Hollywood Babble On & On #1132: Random Forebodings?

CAN NOAH SAIL?

The box office for Darren Aronofsky's non-Bilblical Biblical epic Noah has been very good for the opening weekend raking in about $44 million domestic and $50 million internationally. Now Hollywood is thinking that it's a victory for the film which sparked some controversy by, according to some reports, removing most of the involvement of God and religion from the Biblical tale, replacing them with CGI monsters, which strikes me as akin to making a Batman movie where all you see is Alfred doing chores.

But that's an argument for Biblical scholars and Hollywood folks to have, what I'm here to talk about is whether or not the movie has legs. Or in the case of Noah: sails.

You see "legs" is old school theatrical talk for a show's ability to pull an audience over time. One way is to gauge word of mouth, like a film's Cinemascore rating, which in the case of Noah is an unhealthy "C."

That means that while audiences are flocking to the opening weekend, they are leaving the theatre unsatisfied at best, and will most likely not recommend the film to other potential ticket buyers.

That doesn't bode well for Noah, which cost about $125 million to make, and at least 2/3s of that amount to promote and release. Add that to the fact that on-average the distributor gets about 50¢ of every domestic dollar, and anywhere between 25-40¢ of each international ticket dollar, depending on the territory, and you have a potential problem.

Noah is going to need to maintain that opening weekend momentum if it's going to turn a profit. The reports of audience dissatisfaction don't bode well for that, and for its future home-video revenues.

SPEAKING OF THERE BEING NO GOD

The Shituation Situation from Jersey Shore is getting another reality show.

That crew are like herpes, you never truly get rid of them as long as TV execs have zero imagination and they have unlimited greed.

THIS DOES NOT BODE WELL EITHER

Colin Farrell is signed up to do the movie The Lobster, about a dystopian future society where if you don't find your true love by a specified time you're turned into an animal. Most likely a lobster.

Why?

It's a dystopia, we don't need reasons!

Is it just me, or does the combo of Colin Farrell, and a romantic-adventure story with a surrealistic premise seems like a rerun of the fiasco surrounding A Winter's Tale?

Hollywood Babble On & On #1131: Got Money? Make Movies?

Just about anyone with an internet connection knows that folks like crowd funding movies, and we all more or less have a sense of how that works.

A filmmaker puts out a call for money, and in exchange for your donations you get prizes, like DVDs of the film in question, autographs, scripts, props, and/or other related-memorabilia, all depending on how much you kick into the kitty.

You're essentially pre-buying stuff related to a movie before it gets made, but you're not expecting to own a piece of the film's profits.

However, that might change.

Junction Investments is a new website set up to connect accredited investors with a way to purchase a piece of independently financed films from major independent financiers.

Now if you don't know what an accredited investor is, well they sort of look like this…

Get my point?

You gotta be rich to play this game.

Anyway, let's take a moment to look at THE PROS AND CONS!

PROS:

1. SPREADING OF RISK: The more people paying into a project, the less risk each individual investor has to face. Pretty simple really.

2. WIDENING OF INVESTOR POOL: The movie business needs more people willing to invest in movies, and, by succeeding at turning a profit, hopefully improve the image of the financial side of the movie business. Which will attract more investors… etc… etc...

CONS:

1. STUDIO BOOKKEEPING: The article says that some packages will be offering shares of the net profits.

Wanna see a picture of some Hollywood net profits?

Well sorry, but net profits haven't been seen in Hollywood since Disney released Splash about 30 years ago, so all I can show is something you're more likely to see.

Now I'm bringing this up because a lot of these projects will be either already set to be distributed by a major studio, or could potentially be released by a major studio. That means they will be subject to the bookkeeping of a major movie company. If studio bookkeeping were on a medieval map, it would be labelled under "Here be where madness doth lye."

Studios are black holes for net profits, and that is a bad pairing with this inevitability of movies...

