News

Exclusive: The Us-Chinese production company and the screenwriter development platform have launched the Orb Media China-Hollywood Screenwriting Fellowship.

The award will finance and develop up to four projects for production and distribution within the Us and China each year.

Winners will each be offered a WGA-scale option fee of up to $13,374 against a purchase price of up to $133,739, depending on the final budget of each film. Each of the top 30 finallists will also be considered for first-look deals with Orb.

Orb is backed by private equity firm Falcon Investments and other financing partners including China Film Group and Zhong Ruan Investments.

“The big brass ring for sure is to make films that will be embraced by the world’s two largest markets with autonomy in both,” said Orb founder Peter Shiao. “Yet, for the amount of attention co-productions have gotten, so very little has been achieved.

“The reality is that it is a very hard thing to do. It...

Timothy Bottoms Gets His Pound Of Flesh

By

Alex Simon

Timothy Bottoms became an overnight sensation at the height of the so-called “Easy Riders and Raging Bulls” era, after landing the leading role in The Last Picture Show (1971), Peter Bogdanovich’s film about the social and sexual rites of small town Texans in the early 1950s. Internationally acclaimed for his portrait of Sonny, a sensitive kid struggling to find his way in the harsh landscape of post-war America, the then-twenty year-old Bottoms suddenly found himself not only in-demand as a rising young star, but a major celebrity, as well, with younger brothers Sam (who co-starred in The Last Picture Show), Joseph and Ben following in their older brother’s footsteps, making names for themselves on stage and screen. Bottoms reprised the role of Sonny for Picture Show's 1990 sequel, Texasville.

After another triumphant turn with the lead in James Bridges’ The Paper Chase...

Sandman Meditations – Worlds’ End: “Worlds’ End”

Worlds’ end and words’ ends; end as conclusion and end as purpose. We’ve reached the finishing line of this story arc, and the stories within stories reveal by the last page what seems to be their outer shell.

This conclusion does what the best conclusions do: it ties up some loose ends while heightening the overall sense of mystery. We might say we like stories that have clear, unambiguous endings, but do we? Depends on the we, I suppose. No-one who likes such endings is likely to last through many Sandman volumes.

If I may indulge in utter presumptuousness for a moment, I would bet that most people who like stories (and are there people who do not like stories?) don’t actually like neat and tidy stories, stories without a hint of remaining mystery. Such stories are fine when we just want...

Carmine Dominik Giovinazzo was born on August 24, 1973 and grew up on Staten island. He is 5' 9". His mother is Nancy and father is Dominik, for who he is middle-named. His father was also a policeman, as are his sister, Alise Varela and brother-in-law, Will. Thus it was only fitting he should follow suit and become a detective too, albeit only in a TV show, CSI: NY (TV). Carmine commented he didn't want to pursue that career and it was left to his sister to follow in his father's footsteps. His family is originally from Naples, Italy. Carmine is of Norwegian and English ancestry too. He describes himself as half Italian from Calabria. His mother's side of the family are from Norway. "I think there's a bit of Bristol, England in me too. It's a great mix." His looks are more Norwegian than Italian with his blue eyes (the bluest of...

This came to us on Thursday from Cinema St. Louis.

Casino Jack to follow Hickenlooper tribute

Because of the tragic, unexpected death of native St. Louisan George Hickenlooper on Oct. 30, the 19th Annual Stella Artois St. Louis International Film Festival (Sliff), held Nov. 11-21, is altering its plans and mounting a tribute to the filmmaker.

The festival is slated to open with the St. Louis premiere of “Casino Jack,” directed by Hickenlooper. Featuring a buzz-generating performance by two-time Oscar winner Kevin Spacey, the film chronicles the rise and fall of disgraced super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

The “Casino Jack” screening – at 8 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 11, at the Tivoli Theatre, 6350 Delmar Blvd. – will continue as planned. But Sliff is cancelling the cocktail party that was to precede the film and is instead devoting a tribute program to Hickenlooper, a former Cinema St. Louis Award winner.

The tribute will take place from 6:30-8 p.

The film community(especially his home town of St. Louis) was stunned to hear of the death of director George Hickenlooper. The forty seven year old was found dead of natural causes in Denver, Co where he was helping his cousin John in his run for governor.

George left behind an impressive list of films. After making Super 8 movies during his years at St. Louis University High School, he continued his studies at USC School of Cinema and Television and Yale and interned with Roger Corman. George’s debut as a professional director was the 1988 short Art,Acting,And The Suicide Chair:Dennis Hopper. In 1991 George had great success with two feature length documentaries: Picture This:The Times Of Peter Bogdanovich In Archer City, Texas and Hearts Of Darkness:a Filmmaker’S Apocalypse (with Fax Bahr). Hearts, a look at the making of Apocalypse Now, has been hailed as one...

Besides the initial shock that comes with the news that writer/director George Hickenlooper died in the midst of a whirlwind festival run for his latest film "Casino Jack" at the far too young age of 47 is the great irony that he reportedly passed away quietly of natural causes. For anyone who has followed Hickenlooper's career, the latter fact may come as an even greater surprise since even more so than his films themselves, he may be best known for the struggles he endured in getting them made, the product of a indefatigable love of film, and as his cousin, Denver mayor John Hickenlooper said in a statement to The Denver Post, "his unquenchable curiosity."

As the late Hickenlooper recounted in the foreword to his invaluable 1991 collection of interviews with directors and film critics, "Reel Conversations," such passion for the medium was evident from an early age when he arrived in Hollywood at 17 from St.