tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-249040372024-03-06T01:32:57.207-04:00The Furious D ShowFurious Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07934529688753875751noreply@blogger.comBlogger1990125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24904037.post-14959583337868875092016-06-03T10:30:00.001-03:002016-06-03T10:30:56.662-03:00More Shameless Self Promotion!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjT3GW3SE6PdE2jrLDELWBEGQ7lkDtEdRvnqEj1rFVY0rBxrt5f4RiIhCqW_kUeyillEwM1kHiACjh6YCUJtZgBipXh03IrXaTBsfgYV9w4lXmcsOlJoR6VgDjHT_CKH37-MclaEg/s1600/QaVKrN_u.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjT3GW3SE6PdE2jrLDELWBEGQ7lkDtEdRvnqEj1rFVY0rBxrt5f4RiIhCqW_kUeyillEwM1kHiACjh6YCUJtZgBipXh03IrXaTBsfgYV9w4lXmcsOlJoR6VgDjHT_CKH37-MclaEg/s400/QaVKrN_u.jpg" width="250" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="text-align: justify;">As you know, my mystery novel </span><a href="https://t.co/D3ZRqGjV5b" style="text-align: justify;" target="_blank"><b>A MINT CONDITION CORPSE</b> is now on sale as an e-book</a><span style="text-align: justify;"> from Fahrenheit Press.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">But today,<a href="https://t.co/D3ZRqGjV5b" target="_blank"> Friday June 3, 2016, that e-book can be on your e-reader for less than a buck</a>!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">You literally have zero excuses to not buy it.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Now go buy it, come back, read the rest of this blog post, then go to <a href="http://www.fahrenheit-press.com/books.html" target="_blank">this site</a>, pick up the books by the other members of Fahrenheit's Rogues Gallery, then read my book and post a review.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">You can get an entire summer's reading for less than $30.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">That's a downright crazy bargain.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">What do you think Captain America?</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigvUhyphenhyphenBVl4zSmsYWv3F_08zG5k8aW_SterkBZmxKHE1rc1LPdCVjikpQA3WPfAt-BtWNXlgMUmFLIXhtjelu1tC5I_y2leFzE0YEXLNEyGne-_vkWvSNbm9C9BlGuhXtgJKVLJWA/s1600/Captain+America+Redeems+Himself.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigvUhyphenhyphenBVl4zSmsYWv3F_08zG5k8aW_SterkBZmxKHE1rc1LPdCVjikpQA3WPfAt-BtWNXlgMUmFLIXhtjelu1tC5I_y2leFzE0YEXLNEyGne-_vkWvSNbm9C9BlGuhXtgJKVLJWA/s640/Captain+America+Redeems+Himself.jpg" width="590" /></a></div>
<br />Furious Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07934529688753875751noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24904037.post-12034502665932896222016-05-26T09:09:00.000-03:002016-05-26T09:09:04.434-03:00Buy My Book!<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">My geek-centric mystery thriller A MINT CONDITION CORPSE is now available for your e-reader from Fahrenheit Press.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9lhz9qS73PIkXM-nXD2eNhkiAxurVNYl7I6FjM-hD53Cxgecx1goEktiLzSoz8-uYlLHE2fxPgDDuMQacOaD7ym45jacz8hMsSlwgwZEJnos2kkpUsUakC9ixs-euClf0adu8Lg/s1600/Shameless+Plug+3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9lhz9qS73PIkXM-nXD2eNhkiAxurVNYl7I6FjM-hD53Cxgecx1goEktiLzSoz8-uYlLHE2fxPgDDuMQacOaD7ym45jacz8hMsSlwgwZEJnos2kkpUsUakC9ixs-euClf0adu8Lg/s640/Shameless+Plug+3.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: black; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">USA <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01G6PB0PQ"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01G6PB0PQ</span></a></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">Canada <a href="https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B01G6PB0PQ"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B01G6PB0PQ</span></a></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">UK <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01G6PB0PQ"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01G6PB0PQ</span></a></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">Australia <span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><a href="https://www.amazon.com.au/Condition-Corpse-Kirby-Baxter-Investigates-ebook/dp/B01G6PB0PQ">https://www.amazon.com.au/Condition-Corpse-Kirby-Baxter-Investigates-ebook/dp/B01G6PB0PQ</a></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">Buy it, leave an honest review, and spread the word. </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">The more copies that sell, the more likely I'll be able to write a sequel.</span></span></div>
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Furious Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07934529688753875751noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24904037.post-2811039740688687732016-04-30T14:14:00.001-03:002016-04-30T14:17:31.408-03:00Hollywood Babble On & On #1263: Some Shilling Then It Gets Offensive...<h2 style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">FIRST SOME SHILLING!</span></h2>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Okay, if you're a regular reader of my blog, or my Twitter feed, you will know that I sold a novel to Fahrenheit Press of Los Angeles. Soon A MINT CONDITION CORPSE will be available. It's what I call a "nerd noir" a satirical whodunnit set at a comic book convention starring a brilliant geek detective named KIRBY BAXTER, and his Scooby gang of friends.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">So I'm putting out a call to any and all people who are taste-makers in the geek community, or they know taste makers, for some help. We can arrange preview copies of the book, for perusal, and if you, or they, like it, please get the word out. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">I need all the help I can get to get people to read this book. Those who do seem to enjoy it, so the more the merrier.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">If you have any leads, let me know, either by my e-mail or via Twitter, and I'll make arrangements with my publisher.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Thanks in advance.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Now onto…</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">SOMETHING OFFENSIVE PART ONE</span></span></h2>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">For a brief period SNL alumni Will Ferrell considered and then dropped out of a gig playing the late actor/governor/president Ronald Reagan with a twist.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiw_Dcrw3o1Tip9ACVF54dnmUWEfWqgLz6GU7bgyWhcW2Mso9fk4f2Vjk1_hFZ-qARjAYudfBbhYXtxnxJdQpb4vO5jc8PQ_wVRMZ7rHKrKuMFe4qxsXwmH1EsJKTNwsMmO55Rt-g/s1600/Will_Ferrell_2013.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiw_Dcrw3o1Tip9ACVF54dnmUWEfWqgLz6GU7bgyWhcW2Mso9fk4f2Vjk1_hFZ-qARjAYudfBbhYXtxnxJdQpb4vO5jc8PQ_wVRMZ7rHKrKuMFe4qxsXwmH1EsJKTNwsMmO55Rt-g/s320/Will_Ferrell_2013.jpg" width="205" /></span></a><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">That twist was that it was going to be a comedy inspired by the conspiracy theory that the Alzheimer's disease that destroyed the last ten years of Reagan's life secretly happened at the beginning of his second term. The theory goes on to say that he only made it through because his staff, in the movie; a young intern, convinced Reagan that he was playing the president in a movie.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Already Republicans, Reagan relatives, and many others are saying this is an offensive idea spawned by deep seeded political malice. The outrage probably was what scared Ferrell off the project in the end.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">I also have something to add.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">It will be an enormous waste of money and time.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">The financiers would be better off putting the budget in a pile and setting it on fire. At least that way they can maybe have a wiener roast.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh03WDjEGwTDnsx-MK8qVmh-G61kO-OibzryoNYqu5S0av8PYVIDsWG42bTr0P71zR-k-2s1X0VImsiH7loch-obEzm-NSO9O2zgCV1YAExCBL6KPjGHQYlckQI18oMAkOZ0ejocQ/s1600/maxresdefault.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh03WDjEGwTDnsx-MK8qVmh-G61kO-OibzryoNYqu5S0av8PYVIDsWG42bTr0P71zR-k-2s1X0VImsiH7loch-obEzm-NSO9O2zgCV1YAExCBL6KPjGHQYlckQI18oMAkOZ0ejocQ/s400/maxresdefault.jpg" width="400" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">An even better idea is that they could give the budget to me, and let me make something worth watching, or just to live a lush lifestyle.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">That's because this film falls into the far edge of what I call the Offend/Bore Matrix. That's where a film dealing with a controversial subject, like politics and/or religion is so aggressively partisan that it can only offend the opposite side of the issue and bore those who agree with the filmmaker.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">But when you get out to the far edge, like this idea, you slip into the realm of the Offend/Creep region. That means that its militant partisanship has gone too far, and has become toxic, making anyone who likes it look like a creep.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Why?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Let's say you are a partisan Democrat. You despised Ronald Reagan and think he was the spawn of hell.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">That's fine, you have a right to have your opinion of a politician. But there's that little something extra to this script, and that's <b>Alzheimer's Disease</b>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>Do you want to be known as the person who laughs at someone with Alzheimer's Disease?</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Bring in Alzheimer's disease and political affiliations tend to fall by the wayside, and it slips into the realm of intense personal suffering.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Very few would find that kind of soul-destroying suffering funny, even if it happened to a Republican, and even fewer would publicly admit to finding it funny solely because it happens to a Republican.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Imagine this conversation:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">A: Did you see the new movie about Reagan. It's the funniest thing ever made.</span> </blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">B: Isn't that about him having Alzheimer's?</span> </blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">A: Yeah, and it's hilarious. I laughed so much at his inability to remember things like friends and family.</span> </blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">B: We didn't find it funny when that happened to my Grandpa.</span> </blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">A: But this a Republican we're talking about.</span> </blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">B: So?</span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">A: That makes laughing at Alzheimer's okay!</span> </blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">B: I can't even look at the trailers or commercials without remembering how bad things got for my Grandfather before he died.</span> </blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">A: You have no sense of humour.</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">That might put a damper on the word of mouth.</span></div>
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<h2>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">SOMETHING OFFENSIVE PART TWO</span></h2>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwD7ZNZP9f3oU0UAb5CAJda2TDacpzyw-kE7nR9zkpkZ_Zkif9bZXpTkL6hmI8HIt0BM8v8mLmFeX2i9LrJC1iF2KD98NSX_XCwUDY67ErSFKv3L6jiLy1951qdIR9zHne6sVHxg/s1600/Scarlett.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwD7ZNZP9f3oU0UAb5CAJda2TDacpzyw-kE7nR9zkpkZ_Zkif9bZXpTkL6hmI8HIt0BM8v8mLmFeX2i9LrJC1iF2KD98NSX_XCwUDY67ErSFKv3L6jiLy1951qdIR9zHne6sVHxg/s1600/Scarlett.jpg" /></span></a><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Actress Scarlett Johansson has been cast in the lead role of an American movie version of the Japanese anime <i>Ghost In The Shell</i>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">This led to cries of outrage that the originally Japanese role hadn't gone to a Japanese actor. Most of the cries of "whitewashing" came from Asian-American organizations, and a lot of angry white people.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">But do you know who wasn't offended by the casting?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">The Japanese.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Most Japanese pundits and media outlets don't really care about Johansson's casting, and many are even enthusiastic about it.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">The Japanese aren't freaking out over Johansson because they assume that an American version of a Japanese story would have an "American" actor (translation "White"). Part of this is because the Japanese have no qualms doing a Japanese version of a Euro-American story with Japanese versions of those once white characters. Kurosawa adapted several works of Shakespeare and the tropes of the American Western movie into many of his samurai films.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Then there's the other part: Even when it's not a Japanese version of a Euro-American story, but a Japanese story featuring caucasian European or American characters they will still use Japanese actors.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Case in point...</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/MOmFSflNiQU" width="560"></iframe></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">However, cast a Chinese, or Korean actor to play a Japanese character, or vice-versa, and then they get offended.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">To explain that would involve explaining centuries of Asia's ethnic politics and prejudices, and I ain't going there.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Does this mean that "whitewashing" is not a problem?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">No.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Whitewashing especially of Asian characters is a real problem, and it's part of the short shrift that Asian actors have been getting in Hollywood since the dawn of the medium.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">White actors in bad make-up speaking pidgin English have been used to play Asian characters for over a century. The most infamous being the popular Charlie Chan movies of the 1930s-1940s which managed to make the character of a brilliant detective shorthand for an insulting and offensive stereotype. </span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgG8F4-wiSqB-QXAPTfX59kNaP1I-YfTwaMFrUcaPHqyFgoTGEykS_MkraRqj-AMGghBuD_yejbovZ_Gia8vqL2rD_mA3YGxXECnvtTSG1gfrj2HLJkl30QTQk1aE3xxCO4QafTlQ/s1600/Anna_May_Wong_-_portrait.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgG8F4-wiSqB-QXAPTfX59kNaP1I-YfTwaMFrUcaPHqyFgoTGEykS_MkraRqj-AMGghBuD_yejbovZ_Gia8vqL2rD_mA3YGxXECnvtTSG1gfrj2HLJkl30QTQk1aE3xxCO4QafTlQ/s320/Anna_May_Wong_-_portrait.jpg" width="242" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">But even when Asian-American actors break through in Hollywood they still got shafted. The first Asian-American movie star, California born Anna May Wong* was beautiful, talented, and denied most of the plum roles she probably deserved.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Why?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">There were actual laws on the books against the portrayal of interracial romance or "miscegenation." That meant that she couldn't even kiss a white co-star on screen, even if he was playing an Asian character.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">That meant that she was trapped playing stock or stereotyped characters for most of her career.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Those laws are gone, but the narrow casting of Asian actors in Hollywood continues. Also the recent demands for greater diversity in Hollywood also seem to leave them out.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">That isn't right.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Hollywood does need to reflect the wider audience, and to ditch a lot of the stereotypes that hold back not only actors, but the art of storytelling.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">But that will take effort, and Hollywood isn't known for spending effort, they just prefer to throw money at empty gestures and hope the problem goes away.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">______________________________</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">*Anna May Wong was also the inspiration for this classic love song…</span></div>
