The WGA West on Monday revealed the 13 honorees of its 2022 TV Writer Access Project, a program designed to increase diversity and promote inclusiveness within the entertainment industry. Created in 2009, the project recognizes outstanding and diverse writing talent from within the guild’s ranks and provides access to their work to showrunners, producers, network and studio executives, agents and managers.
“This program is what the guild does best: writers helping writers to take stock, reinvent themselves, then move on to the next stage of their career,” said Glen Mazzara, co-chair of the guild’s Inclusion and Equity Group. “That peer to peer mentorship is invaluable.”
This year’s honorees for drama are:
• Erinne Dobson – The More Gone She’ll Be
• Skander Halim – Nathan X
• Anne-Marie Hess – Disturbed
• Allyssa Lee – Model Minority
• Kerri Brady Long – Blood Sport
• Laurie Parres – Life and Death and High School
• Barbara Soares – Username
• Tom Towler – Borderlands
The...
“This program is what the guild does best: writers helping writers to take stock, reinvent themselves, then move on to the next stage of their career,” said Glen Mazzara, co-chair of the guild’s Inclusion and Equity Group. “That peer to peer mentorship is invaluable.”
This year’s honorees for drama are:
• Erinne Dobson – The More Gone She’ll Be
• Skander Halim – Nathan X
• Anne-Marie Hess – Disturbed
• Allyssa Lee – Model Minority
• Kerri Brady Long – Blood Sport
• Laurie Parres – Life and Death and High School
• Barbara Soares – Username
• Tom Towler – Borderlands
The...
- 2/28/2022
- by David Robb
- Deadline Film + TV
If you say his name five times into the mirror, he'll pop up behind you, shoot bees out of his mouth, and tear you apart with his hook hand. At least, that's what Clive Barker led us to believe about the man they call Candyman...
In this hilarious new parody video from the Upright Citizens Brigade, writer Skander Halim and director Ryan Moulton expose the truth behind the legend, revealing that Candyman is actually just a perverted dude who sells candy. Nothing left to fear? Well, not exactly. Because the real Candyman is actually quite a bit creepier than Tony Todd.
Check out the video below, a Halloween treat that may or may not be safe for work!
Visit The Evilshop @ Amazon!
Got news? Click here to submit it!
Say it five times in the comments section below!
In this hilarious new parody video from the Upright Citizens Brigade, writer Skander Halim and director Ryan Moulton expose the truth behind the legend, revealing that Candyman is actually just a perverted dude who sells candy. Nothing left to fear? Well, not exactly. Because the real Candyman is actually quite a bit creepier than Tony Todd.
Check out the video below, a Halloween treat that may or may not be safe for work!
Visit The Evilshop @ Amazon!
Got news? Click here to submit it!
Say it five times in the comments section below!
- 10/29/2013
- by John Squires
- DreadCentral.com
Pretty Persuasion scribe Skander Halim is set to make his feature directing debut on horror thriller The Perfect Ghost. Halim also is writing the script for the project, which follows a girl who is terrorized by ghosts. The plan is to go into production in the summer. The film is being produced by Tapestry Films and Gibralter, its new foreign sales and financing entity. Tapestry director of development Michael Schreiber brought the project in after meeting Halim at the Sundance Film Festival, where Pretty Persuasion made its debut. Halim also has signed a blind script deal with Carsey-Werner, which covers one script. Halim is repped by Metropolitan Talent Agency and Stone Meyer Genow.
- 3/29/2005
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
PARK CITY -- "Pretty Persuasion" is too broadly played to achieve its dark satirical aspirations and too downright silly to pass for a serious commentary on contemporary society. What it is is a teen comedy with pretensions -- the one element most teen comedies mercifully avoid. Few cliches get overlooked as writer Skander Halim and director Marcos Siega take the usual easy shots at mean school girls, immature parents, sex-obsessed male teachers, easily corrupted journalists and Beverly Hills in general.
The film plays with no more depth than a "Saturday Night Live" sketch, just much greater length. Some might be interested in the jokiness and sexual misbehavior, but the material is too cartoonish to win a large following among teens and young adults.
Bad-girl protagonist Kimberly, played by the new go-to actress for teen heroines, Evan Rachel Wood, is a conniving, cynical vamp at 15. She uses her sexual charisma to get what she wants when she wants it from classmates and adults alike in a private Beverly Hills high school. In a revenge plot -- revenge for what is not immediately clear -- she talks two fellow students, bubble-brained Brittany (Elisabeth Harnois) and Arab immigrant Randa (Adi Schnall), into going with her to school authorities to accuse their English teacher (Ron Livingston) of sexual harassment. The poor guy, who might be guilty in thought but not deed, gets caught up in a media storm of scandal, fueled by an ambitious lesbian TV reporter (Jane Krakowski) and a trial that takes place seemingly the next week.
