LawrenceCConnolly.com

It’s official! This summer, Mickey Rourke’s Projectionist will unleash 100 years of nightmares onto a silver screen that never forgets…. [Read more and view the trailer at The 21st-Century Scop.]

Next Saturday, over 200,000 revelers are expected to pack Pittsburgh’s streets for the annual St. Patrick’s Day Parade. That’s in the morning. But after the parade runs its course, the place to be will be Riley’s Pour House, where live bands will perform all day and into the night for some of the best people this side of the Blasket Islands.

The music will play for two days, running concurrently on two stages – one inside the pub and … [read more at The 21st-Century Scop].

Shorts used to be this artsy thing. But now there really is this explosion in filmmaking. With all this new technology, shorts films have a lot more interest among regular people, because so many people are making them and putting them on the web. Suddenly, we’re not explaining short films to people. Everybody’s seen one. – IndieWire

Back in the 1980s, HBO and Cinemax would play short films between their features. HBO referred to theirs collectively as “Short Takes.” I don’t recall what (if anything) Cinemax called theirs, but for a while, it seemed cable TV was poised to deliver a short-film renaissance.

It didn’t happen. Not then. But now – with an ever-increasing number of festivals and websites delivering quality shorts, the only challenge is finding the time to seek out the best. To that end, I have a few recommendations — some playing at festivals … [more at the 21st-Century Scop].

Earlier this month, I got the chance to chat with the multi-talented Laura Powers about film festivals, Nightmare Cinema, and the philosophical approach to writing that I like to think of as “the long game.”

You can listen in on that conversation by clicking the player above. If you like what you hear, there’s plenty … [more at The 21st-Century Scop].