NOOO!!!!!! Just heard back today from our first film festival…London Independent Film Festival. The response? Not Accepted. It feels bad to get off on this step but we’ll keep hoping for the best. I said I would report the good and the bad.
Let’s hope the future holds better news!
I never liked London anyway.
Two of our actors from Marathon, Derek Lui and Matthew Daly, will be in an upcoming play titled “Sex, Relationships and Sometimes Love”.
It is a monologue show with different actors each performing a monologue written by Joelle Arqueros on sex,relationships and love. The show will be running at Actors Playpen (1514 N Gardner St, Los Angeles , CA 90046) every Sunday night starting March 29th. There are two shows each Sunday night: 7 pm and 9 pm.
Hopefully I got that information right!
Today I compiled a list of the film festivals where Marathon has been sent - 32 total festivals. I’ve ranked them by Tier 1, Tier 2, and Tier 3. Tier 1 festivals are very difficult to get into - if we get into 1 or 2 of them I would be ecstatic. Tier 2 festivals are well known but not major - I’m hoping for a 50% acceptance rate from them. Tier 3 is new film festivals that are just emerging. I’m hoping for a 90% success rate to those festivals.
We haven’t heard back from any of them yet…
Tier 1 (8 submissions - 25% of entries)
CineVegas (Las Vegas)
USA Film Festival (Houston)
New Orleans Film Festival
Cannes Film Festival (France)
CFC Worldwide Shorts Fest (Toronto)
Palm Springs International Shorts Fest
Los Angeles Film Festival
Austin Film Festival
Tier 2 (12 submissions - 38% of entries)
Dance With Films (Hollywood)
Malibu International Film Festival
Santa Cruz Film Festival (CA)
Sidewalk Moving Picture Festival (Alabama)
Santa Monica International Film Festival (CA)
Over the Fence Comedy Film Festival (Australia)
St. Louis Filmmakers Showcase
San Diego Film Festival
LA New Filmmakers at Sunset Gower
Hollyshorts (Hollywood)
Big Bear Lake International Film Festival (CA)
Route 66 Film Festival (Illinois)
Tier 3 (12 submissions - 38% of entries)
Red Rock Film Festival of Zion Canyon (Utah)
The Iron Mule Short Comedy Screening Series (NY)
DC Shorts Film Fest
The Other Venice Film Festival (CA)
What the Hell Did I Just Watch Comedy Festival (Seattle)
NYC Downtown Film Festival
London Independent Film Festival
Hollywood Ultra Fest
Central Florida Film Festival
15 Minutes of Fame (Florida)
Indie Fest USA (CA)
SoCal Independent Film Festival
We would be happy to be accepted into any of these festivals - the reason they were chosen is because they are all well run and have a history of putting on great festivals (especially the Tier 3 festivals). It’s easy to decide to send your film to Palm Springs but deciding between Indie Fest USA and Woodstock FF is where it gets tough.
Another consideration was region. 15 of the 32 submissions are within 3 hours driving distance of Los Angeles and we can attend without buying a plane ticket or hotel.
Breakdown by Region
Local (LA) - 15 (47% of entries)
South - 6 (19%)
International - 4 (13%)
East - 3 (9%)
Midwest - 2 (6%)
West - 2 (6%) - not including LA
So hopefully we can achieve our goals, but if not we can always try again. I’m afraid there’s a few things holding our film back for festivals. One being that it’s 15 minutes (we’d like to keep the next one under 10 for sure) and the other being that there are a lot of characters and locations for such a short film. But we’ve learned from our mistakes. It’s still a good movie regardless.
Western Kentucky Hilltoppers
Syracuse Orangemen
Florida Gators (and Steve Irwin)
International Sportscenter
Y2K
The Perfect Show
I started watching HBO’s The Wire thanks to a high review from PASTE Magazine. I watched the first episode of season 1 last night. It wasn’t amazing, but it wasn’t bad. I’ll give it a few more episodes and see where it goes…
I’m also in the middle of season 2 of 30 Rock. This show is amazing so far!!!