2. SIMPLE RISK: Every movie is a crap shoot. You could have the biggest stars, the best director, and the greatest screenplay ever written on the most widely appealing subject matter and you could still drop a turkey.

It's just how things happen in the movie biz. Bombs happen, and there's no way to stop them from happening or predict which films will bomb and which will be blockbusters. If there was, filmmakers would only make hits, but there isn't, and that's that.

However, if you couple this simple inevitable risk with studio bookkeeping and you're going to attract...

3. LITIGATION: The bane of independent film. So many companies and investment schemes have been destroyed by rampant litigation. This litigation can be inspired by real outrage over shoddy or shady bookkeeping, or it can spring forth from a possibly innocent misunderstanding over the true nature and risks of their investment.

Usually these cases end up as a "guilty until proven innocent" situation if not always in court, then at least in the eyes of investors.

I wish the people behind Junction Investments luck, and I hope they have the ways and means to avoid the cons that I've discussed here.

Cinemaniacal: Don't You Forget About Me...

Yesterday, March 24 2014, was the 30th anniversary of the setting of the teen classic The Breakfast Club. In case you lived in a cave during the 1980s The Breakfast Club was about five very different kids, a jock, a criminal, a 'princess,' a nerd, and a social outcast who are stuck with each other in detention all day on Saturday, March 24, 1984 for various offences.

Over the course of the day they get to know each other beyond the social facades that  had defined them and their high school lives. 

That movie was funny, sincere, and moving and it made John Hughes an important filmmaker for a generation of movie goers, and deserving of some appreciation.

John Hughes was a midwestern boy who started out selling jokes to stand up comedians, the most famous probably being Rodney Dangerfield, which led to work in advertising, and eventually with National Lampoon magazine. That led to working in films, achieving success with National Lampoon's Vacation, directed by Harold Ramis, and starring Chevy Chase.

That film's success, and the prodding of Ramis, allowed Hughes to start directing his own films. Since they were inexpensive, small scale comedies, they didn't attract much meddling from the studios. Which seemed to be just perfect for him, because he was going to produce a filmmaking revolution.

Before John Hughes "teen" films had been divided into three camps: 

1. Nostalgic reminiscences of bygone eras with lots of period music and filters over the lenses. 

2. Overly sincere and downright preachy cautionary tales about the dangers of this and that behaviour.

3. Loud obnoxious comedies where 25-30 year old actors pretended to be teenagers in plots that were just vehicles to get the female cast members to take their tops off.

Hughes directorial debut Sixteen Candles broke the mould by being none of those three. It wasn't nostalgic, no one was in danger of anything worse than a bad case of embarrassment, and no one took off their top. The lead actress Molly Ringwald was actually the age she was playing, and she looked it.

The film became a sleeper hit in theatres, and had a whole second life on home video, and paved the way for The Breakfast Club, and Hughes pretty much became a genre onto himself.

That genre was films aimed at teenagers that didn't look down on teenagers as slavering morons who will take whatever crap is given to them as long as it was "trendy." Hughes' teenage characters were portrayed not as vehicles for gags, or targets for ogling, they were portrayed as people. Human beings with all the ups and downs of life amplified by the simple fact that teenagers are great at turning such trivia into melodrama. For the most part they weren't classical villains or heroes, sex-mad oafs, or cautionary examples heading down the road of self destruction, they were just normal kids, trying to make it to the next day.

Put a bunch of modern teens in front of a John Hughes movie, and their reaction is usually awed wonder. They see the films as speaking to them in much the same way kids of my generation saw them.

That's a pretty impressive accomplishment.

Maybe it was because Hughes based his characters not on what other filmmakers did before him, but on the people he knew growing up. Even his most fantastical creation: Ferris Bueller, had roots in reality. Ferris was based on Hughes' high school best friend who prided himself on his ability to talk and charm his way in to and out of any situation.

