News

May 2, 2011 - [ iTunes ]

The trailer for Page One: Inside the New York Times has premiered on iTunes Trailers.

April 19, 2011 - [ City Pages ]

​Last night, the documentary "Page One: A Year Inside the New York Times" premiered at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Film Festival. The movie stars Minneapolis alt-weekly alumnus David Carr, who is now the Times' brashest media writer. We caught up with Carr and film director Andrew Rossi before the showing.

City Pages: Why do you think this story is best told as a movie rather than, say, a book?

Andrew Rossi: I think it's the ability to see David in the flesh. The incredibly handsome man sitting next to me.


April 14, 2011 - [ WSJ.com ]

The New Jersey Performing Arts Center is undergoing the first major change to its top leadership position: NJPAC's board of directors on Thursday announced the appointment of John Schreiber as president and CEO, effective July 1. Mr. Schreiber will replace Lawrence P. Goldman, who was hired in 1989 to develop the Newark art center.
 
Mr. Schreiber, 56, is currently the executive vice-president for social action and advocacy at the Los Angeles-based entertainment company Participant Media, which has produced films such as "An Inconvenient Truth," "Waiting for Superman," and "Charlie Wilson's War."

April 13, 2011 - [ Associated Press ]

Movie screens this summer are not entirely booked with superheroes, kiddie fare and goofy buddy flicks. Plenty of mature dramas and comedies about dealing with — or escaping from — the problems of real life arrive alongside the season's big studio offerings.
 
If there's a grown-up blockbuster in the making for summer, it's the adaptation of the literary sensation "The Help" which has a built-in audience of millions of readers — women who can turn out in huge numbers when the right female-driven film shows up.

April 11, 2011 - [ SmokinApps ]

The amazing 2010 documentary Waiting for Superman left the entire world reeling. It showed us that American schools are in serious trouble and it’s time somebody did something. And now you can, without even leaving the comfort of your own couch!

The app is a great follow up to the documentary, and as such it's a great new take on apps: it shows what is happening now and what YOU can do to help. There are loads of projects to browse through and you can sort them by urgency or days to go. You can contact your local representative and there are prefab texts you can personalize and send. There are local projects you can pitch in with, or make a donation to.

March 31, 2011 - [ Skoll Foundation ]

The 2011 Skoll World Forum kicked off Wednesday evening at the New Theatre with a musical performance by Senegalese Great: Baaba Maal.

Stephan Chambers, Chairman of the Skoll Centre Standing Committee, Saïd Business School, served as gracious host and Master of Ceremonies.

Jeff Skoll– Founder & Chairman, Skoll Foundation, Participant Media and Skoll Global Threats Fund–spoke on The Power of the Collective, introducing special guest Archbishop Desmond Tutu and congratulating founder Bill Drayton on Ashoka’s 30th Anniversary.

March 28, 2011 - [ Appolicious Advisor ]

Buzz up! 2010’s Waiting for "Superman" documented the failures of the American public school system as it followed students through their educational journey. Recently, an iPad application was released as an extension for users to respond and access the message of the film.

Participant Media, Paramount Home Entertainment, Expanded Apps, and Libros Publishing Group offer Super School—a social engagement tool for Waiting for Superman—for those interested and who want to get involved.

March 23, 2011 - [ Parenting.com ]

Waiting For "Superman" has experienced its share of controversy since its release last fall.  Some say it’s a much-needed battle cry to encourage every parent, teacher and legislator in this country to become more engaged, while others write it off as inaccurate or propagandistic.  Love it or hate it, the documentary by Davis Guggenheim has people talking about education and working to improve learning opportunities across the country.  And I call that a success.

The biggest thing the film did for me was remind me what an advocate really is.  Watching those parents struggling to get the best possible education for their children made me question my own advocacy efforts and ask, “What more can I do to make sure my children are getting the high quality education they deserve?” and “How can I work to ensure that the public school system in this country adequately supports all students?”

March 22, 2011 - [ The New York Times ]

At least Jodie Foster seems to get how tough it will be for some to watch her new movie, “The Beaver,” which features amputation, mental illness and Mel Gibson, all in one swoop.
 
“You’re all still here; I think it’s a good sign,” said Ms. Foster, as she peered through sunglasses at the crowd of 1,200 that had just watched the film’s debut on Wednesday night at the South by Southwest festival here.
 
On the stage earlier Ms. Foster had called the film “probably the biggest struggle of my professional career.”
 
She referred both to its subject — hopeless depression and a man who struggles through it with the help of a beaver hand puppet — and to the turmoil surrounding its lead actor, Mel Gibson.

March 18, 2011 - [ Los Angeles Times ]

Calling the film “the biggest struggle of my professional career,” Jodie Foster introduced “The Beaver,” her drama starring the troubled Mel Gibson as a depressed father who reinvents himself with the help of a hand puppet, to its first public audience at the South by Southwest Film Conference and Festival on Wednesday night in Austin, Texas.
 
“All sorts of stuff happened after the film was finished that threw our release into a crazy pattern,” Foster told the sold-out audience of 1,200 people at the Paramount Theater, alluding to the very public and sordid domestic violence case between Gibson and his ex-girlfriend, a situation that delayed the release of “The Beaver,” filmed in 2009. “I have no regrets about him being in the film.”

