SAN FRANCISCO -- Breaking in as a production coordinator at Grey Advertising NY in the late 1970s, Craig Allen moved to San Francisco in 1980 to become a producer at J. Walter Thompson, collaborating with such clients as Chevron, Activision, the California Milk Board and Dole Pineapple. In ‘87 he was promoted to sr. VP/director of production at JWT S.F. During his tenure there which lasted until ‘97, Allen worked with a host of leading directors ranging from Bob Giraldi to Steve Horn, Joe Sedelmaier and Mark... Read More, Comment

NEW YORK (AP) -- Paul Schrader’s religious thriller First Reformed is the leading nominee for the 28th annual Gotham Awards, with nods for best feature, screenplay (by Schrader) and best actor for star Ethan Hawke. The Independent Filmmaker Project announced nominations for the 28th annual IFP Gotham Awards on Thursday. The period drama The Favourite snagged two nominations and its actresses, Olivia Colman, Emma Stone and Rachel Weisz, will receive a special jury prize for their performances. The other nominees... Read More, Comment

LOS ANGELES -- The American Film Institute (AFI) has unveiled the films that will play in the Special Screenings, Cinema’s Legacy and Midnight sections at AFI Fest 2018. This year’s Special Screenings section showcases some of the most highly anticipated films and episodic series of the season. Narrative features screening are Cold War (director Paweł Pawlikowski), Everybody Knows (director Asghar Farhadi), The Favourite (director Yorgos Lanthimos), Roma (director Alfonso Cuarón), the North American premiere... Read More, Comment

LOS ANGELES -- The American Film Institute (AFI) unveiled the films that will play in the World Cinema section of AFI Fest 2018. The World Cinema section showcases the most celebrated international films of the year and features 28 titles from 27 countries. The section includes seven official Best Foreign Language Film Oscar® submissions: Capernaum (director Nadine Labaki), Dogman (director Matteo Garrone), I Do Not Care If We Go Down In HIstory As Barbarians (director Radu Jude), Never Look Away (director... Read More, Comment

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Making a movie about Neil Armstrong may not necessarily be on par with, say, successfully landing on the moon but the pressure involved isn't a giant leap from that either. There are astronauts who were there, for one, in Michael Collins and Buzz Aldrin, in addition to all the people who were on the ground at NASA ready jump on any inaccuracies. There's the near-mythic weight that that achievement of being the first man to walk on the moon holds. For film fans, there's the "2001: A Space... Read More, Comment

LOS ANGELES -- The Broadcast Film Critics Association (BFCA) and the Broadcast Television Journalists Association (BTJA) have announced the nominees for the third annual Critics’ Choice Documentary Awards. The winners will be presented their awards at a gala event, hosted by science educator and television personality Bill Nye, on Saturday, November 10 at BRIC in Brooklyn, New York. Free Solo leads this year’s field with six nominations and one honor, including Best Documentary, Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai... Read More, Comment

NEW YORK -- R/GA has hired Tiffany Rolfe as U.S. chief creative officer. In this role she will be responsible for creating and championing a creative vision for R/GA in the U.S., curating and nurturing creative talent, and driving transformational creative work that delivers business impact for clients. She will begin work at R/GA in early December. Rolfe is well known for her consultative creative approach and brings with her over 20 years of design and creative experience garnered from her decade-long... Read More, Comment

SAN FRANCISCO -- Jim Elliott is returning to Goodby Silverstein & Partners (GS&P) as executive creative director. During his first stint at GS&P, when he served as a writer and creative director from 2006 to 2011, Elliott helped lead the creation of some of the agency’s most awarded work, including the “Think about It” campaign for Hyundai, “Help the Honeybees” for Häagen-Dazs, “Serious Breakfast” for Denny’s and “This Is How You SONIC” for SONIC Drive-In. Additionally, he worked on HP, Yahoo! and... Read More, Comment

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Jonah Hill has always wanted to direct. He worships filmmakers and has treated what he describes as an "accidental" but "wonderful" 15-year acting career as a partial film school, learning from people like Bennett Miller, who directed him in "Moneyball" and Martin Scorsese on "The Wolf of Wall Street." But Hill didn't just want to make any film, he wanted to have something to say, and the confidence and "emotional maturity" required to lead people He settled on a coming-of-age story, which he... Read More, Comment