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Furious Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07934529688753875751noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24904037.post-25361369528972692252016-04-12T12:39:00.000-03:002016-04-12T12:39:32.891-03:00Hollywood Babble On & On #1262: Quo Vadis American Crime Story?<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjx38xkefyi_nlsBs3fqvjwtInmpYRL3qb7RZVDc0TNYdzSFdNV192vwcFxliZGSnglvoJ0n7oKYufC07Ub00vuUoD754EJ9mUZ9jUyRxddkQ-1v8su4vmStLtNmc5G_rAu_GJ3uQ/s1600/American_Crime_Story_Season_1_Poster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjx38xkefyi_nlsBs3fqvjwtInmpYRL3qb7RZVDc0TNYdzSFdNV192vwcFxliZGSnglvoJ0n7oKYufC07Ub00vuUoD754EJ9mUZ9jUyRxddkQ-1v8su4vmStLtNmc5G_rAu_GJ3uQ/s1600/American_Crime_Story_Season_1_Poster.jpg" /></a><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Glad to back my loyal readers. I hope you're still out there.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">*crickets*</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Sorry it's been soooooo long since I last posted. Things have been busy lately. One the up side, I signed a contract with a publisher in Los Angeles for a mystery novel, and my work as chief caregiver for my parents has been taking up most of my time lately since my mother's knee surgery.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Anyway, enough about me, let's talk about movies and TV.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">If you've been missing <i>American Crime Story: The People vs OJ Simpson</i>, you've been missing a treat. It's been wildly entertaining, and stacked with tons of Emmy worthy performances from the entire cast. I haven't seen a single false note in the acting, and more than a few moments of pure performance bliss.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">(The scene where David Schwimmer as Robert Kardashian lectures his kids on the emptiness of fame without virtue is pure brilliance. I had to rewind to revel in its satiric glory)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">But what to do with Season 2?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Well, it seems that the show's driving force Ryan Murphy wants to take the show in a different direction in Season 2. He wants to take it from covering a true crime story with the sort of intense detail that only a TV series can do, and do a fictional story about people living in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. So basically a variation of David Simon's <i>Tremé</i> from HBO, which came and went with some good reviews, but not much in the line of impact.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">This seems to be in keeping with Murphy's modus operandi to create a show, deliver really high quality in the first season, then begin whittling away everything people liked about the show in subsequent seasons to diminishing returns in audience satisfaction and ratings. I witnessed this with Murphy's biggest mainstream hit <i>Glee</i>, where my twitter feed went from fans raving about the show, to fans complaining about the show, to fans ignoring the show. The same has happened with his other anthology series <i>American Horror Story</i>, which got raves at the beginning and then faded into a mess of loose narrative strings and steadily declining viewership.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I don't know what happened in the case of <i>Horror Story</i>, but it seems that <i>Crime Story</i> is the victim of a fundamental misunderstanding of the show's success. The people behind the show seem to think that the show's success hinges on issues of race in America.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Like in the real case of O.J. Simpson, race is more of a distraction and an excuse for some decisions than the real heart of the issue. The success of <i>American Crime Story</i> is that they're telling a true story where <i>literally everyone knows the ending </i>so well that it's compelling to watch.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I think there's a market for more true crime, and that Murphy and <i>ACS</i> are fools to just give it up when they've already set themselves up as the gold standard.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Let's look at some cases they could adapt that would be better ideas:</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuQSei1gQ4BYuvj7lWpF1ID80nsgJ6hTYWV9tfe_Rcu-LgPphdRB1fhBeXUGh7eTg9VAeD-rixYhEyn_x1ZM97GSJkLH5HXWtrHvnxQ700DHss65tMi5rzG6WBSd1odaMsVdX6wA/s1600/800px-Evelyn_Nesbit_12056u.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"></span></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuQSei1gQ4BYuvj7lWpF1ID80nsgJ6hTYWV9tfe_Rcu-LgPphdRB1fhBeXUGh7eTg9VAeD-rixYhEyn_x1ZM97GSJkLH5HXWtrHvnxQ700DHss65tMi5rzG6WBSd1odaMsVdX6wA/s1600/800px-Evelyn_Nesbit_12056u.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuQSei1gQ4BYuvj7lWpF1ID80nsgJ6hTYWV9tfe_Rcu-LgPphdRB1fhBeXUGh7eTg9VAeD-rixYhEyn_x1ZM97GSJkLH5HXWtrHvnxQ700DHss65tMi5rzG6WBSd1odaMsVdX6wA/s320/800px-Evelyn_Nesbit_12056u.jpg" width="244" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>Harry Thaw & Stanford White</b>. In the 1900s White was a brilliant architect, top dog of New York high society, and an unrepentant lecher. Harry Thaw was the son of nouveau riche industrialists who had the paranoid belief that White had blackballed him from high society, this obsession grew even stronger when he married model and dancer Evelyn Nesbit. Nesbit had been White's mistress when she was a teenager, and may have even been raped by White. This put the already mentally unstable and violently abusive Thaw over the edge and he murdered White in the middle of a nightclub in front of a hundred people.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The trial and its aftermath pretty much birthed the tabloid and scandal culture we have today, and is loaded with so many myths, deceptions, and half-truths it could make compelling viewing.</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> </span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpwoWxBac9ULrkl_JD5qw1mFLHbcR1OZUILXIR2fdTT4H1-6v8EpG0Oyaog7GIRpFbq8JFmbdGUdfYzJEHYjpU4sixIMW0F6tH9jc0L-nSrdxC4fvFf5tzyFizDnDNq-DSrMRkLA/s1600/Stephanie_St._Clair.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpwoWxBac9ULrkl_JD5qw1mFLHbcR1OZUILXIR2fdTT4H1-6v8EpG0Oyaog7GIRpFbq8JFmbdGUdfYzJEHYjpU4sixIMW0F6tH9jc0L-nSrdxC4fvFf5tzyFizDnDNq-DSrMRkLA/s320/Stephanie_St._Clair.jpg" width="216" /></a><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>Stephanie St. Clair: The Queen of Harlem</b>. This is the story of a woman who came to control the "numbers racket" in Harlem. While Queen she held off the mobsters like the psychopathic Dutch Schultz and became a thorn in the side of corrupt and racist policemen by using her resources to promote civil rights and political reform.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">And if business and activism wasn't enough trouble for her, she ended up in a disastrous marriage to a political activist turned cult leader with messianic and hitlerian tendencies that ended with a gunshot.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The fact that she survived and thrived in these conditions would make a fascinating television show.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">You could even cast Travolta as Dutch Schultz, Sterling K. Brown as her right hand Bumpy Johnson, and Courtney B. Vance as St. Clair's charismatic but erratic cult-leader husband Sufi Abdul Hamid who was dubbed the "Black Hitler" by the press.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>The Murder of William Desmond Taylor</b>. I wrote a <a href="http://dknowsall.blogspot.ca/2015/11/book-report-tinseltown.html" target="_blank">review of the riveting book <i>Tinseltown</i></a> and I said then that it would make a great series, and I still do.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Anyway, these stories are true and I think they'd really rope in the viewers far better than just another social realist drama about how life is hard in New Orleans.</span></div>
Furious Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07934529688753875751noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24904037.post-5416070874202239462016-02-29T15:45:00.003-04:002016-02-29T15:45:52.465-04:00Hollywood Babble On & On #1261: Whitewashing or Stereotyping?<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Sorry I've been so lax with the posting lately. Things have been pretty busy lately, and there just wasn't enough time in the day. It's getting even tighter, but I will try to squeeze out what wisdom I can in the moment I can spare.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Today the term "whitewashing" gets tossed around a lot. The biggest uproar being over <i>The Gods Of Egypt</i>, which featured no Egyptians or anyone who looked Egyptian.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiR2ZGdiVLIUN_e8_8JzFxwJ4PxfeDcJB3nqboQEvyN7y_M1_korX3XTgQIxzuarR2GqvOkFlv3AUcrzSBrtSyZHvg2RHLR-FRDWnmM1DByJUWTdPD2sUaf9YtZqDaXlXn0L2f2Kg/s1600/Power_Man_and_Iron_Fist_50th_Issue_cover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiR2ZGdiVLIUN_e8_8JzFxwJ4PxfeDcJB3nqboQEvyN7y_M1_korX3XTgQIxzuarR2GqvOkFlv3AUcrzSBrtSyZHvg2RHLR-FRDWnmM1DByJUWTdPD2sUaf9YtZqDaXlXn0L2f2Kg/s320/Power_Man_and_Iron_Fist_50th_Issue_cover.jpg" width="207" /></a><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">But I'm not talking about that film, because there was a bit of a point behind the criticism.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">What I am going to talk about is where some critics are demanding that what they see as whitewashing be fixed by replacing it with a stereotype.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Allow me to explain.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Marvel cast a British actor to play Daniel Rand, also known as Iron Fist, a martial arts master who is partnered with Luke Cage as the Heroes for Hire to be featured on Netflix in <i>Jessica Jones</i> and probably <i>Daredevil </i>someday<i> </i>as well.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh__yPWxjVXYEIRQ-ylyeTTYO_ETjDIkpX1QZUESbEUQURRuFBmOS1oc8FJc_MDTt5Q2TU1L8QnnA4AV3Va-okg7nmKiRUUxOG0Xxm5OlmDOzW1WPZ9M3GuzEf_lAn4i7xi8O53yg/s1600/Ddif.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><img border="0" height="164" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh__yPWxjVXYEIRQ-ylyeTTYO_ETjDIkpX1QZUESbEUQURRuFBmOS1oc8FJc_MDTt5Q2TU1L8QnnA4AV3Va-okg7nmKiRUUxOG0Xxm5OlmDOzW1WPZ9M3GuzEf_lAn4i7xi8O53yg/s400/Ddif.jpg" width="400" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">A Daredevil appearance is likely since Iron Fist was Daredevil for a while.</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Well the outrage was quick in coming.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">"WHITEWASHING!" they screamed, or tweeted, and demanded that an Asian actor get the role.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">This made me ask 2 questions:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">1. Is it really whitewashing?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">2. Isn't the proposed solution of replacing Iron Fist with an Asian character stereotyping?</span></div>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2ggYzGOfUlYgdaAFnmtsYkQF1bxQs6CS6bbFkN5ZAM_7GWJj4rkAifZcscUnoYYnU18e9nflLbQaxoZbdaxe0bu8uwdqHOPAcK7BVjNF4oyzU9PwvGsMZGDLsD6obmJyBEVNeDA/s1600/250px-Immortalironfist.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"></span></a><br />
