2B - Thursday, December 3, 2009
The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com
2B - Thursday, December 3, 2009 The Michigan Daily - michigandailycom
IPHONE APP
-n
I-
CHAD OCHOCINCO EXPERIENCE
Want to know more about Chad Ocho-
cinco, the "most interesting football
player," according to the app named after
him? In this narcissistic app endorsed by
Ochocinco himself, you can lust at can-
did pictures of him, ask him for advice
('don't ask ... for an autograph please!!")
or indulge the stalker in you and follow
his whereabouts. Perfecto.
I NTERWEB
EAVESDROPPING
(727): I plan on offering nudes
to any guy that wants to give me
notes from the past five weeks of
class
Tila Tequila: Did U guys know
that at www.TilasHotSpotDating.
com we have a room called "FART
ROOM?" lol #4realz ppl go in there
and do their thing! HAHA!,
Today, I found out that the person
FML sending me secret love letters was
actually my dad, who felt sorry for
me. FML
H igh Five
A notable Ann Arborite gives five
answers to a curious question.
COURTESY oFDiNE
Travis Rimando aka DJ Pone
Second-year University Law student
What are your five favorite records to
scratch on the turntables?
5. AC/DC - "Back in Black": I like to sound like Rick Rubin on a 1986 Beastie
Boys record. Full of guitars.
4. Run DMC - "Here We Go (Live At The Funhouse)": This is a live perfor-
mance by Run DMC - there are a bunch of different parts to scratch on it.
3. Run DMC - "Peter Piper": Jam-Master Jay made this song by DJing. Now
DJs like to scratch it.
2. Jive Rhythm Trax - "122 BPM": Not really a record I scratch, it's a record to
scratch to. DJ Jazzy Jeff uses it on He's The DJ, I'm The Rapper.
1. Fab 5 Freddy - "Change The Beat": Almost every DJ knows the sounds on
this record but no one knows they came from this record. It's the famous "Ahh
fresh." You can hear it scratched on Herbie Hancock's "Rockit."
ONLINE GAMES OF THE WEEK
MEMORY MATRIX
"Memory Matrix" will test both your abilities of spatial
recall and your abilities to waste time. You're shown a pattern
of red squares on a grid for only a few seconds, then asked to
recreate it yourself. As you progress, both the grid size and the
number of red squares increase. But for a game that merely
asks you to remember something, "Matrix" is surprisingly
addictive.
Find it at:
http://tinyurl.com/play-memory-matrix
THECOMPANYOFMYSELF
You're a tiny pixilated man in what may or may not be an
8-bit suit - it's hard to tell. This simple level-based platformer
comes with a pretty cool twist: To get through several lev-
els, you will need to create copies of yourself and run them
through the levels in very specific patterns. The game is sadly
short, and the ending is ridiculous, but the cool premise and
style make it well worth playthingthrough once.
Find it at:
http://tinyurl.com/play-the-company-of-myself
TRAILER REVII
DISTRICT 13: ULTIMATUM
There's some very clever editing
matum," the new French action filt
there's not a single word of dialogue t
who love watching explosions but ha
other than Englishbetween those e>
looks like it's just a giant ad for par
really fast and jumping off tall build
all that French.
The Fellowship of the 'U'alum's script
Angus Fletcher awarded
$30,000 grant for his
screenplay 'Sand Dogs'
By JENNIFER XU
Daily Arts Writer
Michigan alumnus Angus Fletcher
(class of '98) has just become the envy of
screenwriters everywhere, nabbing him-
self, along with writing partner Vineet
Dewan, an esteemed Nicholl Fellowship
for his screenplay "Sand Dogs." Out of
a record 6,380 scripts submitted to the
fellowship, five were selected this year
by volunteer Academy of Motion Picture
Arts and Sciences members to receive a
$30,000 grant.
In celebration, Fletcher spent seven
days rubbing shoulders with Hollywood
elite during the week of the offical awards
ceremony.