According to legend that friend grew up to become a big wheel attorney, representing a lot of big names including former vice president Dick Cheney.

Eventually Hughes moved onto other kinds of films, making classic comedies like Planes, Trains, & Automobiles, and writing and producing mega-hits like Home Alone.

However the death of friend and collaborator John Candy, and the increasing frustration of working in Hollywood just got too much for Hughes. He dropped out of the public eye, only occasionally writing or executive producing project from his base in the midwest.

His death in 2009 was a real shock to people of my generation, it was like a piece of our childhood had died along with it. 

Also, his particular brand of teen film seems to have died with him. Replaced by broad gross out comedies and sex farces populated by fashion models and pop stars instead of people who seem designed more for marketing than storytelling.

It's a shame.

Hollywood Babble On & On #1130: Aiming In The Wrong Direction...

THOSE WHO DO NOT KNOW HISTORY ARE DOOMED TO REBOOT IT!

If there was one thing I cannot stand about the Baby Boom generation is their irrational nostalgia for everything about the 1960s. If all you know of history is what you've been told by Baby Boomers you'd think that the 1960s witnessed the invention, by them, of sex, rebellion, pacifism, and the idea of equality under the law.

As a member of the so-called Generation X I was driven almost to drink by the Baby Boomers obsession for all things that happened within their lifetime. As I witnessed a parade of movies based on 1960s TV shows I swore that I would never try to cram my childhood down the throats of those who come after me.

Sadly, I appear to be the only one of my generation to have the self-awareness to make such an oath.

A bunch of folks who should know better have announced that they're making a big-budget live action movie based on the Saturday morning toy commercial cartoon Jem & The Holograms.

Since the show hasn't aired on regular TV since the end of its 3 season run in 1988 I'll give you a quick primer.

Toy maker Hasbro contracted an advertising agency to construct an animated show around their new series of rock-star themed fashion dolls. The show that was created was about a teenage music mogul who used her late father's hologram technology to create a new identity as a pop-star to keep that technology out of the wrong hands. Personally, I'm assuming giving any technology to a pop star is putting it in the wrong hands, they're not known for their rationality.

Anyway, most episodes revolved around Jem dodging attempts by her rivals The Misfits to murder her, because the best way to go up the Billboard charts is to murder your competition.

Back to the roots of the reboot. Apparently the Jem franchise languished in a form of limbo since the late 1980s due to rights issues. However, now those issues are, as far as I know, solved, and the folks at Hasbro and Blumhouse think Gen-Xers and their kids are eager to see the return of something that really only has camp value to the culturally masochistic.

I wish someone who these people will listen to will tell them that just because some kids watched something back when all they had were 3 broadcast TV channels doesn't mean that they'll pay good money to see it now on the big screen. Especially if the see the old episodes and say: "Did I watch that piece of crap?"

IS IT JUST ME?

Or does anyone else suspect that Muppets Most Wanted will underwhelm at the box office this weekend?

I don't really like to make predictions, but I'm not getting some serious underwhelming vibes coming off the movie. I suspect it might be coming from the ad campaign pushing the film's 2 most prominent guest stars Tina Fey and Ricky Gervais.

Tina Fey has only had a little modest success at the box office, never cracking $100 million on her own star-power, and is best known for having a TV show that only Hollywood watched.

Gervais had huge success with franchising his show The Office all over the world, but his more recent TV work has seen him become more of a cult figure among critics rather than a star with the general population, and from what I've been able to gather, he can't even crack $20 million based on his appeal. (It's tricky to gather data, because he doesn't even have his own Box Office Mojo page.)

The ads pushing them over wacky Muppet antics strikes me as trying to appeal to critics over audiences. That's a mistake, because most critics don't pay to see the movies. The ticket buying great unwashed want to see the Muppets doing silly things and singing sillier songs. They don't really care if the movie's considered "edgy" by casting critical darlings.

Then again, maybe it's just me.

