The Departed finally netted Martin Scorsese an Academy Award that many felt was long overdue. I personally haven't seen it yet (I know, I know), but the film has just become notable for another reason: Scorsese used iChat to direct one of its final shots. As the monstrous Macenstein tells the summarized story from a Blackmagic Design case study on the film, filming had wrapped in LA, but Scorsese called for a re-shoot of one scene. The only problem was: he was in NY, and the crew was still in LA. The solution? The crew set up a Mac and "aimed iChat at the video tap on the camera" so Scorsese could view the action in NY (note the interesting use of calling the iSight + iChat setup as simply 'iChat'). A microphone and speaker system were also set up so Scorsese could call the shots as he was viewing footage in real time.

[via digg]

Geeze, those MacZOT guys either have strangely coincidental timing, or I need to consider changing the locks on my house. This is either the second or third time that I discovered and thoroughly enjoyed an app, only to find it go on sale at MacZOT the next day (i.e. - I'm buying a license as I type this). The app in question is yFlicks, which we wrote about back in January (and I probably missed because of all the Macworld craziness). yFlicks is more or less a really cool 'iPhoto for your movies,' allowing you to organize and rate your movie files, as well as update the metadata associated with them. This is a great thing if, like me, you're switching from iPhoto to Aperture, because one drawback of the latter is that it doesn't import or organize movies shot with a digital camera.

But yFlicks does some great stuff I've never seen in a full-on movie organizer before: it offers live video previews when you mouse over the thumbnail (so you don't have to open each movie just to get a look at it), complete support for the Apple Remote, a bookmarklet for downloading movies from popular communities like YouTube, Daily Motion and College Humor, and even a great temporary folder system that doesn't simply copy every movie into your movies folder when playing it, allowing you to pick and chose which movies you actually keep and catalog.

The great thing about yFlicks is that the cleverness doesn't stop there; its developer, Peter Maurer - who Mat Lu pointed out in January has developed a ton of other great Mac apps, has sprinkled all sorts of handy magic throughout yFlicks, from a simple rotate button for movies that were shot with the camera rotated to Smart Folders for organizing your flicks and even one-click access to viewing your movie file in its location in the Finder. In fact, I'm so happy with yFlicks, I'm still buying it straight from Mr. Maurer. If you want to save some cash though, yFlicks is on a 40% sale today at MacZOT: its U.S. price is typically $20, but today-only it's just $11.95. That's a killer deal on one of the best darn movie organizing apps I've ever seen.

Of course, before you decide, you can grab a demo from Many Tricks, Peter Maurer's software company, and take it for a spin before throwing down your cash.

TUAW reader Steve pointed us to this article about "In Search of Silicon Valley". It's a film about a trio (Steve O'Hear, Fleeta Siegel and Selwyn George) who travels from London to Silicon Valley, tracks down Apple pioneers Woz, Hertzfeld, Raskin, and Kawasaki as well as other net luminaries like Tim O'Reilly and Dan Kottke, and talks with them. The film takes place over the period of a month and the discussions range all over the place. You can read reviews at TechCrunch and Kirkville.

After a limited DVD distribution, they've decided to release the film via Streamburst, a site that allows consumers to buy video without DRM. The download will set you back a very reasonable #3.99 (about $8 in US currency), though I'm not sure if the online version will include the DVD extras (about 30 more minutes of interviews on top of the 55 minute film). You can view the trailer at their storefront. Other Streamburst films include "Long Way Round", a TV series with Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman that I've been meaning to watch for forever, and Race to Dakar about the 2006 Dakar Rally.

MSN movies reports that under a new deal, iTunes will sell many of the short films premiering at the Sundance Film Festival. The films will also be available via streaming at the Sundance website. The article says this deal is nonexclusive so filmmakers will be able to make their own deals with distributors.

I tend to find Sundance shorts tedious and a bit self indulgent, but there are always some gems to be found among them. Unfortunately, this deal does not include the full length features from the festival. The festival takes place between the 18th and 28th of this month in Park City, Utah.