Page 284 – NYFA

Oscar Winning Actor J.K. Simmons Visits NYFA

New York Film Academy students gathered in a theater at Warner Bros. Studios this past week for a special screening of Whiplash followed by a Q&A with this year’s Oscar winner for Best Supporting Actor J.K. Simmons. Jonathan Kimble (“J. K.” Simmons) is known for his roles as Dr. Emil Skoda on the NBC series Law & Order (and other Law & Order franchise series), neo-Nazi Vernon Schillinger on the HBO prison drama series Oz, Assistant Police Chief Will Pope on the TNT series The Closer, J. Jonah Jameson in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy, and the voices of Cave Johnson in the 2011 puzzle game Portal 2 and Tenzin in The Legend of Korra. Simmons’s performance as music instructor Terence Fletcher in Whiplash (2014) received universal acclaim and earned him more than 30 accolades, including the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, the Golden Globe and BAFTA Award. Producer Tova Laiter moderated the discussion.

To anyone who’s seen Whiplash, the memory of J.K. Simmons’ role as Fletcher, the music conservatory instructor who will stop at nothing to realize a promising young drummer’s potential, is burned into their memory. Soon after the credits finished rolling, and the man who had just captured the students’ attention so intensely on screen appeared in the flesh and took the stage, the whole theater immediately erupted into cheers and applause during a standing ovation. It was interesting to see how much of a contrast the terrifyingly sadistic Fletcher was to the real man behind the role. J.K. was upbeat, jovial, and having the students laughing in stitches with his endless stream of quips. He was as appreciative to be there as the student’s were to see him and even though the line of students waiting to ask questions stretched to the back of the theater and nearly out the door, J.K. stayed until every last question was answered.

J.K. talked about the incredibly fateful circumstances surrounding the Whiplash feature. Director Damien Chazelle wrote the part of the student drummer Andrew for Miles Teller not knowing at all the the actor had been a drummer since the age of 15. What’s more, when Damien first approached J.K. about playing the part of music instructor Fletcher, he assured him that there would be a music technical advisor on set and that they could use a body double for difficult orchestral scenes. As it turned out, however, Mr. Simmons studied music in college. “I thought I was going to be Leonard Bernstein when I grew up, but I took a few left turns…” J.K. jokingly said. “It was just all meant to be.”

Elaborating more on the making of the film that changed his life forever, Mr. Simmons explained that when he first met Damien Chazelle the director was only 26 years old. However, despite Damien’s lack of experience, the two immediately clicked as J.K. saw the genius within the young director. Within 10 minutes of working together on the Whiplash short film, Simmon’s and Chazella knew they would be working together on the feature version. Simmon’s also had a comfortable, creatively exciting relationship with actor Miles Teller on set. Even though the tension between them was high on screen, the two would joke around together between takes on set. This was also due to the relaxed environment Damien created on set which allowed for experimentation from the actors. An interesting fact about the young music students from the various college bands in the film was that, aside from a few, they were composed of real student musicians, not actors. And during the filming the bands were actually creating real music!

While reminiscing on the long road that took him to where he is now J.K. said, “When I look back it almost seems like I had a plan. But I just kept putting one foot in front of the other, and doing what I really enjoy doing… When I was scrapping by and making ends meet, I didn’t have a wife and kids and any responsibilities… In my case, the level of success, acclaim, attention I’ve gotten more and more of in the last decade or so, if that had happened when I was 25 years old I would not have been prepared creatively, personally in any way.”

Universal Studios Hollywood Tram Ride Getting Fast and Furious

New York Film Academy’s Los Angeles campus is situated on the back lot of Universal Studios Hollywood. Our neighbors have some big news, as they just announced that they are making an exciting addition to their studio tour attractions.

Tram riders on the tour will soon be able to experience a high-speed car chase with the stars of the Fast and Furious series.

This is a welcome (and exciting) update that will see the hit film franchise join the ranks of films such as Jaws, Jurassic Park, and King Kong on the tour.

Dubbed “Fast and Furious – Supercharged,” the attraction is slated to open in July.

While visitors are still a few months away from being able to experience this, Universal Studios has released a trailer showing some behind-the-scenes action from making of the attraction. You can see the trailer below:

Entertainment News Round-up: Emmy Changes, James Corden Makes Debut, and The Matrix Goes Lego

It’s been a busy weekend in Hollywood and beyond. First up, after several months of a rotating cast of guest hosts, The Late Late Show will finally premiere its new incarnation with British star of stage and screen James Corden. While Corden is largely unknown to American audiences, he is a well-regarded celebrity in his home country of England, having cut his teeth on a number of sit-coms such as Gavin & Stacey and The Wrong Mans.

Joining Corden will be American musical comedian Reggie Watts, who will be serving as his bandleader, a position he formerly filled on Comedy Bang! Bang! with Scott Aukerman. Critics and analysts alike are eagerly awaiting to see how Corden will fit in the existing late night landscape and whether Americans will take to a relatively unknown Brit.