MENLO PARK, Calif. (AP) -- In an otherwise innocuous part of Facebook's expansive Silicon Valley campus, a locked door bears a taped-on sign that reads "War Room." Behind the door lies a nerve center the social network has set up to combat fake accounts and bogus news stories ahead of upcoming elections. Inside the room are dozens of employees staring intently at their monitors while data streams across giant dashboards. On the walls are posters of the sort Facebook frequently uses to caution or exhort its employees. One... Read More, Comment

SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) -- While Albuquerque has been named as Netflix’s newest production hub, those in the industry say the benefits are likely to reach all parts of New Mexico. In fact, The Santa Fe New Mexican reported earlier this week that Netflix executives have already visited Santa Fe to scout for space for a project next year. Eric Witt, who leads the Santa Fe Film Office, said he had two phone calls Monday from producers within an hour of Netflix announcing plans to purchase Albuquerque Studios and establish a... Read More, Comment

NEW YORK (AP) -- If Instagram is the dream vacation you’ll never go on and Facebook is Thanksgiving with too many relatives arguing over politics, Pinterest is sitting on the couch by yourself, watching a home-improvement show and absent-mindedly flipping through an old issue of Gourmet magazine. Pinterest has long shunned being labeled a social network. Because of that, it doesn’t push users to add friends or build connections the way rivals have done to grow quickly. But while this has meant that Pinterest is... Read More, Comment

LOS ANGELES -- Humble, the bicoastal integrated production studio founded by Eric Berkowitz, has added James Rath to its directorial roster. This marks the first commercial representation for Rath who’s an educator, activist, YouTube star and filmmaker born with ocular albinism and nystagmus, conditions that left him legally blind. He uses film and creativity to shed light on the difficulties that face those with disabilities and brings his zest for storytelling and motivational approach to the Humble team... Read More, Comment

NEW YORK -- Content creation studio BODEGA, which maintains offices in NY, L.A. and San Francisco, has added Baltimore-based director Matt Pittroff to its roster for exclusive U.S. commercial representation. Pittroff previously helmed spots and branded content out of his own roost, Working Stiff. Prior to that he was repped by Station Film. Known for blending the real with the slightly absurd to create a uniquely relatable brand of humor, Pittroff is off to a quick start at BODEGA, currently in production... Read More, Comment

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- "Can You Ever Forgive Me?" is a film about Lee Israel, a biographer who started a side hustle writing fake letters as Noel Coward, Louise Brooks, Dorothy Parker and other deceased luminaries and selling them to collectors. Part cautionary tale, part celebration of this unapologetic literary rebel who was so good that her forgeries even appeared in a Coward biography, it's also the year's unlikeliest mediation on friendship between two people who've been tossed out by polite society. Melissa... Read More, Comment

SEATTLE (AP) -- Paul G. Allen, who co-founded Microsoft with his childhood friend Bill Gates before becoming a billionaire philanthropist who invested in conservation, space travel and professional sports, died Monday. He was 65. His death was announced by his company, Vulcan Inc. Earlier this month Allen announced that the non-Hodgkin's lymphoma that he was treated for in 2009 had returned and he planned to fight it aggressively. "While most knew Paul Allen as a technologist and philanthropist, for us he was... Read More, Comment

NEW YORK (AP) -- Can there be a "Roseanne" without Roseanne? The answer is yes, indeed. There can even be a pretty good sitcom. And you might not miss her that much. ABC on Tuesday night aired the first episode of "The Conners," a spinoff of "Roseanne" without Roseanne Barr. An overdose of pain pills may be the explanation for the contentious comedian's absence from the Conner dining table, but she still haunts it, at least in the new show's pilot. The writers — Bruce Helford, Bruce Rasmussen and Dave Caplan —... Read More, Comment

It's fall of 1960 in Montana when we meet the Brinson family in "Wildlife ," a carefully considered and deeply moving adaptation of a Richard Ford novel about a fracturing marriage and the teenage son witnessing it all. Things don't start out bad, or don't seem to be. Jerry Brinson (Jake Gyllenhaal) is a well-pressed and affable golf pro working at a local country club, shining shoes and chatting up the members, while his wife Jeanette Brinson (Carey Mulligan) tends to their rented home and 14-... Read More, Comment

The early 1990s New York of Marielle Heller's "Can You Ever Forgive Me?" isn't so long ago but it already feels staggeringly distant. It's a New York of publishing industry cocktail parties, of book stores, lots of them, and of scheming, foul-mouthed eccentrics. Lee Israel (Melissa McCarthy) and her partner-in-crime Jack Hock (Richard E. Grant) are two such dyed-in-Zabar's characters. Life has been kind to neither of them. Israel's latest book, a biography of Estee Lauder, lies stacked on the... Read More, Comment