I’ll give more thorough updates when I complete the seasons. All I can say now is that I love Tracy Morgan. That’s all I’m watching right now besides The Office and LOST on real TV (what a drag! It’s much better to just get things on DVD) and I occasionally watch a Doogie Howser episode on Hulu.com.
Marathon has now been submitted to 23 film festivals and we won’t be hearing back from any of them for a few months or so…I’ll report how we do (good or bad). We submitted to some major festivals (LA, Cannes, USA FF, and Palm Springs) and some smaller festivals so who knows???
As far as books go — I’m completely obsessed with “Bowerman and the Men of Oregon” right now. The stories from the early 60’s are amazing. Not only running stories but Bowerman tinkering with types of track surfaces, mental aspects of coaching and treating different runners, and founding the company we know as Nike.
Musically, I’ve been listening to “Dark was the Night” - it’s a compilation album including Andrew Bird, Bon Iver, and The National - and “Elvis Perkins in Dearland”.
Here’s a video by Elvis Perkins that a secret source led me to:
They finally put Marathon on IMDB. They are very difficult to deal with. They still have the cast out of order (they’re alphabetical right now), but hopefully it will be fixed soon.
I COULD WATCH THESE ALL DAY!
Jimmy Rollins
Watching game footage
Ozzie Guillen
Calling the bullpen
Tiger Woods
The Gallery
I’m not one to give love to commercials. I hate commercials. Even if there’s an obvious need for commercials (how else would our favorite shows stay on tv?)…I still despise them. And with tivos and the emergence of hulu.com as well as other sites - the commercial can almost be ignored now.
BUT - I love commercials by ESPN. In particular, I love the “This is Sportscenter” commercials. I like them so much that I made my own in high school. I’m hoping to dig that up sometime this week and put it up for the world to see. But not now.
The marketing campaign for Sportscenter borders on genius. So for the next few days I will post my favorite Sportscenter commercials and then, hopefully, post my own. This should keep me busy since there is no LOST this week.
Let me know which are you favorites…
The New Kid - 1997
Obviously based on the parody of a young kid leaving college to early or jumping to the pros from high school.
The Closer - Year Unknown
Parody on baseball’s closer
George Muresan Dancing - 1997
7′ 7″ people dancing is always funny
WHAT I WOULDN’T GIVE TO SIT AROUND ALL DAY AND COME UP WITH BRILLIANT IDEAS LIKE THIS!!!
I don’t watch a whole lot of television - I stick to LOST, The Office, and 30 Rock. But I’ve seen the thousands of ads for the upcoming show Castle, which debuted on Monday night. I was mildly intrigued because one of my favorite actors Nathan Fillion is the lead in the show (you may know him as the stud captain on Firefly or the as the evil Captain Hammer in Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog). But it still looked a little corny to me.
Well my wife watched it - so I went for it too. And I must say that I was mildly surprised. I liked it. Fillion was better than I expected for the role. From the commercials, I thought the role was strange for him but he pulled it off. He’s really funny.
Fillion (far right)
The story is nothing crazy. Fillion plays author Rick Castle who writes murder mysteries like my grandma would read. He’s a best selling author. He has a daughter and his mom lives with him. In the first episode we learned that he has writer’s block. On the other side of the story, there’s a female detective who is the lead on a case where they found a murderer who’s killing his victims just like in Castle’s books. The female detective is played by Stana Katic. So they bring in Castle to help solve the crimes. She’s a big fan but thinks he’s kind of like a little boy - which he is. He can’t take anything serious. In the end they solve the crime and then the Mayor (who Castle has on speed dial) lets Castle stay on with the detective as he researches her for his next book.
It’s no Firefly, but we don’t have Joss Whedon here either. It’s good for what it is…plus it was really clean as far as language and sexual references…check it out.
