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Once More For The Hunger Games
The Hunger Games fought its way to the top yet again, becoming the first film since Avatar to claim the number one spot four weekends in a row. While the box office juggernaut's weekend gross of $21 million marks a 35% drop from last weekend, it still handily outpaced new releases The Three Stooges and The Cabin in the Woods, which earned $17.1 million and $14.8 million and came in at two and three, respectively.
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With Sixteen19, The Three Stooges Keeps Post-Production Insanity to a Minimum
The culmination of a twelve year odyssey, The Three Stooges is a testament to the tenacity of co-directors Bobby and Peter Farrelly. But despite the antic chaos that unfolds on screen, editor Sam Seig reports that the production itself was smooth sailing. “This was a completely buttoned-down shoot. The Farrelly Brothers polished every scene for a tight but realistic three-month shooting schedule... It took years to bring this film to the screen, but it was worth the wait. Bobby and Peter crossed every ‘T’ and poked every ‘eye’ in pre-pro. They were ready for action.”
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Yet Again, The Hunger Games Pummels the Competition
The Hunger Games once again showed up-and-comers who's boss, out-earning both new release American Reunion and new(/old) release Titanic 3-D by a substantial margin. Still, those two movies didn't do too shabbily themselves, their $21.4 million and $17.3 million weekend grosses grabbing them spots two and three, respectively. Meanwhile, Wrath of the Titans' $15 million weekend gross was enough to land it in spot number four, while Mirror Mirror squeaked into the top five with a weekend gross of $11 million.
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The Tribeca Film Institute Explores the Future of Film
One of the few facts we can rely on is that things change. And in this age of increasingly advanced technology, it can feel that change is coming at a rate impossible to keep up with, especially when it comes to the world of making movies. New media, transmedia, interactive storytelling... there's always something new going on, but if you're a forward-looking indie moviemaker who wants to take advantage of the Next Big Thing, the Tribeca Film Institute (TFI) has your back.
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The Hunger Games Remains Victorious
Well, they were worthy contenders, but The Hunger Games managed to defeat Wrath of the Titans and Mirror Mirror both, holding onto its number one spot for the second week running with its weekend gross of $61.1 million. New releases Wrath of the Titans and Mirror Mirror came in second and third, respectively, while last week's runner-up 21 Jump Street slid two spots to number four. Rounding out the top five was Dr. Seuss' The Lorax.
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Soundstage Options Expand for New York-Based Productions
Having trouble finding a reliable, controlled environment in New York City in which to shoot? If so, you have a great new option available. Earlier this week, NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Media and Entertainment Commissioner Katherine Oliver joined with Steiner Studios chairman Douglas C. Steiner to open five large soundstages at Steiner Studios in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, already home to the award-winning HBO show "Boardwalk Empire."
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The Golden Voyage of Ray Harryhausen
Long before the days of CGI and motion capture, movie monsters were sculpted by hand and brought to life via stop-motion animation. One of the key innovators during this time was special effects maestro Ray Harryhausen, who created his own unique brand of stop-motion model animation called “Dynamation." The last of Harryhausen's feature credits was the 1981 fantasy classic Clash of the Titans, which inspired a 2010 remake starring Sam Worthington and Liam Neeson, the sequel to which—Wrath of the Titans—is out in theaters today. To celebrate the spirit of the pioneering Harryhausen (who turns 92 later this year), join us as we take a look back at some of his most notable creations.
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The Messy Business of Growing Up
Jannicke Systad Jacobsen crafts a different sort of coming of age story with Turn Me On, Dammit!
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.
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Jon Shenk Gets Up Close and Personal with The Island President
For Mohamed Nasheed, climate change isn't just an academic issue—it's one of survival. The former President of the Maldives, one of the lowest-lying countries in the world, Nasheed made it his personal mission to have a positive impact on the climate issue during his tenure as his island nation's first democratically elected president. Luckily for everyone who loves a good underdog story, director Jon Shenk made it his mission to capture Nasheed's inspiring crusade on film; the result, the award-winning documentary The Island President, comes to U.S. theaters tomorrow.
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The Hunger Games Rakes in the Dough at the Box Office
The odds were in its favor...
