Now Watchable!

It's finally been done! Now, the full-length version of At the Core is entirely viewable from both YouTube and IMDb!

This had been delayed earlier due the movie's entry into this year's Mill Valley Film Festival, and I did not want a simultaneous online showing to hurt its chances. Now that this situation is over, I've made an executive decision and here we are!

On a different note, I've updated my Oscar Predictions part of the website (go here and choose Oscar Predictions). The actual dates for Nominees Announcement and Winners Ceremony have been released, and the hosts (plural!) have been chosen. I reeeeally want to view Precious...

Title Determined

As of this week, the title for my documentary on epilepsy has been solidified: Journey of the Mind. For a film about personal lifelong epilepsy, I think that about sums it up.

So far, there will be at least two names added to the credits of this: Neva Nickols-Hirschkorn, the Executive Director of the Epilepsy Foundation of Northern California and person who I spoke with on the phone to get permission for filming neurologists at a conference, and Kay Barg, my former teacher and an associate producer of this project.  This is all not including the names of neurologists...

There actually is an additional set of guns firing simultaneously (in a good way, of course). All I can say at the moment is that when it rains, it really does pour!

Got Permission!

This is wonderful. For next weekend's Living with Epilepsy conference, I have been speaking with a very helpful woman on the phone from the Epilepsy Foundation of Northern California (who have organized the event). So far, she has granted me permission to film at least one of the panels of neurologists that plan to speak!

This is all for the still-untitled documentary which I will quickly be shooting, editing and sending off to the Different From What? festival within the next month! I hope to complete the screenplay in the next few days so that I'll have an idea of where to include this necessary footage.

Sooo excited!

Two Weeks To Go

Barely a smidge over 2 weeks from tomorrow is September 15th. Why is this date important, you ask? It is the date that the schedule of films to be shown at the Mill Valley Film Festival will be announced.

This may or may not be beneficial to Thomas Productions, but it certainly can be! The MVFF has the chance of being the first "adult-level" film festival one of our projects has ever placed in. We have earned status with the National Children's Film Festival before, but that obviously was during the K-12 era.

Whether or not the hope rings true, the festival still permitted another entry into IMDb.com, and also initiated contact with Michael Neverisky for music rights. This festival is noncompetitive, so if At the Core shows up anywhere in the schedule, then it's worth a yipee!

More Site Swappage

While not 100% of this article regards Thomas Productions, enough of it does to talk about it here. The Checkoff List, which is linked to from this very index, is being moved from the 2nd site (jimthzz.bingodisk.com/public) to the 3rd site (directorg.uuuq.com) because the 2nd is becoming more and more difficult to transfer files to without needing to force quit and/or restart the computer!!

Okay, now that my rant is over, I'm merely announcing that the Thomas Productions Checkoff List, which lists oft-updated plans about the goings on regarding our movies and web pages (and also includes additional YouTube postings that may or may not be for Thomas Productions), is now hosted at directorG.uuuq.com/temp/checkoff.html.

Generally speaking, the only true remaining part of the site at the 2nd site address is GPicturama. Due to site space needs, it must stay there for the time being.

Upgrades Time

Two things over the past few weeks have spawned room for improvement, so here is the announcement of their upgrades.

First, the appearance of each of the tabs on the main page has a slightly different, more 3D glimmer to them. They used to merely look shaded gray, but now, they look so much better! It's subtle, but an improvement.

Second, there have been troubles over the past few months using Lightbox with GPicturama, getting it to work just right. Well, now, I've discovered Lytebox. Now, things are working just fine! I've not touched up any previous works, but I'm working on a soon-to-appear GPicturama entry, and the problems I was having with Lightbox do not appear with Lytebox. Three cheers to that!

3rd Site, Part I

As you may have noticed by now, if you're capable of reading this very text, our site has transferred both its Home Page and News Blog to a new site: directorG.uuuq.com. While the address is slightly longer, it was necessary for several reasons: 1) This News Blog takes up more space than you'd think -- at least 11 MB, 2) I needed a 3rd site that actually permitted FTPing files, which the 2nd site (jimthzz.bingodisk.com/public) simply wasn't capable of, 3) It was free, and 4) No Ads!

So, call it a celebration of sorts, as anything that's free (and means it) is a worthy cause. We'll see how well it works; it took nearly 2 weeks before it would let me register. Also, I'm having to put this main index page on there, too, so that I don't use an iFrame to insert the News Blog to another site's page (since it gets iFramed to the bottom of the main page regardless of where it's located...!).

The original links of directorG.com and directorG.com/news (for now, at least) will stay the same, and you'll get redirected to the new Zymic ones.