________________

UPDATE: It's apparently not just me, Muppets Most Wanted had an opening weekend down 43% from the last Muppet movie.

Hollywood Babble On & On #1129: Haunted By Ghostbusters

How is this for Hollywood logic.

Columbia Pictures wants to release Ghostbusters 3. Which is natural since the first made $290+ million way back in 1984 which is roughly the equivalent of $659 million in today's money, and that's just according to the rate of inflation. Remember that ticket prices then were a fraction of what you pay now, and if you calculated the numbers of tickets sold with today's prices it might top a billion.

The sequel made around $215 million in 1989, and you can do the math on that one. Either way, wanting another sequel seems as natural, and inevitable as the sunrise.

However, there's a catch. Three catches to be specific...

1. The one Ghostbuster the fans most want in the movie, played by Bill Murray probably won't be in it, because Bill Murray doesn't feel like doing sequels.

2. Harold Ramis, who co-wrote the first two, many believing he gave them their structure and coherence, as well as playing another Ghostbuster, is now, tragically, a ghost.

3. Ivan Reitman, who reinvented the blockbuster comedy in the 1980s with films like the first two Ghostbusters has dropped out of directing the proposed third film.

So, two out of the four original Ghostbusters are either unwilling, or unable, to do it. It's lost a key player in the writing, and the director's gone.

That doesn't seem to bother Columbia, they've given the picture, which will most likely have a hefty price tag, a green light for release in 2015.

Now common sense dictates that making a big budget sequel 25 years after the last instalment, that's missing most of the elements that made the original a success has more checks in the CONS column than in the PROS column and might be dropped or at the least put off a while.

So why is Columbia rushing to make it?

One word answer is DESPERATION.

While Sony-Columbia-Tri-Star has the Spider-Man movie franchise and won't let it go, that's about it when it comes to franchises. Attempts to start new big budget blockbuster franchises like After Earth and Elysium either tanked horribly, or at best failed to turn a profit. 

Take for example last year, which didn't have Spider-Man, their biggest film was American Hustle at $149 million. So far this year their performance has been abysmal at worst lacklustre at best before the next Spider-Man movie.

They desperately need a blockbuster franchise to continue justifying their existence and the affection people have for the Ghostbusters franchise is seen as just what they need to put them back on top again.

But is their desperation sending them down a blind alley? Will the fans accept a Ghostbusters movie that's literally a ghost of the originals they knew and love? Expectations will be next to impossible to meet and could harm it at the box office.

We'll just have to see where this takes us, but I'm feeling cynical.

Hollywood Babble On & On #1128: California Rest In Peace.

A few days ago I wrote about how California's being outshone by other states, especially Louisiana, when it comes to film and TV production, and how producers are calling for tax breaks to restore the industry in the state, and now there's a petition calling for California's state government to do something, anything, to reverse the stats seen in this infographic they provided:

I don't doubt that any of these stats are true, however, I do doubt that California's politicians and the big studios and producers can do anything to fix it since they're a big part of the problem.

To look at how everything went wrong in a state where everything is supposed to be so right, we need to go into the Way-Back machine for a little history lesson.

Legend says that bad weather was the reason Hollywood and Los Angeles became the centre of the movie universe. The legend is that the producers of the film The Squaw Man were going to shoot their film in Albuquerque while avoiding the Edison Trust that made filming in New York a pain in the ass. But bad weather made them take the train to the end of the line in Hollywood, California.

The truth is a little more complicated. Film companies had been filming in California almost as soon as they could get a camera on a train. There were very specific reasons for this:

1. NATURE: The weather is generally sunny, mild, and easily predictable. The landscape is also wildly varied from desert wastelands, to forests, to mountains, and jungles were easily faked. Since most filmmaking at that time relied on using sunlight and shooting outdoors, such weather was pretty important.

