THB #93: The Batman (no spoilers)
| March 6, 2022
“The Secretariat for Social Communication of the Presidency has produced a video, made with public money, to offend the Brazilian artist Petra Costa just because she exercised the inalienable right to criticize the government on television. We are talking about censorship and a brutal disrespect when it comes to freedom of speech. Petra was serene in her choice of words, pointing out what Brazilians and the world already know: Brazil is governed by a chauvinist, racist, homophobic enemy of culture; a supporter of dictatorships, torture and police violence, and friend of paramilitary groups, the ‘militias.’ Petra Costa was called a liar for telling the truth about the way the government treats the environment, which the world also knows. The Secretariat for Social Communication has been using its public resources to incite hatred against an artist. But Petra makes us so proud. For being a talented woman, for representing Brazil in the Oscars and for making a movie that unmasks the illegal 2016 impeachment, the coup that led Brazil to this disaster called Bolsonaro.”
Dilma Rousseff
-30-
May 1, 2022
"Netflix, the great disrupter whose algorithms and direct-to-consumer platform have forced powerful media incumbents to rethink their economic models, now seems to need a big strategy change itself. It got me thinking about the simple idea that my film and TV production company Blumhouse is built on: If you give artists a lot of creative freedom and a little money upfront but a big stake in the movie’s or TV show’s commercial success, more often than not the result will be both commercial (the filmmakers are incentivized to make films that will resonate with audiences) and artistically interesting (creative freedom!). This approach has yielded movies as varied as Get Out (made for $4.5 million, with worldwide box office receipts of more than $250 million), Whiplash (made for $3.3 million, winner of three Academy Awards), The Invisible Man (made for $7 million, earned more than $140 million) and Paranormal Activity (made for $15,000, grossed more than $190 million).From the beginning, the most important strategy I used to persuade artists to work with me was to make radically transparent deals: We usually paid the artists (“participants” in Hollywood lingo) the absolute minimum allowable by union contracts upfront, with the promise of healthy bonuses based on actual box office results—instead of the opaque 'percentage points' that artists are usually offered. Anyone can see box office results immediately, so creators don’t quarrel with the payouts. In fact, when it comes time for an artist to collect a bonus based on box office receipts, I email a video clip of myself dropping the check off at FedEx to the recipient."
Jason Blum Sees Room For "Scrappier" Netflix
| April 30, 2022
"As a critic Gavin was entertaining, wry, questioning, sensitive, perceptive"
Critic-Filmmaker Gavin Millar Was 84; Films Include Cream In My Coffee, Dreamchild
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| January 24, 2022
DP/30 Audio: Bombshell, Jay Roach
| December 13, 2019
DP/30 Audio: The Last Black Man in San Francisco, Jonathan Majors
| December 4, 2019
DP/30 Audio: The Mustang, Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre
| December 4, 2019
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