10 Noms for Best Pic??

Wowsers, THIS changes EVERYTHING! Imagine if this were the situation in the past few years: Could WALL-E, Into the Wild, Children of Men, or (dare I say it) The Dark Knight have been included for Best Pic consideration, instead of snubbed like in reality?

So, it's back to how things were in the 1930s. How might things go this year for Best Pic noms? This is how I think it might go, with the year nearly half over (as of July 1st), give or take an extra five:

1. Up
2. Away We Go
   
3. Where the Wild Things Are
4. Nine
5. Precious
6. Avatar
7. Coraline
8. Bright Star
   
9. Public Enemies
10. Sita Sings the Blues
11. Green Zone
12. The Informant
13. Biutiful
    
14. The Hurt Locker
15. The Lovely Bones
    

Silly Little Thang

I can't believe I didn't post this sooner: the next (82nd) Academy Awards have been pushed back into March of 2010 from the month before. Why? A silly little thang called the Winter Olympics.

Not much the athelete myself (unless you'd count bowling a sport), I tend to value the Oscars above the Olympics. Maybe it's merely participating in the same genre as the Oscars to "know the sport better". Just a thought.

But yeah, the specific new date is March 7th. I have no idea what movies are yet to fill the race, but I'm really looking forward to Spike Jonze's Where the Wild Things Are.

Ollalieberry Bliss

As things have finally returned to normal, following my attendance of a family funeral and my receival of an appendectomy, I've been able to step things up a notch. This past weekend, the fine cut of my television commercial for Gizdich Ranch was completed!

It took awhile to whittle down, but making the best selections for a 28-second piece when you have more than an hour's worth of footage is quite difficult, especially when there are four different segments of the ranch requested to be a part of the commercial. The shots shown here were from '07's Tour of the Juicery.

Now to call up the ranch to announce this, and to [learn where and how to] transfer the finished piece onto Beta SP!

Blogiversary

Today, it has officially been one year of successfully utilizing the concept of a blog to convey news articles on this site. It seems like time to celebrate! What could be worthy of displaying? Hrm... How 'bout a YouTube clip from one of the best shows ever on television?

Oh yeah, and of course:

BTW, Blogiversary and Blagojevich are not the same thing, in case you baffled folks were wondering! NOT related topics! :-)

Not Bad!

First, I viewed Waltz with Bashir last night. Let me say how excellent a film it is. It is breakthrough animation -- fantastic, heartwrenching and mindblowing. If you get to see any of the great pics up for Best Foreign Film, see this one first. Not for kids, though.

Now for why I started writing. Being the Oscar fanatic that I am, I always enter the annual Awards Daily (er, Oscar Watch) contests, for both predictions and then awards. This is the first year my name made the list of runners up!

In this case, I think we could only vote for the top awards: picture, director, actor, actress, sup. actor, sup. actress, and then mayyybe orig. screenplay, adap. screenplay, and perhaaaaps animated film. (Things would have gotten out of hand with the tallies beyond that.)

You can see my '08 predix here and click Oscar Predictions at the bottom, then Nominations at the top. The top 5 numerical selections are my choices, and the actual noms are backed in gold.

Predix: Mostly 'B's

Early this morning, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences announced the 2008 Film Nominees for their annual Oscars. For the categories I made predictions (which are all that regarded feature length films), I actually did pretty well -- a few were 100% on the dot (A+!), and the most often occurring prediction result (8 times) was a 'B' with 4/5 (80%) per category.

Films nominated for Best Picture were The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (which earned the most noms with 13), Frost/Nixon, Milk, The Reader (which some believe stole the show from The Dark Knight) and Slumdog Millionaire. One of my favorite parts was that Composer Thomas Newman earned not one but two nominations for WALL-E (song and score), and it's his second time earning so many at once!

Anyhoo, the Oscars are exactly one month away, on February 22nd. See My Predictions by clicking here and selecting "Oscar Predictions" at the bottom, perhaps also making your own, and then tuning in when the time comes!

Academy Sets Dates

For the purposes of next year's Oscars (and thus Garett's Newest Oscar Predictions), the following dates have been announced:

• Thu., Jan. 22, 2009: Nominations announced
  
• Sun., Feb. 22, 2009: 81st Academy Awards
  

There are 2 significant comments to make here.  First, the nomination announcement occurs on a Thursday instead of a Tuesday, like usual; this is to get out of the way of any political occurrences regarding the entrance of the newly elected president.

The other comment regards the date of actual Oscars, as it is the earliest planned date for the event ever.  I still prefer a March date, but that's just me...

Anyhoo, those dates will go atop this year's Oscar Predictions page.

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