When he was 16 growing up in Montreal, Jeff Skoll saw Gandhi and it changed his world. “Here was a way of talking about an exemplary figure who touched the world and spread a message to millions of people.” Skoll would go on to build eBay, amass a fortune currently estimated at $4.5 billion, then use his wealth to launch Participant Media, a film company whose mission is to change the world through movies. Skoll was the keynote speaker at TIFF’s industry series recently. He was in Toronto, where he studied business as a young man, to open the festival […]
by Allan Tong on Sep 20, 2013Syriana director Stephen Gaghan is blogging over at the Huffington Post. From his inaugaral post: “What’s the way in? My first blog. You only get one first time at anything. I’m on a plane. I’m drinking bad coffee. I’m promoting a new film, Syriana, that I’ve spent the last three and half years writing and directing, cutting and scoring, agonizing as recently as three weeks ago over details like the font and point size of the end-title scroll — I chose Highway Gothic, considered in some circles to be the new Helvetica. Since this is an inaugural blog and it’s […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 9, 2005I am very excited to see Steve Gaghan’s Syriana, which we tried to nab an early screening of for Matt Ross’s piece on George Clooney in the current issue of Filmmaker. But, they were editing down to the wire so we were simply intrigued and hopeful by the trailer like everyone else. Now, Todd McCarthy promisingly weighs in in the subscription-only Variety: “Those complaining that Hollywood never turns out films of topical or political substance are likely to embrace Syriana, a weighty and deeply intriguing look at the many-tentacled beast that is the international oil industry. Wide-ranging and restlessly probing, […]
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 20, 2005