LB mentor and friend Stan Lee wants us all to know that YouTube Spaces has partnered with Stan and his company, POW! Entertainment for a special screening and panel discussion on Halloween.
The videos in this screening series are the “best of” results from the “World of Superheroes” program YouTube Spaces, Stan, and POW! hosted last summer in L.A., N.Y., Tokyo, London, and Sao Paulo, where creators were given an original superhero’s lair set, costume designers, visual effects artists, stunt coordinators, and a flying rig to bring their big ideas to life.read article
It’s 1983, and your local PBS station is doing its best to teach you all about the wonders of the computer age. Not that the computer age has arrived yet…but according to this very funny satire, it will:
Meanwhile, in the UK the TV elite looks to be putting its desire for more diversity in creators and audiences where its delightfully metaphorical mouth is:
by Vanessa Thorpe
Stuart Murphy, the influential head of entertainment at Sky TV who resigned on Friday, has joined some of Britain’s leading television screenwriters, includingPaul Abbott and Brian Elsley, creators of the hit dramas Shameless and Skins, in calling for a wider social range in British dramas. Telling stories about people from every class is not just a moral duty, Murphy argues, it also makes better television.
Murphy, Abbott and Elsley are supporting a scheme, launched this weekend, which uses funds gleaned from top ratings successes such as Downton Abbey andCall the Midwife to find and then sponsor writers from less privileged backgrounds.read article
Writing is solitary? Uh-oh, don’t tell all those U.S. network and studio execs who keep making producers open larger and larger writers rooms. Here’s a good article from India illustrating a not-so-good truth that American showbiz just doesn’t get anymore:
Filmmaker Habib Faisal. Hi, Habib. Need another writer?
by Prashant Singh
When you enter his quiet pad in Andheri’s Lokhandwala area, writer-director Habib Faisal instantly sets the tone of our chat by uninhibitedly sharing his views on the current state of affairs in the country. “We always connect politics to party politics. But it can also be about politics of entertainment or engagement (sic),” says the 49-year-old, as he also talks about his journey in Bollywood, his admiration for Amitabh Bachchan, and more.
You are an accomplished writer and director. What excites you more — writing or directing? I can’t pick one over the other. They’re both very different experiences. Writing is a very solitary experience; it’s a bigger personal struggle for me. On the other hand, when I direct, I have a script that I have confidence in. But when I am writing, I don’t have anything. Writing is a far more complex process. When it happens, it’s joyful. But when it doesn’t, you hate and curse yourself.read article