2. INFRASTRUCTURE: From the turn of the century to the 1960s California was the centre of dozens of massive infrastructure projects providing low cost water and electricity to large swathes of the state which contributed to the…

3. LOW COST OF LIVING: Those infrastructure projects made huge chunks of formerly unusable land not only usable, but cheap, because there were lots of it. That means that the big studios could build huge production facilities, and their employees could build and/or buy houses. Not only houses, but nice houses, with comparatively cheap utility rates. These homes were also adjacent to some of the most fecund agricultural lands in North America. Which meant groceries were cheap too.

This ride continued through to the 1960s with Hollywood and aerospace dominating the southernmost third of the state and Silicone Valley in the north. The Golden State seemed truly golden as people flooded into the region searching for the American dream.

Now you have to ask:

Well, like so many things it all started to go wrong in the 1970s.

The upper-middle class baby-boomers who had "dropped out" in California chasing free love, cheap dope, and sunshine began to drop into the state's cultural, economic, and political mainstream. They had embraced a simplified form of the "Small Is Beautiful" philosophy that called for cutting back on spending on things, and spending more on people.

The idea was that if they stopped building and expanding then everything will exist in a state of perfect equilibrium, and the state's seemingly never ending wealth could then pay for a variety of anti-poverty programs that would solve all of society's ills. 

Since at the time southern California was choking under a thick layer of smog caused by the region's explosive, and poorly managed growth, it seemed like a great idea.

This caused two things to happen.

Taxes went up, regulations grew exponentially not only controlling what, how, and where anything could be built, but what could be grown and how in California's fertile central valley.

The California electorate began to stratify along class lines with an alliance forming between the very top and the very bottom of the economic scale. The rich could either afford to pay the high taxes, or at least the ways of legally avoiding them, as well as manipulate the state's stringent regulatory regime through political patronage. Meanwhile the poor don't pay taxes, and didn't deal much with the regulators unless they tried to get out of poverty and tended to vote the way the rich wanted them to, because the rich's pet candidates had all the campaign money.

Meanwhile, the population of California kept growing, at least until recently, but they hadn't built any new infrastructure delivering power and water, since the 1960s when the population was much smaller. This means that the costs of basic utilities have skyrocketed far above the national average.

These factors keep the housing market artificially inflated, despite the near total collapse of the real estate market in 2008. Try to find a house that won't cost you your entire future, and you might end up living in Death Valley, and still be overpaying for it.

And to top it all off municipal and state government salaries and expenses, including their horribly managed public pension system, have skyrocketed. At least one city that I know of has declared bankruptcy, another has seen almost its entire government indicted on corruption charges, and many more cities in the state are on the brink of one, the other, or both.

This has made the state almost uninhabitable for the middle class. Small business people and the self-employed saw their profit margins whittled away, sometimes to almost nothing. They can't get any relief from the politicians, who care only about the feelings of their major individual and institutional donors, who think everything's a-okay, because they're a-okay. They aren't going to change the system beyond a few token gestures, because they run the system.

Now how does this explain runaway productions?

We all know about the top of the heap producers, directors and stars make great money, but they're only the top of the movie-making pyramid.

Below them are thousands of middle class people, many of them small-business subcontractors, who have to make a living. They can't afford to live in California anymore, and are migrating, like hundreds of thousands of middle class Californians every year, to Louisiana, Texas, the Carolinas or other states.

It's also now way more expensive to run production facilities in California as well, and thanks to new technology, filmmaking can now be done just about anywhere under almost any weather conditions. They don't need California, and since it's so expensive to work there they're moving onto greener, and possibly swampier pastures.

That's why Hollywood has stopped being the place where movies and TV are made, to being a sort of never-ending convention. It's where people go to make deals to make movies and TV, but then hit the road to other cities in other states to do that actual work.

Is there a solution to this problem?

I don't really see one.

But I'm a pessimist at heart. 