Everyone knew that The Hunger Games would triumph at the box office last weekend, but the extent to which the much-anticipated teen phenomenon raked in the dough exceeded even the most optimistic box-office expectations. With its weekend gross of $155 million, the movie had A) the biggest non-sequel opening of all time, B) the third-biggest movie opening of all time and C) the biggest March opening of all time. Perhaps most surprising is that The Hunger Games is now D) production company Lionsgate's highest-grossing movie—after just three days. Geez, slow down a bit, The Hunger Games—don't you think you're raising the bar a bit too high for your sequels?
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Dystopia Through the Ages: From Metropolis to The Hunger Games
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.
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Benjamin Wagner Keeps It Deep and Simple with Mister Rogers & Me
Talk to anyone over the age of, say, 20, and chances are good that they grew up learning about the values of kindness and self-respect from Fred Rogers, whose show "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood" brought Mr. McFeeley, King Friday XIII, Lady Aberlin and the rest of the gang to PBS from 1968 to 2001. Of the many whose lives were impacted by Mister Rogers, very few were lucky enough to actually have a chat with the man. One of those who got that chance is Benjamin Wagner, then a young journalist and producer at MTV News, who met Rogers at the cultural icon's summer home in Nantucket, Massachusetts, which happened to be next door to the cottage Wagner's mother was renting.
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Box Office Goes to 21 Jump Street
After the excitement of John Carter's epic box office flop, things got more or less back to normal over the weekend, with new release 21 Jump Street taking the top spot and reigning champ Dr. Seuss' The Lorax sliding to second place. John Carter came in at number three, its box office take dropping 55 percent from last weekend; so far, the sci-fi blockbuster that cost $250 million to make has earned a mere $53.1 million in domestic markets.
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The Key to Natural Selection
Everybody always wants everything to be perfect.The perfect budget, the perfect cast, the perfect shooting schedule, the perfect location. It took me six long years to get Natural Selection made, and most of that time was spent obsessing over getting things perfect rather than making do with what I had. I could have waited forever if at some point I didn’t say to myself—‘Hey, asshole, nothing’s ever going to be perfect, and if you wait too long to make this thing, every feeling that inspired you to write it in the first place will be nothing but a memory.’ So I sat down with my producers one day and broke the news to them. Two million dollars is a bloated budget, I said. Let’s make this thing for what we’ve got: $150,000. We decided on the spot to make our movie, come hell or high water, in three months. And that’s when everything started falling apart.
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Who Needs L.A. When You’ve Got LA?
Step aside, California. The Bayou State keeps getting better with the Louisiana Film Prize
Regular readers of MovieMaker will know that New Orleans was named the number one city to make movies in our most recent issue. But the Big Easy is far from being the only city in Louisiana that moviemakers should be paying attention to. Located in Northwest Louisiana, the Shreveport-Bossier area has seen a rise in production in recent years, with its substantial talent base, ready availability of equipment and low cost of filming drawing productions as diverse as Battle Los Angeles and Super to the area. And while an abundance of financial incentives means that Louisiana is already a great place to be a indie moviemaker, the introduction of the Louisiana Film Prize (LAFP) means that shooting in Shreveport just got even better.
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John Carter Gets Beaten by The Lorax
Disney's John Carter failed to live up to expectations over its opening weekend, earning only $30.6 million (its budget, at an estimated $250 million, is quite a bit higher) and being defeated by Dr. Seuss' The Lorax, whose weekend gross of $39.1 million was enough to land it in the number one spot for the second weekend running.
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Crawling Out of Development Hell with Laura Lau and Chris Kentis
Silent House's directing duo on their real-time, single-take horror thriller
“Opportunity knocks…” was the intriguing subject line sitting in our Gmail nestled between the latest Groupon offer and reminder from Geico to pay the car insurance. With so many years since we’d made a film, not a whole lot of opportunities were knocking. Swimming with the sharks in Open Water was a leisurely dip compared to surviving the perils in Hollywood. We had had our hearts broken over passion projects and other labors of love, all of which were stalled at their own frustrated spot on the road to celluloid. But we didn’t give up.
