“As it happens, before the Oscars were even the Oscars (the name was officially Academy-approved in 1939), the awards show actually played this card in its [very] first iteration, but arguably with very different motives in mind.”
Category: media
The Precarious, Unlikely Way A Big Piece Of Movie History Was Preserved
It’s estimated that all copies of about 75 percent of silent films have perished, taking with them heaven knows how much memory of an era. In 1978 a significant portion of that memory was recovered by chance when a Pentecostal minister with a backhoe unearthed the last known remnants of 372 silent films from the 1910s and 1920s, as he was excavating a lot behind Diamond Tooth Gertie’s, a gambling hall in the Yukon’s Dawson City.
Matt Groening Goes Medieval On Us
“But while it takes place in a medieval realm of wizards and dragons, [the new series] is not exactly Mr. Groening’s answer to Game of Thrones. Disenchantment is more like [his] comic amalgam of fantasy franchises like Lord of the Rings and the animated epics of Hayao Miyazaki, to name just two of its dozens of influences. It is also Mr. Groening’s first show created for a streaming service … as well as, consequently, his first to have a serialized narrative.”
Hollywood’s Billion-Dollar Plan To Make And Market Ten-Minute Videos For Smartphones
NewTV, founded and led by former Disney exec Jeffrey Katzenberg and with former eBay and HP chief Meg Whitman as CEO, “is aiming to launch by the end of 2019, with a premium lineup of original, short-form series comprising episodes of 10 minutes each. The service will have two subscription tiers,” with and without advertising. Just about every major Hollywood studio has bought in.
Oscars To Feature New Category: Popular Movies
At one point in its history, Oscar voters routinely named blockbusters such as “Titanic” or “Gladiator” as the year’s best. That’s changed. Recent best picture victors such as “Moonlight,” “Spotlight,” and the 2018 winner “The Shape of Water” have been firmly ensconced in the arthouse world, whereas well-reviewed hit films such as “Guardians of the Galaxy” or “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” have only been recognized for their technical achievements.
More Popular Oscars? There’s A Better Way…
Creating a category that segregates popular films from more elevated fare hardly seems like an improvement or likely to keep the academy relevant, since it calls attention to the awards’ elitism rather than actually broadening their appeal. If the academy really wants to make the Oscars more appealing to a wider audience, it should consider just recognizing the artistic merit of deserving popular films instead of cordoning them off in their own category. After all, wasn’t that part of the justification for expanding the Best Picture category in 2009, that having more than five nominees would allow room for both obscure indies and more popular fare that might otherwise be squeezed out of the race?
Aaron Sorkin Called The Internet A ‘Bronchial Infection On The First Amendment’. He May Have Been Right
“Sorkin’s critiques of digital life looked especially off base in the 2000s and early 2010s, when the internet was a less broken place than it now is. The platforms looked like tools instead of weapons, and Sorkin looked like a boring crank. Now, though, instead of an old man yelling at the sky, Sorkin looks more like a middle-aged man yelling at a mountain of trash emitting toxic fumes. He’s still not offering any productive solutions, but he’s not incorrect.”
How MoviePass Has Changed How We Pay To Go To The Movies
For all of MoviePass’s ludicrousness, it has demonstrated that audiences have a real appetite for a subscription-based approach to filmgoing, and larger theater chains are catching on.
How Bad TV Creeps Up To Infect Great TV
“Bad TV,” in this case, doesn’t mean reality television, which has a kind of integrity in its shamelessness, but old-style idiot-box TV like The Man From U.N.C.L.E., Gilligan’s Island, and Dynasty. And as the much-ballyhooed age of Peak TV runs on, argues Paula Marantz Cohen, some of the most insidious traits of Bad TV are creeping into what ought to be high-quality material.
A Eulogy For 20th Century Fox (About To Be Swallowed By The Disney Leviathan)
“In the aftermath of its July 27 sale to Disney, film historian and author Leonard Maltin recalls Fox’s wild early days, a predator mogul, firings and backstabbings, and along the way, movies from Cleopatra to Titanic (and movie stars like Marilyn Monroe and Shirley Temple) that impacted the world.”