Based on a compilation of results from 31 TV/cinema competitions, The Gunn Report ranks this year’s top commercial production houses as being bicoastal/international Partizan, followed by London-headquartered Harry Nash, then London-based Gorgeous Enterprises, and bicoastal/international @radical. media. Tying for fifth place were Bangkok-based Matching Studio, and the just-closed Propaganda Films. (Full coverage of The Gunn Report will appear in next week’s SHOOT.)….Director Martin Cannelakis has joined bicoastal Gartner. He comes over from bicoastal/international hungry man…Director Paul Street has joined Crossroads Films, bicoastal and Chicago, for U.S. representation. The British native, who is relocating to Southern California, was previously with Los Angeles-headquartered A Band Apart Commercials for stateside work….Feature filmmaker John Landis (Coming To America, Animal House, The Blues Brothers) has come aboard Los Angeles-based A Band Apart.35mm for representation as a spot director….Company 3, the Santa Monica-based telecine house, has taken the first step toward its anticipated launch of a studio in New York. Colorist Billy Gabor is relocating from Company 3’s West Coast operation to New York, where he will work out of R!OT Manhattan, joining a telecine team there that includes Victor Mulholland and John Bonta. Gabor establishes a Big Apple presence for Company 3 as it proceeds on constructing a New York studio of its own. Company 3 and R!OT are both part of the Liberty Livewire Pictures Group family of companies….SHOOT was provided with the wrong moniker for the renamed Burning Suits. The new banner is Creative Content Artists (CCA), the New York-headquartered post/sound design/mixing and visual effects company, with holdings that consist of New York houses Super Dupe, East Side Video, Lower East Side Studios, Arc Light, Crush and Post Perfect….Ceinwyn Clark has been named executive producer at Stimmüng, the Santa Monica-based music and sound design shop. Clark had previously served as executive producer at bicoastal tomandandy and HUM Music+Sound Design, Santa Monica….James Martin, formerly head of production at Santa Monica-based Milk Bar, has taken the executive producer reins at Audio Lounge, a Santa Monica-based sound design/ music house formed this summer by sound designer Jon Klok…. Chicago-headquartered Optimus has named its Santa Monica division Optimus West….
Martin Scorsese On “The Saints,” Faith In Filmmaking and His Next Movie
When Martin Scorsese was a child growing up in New York's Little Italy, he would gaze up at the figures he saw around St. Patrick's Old Cathedral. "Who are these people? What is a saint?" Scorsese recalls. "The minute I walk out the door of the cathedral and I don't see any saints. I saw people trying to behave well within a world that was very primal and oppressed by organized crime. As a child, you wonder about the saints: Are they human?" For decades, Scorsese has pondered a project dedicated to the saints. Now, he's finally realized it in "Martin Scorsese Presents: The Saints," an eight-part docudrama series debuting Sunday on Fox Nation, the streaming service from Fox News Media. The one-hour episodes, written by Kent Jones and directed by Elizabeth Chomko, each chronicle a saint: Joan of Arc, Francis of Assisi, John the Baptist, Thomas Becket, Mary Magdalene, Moses the Black, Sebastian and Maximillian Kolbe. Joan of Arc kicks off the series on Sunday, with three weekly installments to follow; the last four will stream closer to Easter next year. In naturalistic reenactments followed by brief Scorsese-led discussions with experts, "The Saints" emphasizes that, yes, the saints were very human. They were flawed, imperfect people, which, to Scorsese, only heightens their great sacrifices and gestures of compassion. The Polish priest Kolbe, for example, helped spread antisemitism before, during WWII, sheltering Jews and, ultimately, volunteering to die in the place of a man who had been condemned at Auschwitz. Scorsese, who turns 82 on Sunday, recently met for an interview not long after returning from a trip to his grandfather's hometown in Sicily. He was made an honorary citizen and the experience was still lingering in his mind. Remarks have... Read More