We Highly Recommend - FELIX AND MEIRA!

FELIX AND MEIRA is a calling card for its young director, Maxime Giroux; a story of an unconventional romance between two people living vastly different realities mere blocks away from one another. Each lost in their everyday lives, Meira (Hadas Yaron), a Hasidic Jewish wife and mother and Félix (Martin Dubreuil), a Secular loner mourning the recent death of his estranged father, unexpectedly meet in a local bakery in Montreal's Mile End district. What starts as an innocent friendship becomes more serious as the two wayward strangers find comfort in one another. As Felix opens Meira's eyes to the world outside of her tight-knit Orthodox community, her desire for change becomes harder for her to ignore, ultimately forcing her to choose: remain in the life that she knows or give it all up to be with Félix. Giroux's film is a poignant and touching tale of self-discovery set against the backdrops of Montreal, Brooklyn, and Venice, Italy. FÉLIX AND MEIRA is the Winner of Best Canadian Feature at the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival.

Opening: In New York on Friday, April 17th At Lincoln Plaza Cinemas

Director: Maxime Giroux, who also shares a writing credit with Alexandre Leferriere

Starring: Hadas Yaron, Martin Dubreuil and Luzer Twersky

Running time: 106 minutes

The Academy looks to the future with a colorful eye!

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has officially launched the Academy Color Encoding System (ACES), a free, open, device-independent color management and image interchange system that offers a critically needed global industry standard for motion picture and television production. 

From image capture through editing, VFX, mastering, public presentation, archiving and future remastering, ACES enables a consistent color experience that preserves the filmmaker’s creative vision.

It addresses and solves a number of significant production, post-production and archiving problems that have arisen with the increasing variety of digital cameras and formats in use, along with the surge in the number of productions that rely on worldwide collaboration using shared digital image files.

“A decade ago, the Academy recognized the need for a new set of infrastructure standards as the industry moved from film to digital,” said Richard Edlund, Academy governor and founding member of the Academy’s Science and Technology Council. “We made a deep commitment to the effort – coordinating hundreds of top industry scientists, engineers and filmmakers on years of research, testing and field trials – so we’re both proud and excited to launch ACES 1.0 as the first production-ready release of the system.”

The Academy is simultaneously launching the ACES Logo Program to encourage consistent, high-quality implementations of ACES concepts and technical specifications throughout the industry. Initially focused on production and post-production equipment such as cameras, color correctors, displays and visual effects and animation software, the Logo Program is the first step toward enabling facilities and productions to take full advantage of ACES benefits.

There are 22 leading companies already in the Logo Program: ARRI, Assimilate, Autodesk, Canon U.S.A., Codex, Colorfront, Deluxe Media Creative Services, Digital Vision, Dolby Laboratories, FilmLight, FotoKem, The Foundry, FUJIFILM North America, Light Illusion, MTI Film, Panasonic, Pomfort, Quantel, RED Digital Cinema, SGO, Shotgun Digital and Sony Electronics.

ACES has been used on scores of film and television productions to date, including such features as “Chappie,” “The Lego Movie,” “Big Eyes,” “Elysium,” “Oblivion” and “Chasing Mavericks.”

As part of the ACES launch, the Academy will be exhibiting at the 2015 NAB (National Association of Broadcasters) Show, April 13–16 at the Las Vegas Convention Center, in booth C9132.  The Academy also will make two ACES presentations: the first as part of the Technology Summit on Cinema, and the second in conjunction with NAB’s Creative Master Series.  Science and Technology Council Managing Director Andy Maltz will make the Summit presentation “The Academy Color Encoding System (ACES): A Digital Production Infrastructure Standard,” covering the science, engineering and practical application of ACES, on Saturday, April 11, at 4:15 p.m. The panel session “Coming to You Live: ACES 1.0,” with top industry professionals discussing how ACES helped them successfully manage complex cinematography, visual effects and color correction issues on a variety of motion picture and television projects, will take place on Tuesday, April 14, at 3 p.m.

For more information about ACES or the ACES Logo Program, visit:

Oscars.org/ACES.

For complete information about the 2015 NAB Show, visit:

nabshow.com.

