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 […]
February 11, 2020
The show, simply, sucked. And the first big reason it sucked was because of the producers and The Academy paying endless homage to diversity in a way that was so ham-fisted and poorly managed that it felt like a husband whose wife caught him in their bed with 2 strippers and a donkey trying to […]
February 10, 2020
Simply… a rundown of the show… with a few bits of commentary. Janelle Monáe opens the show with an homage to a movie that was not nominated that turns into a really cool number paying homage to other movies that were not nominated. (There was a dancing Joker, and other costumes represented Dolemite Is My […]
February 9, 2020
There is so much to dig through that this was intended to be two columns. But it’s the day before Oscar and these pieces have sat on my desktop for two days and F.X. Feeney is dead and Orson Bean was killed while jaywalking at 91 and I don’t feel like tearing anyone specific a […]
-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