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Hear John Carter Roar
From Academy Award-winning moviemaker Andrew Stanton comes John Carter, a sweeping action-adventure set based on a classic novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs, whose highly imaginative adventures served as inspiration for many moviemakers, past and present. The film tells the story of war-weary, former military captain John Carter (Taylor Kitsch), who is inexplicably transported to Mars, where he reluctantly becomes embroiled in a conflict of epic proportions amongst the inhabitants of the planet, including Tars Tarkas (Willem Dafoe) and the captivating Princess Dejah Thoris (Lynn Collins). In a world on the brink of collapse, Carter rediscovers his humanity when he realizes that the survival of Barsoom and its people rests in his hands.
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Spurlock, Delpy, Hysteria and More to Make Their Way to Tribeca
With today's announcement of the Tribeca Film Festival's Spotlight, Cinemania and Special Screenings lineups, cinephiles now have 44 more films to look forward to at this year's festival, among them Julie Delpy's 2 Days in New York, Morgan Spurlock's Mansome, Persepolis directors Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud's Chicken with Plums and Tanya Wexler's historical rom-com Hysteria.
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Sneak Peek: Frankenweenie
In 1984, twenty-something newcomer Tim Burton made his mark on the industry with a modern take on a horror classic in the form of Frankenweenie, a live action short in which a young boy named Victor uses the power of science to bring his beloved dog, Sparky, back to life. Now, almost 30 years later, the Oscar-nominated director is returning to his roots to create the Frankenweenie he always envisioned, in the form of a stop-motion animated feature.
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Harmony Korine, Bradley Rust Gray and Francophrenia Set to Make Waves at Tribeca
We already know this year's Tribeca Film Festival will be opening with Nicholas Stoller's rom-com The Five-Year Engagement, and today the world-renowned fest has given us a more complete look at the films that will be making their way to lower Manhattan this April by announcing the lineup of their World Narrative Competition, World Documentary Competition and out-of-competition Viewpoints sections.
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Dr. Seuss' The Lorax Wins Big at the Box Office
Wow. Dr. Seuss' The Lorax sure let everyone know who's boss. The animated family film surpassed all expectations to earn $70.7 million over the weekend, earning back its budget in a mere three days with the biggest opening weekend so far this year. Second place finisher Project X didn't do too shabbily, either: The R-rated comedy, made on a budget of $12 million, picked up $20.7 million during its opening weekend. Last week's champion Act of Valor brought in a weekend gross of $13.7 million, and rounding out the top five were Safe House and Good Deeds.
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Become a Professional Producer with the ProShow Competition
It doesn't matter whether your film dream job is directing, writing or producing—if your goal is to break into the industry, it's nice to have some help along the way. Luckily, the Producers Guild of America (PGA) is offering a leg up to aspiring producers with their 2012 PGA Producers Showcase (ProShow) competition. Developed in 2010 by the PGA’s International Committee and presented in conjunction with the Produced By Conference (PBC), ProShow encourages up-and-coming producers of international and domestic films to establish business relationships, co-develop projects and secure investments, thereby helping a new wave of moviemakers get their unique visions out into the world.
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Finding Your Jodie Foster
Boy "wrirector" Taika Waititi on auditions, acting and happening upon the perfect child actor
We found our main actor three days before principal shooting started. I don’t recommend that process, but sometimes you have to go with your gut and believe everything will be okay.
Someone once said of casting: “This is quite painful and I’d rather be at the pub.” It was me. I’m not a fan. I’d rather write a role for a specific actor and then convince them do it with treats or weapons. Some of this probably stems from being an actor, having to audition and knowing the feelings that go with it: Putting yourself out there, walking into the room hoping to not suck, convincing yourself you don’t care, secretly knowing you’re amazing.
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Tribeca to Kick Off With The Five-Year Engagement
The Tribeca Film Festival approacheth. The 11th edition of the festival, founded in 2001 by Robert De Niro, Jane Rosenthal and Craig Hatkoff as a way to assist the economic and cultural revitalization of post-9/11 lower Manhattan, doesn't kick off until April 18th, but today movie fans found out one film they'll have to look forward to at the fest: The Five-Year Engagement, directed by Nicholas Stoller (Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Get Him to the Greek), which has been chosen as Tribeca's opening night film.
