“The Valencia institution, founded by Walt Disney and his brother Roy, reported that movies directed by graduates from CalArts’ animation programs generated $1.5 billion in box-office revenue in 2014.”
“Amazon has ordered a full season of the Untitled Woody Allen Project, a half-hour series written and directed by the veteran filmmaker. Episodes will be available next year on Amazon’s Prime Instant Video service in the U.S., the U.K. and Germany.”
“Beyond lowering the prices, something movie theaters are likely loathe to do, there are other incentives that could be explored. For instance, 87% of moviegoers across all demographics were attracted to some kind of subscription plan, which would allow them to pay a set fee for an unlimited number of movies.”
“As surprising as the company’s breakthrough success with “Transparent” may be, it is also consistent with its history and identity. Amazon is the first digital streaming service to win a Golden Globe for best TV series. In other words, the company that has changed the way consumers buy everything from diapers to high-definition TVs is trying to disrupt yet another industry.”
“The problem, though, with making reality television about gay men who don’t want to be gay is that it will invariably lack empathy for the pain that likely defines those men’s lives. The failure of My Husband’s Not Gay is one of style, not substance; but the fact that it has been protested for its substance says a lot about the cultural tensions surrounding homosexuality in America.”
“Critics love them and audiences, represented by tickets sold, like them pretty well. But the Academy almost completely ignores them. Anderson’s eight feature films have received just four Oscar nominations total … [and] have lost every one. … Whether or not you like Wes Anderson movies, their failure with the Academy highlights several shortcomings of the Oscars.”
Cinematographer Chris Doyle: “We want some ongoing relationship with this generation, which is more or less frustrated, if not dissatisfied, with the financial and socioeconomic, and in the background, the political journey of this period of time. … We have certain talents, we have a certain idealism, we have a certain voice, and we’d better speak up for ourselves.”
“The absence of color is egregiously noticeable in the sci-fi and fantasy genres, where characters can be any ethnicity.”
“It was a very progressive, surprisingly forward-thinking show — for about an hour or so, during the TV winners. The movie choices felt far more conventional.”
“Although I understand why they treat writers so badly, it’s not in their interests to do so. They will get poorer work from their writers. Create an atmosphere of trust and [writers] will take risks and write better for you. Create an atmosphere of fear and neglect and they won’t.”
“The Hollywood Foreign Press Assn. and the film academy have envy issues. The HFPA craves respect. The academy wishes the Oscars, bound by its rigid format, could be as fun as the Globes. So the jealousy spiral continues, with the academy jostling its dates to mess with the Globes and the HFPA retaliating by hiring talented hosts like Fey and Poehler.”
“The remaining staff aim to print 1m copies of the satirical weekly, which has a typical print run of 60,000.”
“Several studies have shown that, contrary to many peoples’ intuition, the unbundling of cable service could actually lead to slightly higher prices for fewer channels.”
“Over the past several weeks, it seems that almost every major awards contender has had some kind of high-profile accusation flung at it over its misappropriation of the truth. It happens every year, of course …, but this time, it’s reached comically epidemic levels … These movies are not documentaries, nor are they acts of journalism. (And even documentaries don’t always need to be totally accurate – just ask Werner Herzog.)”
“An upcoming Oculus Rift experience tracks a character’s recovery following a sexual assault – aiming to enable empathy, even therapy, for survivors and outsiders alike.”
“One falling tree managed to land directly on a very expensive microphone. Audiences can hear that in the movie.”
“But the big increases in the digital realm couldn’t completely offset the weakness in the traditional, physical space.”
“While the Walton thrived as a community playhouse, it stopped showing movies, which created a kind of cultural segregation for the city: for two decades, to see a first-run blockbuster, Selma residents were forced to drive nearly 40 miles to Prattville, a Montgomery suburb that, unlike Selma, was majority white and affluent. For many, the drive was not just costly and time-consuming, but often dangerous.”
“Nikolai Borodachyov, director of Russia’s Gosfilmofond, or State Film Foundation, told newspaper Izvestia that his organization would not take part in the project” – titled The Eisenstein Handshakes – “unless details about Eisenstein’s ‘nontraditional sexual orientation’ were edited out of the screenplay.”
The director of the State Film Foundation, responding to earlier reports, said, “The reason is nothing to do with homosexuality, I didn’t talk about it at all. There are issues with the screenplay, but it’s not about this. For example, about the shooting of Battleship Potemkin. I really don’t like the way that Peter Greenaway interprets it.”
For a popular but complicated Stephen Sondheim musical that had nowhere near the widespread appeal of such shows as “Les Misérables” or “The Phantom of the Opera,” the breakout success of the film is something of a surprise. The film is managing the difficult feat of appealing to the younger “Frozen” audience as well as older fans of Broadway musicals.
Chris Boyd, the director of the national broadcaster’s English-language radio network, and human resources director Todd Spencer were placed on indefinite leave of absence after investigations – including one by the CBC’s own flagship news program – into the way they handled complaints over now-fired radio star Ghomeshi’s conduct.
“Netflix’ efforts to block geoblocking circumvention tools doesn’t come as a surprise. TF has seen a draft of the content protection agreement Sony Pictures prepared for Netflix earlier this year. This agreement specifically requires Netflix to verify that registered users are indeed residing in the proper locations.”
“‘The movie that’s on fire right now is Selma,’ Karger said. ‘A $900,000 opening on only 19 screens is huge.'”
“It’s not a question of homage but of throwing absolutely everything into the mix for processing, every stray particle of a commonly shared culture—every joke good or bad that you ever heard, every commercial you couldn’t escape from, every sex fantasy or tabloid crime story that inhabited your dreams, every tag line dredged up from ancient comic strips or pulp stories.”
“In honoring the French New Wave icon’s 39th feature, a densely layered 69-minute fantasia on the ongoing evolution of language, history, coupledom and cinema, the Society went decidedly against the grain in a season that has largely favored ‘Boyhood.'”
“Cinemas took in 29.6 billion yuan ($4.77 billion) in ticket sales last year with domestic films accounting for a little more than half the total, the official Xinhua news agency reported. Domestic productions made 16.15 billion yuan, or about 55 percent of the total, as China produced more than 600 movies, Xinhua cited Zhang Hongsen, head of the country’s film censor as saying.”
These dynamics could evolve over time, of course, as viewing habits do; if so, “The Interview” will surely be seen as a watershed moment in the evolution of film distribution.
“2014 just wasn’t all that great for movies, and that means creatively, at the box office and for the overall health of the business — three factors that always seem to run in a pack.”
“Sony Pictures Entertainment announced Wednesday that it would continue its rollout of The Interview by adding new video-on-demand platforms, pay-per-view services and about 200 more theaters.”