-loved classics like Easy Rider, The Grapes of Wrath and The Wizard of Oz are among the hundreds of movies where the central plot revolves around a group of people who must get from point A to point B. Most real-life road trips are more soul-crushingly boring than their cinematic counterparts, but audiences are still drawn to the mystique of the movie road trip.

If you haven’t noticed, vampire movies have been enjoying a bit of a renaissance lately. Recent movies like Underworld, Blade and Twilight portray vampires as suave, sexy action stars, while Let the Right One In and Thirst have given vampire movies the intellectual, introspective treatment. Stake Land isn’t about a tormented, misunderstood vampire who’s actually very sensitive (and looks great in a billowing coat).

Screenwriting can be a time-consuming and creatively exhausting process. When writers have trouble getting motivated or can't get over their writer's block, it is helpful to have fellow screenwriters to whom you can turn; you know, people who have experienced the same demands of the creative process. At NYCscreenwriter.org, New York-based scribes will find a group of fellow writers who are eager to share their experiences (and their work) and learn more about their craft.

In Captain America: The First Avenger, in theaters July 22nd, Steve Rogers is a WWII soldier who is transformed into the superhero Captain America by a top-secret government organization dedicated to defending American ideals against the Nazis. In most contemporary film, one must have either supernatural abilities (Superman, Green Lantern,Spider-man), super-secret government training (James Bond) or just superhuman levels of bad-assery (Batman, Jason Bourne) to be a hero. Hollywood seems to have forgotten that the everyman (or woman) who stands up for his or her rights and beliefs without having super-anything is just as capable of bringing down the baddies, saving lives and changing the world. As proof that we mere mortals are capable of extraordinary achievements, MM presents some cinematic average Joes and Janes who represent what it means to be a true American hero.

Septien, which premiered at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival, is the story of Cornelius Rawlings—played by the film's writer-director Michael Tully—a man who returns home to Tennessee after disappearing 18 years earlier. The film explores the dynamic between Cornelius and his brothers—Amos (Onur Tukel) and Ezra (Robert Longstreet)—and the roles (caretaker, artist and athlete) that each brother plays in their dysfunctional little family. As the story unfolds we learn why Cornelius left home and how his brothers and a mysterious drifter help him overcome the pain of his past.

Short films don't always get the respect they deserve. You can see Transformers anywhere, but it takes a dedicated fan to track down a short film he or she wants to see. Unless they are attached to the beginning of a Pixar movie, short films have a very limited theatrical exposure to the public.

Ah, how things have changed in just one short year. When we published our first list of 25 must-have apps for moviemakers in last year’s Future of Moviemaking edition, the world of apps was still a relatively new one. Last year’s list included only one app exclusively for the then-brand-new iPad, and today’s newest technological toy du jour, the iPad 2, wasn’t even on the radar.