Hollywood Babble On & On #1127: Tiny Tidbits

1:

Legendary voice actor Hal Douglas, who did thousands of movie trailers, has passed away at the age of 89.

His funeral will take place… IN A WORLD!

2:

Sony is not going to make Smurfs 3.

But don't applaud just yet. They may not be making a sequel to last year's Smurfs 2, but they are doing a REBOOT!

I hope they go all dark and gritty this time.

3:

Lionsgate TV has announced they're starting a reality TV series about the preparations for the first human colony on Mars.

The working title is MARS ONE, but I think INEVITABLE DISAPPOINTMENT will be more realistic.

Hollywood Babble On & On #1126: Random Drips From My Brain Pan.

LIVE FROM NEW YORK IT'S SOMEONE YOU DON'T CARE ABOUT!

Lena Dunham, the star/creator of HBO's Girls was guest host of Saturday Night Live, and predictably had some of the worst ratings the show has seen this season. She's also penning a four part story arc for Archie comics which could set new records in dismal sales if they use that in the sales pitch.

I say predictably because Dunham is a paradox. She's the child of New York's elite art and media scene who has known a life of privilege and near constant praise who tries to present herself as the average everywoman. Except whenever she tries to speak like an "average" person she sounds like Thurston Howell III trying to make friends in a working class tavern while on a lay-over in what she would call "fly-over country."

Her background pretty much insures that the media will sell her as if she is the biggest thing to happen to entertainment since Star Wars. She is more than just one of them, she is literally the child their village has raised, and her pretensions to average-ness appeals to their belief that they set the world's standards of normalcy.

So they repeatedly yell in the world's collective ear that she's the greatest thing to ever happen to them. But as the rest of the world gets to know her they realize how little they have in common, and move on to things they have a better chance of relating with.

The irony is that if Hollywood didn't go for such a hard sell right out of the gate, they may have had a better chance of finding her a larger audience.

A TRUE DETECTIVE MYSTERY

HBO's True Detective wrapped up its first and some are already sniping about the ending because, horror of horrors, they catch the killer.

I blame JJ Abrams and David Chase. Ever since they introduced the non-ending of a series critics, both professional and self-appointed tend to start feeding frenzies over the conclusions of shows. They demand either massive plot twists that would bend the brain of M. Night Shyamalan, or pretentious non-endings where things just stop, leaving untied threads, unanswered questions and unsatisfied viewers.

So a show that apparently has a logical conclusion shocks and dismays them.

Lighten up.

HE SHOULD KNOW

Harvey Weinstein of The Weinstein Company told LA's new film czar that California is still competitive in the movie business, even though more movies and shows are being shot in Louisiana these days.

Harvey should know, he lives and operates in New York City.

The sad truth is that California is not competitive anymore. Hollywood used to the place where movies were made because of the state's mild predictable weather and open-for-business frontier mentality. The weather's still there, but things have changed dramatically.

Developments in technology means that filmmakers aren't bound to sunshine and warm weather to make movies, and the frontier mentality is long gone. In its place is a closed off mentality where the wealthy elite, cushioned by their wealth from the consequences of their decisions, back programs and regulations that make living and working for the middle class and  small businesspeople nearly impossible.

That means the people who make the infrastructure of filmmaking possible are migrating to Louisiana, Texas, and a dozen other states. Hollywood has gone from being the place where movies are made to the place where the deals for making movies are made.

Hollywood Babble On & On #1125: Escaping Pigeonholes & Traps

Steve McQueen and Lupita Nyong'o were big winners at Sunday's Oscars. His film 12 Years A Slave won Best Picture, and she won Best Supporting Actress for her part in the same film.

Both of their careers are in an extremely precarious position where they can be destroyed by their own success.

Hollywood loves to reduce people down until they squeeze into a tight little pigeonhole that they can't get out of. That can be career death.

So let's take a look at the careers of McQueen and Nyong'o and see how they can escape the pigeonholes that Hollywood is carving for them.