"It's basically a whole week of you being
celebrated," Fletcher said. "You spend a
couple days surrounded by people respon-
sible for the greatest movies ever made in
the past 40, 50 years. At dinner we were
sitting next to the guy who made 'Beverly
Hills Cop,' which blew my mind when I
was a child."
"Everyone you look at is sort of a hero,"
he added. "All these people say very nice
things about you and your head gets real
large."
Awarded to new writers who haven't
sold a screenplay for more than $5,000,
the Nicholl Fellowship operates under the
Academy of the Motion Picture Arts and
Sciences, otherwise known as the Acade-
my. The Fellowship is known for being the
most prestigious screenwriting competi-
tion in the nation. Notable Nicholl fellows
from the past are now heavyweights in
the industry. The group including Susan-
nah Grant ("Erin Brockovich"), Mike Rich
("Finding Forrester") and Andrew Mar-
lowe ("Air Force One").
"The Nicholl Fellowship started when
a woman named Gee Nicholl - the widow
of Don Nicholl. a TV writer best known
for 'The Jeffersons' and 'Three's Com-
pany' - brought the idea of helping new
writers to the Academy in 1985," Greg
Beal, director of the Nicholl Fellowship,
said. "There have now been 113 writers
who have won the award. This is the 24th
year of the Fellowship."
Fletcher's own initiation into the film
industry started a little more humbly.
"A couple years ago, Vineet won a lot of
awards for a very good short film called
'Clear Cut, Simple,' " Fletcher said. "I saw
the movie and I was very impressed with
his work, and we talked for a little bit and
we made a connection."
For the next year, Fletcher and Dewan
would work together on the script now
known as "Sand Dogs."
"I would write a draft and Vineet would
take the draft and make changes ... Each
of us would add different things. I'm more
interested in plot and he's more interested
in design and detail," Fletcher said. "We
kind of kicked it back and forth like a ping
pong ball."
Fletcher and Dewan originally intend-
ed to submit "Sand Dogs" to the Sundance
Screenwriting Contest, but missed the
deadline for this year.
"We thought, 'The Nicholl is such a
big fellowship we probably don't have a
chance of winning, but we should give it a
shot,'" Fletcher said.
A few months ago, Fletcher and Dewan
were notified by Beal of their finalist
standing. Since then, it's all been a dream.
They've been bombarded by e-mails from
production companies that want to sign
them and phone calls from agents and
managers who want to represent them.
"Sand Dogs," the winning screenplay,
is about a young, idealistic American who
travels to the highly volatile war zone of
Gaza as a Red Cross ambulance driver.
He befriends a slightly older Palestinian
and starts taking part in border crossings,
eventually getting sucked into a smug-
gling ring.
Although neither writer had direct
experience with the story's events, both
Fletcher and Dewan were attracted to
the concept of an outsider entering into a
world about which he knows nothing.
"Because I'm originally from England,
I'm an American, but I'm also watching
it from the outside. I think when you're
outside a culture you think you can fix it
because you think you know things that
people in the culture don't see," Fletcher
said.
"But the situations are so complicated
that the more you get involved, the more
you find yourself compromising your own
ideals," he added.
"I was attracted by the fact that a good
person wants to help people but he gets
put in a situation where the more he gets
involved,.the more he's forced to compro-
mise."
Reception to the script has been over-
whelmingly positive.
"It's a thriller, a war movie, a charac-
ter study - it was described last night at
the awards ceremony as a coming-of-age
story," Beal said.
"Believe it nor not, my major (at Michi-
gan) was actually cellular and molecular
See NICHOLL FELLOWSHIP, Page 4B
0
iJht Midhjgan faill) PPR E S EN T
TakeYour CAREER InA
NEW DIRECTION!
Try a health care career in
CHIROPRACTIC,
MASSAGE THERAPY,
ACUPUNCTURE or
ORIENTAL MEDICINE.
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