Category: media

“The red carpet has yet to be unrolled for the Academy Awards next month, but studio executives are already thinking about next year. Taking cues from the Oscar nominations announced on Tuesday, the studios say they expect big changes in how they will market movies in the years to come. Most notably, the studios will be looking to tie their Oscar campaigns to the release of a DVD,” a tactic which appears to have helped last summer’s blockbuster, Seabiscuit, garner seven nominations for this year’s ceremony.

“When Academy Awards officials announced in 2002 that the current Oscar season would be shortened by a month when the ceremony was shifted from late March to Feb. 29, there were concerns that smaller films, dependent on slow-building word of mouth, would suffer.” But yesterday’s Oscar announcement of this year’s nominations should allay many of those fears, as art house favorites like Sofia Coppola’s Lost In Translation led the pack, with big-budget, big-studio fare like Cold Mountain and The Last Samurai failing to garner the expected slew of nominations.

The long-standing lament of the British expatriate living in America is that Americans simply do not understand or appreciate irony in their humor. But with the decidedly ironic Britcom, The Office, having just walked away with two Golden Globe awards, is America finally starting to get the joke? The truth, says Jonathan Duffy, is that American comedy is full of irony, and has been for some time. What has taken Americans so long to catch on to British humor is not the ironic content, but the lack of traditional setups and punch lines.

“The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, the final chapter in Peter Jackson’s majestic fantasy trilogy, led the Academy Awards race Tuesday with 11 nominations, including best picture and director. The Napoleonic era naval adventure Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World was right behind with 10 nominations, among them best picture and director. Bill Murray, Diane Keaton, Sean Penn and Charlize Theron were among the leading acting nominees. Other best-picture nominees for the 76th annual Oscars included Lost in Translation, about two lonely Americans in Tokyo; the brooding murder thriller Mystic River; and the horse-racing drama Seabiscuit.“

“This was supposed to be a kinder, gentler Oscar season. After last spring’s awards, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced a shortened season, moving up nominations from February to January… and shifting the awards show itself from March to February. The idea was to take a bite out of the uber-aggressive campaigning that studios big and small launch in the never-ending quest for a golden statuette or two. It may have seemed like a swell plan, but competition is as fierce as ever, especially with all the added studio intensity – pandemonium, panic, twisted nerves – about adapting to the new schedule.”

Documentaries have increasingly been gaining traction in the film world, and this year’s Sundance Festival was no exception. From a horrifying first-person look at what happens to the human body when it is fed nothing but food from McDonald’s, to an intimate look at “a roiling skirmish between Latin immigrants and the Long Island natives who’ve lived in a small town for generations,” the documentary made a serious mark in Park City. “The scope and depth of this year’s documentaries made the fiction features seem all the smaller and more navel-gazing.”

A consortium of 2,000 independent record labels is lodging a complaint with the European Union in an effort to block the pending merger of super-labels Sony and BMG. According to the group, the merged company would control fully 25% of the global music market, and would be able to crush its competition, particularly small, independent labels.

As trendy, glamorous American cities go, Seattle ranks pretty far up the list. And during the 1980s and ’90s, when Seattle’s star was rising, Hollywood couldn’t get enough of the place, filming movie after movie in its picturesque urban settings. But these days, the filmmakers’ dash for the Canadian border has left Seattle bereft of new productions, and forced to watch in disbelief as movies set in the city are filmed in Vancouver and other foreign cities. City officials are trying desperately to lure Hollywood back to town with financial incentives and other deals, but so far, nothing is working.

The final sign that CDs had supplanted cassettes, record albums, and 8-tracks as the dominant recording media may have come when services began popping up, offering to convert your old vinyl collection to disc for a fee. So what does it say about CDs that there are now companies eager to convert your thousands of shiny discs into MP3 files?

The Golden Globe Awards were as unpredictable as ever last night, with the critically acclaimed Cold Mountain getting all but shut out despite leading the field in nominations, and the final installment of the Lord of the Rings trilogy taking home four awards, including best dramatic film and best director for Peter Jackson. On the television side of the slate, the satirical BBC sitcom The Office, which airs only on a little-known cable network in the U.S., was the surprise winner of best comedy, and also garnered an acting award for the show’s creator and star, Ricky Gervais.