STEVE MCQUEEN: His third feature film 12 Years A Slave, won an Oscar, and his previous feature length and short films have won numerous prizes and truckloads of critical praise.

That's all well and good.

However, he's won for making a very serious, downright emotionally painful drama. His two previous feature films were also very serious, and emotionally painful.

He should consider doing something different once in a while.

I'm talking about putting aside the serious dramas and doing a comedy, or a thriller, or the best option a Bond Movie.

Now he might think my suggestion is downright heretical. He is an important filmmaker who makes important films and how dare I, some unknown clot-headed troll, dare suggest that he do something trivial like a comedy or a Bond movie.

All right, he's free to think that. However, I know that always striving for "importance" in Hollywood is a one way ticket to nowhere.

When you're branded as the sombre and serious guy, then that's all Hollywood is going to give you. But sombre and serious is a tough sell and only a few become real hits, even on a small scale, so it will soon become harder and harder to make those kinds of films.

However, if a filmmaker does something different, puts 100% of their energy and talent into it, and it's a success, then something magical happens.

Perceptions change.

A filmmaker goes from "That guy who does stuff for awards shows" to "That guy who can do anything!"

Hollywood loves someone who can do anything it impresses them, and those who can impress get a lot more leeway.

Also, some broad commercial success makes doing the sombre serious stuff a hell of a lot easier. An Oscar win only really impresses the investors for only so long, because someone else will win one the next year, and you'll be competing with them.

Look at Sam Mendes, he exploded into Hollywood with his indie drama American Beauty, winning Best Director and Best Picture. His follow ups though suffered from a case of diminishing returns in both praise and box office. He was becoming the "make a statement about modern American life" guy, and it was pigeonholing him severely.

Then he did Skyfall.

He not made a Bond movie, he burned a lot of calories making it the best Bond movie he could make. Suddenly he had a critical and commercial mega-hit, that will no doubt ease the way for his career for many years to come. 

McQueen should consider that strategy.

LUPITA NYONG'O: On the plus side for her career- She's a beautiful woman, a talented actress, and managed to avoid having Travolta mangle her name.

However, a big downside is that she's won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her first big attention getting role.

That's very dangerous for an actress.

Why?

Because Oscar winners, especially actresses, who aren't already established securely in their careers or themselves can fall into a trap that badly damage that career.

This happens because the actress' handlers, agents, managers, and the producers they work with only see them through the prism of the Oscar and getting another one. 

That means lots of roles with lots of emoting, maybe something involving a disease, and hopefully a lot of crying.

Lupita should pass on any offer that promises her another Academy Award nomination. Those kinds of offers the cheese on the mousetrap that will put the smack down on her career. What she needs to do is to use her position as an Oscar winner to network and connect with talented filmmakers with good track records who will be eager to work with her on a variety of projects.

Then she might avoid the career mishaps that have sunk so many other careers.

Hollywood Babble On & On #1124: Oscar Recap!

I actually watched some of the Oscars last night, but since I live in a screwy time zone, sleep overtook me before I watched too much of it.

But here is a list of the winners, with appropriate commentary by me:

86TH ANNUAL ACADEMY AWARDS WINNERS

PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE

Jared Leto in “Dallas Buyers Club” (Focus Features)

Leto won for a transformative role as a transgender AIDS patient, and, judging by his appearance at the show, plans to walk across the pool at the Beverly Hilton.

ACHIEVEMENT IN COSTUME DESIGN

“The Great Gatsby” (Warner Bros.) Catherine Martin

The costumes were purty.

ACHIEVEMENT IN MAKEUP AND HAIRSTYLING

“Dallas Buyers Club” (Focus Features) Adruitha Lee and Robin Mathews

The fact that the entire makeup/hair budget was $250 should be seen as a lesson to the studios when it comes to spending.

BEST ANIMATED SHORT FILM

“Mr. Hublot”

Didn't see it.