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<br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Let's think about it.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2ggYzGOfUlYgdaAFnmtsYkQF1bxQs6CS6bbFkN5ZAM_7GWJj4rkAifZcscUnoYYnU18e9nflLbQaxoZbdaxe0bu8uwdqHOPAcK7BVjNF4oyzU9PwvGsMZGDLsD6obmJyBEVNeDA/s1600/250px-Immortalironfist.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2ggYzGOfUlYgdaAFnmtsYkQF1bxQs6CS6bbFkN5ZAM_7GWJj4rkAifZcscUnoYYnU18e9nflLbQaxoZbdaxe0bu8uwdqHOPAcK7BVjNF4oyzU9PwvGsMZGDLsD6obmJyBEVNeDA/s1600/250px-Immortalironfist.jpg" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">1. Iron Fist was <i>always</i> a white character. The whole premise of the character is that he is a Westerner who is taken in by Asian friends of his father after he is orphaned and is fully absorbed into their culture to the point where he dawns the mantle of the Iron Fist.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I guess you could say that it's all about cultural appropriation, but that's another story.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">But let's get to stereotyping...</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">2. If you're an male Asian actor in Hollywood you get cast in one of three roles all the time, and they are:</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">A. Martial Arts Master</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">B. Triad Gang Member </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">or</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">C. Math/Science Geek</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">How will pigeonholing an Asian actor into one of the three stereotypical Asian roles somehow right this perceived wrong?</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjCncSwl5Go2YS7iLFcKISaqhDTjiLM6AOPNJZmNYUo-YclnhfvEcaa1w8gUObs92PAXE-l8vsbvzmyU2IcXyRlC6ZJtRyqr1Xm3IfzArVPEJY0RcIPyywCMmHUFLPHxGe9q-qPw/s1600/Shang-Chi.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjCncSwl5Go2YS7iLFcKISaqhDTjiLM6AOPNJZmNYUo-YclnhfvEcaa1w8gUObs92PAXE-l8vsbvzmyU2IcXyRlC6ZJtRyqr1Xm3IfzArVPEJY0RcIPyywCMmHUFLPHxGe9q-qPw/s320/Shang-Chi.jpg" width="296" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Wouldn't it be better to show that there's a commercial viability in seeing an Asian character in a non-stereotypical role? Or if you're not willing to take that leap, at least try to get Marvel to bring in Shang-Chi, Master of Kung Fu.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Maybe, folks are just looking for something to be offended over so they can tweet about something without the effort of trying to be interesting.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">That's what I think, put what you think in the comments.</span></div>
Furious Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07934529688753875751noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24904037.post-73257455825460532322016-01-20T15:28:00.001-04:002016-01-21T11:53:34.243-04:00Hollywood Babble On & On #1260: Why The Oscars Are So White...<div style="margin-bottom: 3px; text-align: justify;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhN-tSTU-hAlSroT0L66AKOe4vyZTsh3pPocVvy5MHYZq4Qja4qMrjLG830p7G3wJs8r0umIn4RWp7AfLqasFnfah8h-d-F7Cr9jLid3pL39R8Ik5Db0u8hY_Zrm1ir7IblG8Igfw/s1600/oscarn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhN-tSTU-hAlSroT0L66AKOe4vyZTsh3pPocVvy5MHYZq4Qja4qMrjLG830p7G3wJs8r0umIn4RWp7AfLqasFnfah8h-d-F7Cr9jLid3pL39R8Ik5Db0u8hY_Zrm1ir7IblG8Igfw/s400/oscarn.jpg" width="160" /></a><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">With the Oscar nominations out comes the traditional complaining about how weirdly unfair the nominations seem to be.</span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhN-tSTU-hAlSroT0L66AKOe4vyZTsh3pPocVvy5MHYZq4Qja4qMrjLG830p7G3wJs8r0umIn4RWp7AfLqasFnfah8h-d-F7Cr9jLid3pL39R8Ik5Db0u8hY_Zrm1ir7IblG8Igfw/s1600/oscarn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"></span></a><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">For the second year in a row all of the acting nominees are white, marking the return of the #OscarSoWhite and #OscarsSoWhite hashtags on twitter as well as threats of boycotts from several prominent black entertainers.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">They do have a case. Several African American actors like Michael B. Jordan, and Samuel L. Jackson, and the cast of <i>Straight Outta Compton</i> have put out performances that critics and audiences have considered Oscar worthy. Also the African American directors F. Gary Gray and Ryan Coogler were snubbed even though their films, <i>Straight Outta Compton </i>and <i>Creed</i>, had excellent box office, reviews, and Oscar buzz.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">So, why all the snubbing?</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Do the Academy members meet around a big table and declare a moratorium on African Americans getting nominations?</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Are the individual Academy members so riddled with hate for non-white people they can't bring themselves to nominate African-Americans?</span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjisTr9FyDewednPZuV2Q2aq9qSYKDGqRt8WgFhwAvUH6xCIMYV4Iii257Wy5hfuzyILqCCMf84Yt9sOyIicGOrMiDt0WDw-yhwCRGTqS7pNcqjf6Q7lFJt4qCBLqs0wKQ3chSFMg/s1600/senile+agitation.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjisTr9FyDewednPZuV2Q2aq9qSYKDGqRt8WgFhwAvUH6xCIMYV4Iii257Wy5hfuzyILqCCMf84Yt9sOyIicGOrMiDt0WDw-yhwCRGTqS7pNcqjf6Q7lFJt4qCBLqs0wKQ3chSFMg/s320/senile+agitation.jpg" width="198" /></a><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">The answer to both questions is: No.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 3px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">The cause isn't hatred.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 3px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">The cause is <b><i>blindness</i></b>.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 3px; text-align: justify;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjisTr9FyDewednPZuV2Q2aq9qSYKDGqRt8WgFhwAvUH6xCIMYV4Iii257Wy5hfuzyILqCCMf84Yt9sOyIicGOrMiDt0WDw-yhwCRGTqS7pNcqjf6Q7lFJt4qCBLqs0wKQ3chSFMg/s1600/senile+agitation.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"></span></a><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">You see the Academy members are predominantly older (average age 67), predominantly white, and predominantly politically liberal. </span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 3px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">They are the generation that came of age in the 1950s and 1960s and they see literally EVERYTHING through that lens.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 3px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Which brings us to the reasons why <i>Creed</i> and <i>Straight Outta Compton</i> were mostly snubbed: They didn't look like "black films" to the Academy voters.</span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGe41LLVesnuZEWGOGVswvyGhzR0TbYAhZZGyCLkFwAPICwAyUYUrMLmPExKWoz5RNdW3XwITQNpRjpzhgG1OaC8Ct4ch_9DV1YhUrDrG_hVnqnmQ3iAovpLzy01FDsY8eYQSx0g/s1600/Straight_Outta_Compton_poster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGe41LLVesnuZEWGOGVswvyGhzR0TbYAhZZGyCLkFwAPICwAyUYUrMLmPExKWoz5RNdW3XwITQNpRjpzhgG1OaC8Ct4ch_9DV1YhUrDrG_hVnqnmQ3iAovpLzy01FDsY8eYQSx0g/s320/Straight_Outta_Compton_poster.jpg" width="202" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">For someone in the very rarified demographic of an Academy Voter <i>Straight Outta Compton</i> and <i>Creed </i></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">look radically different from the way everyone else saw them. To an Academy Voter </span><i style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Straight Outta Compton</i><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> was just a showbiz biopic about a kind of music they don't like, but don't dare admit to not liking, for fear someone will call them racist. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">They also saw </span><i style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Creed</i><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> as just a sports movie and a comeback vehicle for a previous nominee who has been below their precious radar since the first time he played his signature character.</span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHSQ9C28tvlFomNJopFmBJdv4tpuGOnUCuQLPCLCgEl2EFkZCGQ2ThrN73cbP9VN7euvc91xsUun25l808ZNFtcPB_mLCIZBsOLADhM8UYFCv6vSSdqpBB9lqgrZ2icV-jj78pFQ/s1600/Creed_poster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHSQ9C28tvlFomNJopFmBJdv4tpuGOnUCuQLPCLCgEl2EFkZCGQ2ThrN73cbP9VN7euvc91xsUun25l808ZNFtcPB_mLCIZBsOLADhM8UYFCv6vSSdqpBB9lqgrZ2icV-jj78pFQ/s320/Creed_poster.jpg" width="216" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHSQ9C28tvlFomNJopFmBJdv4tpuGOnUCuQLPCLCgEl2EFkZCGQ2ThrN73cbP9VN7euvc91xsUun25l808ZNFtcPB_mLCIZBsOLADhM8UYFCv6vSSdqpBB9lqgrZ2icV-jj78pFQ/s1600/Creed_poster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"></span></a><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">No one in <i>Compton</i> or <i>Creed</i> are brutalized slaves in the pre-Civil War South, or led Civil Rights marches in the 1960s, or ended up on death row because of a racist justice system manned by white men with heavy southern accents. If they were, then they'd all be up for Oscars, because to Academy voters those are Oscar worthy African-American movies. Instead, the movies featured African-Americans using talent and hard work to succeed in America, and, to various degrees, doing just that.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 3px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">No martyrs, no Oscar nominations because the Academy just cannot accept them as telling a "sincere" or "real" African-American story, because they lay</span> outside their narrow field of vision<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">There is a way to use the Academy's narrow vision to get nominations and awards.</span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfe_Ss4YQsvC2TrPL2daZ3woPFxG06iktHpdze9Yd1pXM4uwoC3tUBNkJe25s5AZ01jsu92-PJLeVYNGgcdLU4utJfwDVgPQ_QpVhjKtlFNs8pfRMDgLq7q28V-LAPpb0-id-0gA/s1600/Trumbo_%25282015_film%2529_poster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfe_Ss4YQsvC2TrPL2daZ3woPFxG06iktHpdze9Yd1pXM4uwoC3tUBNkJe25s5AZ01jsu92-PJLeVYNGgcdLU4utJfwDVgPQ_QpVhjKtlFNs8pfRMDgLq7q28V-LAPpb0-id-0gA/s320/Trumbo_%25282015_film%2529_poster.jpg" width="213" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfe_Ss4YQsvC2TrPL2daZ3woPFxG06iktHpdze9Yd1pXM4uwoC3tUBNkJe25s5AZ01jsu92-PJLeVYNGgcdLU4utJfwDVgPQ_QpVhjKtlFNs8pfRMDgLq7q28V-LAPpb0-id-0gA/s1600/Trumbo_%25282015_film%2529_poster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"></span></a><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Bryan Cranston was nominated for playing blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo in <i>Trumbo</i>, a film whose sole purpose was to get Cranston an Oscar nomination and to do that, it followed a carefully structured formula. </span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 3px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">It was a story about Hollywood, and Academy voters love navel gazing.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 3px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">It has a martyr, Dalton Trumbo, albeit a Hollywood kind of martyr, who was blacklisted for his politics. For those who don't know, blacklisting meant that he was forced to write screenplays for less money under pseudonyms.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 3px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">It has a politically acceptable villain, chiefly right-wing American politicians who didn't care for Trumbo's love of the Stalin regime.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 3px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">It's a perfect white man's Oscar bait film, and it could be performed entirely in gibberish with falsetto voices by a cast wearing clown make-up, it would still get at least one nomination.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Now you're probably sitting in front of your computer or tablet, furrowing your brow and thinking "What about Will Smith in <i>Concussion</i>?"</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">If the Academy thinks like me, they probably looked at the trailer for <i>Concussion</i> and thought: "Denzel Washington or Idris Elba would have knocked that out of the park. Will Smith just seems too fluffy, to 'movie star' to pull it off." Then they'd see what else was on.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Those are my theories, what are yours?</span></span></div>
Furious Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07934529688753875751noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24904037.post-61955343133288525372016-01-15T11:28:00.000-04:002016-01-15T11:28:08.470-04:00Hollywood Babble On & On #1259: It's Oscar Time...<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Here's the list of Oscar nominations with my commentary possibly coming later...</span></div>
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<b><u><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Best Picture</span></u></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“The Big Short” </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“Bridge of Spies” </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“Brooklyn” </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“Mad Max: Fury Road”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“The Martian” </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“The Revenant”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“Room”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“Spotlight”</span></div>
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<b><u><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Best Actress in a Leading Role</span></u></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Cate Blanchett, “Carol”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Brie Larson, “Room”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Jennifer Lawrence, “Joy”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Charlotte Rampling, “45 Years”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Saoirse Ronan, “Brooklyn”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<b><u><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Best Actor in a Leading Role</span></u></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Bryan Cranston, “Trumbo”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Matt Damon, “The Martian”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Leonardo DiCaprio, “The Revenant”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Michael Fassbender, “Steve Jobs“</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Eddie Redmayne, “The Danish Girl”</span></div>
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<b><u><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Actress in a Supporting Role</span></u></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Jennifer Jason Leigh, “The Hateful Eight”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Rooney Mara, “Carol”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Rachel McAdams, “Spotlight”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Alicia Vikander, “The Danish Girl”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Kate Winslet, “Steve Jobs“</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<b><u><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Actor in a Supporting Role</span></u></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Christian Bale, “The Big Short”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Tom Hardy, “The Revenant”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Mark Ruffalo, “Spotlight”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Mark Rylance, “Bridge of Spies”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Sylvester Stallone, “Creed”</span></div>
