Saturday Hot Links
Time for the 224th installment of Saturday Hot Links, your week’s essential reading about movies, TV, streaming, Hollywood, and other things of writerly interest.
Oscars: 10 Nominated Scribes on How They Wrote Their Most Memorable Scenes.
WGA Awards Nominees Reveal Their Screenwriting Journeys.
Sundance 2016: ‘Birth of a Nation’ Sweeps Top Prizes.
Sundance 2016: 19 Biggest Breakthrough Performances.
Movies Sold at Sundance 2016: A Complete & Updated Guide.
2016 Sundance Deals: The Complete List of Festival Pick-Ups.
Rolling Stone: 12 Best Movies We Saw at Sundance 2016.
The Playlist: The 18 Best Films Of The 2016 Sundance Film Festival.
Observed: 6 Trends We Noticed At The 2016 Sundance Film Festival.
Memo to Distributors: Buy These 2016 Sundance Titles.
Sundance Fights Tide With Films Like ‘The Birth of a Nation’.
‘Manchester by the Sea’: The Story Behind Sundance 2016’s Best Movie.
Giving Sundance Movies a Second Chance.
How Sony Pictures Classics Picked Up Four Pictures at Sundance.
South by Southwest film program announced.
SXSW Film Festival Lineup.
7 Hidden Gems in the 2016 SXSW Features Lineup.
SAG Awards 2016: Full Winners List.
SAG Award Winners: ‘Spotlight’ Wins Best Ensemble, Leonardo DiCaprio, Idris Elba & Brie Larson Also Score Big.
SAG Awards: Diversity Reigns in a Rebuke to #OscarsSoWhite.
Hollywood’s Diversity Crisis: 7 Facts Overlooked in the Current Furor.
Academy Acting Branch Is 87 Percent White, NY Times Study Finds.
Working in Hollywood When You’re Not White: Three Players Reveal All.
Hollywood’s Pathetic Treatment of Women Is Ready for Its Close-Up.
Hollywood’s Diversity Crisis: 7 Facts Overlooked in the Current Furor.
Where are all the women in American film.
What Awards Season Would Look Like If Hollywood Were Run by Women.
Ryan Murphy Launches Foundation to Tackle Hollywood’s Diversity Problem.
George Miller Named Cannes Jury President.
Patton Oswalt to Host Writers Guild Awards.
Is Steven Soderbergh Un-Retiring.
Paul Feig Makes History as First Man Ever Honored By Athena Film Festival.
Scott Frank Says His Long Developing Western ‘Godless’ Will Be A 6-Hour Netflix Miniseries.
James Franco Is Turning Zola’s Story Into a Movie, Because of Course He Is.
‘Tricked’ Trailer: Brilliant Madman Paul Verhoeven Shot a Crowdsourced Screenplay.
Oscar Contenders from ‘The Big Short’ to ‘Spotlight’ Highlight Santa Barbara’s Screenwriters Panel.
Coen Brothers Talk ‘Barton Fink’ Sequel ‘Old Fink’ And #OscarsSoWhite Controversy.
Oscar 2016 Hopefuls Have a Common Enemy: Father Time.
Did You Catch Ewan McGregor’s Cameo in The Force Awakens.
Disney, Fox, Lionsgate Leading $50 Million Into Mobile Ticketing App.
Screenwriting Software Leader Final Draft Bought by Cast and Crew.
Ron Howard, Brian Grazer Ending Their 30-Year Deal With Universal Amid New Money.
21st Century Fox to Looks to Cut $250 Million in Film, TV Staff.
Michael Wright Re-Ups as CEO of Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Partners.
Mexican Box Office Reaches Record High in 2015.
10 Of The Most Mind Bending Plots In Hollywood Movies!.
Stephen King On What Hollywood Owes Authors When Their Books Become Films.
Psychiatrists studied 400 movies to find the most realistic psychopath.
Here Is Every Single Movie Bill Clinton Watched In The White House.
The people thanked more than God at the Oscars.
The 100 Jokes That Shaped Modern Comedy.
Steven Wright on His Joke-Writing Process and Being an Influencer.
A February To-Do List for Film Buffs in Los Angeles.
Universal Rejiggers Its Specialty Division Again.
Why Focus Features is Again Getting a Drastic Reboot.
How I Shot That: DP Larkin Seiple Explains How to Shoot an Action Film on an Indie Scale.
How Four Filmmakers Turned Kickstarter Into Sundance Gold.
The 9 Indies You Must See This February.
Network Pilot Season In a Frenzy Thanks to Cable and Digital Dealmaking.
The Entire Planet is Watching ‘The X-Files’ Revival, and That’s Terrible News for TV.
Are Limited Series Rewriting the Rules For TV Drama.
What a $5 million Super Bowl ad can buy you in digital media (tl;dr: a lot).
As MSNBC Makes Shifts, Rachel Maddow Presses On.
‘Billions’ Showrunner on Epic Clash Between Damian Lewis, Paul Giamatti.