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE FILM OF THE YEAR

“Frozen” (Walt Disney) Chris Buck, Jennifer Lee and Peter Del Vecho

Congrats Disney for winning, the frozen head of Walt must be beaming.

ACHIEVEMENT IN VISUAL EFFECTS

“Gravity” (Warner Bros.) Tim Webber, Chris Lawrence, Dave Shirk and Neil Corbould

With the way the VFX industry is going I have to say congratulations, and my deepest sympathies for your inevitable bankruptcy.

BEST LIVE ACTION SHORT FILM

“Helium” An M & M Production Anders Walter and Kim Magnusson

They hope to follow in the footsteps of past winners like… that guy… you know, his hair was a colour, always wore a shirt.

BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT SUBJECT

“The Lady In Number 6: Music Saved My Life”

A Reed Entertainment Production Malcolm Clarke and Nicholas Reed

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE

“20 Feet From Stardom” (RADiUS-TWC)

A Gil Friesen Productions and Tremolo Production Morgan Neville, Gil Friesen and Caitrin Rogers

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM OF THE YEAR

“The Great Beauty” (Janus Films) – Italy An Indigo Film Production

ACHIEVEMENT IN SOUND MIXING

“Gravity” (Warner Bros.) Skip Lievsay, Niv Adiri, Christopher Benstead and Chris Munro

PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE

Lupita Nyong’o in “12 Years A Slave” (Fox Searchlight)

She's beautiful, talented, and John Travolta pronounced her name "Debbie Johnson." Right now Hollywood is eagerly making plans to pigeonhole her career into oblivion.

ACHIEVEMENT IN CINEMATOGRAPHY

“Gravity” (Warner Bros.) Emmanuel Lubezki

Travolta called this guy Steve Collins. I'm starting to worry about him.

ACHIEVEMENT IN FILM EDITING

“Gravity” (Warner Bros.) Alfonso Cuarón and Mark Sanger

ACHIEVEMENT IN PRODUCTION DESIGN

“The Great Gatsby” (Warner Bros.) Production Design: Catherine Martin; Costume Design: Beverley Dunn

ACHIEVEMENT IN MUSIC WRITTEN FOR MOTION PICTURES (ORIGINAL SCORE)

“Gravity” (Warner Bros.) Steven Price

ACHIEVEMENT IN MUSIC WRITTEN FOR MOTION PICTURES (ORIGINAL SONG)

“Let It Go” from “Frozen” (Walt Disney) Music and Lyric by Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez

And sung by Idina Menzel, who despite the spelling her name will now be pronounced Adele Nazeem. 

SCIENTOLOGY HAS DECREED IT!

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

“12 Years A Slave” (Fox Searchlight) Screenplay by John Ridley

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

“Her” (Warner Bros.) Written by Spike Jonze

The story of a man in love with his iPhone. Sad ending when the update causes her to have an affair with his neighbour's cable box.

ACHIEVEMENT IN DIRECTING

“Gravity” (Warner Bros.) Alfonso Cuarón

Travolta pronounces his name as Guido Hassenfeffer. This is probably a symptom of something.

PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE

Cate Blanchett in “Blue Jasmine” (Sony Pictures Classics)

You know what this means: HOLLYWOOD ENDORSES SEXUAL ABUSE!

PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE

Matthew McConaughey in “Dallas Buyers Club” (Focus Features)

All right.

BEST MOTION PICTURE OF THE YEAR

“12 Years a Slave” (Fox Searchlight) A River Road, Plan B, New Regency Production Brad Pitt, Dede Gardner, Jeremy Kleiner, Steve McQueen and Anthony Katagas, Producers

It's about time that Hollywood has finally taken a stand against slavery. Anyway, I think director Steve McQueen has been cheated. I mean, he's been working in Hollywood since the 1950s and has never won an Oscar, not even for his iconic performance as an actor in Bullitt.