In other television news, following significant changes in its classifications of Drama and Comedies, Netflix wunderkind Orange is the New Black, which has competed at the last two Emmy awards in the Comedy category, will no longer be eligible for the Outstanding Comedy Series due to the cap the Academy instituted last month restricting “comedies” to being thirty minutes in length. However, the news becomes far more vexing when one considers the fact that hour-long comedies Jane The Virgin, Shameless, and Glee have all been classified as comedies, despite their running times. In light of the head-scratching this ruling has caused, one thing is sure: as more comedy-dramas straddle the traditional run-time of sitcoms, there will certainly be continued confusion as to which shows qualify as dramas or comedies

Here is some exciting news for our 2-Year Musical Theatre students: Beautiful: The Carole King Musical will be turned into a feature-length film, produced by Tom Hanks’ Playtone production company and released through Sony Pictures, which has also secured the rights to King’s songs and life rights. The Broadway musical has been running since January 2014 and was nominated for seven Tony Awards, winning two, including one for Jessie Mueller’s turn as King.

Finally, ending things on a fun note, here is something that our animation students will particularly enjoy. While The Matrix is chockfull of iconic scenes, none might be more memorable than the famous lobby scene in which Neo and Trinity lay virtual waste to a building lobby. To commemorate the scene and to test his own stop-motion animation abilities, YouTube user Snooperking re-made the entire scene shot-for-shot using nothing but LEGOs in the process. In total, the project took an estimated 160 hours to complete and even finishes with its own twist ending. Check out this feat of LEGO animation below.

Al Pacino and ‘Insurgent’ Win Box-Office

Insurgent, the second entry in the Divergent series, topped last weekend’s box office, earning over $54 million in its debut release. Starring Shailene Woodley, the films are adaptations of the popular YA dystopian series, similar to The Hunger Games’ cross-media success. Earning approximately half its budget in its first weekend, Insurgent is on track to make back its money and then some, although its opening hasn’t grown much from Divergent’s initial numbers, suggesting the audience hasn’t expanded as much as its studio would like.

Cinderella, Disney’s live-action princess epic, performed well with $34 million in its second week, surpassing its $95 million budget with a total $122 million gross. Less successful was The Gunman, a Sean Penn action vehicle many have compared to Liam Neeson’s original foray into the genre. Where Neeson found huge success and a series of sequels and similarly-styled movies, Penn’s film looks dead in the water and may be a failed experiment for the actor. Ironically, the Liam Neeson action film currently out, Run All Night, which has also been underperforming, beat out newcomer The Gunman for the third spot in the weekend’s box office charts.

While Al Pacino’s indie film Danny Collins hasn’t made nearly as much money as the current box office champs, it has made the most per theater, the metric most independent films in limited release use as a measure of financial success. It edged out Insurgent, earning $73,000 in only five theaters, for an average of $14,640 per theater. Danny Collins is a dramedy about an aging rocker reevaluating his life and family, with an all-star cast including Christopher Plummer, Annette Bening, Jennifer Garner, Bobby Cannavale, and Melissa Benoist. Al Pacino, who recently spoke at the New York Film Academy about acting and Hollywood, stars as Collins.

The box-office top ten is listed below:

NBC Visits NYFA in Search of Diverse Talent

nbc diversity — NBC’s Grace Moss presenting NBC’s Diversity Initiative Programs

This past Thursday, March 19th at the New York Film Academy in Union Square, our students, alumni and faculty were treated to an informational session on NBC’s Entertainment Diversity Programs hosted by Grace Moss.

The goal of their initiatives is to increase diversity on the network through programs like Writers on the Verge, the Directing Fellowship Program, NBCU Short Film Festival and Scene Showcase.

Grace was able to break down each program with her informative presentation, and answered questions from the audience. She even answered specific one on one questions for students after the presentation.

The New York Film Academy strongly recommends its students of diversity apply to these programs, as it is an amazing opportunity to break into the industry on a serious level.

Below are just a handful of the programs Grace highlighted in her presentation:

DIRECTING FELLOWSHIP PROGRAM The Directing Fellowship Program is designed to take directors accomplished in their respective fields (features, commercials and/or music videos) and give them the opportunity to work alongside episodic television directors. The selected directors will foster relationships and fine-tune their art to fit the television format.

NBCUNIVERSAL SHORT FILM FESTIVAL The Short Cuts Film Festival is an initiative to discover diverse voices both in front of and behind the camera. It provides creative individuals of diverse backgrounds an opportunity to get their materials in front of key decision makers from the entire NBCUniversal family, as well as agents, managers, producers, and other industry players.

WRITERS ON THE VERGE Writers on the Verge is a 12-week program focused on polishing writers and readying them for a staff writer position on a television series. We are looking for writers who are “almost there,” but need that final bit of preparation with their writing and personal presentation skills.

LATE NIGHT WRITERS WORKSHOP The NBCUniversal Late Night Writers Workshop is a program focused on exposing talented joke, sketch and comedy writers to NBCUniversal’s late-night & alternative lineup and readying them for a staff writer position.