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Oscar Brings student academy awards

While covering the 2015 Academy Awards, the increased interest of film, among the younger generation was a topic of conversation.

That's natural in a town, like Los Angeles, that's packed to the gills with film students and aspiring thespians everywhere you look.

Hollywood is a company town and business is booming despite the many exciting platform changes, the desire to create and make movies will never diminish. It's storytelling and we've been doing that, "collectively" since the cave people huddled around a roaring fire and shared about their fears and dreams. 

In full disclosure, which is my nature, while covering the Oscars, this year, I was most excited about TEAM OSCAR (in it's third year) than I was about rubbing elbows with the famous and glamorous.

The Academy is packed with people who make things happen. Not idle talkers and one way they show their support for developing talent s with the Student Academy Awards. 

Good news, the Academy is now accepting entries for its 2015 Student Academy Awards competition. All Student Academy Award® winners become eligible for Oscars consideration.  

The 42nd Student Academy Awards presentation will be held on Friday, September 18, at the Academy’s Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills.

Beginning this year, students are able to submit their films online using FilmFreeway, a widely used festival and competition platform. Also new this year, the entry deadline has moved to June 1, and the awards ceremony date has been changed from June to September to better align the competition with the academic calendar.

Complete rules and a link to the online submission platform are available at www.oscars.org/saa. 

Past winners have gone on to receive 47 Oscar nominations and have won or shared eight awards. Two previous Student Academy Award winners received 2014 Oscar nominations: J. Christian Jensen, a 2014 Silver Medal winner, received a nomination for Documentary Short Subject for “White Earth,” and Talkhon Hamzavi, a 2013 Silver Medal winner, received a nomination (with Stefan Eichenberger) for Live Action Short Film for “Parvaneh.”  Past Student Academy Award winners include such acclaimed filmmakers as Pete Docter, John Lasseter, Spike Lee, Trey Parker and Robert Zemeckis.

Awards may be presented to student filmmakers in the following categories: Alternative, Animation, Narrative, Documentary and Foreign Film.

The Student Academy Awards U.S. competition is open to all full-time undergraduate and graduate students whose films are made within the curricular structure of an eligible accredited institution. In the Foreign Film category, eligible schools are allowed to submit one film to the competition.

The deadline to submit entries is Monday, June 1, 2015.  For a list of eligibility requirements, visit www.oscars.org/saa. 

In 1972, the Academy established the Student Academy Awards to provide a platform for emerging global talent by creating opportunities within the industry to showcase their work.

Disney gets bigger - if that is even possible!

I wonder if the late Walt Disney had a clue the growth of his empire that is built on a mouse with rather large ears and a few, goofy friends?

Can you believe that intellectual property has grown such a trillion dollar industry? 

Here is further proof, dear creatives, that you must create, protect and fight for your intellectual property because it's P R O P E R T Y and has value!

Just ask the brass at the Walt Disney Animation Studio who announced that their Academy Award®-winning Big Hero 6 became the #1 animated title of 2014 with more than $620 million globally. The film, which has earned $221 million domestically, also surpasses $400 million at the international box office this weekend.

Big Hero 6 continues to perform strongly in China, where it opened Feb. 28 and has brought in over $51 million, surpassing Frozen to become the highest grossing animated release ever from Disney or Pixar. In Japan, it has earned more than $75 million and is the second highest grossing Disney  animated release ever. It’s the second biggest Disney or Pixar animated movie ever released in Korea and Russia, and it’s the biggest animated release of all time in Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand, and Indonesia.

Last weekend, Big Hero 6 surpassed Tangled to become the third biggest Walt Disney Animation Studios release ever globally, behind only Frozen and The Lion King. It is also Walt Disney Animation Studios’ third biggest domestic release of all time.

Big Hero 6 debuted in the U.S. on November 7, 2014. Directed by Don Hall and Chris Williams and produced by Roy Conli, this action-packed comedy-adventure, inspired by the Marvel comics of the same name, centers on the special bond that develops between Baymax, a plus-sized inflatable robot, and prodigy Hiro Hamada as they team up with a group of friends to form a band of high-tech heroes.