Jeffrey Blitz
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Jeffrey Blitz
Jeffrey Blitz is an American film director, screenwriter and producer best known for the documentary '' Spellbound'' (2003), ''The Office'' (2007 - 2010), the fiction film '' Rocket Science'' (2007) and ''Comedy Central’s'' ''Review'' (2014 - 2017). Blitz is a two-time Emmy Award winner, the winner of the Directing Prize at Sundance and an Academy Award nominee. Personal life Blitz grew up in New York City and then New Jersey to an Argentinian mother and an American father. He is brother to comedian Andy Blitz and constitutional law scholar Marc Blitz. While a student at Ridgewood High School in Ridgewood, New Jersey, Blitz worked to overcome his debilitating stutter by joining the speech and debate teams. He went on to win the New Jersey state championship in policy debate as well as multiple public speaking events. He has since become an outspoken advocate within the stuttering community. Blitz attended Johns Hopkins as an undergrad and graduate student where he stud ...
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Rocket Science (film)
''Rocket Science'' is a 2007 American comedy-drama film written and directed by Jeffrey Blitz, and starring Reece Thompson, Anna Kendrick, Nicholas D'Agosto, Vincent Piazza, and Aaron Yoo. It tells the story of Hal Hefner, a fifteen-year-old stutterer who decides to join his school's debate team when he develops a crush on its star member, and addresses the themes of coming of age, sexuality, and finding one's voice. Blitz conceived a rough storyline for the film while making '' Spellbound'', a documentary about 1999's Scripps National Spelling Bee, but an HBO Films executive persuaded him to write the film based on his own adolescence when he told her about his experiences as a stutterer. The film's producers visited several cities in the United States and Canada; Thompson was cast based on a tape which his agent had sent and a follow-up audition after the first actor cast in the lead was forced to pull out. The film was shot over 30 days in Baltimore, Maryland and Trenton, ...
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Johns Hopkins University
The Johns Hopkins University (often abbreviated as Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private university, private research university in Baltimore, Maryland, United States. Founded in 1876 based on the European research institution model, Johns Hopkins is considered to be the first research university in the U.S. The university was named for its first benefactor, the American entrepreneur and Quakers, Quaker philanthropist Johns Hopkins. Hopkins's $7 million bequest (equivalent to $ in ) to establish the university was the largest Philanthropy, philanthropic gift in U.S. history up to that time. Daniel Coit Gilman, who was inaugurated as :Presidents of Johns Hopkins University, Johns Hopkins's first president on February 22, 1876, led the university to revolutionize higher education in the U.S. by integrating teaching and research. In 1900, Johns Hopkins became a founding member of the Association of American Universities. The university has led all Higher education in the U ...
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USC School Of Cinematic Arts
The USC School of Cinematic Arts is an academic unit of the University of Southern California, in Los Angeles, California, Los Angeles. With a history that dates to the first years of Sound film, talkies, the school descends from America's first program to confer a college degree in film. Under a name that directly preceded its present one, it became, in the 1980s, an academic unit of its own, within the university. Colloquially "SCA" or "the USC film school," it now has several divisions or programs, which treat artistic or business aspects of the creation of motion pictures and related media. History In 1927, when Douglas Fairbanks became the first president of the nascent Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, one of his recommendations was that the academy have a “training school”. Fairbanks and his enablers reasoned that training in the cinematic arts should be seen as a legitimate academic discipline at major universities and be accorded degree considerations t ...
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The Austin Chronicle
''The Austin Chronicle'' is an alternative weekly newspaper published every Thursday in Austin, Texas, United States. The paper is distributed through free news-stands, often at local eateries or coffee houses frequented by its targeted demographic. In 2001, the newspaper reported a weekly readership of 545,500. It is part of the Association of Alternative Newsmedia and it emulates the typical publications of the 1960s counterculture movement. History The ''Chronicle'' was co-founded in 1981 by Nick Barbaro and Louis Black, with assistance from others who largely met through the graduate film studies program at the University of Texas at Austin. Barbaro and Black are also co-founders of the South by Southwest Festival, although the festival operates as a separate company. The paper initially was published bi-weekly, and later weekly. Its precursor in style and format was the ''Austin Sun'', a bi-weekly that had ceased operations in 1978, after four years of publication. The fi ...
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Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is an American review aggregator, review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang. Although the name "Rotten Tomatoes" connects to the practice of audiences throwing rotten tomatoes in disapproval of a poor Theatre, stage performance, the direct inspiration for the name from Duong, Lee, and Wang came from an equivalent scene in the 1992 Canadian film ''Léolo''. Since January 2010, Rotten Tomatoes has been owned by Flixster, which was in turn acquired by Warner Bros. in 2011. In February 2016, Rotten Tomatoes and its parent site Flixster were sold to Comcast's Fandango Media, Fandango ticketing company. Warner Bros. retained a minority stake in the merged entities, including Fandango. The site is influential among moviegoers, a third of whom say they consult it before going to the cinema in the U.S. ...