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<b><u><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Best Director</span></u></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Adam McKay, “The Big Short”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">George Miller, “Mad Max: Fury Road”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Alejandro G. Inarritu, “The Revenant”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Lenny Abrahamson, “Room”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Tom McCarthy, “Spotlight”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<b><u><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Visual Effects</span></u></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“Ex Machina”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“Mad Max: Fury Road”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“The Martian”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“The Revenant”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“Star Wars: The Force Awakens”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<b><u><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Best Documentary Feature</span></u></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“Amy”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“Cartel Land”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“The Look of Silence”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“What Happened, Miss Simone?”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“Winter on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<b><u><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Best Documentary Short Subject</span></u></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“Body Team 12”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“Chau, Beyond the Lines”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“Last Day of Freedom”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<b><u><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Editing</span></u></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“The Big Short”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“Mad Max: Fury Road”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“The Revenant”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“Spotlight”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“Star Wars: The Force Awakens”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<b><u><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Production Design</span></u></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“Bridge of Spies”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“The Danish Girl”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“Mad Max: Fury Road”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“The Martian”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“The Revenant”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<b><u><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Best Original Score</span></u></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“Bridge of Spies”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“Carol”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“The Hateful Eight”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“Sicario”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“Star Wars: The Force Awakens”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<b><u><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Best Foreign Language Film</span></u></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“Embrace of the Serpent,” Colombia</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“Mustang,” France</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“Son of Saul,” Hungary</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“Theeb,” Jordan</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“A War,” Denmark</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<b><u><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Best Original Screenplay</span></u></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“Bridge of Spies”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“Ex Machina”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“Inside Out”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“Spotlight”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“Straight Outta Compton”</span></div>
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<b><u><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Best Adapted Screenplay</span></u></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“The Big Short”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“Brooklyn”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“Carol”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“The Martian”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“Room”</span></div>
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<b><u><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Best Original Song</span></u></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“Earned It” from “Fifty Shades of Grey”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“Manta Ray” from “Racing Extinction”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“Simple Song No. 3” from “Youth”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“Til It Happens To You” from “The Hunting Ground”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“Writing’s on the Wall” from “Spectre”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Achievement in Makeup and Hairstyling</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“Mad Max: Fury Road”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed out the Window and Disappeared”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“The Revenant”</span></div>
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<b><u><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Best Animated Feature</span></u></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“Anomalisa”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“Boy and the World”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“Inside Out”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“Shaun the Sheep Movie”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“When Marnie Was There”</span></div>
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<b><u><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Best Animated Short Film</span></u></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“Bear Story”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“Prologue”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“Sanjay’s Super Team”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“We Can’t Live Without Cosmos”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“World of Tomorrow”</span></div>
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<b><u><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Best Live Action Short Film</span></u></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“Ave Maria”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“Day One”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“Everything Will Be Okay (Alles Wird Gut)”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“Shok”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“Stutterer”</span></div>
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<b><u><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Best Cinematography</span></u></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“Carol”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“The Hateful Eight”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“Mad Max: Fury Road”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“The Revenant”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“Sicario”</span></div>
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<b><u><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Achievement in Sound Mixing</span></u></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“Bridge of Spies”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“Mad Max: Fury Road”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“The Martian”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“The Revenant”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“Star Wars: The Force Awakens”</span></div>
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<b><u><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Achievement in Sound Editing</span></u></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“Mad Max: Fury Road”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“The Martian”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“The Revenant”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“Sicario”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“Star Wars: The Force Awakens”</span></div>
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<b><u><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Best Costume Design</span></u></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“Carol”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“Cinderella”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“The Danish Girl”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“Mad Max: Fury Road”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“The Revenant”</span></div>
Furious Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07934529688753875751noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24904037.post-47234365453728365172016-01-13T15:15:00.002-04:002016-01-13T15:15:57.750-04:00Goodbye Major Tom<div style="margin-bottom: 3px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">David Bowie is dead.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 3px; text-align: justify;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-NtsH1iXpScp1M37Hyd3zDfA5_1wjvwQqjep1dpm36u4JGxcoTI2hJFaDcKuexsK7cutmuOBkzN_crMntBJP8oenS_-AsPFNdZlvbVgezbf0w4-abS3da_Ucyr1vFJs3Ngjwxxw/s1600/Bowie_1983_serious_moonlight.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-NtsH1iXpScp1M37Hyd3zDfA5_1wjvwQqjep1dpm36u4JGxcoTI2hJFaDcKuexsK7cutmuOBkzN_crMntBJP8oenS_-AsPFNdZlvbVgezbf0w4-abS3da_Ucyr1vFJs3Ngjwxxw/s400/Bowie_1983_serious_moonlight.jpg" width="165" /></a><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">Killed by cancer just days after his sixty-ninth birthday and the release of his latest album.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 3px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">Turning on twitter and seeing reports of his passing was a real kick in the teeth for me. Like millions of others around the world Bowie didn't seem like an ordinary mortal. Death seemed so inconceivable for such an important part of the soundscape of our lives. One could be forgiven for assuming that Bowie would just assume a new persona and genre and go off in some new creative direction. </span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 3px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">Sadly, he was just a human being and death came for him as it will come for us all eventually.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 3px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">His death stings especially hard because Bowie taught people who were freaks growing up learned that not only were they not alone, there was a way they could be accepted and that's by being as creative and as accepting of others as they can possibly be. To be a Bowie fan was a responsibility. He wasn't everyone's cup of tea, and when I was growing up, a time when the music you listened to established your identity, those who didn't get Bowie liked to express their displeasure with your choices often verbally, and on rare occasions physically.</span></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxGy7tphNmioZ9rrwzE86aooaddKo9dXNdvXlWn_muluM9OlHw0vrFh967DCMPesNzBbDTnyo6pQsXDqcecfWRKRW32wOzl3iOicMmGO74f9NOEFJVDL7KDNdIYx_CuY1jeJrHNg/s1600/David_Bowie_1976.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxGy7tphNmioZ9rrwzE86aooaddKo9dXNdvXlWn_muluM9OlHw0vrFh967DCMPesNzBbDTnyo6pQsXDqcecfWRKRW32wOzl3iOicMmGO74f9NOEFJVDL7KDNdIYx_CuY1jeJrHNg/s1600/David_Bowie_1976.jpg" /></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 3px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">However, </span>camaraderie<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> could be found with other Bowie people, who would then introduce you to other bands and styles of music, who themselves were influenced by Bowie's work and versatility. Bowie was the gateway drug to alternative rock and alternative pop culture.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 3px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">I always admired how Bowie managed to remain cool right to the end by avoiding the trap that had ruined so many of his profession. Since he was constantly experimenting and reinventing himself and his music, and wasn't wed to some look from what he considered his gloried past. A habit that transformed too many rock and pop legends into ridiculous or creepy parodies of themselves.</span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBqhuAVvEt9bAPqUIK0y7ejhPq3iJmEcKv8lPI5wekQfheU-xpARXxytw8AX2SnrUIVa9ixwBuKEzVF1STRSpxyc3-ZSxQet0tc2kGQJoMMCMfMqlRqK0CBXRLjLms14-vbF4cGw/s1600/David-Bowie_Early.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBqhuAVvEt9bAPqUIK0y7ejhPq3iJmEcKv8lPI5wekQfheU-xpARXxytw8AX2SnrUIVa9ixwBuKEzVF1STRSpxyc3-ZSxQet0tc2kGQJoMMCMfMqlRqK0CBXRLjLms14-vbF4cGw/s320/David-Bowie_Early.jpg" width="229" /></a><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">Could you imagine if he had never left his Ziggy Stardust phase?</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 3px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">*shudder*</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 3px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">That constant experimentation and reinvention also meant that if one of his experiments didn't succeed with some segment of the audience, no problem, his next project will be different anyway, and you might like that instead.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 3px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">Well, we won't be able to take David Bowie for granted anymore.</span></span></div>
