Top Ten Things They Teach You on the First Day of Film School

10. They’re not called clothespins.  They’re called “C-47’s”, and if you call them by anything but such, you will not receive them.

9. A slate is not a toy, no matter how much fun it is to write “Cooz Juice” in permanent marker on the title line.

8. Assistant directors are not doing their job unless everyone on set wants to spoon their eardrums out with a rusty coat-hanger like a chimp looking for ants in a dirt mound.

7. A lens cap is to your camera as the command-save option is to the Declaration of Independence (had it been written by a Mac owner).

6. The shittier the food you serve your crew, the longer your grips will take to set anything up.  Serving Chinese food?  G&E will be ready to shoot in 10 minutes.  Serving kroger wraps?  G&E will lose all the stingers (extension cords) and “think they left them in the truck”.

5. Shooting past 3 a.m. is kind of like Canada.  A great idea in theory, but usually ends up being a horrible mistake.

4. Nobody actually gives a shit about Citizen Kane.

3. Your first script will suck.  It just will.  Your second one will probably suck, too.

2. If you spent less than 15 hours editing a film, odds are it blows.

1. Are you tired, starving, smelly and on your way to the lab?  Congratulations!  You’ve just made a film!

Katy’s Oscar Picks

Best Picture- Black Swan

Best Actor- Colin Firth

Best Actress- Nicole Kidman

Best Supporting Actor- Geoffrey Rush

Best Supporting Actress- Hailee Steinfeld

Best Director- Darren Aronofsky

Best Original Screenplay- The Kids Are All Right

Best Adapted Screenplay- The Social Network

Best Foreign Film- Biutiful

Best Animated Film- The Illusionist

Best Documentary (Feature)- Waste Land

Best Cinematography- Black Swan

Sound Editing- Inception

Sound Mixing- Inception

Art Direction- Alice in Wonderland

Costume Design- The Tempest

Film Editing- The Social Network

Music (Original Score)- How to Train Your Dragon

Music (Original Song)- “I See the Light” from Tangled

There ya have it folks.  Hope this brightened your day, and brittled your britches.  God help us if 127 Hours wins.  In the event that happens, you can find me in Montreal, sipping on sangria and watching hockey.

Rest In Peace, Rom Com’s

Rating’s of the top 2010 romantic comedies:

Love and Other Drugs: 47%

How Do You Know: 36%

Twilight: Eclipse:  50%

Eat Pray Love: 37%

The Switch: 51%

Going the Distance: 52%

Life As We Know It: 29%

Morning Glory: 51%

(Rottentomatoes.com)

Healthcare and the Missionary Position in “Love and Other Drugs”

If you’ve ever wondered “what exactly is Parkinson’s Disease?” and “where can I stare at Anne Hathaway’s breasts for 45 minutes consecutively?”, park those chariot’s, brothers and sisters.  My irrevocable girl crush on Anne Hathaway aside, Edward Zwick’s Love and other Drugs without question is the most wonderful combination of casual sex and business philosophy I’ve ever seen.  And I’ve seen a lot of ’em.

The bad news: every time I wiggled my way into the wormhole of a genuine moment, there was Jake Gyllenhal’s penis to push me back out of it.  I love him, I do.  But after Prince of Persia, I fear a sexually charged Rom. Com. isn’t going to cut it.

The good news: Anne Hathaway’s performance is breathtaking.  One particularly rapturing scene sees Hathaway’s character Maggie (I’ll save you the comment on how weird it is that Gyllenhal had to repeatedly have sex with someone who shares his sister’s name) is having an especially trying time with her Parkinson’s one afternoon.  She looks like a fish thrown in the boat looking for the ocean as she searches through her line of medications to find the one that will calm her trembling hands.  After minutes of struggling just to open the bottle, she finds that she’s out of pills.

It’s a fantastically suspenseful scene.  My grandfather died of Parkinson’s several years ago, but it shocked me at how paralyzed in grief I was when I watched her try to catch her breath.  While this film is in no way best picture, Hathaway’s performance beckons an Oscar above so many other performances this year.

