Anil Kokaram, an expert in the restoration of films, who is currently a senior engineering lecturer and fellow at Trinity College Dublin, is to receive an Oscar in the Scientific and Technical Academy Awards on the 10th of February.

Unlike the main prizes, which are to be given out on the 25th, the Science and Technical awards are announced in advance.

Mr. Kokaram is to win for the design of Furnace, a set of visual effects software tools. He is to receive the award, along with his colleagues, Bill Collis, Simon Robinson and Ben Kent, at a gala function at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills, California.

The ceremony will be hosted by Maggie Gyllanhaal.

I’ve always had the idea in my head that it would be good to do a good musical (note - I hate musicals) and one idea I had was to write a standard love story and then insert the music of The Beatles where appropriate - ie. not singing while pretending to talk. Well I dithered too long and figured I’d never get the rights and now it’s too late.

Across The Universe is directed by Julie Taymor, who brought us Frida in 2002.
It isn’t released in the US until September 28th and there’s no official release date for this part of the World yet but I’d guess late October early November. Could be good.

Reminds me a bit of the work of Dennis Potter, mostly The Singing Detective.

If you’re wondering that’s Bono singing Hey Jude in the trailer and both himself and Eddie Izzard are in the movie.

In related news. Apple and Apple are friends again.

I’ve been catching up on my RSS feeds today so here are a few bits of film news I thought people might be interested in.

Dan Akyroyd has confirmed a Ghostbusters 3. CGI apparently!

Rumour has it Harrison Ford may yet quit Indy 4.

Another rumour has JJ Abrams, director of Mission Impossible 3 and creator of Alias and Lost, quitting the 11th Star Trek movie but it’s not to be believed.

Russel Crowe is to star in a revisionist version of Robin Hood.

Disney have sold 1.3 million movie downloads on Apple’s iTunes. If only Hollywood had been quicker to embrace the internet? Ah well, it’ll never catch on…

One more that I’ve been meaning to post for a while. Harvey Dent (alias Two-Face) will be appearing in The Dark Knight (sequel to Batman Begins). Casting rumours are rife but Edward Norton seems to be the favorite. Meanwhile in Bat-land Katie Holmes will not be reprising her role as Rachel Dawes, but the character will be back. Who will replace her? Rumours, rumours, rumours.

Check this out for more Dark Knight information.

Below, I will embed a twenty minute short into this post. The short is by Stu Maschwitz, author of ‘The DV Rebel’s Guide‘.

The DV Rebel’s Guide is a comprehensive guidebook to planning, shooting, and finishing your own digital movie.

Stu works in the visual effects industry in Hollywood and has a fairly impressive list of credits to his name, including Star Wars, Sin City and Superman Returns - his involvement in the latter two being through his company ‘The Orphanage‘.

He says himself his day job is directing commercials, and you can watch his showreel on the Orphanage website, which includes one I recognised where a woman driving a toy VW Polo is chased by a cat… remember that one?

Oh, and he’s also responsible for developing ‘Magic Bullet‘ - a colour correction system which makes Digital Video look more like film.

He also has a fairly active and interesting blog worth checking out.

But the really impressive thing about Stu and his book is the fact that the proof is in the pudding. The film embedded below ‘The Last Birthday Card’ is a showcase for Stu’s skills, which his book will attempt to impart to you. The film is about two hitmen and features shoot outs, helicopter attacks and car crashes.

Is it a good film? Hell no. It’s terrible.

But he made it for $5,000. That’s pretty impressive and shows he obviously knows his stuff - whether his book can teach you his tricks I can’t say, not having read it, but Robert Rodriguez seems impressed, he says:

I’d been wanting to write a book for the new breed of digital filmmakers, but now I don’t have to. My pal and fellow movie maker Stu Maschwitz has compressed years of experience into this thorough guide. Don’t make a movie without reading this book!

Any filmmakers out there read this book? Find it good? Please comment!

The Irish film Once has won the World Cinema Audience Award in the dramatic category at Robert Redford’s Sundance Film Festival. From director John Carney, who brought us Bachelor’s Walk, Once is a modern day musical about a busker, played by Glen Hansard, who falls in love with a Czech singer/songwriter, played by Marketa Irglova.

John Carney was once a member of The Frames - for whom Glen Hansard is the lead singer - but left to pursue a film-making career after shooting some music videos for the band. Glen and Marketa worked together previously on The Swell Season and some of the songs from that album feature in this film.

Following on from The Wind That Shakes The Barley taking the Palme D’Or at the last Cannes Film Festival, it is another encouraging sign for the Irish Film Industry.

Once was made for €100,000 over a period of two weeks and shot on Digital Video. It now looks set to be picked up by one of the major distributors in Hollywood.

For more information check out this review, this interview with John Carney, this live performance from Sundance and this report from Sundance.