Furious Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07934529688753875751noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24904037.post-3368432672846901522016-01-01T13:52:00.000-04:002016-01-01T13:52:17.422-04:00Hollywood Babble On & On #1258: 2015 - The Year In Stupid<div style="margin-bottom: 3px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">2016 has finally stumbled into our lives like an alcoholic uncle who shows up late for the holidays with a bottle in his hand screaming for everyone to keep the party going even though all are still hungover from the last year.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Anyway, 'tis the season for looking back in list form and I'm not immune for that sort of easy clickbait, so let's look back at the year in stupid.</span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieZLqftup8IvQzF0w5QS29R6Reb5lE1rXvUM3ZISHZ1H5MJY8F5H1ReO6JQCJMjlsDbvD-vdmikuBf8oirznBBH9qNAYa9K78u4rH11a-zl_eFdFPZ3QcK5i6bWjvMYQkxTpl4Ug/s1600/WIZARDOFOZTVSERIES.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieZLqftup8IvQzF0w5QS29R6Reb5lE1rXvUM3ZISHZ1H5MJY8F5H1ReO6JQCJMjlsDbvD-vdmikuBf8oirznBBH9qNAYa9K78u4rH11a-zl_eFdFPZ3QcK5i6bWjvMYQkxTpl4Ug/s320/WIZARDOFOZTVSERIES.jpg" width="173" /></a><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>THAT'S OFFENSIVE</b>: 2015 was the year when EVERYTHING was declared offensive. In fact, I'm pretty sure that someone, somewhere is offended by my mentioning people finding things offensive.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">It was also the year that a select few saw that no matter what they try, popular culture will always be in the wrong to the new class of professionally offended people who write thinkpieces for websites.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Let's use sexism as an example.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Hollywood does have a sexism problem. They don't know what to do with female stars and female audiences like they did in the allegedly more sexist Golden Age, when both female stars and audiences were much bigger box-office players. However, modern Hollywood sexism is trapped in a never ending circle of offense. Even when they try to appease or even please their critics they still get crapped on.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Critics complain that there are not enough stories being made about the accomplishments of historic women. Hollywood responds with SUFFRAGETTE a lavish period drama about the fight of women to get the vote. SUFFRAGETTE is almost immediately condemned that the suffragette movement was too white and middle class to matter to modern audiences. (Ironically, a complaint made about the real suffragette movement at the time)</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Critics complain that there are not enough competent female heroes on the screen, so they give them Rey in STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS who is tough, competent, and capable of tackling any problem. Many of the same critics then condemn the film and the character as a "Mary Sue" a female character who is "too perfect" to be believed.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">There is literally just no pleasing some folks. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The greatest irony is that when there is something that just reeks of sexism, it's treated as a victory. I'm talking about the all-women reboot of GHOSTBUSTERS. Hollywood is literally tossing women the scraps of a franchise that's been dead for over 25 years, instead of creating something new and original, and it's seen as a victory for feminism.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">To borrow a phrase from Admiral Ackbar: "IT'S A TRAP!"</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">If the film succeeds, the credit will go to the affection people have for the GHOSTBUSTERS franchise.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">If the film flops, the blame will be put on its female stars. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Yet I appear to be the only person who sees this.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Ironically, I'm not offended by it, just saddened.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>GEORGE LUCAS</b>: Lucas called Disney "white slavers" after they dropped $4 billion on his lap for Lucasfilm because they revived the long moribund and once creatively bankrupt STAR WARS franchise sans Lucas and his whims like Jar-Jar Binks.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">George, I love ya for creating STAR WARS, but you're driving me crazy with this sort of spoiled brat chatter. It was nice that you apologized, but maybe you shouldn't have said it in the first place, right when people were about to forgive you for the prequels? </span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhz6eXrO-OSFqpc0dON7BGrmprqw7df3F8-vA4ZO4-oEvZ_OGQCxdRp6zOrtOOpxSbWXE9uonFOLztUlWNU4gfDwbsqSAtAQgg8qGqZ0IUgviN7Lyy5pb_Mcezg34fwQlDN71L8uQ/s1600/Slow_west_poster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhz6eXrO-OSFqpc0dON7BGrmprqw7df3F8-vA4ZO4-oEvZ_OGQCxdRp6zOrtOOpxSbWXE9uonFOLztUlWNU4gfDwbsqSAtAQgg8qGqZ0IUgviN7Lyy5pb_Mcezg34fwQlDN71L8uQ/s200/Slow_west_poster.jpg" width="135" /></a><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>SLOW WEST</b>: My problem is not with the movie itself. It apparently got lots of good reviews. My problem is with the title.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">It's hard to sell a Western, but calling a Western SLOW WEST is about as smart as naming a play THEATRE CLOSED FOR RENOVATIONS. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">It's going to turn audiences away.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">What producer or distributor allowed themselves to be convinced that it was a good title for a Western?</span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgThCOZ5SPwfOxce-WyXfKk6xV2ogkwxpDDR8ihX0YEYT1AMx9zAe2hlx5SQ4EHxzgOsRd6FxQn_utgEYw5YaMsfDimZa1U5yMWUrgQpitkTVGw2WynsxFm6g95TSam5CX3YYnClQ/s1600/Movie+Producer.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgThCOZ5SPwfOxce-WyXfKk6xV2ogkwxpDDR8ihX0YEYT1AMx9zAe2hlx5SQ4EHxzgOsRd6FxQn_utgEYw5YaMsfDimZa1U5yMWUrgQpitkTVGw2WynsxFm6g95TSam5CX3YYnClQ/s200/Movie+Producer.jpg" width="197" /></a><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">It makes the film sound pretentious, annoying, and, most of all SLOW, and audiences hate slow and will avoid anything that literally promises slowness in the title and makes the film lucky to pull in the $200,000 it did at the box-office.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Not seeing that means those who green-lit that title should probably reconsider their career choices.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>MARTIN SHKRELI</b>: Now this isn't an entertainment or pop culture story, but it does have some lessons people in any business can learn.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">In case you're living in a cave Martin Shkreli is a millennial multimillionaire who took over a drug company and immediately jacked up the price of a drug for people with compromised immune systems by about 7,000%. He claimed he was going to kick the profits back into research and development, but his lifestyle, business record, and overall attitude about everything made everyone doubt his word.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">In fact, when he was arrested and arraigned on running a high financed Ponzi scheme the internet pretty well cheered in unison.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Which brings me to the lesson.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">A little known fact about business life is that no matter how honest an American businessperson strives to be, they commit on average several felonies a day without even knowing it. This number goes up exponentially the higher up you go in the financial food chain.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The majority of these felonies are violations of obscure Federal regulations that even the regulators don't fully understand. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">That creates an interesting situation.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">First, there are laws that everyone breaks, but since they're so complicated and obscure they're selectively prosecuted.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Second, if you want to be prosecuted for something, be a business person that makes himself a politically attractive target.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Which means that Shrkreli was nowhere near as smart as his ego told him was, or he would have seen that coming. If Conrad Black could be convicted of a crime that never happened, then any businessperson can become a pelt on a prosecutor's wall, so be honest, be straight, and for the love of Xenu, don't make yourself a target.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">There's been a lot more stupidity this year, but I've decided to just let it go, and pray that 2016 will be a lot smarter.</span></span></div>
Furious Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07934529688753875751noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24904037.post-68113439168145864552015-11-30T18:27:00.001-04:002015-11-30T18:27:48.817-04:00BOOK REPORT: TINSELTOWN<div style="margin-bottom: 3px; text-align: justify;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj17RLag5Xhg_J-voEidLJVpSTsAZ9Ws7oe4p2iOcFS0GPLFiwW6rszqmN3Zsz7md21yYIfjUTvadVj68lJHJnotphnYjm7dcZorB9CnhpuX50xMpMi4tOunkxWdAYoXNiCyZ4Qqw/s1600/Tinseltown_hc+Final%252C+7.28.2014.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 28px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj17RLag5Xhg_J-voEidLJVpSTsAZ9Ws7oe4p2iOcFS0GPLFiwW6rszqmN3Zsz7md21yYIfjUTvadVj68lJHJnotphnYjm7dcZorB9CnhpuX50xMpMi4tOunkxWdAYoXNiCyZ4Qqw/s320/Tinseltown_hc+Final%252C+7.28.2014.jpg" width="214" /></a><b style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></b></div>
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<b style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><b style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">TINSELTOWN: MURDER, MORPHINE, & MADNESS AT THE DAWN OF HOLLYWOOD by William J. Mann, Harper Books, $16.99 US / $21 CAN</span></b></b></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I don't normally do book reviews since I mostly write about the movie business, but there are these things called books, and some of them are about the movie business.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">One such book is <i>Tinseltown</i> by William J. Mann which won the Edgar Award for Best True Crime book of 2014. It's a book that shows how intertwined the worlds of celebrity, business, and scandal really were, and how it goes all the way back to the very beginnings of the modern film industry that we know today.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Now the main crux of the book is a story of murder and scandal, but it goes quite a bit deeper than that, and presents a wider picture of a fledgling industry under siege. The best way to blurb it is to tell you a little bit about the main characters.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>WILLIAM DESMOND TAYLOR</b>: He was one of the most commercially successful and prestigious film directors for the Famous Players-Lasky Company (later Paramount Pictures). He was a man with a reputation for being a man of excellent character and probity, but he had secrets that he desperately wanted kept, and it's his unsolved murder in 1922 that forms the central crux of the book.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>MABEL NORMAND</b>: Was Taylor's best friend and confidante. She was also one of the biggest comedy stars in Hollywood, and was desperately trying to put a past of bad relationships and cocaine abuse behind her. However, the trial of her former co-star Fatty Arbuckle on bogus rape and murder charges, and the murder of her best friend threatened to destroy her career and her life.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>MARY MILES MINTER</b>: A Famous Players child star growing up into an ingenue desperately trying to get out from under the control of her domineering mother Charlotte Shelby. She's romantically obsessed with Taylor, to the point of practically stalking a man she could never have.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>MARGARET "GIBBY" GIBSON</b>: A former co-star of Taylor's from his acting days who came close to big-time Hollywood stardom, only to have her shot ruined by her fondness for scuzzy men and easy money. She will do anything to get another shot at stardom, and isn't one to let the law or morality get in her way.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>ADOLPH ZUKOR</b>: Started life as a penniless orphan from Hungary, and rose to become the head of Famous Players-Lasky, which at the time was the biggest, most prestigious, and most powerful movie producer-distributor-exhibitor in America, and by extension the world. He's also a man under siege, who is desperate to hold onto the company and life he literally built from nothing.</span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigvLdNvFfHF6iRlwD4oFTJX7xURIAjZ7FIsKMD3Y_d9JfJTVYfUjFevpyAfVT6QHR1lk4frUMsiXF9ZtqcZxmz5TLRRwRwjwJZsBP7HTobWQ2VirSkGItYF6RK7Rspwiad33esEA/s1600/89a9844affb88a447a331e04f5df95729a6f380b.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigvLdNvFfHF6iRlwD4oFTJX7xURIAjZ7FIsKMD3Y_d9JfJTVYfUjFevpyAfVT6QHR1lk4frUMsiXF9ZtqcZxmz5TLRRwRwjwJZsBP7HTobWQ2VirSkGItYF6RK7Rspwiad33esEA/s320/89a9844affb88a447a331e04f5df95729a6f380b.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>WILL H. HAYS</b>: A former postmaster-general and campaign manager for the Harding administration. He's hired to lead the organization that will become the modern MPAA, and his mission is to save Hollywood from threats both within and without, and boy-oh-boy were there threats.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">A series of scandals had rocked Hollywood, involving sex, drug addiction, and even death. This sparked a movement to regulate, censor, or even shut down Hollywood that became downright hysterical when Fatty Arbuckle was unjustly tried for a murder that never happened. It got even worse when Taylor was gunned down in his apartment and the police investigation, hindered by interference by both the studio, and the press who had just realized that Hollywood scandal sold newspapers like nothing before. That takes the book on three tracks. There's the investigation into the murder itself, the effects it was having on three women in Taylor's life Mabel, Mary & Margaret, and the effect on the industry as a whole, as witnessed by Will Hays and Adolph Zukor.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">One thing I found surprising was the amount of sympathy I felt, not only for the women caught up in the murder and scandal hysteria, but for Hays and Zukor.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Like many I viewed Hays as a censorious prig, and Zukor as a ruthless cold-fish only out for himself, but this book showed me that I was wrong. (Yes, that happens rarely) You see Hays was deep down a true believer in free speech and free markets. He thought that movies should be free to show whatever they wanted, because the audience was free to not pay money to see something they didn't like. However he was all too often forced into playing the censor by outside forces.