crewless news and notes

I don’t always agree with film critic Roger Ebert, but I read his stuff because the guy can write. His reviews of movies are often more entertaining than the movies themselves.

Case in point: Ebert’s National Treasure review. When I saw the Treasure trailer, I thought, “what a waste of money.” But it inspired a brilliant Ebert review, so I guess it wasn’t all for naught.

Chuck and I recently helped out the FReD guys with the latest Sidewalk Scramble, a contest where the goal is to write, shoot and edit a short movie in less than 48 hours. There were more than 20 movies entered in the Scramble, and the FReD team (AKA “Zing! Boing! Splat!") fared well, winning four awards with our entry, The Peanut Business.

You can see the movie for yourself in glorious QuickTime at the FReD web site, FullResolutionDesign.com.

As predicted in my previous post, today sees the release of a new “This Movie Ain’t Gonna Shoot Itself” column at Movie Poop Shoot. Today’s episode: Part Sixteen: Mix Harder, the sequel to Fix It In the Mix from two weeks ago.

Wow. I just realized it’s been quite a while since I updated the ol’ Crewless news page. Not that anything too exciting has been going on, anyway. The short version…

• Sent Hide and Creep off to a few film distribution companies – no one has offered to release it. Yet.
• Submitted Hide and Creep to a few film festivals. Many more festivals on the “send to” list.
• Posted a new “This Movie Ain’t Gonna Shoot Itself” column at the ‘Shoot on Oct. 30, right before hopping a plane to visit friends in New York City for Halloween.
• Worked last weekend with Robb and Jimbo of FReD fame on a 48-hour short movie that will premiere this weekend at the Alabama Theatre as part of Sidewalk’s Scramble Screening. I won’t be there, but the Exhibit(s) will be playing the post-screening party.
• Saw Pixar’s The Incredibles. It rocks, it’s one of the best movies of the year, and Pixar is now 6 for 6. Speaking of Pixar’s greatness – screw DreamWorks Animation. Film for film, Pixar consistently outdoes DreamWorks, Oscar awards be damned.

Later today, I’ll be working on a new column for MoviePoopShoot.com that will hopefully be posted tomorrow, so keep an eye out if you’re into that sort of thing.