"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.

Pressure Cooker Update!

I 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

Celtx 2.0 Released!

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...

Oscars!

Winners Announced for 81st Annual Academy Awards!

Favorite gag: Craig's List Dancers and Ben Stiller (sorry Joaquin). Hmm, the low-budget dance gig was funny, but next year, can we make the Oscars look less like the Tonys? Or at least make it less than 3 1/2 hours long? I will say I dig the new look for the Kodak theatre!

I would like to add two names that I believe were left out of the tribute montage this year:
Don Lafontaine (the movie trailer voice) and Majel Barrett Roddenberry (TV actress and wife of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry).

Ron Moreno, Actor

Just completed a website for my good friend and very talented actor Ron Moreno.
www.ronmoreno.com, check it out!

Also, check him out on IMDB.

UPDATE Sebsky Tools

Recently I received an email thanking me for posting a link to download the program Sebsky Tools. After doing some research I have discovered that Dharma Films is no more. Since I believe this tool to be so important I have provided a download of the last known release of the software.

You can click here to download

What's On Your Plate premieres at Berlin Film Festival

Catherine Gund's documentary "What's On Your Plate" (edited by Nancy Kennedy) premieres at the Berlin Film Festival February 13th at 9:00am! Congrats everyone on the WOYP team!

"WHAT’S ON YOUR PLATE? is a witty and provocative documentary produced and directed by award-winning Catherine Gund about kids and food politics.

Filmed over the course of one year, the film follows two eleven-year-old African-American city kids as they explore their place in the food chain. Sadie and Safiyah take a close look at food systems in New York City and its surrounding areas. With the camera as their companion, the girl guides talk to each other, food activists, farmers, new friends, storekeepers, their families, and the viewer, in their quest to understand what’s on all of our plates."