How many notices have we seen from directors who have a great idea for a film, have written a script themselves and now ‘just’ need a producer to raise a hundred thousand to make it? What could be simpler? And let’s not forget that all-important incentive… no fee, but you’ll get a VHS copy of the film if, and when, it’s finished! Wow, as a prod…

  Music videos The End of the World  REM's The End of the World As We Know It sung by George W Bush {youtube}V3CmXGKXOmk{youtube} Familjen - Det snurrar i min skalle Swedish Grammy nominated mashup of archive evangelists to Familjen's music. {youtube}QfU-4Y4_akY{/youtube}  Mashups The Vadar Sessions Before Star Wars, James Earl Jones starred…

I arrived for once a little early, as the last gold balloons were being lifted into place. I decided to walk the block, attempting to hide my game industry noobiness with some assertive power walking. Ah a river. I will gaze across it with a sense of confidence, a metaphorical eye on the future. All is fine. So as I was scribbling this blog in a cafe in Bristol, the guy opposite told me "I never…

So I decided to give myself the Christmas break - from just after boxing day until the 9th of January when I returned to work to tryand get Netribution 2.0 up online. I ordered one of the most boring christmas presents in memory - Larry Ulman's 'PHP and MySQL for Dynamic Websites' and proceeded to teach myself some basic PHP, beynd what I'd hacked for the www.ukfilmfinance…

It has often been said that men age and women mature. However women, like wine, tend to mature in one of two ways. They either ripen into something full-flavoured, with lots of body and a myriad of intriguing flavours or they turn onto an unpleasant, acidic vinegar. It's further said that there are no good parts in Hollywood for the older woman. Well, one person would take issue with that. She's…

The Defence Medical Services Department (DMSD), part of the Ministry of Defence has appointed iceni Productions to produce a unique Defence Nursing web video project. The year long project will see the Midlands based video production company iceni, filming Defence Nurses across the UK giving a fresh perspective on the world of Nursing within the Military.  The nursing video, which will be ava…

"In 1744 a simple experiment was conducted in Sweden to reproduce the underlying cause of the Aurora Borealis in a laboratory, what we would now think of as a room. A small hole in a shade "the size of a large pea" let through a ray of sunlight that then was refracted through a prism. The small patch of light broken into a spectrum of colour…

i have spent the last 6 months trying to make a small impact on my website with my content that hopefully is something different to what is offered by the established networks (as i have no budget there will be cracks here and there in the quality) and seeing as i am not handcuffed by the censorship and regulatory boards my material can be inflammatory if need be depending on what i am thinking a…

  Sunflower3 - from vimeo's danLinfield

Roy Disney, nephew of Walt and general protector of Disney, has passed away. I was lucky enough to meet Roy in 2000 at the Belfast Cinemagic Conference, and it has stood as one of the more memorable encounters of my working life. I was quite nervous beforehand yet without need - he was warm and genuine in his convictions, unassuming with a quiet strength. [Netribution, Dec 2000] Roy worked for…

Two and a half weeks may be a little late to begin writing up the Open Video Conference, but then my first essay, penned in the few days after, discussed Pirate Bay at some length and even mentioned Michael Jackson and Brian Newman and so is now largely irrelevant. But with our new Tweeting Netwitbutions, perhaps this is the time to sign up fully for the more anti-knee-jerk Slow Blog Movement - i…

It's taken me a while to gather my thoughts about the Second Open Video Conference which took place at the start of October in New York. It featured a vast mix of people and organisations interested in the future of video online - from tech and web shapers to creatives and lawmakers - there's not many places where you can end up round the table with implementers from the W3C, the Firefox and Safa…

unicorn chaser

All is clear now. The middle east crisis. Homer Simpson vs Ned Flanders. Almost every fight I've ever had. Thanks Norman McLaren & BoingBoing. (this won the best animated short Oscar in 1952) {google}2976945051371832639{/google}   

This year has seen something of a resurgence of interest in the political movie with 'Good Night. And Good Luck' and 'Syriana' both doing well both critically and financially. In contrast, the British Film Industry hasn't produced a political film since the late eighties. One man aims to change all that. Tobias Blennerhassett has produced some of the most successful films ever produced in this co…

Following the success of Brokeback Mountain and Capote, 2006 has been called by some, the gayest year in recorded history. But one man has gone further still. Josh Tenttrow is Professor of Gender Studies at the University of San Francisco. Often called the most flamboyant academic in the US, Tenttrow has written a string of books examining gender and sexuality issues in mainstream cinema…

 Hallam Foe, Edinburgh 2000, Protagonist, Rataouille & Planet B-Boy "You know, everytime someone says they don't believe in cinema, someone, somewhere makes a sequel to a bad movie."  I'm slammed head first into multiplex A&E. Pulse falling, blood pressure dropping fast. I don't believe in anything any more. A sugar rush of Butterkist popcorn barely gets me into the trailers…

  A record number of films are getting release in British cinemas without any cuts being needed to get approval. Figures released by the British Board of Film Classification show that during the past decade less than three percent of the 4,951 films released into cinemas had to have cuts in order to achieve the classification they wanted.   This is a substantial fall from the…

"Memes don't exist, tell your friends" spouted the t-shirt of Hugh Hancock when I first met him at a Dundee hotel loby for a Scottish Screen new talent event. Hugh, for those who haven't read James' Wideshot interview with him, is one of the pioneers of the Machinima movement and through his Strange Company (whose t-shirt he was sporting) has made 16 Machinima films…

In 2006 we wrote here about this new idea of crowd-source financing to fund films, which had funded a few short films – a couple of years before IndieGoGo and Kickstarter took off. We'd followed the growth of a new website 'craze' called YouTube, that was making the industry sit up sweaty, followed their first feature filmmakers Arin and Susan and written about alternative exhibition as Secret Ci…

So, Digital and Culture Minister Ed Vaizey has backed MP Clare Perry's calls to create a firewall of Britain to support the seemingly reasonable aim of protecting children from pornography (and potentially keeping adults from materials classified under the Obscene Publications Act). With the web now moving further towards the TV, the suggestion is not much of a surprise. While it's tempting…

Thursday, March 19, 2009 To Whom it May Concern: Please in what city and country was the Church bombed in the movie The Reader, where 300 Jewish Woman died.  Are the only survivors Ilana and Rose Mather? Does anyone know if the name of her book is Memoir?  Is this book still in print? Best Regards, Sharon Corr

  Award-winning actor and comedian Red Buttons has died at the age of 87 He was one of the first funny men to show that comedians could also be Oscar-winning actors. He won the Supporting Actor award for Sayonara (1957), in which he co-starred with Marlon Brando as a U.S. airman who embarks on a tragic romance with a Japanese woman. He was also a quick-witted master of his craft as a com…

"The mother has challenged the Anjuna polica head on and got the backing of the Goan state minister - a remarkable achievement" BBC News informs me that the mother of Scarlett Eden Keeling   - who was horribly murdered in the neighbouring beach to here on Feb 18th - - has five children and had left her alone while she went off travelling with her boyfriend. The DailyMail.co.uk says in fact she…

As the season finally closes in on us, for those tired of the same old re-runs on TV or wanting to avoid the family warzone of the living room and watch TV on a computer under your bed - or better still are looking for films to share during the post-dinner web video show-off - I've pulled together some of our favorites of the year. In the first bundle I've focussed on anima…