Off-Topic Category: Digital Rebellion Blog

Perfect Sport wins MyFestival, screens at SIFF

Tue, 10 Jun 08 15:20:29 -0600

I'm pleased to announce that Perfect Sport has won MyFestival, the online film festival that decides which movie will fill the last available screening slot at the Seattle International Film Festival.

Perfect Sport won the Feature Film category, with the short film Robbie's Withdrawal being screened before it. This takes the movie's total festival wins to two so far, the previous being Best Dramatic Feature at WorldFest.

The screening takes place at the Harvard Exit on Sunday June 15th at 6:30 pm. Tickets are $11 General Admission or $9 for SIFF Supporter. Tickets can be purchased here.

I'd recommend the theatrical screening for the best possible experience but the film is still available for viewing on the MyFestival site until June 15th.

Read the press release here.

Last chance to catch Perfect Sport

Thu, 05 Jun 08 14:53:47 -0600

Only a few days left to catch the award-winning feature Perfect Sport online for free. It is competing in MyFestival, a collaboration with the Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF). 10 features and 10 shorts compete for votes, with the winner in each category going on to screen at SIFF on June 15th. The movie will only be online until June 8th (this Sunday) so time is running out!

Here's what some people had to say so far:

Digg:

Just got done watching the movie on MyFestival- "socially-challenging while delightfully entertaining" sums it all up. Its a movie I won't soon forget.

IMDb:

Building on a very creative script with an unexpected plot and believable, fully human characters, the actors make unusual choices that bring even more life to their roles. Your typical sports movie this ain't. Perfect Sport is also set against a beautiful score. I'd recommend this movie to anyone who wants to see something original and gripping. It's so nice to see a movie where you don't know everything that's going to happen in advance. Loved it! Hope it comes out in wider release soon.

http://myfestival.indieflix.com/FilmDetail.aspx?filmid=12

Definitely not a movie to be missed. Also don't forget to post your thoughts on the movie into the comment box on the MyFestival site as feedback is really helpful for filmmakers.

P.S. I'm going to have limited internet access over the next few days so apologies if I can't answer your emails quickly.

R.I.P. Sydney Pollack

Mon, 26 May 08 22:55:30 -0600

Didn't expect to read this... Sydney Pollack just died of cancer, aged 73.

Read more...

If you need an editor in the Southern California area...

Sat, 24 May 08 17:20:23 -0600

My buddy Robby is currently looking for work. He is a very talented editor and edited the feature film Perfect Sport, that just won Best Dramatic Feature at the Worldfest Houston film festival and is now competing in MyFestival for a place in the Seattle International Film Festival (and appears to be winning at the present time). He's also a great guy who's very easy to get along with.

He doesn't have a reel at the moment but you can see the movie he edited online for free:
Perfect Sport at MyFestival (requires signup)

So if you're looking for an excellent editor for a future project, look no further. He's had experience with short-form, long-form, dramas, comedies, etc, and tells me that he's open to anything sent his way.

Here is his resume and if you would like to hire him or speak to him further, please contact him directly.

Robby Stambler Resume (DOC)

Baz Luhrmann offers free filmmaking course on iTunes

Wed, 30 Apr 08 01:57:10 -0600

Baz Luhrmann (director of Romeo + Juliet, Moulin Rouge and the infamous Chanel commercial with Nicole Kidman) is now offering a free filmmaking course entitled Set to Screen in video podcast form on the iTunes store.

It lasts until October and each podcast features a specific aspect of the filmmaking process (e.g. set design, cinematography, etc) on Baz's new feature film, Australia, starring Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman. The first one, On Set Photography, is available now. Peter Jackson did something similar on King Kong which ended up being very successful.

If you're a high school or college student, five of the podcasts come with a challenge at the end. Complete the challenge, post it to the Apple Student Gallery and you could be in for the chance of winning an iPod shuffle, iPod nano, iPod touch, or a MacBook Pro. A trip for two to Australia is also up for grabs, and the top prize in the final challenge is a trip to Australia with a chance to meet Baz and travel with him on the movie's promotional tour. Your project will also be featured on the movie's DVD release.

For those who aren't students, I think the podcasts are still very interesting regardless. I have a lot of respect for Baz and his work so I will be subscribing to this for sure and no doubt hanging on his every word.

[via CamcorderInfo]

Perfect Sport wins Best Drama at WorldFest

Sat, 26 Apr 08 15:03:49 -0600

I previously mentioned that Perfect Sport had been entered into the WorldFest Houston film festival. I'm happy to announce that the movie fought off some tough competition to win Best Dramatic Feature at the festival. Congratulations to all those involved, in particular Tony O'Brien, the writer-director-actor behind it.

I saw a great review on IMDb from someone who saw it at WorldFest that summarizes the movie far better than I ever could:

I loved this movie! Caught it at Houston Worldfest where it won for Best Drama. For those of you who haven't seen it yet (don't worry, no spoilers here) here's a mini-review:

Building on a very creative script with an unexpected plot and believable, fully human characters, the actors make unusual choices that bring even more life to their roles. Your typical sports movie this ain't. Perfect Sport is also set against a beautiful score. I'd recommend this movie to anyone who wants to see something original and gripping. It's so nice to see a movie where you don't know everything that's going to happen in advance. Loved it! Hope it comes out in wider release soon.

And finally, LA Times has a sneak preview.

The movie will be entered into other film festivals and I will let you know more about that when information becomes available. When it comes to your town, I definitely recommend checking it out.

NewsFire now completely free

Sun, 02 Mar 08 00:32:01 -0700

I just heard that the developer of NewsFire is now offering the popular Mac feed reader for free. I recommended this even when it cost money (I am a paid user) so I recommend it even more now that it is free.