March 17, 2011 - [ Hollywood Reporter ]

Less nutty and more moving than its premise suggests, Jodie Foster's on-target dramedy transcends its real-world baggage.
 
A risky bet that pays off solidly, Jodie Foster's much-delayed "The Beaver" survives its life/art parallels -- thanks to its star, Mel Gibson -- to deliver a hopeful portrait of mental illness that is quirky, serious and sensitive.

March 15, 2011 - [ Austin360 Movie Blog ]

One of the signature movies at this year’s SXSW (and not just because part of it was filmed here last year), “Page One: Inside The New York Times” is a brilliantly paced doc about the times in which the Times finds itself.
 
Where are we now? Well, the bottom continues to fall out of newspaper ad revenue, a public continues to believe it can be informed without actually paying for the news, and bloggers and aggregators continue to eat into page views, all of which “Page One” addresses.

March 14, 2011 - [ Poynter ]

"Page One,” a movie about The New York Times, was screened at SXSW on Friday night. Steve Myers attended the screening and the Q&A that followed with David Carr and Brian Stelter and recorded the conversation, which we are publishing below (accompanied by the sound of Steve typing).

March 14, 2011 - [ Fast Company ]

For creating big-screen movies that can affect big-time social change. Just as 2008's Food Inc. took on the corporate-controlled food industry and 2009's The Cove aimed to stop mass dolphin-killings, 2010's Waiting for "Superman" opened our nation's eyes to the vast problems in our public education system. To promote the movie and its message, Participant is also working with advocacy groups, such as Michelle Rhee's "Students First”

March 9, 2011 - [ Variety ]

"This film will portray the great heroism that took place last year on the Deepwater Horizon rig and how colleagues so courageously came to each other's aide," said Summit production prexy Erik Feig. "This piece in The New York Times evoked the raw emotion these brave men experienced and endured throughout the tragedy that took place in April of last year and we hope to evoke the same emotions for our audience with this movie."

Participant, which has been in financial partnership with Imagenation since 2008, has focused on issue-oriented projects such as "An Inconvenient Truth," "Good Night, and Good Luck," "The Cove," "Waiting for Superman" and "Fair Game."

March 2, 2011 - [ UK Guardian/The Sustainable Business Blog ]

UN secretary general Ban-Ki-moon caught Oscars fever last week when he gathered Hollywood moguls to discuss climate change. "Together we can have a blockbuster impact on the world," he entreated. Puns aside, he is absolutely right about the entertainment industry's impact on sustainability, but in the wrong way.

We consume enormous amounts of entertainment, estimated at between 28 hours a week to half our waking hours. Movies promoted with the full weight of the Hollywood marketing machine can infiltrate the minds of people who don't even see them. The animated hit Wall-E, and last year's Avatar both ignited environmental chitchat and reached places traditional green messages have never touched.

February 22, 2011 - [ Washington Post ]

"Waiting for Superman," the edu-documentary that is high on charter schools and tough on teachers' unions, may have been shut out of the Academy Award nominations, but it's enjoying a long half-life as an organizing tool. Participant Media, the film's producer, is partnering with a coalition of local school and community groups to hold a "town hall" at 6 p.m. Monday at THEARC, 1901 Mississippi Ave. SE. There will be clips from the movie, a panel discussion (Amanda Ripley, TIME contributor and author; Khala Johnson, founding principal, KIPP DC; Charles Adams, Head of School, SEED School of Washington and Natanya Levioff, D.C. program director, GreatSchools) and an "action center" with tools to help parents better navigate the city's public education system.

February 17, 2011 - [ NAACP Image Awards ]

Waiting for “Superman” has been nominated for an NAACP Image Award in the category of Outstanding Documentary (Theatrical or Television.)
 
The Image Awards will be broadcast live on Friday, March 4th from the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles at 5pm PST on FOX.

February 16, 2011 - [ The New York Times ]

J. C. Chandor’s directorial debut, “Margin Call,” a feature that takes place over the course of 24 hours on the trading floor of an investment bank, will be the opening night feature of the 40th annual New Directors/New Films series, the Museum of Modern Art and the Film Society of Lincoln Center said on Wednesday. “Margin Call,” one of 28 films that will be presented during the series, features a cast that includes Kevin Spacey, Paul Bettany, Zachary Quinto, Demi Moore, Stanley Tucci and Jeremy Irons, and chronicles “a day that brings layer upon layer of human and professional wrongdoing that jeopardizes the entire fabric of the banking system,” according to a statement from MoMA and the Film Society. The closing night film of the series, which runs from March 23 through April 3, will be Maryam Keshavarz’s “Circumstance,” about two Iranian women who begin to step outside the boundaries of their oppressive lives, and which won the Audience Award at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.

February 16, 2011 - [ Vimeo ]

This past weekend over 11,000 people attended Teach for America’s 20th Anniversary Summit, including over 500 members of the KIPP Team and Family.

The closing ceremonies featured a special performance by John Legend and the KIPP Academy String & Rhythm Orchestra.