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Those same forces also drove Zukor to do many of the seemingly ruthless and heartless things. Yes, he's shown doing many things driven by ego, but most of the stuff he does is driven by inadequacy and a fear that he might lose everything he's struggled build.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Zukor's fears were not unfounded. We may look at the threats by the morality campaigners to have the government seize the entire movie industry, and move it to Washington where it would operate under the supervision of the US congress as ridiculous, but you have to remember that it was these exact same campaigners that got the Prohibition of alcohol written into the American constitution. Alcohol had been a part of the culture for millennia before the country had even been founded, and the movie industry had only been around a little more than twenty years at this point. When you look at it from that point of view those threats don't seem all that ridiculous.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">But back to the book.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 3px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Mann does an excellent job presenting a very careful analysis of the crime, the evidence, and things that the investigators didn't see, and presents a pretty compelling theory as to what might have really happened.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">He also presents where our modern obsessions with celebrity, scandal, and power begin, and is written with a fast paced style that manages to elegantly capture the complexities of this time and place</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Now the story naturally has cinematic qualities. It has murder, sex, scandal, and the sort of big business shenanigans that audiences eat up these days. But it wouldn't work as a movie.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">For this to be properly adapted, it has to be done as a TV series. While a relatively slim volume at a little over 400 pages, the story is just too damn big and broad to do justice to with a 2-3 hour feature film, or even a two or three episode miniseries. You could two seasons of 10-13 one-hour episodes each, with season one dealing with events leading up to Taylor's murder, and season 2 with the investigation & aftermath, and then you might get the story right.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 3px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">But back to the book.</span></span></div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 3px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I would suggest picking this up if you're into movies, murder, and history. William J. Mann manages to capture not just the story, but the era, and presents it with great energy and style.</span></span></div>
Furious Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07934529688753875751noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24904037.post-63343385983694937922015-11-18T14:57:00.000-04:002015-11-18T14:57:07.347-04:00The Book Report: What's In A Head?<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The people behind the World Fantasy Awards have lost their head.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjE43iSPSB1mkLy57gImaNZd-4TjM_URF39GFf6J78p-QOJp5PPozzMYfbEP8auDrgySBMLK0Lhczq-lsVdeoz-9S2HrDI4BzC7nPyaU0HlWU6dhL1dEUvBnkW3hklMCwlXQOBeTg/s1600/-World-Fantasy-award-008.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Well, technically it's not THEIR head, but they have lost the head of long dead author H.P. Lovecraft, whose bust, designed by cartoonist Gahan Wilson, was used as their trophy for many years.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjE43iSPSB1mkLy57gImaNZd-4TjM_URF39GFf6J78p-QOJp5PPozzMYfbEP8auDrgySBMLK0Lhczq-lsVdeoz-9S2HrDI4BzC7nPyaU0HlWU6dhL1dEUvBnkW3hklMCwlXQOBeTg/s1600/-World-Fantasy-award-008.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="384" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjE43iSPSB1mkLy57gImaNZd-4TjM_URF39GFf6J78p-QOJp5PPozzMYfbEP8auDrgySBMLK0Lhczq-lsVdeoz-9S2HrDI4BzC7nPyaU0HlWU6dhL1dEUvBnkW3hklMCwlXQOBeTg/s640/-World-Fantasy-award-008.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The reason for dropping the head of Lovecraft was that he was a racist person from a racist time and that sparked the usual online screaming match with terms like "racist," and "social justice warrior," being tossed around like grenades full of manure.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Some are campaigning to replace Lovecraft's head with the head of author Octavia Butler, who was a multi-award winning and groundbreaking fantasy and science-fiction author in her own right.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I disagree.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Now before you type out "you're a racist" in the comments, just let me make my case.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I don't think the award should be a bust of <b>any one particular author.</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Being a fantasy award, the temptation is to make it a bust of J.R.R. Tolkien who has been one of the most influential authors, but I disagree with even that.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Why?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Because if you use a human head, the award <b>will end up being about that person</b>, and if the award is about that person it will be about something about that person that offends one group or another.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Let's use Lovecraft as an example.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Yes, he was racist, maybe even more racist than the normal standards of the early 20th century. But even if he spent his short life campaigning for racial equality and love between all people, I still would oppose the use of his visage for the award.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">He represented a very narrow sub-genre of fantasy, namely a specific brand of phantasmagoric cosmic-horror that we now know as "Lovecraftian." He doesn't truly represent the breadth and depth of the genre. No one author does.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdyhy-0oWFIkwjh7o-smsIezUPHdTkhJUi-FL0p9pLyc3BAkeFoXJl2Hrig0h0gETYlTPvca4SVA64MmScBMtnmNcp_ukJd9ZWcRugpujdOEiFZuXHphcjHFPTuj7stG63tZqHJQ/s1600/1280px-Butler_signing.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="244" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdyhy-0oWFIkwjh7o-smsIezUPHdTkhJUi-FL0p9pLyc3BAkeFoXJl2Hrig0h0gETYlTPvca4SVA64MmScBMtnmNcp_ukJd9ZWcRugpujdOEiFZuXHphcjHFPTuj7stG63tZqHJQ/s320/1280px-Butler_signing.jpg" width="320" /></a><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Not even Octavia Butler, who despite the quality or variety of her work, only represents a tiny corner of a very big tent, because she is only one author, with one author's interests and abilities. Plus, there will always be a nagging doubt hanging over her metallic head that she was chosen as some sort of token gesture of white-liberal-guilt atonement by those who allowed Lovecraft to linger for so long.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Plus, we don't know what some future biographer is going to discover about her. She might have secretly hunted the homeless for sport, for all we know.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Which brings me to what the trophy should be.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">It should not be a person, it should be a symbol.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The fantasy genre is born from tales of adventure from mythology. So I suggest a classic fantasy symbol: the sword in the stone from Arthurian legend.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgi9IoavyQl-bOP0HUjIXfK_zEns6OWUysx-1Pe_dZGkR-lw2CTSDf7BbMcJvHWbSV0qWRCYRnsoF1mIIVZbUms6BVtN_zf3rTpeUEkF5KwuVjJ0RINAJ54C9RlJLkyC8Dx2XOKHg/s1600/Albion_SaintMaurice_XIII_horizontal.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="144" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgi9IoavyQl-bOP0HUjIXfK_zEns6OWUysx-1Pe_dZGkR-lw2CTSDf7BbMcJvHWbSV0qWRCYRnsoF1mIIVZbUms6BVtN_zf3rTpeUEkF5KwuVjJ0RINAJ54C9RlJLkyC8Dx2XOKHg/s640/Albion_SaintMaurice_XIII_horizontal.jpg" width="640" /></a><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Now before you yell "you're not being inclusive" or that I'm being "Eurocentric" at your monitor, let me finish explaining my design idea.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Every culture has a sword.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhttJLx4f164g7LxxAAJxo0SAZaS269fTP83E6qFzomEna_Plr9LgLcy-Uehl_-_R4ZCnTeDluxksAkx2Dw5ZVBHpjsEUB0aRIMDNabDdYZuUge_rWf7ROg3WwsR2pzjWzX5dgURA/s1600/19th_century_Indian_tulwar_sword.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhttJLx4f164g7LxxAAJxo0SAZaS269fTP83E6qFzomEna_Plr9LgLcy-Uehl_-_R4ZCnTeDluxksAkx2Dw5ZVBHpjsEUB0aRIMDNabDdYZuUge_rWf7ROg3WwsR2pzjWzX5dgURA/s400/19th_century_Indian_tulwar_sword.JPG" width="121" /></a><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">That means that there can be a range of designs for the trophy, which can alternate. A classic European medieval sword one year, a katana the next, a scimitar after that, then maybe a jian sword, or an Ethiopian shotel, or an Indian Tulwar. You can pretty easily make a line of different trophies and rotate them among the various awards categories each year.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">And to include the horror genre, maybe have the stone be carved in the shape of a sinister looking skull, marked with nonsensical arcane symbols.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Then you have a trophy that symbolizes the roots of the genre without really leaving anything out, and free from the baggage of any one person from the genre's history.</span></div>
Furious Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07934529688753875751noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24904037.post-42442838951466622502015-11-06T14:32:00.000-04:002015-11-06T14:32:24.644-04:00Hollywood Babble On & On #1257: Diversity…of Family?<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Okay, this story begins with a complaint.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">People are complaining that there is not enough diversity in Hollywood. One key complaint is that the numbers of directors getting regular work that are not caucasian males do not reflect the demographic realities.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiENg4dEGBM2kC-fMDcf9fc479J5xZKgG7Bl24c82_uAnr133rZ1iHvoFK0kD-GkaRXkaK65xH5ie0dkgAp39-Y-01kOBVYfT01RZxgktTOH5WafvBeVyR9zRBwKOLymB6WbuFr9w/s1600/Sony_pictures_logo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiENg4dEGBM2kC-fMDcf9fc479J5xZKgG7Bl24c82_uAnr133rZ1iHvoFK0kD-GkaRXkaK65xH5ie0dkgAp39-Y-01kOBVYfT01RZxgktTOH5WafvBeVyR9zRBwKOLymB6WbuFr9w/s320/Sony_pictures_logo.jpg" width="208" /></a><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">But don't worry. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Sony Pictures has swept in to save the day with a special "Diversity In TV" program. The mission of this program is to get more women and more "people of colour" into the world of directing television.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Sounds like a noble cause but when you see that the program's first reported recruit is Kate Barker-Froyland, the <a href="http://www.thewrap.com/sony-pictures-classics-chiefs-daughter-named-to-sony-tv-diversity-program/" target="_blank"><b>DAUGHTER OF A SENIOR SONY EXECUTIVE</b></a>.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjd6JE3-rUM7NM8MV5SXNmZGnhPba7a4Tk0-y6I4ZfZMqE6j6wcguCfonJRrhz4CJ-0H6_wCD9xl9suB7mXo-2ePEN8RBmSpspoCM2Ga8TInFOvAZDDmN8bYQ8IhVjhQev64O_e7Q/s1600/0616_anne-hathaway-get-smart-photoshoot-23.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"></span></a><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjd6JE3-rUM7NM8MV5SXNmZGnhPba7a4Tk0-y6I4ZfZMqE6j6wcguCfonJRrhz4CJ-0H6_wCD9xl9suB7mXo-2ePEN8RBmSpspoCM2Ga8TInFOvAZDDmN8bYQ8IhVjhQev64O_e7Q/s400/0616_anne-hathaway-get-smart-photoshoot-23.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="238" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">I call this Meta-Sexism, being sexist to mock sexism.</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Now she is a woman, and she is a director, having made a film called <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2182972/?ref_=fn_al_tt_6" target="_blank"><i>Song One</i> starring Anne Hathaway</a>, which gives me an excuse to post a click-bait picture of Anne Hathaway.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">However, there is a problem with her familial connections. We live in an age where people are demanding that others "check their privilege" in the name of diversity. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">In the diversity fight Hollywood comes across as the pinnacle of hypocrisy. The citizens of their community that I call the Axis of Ego, are always the first to demand diversity in others, but are the worst when it comes to having diversity in their own house.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">You will never find a people more ethnically, and ideologically homogenous outside of Hollywood. And it's not just the use of white stars all the time, even in so-called "ethnic" roles. The executive suites bear more resemblance to a trustafarian frat-house at an Ivy League university than the population in general.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpPpLVoR6Sk8zKSqcb6eRvB3Nc2HSBGw2ILpRD-c8Y3EIALkWA_BYZXHUENokkFuCbafFGiggxqDBRLLsIA2ZRD_LvoyCFtgVvc0USEV2_MC62d8t_bkCRvzLt3g-MBv0iLCD37A/s1600/rant-small.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpPpLVoR6Sk8zKSqcb6eRvB3Nc2HSBGw2ILpRD-c8Y3EIALkWA_BYZXHUENokkFuCbafFGiggxqDBRLLsIA2ZRD_LvoyCFtgVvc0USEV2_MC62d8t_bkCRvzLt3g-MBv0iLCD37A/s320/rant-small.jpg" width="276" /></a>This leads to the hiring of even more people that fit that vaguely general mould, and more and more people, feel left out, and not just women and ethnic minorities, but other white males who just don't fit in the club are blocked too. I'm a white male Gen-Xer, according to the activists I should have Hollywood dragging me from my home to write &/or direct big budget projects regardless of my résumé, when in reality Hollywood wouldn't touch me with a ten foot pole because I just wouldn't fit in with them, and never will.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">However, this clubbiness when it comes to women and ethnic minorities challenges the liberal bona-fides of the Axis of Ego. That makes them look bad, and </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">This leads to hackneyed token gestures, like tossing women and minorities the scraps from the franchise table, and the creation of programs meant to improve diversity, but only make things worse.