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International Documentary Association
International Documentary Association (IDA), founded in 1982, is a non-profit 501(c)(3) that promotes nonfiction filmmakers, and is dedicated to increasing public awareness for the documentary genre. Their major program areas are: Advocacy, Filmmaker Services, Education, and Public Programs and Events. Based in Los Angeles, the IDA has approximately 2,000 members in 53 countries, providing a forum for supporters and suppliers of documentary filmmaking. Advocacy The IDA advocates for, protects and advances the legal rights of documentary filmmakers. IDA has a long history of making the case for documentary filmmaking as a vital art form, and seeking ways to ensure that the artists who make documentaries receive appropriate funding. Most recently, IDA has been vocal in confronting the non-fiction film industry, to include promoting net neutrality efforts, lobbying for the development of strong public policies for the arts, lobbying for the appropriation of increased public fundin ...
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International Documentary Association Top 25 Documentaries
The International Documentary Association produced in 2007 a list of the top 25 documentary films as voted by members. Statistics ''Night and Fog'' is the oldest and shortest entry on the list while ''An Inconvenient Truth'' is the most recent as of 2022. Six Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature winners are featured on the list: ''Bowling for Columbine'', '' Harlan County, U.S.A.'', ''An Inconvenient Truth'', ''The Fog of War'', '' Born into Brothels'' and ''Woodstock The Woodstock Music and Art Fair, commonly referred to as Woodstock, was a music festival held from August 15 to 18, 1969, on Max Yasgur's dairy farm in Bethel, New York, southwest of the town of Woodstock, New York, Woodstock. Billed as "a ...''. Michael Moore, Errol Morris and Albert and David Maysles, The Maysles Brothers have multiple entries on the list. See also * 50 Documentaries to See Before You Die * List of films considered the best *''Documentary Now''-Emmy-nominated mockumentary series pa ...
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The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of the longest-running newspapers in the United States, the ''Times'' serves as one of the country's Newspaper of record, newspapers of record. , ''The New York Times'' had 9.13 million total and 8.83 million online subscribers, both by significant margins the List of newspapers in the United States, highest numbers for any newspaper in the United States; the total also included 296,330 print subscribers, making the ''Times'' the second-largest newspaper by print circulation in the United States, following ''The Wall Street Journal'', also based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' is published by the New York Times Company; since 1896, the company has been chaired by the Ochs-Sulzberger family, whose current chairman and the paper's publ ...
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ThinkFilm
ThinkFilm (stylized as TH!NKFilm) was an American film distribution company founded in September 2001. It had been a division of David Bergstein’s Capitol Films since 2006. On October 5, 2010, five of Bergstein's companies in the film industry — Capitol Films, ThinkFilm, R2D2, CT-1, and Capco — were forced into Chapter 11 bankruptcy Chapter 11 of the United States Bankruptcy Code ( Title 11 of the United States Code) permits reorganization under the bankruptcy laws of the United States. Such reorganization, known as Chapter 11 bankruptcy, is available to every business, w ... by a group of creditors led by the Aramid Entertainment film investment fund seeking payment for outstanding debts of $16 million.Deadline Hollywood, Ap ...
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Los Angeles Times
The ''Los Angeles Times'' is an American Newspaper#Daily, daily newspaper that began publishing in Los Angeles, California, in 1881. Based in the Greater Los Angeles city of El Segundo, California, El Segundo since 2018, it is the List of newspapers in the United States, sixth-largest newspaper in the U.S. and the largest in the Western United States with a print circulation of 118,760. It has 500,000 online subscribers, the fifth-largest among U.S. newspapers. Owned by Patrick Soon-Shiong and published by California Times, the paper has won over 40 Pulitzer Prizes since its founding. In the 19th century, the paper developed a reputation for civic boosterism and opposition to Trade union, labor unions, the latter of which led to the Los Angeles Times bombing, bombing of its headquarters in 1910. The paper's profile grew substantially in the 1960s under publisher Otis Chandler, who adopted a more national focus. As with other regional newspapers in California and the United Sta ...
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Kenneth Turan
Kenneth Turan (; born October 27, 1946) is an American retired film critic, author, and lecturer in the Master of Professional Writing Program at the University of Southern California. He was a film critic for the ''Los Angeles Times'' from 1991 until 2020 and was described by ''The Hollywood Reporter'' as "arguably the most widely read film critic in the town most associated with the making of movies". Early life Turan was raised in an observant Jewish family in Brooklyn, New York. He received a bachelor's degree from Swarthmore College and a master's degree in journalism from Columbia University. At Swarthmore, he was roommates with the mathematician and science fiction author Rudy Rucker. Career Turan started his professional career around 1970s. Before becoming a film critic, Turan was a staff writer for ''The Washington Post'' from 1969 to 1978. In-between, he was a sportswriter in 1971, and by 1976 became a feature writer. Turan was a film critic for ''The Progressive'', ...
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Film Forum
The Film Forum is a nonprofit movie theater at 209 West Houston Street in Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City. It is a four-screen cinema open 365 days a year, with up to 250,000 annual admissions, nearly 500 seats, 60 employees, over 6,500 members, and an operating budget of $7 million. It is the only autonomous nonprofit cinema in New York City and one of the few in the United States. History It began in 1970 as an alternative screening space for independent films, with 50 folding chairs, one projector and a $19,000 annual budget. Karen Cooper became director in 1972. Its current Greenwich Village cinema (on Houston Street, west of Sixth Avenue) was built in 1990. In 1994, the Film Forum was honored with a Village Award by the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, even though it is technically in SoHo. In 2018, the Film Forum had a major renovation, adding new seats (and in turn, more leg room) and a fourth theater. In 2023, it was announced tha ...
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