“If Your Fall Festival Wants To Live, Come With Me.”
May 25, 2020
May 25, 2020
May 14, 2020
May 12, 2020
The single most significant public event in the possible Oscar season to come happened today. Disney and Lin-Manuel Miranda moved Hamilton into 2020. No, I am not saying that Hamilton is a lock to win Best Picture. It is possible that it won’t be nominated. It is possible that it will be nominated and lose. […]
May 11, 2020
Paul Schrader is a brilliant man. But… myopic. Festivals have a narrow value beyond the experience to be had at the festivals. And every one of the major festivals has a different purpose that extends beyond those events. Cannes is many festivals. There are two major competitions, a few other platforms, and then a major […]
May 5, 2020
“Theatrical is over.” Yeah, yeah, yeah. I have been listening to this bullshit for decades. And if you read David Puttnam‘s “Movies & Money” (from 1997!), you will see that this line of gloom & doom and hipster pronouncements about The Future started coming up a century ago. This morning, Indiewire published a piece by […]
May 1, 2020
Some of the greatness during this period has been coincidental to the previously scheduled releases of shows. And so has the absolute crap. It became a project during all this mess, driven by the insane amount of media coverage, to watch the worst of Netflix… which is also, apparently, the most popular of Netflix. No, […]
May 1, 2020
Television is so much a part of this experience of being locked down… so I’ll skip to those adventures before getting back to movies. Let’s start by paying tribute to FX. Devs. Better Things. And Mrs. America. This is some of the finest television of the decade. For me, it’s Devs over Mr Robot. For […]
April 29, 2020
In light of the theoretical showdown between Universal Studios and the exhibition business and the many opinions thrown around, a simple guide to how the current exhibition/distribution relationship works, in the broadest terms, is called for. Movie theaters are brick & mortar outlets for a small percentage of the content produced by major studios. Via […]
April 23, 2020
It’s April 23, 2020. New York seems to be over the COVID-19 hump. The, uh, president is encouraging “reopening” America while simultaneously hedging so that he won’t be blamed for encouraging this when people start dying in states that reopen too recklessly. The threat of a rekindling of the pandemic in America looms heavily over […]
April 21, 2020
I’ve been in lockdown pretty much since March 9, when I returned from the great and glorious True/False Doc Fest. Thirty-seven days. It’s not really that much, but it feels like forever at times. But when I am on the couch/chair/bed watching something great, time stops and the world is my oyster. There has been […]
April 9, 2020
As we head toward the premiere of Trolls World Tour tomorrow, a wholly different experiment than the rest of the adjustments that have been made to the VOD window in the last month, let’s get some idea of where we are. The number of titles that have been released in the change-of-plan direct-to-paid-streaming or window-shrinking […]
March 26, 2020
Today, we are two-and-half months from the first death from COVID-19 in Wuhan. And things are beginning to start up again in Wuhan and across China. The first death in America from this virus was on February 29, in Washington state. California: March 4. New York: March 14. The arc will vary, but two-and-half months […]
March 19, 2020
You know how you were 12 and the entire world was going to notice that zit on your nose and never see you as anything but a troll forever and ever? That is the spirit that the authors of most of the coverage of Hollywood’s COVID-19 problem are embracing. I mean… yes, the entire world […]
March 14, 2020
No. It’s not a complicated answer. COVID-19 isn’t a fart in the wind, which is about what it takes to get media to start screeching about the end of this or the end of that part of the industry. But this isn’t Armageddon either. Not even close. That is, unless it is literally Armageddon and […]
March 4, 2020
There is something sad about a bad Pixar movie. Like so many things Disney, Pixar is going through a generational change in the post-Lasseter era. The place is still loaded to the gills with talented people. But when you see a movie like Onward, you realize that something or someone was missing. Onward is not […]
March 2, 2020
In the early evening of Sunday night, March 1, about 12 days after cutting the cord, there is a headline in my e-mail inbox. AT&T has yet ANOTHER offering for streaming. How many ways can one company flip-flop on their plans for The Future? But seriously… this is becoming a real problem for AT&T, as […]
February 26, 2020
The journey to a box-free television life continues. There is something almost as exciting about gathering up all the DirecTV hardware all over the house as there was in having it installed. It’s all gone to FedEx (no remotes requested) for free delivery back to the home ship. Shelves are more open. Fewer wires float […]
February 25, 2020
I didn’t know exactly what to expect from The Invisible Man when I sat down. The ads told me that the woman at the center, played by the always-compelling and more-interesting-than-your-average movie star, Elisabeth Moss, was not imagining it all. They told me that, eventually, others would suffer the wrath of the man formerly known […]
February 21, 2020
I was planning to cut the cord a year ago. My DirecTV bill was around $180 a month and they announced that they were going to raise the price another $10 a month. DirecTV Now (as it was then known) was around $50 a month. HBO was free with my AT&T unlimited phone plan. Showtime […]
February 16, 2020
I’ve been anxious to write this column… and avoiding it… for a week. The biggest problem is that I don’t want to be guilty of what most of the writing on the Parasite win has been… a clear reflection of a predetermined set of beliefs that would have been reflected in a specific way, regardless […]
"In the world of performing arts, the coronavirus pandemic has already sunk summer. Now it is felling fall. Even as reopened barbershops, beaches and bookstores herald the resumption of economic life across America, concert promoters, theater presenters, orchestras and dance companies are ripping up their 2020 calendars and hoping 2021 will mark a new beginning. “I think 2020 is gone,” said Anna D. Shapiro, the artistic director of Chicago’s storied Steppenwolf Theater Company. “I’ll be stunned if we’re back in the theater.”
The Autumn That Is Not To Be: Live Producers Shut Down 2020
| May 26, 2020
| May 25, 2020
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