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Now Sony may have hired her on her non-familial merits, her film<i> Song One</i> might be the most brilliant thing since <i>Citizen Kane</i>, I don't know, it hasn't really been seen by anyone, so I can't judge her as a filmmaker.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">What I can talk about are the optics.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The optics are terrible.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">"Diversity" is supposed to mean hiring from a pool of diverse genders, ethnicities, backgrounds, and beliefs. You don't say a program is about "diversity" and then hire from a pool even narrower than the usual monolithic upper class white Ivy League pool; the literal gene pool.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEio2hMYTCQOjxcYD7az7Pp0yfBOOpxJe7Yx22m4rLqbLB2CDneWw025Vx195bvu8u1IF8wmQw_PKotjrR5IijbvDFGoMqvXrvp1DUlqqnfJHxpjPANHIUoY9oe5RajEYEZogtGeNQ/s1600/05-hollywood-sign.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="236" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEio2hMYTCQOjxcYD7az7Pp0yfBOOpxJe7Yx22m4rLqbLB2CDneWw025Vx195bvu8u1IF8wmQw_PKotjrR5IijbvDFGoMqvXrvp1DUlqqnfJHxpjPANHIUoY9oe5RajEYEZogtGeNQ/s320/05-hollywood-sign.jpg" width="320" /></a><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">It doesn't matter if your hire is more brilliant than Alfred Hitchcock and Stanley Kubrick combined, if they have the same last name of a senior executive, the first thing people are going to think when they hear the news is not "diversity" it is "nepotism."</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">It reminds people of the early days of Universal Pictures when the joke around the lot was that owner "Carl Laemmle had a big faemmle." However, most studios weren't as egregious in their nepotism. Sure, many viewed them as family businesses, but folks weren't hired solely on their DNA, that may have landed them a chance, but if they didn't deliver in the hard work department, they were often ushered out of the company and sometimes even out of the family.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Ironically, the Silent Era had a lot more diversity behind the camera than today, especially when it came to gender. There were almost as many female screenwriters, directors, editors, and technicians, as there were male, even in the executive suite at some studios. Ethnic diversity was a exponentially weaker because even the suspicion of there being some colour in a black and white film ran the risk of getting a studio's output banned in some states. (Up until the 1960s America was rife with politically powerful movements seeking to censor films for reasons that would seem comically ridiculous to modern eyes.)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">This was because the old school moguls believed in one thing: Making movies that the audience wanted to see. They didn't care about making quotas, they were concerned with putting bums in theatre seats so they could make more money and more movies.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The rise of unions and the introduction of sound led to many women being shut out of the industry's technical fields on the bullshit grounds that they were now "too technical" for their feminine minds. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Then came the corporate era when the studios went from being stand-alone entities run by powerful "moguls" to subsidiaries of larger conglomerates and run by committees of Ivy League number-crunchers.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Which is what brings us to our current situation. They see the general population as a list of targets in a marketing report. That some people in these targets have an interest in making film and television instead of consuming it strikes them as inconceivable, because the making of film and television is <i>their</i> world, which is populated by people more or less like them.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Hollywood does need diversity, however, it will not be achieved easily, and most likely won't be achieved in any way we think it's going to happen.</span></div>
Furious Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07934529688753875751noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24904037.post-91750218060041697842015-11-02T14:25:00.000-04:002015-11-02T14:25:48.048-04:00Hollywood Babble On & On #1256: The Flops of Fall<div style="margin-bottom: 3px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Right now Hollywood has been kicked in the head by the audience. The <a href="http://www.boxofficemojo.com/weekend/chart/?yr=2015&wknd=44&p=.htm"><span style="color: #021eaa; letter-spacing: 0px;">last two weeks of October have contained more bombs than Curtis LeMay's Christmas wish list</span></a>. Even fairly reliable box-office stalwarts like Sandra Bullock have seen their pictures crash and burn.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Now all of these films have flopped for different reasons, and I will lay out some of those reasons for some of those failed films in a wonderful little listicle!</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Let's get started:</span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixD_x2TPMOCv2v7eoUH-3JPDJJOOl7q53yi-wXlYOCVHfIZ0izcuVPaAgG5HONPRyF3VCffdqH2x522ihwcfwjFRMtcMcnQjA81D5C04dMcdIhfu8Vs08I8G1oNmVlcEL6NllPhg/s1600/Our_Brand_Is_Crisis_%25282015_film%2529_POSTER.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixD_x2TPMOCv2v7eoUH-3JPDJJOOl7q53yi-wXlYOCVHfIZ0izcuVPaAgG5HONPRyF3VCffdqH2x522ihwcfwjFRMtcMcnQjA81D5C04dMcdIhfu8Vs08I8G1oNmVlcEL6NllPhg/s320/Our_Brand_Is_Crisis_%25282015_film%2529_POSTER.jpg" width="215" /></a><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>OUR BRAND IS CRISIS</b>: The main thing this film had going for it was the star power of Sandra Bullock. Sounds like it should have worked, so why did it fail?</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Politics.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Not any specific politics, just the simple fact that the audience has about as much trust in Hollywood handling political subjects as they would trust a hungry dog with a t-bone. Tell the audience that Hollywood is going to tell them a political story and they're going to assume that it will be a joyless lecture about how wrong they are in all facets of life by people who think they are right about everything because they're rich, famous, and read the Huffington Post when one of their friends is in it, and will finally finish that Howard Zinn book someday.</span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgScjSa5LDfT5wmC8fueocXkcZ1C-vkcFHexjeCJS2Kdk-Bhx2oZDbFrg1uZMXDx0fGMribETQD0AugDumFJQ-IAAnNiMvx2WyvVCWkatZeaR4HIT1wUO0AkLTaf3Maj5wSirHdRA/s1600/The_Last_Witch_Hunter_poster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgScjSa5LDfT5wmC8fueocXkcZ1C-vkcFHexjeCJS2Kdk-Bhx2oZDbFrg1uZMXDx0fGMribETQD0AugDumFJQ-IAAnNiMvx2WyvVCWkatZeaR4HIT1wUO0AkLTaf3Maj5wSirHdRA/s320/The_Last_Witch_Hunter_poster.jpg" width="210" /></a><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>THE LAST WITCH HUNTER</b>: Here's what people saw from the trailers and advertisements for this movie: Lots of weightless CGI and lots of Vin Diesel telling every other character how he's better at everything than they are.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">What did they NOT see in the trailers and advertisements for this movie?</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The campy, goofy, sense of fun, and quirky family values of the <i>Fast & Furious</i> movies. Which is the chief reason of seeing a Vin Diesel movie.</span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihe26KSGDDO7OT9yFNCv5Vl2YqI4jBSs1Yl3vnPv1QMTdql3X2hPEha1GrajWHxicTz4aQgOF4rkSL7lMTxtOh0y_U2ked14f6fUhD2X2-r9TW65hKUNcd5F81yIy1NhQXhOkCcg/s1600/SteveJobsposter.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihe26KSGDDO7OT9yFNCv5Vl2YqI4jBSs1Yl3vnPv1QMTdql3X2hPEha1GrajWHxicTz4aQgOF4rkSL7lMTxtOh0y_U2ked14f6fUhD2X2-r9TW65hKUNcd5F81yIy1NhQXhOkCcg/s320/SteveJobsposter.jpg" width="202" /></a><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>STEVE JOBS</b>: The first thing is that everyone had already heard so damn much about Steve Jobs in the months leading up to, and after his death. The second thing is that it lacked the sort of star power that can sell tickets to anything, which is rare. And the third thing is that the ad campaign seemed to strive to make Jobs look not only unlikable, but uninteresting as well. Audiences will pay to see an unlikable person, but that person has to be way more interesting than a guy who occasionally drinks Dos Equis.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>BURNT</b>: The whole of a guy trying to overcome his own stupidity and arrogance to sell overpriced food to rich snobs just doesn't really appeal to audiences no matter how popular celebrity chefs are on television.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>SCOUT'S GUIDE TO THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE</b>: The whole thing looked like it had been written for and by thirteen year old boys. Folks like zombie stories, but they appear to want QUALITY zombie stories. If it doesn't look like you've got more than gross out and genital jokes, they'll just stay home and probably catch it on Netflix, if they're high enough.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>PAN</b>: This movie reeked of desperation from the first frame of the first trailer. It looked like it had been composed by marketing gurus for maximum pandering. Audiences saw the ads, and thought: "Hmmm... the original animated <i>Peter Pan</i> still looks better."</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>CRIMSON PEAK</b>: The buzz over this film among critics and those who actually took the effort to see it, tell me that this film could have a long life on video and television. I don't think the general movie going audience could get past the Victorian frippery and emphasis on boo-scares and special effects in the ad campaign.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>JEM & THE HOLOGRAMS</b>: This project could only be a flop. It's a franchise based on a property that's barely remembered by Gen-Xers, and only for being really cheesy, sold to tweens who don't remember it at all, and using music and dialogue that makes <i>Hannah Montana</i> look like a collaboration between Kurt Cobain and David Mamet. There's no way it could succeed outside of some marketing gurus nonsensical imagination.</span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjd604k8mZ3qmFGUYYuHM_vS_sTTO9kunUHxGDIzaL00M3CI-jn4_DUtC5tk2mNYz-cRV5mwdYCUXvjJ9muQ-yzoSpxRPrm7YACzS5fqA85ugSx0TuB3qzMrgrgUTJ-LHe7Bi6X3g/s1600/Truth_2015_poster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjd604k8mZ3qmFGUYYuHM_vS_sTTO9kunUHxGDIzaL00M3CI-jn4_DUtC5tk2mNYz-cRV5mwdYCUXvjJ9muQ-yzoSpxRPrm7YACzS5fqA85ugSx0TuB3qzMrgrgUTJ-LHe7Bi6X3g/s320/Truth_2015_poster.jpg" width="217" /></a><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>TRUTH</b>: It was sold as the untold story of a story that was actually told very loudly and in great detail.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">In case you can't remember recent history, Dan Rather and his producer Mary Mapes ran a story that they hoped would cost George W. Bush the 2004 election. In it they claimed to have letters from Bush's time in the National Guard that they claimed proved all sorts of derelictions and near-desertions.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">However, there was a problem.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The letters weren't written on an early 70s military issue typewriter, they were written much more recently on a computer using Microsoft Word. Also, deeper investigations into the documents by bloggers found more and more evidence of fakery, and no evidence to back up the documents or what they claimed to prove.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">As the "facts" of the story fell apart, Rather and Mapes defended it by saying the documents were "fake, but accurate."</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Naturally, Rather and Mapes were eased out of their jobs, shockingly gently for how badly they embarrassed the once August CBS News organization, and they stand by their story to this day, no matter what evidence is given to them.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The movie <i>Truth</i>, failed because it was political, and as I said before, the audience doesn't trust Hollywood with political topics anymore, but that wasn't the only reason. The main reason was that the film, starring Robert Redford and Cate Blanchett, was sold on the premise that the fake documents were somehow real, and that Rather and Mapes weren't raging egoists who were so eager to take down a Republican president they deliberately refused to do the proper due diligence on their so-called "evidence." </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">It came across as vain, self-serving, tripe with the insulting audacity to call itself <i>Truth</i>. That's the marketing equivalent as pissing in the audience's ear, and telling them it's raining.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Audiences don't mind dumb movies as long as their entertaining, but they won't go see a movie that acts like they're the dumb ones.</span></span></div>