NBC SCENE SHOWCASE A 6-8 week workshop of original scenes by diverse writers, cast with up-and-coming actors and guided by directors of diverse backgrounds presented in a one-day showcase for executives, producers, casting directors, and other industry professionals.

Martin Scorsese to Direct Mike Tyson Biopic Starring Jamie Foxx

Nearly a year ago, Indiewire reported that Jamie Foxx would take the leading role in a Mike Tyson biopic, penned by Terence Winter. It would seem as though the long-rumored film about the boxing legend will actually be coming to life.

More details about the film project have now been revealed, as Jamie Foxx divulged that he thinks Martin Scorsese will be involved as well.

This all-star lineup has everyone excited, and none of the aforementioned individuals are new to this type of project.

Winter and Scorsese worked together to bring to life The Wolf of Wallstreet, a biopic about the infamous Jordan Belfort. Foxx is also not a newcomer to the biopic genre, as he won an Oscar for his portrayal of Ray Charles in 2004’s Ray.

Foxx has also portrayed athletes in the past, starring as Willie Beaman in Any Given Sunday. This will also mark Scorsese’s return to boxing, having directed 1980s Raging Bull, an award-winning biopic about Jake LaMotta.

With so much star power behind this project, it is sure to be a hit. Speaking of hits, Mike Tyson seems to be pleased with the project’s current direction, going as far as asking fans to pick his best knockouts for Jamie Foxx on his official YouTube channel:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_mnWXhS_es

Nintendo to Enter the Smartphone Gaming Market

Nintendo to make mobile smartphone games — Photo by Sergey Galyonkin

The smartphone gaming market, traditionally dominated by specialized mobile gaming companies and independent game designers, is about to get some big competition.

After years of avoiding creating games for smartphones, video game giant Nintendo has announced that they will changing course and will be releasing games for mobile devices. These games will not simply be existing games ported to smartphone systems, rather they will be brand new games designed specifically for phone and mobile devices.

This bucks the trend of the company retaining as much control as possible. Historically, they have created consoles, sold them, and created games to support their own consoles; a top-down approach that has worked for decades.

Recently, however, things have not been so bright on the console side of things. The Wii U did not perform up to expectations, and even drew comparisons to the Sega Dreamcast, which prompted the rival Japanese game design giant to abandon creating consoles and focus solely on creating games. Some investors have stated their concerns and prompted Nintendo to go a similar route.

Not all is doom-and-gloom for their branded consoles, however. Nintendo’s handheld 3DS is a huge hit and happens to be the bestselling portable gaming console on the market, so they are not stranger to mobile gaming. They also seemed to have brushed off the criticisms, as a new home gaming console is rumored to be in the works (code name “NX”).

They will be partnering with Japanese mobile game company DeNA to create new games focused on Nintendo’s wide range of iconic characters. Between Nintendo’s experience and brand equity, and DeNA’s specialization and existing network, it looks like the landscape of smartphone video games is going to change drastically.

Stephen Colbert to Interview George Lucas at Tribeca

For those of you on Stephen Colbert withdrawal, there’s a beacon of light ahead with the announcement from the Tribeca Film Festival that the long-time TV host will interview Star Wars creator George Lucas. The two are expected to discuss Lucas longstanding career as a filmmaker, which includes the classic franchises Star Wars and Indiana Jones. Fans also expect Lucas to unveil a bit about the upcoming films, which are being directed by J.J. Abrams, under Disney.

Colbert hasn’t hidden his crush on Star Wars, having had an epic light saber duel with Comedy Central’s The Daily Show host, Jon Stewart. The force was strong for Colbert.

While not everyone will be able to attend the exclusive interview this April in New York City, there is some solace in the fact that the brilliant comedy mind will be returning soon enough when he replaces David Letterman on the The Late Show this September.

Now we just need to figure out how we’ll cope without Letterman…

Epic Trailer for Adam Sandler’s ‘Pixels’ Is Out

Summer blockbusters are known for their photorealistic HD and 3-D special effects, but Adam Sandler’s new film, Pixels, is all about the 8-bit. The supervillains conquering the planet in the latest space invasion epic are animated in the blocky style of early video games—because they are video games.

Adam Sandler says it himself in the trailer: “Pac-Man is a badguy?” It turns out, according the plot of Pixels, that aliens mistook thirty-year old video signals from Earth of period arcade games as a declaration of war. In response, they invade our world with giant, pixelated monsters based on Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Space Invaders and others. It’s up to arcade champ Sandler and President of the United States, Kevin James to stop them, with some help from Josh Gad, Michelle Monaghan, and Game of Thrones’ Peter Dinklage.

Pixels is based on the French animated short film of the same name by Patrick Jean. The feature was adapted by Timothy Dowling and SNL vet Tim Herlihy and was directed by Harry Potter and Home Alone director Chris Columbus. The film releases July 12, but you can watch the trailer now!