10 Good Movies to Watch on Amazon Prime in February 2016.
Hulu Might Lose the Best Reason to Pay for Hulu.
Twitter Stock Pops on Another Rumor of Investment Deal.
How These YouTube Content Creators Just Changed Hollywood.
YouTube’s First Round of Paid Content Is Coming on February 10th.
Instagram Has Released Shield 5, Its First Scripted Content.
How Joan Didion the Writer Became Joan Didion the Legend.
Amazon plans hundreds of physical bookstores.
Why Would Amazon Want To Be the New Barnes & Noble.
Why It’s a Great Time to Be a Vinyl Nerd.
Why Apple and Beats Should Sell Turntables.
The Power of the Isolated Vocal Track.
A writer’s life: Mark Bomback, Hollywood telecommuter.
Barry Levinson pitches “The Man in the Golden Tower”.
William Monahan: An Oscar-Winning Screenwriter Traces His Artistic Path.
Joshua James: Embrace “The Last Gasp”.
Chuck Wendig: The Pros And Cons Of Pro Cons (For Writers).
Chicks Who Script: Episode 74.
Scriptnotes: Episode 235 (Justin Bateman, Game of Thrones).
The Moment: Scott Frank.
Watch: The Sandlerverse [video] HT @GNetterville.
Watch: This Violent Short Film Features the Most Insane Oscar Isaac Performance Yet [video].
Watch: ‘A Brief History Of Swearing In Movies’ In Less Than 3 Minutes [video].
Watch: 5-Minute Supercut Highlights ‘Actors Acting Opposite Themselves’ [video].
Watch: 13-Minute Video Essay Details The Book Vs. Film Differences In ‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit’ [video].
Watch: Sundance Talks With Werner Herzog, Charlie Kaufman, DA Pennebaker, Lena Dunham, And More [video].
Watch: Sundance’s 90-Minute Art of Film Panel with Christopher Nolan and Colin Trevorrow [video].
Screenwriting Master Class tip of the week: From elevator pitches to development meetings to conference calls with talent, a screenwriter’s ability to share stories in a variety of narrative forms is both a valuable and necessary skillset. In the upcoming 1-week Screenwriting Master Class online course Story Summaries: From Loglines to Beat Sheets [February 8–14], you will learn six different story summaries that are critical assets for any screenwriter.
A screenwriter not only needs to know how to write a script, we also have to be able to convey our stories in multiple other ways. Beyond that, every time we shape a story in a different way, we learn something about it. As such, summaries can be helpful tools in developing, understanding, and crafting our scripts.
This 1-week online course that I will be teaching covers multiple story summaries: Logline, Synopsis, Breakdown, Treatment, Scriptment, and Beat Sheet.
Learn the ins and outs of six different story summaries including using them to help you craft your stories.
Plus you will have the opportunity to craft a logline of your own story with an optional workshop exercise.
The course consists of:
Seven lectures written by Scott Myers
Daily forum Q&As
Optional workshop writing assignments with instructor and class feedback.
A live teleconference between instructor and class members.
In the past, the response from participants in this course has been extremely positive. Here’s one reaction:
The prepared lectures alone are worth the price of this class. But, the added bonus of discussing the lectures as well as being able to workshop my loglines with Scott and my classmates was a fantastic learning experience that really helped me develop my ability to whittle an idea down to one intriguing sentence. If your manager, agent, guru, mother, or favorite reader asks you for a synopsis, treatment, beat sheet, or logline and you have no idea what any of those are then this class is for you. — Calvin Starnes
If you haven’t tried an online course before, this is a great and simple way to do it. You can download lectures any time and read them at your leisure. Peruse forum comments from your fellow classmates and respond whenever you want. The teleconference is on Skype and recorded so you can have access to it for transcription purposes. It’s amazing how convenient and effective online education is.
So why don’t you join me for Story Summaries: From Loglines to Beat Sheets? You can find out more about this 1-week online screenwriting class here.
I hope you can join me starting this Monday for this important and informative class!
Check this out: The Craft Package. Take all eight Craft classes and learn some of screenwriting’s most important principles and practices all for nearly 50% off.
- Automatic enrollment in all 8 Craft classes as they are offered now through May
- Immediate access to the online Craft Package site so you can go through all course content on your own time
- A bonus 9th class — Character Introductions — exclusively for Craft Package enrollees
January 25: Craft: Pixar and the Craft of Storytelling
presented by Scott Myers
February 8: Craft: Story Summaries
presented by Scott Myers
February 22: Craft: Handling Exposition
presented by Scott Myers
March 7: Craft: Scene Description Spotlight
presented by Scott Myers
April 4: Craft: Character Development Keys
presented by Scott Myers
May 2: Craft: Create a Compelling Protagonist
presented by Scott Myers
May 16: Craft: Write a Worthy Nemesis
presented by Scott Myers
May 30: Craft: The Coen Brothers and the Craft of Storytelling
presented by Scott Myers
For more information on the Craft Package, go here.