Oscars
Brainstorming on improving the Oscars
There are a bunch of posts around Ye Olde Interwebs today on how the Oscars, either as a broadcast or as a ceremony as a whole can be improved in light of this year’s Lowest. Ratings. Ever. Yesterday I got an email from a contact at the L.A. Times asking for my thoughts on that [...]
The day after the Oscars
Last night, as you of course know, Hollywood got it’s act together and held the 80th Academy Awards ceremony free of overshadowing from the recently settled writer’s strike. From what I gather most of the awards went to the odds-on favorites (I haven’t tried to make Oscar predictions since 1995), a bunch of movies few [...]
There Will Be Oscars
This is the funniest thing David Spade has been in since Tommy Boy.
There Will Be Oscars on FunnyOrDie.com
On a related note, I’ve made the decision not to try and live-blog tonight’s Oscar telecast. If you’re really interested in such coverage there are a bunch of people who are doing so, but I’d recommend Karina’s live-Twittering [...]
Shocker: Few people see Best Picture nominees
Oh yeah. It’s really surprising that this year’s Best Picture nominees are having trouble finding an audience. Real surprising, especially since these movies receive limited marketing support, even more limited distribution and generally are as hidden as it’s possible to make them and still consider them “released.”
Again, here’s the general formula:
Greenlight prestige project
Realize it has [...]
No Country for Old Men wins consumer poll for best picture
A survey by BrandIntel shows that, based on online opinion, No Country for Old Men deserves to win the Best Picture Oscar later this month.
Other Best Picture nominees There Will Be Blood and Juno were not chosen because of a lack of perceived chances for success. TWBB was just generally believed, it seems, to be [...]
Oscar nods help independent films
A number of current releases have received bumps in their box office after being nominated for Oscars, according to Variety. No Country for Old Men, There Will Be Blood, Michael Clayton and others all got boosts in some size or another following the announcement of their nominations.
In some cases the nominations coincided with the movie [...]
Oscar nominations revive movies and advertising
A fresh wave of ad buying is expected as studios re-release movies that yesterday morning received Academy Award nominations.
While some movies that got nominations have long come and gone from theaters, others such as Sweeney Todd, Diving Bell and the Butterfly and The Savages are still playing. In those cases, recognition of the Oscar nominations [...]
Oscars poster unveiled
The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences has revealed the official poster for this year’s Academy Awards. The poster was designed by Drew Struzan, creator of posters for Star Wars, Indiana Jones and many, many more.
Like most of the previous posters, this one is more geared toward making you feel warm and fuzzy things [...]
Walk Hard Oscar ad
This is a pretty funny “For Your Consideration” ad Sony has created for Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story. Completely in keeping with what we know about the movie so far. [via DHD]
A glut of both quality and quantity
This New York Times story by David Carr is an interesting lead-in to awards season. Carr looks at how, because Oscar voters have been rewarding smaller, more ambitious movies lately, studios are making movies they know to not be commercially viable just to put them into Oscar contention.
Couple that with this story in Variety. A [...]
Indie films finding success hard to come by this fall
Both Variety and the Los Angeles Times have stories in the last couple days about the difficult environment smaller, independent and non-mainstream films are finding themselves in this fall.
As the VAR story says, smaller movies that don’t have the huge marketing resources of a big-budget blockbuster rely largely on the festivals earlier in the year [...]
Studios hold back on Oscar campaigns
Anne Thompson has a story in Variety about how the studios are only tentatively looking at starting their campaigns to secure Oscar nominations for their biggest films. They’re trying to walk the line between building buzz and, quite frankly, honking people off by over-doing it.
This won’t impact the general movie-goer much, except that the online [...]
Awards blogs coming out their hinders
Anne Thompson recaps all the awards season blogs being either launched or revived by publications ranging from the Los Angeles Times to Variety to The New York Times now that we’re getting into crunch time before the Oscar nominations are announced. These blogs are, of course, plays to capture more advertising cash as studios begin [...]
Quote of the Day
While Mark Caro is talking about the Short Film category I think the larger point is applicable to the movies that play downtown and not where people actually, you know, live.
At some point you have to consider the entertainment value of seeing films you’ve never heard of winning awards you don’t care about so people [...]
Oscar win = revenue
There are a couple points in this story about how Oscar wins translate to increased revenue I want to take issue with. See the quotes followed by my thoughts.
“Last year’s winner, Lionsgate’s “Crash” — a May release that hit the video shelves the previous September — suggested that a new pattern had arrived.”: This isn’t [...]
