Category: media

“Last year saw a handful of filmmakers take on the questions of what it means to be a man in America in the 21st century, but their films don’t celebrate archetypal images of frontier manliness. Rather, they seem to suggest that looking back to these old forms is another broken urge in an age of cultural nostalgia.”

This time around, buyers are largely reacting to films with appreciation as indie film fans and disappointment as business people.

“As streamed video on demand increasingly strives to become a channel itself, viewers might consider it to be an adequate substitution for other premium channels, or perhaps they are switching to economize on their time and money spent.”

“They met with human rights groups, who told them that if they included their names in the credits, they could face intimidation, harassment and possibly a death made to look like an accident.” And this film is about events that happened half a century ago.

Two researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, have looked into “Oscar baiting,” making films that are reliable picks for Oscar nods. Along the way, Gabriel Rossman and Oliver Schilke came up with a formula to predict Oscar success.
NPR 01.19.14

No fewer than six of the nine films nominated for the best picture Academy Award are based on true events — possibly the biggest proportion ever vying for Hollywood’s highest honor.

Paramount Pictures signals the end of film by distributing The Wolf of Wall Street in digital format only – at least to U.S. theatres.

Bring on the multiplexes.

The 1990s were “a time when the film business was flush with cash, to entice their first occupants into production deals. Studios regularly gave producers millions of dollars a year as part of so-called ‘on the lot’ agreements. In exchange, they got the right of first refusal on any project the producer generated. Life is different for producers in the new, tightfisted Hollywood.”

“People have become intoxicated — maybe they’re carried away by the shows they’ve watched, I don’t know, but they’re acting crazy. The shares have gotten way, way ahead of themselves. I don’t know if it’s ever going to be worth what the market says it’s worth now.”