Siega eggs his actors into over-the-top performances, the most egregious of which belongs to James Woods, who plays Kimberly's uncouth, racist, foul-mouthed, coke-snorting, phone-sex-addicted industrialist dad. (Then again, maybe there is no other way to play such a role.) Siega pushes most of his movie into the broadest of comedy, especially trial scenes that bear no resemblance to anything that could occur in a courtroom.
The filmmakers then engineer an abrupt tonal shift in the third act in a bid for gravity. Let's call it the "American Beauty" ending, complete with a violent death and garbled social message. It doesn't wash.
Other things in the film feel equally as fake, such as sets that don't look lived in and an annoyingly jocular musical score.
PRETTY PERSUASION
Roadside Attractions/Samuel Goldwyn Films
Prospect Pictures
Credits:
Director: Marcos Siega
Screenwriter: Skander Halim
Producers: Todd Dagres, Carl Levin, Marcos Siega, Matthew Weaver
Executive producers: Joni Sighvatsson, Jason Barhydt, Eric Kopeloff, Robert Ortiz
Director of photography: Ramsey Nickell
Production designer: Paul Oberman
Music: Gilad Benamram
Costume designer: Danny Glicker
Editor: Nicholas Erasmus
Cast:
Kimberly: Evan Rachel Wood
Percy: Ron Livingston
Hank: James Woods
Emily: Jane Krakowski
Brittany: Elisabeth Harnois
Grace: Selma Blair
Randa: Adi Schnall
No MPAA rating
Running time -- 108 minutes...
The film plays with no more depth than a "Saturday Night Live" sketch, just much greater length. Some might be interested in the jokiness and sexual misbehavior, but the material is too cartoonish to win a large following among teens and young adults.
Bad-girl protagonist Kimberly, played by the new go-to actress for teen heroines, Evan Rachel Wood, is a conniving, cynical vamp at 15. She uses her sexual charisma to get what she wants when she wants it from classmates and adults alike in a private Beverly Hills high school. In a revenge plot -- revenge for what is not immediately clear -- she talks two fellow students, bubble-brained Brittany (Elisabeth Harnois) and Arab immigrant Randa (Adi Schnall), into going with her to school authorities to accuse their English teacher (Ron Livingston) of sexual harassment. The poor guy, who might be guilty in thought but not deed, gets caught up in a media storm of scandal, fueled by an ambitious lesbian TV reporter (Jane Krakowski) and a trial that takes place seemingly the next week.
Siega eggs his actors into over-the-top performances, the most egregious of which belongs to James Woods, who plays Kimberly's uncouth, racist, foul-mouthed, coke-snorting, phone-sex-addicted industrialist dad. (Then again, maybe there is no other way to play such a role.) Siega pushes most of his movie into the broadest of comedy, especially trial scenes that bear no resemblance to anything that could occur in a courtroom.
The filmmakers then engineer an abrupt tonal shift in the third act in a bid for gravity. Let's call it the "American Beauty" ending, complete with a violent death and garbled social message. It doesn't wash.
Other things in the film feel equally as fake, such as sets that don't look lived in and an annoyingly jocular musical score.
PRETTY PERSUASION
Roadside Attractions/Samuel Goldwyn Films
Prospect Pictures
Credits:
Director: Marcos Siega
Screenwriter: Skander Halim
Producers: Todd Dagres, Carl Levin, Marcos Siega, Matthew Weaver
Executive producers: Joni Sighvatsson, Jason Barhydt, Eric Kopeloff, Robert Ortiz
Director of photography: Ramsey Nickell
Production designer: Paul Oberman
Music: Gilad Benamram
Costume designer: Danny Glicker
Editor: Nicholas Erasmus
Cast:
Kimberly: Evan Rachel Wood
Percy: Ron Livingston
Hank: James Woods
Emily: Jane Krakowski
Brittany: Elisabeth Harnois
Grace: Selma Blair
Randa: Adi Schnall
No MPAA rating
Running time -- 108 minutes...
Director Marcos Siega has started lensing the indie dark comedy Pretty Persuasion with a cast that includes Evan Rachel Wood, Ron Livingston, James Woods, Jane Krakowski, Christopher Meloni, Selma Blair, Danny Comden, Jaime King, Stark Sands, Elizabeth Harnois, Adi Schnall, Michael Hitchcock and Robert Joy. Described as Election meets Heathers, the project is a comic satire about a high school girl (Wood) who turns her exclusive Beverly Hills private school upside down when she accuses her English teacher of sexual harassment. Skander Halim penned the screenplay.
- 7/27/2004
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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