Independent films
fromwww.theguardian.com
4 days agoScreenmaxxing: why Hollywood is supersizing the big screen experience
Disney introduced InfinityVision, a certification for premium large-format auditoriums to enhance movie viewing experiences.
April O'Neil comes down out of City Hall as the ace reporter and then walks into the Hoyt-Schermerhorn station. That secret, that the Downtown Brooklyn station is subbing in for City Hall, is at the heart of an upcoming film series at BAM.
Los Angeles is home to more than a dozen one-of-a-kind cinemas that operate on their own terms. Some of these theaters have been around for 100 years, and in classic LA fashion some of them are owned by living LA legends-think Quentin Tarantino and Kyle Ng. Kristen Stewart recently announced she's also jumping into the mix with her purchase of Los Angeles's Highland Theatre.
For the last two weeks, my Instagram feed has been overflowing with Valentine's Day images-lush photo shoots of good-looking couples surrounded by rose bouquets, drinking champagne, and nibbling on chocolate dipped strawberries in cozy rooms that are the essence of romance. But wait, stop the carousel! These rooms look familiar. Welcome to my very own House of Love-at least as art directed and styled to perfection for 1-800-Flowers' latest Valentine's campaign.
We have run out of options for creating more production space," said Frederick Huntsberry, Paramount's chief operating officer. The internal expansion would create nearly 7,300 jobs during construction and accommodate 5,500 permanent workers at the studio.
The Human Artistry Campaign's " Stealing Isn't Innovation " movement launches today with over 800 signatories. Those include many Hollywood actors, including Scarlett Johansson, Cate Blanchett, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, as well as writers such as Jodi Picoult and Roxane Gay, and musicians like Cyndi Lauper and They Might be Giants. The campaign has a simple message: "Stealing our work is not innovation. It's not progress. It's theft-plain and simple."
It has an impeccable inner-city skyline. Croydon has the facade of being a bigger city. It's got all these huge offices that looks like residences. And filmmakers get this authentic scenery without the restrictions of space and traffic management found in central London.
It's nice that you are asking about props, because they're not really acknowledged, says Jode Mann, a TV prop master in Los Angeles. When Mann worked on the children's comedy show Pee-wee's Playhouse in the 1980s, she got a call from its star, Paul Reubens, who said he was nominating her for an Emmy. It was only after Mann told her mother and promised to thank her if she won that Reubens called back to say he couldn't nominate her because there's no category for you.
"Number one for me was not faking too much," Haley says. "Obviously you have to fake stuff and you have to pretend you're somewhere where you're not. But I wanted this film to be grounded and believable, and for it to feel like you were actually on vacation with Poppy and Alex. So it was important to me to shoot it with our boots on the ground."
PARK CITY, UTAH - San Francisco may be one of the most cinematic cities in the world, but it isn't necessarily the easiest place to film a movie. Or is it? This year's Sundance Film Festival saw two breakout hits that filmed in the city: "Josephine," which was filmed fully in SF, and "The Invite," which spent two days in the city on location. Along with the recent filming of "Artificial" and 2024's "Man on the Inside," there's a growing mound of evidence that despite popular belief, San Francisco can be a welcome place for filmmakers.
Nearly every other month since 2015, Carla Rossi has hosted a movie screening at the Hollywood Theatre that's also a drag show. The event, called Queer Horror, helps explain why The Ring is a "lesbian-coded ode to unwanted queer kids" and contextualizes Hellraiser 's "outrageously horny injection of iconic '80s queer horror." If Rossi's intro alone doesn't forever change your relationship to the night's movie, the on-theme drag performances-burlesque, lip-syncing, acrobatics-certainly will.
George Lucas should have died. It was 1962; the 17-year-old had just crashed his yellow Autobianchi convertible into a walnut tree, in Modesto, California. The car rolled, bounced and came to rest - it was "beyond mangled, flipped upside down and twisted like a crushed Coke can against the tree". When the teenager woke in hospital two weeks later, his heart having nearly stopped, he had a new philosophy: "Maybe there's a reason I survived this accident that nobody should have survived."
Ever since we first got wind of Emerald Fennell taking on this Emily Brontë classic, we've found ourselves thinking of visiting Yorkshire time and time again. The English county, with its vast misty moors, rolling hills and cutesy villages, is ripe for romantic trips and cosy, fireside staycations. Start planning your next escape with our guide to the best hotels in Yorkshire.
Everyone in Half Moon Bay seemed to know that something was going on. Some saw the casting call for extras circulating on Nextdoor: locals only, appearing to be ages 20 to 50. Others noticed the street closures on Tuesday, as heavy rains pummeled the small city. And a few, biking on the bluffs overlooking Wavecrest Beach on Wednesday, stumbled across a film crew clustered under a row of canopies, complete with a camera crane and several generators.
For Kleber Mendonça Filho, filmmaking is an act of both provocation and preservation. Mendonça was born in 1968, in the early years of a ruthless military dictatorship-a time when cinema, like much else, was harshly constrained. His mother, Joselice Jucá, was a historian who studied Brazil's abolitionist movement, and she taught him that filling gaps in the cultural memory was a way to expose concealed truths. In Mendonça's work, memory functions as a tool of defiance.
Last week, he opened a $230-million movie and television studio on the edge of the Arts District in downtown Los Angeles nestled alongside the dramatic new Sixth Street Bridge. The state-of-the-art complex has five sound stages, offices and other proper movie studio features such as a mill, commissary and base camp. "We just had all the major networks, all the major streaming platforms walk through this facility and they can't believe how nice it is," said Wainright, managing partner of East End Studios.