To Live and Write in LA

Collaboration Filmmakers Challenge: The Fifteen Dollar Film School

(First published on blogcritics.org) The Collaboration Filmmakers Challenge, now in its second year, brings a new twist to film contests. You not only have to make a film in two weeks, you also must collaborate on another filmmaker’s project. Both of you have to succeed, or neither one qualifies for the prize competition. For actors and technical crew, it […]

The Making of ‘Effigy’

(First published on blogcritics.org) Opening e-mail is usually pretty uneventful, but that day in August was different. I saw an ad for the “The 2nd Annual Debra Hill Fellowship presents Producers Guild Weekend Shorts Contest”. Heck of a long name for a shorts contest. I’d heard of competitions like this before and they intrigued me. The goal […]

Warming Up to ‘Cold Weather’

(Originally published on blogcritics.org) Cold Weather, which opens at LA’s Laemmle Sunset 5 Theater Friday, February 11, is not your typical American movie, despite the fact that it takes place in Portland, Oregon, with an all-American cast and a purportedly Raymond-Chandler-like plot line. It left me dazed and confused, but, in a good way. This was not a […]

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