For the last few months, we've found ourselves up to our armpits in engineers, scientists, developers and designers from Ford Motor Company. It is part of a larger initiative launched recently called Ford Drive One, a part intended to help find some of the interesting stories among the fascinating teams at Ford Motor Company. Now the auto and mainstream press are starting to weigh in on the first of that larger series of web videos. We're fortunate to be working again with friends at Team Detroit (including Toby Barlow, Sam Walsh, Matthew Jacobson and Rick Todd), some of our dearest collaborators (including Jonny Leahan, Darren Himebrook and Miguel Drake-McLaughlin), and a number of new faces (including editor Chris Bremer and the Detroit crews from Rare Medium), all for a client we've worked with before. Our brains are spinning with science ... in a good way. More of those collective labors forthcoming.

It is time again for the Tribeca Film Festival, which means the kick-off of our annual Filmmaker Talks at the Apple Store in SoHo. We're flattered to have an amazing collection of guests again, this year including actor Clive Owen (4/25), screenwriter Tony Gilroy and comedienne Amy Poehler (4/26), filmmaker Guy Maddin (4/27), documentarian Morgan Spurlock (4/28), screenwriter/producer Tom Kalin and legendary actress Isabella Rossellini (4/29), director Greg Mottola (4/30), screenwriter/director Harmony Korine (5/1), director and Beastie Boy Adam Yauch (5/2), screenwriter Paul Haggis (4/3) and actor/filmmaker Matthew Modine (4/4). All of the events are free, but have limited room and have been known to fill up. Meanwhile, indieWIRE's in-depth coverage of the Tribeca Film Festival starts ramping up next week as well.

Sometimes, we're kinda pleased with how odd we are. Then our next door neighbors scare the crap out of us by blowing something up Mad Max style. Today, they went after the mailman's truck with a rocket launcher, as this truly unretouched picture from our parking lot proves:

Fortunately, the mailman is on to their tricks, and so are we.

Back in April, we mentioned there was this game called Eldritch Errors but that we didn't want to spoil any surprises. In December, a Wired article about alternate reality gaming hinted at what we've been aiming at with the project. As an immersive horror story playing out in real-time on the Web and everywhere else, Eldritch Errors places the participants in the center of the story as the protagonists. They might also find themselves starring in future graphic novels, television shows and films re-telling their adventures for broader audiences. It is an independent media model that collaborates more deeply with participants than just thinking of them as the "target audience". As the events of Book Three start to stumble into view, the curious might keep their eyes on EldritchErrors.com and the Sentry Outpost forums ... but then, we all remember what curiosity did to the cat, right?

January is always a busy month for indieWIRE. Last week, we teamed up with New Line Cinema and Apple to bring filmmaker Michel Gondry to huge crowds at the San Francisco, Chicago and New York City Apple Stores, talking about his new film "Be Kind Rewind". This week, the editorial team is already embedded in the slopes of Park City to cover the 2008 Sundance & Slamdance Film Festivals (in part through the support of "Be Kind Rewind"), including interviews with each of the first-time filmmakers at Sundance (and there are a lot of them this year.) The latest news from Sundance & Slamdance can always be found at http://www.indiewire.com/parkcity/.

This year, Emerging Pictures and indieWIRE bring you a year-long series intended to discover some of the best films from the previous year that never found a distributor. This year, the winner of the audience award for Undiscovered Gems included a $50,000 broadcast license from The Sundance Channel and a $50,000 distribution fund with Emerging Pictures -- David Muno, Director of "Full Grown Men", looked downright surprised at the award luncheon yesterday. Congratulations, and keep your eyes open for "Full Grown Men" in your area (including your cable box.)

With the full-list of film picks from 106 film critics' now up on indieWIRE ("There Will Be Blood" was the runaway favorite) , the reactions are starting to roll in. GreenCine called it "one of the major events of the cinematic year," the Sun-Times said "this is going to be a Netflix list," and SlashFilm is asking "WTF?" about critics (we all do sometimes.) Our own analysis of the poll continues today at indieWIRE.

Last year, indieWIRE picked up the mantle of an annual poll of film critics at alternative weekly dropped by the Village Voice, expanding the critics list with some of the best film reviewers on the web. Tommorrow, we'll announce the results of our 2nd annual poll, but we've already revealed one of our favorite aspects of it -- the best undistributed films of 2007. Congratulations to Lee Chang-dong (for "Secret Sunshine") and all the other unsung filmmakers who caught the critics' eyes this year.

We spent a good part of 2007 being vague about one of the product development projects we worked on. Yesterday, our friends at Scholastic's Lab for Informal Learning got some great press in the New York Times about the project, called "39 Clues" (an ambitious children's media experience that's years in development.) I imagine we'll hear alot more buzz about "39 Clues" in 2008, and we were flattered to spend time with their extended team and amazing ideas.

Unlike most project launches, a story that relies upon mystery and suspense requires you to cultivate a certain level of intrigue that trumps self-promotional instincts. There's a fine line, though, between mystery and the appearance of deceit. As people discover something strange and look for confirmation, trust-building requires that some authentication be out there. So, yes, there's this game. If we tell you too much about it, you'll get fewer goosebumps, so perhaps all you need to do is think about what the name might promise:

eldritch (adj) - suggesting the operation of supernatural influences. Syn: weird, uncanny, unearthly.

errors (n) - wrong actions attributable to bad judgement or ignorance or inattention; the occurence of incorrect results produced by a computer. Syn: mistakes, faults, wrongdoing.

Just because people are reporting all kinds of strange experiences doesn't mean those weird occurences aren't connected, however obscure that connection might seem as the story begins. Although a rose by any other name might still smell as sweet, a loathsome canker still lies in sweetest bud.