SUNDANCE 2011

Sundance 2011

Sundance 2011

So it’s almost upon us!  I’m talking about the Sundance Film Festival, of course!  And I’m going.  😀  You may recall in an earlier post, that I played the part of Alisa in the film Salvation Boulevard.  Well, George Ratliff is premiering it at Sundance, so I felt it would be the perfect opportunity to attend for the first time.  My only qualms are that I decided so late in the game, and the ticketing procedures were unfamiliar to me, so I will have to see if I can get tickets once I’m there.

Here are some images from the film (they all link back to what site they’re from if you click on them):

Pierce Brosnan as Dan Day in Salvation Boulevard

Pierce Brosnan as Dan Day in Salvation Boulevard

 

Salvation Boulevard--Dan Day

Salvation Boulevard--Dan Day

Greg Kinnear as Carl VanderVeer in Salvation Boulevard

Greg Kinnear as Carl VanderVeer in Salvation Boulevard

 

I’ll have a partner in crime for my SLC/PC trip: my actor friend Lauren Petre!  She’s also represented by my talent agency, Charlie’s Talent Agency, or CTA.  She also has a film in which she acted premiering at Sundance.  It’s a horror film directed by well-known director Lucky McKee, called The Woman.  We’ll be attending the Wednesday night showing together!  Here are a couple creepy images from the film:

 

Still from Lucky McKee's The Woman--from ShockTillYouDrop.com

Still from Lucky McKee's The Woman--from ShockTillYouDrop.com

Behind the scenes shot of Lucky McKee's The Woman--from soundonsight.org

Behind the scenes shot of Lucky McKee's The Woman--from soundonsight.org

In preparation for the festivities, I picked up a couple more sweaters and some good solid snow boots, so I’ll be ready to wait outside in the cold!

 

The North Face Nuptse Fur IV Boots

The North Face Nuptse Fur IV Boots

It had been awhile since my last haircut, too.  I had my stylist, Josh Thiele of Orbit Hair Salon in Ann Arbor, Michigan, give my mop a good cleaning up today.

 

Cindy Chu haircut

Cindy Chu with her fresh coif

Looks like 2011 is off to an exciting start for me.  I can only hope that this year will be even more successful for me in my pursuit of acting.  As with all actors, learning new skills or just having other skills can be important sometimes.  Take Christina Hendricks, who has been learning how to play the accordion.  Well, while the writers of Mad Men were brainstorming ideas, they decided they wanted an episode in which she played a song at a dinner party.  They found out she played accordion, and so they wrote the scene for her.

This brings me to my point.  I have been earnestly practicing on my ukulele, and recorded another song the other night.  Right now, I’m working on learning yet another, and as soon as I feel I’m performing it at my best (difficult strum pattern!) I will post it, as well.  This one was “Sentimental Heart” by She & Him, and I definitely should have practiced it longer than 15 minutes before uploading any performance, but c’est la vie!   (Pretty sure I can perform it a bit better than in the video now… 🙂 *shrugs*)

And in other skill areas, I finally got out my Nikon D70 to shoot my friends’ event.  The Ann Arbor hip hop duo made up of J Thrill, and D Train, aka Thrill$Train, had a show at Sava’s last weekend, and I was there with my camera to capture the magic.  They were pretty happy with the photos!  They’ve got a show in Detroit next month at The Old Miami.  Check out their website for more details or to download their album free!  These were a couple of my favorite images from the night:

 

D Train says J Thrill looks like "The Most Interesting Man in the World's Son" here

D Train says J Thrill looks like "The Most Interesting Man in the World's Son" here

 

Thrill$Train in all their hot hot glory

Thrill$Train in all their hot hot glory

D Train thrilling the crowd

D Train thrilling the crowd

Thrill$Train playing to a packed house at Sava's in Ann Arbor

Thrill$Train playing to a packed house at Sava's in Ann Arbor

 

As with other posts, I like to promote friends, and I went to a show recently at the Crofoot and discovered this AMAZING new band from Monroe, Michigan.  They are called Jack & The Bear and they play instruments like the banjo, violin, trumpet, accordion, etc.  Absolutely brilliant.  One of their friends uploaded some live video footage from the show which you can check out on their Facebook fanpage.  From what I heard, they are in the midst of recording their first album.  I wish them the best of luck, and I honestly wouldn’t be surprised to see them blow up big time in the next couple of years.

Alright, I guess I’ll hopefully have a few more updates for you when I get to Salt Lake City/Park City, UTAH!  It’ll be my first visit to the state.  Huzzah!

