This year's Independence Day celebrations will be taking place on the first Friday of July (the 4th, duh!) and that means that The Loft Cinema's annual sing-and-cuss-a-thon featuring Trey Parker's Team America: World Police will be screened Friday night. 

What does this mean?  Well, for First Friday frequenters of The Loft it means that you'll still be able to get your drink on and laugh til you wet yourself in your favorite Loft seat, but if you want to do this to the talents of local filmmakers you'll have to wait another week.  The Loft's "First Friday Shorts" will actually take place on July's 2nd Friday, the 11th.

The summer 48 Hour Shootout Film Festival at The Loft Cinema has come and gone, but not without a little controversy. There was once again a great turn out and a sense of anticipation and excitement in the crowd moments before the event kicked off.

Just got home from the 48-Hour Shootout Screening and Awards Show at The Loft and I just had to be the first person to pop online and give a shout-out to Team Thomas for a near-sweep of the awards at this year's show.  "Planet of the Rapes" is a very funny film, and in the tradition of every film competition at The Loft, humor won big!  The film wasn't so popular with everyone in attendence, but I'm thinking that was kinda the point.  So props to them for a job well done (you guys were robbed for the 'audience choice' award, but then again that award is never fair).

The Thomas clan recently uploaded the film to YouTube (http://youtube.com/watch?v=Ie3xRufLUdo).  You can view their other films onlin on their YouTube page here:  http://www.youtube.com/user/jthomaspsychic

Completed films from the Tucson 48 Hour Film Shootout will be screened and an esteemed judging panel will select the overall Best Film of the competition. The $500 Grand Prize will be awarded to the winning filmmaking team. But that’s not all … the audience will also vote for their favorite film, which will be awarded a $250 prize!

Previous winners of THE TUCSON 48 HOUR FILM SHOOTOUT have gone on to fame (sorta), fortune (maybe not exactly, but close) and cinematic acclaim (definitely!), and most (but possibly not all) have managed to avoid jail time since their respective wins.

General admission to the public screening/awards show is only $5.00.

See previous entries and explore other related content at the official Tucson 48 Hour Film Shootout website:
http://www.filmshootout.org

Tall Ship Productions is happy to announce the completion of its latest short, “The Pirate’s Daughter”, produced for the May 2008 Tucson 48-hour Film Shootout competition.  

In its fourth iteration, the Shootout was held from Friday, May 23rd through Sunday, May 25th.  Twenty-two teams were at the pre-production meeting held at The Loft and minutes before the 6:45pm cutoff, 10 teams had yet to turn in their tapes.  The final count of eligible teams will be announced at the screening on June 12th.

A long overdue review for April, but just in time to remind readers and fans of the Loft’s First Friday Shorts contest that this coming Friday will be the Year End Showdown wherein all the winners from the past 12 months compete for the grand prize. And my apologies for the interminable delay.