So what is it and why do you need it? Well, those little orange buttons you see on web pages are links to RSS feeds. An RSS feed is a tiny file containing textual information such as posts from a blog or software updates. If you have a favorite site or blog, you can be notified of updates without having to visit the site every day. Obviously this saves a lot of time and bandwidth.

I didn't think I needed one until I tried it, and the time I saved was tremendous. If you see a new site you like the look of, put it in your feed reader and forget about it until the next update. Visiting a site to check for updates that don't exist is very inefficient.

NewsFire is a great program because, as the developer himself says: "Unlike other readers, NewsFire is designed with a deliberately minimal interface. The news is what matters and it takes center stage." And now it's free, so try it out.

We have several feeds on this site, listed here. We also have an appcast feed that tells you when one of our applications is updated.

[via TUAW]

iPhone storage bumped up to 16 GB, iPod Touch increased to 32 GB

Tue, 05 Feb 08 10:53:44 -0700

Apple just increased the storage space on its iPhone and iPod Touch lines. Here are the new prices and specs:

iPhone 8 GB - $399
iPhone 16 GB - $499

iPod Touch 8 GB - $299
iPod Touch 16 GB - $399
iPod Touch 32 GB $499

I don't think there is anything right now preventing the iPhone from having 32 GB of storage, it's more of a case of Apple not wanting to cannibalize iPod Touch sales for those with larger music collections.

iTunes tells me I have 32.86 GB of music so I guess I will have to wait for the next two storage revisions of the iPhone before buying one (the next one presumably being 32 GB and the one after that being 48 or 64 GB, one would imagine).

Bloody Omaha

Fri, 11 Jan 08 15:52:14 -0700

For the BBC history show Timewatch, they did a reenactment of the Omaha Beach landings - using only three actors. They used all kinds of camera and post tricks and managed to pull it off believably. Here's the making of "Bloody Omaha":

[via ProLost]

Opera sues Microsoft over Internet Explorer

Mon, 17 Dec 07 13:30:19 -0700

Opera Software is suing Microsoft over Internet Explorer, claiming that it is anti-competitive to integrate the browser with the operating system. That claim has been made many a time. However, they are also claiming that Microsoft deliberately flouted web standards in order to discourage interoperability. I would agree with this. Firefox is my primary browser so I generally design for that, but the site is near-identical in standards-compliant browsers such as Safari. Try it in Internet Explorer and it looks completely different.

The access logs for the site say that the majority of visitors are on a Mac, so wouldn't be able to use IE anyway - no bad thing, and the majority of visits come from Safari, with Firefox at second place and IE at third. I don't feel that it is a worthwhile use of my time to create code that will detect IE and offer a site specifically tailored for only the third popular browser used to navigate to this site, especially as the incompatibilities are entirely Microsoft's fault.

Opera says that it would like the European Commission to force MS to comply with standards. I don't know if that is possible but then again, European courts takes a sterner stance on Microsoft than their US counterparts, so it is possible. Either way, I am hoping that this will generate negative press for IE and alert people to the fact that there are alternatives.

I would personally recommend Firefox for speed, stability, standards compliance, ease of use (I find IE7's interface really confusing) and above all, extensions. Extensions are small pieces of software that perform tasks. For example, I have extensions for removing ads, displaying page ranks and for counting words in text areas (very useful when filling data into forms with minimum or maximum character limits). There are extensions for pretty much anything.

I also recommend Safari. Safari is VERY fast. It doesn't support extensions unfortunately but it's an Apple product so there is a lot of attention to detail. It's mainly the small details that cause people to like it so much, like the fact that you can resize text boxes in forms so that you can see what you're typing, Snapback mode that lets you easily return to your search results, and an advanced RSS reader that lets you filter and re-order the posts in the list.

I have also heard good things about Camino but have never used it myself. Firefox and Safari are compatible with both Mac and Windows but Camino is Mac-only.

Internet Explorer users: you might think your current browser offers you everything you could want but give one of the browsers listed above a try and you will find a lot of things that you can't live without.

[via BBC News]

Extras season finale this Sunday

Wed, 12 Dec 07 04:30:30 -0700

HBO is showing the season finale of Extras on Sunday Dec 16th at 9pm. Extras follows the life of aspiring actor Andy Millman. The first series features him as an extra trying to make the jump into full-time acting. The second series features him as an actor who has "made it" to an extent - but he's still no better off.

It's a comedy by the people who brought you the British version of The Office. Whilst The Office was great ("oi, no professionals"), I believe that this show is superior. It's sad that it's coming to an end but I have a lot of respect for Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant because they always end their TV shows before they get old. I can't wait to see what their next project is.

I wanted to make a post about it because despite being broadcast on HBO, a lot of people in this country still don't know about it. Every episode features them on the set of a production with a high-profile celebrity. They've had Ben Stiller, Daniel Radcliffe, Samuel L. Jackson, Kate Winslet, Orlando Bloom, Robert De Niro, Patrick Stewart, and many more. The humor is derived from the fact that they each play a slightly warped version of themselves. I think this is best illustrated by this clip of Patrick Stewart:

I would recommend checking out some of the episodes or clips on YouTube before watching the final episode as 1) you won't understand what's going on and 2) the final episodes are generally not as funny as the other ones as they mainly focus on tying up the story. I'm sure it will be good though.

Scorsese creates "The Key to Reserva"

Fri, 30 Nov 07 01:01:41 -0700

This is a really great Hitchcock tribute by Martin Scorsese. He supposedly found a 3 1/2 page lost script by Hitchcock with a page missing and wanted to create a movie from the script as a tribute. It's fake obviously - it's actually a wine commercial - but it's still a pretty good short film and very enjoyable to watch.

The Key to Reserva

[via HDForIndies]