Jimmy Fallon and The Muppets Sing "12 Days of Christmas"

via latenightwithjimmyfallon.com

OK - so I'm warming up to Jimmy Fallon as a late night host. Anyone with this much love for the Muppets is OK in my book.

Posted via web from Blue Glow

#1 Party School episode of This American Life

This year, The Princeton Review named Penn State the #1 Party School in America. It's a rotating crown—last year it was University of Florida, before that it was West Virginia University. So we wondered: what's it like to be at the country's top party school? Note, Act Three was not in the broadcast version of the show. That's a web bonus.

via thisamericanlife.org

Episodes like these are what drive me to donate a few bucks to this radio show every year. I listen on my iPhone in the car so it's not technically radio, but you know what i mean. Good listening, I very much recommend you check it out.

Posted via web from Blue Glow

Iron Man vs Bruce Lee!

via vimeo.com

Bad. Ass.

Posted via web from Blue Glow

Twitter Literacy

Nielsen, the same people who do TV ratings, recently noted that more than 60% of new Twitter users fail to return the following month. To me, this represents a perfect example of a media literacy issue: Twitter is one of a growing breed of part-technological, part-social communication media that require some skills to use productively. Sure, Twitter is banal and trivial, full of self-promotion and outright spam. So is the Internet. The difference between seeing Twitter as a waste of time or as a powerful new community amplifier depends entirely on how you look at it - on knowing how to look at it.

via sfgate.com

Posted via web from Film Festival Secrets

Have A Sexy Ponceman Xmas - Pop Up Edition

via youtube.com

Everything's better with pop-up notes.

Posted via web from Blue Glow

Ihnatko's handy tips for solar panels for peanuts.

It reminds me of those "Get rich quick with your own home business!" things that used to be advertised in magazines. You'd send in your $10 and get a sheet of paper saying "Take out an ad in a magazine advertising a get-rich-quick home business. Fill incoming orders with photocopies of this same sheet of paper.

via blogs.suntimes.com

Andy Ihnatko (by way of Roger Ebert) expresses his outrage at overpriced instructions for solar-powering your home. I need to think up one of these get-rich-quick schemes. Anyone wanna buy instructions on how to make a cult movie?

Posted via web from Blue Glow

Using Twitter For Promos Without Being a D-bag

via mailchimp.com

Mailchimp is my favorite email marketing tool ever - I use it for the Film Festival Secrets newsletter. Their marketing blog is almost as good as their service – as evidenced by this article, which gives a great example of how to run a promotional campaign on Twitter & Facebook without, well -- you know.

Posted via web from Film Festival Secrets

Happy Holidays from Stingray Sam

via Cory McAbee

If you're not yet a fan of Cory McAbee's Stingray Sam, become one. You can watch the first two episodes of the serial musical space western on the web site.

Posted via web from Blue Glow

Lots of choices for Slamdance

Slamdance’s 2010 feature competition will serve up 10 narrative and eight documentary feature films, programmed in the spirit of the fest’s motto “by filmmakers, for filmmakers.”

As in years past, competing films are by first-time feature directors working with limited budgets and without domestic theatrical distribution in place. Among the 18 titles, 11 are world premieres.

This year’s slate was selected from a record 5,000-plus submissions. “The quality of indie filmmaking is getting higher while productions costs are getting lower,” said Slamdance prexy and co-founder Peter Baxter. “Far apart from the apparent industry downturn, there appears a great sense of what is possible rather than impossible with our submi

via variety.com

Posted via web from Film Festival Secrets

So you didn't get into Sundance

Good advice from Scott Macaulay at Filmmaker Magazine.

In short, after you get over the Sundance rejection, know that there are many more gatekeepers to approach. But if you learn one thing from the Park City pass, it’s that you can’t rely on these gatekeepers. You need to have a pro-active strategy that doesn’t depend on them for your film’s greater exposure. Ultimately, you are responsible for your film’s success, not a festival programmer, and, once you’ve taken that break, it’s time to get back to work.

via filmmakermagazine.com

See also "Why didn't I get into Sundance?"

Posted via web from Film Festival Secrets

Post-it Note Marketing

A smart idea: your logo etc stamped on Post-It Notes for temporary lo-fi marketing power and it doesn't irritate the property owner the same way that stickers do. Tip o' the hat to Dan Brawley at Cucalorus film fest. 

Posted via email from Film Festival Secrets

Jyotika's Tropical Storms Blog wraps up another season

My friend Jyotika Virmani (formerly of the Florida Coastal Ocean Observation System Consortium and now working at the U.K. Met Office) keeps a hurricane blog in which she gives her own, uh, spin on the year's hurricane season. As yesterday was the final day of the official season, she posted a wrap-up. For those living in hurricane-prone states Jyotika's personal touch and frank analysis is invaluable.

Read Jyotika's Tropical Storms Blog: November 30: Final Day of the 2009 Atlantic Hurricane Season.