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Bringing Suspicion to the Big Screen
When I moved to Los Angeles in 2007, I didn’t know I wanted to be a director. I thought I just wanted to produce. Like everyone else who moves to L.A. to pursue their dream, I figured that said dream would involve getting a job as a production assistant and going from there. I was fortunate enough to land just that job; later, I became a producer’s assistant for my mentor John J. Kelly (Warrior). It was during this time that I discovered I wanted to direct, write and produce. I wrote the contemporary mafia drama/thriller Suspicion and approached financiers with an interest in independent film. Once financing was secure, I approached available colleagues, and we set out to make my first feature film.
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Cinco Paul and Ken Daurio Bring The Lorax to Life
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."
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Act of Valor Storms the Box Office
While megawatt movie stars from around the world descended upon the Kodak Theatre yesterday for the 84th annual Oscars, the weekend saw moviegoers across the country descend upon their own local theaters in droves to see Act of Valor, an action film starring real-life Navy SEALs that pulled in a (much) higher than expected opening weekend gross of $24.7 million. The film beat out the second place finisher, Tyler Perry's Good Deeds (weekend gross $16 million), by a substantial margin.
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Hooray for The Artist!
Awards season is over for another year. Last night's Oscars saw the big award go to—surprise, surprise—The Artist, which picked up a total of five wins (Best Film, Actor, Costume Design, Original Score and Director) out of its ten total nominations. Also heading home with a quintet of statuettes was Martin Scorsese's Hugo, whose wins in many of the more technical categories—Best Sound Editing, Sound Mixing and Visual Effects, in addition to Best Cinematography and Art Direction—had the legendary director's name thrown out in thank you speeches time and time again during the first half of the show.
In an night devoid of any big surprises, there was still an upset courtesy of Meryl Streep, who won for Best Actress courtesy of her performance as Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady. Though Streep has been nominated a grand total of 17 times, only three of those have been wins, and the last time she found herself ascending the stage at the Kodak Theatre to deliver an acceptance speech was in 1983 for Sophie's Choice.
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Film or Digital? The Oscars’ll Take Film.
As firmly placed in the Age of Digital as moviemaking—especially low-budget indie moviemaking—undoubtedly is, it's good to take a step back once a while and consider film. The last few decades have seen an increase in buzz about digital cameras, digital projectors—digital everything, really. And while the sheer amount of attention paid to digital advances can give one the impression that shooting on film is a holdover from a bygone era, the fact of the matter is that film is still very much alive. For proof, one needs look no further than the Oscars, where the big winner is still, as it always has been, film.
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The Highs & Lows of Paul Rudd
If there’s one thing the entire human race can agree upon, it’s the inherent likability of Paul Rudd. With his good looks, goofy personality and gregarious yet laid-back persona, he seems like the kind of person pretty much anyone would love to have as a friend. But although Rudd almost always turns in a fun, witty performance, he’s also appeared in his share of stinkers over the years. With his latest film, Wanderlust, in theaters today, we're taking a look back at some of the highs and lows of this hilarious actor’s career.
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Discover the Future of Film at Cinequest
Cinequest isn't your average film festival. While it screens films like all the rest, its devotion to spreading the world about cutting-edge technology—and its history of being an early adopter of those technologies itself—means it tends to leave other festivals in the dust, at least when it comes to once lesser-known ideas like online distribution and digital projection. MM spoke with director and co-founder Halfdan Hussey about Cinequest's evolving mission and some of the highlights of this year's fest, which kicks off next Tuesday, February 28th.
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Awards Season Weekend Roundup
One week before the Oscars, the WGA, MPSE, CAS and ACE announce their 2012 winners
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.
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Box Office Ventures to the Safe House
With Valentine's Day now officially behind us, rom-com The Vow, the winner of last weekend's box office race, slipped to the number two spot, with last week's runner-up Safe House taking its place. New release Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance roared into number three with a weekend gross of $22 million, while Journey 2: The Mysterious Island claimed spot number four. Rounding out the top five was new release This Means War.
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Bringing the Movies to Michigan
The Great Lakes State passes five-year incentive program
What do Real Steel, Up in the Air and Youth in Revolt all have in common? They stand as just three of many movies filmed in the state of Michigan. And with last month's announcement of a new five-year incentive program, it will now be even easier for large and small productions alike to film in the Great Lakes State.
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