Ready, Set, Austin

I'm packing tonight for the SXSW Film Festival. I've been on the website selecting the films I want to see. I'm so excited to get to Austin and to drive 20 hours to get there.
Yay.

I'll be blogging and tweeting reviews of the films, music videos, shorts, docs and panels I attend daily.

Check out the festival line up here: http://sxsw.com/

Annie Goes Boating 3D trailer

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Annie Goes Boating

Director, Noel Paul

Some Boys Don't Leave

Director, Maggie Kiley

The new girl on the block

This Girl Rules the School.

I recently worked with Alessandra. Not only is she an amazing bundle of talent, she is a spectacular person.

The real world

I went in to this movie with my dad and his girlfriend with very, very, low expectations. A film starring Sandra Bullock, based on the true story of a wealthy southern family, helping an abandoned African American kid get into college and pro football, just had to be the perfect, cheesy, Thanks Giving holiday, film. I bought a coke and chocolate covered peanuts, snuggled into my parka and comfy movie seat ready for failure on every level.

Instead, I got to see a very well made and acted movie. I was so surprised by how simply the filmmakers took this sure-to-be-sad-happy-cutesy story and created a nicely done film.
Sandra Bullock gives a great performance. The critics aren't lying.
The entire cast is talented. The story is smooth and doesn't hover on the negative, nor does is dwell on the positive. It's all there, tastefully.

It's a difficult story to tell. By this I mean, rich meets poor, white meets black, the ghetto south meets the southern bell. The balance between these two worlds is painful to pull off in the art of filmmaking. The Blind Side wasn't perfect, but it came damn close.

At the end of the day, this is a film about a real family that took in a boy without a family and some how became his family. It's an amazing feat in this day and age.
This film makes you think, reflect and wonder. Isn't that what you want from a movie? To be entertained and challenged?

I recommend this film to any audience.

You should see it.

Contribute to the table

It's the night before Thanks Giving and if you are an indie filmmaker like me, you are on pins and needles waiting for calls from Sundance & Slamdance Film Festivals.


I have 5 projects submitted to Sundance and 4 submitted to Slamdance.





I've arrived in Utah, where I am spending the holiday with my dad, his family, his girlfriend and her family. I'm booking flights for a commercial shooting this weekend in Seattle so I can try to take the entire day off for some snowboarding, food and a lot of wine tomorrow.

Once I'm done wrapping up work, only to get back to it on Friday morning, I'm planning on making homemade cranberry sauce from fresh cranberries. I'm adding cinnamon, brown sugar, pepper, orange zest, orange juice and water. I have no idea what I'm doing, but I am terribly excited.I'm not a cook by any means and I haven't baked a pie for over a year. Yikes!

Each year at Thanks Giving I sneak by with being so busy with work, that all I'm every expected to serve is a bottle of wine.

This year I want to challenge myself (mostly because of the nervous energy caused by the festivals) to contribute to the holiday table. I'm also bringing two bottles of wine and a cranberry White Stilton cheese block.

So, if my homemade cranberry sauce fails miserably, I have the wine and the cheese to make up for it.

The most important thing for me to take away from this years Thanks Giving is having had attempted to make something fresh for everyone to share with me, just like the meal of Thanks Giving itself.

Happy Thanks Giving to you and yours.

I hope to have good news about my projects next week.
Yeehaw!