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This week the "The Mouse House" (ABC/Disney) is all about the red and the blue.From news pertaining to studio heads, actors, producers, and writers, find out what sorts of waves Penn alumni are making this week!
Showing posts with label Film Producer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Film Producer. Show all posts
DT's B&P: 6 Reasons Why ABC Is Really Loving On Penn Alumni This Week
Friday, September 25, 2009This week the "The Mouse House" (ABC/Disney) is all about the red and the blue.From news pertaining to studio heads, actors, producers, and writers, find out what sorts of waves Penn alumni are making this week!
DT's B&P: They're ALL Hollywood Producers To Watch
Friday, September 11, 2009
Some exciting entertainment tidbits from our alumni film producers...
Mike Karz (C'89, W'89)'s Sorority Row (as reported HERE on DT ) debuts today.The film is about "A group of sorority sisters try to cover up the death of their house-sister after a prank gone wrong, only to be stalked by a serial killer."
Past posts about Mike's film projects here
More of my Penn "Film Producer" posts here
Adding to our "Alumni on Important Lists" series, husband and wife team, Elizabeth Banks (C'96) and Max Handelman (C'95, AEPi) are now 2 of Variety's "Top 10 Producers To Watch".More Here!
More of Liz's busy actress life HERE
Check back in weeks to come! I have a ton of developing stories from Penn alumni film producers!
DT's B&P: Alumni Dealings with Quentin Tarantino, Russell Crow and John Legend
Friday, August 28, 2009
Transitioning now out of our "Delicious Leftovers" series to bring you some exciting entertainment tidbits from our alumni and undergrads:
- Lots of celebrity dealing with our alumni this week
- She's casting For A new TV show
- She will be starring in a new thriller as a prisoner
- A Hot Los Angeles Penn event you'll want to go to on September 1!
- Free music!
Click HERE for the scoop!
"Most reality shows have people looking for their 15 minutes of fame. Reality Hell will have people wanting to give their's back! The reality genre has all but taken over television programming, making stars out of regular people. Now E! is turning the tables on all those reality-star wannabes by staging a show where the whole cast is in on an act to set up one unknowing reality-show contestant. Staged scenarios include an over-the-top modeling competition with extreme challenges, wacky contestants and insane judges and a family swap that will have the mom trying to find a way to escape the crazy Hollywood clan she's been placed with. This summer on E!, Fake is the new Reality!"I've watched this show and the part I look forward to is the end of the show at the moment when the actors tell the victim they're on "Reality Hell" and the person that is being pranked doesn't know what "Reality Hell" means until they realize all the actors are laughing at them. It's briliant!
My past posts about stand-up and casting director Lesley Wolff HERE
...Jordana also reviews the film for the Wall Street Journal. Read all about "Torah and Tarantino" HERE
...And speaking of Inglorious Basterds, read the early review HERE that Brian Tran (W'10) wrote last May for our Penn in Cannes '09 series
Elizabeth Banks (C'96) to star with Russell Crow in Next Three Days According to The Hollywood Reporter, Liz "will play the lead role of Laura, a woman who is imprisoned for a murder she claims she didn't commit, as her husband, the recently cast Russell Crowe, desperately tries to vindicate her."
I will tell you I recently saw Liz in the thriller The Uninvited. Liz definitely plays evil real good... in that she creeped me out real good. She reminded me of Rebecca De Mornay in The Hand That Rocks the Cradle.
+ For more information about his tour, click HERE
+ More of my posts about John Legend and his appearances at Penn HERE
Speaking of John Legend, Malik Smith (C'10), a similar sounding (undergraduate!) artist I covered HERE is giving all of us his 1st single "Crazy" for free HERE
+ More of my DT Music posts HERE
His New Production Company's Hot New Viral Videos You MUST See!
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Last year, I did a post about how Jake Avnet (C'05, Co-Chairman of Undergraduate Film Advisory Board, Founder of the Lecture Series, "Talking Film") won two prestigious grants for one of his films. Since then, Jake has co-founded his own production company called ENEMY Incorporated with director David Green whose focus is on commercials, music videos, and viral content, as well as film and television production.
As mentioned above, Jake sent me two great films his company has produced. And they're really creative and well done!
Click HERE to watch them!
Trojan2Go Commercial -"Sri Lanka": Watch this guy travel the globe in the name of love! (reminds me of my undergrad film). I'm sure our Penn alum sexologist and Trojan spokesperson would approve!A semi-NSFW cover of the Talking Heads Song "This Must Be the Place" laid over shot-by-shot re-enactments from American Psycho. ...Tell me that the star of this video, Miles Fisher (Harvard alum), doesn't look like Tom Cruise?!
