News

Erica Palgon, who has been in casting for 15 years and now heads her own company, Erica Palgon Casting & Beyond in New York, has cast on-camera commercials, voiceovers, indie and studio films, theater, and real-people projects. Among her credits: commercials for T-Mobile, Pringles, Olive Garden, Febreze, and Advil; the short film "Counterfeit"; and the features "Blissestrasse," "Dumping Lisa," "The Project," and the upcoming comedy "Murt Ramirez Wants to Kick My Ass." She's currently casting a "transmedia project" called "Billboard, an Uncommon Contest for Common People." Her company also offers on-camera and business-of-acting classes, private one-on-one career counseling, and on-camera coaching for actors of all ages.Submission Smartsi love to discover new actors and am open to receiving unsolicited submissions from actors who do not have representation. It's also important for actors to look out for projects I'm casting on Actors Access via Breakdown Services and submit their pictures and résumés for...

NEW YORK -- The 14th annual Slamdance Film Festival on Wednesday unveiled its lineup of narrative competition features, special presentations and the opening night film: Randall Cole's comedic drama Real Time starring Randy Quaid and Jay Baruchel.

The Park City, Utah, fest, long established as a renegade alternative to Sundance, includes a few other narrative features with known actors among its world premiere special screenings: Hart Bochner's romantic comedy Just Add Water starring Dylan Walsh, Danny DeVito,

Justin Long and Anika Noni Rose, and Daniel Schechter's coming-of-age drama Goodbye Baby starring Christine Evangelista, Kevin Corrigan and Alan Ruck, which was shown to distributors at ShoWest's indie film showcase this spring.

The 10 films in the Narrative Feature Competition include Tao Ruspoli's darkly comic road trip movie Fix, Steve Clark's portrait of a Manhattan playboy, Frost, and Paul Encinas' coming-of-age ensemble drama Glory Boy Days.

Other films include Simon Welsford's amnesiac thriller Jetsam, Oliver Irving's dark family comedy How to Be, Oren Peli's supernatural thriller Paranormal Activity and Matthew Miller, Ezra Krybus and Sascha Drews' erotic drama Portage.

Rounding out the narrative list are Ryan Piotrowicz's urban filmmaker drama The Project, Tom Quinn's family drama New Year Parade and Candela Figueira and Maitena Muruzabal's portrait of a factory worker, Under the Snow.

• The parallel film festival event that takes place in the same village, same street and pretty much the same dates as its more intimidating cousin is now in its 14th year. The Slamdance film festival is filled with plenty of low budget stuff and though there are not that many items here below to brag about - ever year they manage to pull a rabbit of a film out of their hat. This year the film festival opens with (pictured below): Real Time by Randall Cole.Here is the complete rundown of titles for the festival: Narrative Feature CompetitionFix, World Premiere (2008, 90 min, USA)Written/Directed by Tao RuspoliThis darkly comedic road movie journeys from Beverly Hills to Watts over the course of 12 hours, as documentary filmmakers Bella and Milo race to get Milo's brother Leo from jail to rehab before 8 p.m. – or Leo goes to prison for three years.

...