Vote!

Quick --- if you're so inclined, go vote for The Atom Smashers audience award on PBS! The opportunity to vote disappears quickly, so hurry!

Thanks!

Talkback!

The Atom Smashers is broadcasting again tonight (Tuesday, January 27th) in an encore showing on many PBS stations. We found out from PBS that the film is screening in the Los Angeles area for the first time tonight, as they were in the midst of a pledge drive in November when it originally aired. So, to any west-coasters, welcome! And to everyone, please visit the PBS "Talkback" page to write your thoughts about the film. And please visit here to buy your very own copy (an extended version with 6 extra features), and we'd love to discuss setting up a screening with your school, museum, lab, club, or whatever organization you've got.

Ghostly congratulations

Great news for our esteemed soundtrack composer, Kate Simko (and us, indirectly): The Atom Smashers soundtrack will be released on Ghostly Records! Kate has a great career going as a composer and performer, and I've gotten so many compliments about the soundtrack of the film that I can't forward them all to Kate. I wrote about the collaboration I had with her here and I'm really excited to see this album come out! it represents what I think is the best part about collaborations: two things that are symbiotically created (a movie and the movie's soundtrack) but that have identities and lives beyond and above the relationship between them. OK, I'm not sure how much a life our film would have without its soundtrack, but you get the idea.

I'm not sure when this will be ready for sale (they're still working on details like cover art, etc) but you can be sure I'll post about it and there will be a link to buy it from our website.

[PS - 1/28 I've just heard a preview copy of the CD --- it sounds fantastic. - cb]

Watch it again!

The Atom Smashers will air again on PBS this Tuesday, January 27. This time around it will be at 10PM instead of 10:30, so hopefully some early-risers might have a chance. PBS is not doing anything to promote this screening, since it's basically a freebie (meaning it was a repeat that they didn't expect during the contract negotiations. We prefer to call it an "encore presentation.") For this broadcast, we managed to change a bit of text at the very end to recognize the shutdown of CERN. Check your local listings here.

Since my last post we've had a couple more festivals (one in Greece, one in Belgium) invite the film to screen (not us, just the film, alas), and Monica and I are very excited to be flying out to show the film at UC Davis where John and Robin teach sometime in April.

And here's something I find personally very exciting: it's fun to see our film listed on Netflix! We've got an average rating of 3.5 stars. So far we're not appearing on itunes, but that should happen eventually.

And finally, a funny anecdote, from Robin:

John and I had our first encounter with a "fan" at LAX on the way back from Taipei. We were changing gates to transfer to Sacramento and a guy (early 30s? late 20s?) stopped us and said "Hey! I just saw you in a movie!". Unfortunately he couldn't remember right then what it was, though we didn't give him a moment before we told him it was the Atom Smashers. I'm also not sure whether his star search feelers were out due to being in Los Angeles or something. :)

Anyway, he asked us how things were going with our project and such, then we went on our way.

Thanks, Andrew/Monica/Clayton, for our >15 minutes of fame. *grin*

I wrote back to say that one of my goals in life is to have more physicists signing autographs.