Zachary Horwitz collected $690 million from investors for movie deals authorities say were fictitious. The HBO and Netflix contracts he used to convince Russell and others that his business was legitimate were forgeries, the government says. - Los Angeles Times
Among adults 18 to 49, the demographic that many advertisers pay a premium to reach, the Oscars suffered an even steeper 64 percent decline, according to preliminary data from Nielsen released on Monday. Nielsen’s final numbers are expected on Tuesday and will include out-of-home viewing and some streaming statistics. - The New York Times
As a Hollywood writer friend of mine said after she watched “Nomadland”: “That was not entertainment. That was Frances McDormand having explosive diarrhea in a plastic bucket on a van.” Not a crop of movies that make you reach for the Junior Mints. - The New York Times
"A website called #allesdichtmachen ('close it all down') was launched on Thursday night, featuring 53 to-camera clips in which high-profile actors sarcastically boast of the lengths they have gone to restrict their social contacts and appeal to the government to lock down the country even harder." Mein Gott, did they get dragged. One television host who's been working...
Back in the 1990s, before search engines were much good, Yahoo was a popular and useful portal, a directory organizing the great, amorphous mass of websites into something navigable (especially for those who didn't want to be stuck inside AOL's bubble). Now Yahoo's seen as a giant, bumbling monster, gobbling up and wiping out beloved hubs of user-generated content...
The Chinese government imposed a virtual news blackout, and censors moved to tamp down or scrub out discussion of the award on social media. - The New York Times
To survive beyond the pandemic, theaters must persuade moviegoers not just to come back, but to come back more frequently than they did—to start thinking of their local cinema as akin to their favorite coffee shop. Because a return to pre-pandemic habits isn’t enough, industry executives told me they’ve been spending this past year rethinking the role of theaters...
What a haiku is to language, a vibe is to sensory perception: a concise assemblage of image, sound, and movement. (#Aesthetic is sometimes used to mark vibes, but that term is predominantly visual.) A vibe can be positive, negative, beautiful, ugly, or just unique. It can even become a quality in itself: if something is vibey, it gives off...
Five years ago, 63% of Americans mostly watched television through cable and satellite. Today, that percentage has dropped to fewer than half of all Americans, while the percentage of those primarily watching television via a streaming service on the internet has jumped 17 percentage points, from 20% in 2016 to 37% today. - CBS News
Yes, 2020 was a weird year, and the rules for movies to debut in movie theatres were waived, but still: Netflix had seven statues, Amazon two, Disney one (or a lot more, if you count Nomadland as a Disney production), and Warner Bros one, all for movies that were either only streamed or debuted on streaming and theatres (if...
How wild to have a show with Crip Camp nominated for best documentary, a show that prevented disabled people in L.A. from getting to their subway trains - and also forced hordes of people to find the new site for COVID-19 testing. Ash Pana, who lives by Union Station and "who suffers from chronic pain and sometimes uses a...
Basically, her subjects tell their stories; she works with those stories and fictionalizes them, and then the subjects act out their fictionalized lives. "The outcome is scripted but the raw material is fact. There’s a personal rediscovery for the men and women onscreen as they interpret themselves in Zhao’s fabricated versions of their realities." - Los Angeles Times
Yes, Nomadland is only the second movie directed by a woman to win a Best Picture Oscar, and the first Best Picture Oscar to go to a film directed by a woman of color. But also: Nomadland is about women. "Movies about women basically never win Best Picture. By my count, Nomadland is one of only six movies focused on the...
A dubious proposition, but a possible one: "If numbers or data or statistics can provide any ounce of entertainment, there’s no better time than the present." (If you're a betting person, bet on Nomadland to take it all.) - The Hollywood Reporter
