20 March 2009

"Beat the Devil Out of It!" To Benefit Art•Start

My friend Misha Calvert is hosting a party to benefit the Art•Start organization.

Information As Follows:

A tribute party for the famed Public Television Painter/ Pop Culture Icon - Bob Ross. To benefit Art Start!

PBR OPEN BAR 8:00-9:00 PM.
DRINK SPECIALS ALL NIGHT.
MUSIC BY ALEX ENGLISH AND BABYBUNNY.

RSVP: WWW.GOING.COM/BEATTHEDEVILOUTOFIT

FEATURING:

* Bob Ross Look-A-Like Contest! Wear your afro and unbotton your shirt! Win prizes!

* $1 raffle tickets to benefit Art Start (http://www.art-start.org) -- win original art and exclusive Bob Ross brand products.

* Live Bob Ross instructional painting! Learn how to paint happy trees!

* And a special performance by the "Titanium White Hot Dancers" (Bob Ross tribute dance troupe).


* ARE YOU AN ARTIST? Exhibit your Bob Ross inspired artwork in our special exhibition. Email for details: beatthedeviloutofit@gmail.com


Produced in Association with Gallery Bar, PBR, and the Culture of Me.

** All proceeds from the raffle benefit Art Start, an organization that provides art education and resources to children and teenagers living in shelters. It promotes creativity as a means of transforming lives --just as Bob Ross believed.

10 March 2009

Pressure Cooker Update!

http://prod.takepart.com/social_network/action/pressurecooker/images/actions/poster_300.jpgI got this letter from Jen and Mark today, great news guys!

Hi everyone,

So there is lots of exciting news. We recently won the audience award at the Portland International Film Festival and played at True/False.

Philly is the next festival coming up for those who are in Philly. We are playing the following dates and venues:


Sat. Mar. 28th, 6:30 at the Prince Theater

Sun. Mar. 29th, 4:45 at the Ritz East #1

Sat. Apr. 4th, 7:00 at the Black Box in the Prince Theater

http://www.phillycinefest.com/

But most importantly, we're opening theatrically!

May 27th at the IFC Center in NYC
June 5th at the Sunset 5 in LA (and hopefully Santa Monica and/or Pasadena too)

And sometime in June at the Ritz in Philly.

So if you can't make it to the fest, please come when we open in June. And we will need to get lots of people to see it at the Ritz when we open, so hopefully you can tell everyone you know.

Other fests coming up:

Sarasota
Florida
Nashville
RiverRun in Winston-Salem, NC
Berkshire

Hope all is well and to see you soon.

Best,
Jen and Mark

02 March 2009

Celtx 2.0 Released!

celtx
Wow! What a jump, right from 1.0 to 2.0! Well, either way, I've been using the new Celtx for about 2 hours now and haven't found any major bugs, time will tell as we drift into the late night hours of drafting ideas we'll see.

In this 'mostly under the hood' update (think OS X 10.6 "Snow Leopard" ) we do have the addition of a "Toolbox" option that allows developers to create plug-ins for the software. Celtx has followed Apple's iPhone development path: anyone who wishes to create tools for the freeware "open-source" software must have their 'Tool' autherized by Celtx Corp before it's allowed to be released for the plateform.

I will note that a lot of smaller options have been improved upon; highlighting and moving text works a lot better and the calendar / scheduling part of the software, once a chore to work with now feels less like freeware and more like a professional application.

Speaking of pro-apps, Celtx has also announced "Celtx Studio"; which they cite as:

"... a powerful new way to store, manage and collaborate on your projects. You'll be more creative, more productive, and better prepared with a Celtx Studio — which will help you save money in production."


I have not signed up for the free Beta yet (it ends later this month, after that Celtx asks for a $50 annual fee to help maintain the server) but I plan to do so this week. Although the server seems to be their solution to "collaborate" on files, I think Celtx could have found a simpler, in application way to monitor writer collaboration. If not at the very least, a "track changes" function that shows differences between drafts.

Overall, not quite a Movie Magic or Final Draft killer yet... key word being YET...