The State of Oscar. 020420. Rebuilding The Oscar Season (Pt 2)
February 4, 2020
February 4, 2020
January 29, 2020
One of the great movie experiences I had in 2019 was Apocalypse Now: The Final Cut. Francis Coppola did a recut of the film, after the original, the Redux, and however many TV and airplane cuts, and you could see in the film that he had opened to the door to changing every single moment […]
January 20, 2020
It struck about halfway through the SAG Awards on Sunday night… which followed the PGAs on Saturday… which followed the ACE Awards on Friday… which followed Oscar nominations last Monday… which followed BFCA/CCAs on Sunday… which followed LAFCA on Saturday… which followed NBR on Wednesday… which followed NYFCC on Tuesday… which followed The Globes on […]
January 17, 2020
It turned out to be a pretty terrific year for film. Movies you can watch repeatedly and keep mining new stuff and reassessing old without getting bored. I stuck to 20 motion pictures, overall. Two sets of 10. And the only hierarchical order within the two groups is for my top choice. Top 10 Motion […]
January 13, 2020
I’ve been explaining this for years. People don’t want to understand. Next year’s Oscars are already down to 60 films being taken seriously. By March, the number will be down to 45. By the end of July, the number will be down to about 30. About 23 of those 30 (or so) will go to […]
January 11, 2020
People adjust. People with multimillion budgets adjust easily. The February 9 date of this year’s Oscars have led to whining beyond all whining. “People don’t have time to see all the movies!” “It’s all happening too quick!” “All the other shows are bunched up!” And here is the issue for The Academy. Who cares? The […]
January 7, 2020
Your 2020 Producer’s Guild Nominees 1917Producers: Sam Mendes, Pippa Harris, Jayne‐Ann Tenggren, Callum McDougall Ford v FerrariProducers: Peter Chernin & Jenno Topping, James Mangold The IrishmanProducers: Jane Rosenthal & Robert De Niro, Emma Tillinger Koskoff & Martin Scorsese Jojo RabbitProducers: Carthew Neal, Taika Waititi JokerProducers: Todd Phillips & Bradley Cooper, Emma Tillinger Koskoff Knives OutProducers: […]
January 5, 2020
January 5, 2020
I was at an event for a distributor, celebrating its Golden Globes nominees and a friend in the industry asked me, “So who is going to win?” Without much thinking, I said, “It doesn’t matter. At all. The Globes aren’t actually a thing.” He was taken aback and frankly, I was taken aback by how […]
December 31, 2019
Voting for nominations is now two days away. Voters may watch another movie or two before they enter the six-day window of voting, but with such a short window, my guess is that even more voters than usual will get their votes in early in the process. It’s hard to imagine that even 20% of […]
December 28, 2019
Christmas Day has come and gone and some distributors are happily sleeping, their bellies filled with the comfort of their films’ position. Others are — or should be — getting twitchy. The most comfy of all should be Netflix, for whom absolutely nothing has changed since this holiday window began last Friday the 20th. This […]
December 27, 2019
There is a disease in Hollywood that is also found in many places, more so in 2019 than in the past… though it has certainly been there in the past as well. When it’s about someone else, gossip is fun, even if it might be untrue… but if people are saying it, there must be […]
December 23, 2019
It was Bill Condon who coined the phrase, “The Great Settling.” And I have used it every year since I heard it. Because even in a shortened season —perhaps more so — there is a point at which the power to try to convert voters disappears from the efforts of the often-brilliant salespeople (whatever their […]
December 20, 2019
The Non-Spoiler Review is here. After chewing on this for a bit, I am just going to make a list of things I feel about the film. And I will look forward to added such issues from others. Let me start with the couple of things I loved in the film. I loved the “They […]
December 18, 2019
I never liked the show, “Cats.” Critics never liked the show, “Cats.” More than 73 million people have bought tickets to the show, “Cats.” And even if just half of them liked it and one-quarter loved it, that’s over 36 million people who will enjoy this movie. Tom Hooper and co-writer Lee Hall didn’t transform […]
December 18, 2019
The Spoiler Review is here. Just to lay down a sense of my standards for Star Wars… I am a fan, not a fanboy. I have seen all the previous films multiple times. I saw Star Wars on opening weekend 42 years ago. I didn’t hate The Phantom Menace, but I do find Jar Jar […]
December 12, 2019
I support women directors and the fight to push the industry to embrace them moving forward. I have argued for years that seeding the industry with at least two films a year directed by a woman at every major, as well as pushing for more women in crews. This seems to be taking place this year and it continues in the upcoming year. Progress, albeit slow progress.
December 11, 2019
It’s easy to imagine the dramatic version of this story. But this is a Taika Waititi film, not the sad, solemn Holocaust drama we have seen literally dozens of times. Instead of delivering the adult perspective on the horrors of the moment, Waititi tells the story from the perspective of a 10-year-old.
December 11, 2019
And now, ladies and gentlemen, The SAG Nominations. This award season is a corkscrew. Maybe it’s because of the relative brevity. The timetable, except for Oscar, isn’t all that different. Yet, it feels more compact and each group voting for awards seems less influenced by the others. On the other hand, the shape of the […]
-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
