Colleges’ Favorite Movie; Alec Baldwin Jeopardy; Christian Bale Isolates

The most-assigned film in colleges is a total surprise; bad news for Alec Baldwin; Christian Bale has a good reason to get some distance from Chris Rock. All in today’s Movie News Rundown.

SCAD Animation: I’m back from several days at the SCAD Animation Fest in Atlanta, and wow. What a gorgeous campus and inspiring operation. I learned a tremendous amount about animation, starting with some key The Sea Beast creatives explaining how they designed the film’s young heroine.

Newport Beach: The Newport Beach Film Festival has announced its opening and closing night films. The 23rd annual festival will kick off on Oct. 13 with a screening of WEIRD: The Al Yankovic Story and close on Oct. 20 with Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery. All in all, over 350 films will screen during the eight-day festival, which will include nightly special events, world premieres, red carpet galas, awards contenders and don’t-miss conversations with filmmakers.

Alec Baldwin Legal Jeopardy: Prosecutors in Santa Fe, New Mexico may be planning to prosecute Alec Baldwin in the tragic October 2021 Rust shooting that killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, the Santa Fe New Mexican reports. In a stellar display of boots-on-the-ground local reporting, the paper learned that Santa Fe prosecutors requested $635,000 from state officials to cover the costs of prosecuting up to four people. “One of the possible defendants is well-known movie actor Alec Baldwin,” the prosecutors reportedly wrote in their request. The New Mexico Board of Finance allotted $317,000 to the prosecutors, who plan to ask for more money soon. Baldwin has said the gun fired the fatal bullet without him ever pulling the trigger. A rep for Baldwin did not immediately respond to MovieMaker‘s request for comment today.

Christian Bale Isolates From Chris Rock: Bale told IndieWire that he needed some space from Chris Rock on the set of David O. Russell’s Amsterdam, because Rock is too funny. “David told him to tell me some stories that I didn’t know he was gonna tell me, which is the way David works often. And I was loving it,” Bale said.  “But Chris is so bloody funny and I found that I couldn’t act, because I was just becoming Christian laughing at Chris Rock. So I had to go to him, I went, ‘Mate, I love talking to you, and we have mutual friends, but I can’t do it anymore. Because David didn’t ask me to make this film so he could just watch me giggle. He wants me to be Burt and I’m forgetting how to be Burt.’”

This Is Nothing New: Bale and others on the set of his 2000 film American Psycho told me in this oral history that he kept to himself then, too. It’s just how he works.

House of the Dragon Pacing: I’m all in on the Game of Thrones prequel — it’s a sheer joy, more narratively ruthless than its predecessor, in all the best ways. It’s also going to get faster, showrunner Miguel Sapochnik tells The Hollywood Reporter. “No one ever said to us, ‘When’s the drama going to start?’ There’s a real advantage to taking the time to get to know the characters because the investment is worthwhile. House of the Dragon Season 1 is a slow burn. And it’s worth it because there’s enough in there to keep everybody interested, but we have purposely tried to move away from doing spectacle so that when we return to the spectacle we can do it properly.” Maybe I’m alone in this, but I don’t consider it slow at all.

Most-Assigned Films: For a cool new feature focused on data, the Washington Post compiled a list of the films most often assigned in college classes. No. 2 is Spike Lee’s 1989 Do the Right Thing. No. 1 is… Dziga Vertov’s Man With a Movie Camera?

Man With a Movie Camera? Okay. As a former film major (I switched to a history, long story) I’m going to just come out and admit I had never heard of Man With a Movie Camera. But it’s apparently required viewing because of the many techniques it instituted, including jump cuts. It also had a very fast, for its time, average shot length of 2.3 seconds. It sounds, frankly, awesome. Let’s watch it together, shall we?

Main image: A still from Man With a Movie Camera (1929).