$350,000 Netflix Competition: She's In The Final 10 and Needs Your Vote! (VIDEO)
Monday, June 29, 2009
Kristin Fairweather (Penn Grad '01, Masters in Government Administration, Alumni Relations) is in the running for winning a $350,000 production grant and a guarantee of a premiere at next year’s LA Film Festival. ...and they need your vote!Once producer Kristin and writer/director Jenny Deller found out they were one of the top 10 semi-finalists in the Netflix Find Your Voice competition, they were tasked with creating the above 3-minute short that reflected the feature in style or theme.
Tasked with shooting a 3-minute short they decided against doing a traditional trailer and shot a stand-alone script called "Save the Future" that we bill as "a companion piece" to the feature length film (and recent Nantucket Film Festival screenplay award winning) Future Weather. If they are selected as the winner of the Netflix contest then they get the funds to shoot the feature. "Save the Future" Netflix Short description:Check out the film above. It really is a beautiful piece of work!
In Deller's 3-minute companion short for the Netflix competition, FUTURE WEATHER's protagonist reimagines a day in her life as a public service announcement, blurring the lines between family struggles and fear of environmental apocalypse.
Future Weather Feature logline:
Future Weather, is a coming-of-age tale about a 13-year-old environmentalist. Central to the stories of three rural women, is the gifted but lonely Laduree, an aspiring conservationist whose experiments to save the planet from global warming are destroyed when her single mom runs away to find herself.
Help Kristin get to the final phase of the contest by VOTING HERE or voting within the video module above! (voting ends July 5)
Find out why Kristin left her career in Politics and how she got started in entertainment HERE
Other Penn alumni who followed their passion and changed careers HERE
On an environmentally related note, check out all my posts about Penn going green HERE!
These 3 UPenn Alumni Release a Hot New Futuristic Trailer Starring Bruce Willis
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Move over Terminator, another high tech film is coming out this Fall and it looks really cool.
Last week I posted my review (and photo with Betty White!) of Todd Lieberman's (C'95, Mask and Wig, AEPi) The Proposal premiere. (Incidentally, it opened on Friday...go out and support Todd!)
Now Todd, as well as co-producers Max Handelman (C'95, AEPi) and Elizabeth Banks (C'96) have recently released a trailer for their hot new futuristic film The Surrogates. The story is as follows:
"FBI agents (Bruce Willis and Radha Mitchell) investigate the mysterious murder of a college student linked to the man who helped create a high-tech surrogate phenomenon that allows people to purchase unflawed robotic versions of themselves - fit, good looking remotely controlled machines that ultimately assume their life roles - enabling people to experience life vicariously from the comfort and safety of their own homes. The murder spawns a quest for answers: In a world of masks, whos real and who can you trust?"
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Scott Glosserman's Documentary on the Implications of Wikipedia (TRAILER)
Friday, June 12, 2009
In his documentary Truth in Numbers?, Scott takes us on the journey about the phenomenon that Wikipedia has become.
Per Scott,
"The question of whether you and I should be charged with canonizing the sum of human knowledge or whether that should be left to the scholars/experts really intrigues me. I think it’s safe to say that we’re among a populist revival era right now and nowhere is that more acutely reflected than on Wikipedia. If knowledge is power and history really is written by the winners, then Wikipedia, already the second most widely read publication in human history, clearly demonstrates this power shift towards "The People". The documentary tries to explore implications of that, among other things."
Check out his trailer above!
Catch Up!: More of my posts about Penn alumni:
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Alumni with New Films, TV & Music + His Recurring Role on a Popular Soap Opera!
Friday, April 3, 2009
Some Hollywood bits and pieces from our Alumni this week:
- New sci-fi film being produced.
- New reality TV show debuting in May.
- New music featured on a TV show.
- New TV guest appearances on 2 popular shows (one tonight!).
Dig into the details HERE.
Reality honcho Mark Cronin (ENG'86), debuts his next VH1 reality show, "New York Goes to Work"
More details here
My past posts about Mark and all his reality shows here
Todd Lieberman (C'95) will produce the film (based on the book) Grandma's Intergalactic Bed and Breakfast. Per Variety, "The story revolves around a boy who goes to visit his hippie grandmother for the first time and discovers that her inn caters to vacationing aliens, a secret that she has been able to keep from her small town."
My past posts about Todd and his films here
Actor Roy Vongtama (C'96) will appear on tonight's "Dollhouse" (April 3) at 9 pm (playing a yoga instructor)!
Roy will also be recurring on "Days of Our Lives" starting April 21st and 22nd on NBC at 1pm as Doctor Richman! As you may recall from my earlier posts, Roy is actually a doctor in real life. How great is that!