Could Zwick just remake the film and charge Hathaway with playing herself and Gyllenhal?  That’d be fantastic.

I’m also an equestrian.

I’ve been an avid three-day event rider since I was 7 years old.  I’ve had some life changing experiences on the back of a horse… good and bad.  I’ve made a short video of my horse Forte`, who has been my equine partner for the past 13 years.  It’s poor quality, but hey… as our deeply personal info states… I’m broke as you know what.

Hope you enjoy and let me know what you think!

-C

The Most Charming Man in Showbiz

At this year’s Governors Awards, Eli Wallach (Godfather III, The Magnificent Seven, The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly) received an honorary award.  His acceptance speech reminds me of old Hollywood, and gives me hope that some day that city can, and will be restored to the original integrity and magic that it once held.  In a town that’s forgotten it’s own charm, Wallach ropes it back in, if only for a moment.

http://www.oscars.org/video/watch/ga_2010_14_wallach.html

Why I want to be Glozell Greene.

Wednesday. 8pm. I sit in my living room with Olive, my boyfriend’s and mine love fern… in the form of a Beagle.  I also have the company of my cat, Albi (who will make many appearances on our humble internet abode), and Antonio, the feral cat who looks exactly like Puss-n-Boots from Shrek voiced by Antonio Banderas and thus called Antonio.  I have the night off from my part-time job as a hostess at a local Mexican restaurant and, naturally, I have spent the evening on YouTube, Funny Or Die, The Oatmeal, and other various substitutes of real, human interaction.

And then it happened….  Glozell Greene.  A goddess among worms.  A glowing ball of hair weave and voluptuous lips filled the screen of my Lenovo.  Radiating confidence, she tries on bikinis, waxes her upper lip and armpits, and ad libs musicals on racial tensions in the United States on her YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/glozell1 .

Watching her antics, my chortling, snorting, and gurgling scared my fur babies into a corner where they collectively peed.  Then I realized something about myself… I am so very white. My revelation was like Dave Chapell as Conspiracy Brother on Undercover Brother “Caucasian overload! Caucasian overload!”  I’m funny.  I have a good sense of humor.  Katy told me I do.  I’m confident.  Why can’t I be as funny as my darling Glozell?  And I have the answer:  I’m white… and thus, awkward.  I could never video tape a child screaming on an airplane and tell it to shut up.  I could never don a bathing suit and refer to the necessity to apply deodorant to my  “breast-uh-ses.”  It’s not fair!  Not fair, I tell you!

But… I guess I just have to live with it and continue to comfort myself by subscribing to her YouTube channel and praying the glow of the computer screen gives me the a tan and thus the confidence to express myself.

And, since we’re entering the holiday season… Glozell spreads a little Christmas cheer.

-C

If you wanted to take the hair off the inside.

O.J. Simpson–Not a Jew.

It’s the first day of Hanukkah, and I decided to celebrate by doing what I do best: drinking heavily.   As I dunked latkes in my glass of Johnny Walker while crying softly in my darkened apartment, it dawned on me that it’s been nearly a year since I’ve heard my favorite Hanukkah song, the classic Adam Sandler ballad.  Enjoy kids, and for God’s sake, put a condom on.

-K

Cute. Win. Fail.

Toby Turner pits three epic clips against each other in an “epictition” in his YouTube channel series “Cute. Win. Fail.”

http://www.youtube.com/user/cutewinfail?feature=chclk

A cute video, a win video, and a fail video are voted on to determine which is most epic.  There is consistently a cute dog video… a beagle walking down a busy highway like a human, a chihuahua squeezing itself through a two-inch crack, or a golden retriever raising its paw and nodding for some Old Roy.  The classic trampoline fail makes an appearance in the series as well.

The featured clips in and of themselves are hilarious, yet it’s Toby Turner’s commentary I find most likely to cause an accidental pant wetting.  Take care to listen carefully to his introduction, which is typically the highlight of each episode.

-C