~cindy

 

Qing Lou Nu wins BEST SHORT FILM award at DWIFF

Hello everyone.  I’m long overdue for an update!  Sorry it’s been awhile.  I have a lot of exciting news to share, though.

I’ll start off with discussing Salvation Boulevard.  They are currently in post-production.  My shooting date was actually in their second-to-last week.  I was mistaken when I thought my scene was with Pierce Brosnan.  I actually filmed with Ciaran Hinds, who was super nice to work with, along with the rest of the production.  I really enjoyed being directed by George Ratliff, and I recently watched his film Joshua.  It was very disturbing and dark, and I actually had nightmares as a result.  While I like watching scary movies at times, I often do have bad dreams after.  It wasn’t the typical blood and gore type scary movie, it was definitely more disturbing in a psychological way.  It’s about a boy who takes sibling rivalry to a new level and attempts to destroy his family in the process.  Definitely worth checking out.

Ciaran Hinds

Ciaran Hinds

On to Riddle.  Due to a scheduling conflict with Salvation Boulevard, I was unable to portray the role of Michelle.

Since I was Taft-Hartley’d on Red Dawn, after booking Riddle and Salvation Boulevard, I received a must-join letter from the Screen Actors Guild (SAG), and I’ve since joined!  I actually just attended my first SAG conservatory workshop, taught by my old friend Ben Ketai.

Cindy Chu

Cindy Chu with SAG card

Moving on, my short film Qing Lou Nu just screened this past weekend at the Detroit Windsor International Film Fest (DWIFF) and the Philadelphia Independent Film Festival (PIFF).  We even got a mention in Daniela Vitola‘s culturemob blog!  I am pleased to announce that we took the Best Short Film Award at DWIFF.  Congratulations to my director, Bryan D. Hopkins!  He is currently working on creating a documentary about the oil spill, and you can check out more information on that project and donate to the project through the link, Dirty Energy Movie.

If you missed the screening at DWIFF, you can also check it out July 17, 2010, at 11AM during the GlassCityCon in Perrysburg, Ohio, very close to Toledo.  I will be conducting a screening of the film, followed by a half-hour Q&A about the film and the acting industry.  This will be my first official appearance at an anime convention as a guest.  It is a 2-day event taking place at Owens Community College and is free and open to the public.  My event will be limited to guests 18+ with ID.

Besides the screenings this weekend, I also filmed for a SAG new media project directed by John Monnich.  This was shot in affiliation with DWIFF, and will be released online when it is finished.  I’m not sure what details I can release about it, so I won’t say much besides that it will be funny, and I played a pissed off office employee.

And as always, I love to promote my friends and their projects, and I have the perfect gift for you today.  Check out the new hip hop songs by Thrill Train here.  Downloads are at the top of the page.  They just added a few new tracks.  Did I mention the downloads are FREE?  Add them to your club mixes, workout mixes, whatever, they’re great for breaking a sweat to.  You can also be their fan on Facebook.  And you can be a fan of my acting on Facebook as well. Thrill Train on FB.  Cindy Chu–Actress on FB.

Post-DIFF followup

Hello again!

Good news, we took home two awards from DIFF, for the Michigan Film Awards.  My wonderful director, Bryan D. Hopkins, won for Best Director.  And Mark C. Davis, Jr. won for Best Cinematography!

I also got my hands on a PDF copy of The Tower, my old high school’s newspaper.  Thank you to Miss Carly Engel for the wonderful interview.  Here’s a jpeg of the article itself:

The Tower article

The Tower article

I’m also updating my headshots and here’s one  I just touched up last night, shot by the very talented photographer Darren Michaels.  He’s based out in LA, and I met him while he was the stills photographer on Whip It! If you’re interested in booking him for YOUR headshots, check out his information here.

Cindy Chu Headshot

Cindy Chu

And for your viewing pleasure, here is a music video my friends Josh and John shot for their new single, called “Naughty Body” by Thrill Train.  It’s kind of Mike Posner-meets-Lil’ Wayne or something like that.  🙂  All I can say is that it was fun having a cameo in the video and I think the song is infectious and fun, and I know they’re going to be a Youtube sensation.  So hop on the bandwagon and enjoy this video!

And for my last bit of news for this post…

It’s quite exciting!  I was approached by Brad Rowell of the Blue Water Film Festival after our screening of Qing Lou Nu at DIFF.  He was a fan of the film and wants us to screen at this year’s festival which will be in October, in Port Huron, Michigan.  So that is at least one more festival we’ll be screened at, yay!

And that’s it for now!

Stay classy,

Cindy