My past posts about Roy here
Matt Kap's (C'97) band's (The Moving Picture Show) song "The Boy Who Lives Backwards" was featured this season in minute 10 of "The Real World: Brooklyn" episode above.
Listen to "The Boy Who Lives Backwards" here:
The story behind the song? Per Matt:
"The Boy Who Lives Backwards" basically came out of a regret. I was going to take some summer classes at NYU and met a girl the first day in the dorm through a friend. She'd had a bad day and her friend wasn't around so I decided to try and cheer her up. We had a really incredible night but I was so shy at the time and thought she had a boyfriend so I didn't ask her out. Years later I thought of that while singing a melody and began thinking about regrets we have in life - the person we didn't kiss, the bully on the playground we didn't stand up to, the clever comebacks that we wished we'd said in an argument and that's what the song is about. It also really reminds me of New York City in the fall which is my favorite time of year."Check out Matt's performance at our very own Pennfest 2007:
My past posts about Matt here
More about The Moving Picture Show
Past "DT Hollywood Bits and Pieces" posts here
Two Mask and Wig Alumni Film Producers With A Bunch of New Hollywood Movies
Friday, March 13, 2009
This week here are some tidbits of some upcoming films from some Mask and Wig alumni film producers:
Per Variety,
"The plot centers on an average college student (Jay Baruchel), who is unwillingly recruited to work for sorcerer Balthazar Blake (Nicholas Cage). The sorcerer gives him a crash course in the art and science of magic to prepare him to fight the forces of darkness, including the evil magician Horvath (Alfred Molina), in modern Manhattan. Teresa Palmer will play Baruchel's love interest."
Norm's other Nic Cage movie Knowing comes out in theaters on March 20.
My past post about Norm here
Todd Lieberman (C'95, AEPi, Mask and Wig) will be producing a remake of The Man With the X-Ray Eyes. .
Per Variety,
"The original starred Ray Milland as a scientist who is near a breakthrough in X-ray vision technology when his funding is cut off. Desperate to show results, the doc applies eye drops that eventually cause him to lose control over his growing powers."
Todd also has a great looking movie coming out in June called The Proposal. Per Yahoo movies, the synopsis is as follows:
"A book editor (Sandra Bullock) is forced to marry her male assistant (Ryan Reynolds) in order to stay in the country. When they travel to Alaska to meet his family, the new couple has to fake their way through a surprise wedding thrown by his parents. "
Check out the trailer below:
Also, Todd's Beverly Hills Chihuahua movie also just came out on DVD
My past posts about Todd here
My past Hollywood Bits and Pieces stories HERE
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From Wall Street to Hollywood: His WAKE Up Call
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Per the film's website, the synopsis of the film is as follows:
"When things get tough for offbeat Carys Reitman, she does what any emotionally isolated, modern girl would do - she goes to strangers' funerals. At one fateful funeral, she unexpectedly meets Tyler, a man mourning his fiancee. Despite the warnings of her undertaker best friend Shane and her roommate Lila, she finds herself connecting to someone for the first time. Searching for answers, Carys goes to see her estranged mother to confront her past. And as she tries to open herself to the risks of love with Tyler, she realizes she may have more to fear than just a broken heart..."
Click HERE to learn how Bill left his job as an investment banker on Wall Sreet and became a producer!
Other Penn alumni who made a career change for entertainment here!
More about the film here
Other Penn film producers here
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Digg He's Been Named The Hollywood Reporter's Top 5 Under 35
Monday, November 10, 2008
Matt Reilly on far right
Last week, Matt Reilly (C'00) just got named as The Hollywood Reporter's Top 5 Under 35.
Here's the scoop per the Hollywood Reporter,
"Matt Reilly, 30Check out other important "lists" alumni are on!
vp production
Warner Bros.
New Jersey-born Reilly first tasted the business as a summer intern for James Moll and June Beallor, makers of the 1998 Oscar-winning docu "The Last Days." His big break didn't happen until a college buddy working as an assistant to Patrick Whitesell, then at CAA, suggested Reilly take his place. He had only been on Whitesell's desk a month when the agent famously jumped ship for Endeavor. "He called me on a Sunday night and asked, 'Do you want to go with me?'" Reilly remembers. "I was in the eye of the storm of something really big, but at the time I was just going with it." Reilly soon realized he didn't want to be an agent after all. He credits Endeavor's Tom Strickler for pushing him to take a job at Warners, comparing the studio with the Yankees: "'You want to play for the Yankees, don't you?'" Reilly recalls Strickler asking. Reilly now oversees an upcoming slate that includes the Seth Rogen comedy "Observe and Report," political thriller "The 28th Amendment" and Ben Affleck's "The Town.""
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