THB #93: The Batman (no spoilers)
| March 6, 2022
Glenn Whipp: “Called instant-runoff voting and ranked-choice voting, the preferential ballot is an electoral system used in places around the world — including in New York City — for elections with more than two candidates. Each voter ranks his or her choices, rather than choosing only one to be the winner. This is to ensure that each ballot will have maximum influence, putting a premium on the choices that voters rank near the top. If an academy member put Movie A first and Movie A gets knocked out of the running early for lack of other votes (assuming no movie won a majority), that member’s ballot continues to affect the outcome. If the member has Movie B ranked second, that ballot’s vote then goes to Movie B until one of three things happens: Movie B accumulates 50% of the vote and wins, another movie crosses the 50% threshold and wins, or Movie B is also eliminated. And the cycle continues—Movies C through J, anyone?—until one of this year’s 10 nominees crosses that 50% threshold and claims the prize. Depending on how long it takes to determine a winner, that academy member’s one vote could ultimately transfer to a number of different movies before ultimately landing in its final resting place.”
-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
April 29, 2022
| 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
No Responses to “Ranked Choice Oscar BP”