LOS ANGELES -- Four-time Academy Award -nominated production designer Jeannine Oppewall, best known for her work on L.A. Confidential, Pleasantville, Catch Me If You Can and Seabiscuit , will receive the Art Directors Guild (ADG, IATSE Local 800) Lifetime Achievement Award at the 23rd Annual “Excellence in Production Design” Awards. The 2019 ADG Awards, themed “Production Design: Landscape of the Imagination,” will be held at the InterContinental Los Angeles Downtown in the Wilshire Grand Ballroom on Saturday... Read More, Comment

NEW YORK (AP) -- President Trump reached 11.7 million viewers for his “60 Minutes” interview on Sunday — or just over half the audience that Stormy Daniels had on the CBS newsmagazine last spring. Daniels, the porn star who alleged an affair with Trump before he became president, drew 22.1 million for her interview last March. The president called Daniels “horseface” on Twitter Tuesday in reaction to a judge’s ruling dismissing her defamation lawsuit. Trump’s interview with Lesley Stahl is part of a new... Read More, Comment

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- The Neil Armstrong film "First Man" settled for a third-place landing at the North American box office in its opening weekend in theaters. The Ryan Gosling-starrer and a host of newcomers, like the family-friendly "Goosebumps" sequel and the neo-noir mystery "Bad Times at the El Royale," couldn't unseat last week's top two films, "Venom" and "A Star Is Born," which again took first and second place. As the month of October careens toward a box office record, the crowded marketplace can be a... Read More, Comment

Pete Candeland of Friends Electric directed this animation spot for Great Western Railway featuring The Famous Five, a group of adventurous young children and their dog Timmy from the series of novels by English author Enid Blyton. Titled “Five and the Missing Jewels, this ad out of agency adam&eveDDB, London, has the Famous Five chasing a jewel thief. And they’re able to stay in hot pursuit of him thanks to the Great Western Railway transit system. Friends Electric worked in tandem with... Read More, Comment

International creative studio LOBO crafts sugar-coated environs in this “Chocolate World” campaign for confectionery company Mondelez’s Lacta 5Star, out of Wieden + Kennedy Brazil. Among the package of spots is “Garage” in which a magnet wreaks havoc, attracting varied forms of trouble to great comedic effect. This darkly comic piece ends as do all the spots--with carmel-laden tragedy as the camera ultimately reveals that all of the activity actually takes place inside a Lacta 5Star chocolate... Read More, Comment

Pop icon Kesha and her younger brother Sage, director Ben Smith at Mill+, and ad agency McCann NY have teamed to create a music video for March for Our Lives that dramatizes the cycle of gun violence and reminds young people that voting is the only way to end it. Just like gun violence in America, the video repeats over and over again--and in chain-reaction Rube Goldberg-esque fashion. The piece features a song, written the day after the Parkland shooting by Sage who was a senior in high school... Read More, Comment

Agency GTB Brazil teamed with Zombie Studio, Sao Paulo, to create this animation film titled “Gears.” The action depicts different situations which take place within a large gear. For each story, the gear’s parts interact with the characters, helping them. Part of the gear delivers a wedding ring to a couple of grooms. A lamp is given to a little girl studying under candlelight. A boy who dreams of being a soccer player receives a football boot to fulfill his dream. A bored old couple gets a... Read More, Comment

Agency BETC Paris conceived of this film promoting the great original television series on French cable network CANAL+ by taking audiences inside a screenwriter’s mind as he searches for compelling, entertaining ideas. Titled “The Idea” with the campaign signature “CANAL+ Creates,” this promo spot was directed by Ivan Grbovic via production house Wanda. BETC Paris CCO and president Stephane Xiberras, who’s been in charge of the CANAL+ account for 15 years, said, “People who watch our ads for... Read More, Comment

Bose has launched an advertising campaign in support of its QC35 II noise-cancelling headphones. Featured in the mix is this spot directed by Phil Joanou of MJZ for Grey New York featuring Green Bay Packers’ star quarterback Aaron Rodgers during his pre-game warm up. In this situation, Bose headphones allow him to eliminate the noise of competing fans so he can prepare for the game and focus on the positive--the lone Green Bay fan in the stadium. The overall campaign is based on the idea that... Read More, Comment

This video starring TV host Mike Rowe shows men how easy it is to get their prostate checked by a doctor--and does so with humor. Rowe teamed up with ZERO Cancer for this on-camera exam. Directed by Andrew Laurich of L.A.-based production company ContagiousLA , the video was created via agency Erich & Kallman. Read More, Comment

---