Furious Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07934529688753875751noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24904037.post-44971332057420260302015-10-26T14:59:00.000-03:002015-10-26T14:59:45.146-03:00Hollywood Babble On & On #1255: Can Amazing Stories Be Amazing Again?<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0v8pycwRpweRVIwe6vs2m8jwt_qVCMrZUm8cTV1UNhWsE5dsS1TyxzsBesmwZKxv6FuvbaTGGHuAxwYECkgWpSxhF2VUq4CwjTdC1DrltYu2aPa7VdTm6z6DcPVhFSe6EOzr7GA/s1600/AmazingStoriesTVseries.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0v8pycwRpweRVIwe6vs2m8jwt_qVCMrZUm8cTV1UNhWsE5dsS1TyxzsBesmwZKxv6FuvbaTGGHuAxwYECkgWpSxhF2VUq4CwjTdC1DrltYu2aPa7VdTm6z6DcPVhFSe6EOzr7GA/s1600/AmazingStoriesTVseries.jpg" /></a><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Cult TV showrunner Bryan Fuller has been given the green light by NBC to <a href="http://www.blastr.com/2015-10-26/hannibal-showrunner-bryan-fuller-reviving-amazing-stories" target="_blank">bring back the 1980s anthology series <i>Amazing Stories</i></a>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">If you're one of those millennials with no knowledge of your pop culture heritage <i>Amazing Stories </i>was an anthology TV series inspired by <i>Amazing Stories Magazine</i>, the first science-fiction and fantasy magazine founded by Hugo Gernsback. The show was brought to television by Stephen Spielberg at a time when he could literally do no wrong on the big screen and NBC was hoping to bring some of that to the small screen.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Like most Spielberg related TV projects it had a huge beginning with lots of big names appearing in front of and behind the camera, but like so many other Spielberg TV projects it fizzled out in the second season, and was cancelled. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">This is because Spielberg has two things against him when it comes to producing a TV show. He is too busy making movies to be much more than a name in the credits after the pilot's been shot, and Spielberg has a notorious aversion to conflict, which means that unless he has a strong partner and showrunner, the network will walk over the show and grind it into the dirt. That's why the only Spielberg-branded show to have any real success after its first season was <i>ER</i>, because he had Michael Crichton's name on it, and they had showrunners with balls and clout.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Now, hot on the heels of cancelling Fuller's critically claim and hyper-stylish horror series <i>Hannibal</i>, they want him to bring it back.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Now Fuller can do Amazing Stories in one of three ways:</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPtLUQ_Blo69cpf4IhKYX6fX1wZKjbCqN1ZKJBH3XaB-6f-Ip7kOWdOAzpfE2UGMAdBWJZ4_49IcgDM8KDiqlc8vG83s2J-tD8yP7o9aaAo5wD19uXZcZj7k8MmcFyjgNte3TM5A/s1600/TheTwilightZoneLogo.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="210" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPtLUQ_Blo69cpf4IhKYX6fX1wZKjbCqN1ZKJBH3XaB-6f-Ip7kOWdOAzpfE2UGMAdBWJZ4_49IcgDM8KDiqlc8vG83s2J-tD8yP7o9aaAo5wD19uXZcZj7k8MmcFyjgNte3TM5A/s320/TheTwilightZoneLogo.png" width="320" /></a><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b><u>STORY OF THE WEEK</u>:</b> This is the traditional approach made famous by <i>The Twilight Zone</i>. The problem with this traditional approach is that tradition can very quickly become a rut. The tendency is to not exactly do what <i>The Twilight Zone </i>did, but a vague memory of what they thought <i>The Twilight Zone</i> did. They slip into a comfortable trap of stories of things that seem normal at first, then they go weird, and pow, there's a twist in the end.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">That can get really boring, really quick. There is a way to avoid this, and this is to go literary. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">There is literally a couple of centuries of short fiction in the genres of science fiction, fantasy and horror. That means that they don't have to be reliant on TV writers and their vague memories of another TV show for stories. Of course that would take effort to find the stories, and money to buy the ones not in public domain, which means that plan probably won't be done.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b><u>STORY OF THE SEASON</u></b>: This format is pretty popular through shows like <i>True Detective</i> and <i>American Horror Story</i>. Basically, you do each season like a novel for television where a story goes for X number of episodes of a season, it ends when the season ends, and new story runs for the next season.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">This is popular, but it too has its pitfalls. If you have an incredible first season story, the odds are really good that if the second season story isn't light years better, it will be declared a total failure.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Plus, networks are tempted to take a successful story that originally had a set ending, and then say: "Hey, let's have a second season of just that" and then they flog it until it's dead and stinky.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg099tbwPcxUV5tOXoqtk_EbaOzgHCkevFmP42DK0_uEN8z2tmlNDaOpnGSXGd-MmD5YdAyoDMA5u52t36W7vuoUkEP1mjxuy6KnyyLEJ6unoTZCM9Pa5br_tUZ9jEUJGKHs-xHdA/s1600/Masterpiece_Theatre_%2528title_card%2529.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="189" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg099tbwPcxUV5tOXoqtk_EbaOzgHCkevFmP42DK0_uEN8z2tmlNDaOpnGSXGd-MmD5YdAyoDMA5u52t36W7vuoUkEP1mjxuy6KnyyLEJ6unoTZCM9Pa5br_tUZ9jEUJGKHs-xHdA/s320/Masterpiece_Theatre_%2528title_card%2529.png" width="320" /></a><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b><u>MASTERPIECE THEATRE IT</u></b>: This is a hybrid of the other two formats. Basically you set the show up as a sort-of brand that covers a range of science fiction, fantasy, and horror productions that range from stand-alone one-episode stories, to multi-episode arcs.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">This can give the writers the leeway they need to experiment with long form and short form stories, but the hazard is that the audience might find the format jarring, and tune out, or that only certain stories and their sequels catch on, and come to dominate the show's run, thus killing the whole "anthology" idea.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Anyway, that's what I think, let me know what you think in the comments...</span></div>
Furious Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07934529688753875751noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24904037.post-68976533196185480182015-10-19T15:51:00.000-03:002015-10-19T15:51:30.263-03:00Hollywood Babble On & On #1254: Let Die Hard Die Out.<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">20th Century Fox has announced that they're developing a 6th <i>Die Hard</i> movie, but this one will be different. Franchise star Bruce Willis will only bookend an "origin story" about a rookie John McLain in 1970s New York and most of the heavy lifting, running, jumping, and shooting will be done by a younger, cheaper actor in the hope that they might get the budget within a range that'll someday make a profit.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">There are a two conundrums with this idea.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">1. The original <i>Die Hard</i> is the origin story. It's about how an average joe police detective becomes a butt-kicking terrorist killer, not because of mad ninja skills, or superpowers, but solely through ingenuity, toughness, and a refusal to ever give up.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">2. There already is a prequel to <i>Die Hard</i> in existence, and it's this:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">You see the <i>Die Hard</i> franchise has a complicated history. Back in the 1960s the novelist Roderick Thorp wrote the original novel <i>The Detective</i> and sold the movie rights to 20th Century Fox. They made a movie starring Frank Sinatra and it was a big hit. Naturally, Fox wanted a sequel, and so did Thorp, so he wrote a new novel called <i>Nothing Lasts Forever</i>.</span></div>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOKvOw_oeHbqj_ar4Ul1gU2KI8exTErA2rOP5d3ubIceXV4fQFp9zJ_GzpfDeyjb7gRZR7uQiCfLuvBo9F3lstnpTzWNC-mRJYq731SujMweATVOIjgrkvP5sYQ-___tbufY3NVg/s1600/Thorpe_-_Nothing_lasts_forever.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOKvOw_oeHbqj_ar4Ul1gU2KI8exTErA2rOP5d3ubIceXV4fQFp9zJ_GzpfDeyjb7gRZR7uQiCfLuvBo9F3lstnpTzWNC-mRJYq731SujMweATVOIjgrkvP5sYQ-___tbufY3NVg/s320/Thorpe_-_Nothing_lasts_forever.jpg" width="198" /></span></a><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">But there was a complication, Frank Sinatra wasn't available to make the sequel movie when the time came. The project languished in development hell until the mid-1980s. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Producer Joel Silver, who was on a major hot-streak at the time, wanted an action thriller property that he could do with Fox, and found <i>Nothing Lasts Forever</i> in their archives. They offered the part to Sinatra, who said he was too old for all the running and shooting, so they offered it to Robert Mitchum, who declined for the same reasons.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">It was then they decided on a rewrite.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Retired NYPD detective Joe Leland was transformed into active-duty NYPD detective John McLain, and instead of a rescuing an estranged daughter and grandchildren, he was rescuing an estranged ex-wife. They also tweaked the novel's ambiguous ending where Joe Leland succumbs to blood loss, collapses, and possibly dies.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">They cast Bruce Willis, who was also on a burgeoning hot streak from his hit TV show <i>Moonlighting</i>, and movie history was made spawning thousands of imitators and movie pitch shorthand with "It's <i>Die Hard</i> on a---".</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Sadly, Fox has decided that repeating history is a good business model. They took what was a neat, tight, trilogy that ended on a high with <i>Die Hard With A Vengeance</i>, and enforced the laws of diminishing returns. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">There is only one reason to keep making <i>Die Hard </i>movies, and that's because they can still pull in about $200+ in the foreign box-office even though domestic grosses are decidedly lacklustre.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">However, there's a catch.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The post-<i>Vengeance</i> <i>Die Hard</i>s cost between $90-$115 million to make, and about that amount again to distribute and market internationally. That's an overhead of about $200+ million per picture.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Domestically, the studio gets roughly 50</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">¢ on the box-office dollar as the "rental" the rest goes to the theatre. Internationally, it depends on the individual country or territory, but averages out </span>to<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> about 25</span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">¢ to 30</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">¢ on the box office dollar.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkX8jWVCpgZJAnLGLiNcvSytcq0IvEA_OpklKbX9WhwJeh4jBpUAreLBeiHU9pIbM6qIddg9MCmzt0tJXcES-I5ZiumzB3HqCpsQzBWCQLOwLtHvrRtcwy8qWQJV_8mQEflqgWeQ/s1600/Die_Hard_2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkX8jWVCpgZJAnLGLiNcvSytcq0IvEA_OpklKbX9WhwJeh4jBpUAreLBeiHU9pIbM6qIddg9MCmzt0tJXcES-I5ZiumzB3HqCpsQzBWCQLOwLtHvrRtcwy8qWQJV_8mQEflqgWeQ/s320/Die_Hard_2.jpg" width="216" /></a><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">That means that at best the more recent movies broke even at most. I also don't see folks clamouring to get them on home video or on television airings. I got the first trilogy on Blu-Ray and I just try to ignore the others.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">But I see where Fox is going with this plan.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">They know how beloved the first </span><i style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">Die Hard</i><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> is, and how many watch it every Christmas as a sort of antidote to the more saccharine holiday fare. They also know that announcing a remake with a new star would be received with screams of "blasphemy" and a lot of bad press. That's why I suspect they start a new series with the proposed <i>Die Hard: Year One</i>, and hopefully segue it into a full on <i>Die Hard</i> remake with lots of CGI explosions as a hundred buildings are seized by ten thousand terrorists and only superhuman John McLain can stop them. They hope that audiences will be so used to this new franchise, they'll somehow accept it over the original.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Which brings me to the point of all my rambling.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">What made the first <i>Die Hard</i> such a classic was not the quantity of the action, even though it did deliver quantity, it was the quality. Each set-piece was carefully constructed to deliver the maximum emotional impact on the audience without having to resort to size. <i>Die Hard 2</i> slipped into the "just make it bigger" trap, and was the comparative low point for the original trilogy. <i>Die Hard With A Vengeance</i> found the right mix of size and dramatic impact, which was why that original trilogy ended on a high.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The latter two sequels, I haven't been able to sit through one to completion, seem to be just after quantity and not quality. There's no tension, no dramatic impact, no reason to give a shit.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuI-On5JYKq3O0zfalSt_GxAjjfzOtJ24TJ30l74TtaFsEiGM6_gQkFGcyhXlD-7r9o8ZEKCP2msvCK8fMPtaWe_P_FxB-vqHGdK-iunktpxOOTbYas8ilp_rMmJpa4Ge_SfmKtg/s1600/Die_Hard_With_A_Vengance.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuI-On5JYKq3O0zfalSt_GxAjjfzOtJ24TJ30l74TtaFsEiGM6_gQkFGcyhXlD-7r9o8ZEKCP2msvCK8fMPtaWe_P_FxB-vqHGdK-iunktpxOOTbYas8ilp_rMmJpa4Ge_SfmKtg/s320/Die_Hard_With_A_Vengance.jpg" width="215" /></a><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">My suggestion to Fox is to look at what made the original so beloved. The mechanics of suspense, action, and story are all out there to be carefully studied, and use that as a template to develop new original action properties that could find an audience all their own.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Of course, that would take work, and I doubt they're interested in that when they can just throw money at the problem.</span></div>
Furious Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07934529688753875751noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24904037.post-17332599339642847102015-10-09T13:56:00.000-03:002015-10-18T15:28:39.157-03:00Hollywood Babble On & On #1253: Guys, Gals And Greenbacks! (UPDATED)<div style="margin-bottom: 3px;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6r4bAo-xQjo1y8pnf5puP9j2Ws1C1JIOcrE4V9MhwdGiweYJZczuLXOeo7YtODTYNvp4etOjXq0ROgMtUVWaxTKK22waE6Jgs5UehqcUw79Cj2SMKoshXoW0RbEro9zOesKdKVg/s1600/405px-GwynethPaltrowByAndreaRaffin2011.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; display: inline !important; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6r4bAo-xQjo1y8pnf5puP9j2Ws1C1JIOcrE4V9MhwdGiweYJZczuLXOeo7YtODTYNvp4etOjXq0ROgMtUVWaxTKK22waE6Jgs5UehqcUw79Cj2SMKoshXoW0RbEro9zOesKdKVg/s320/405px-GwynethPaltrowByAndreaRaffin2011.jpg" width="270" /></a><div style="margin-bottom: 3px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Gwyneth Paltrow is a victim of sexism.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The Oscar winning actress is telling the world that the <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/gwyneth-paltrow-uses-robert-downey-jr-to-highlight-gender-pay-gap-in-hollywood-a6684566.html"><span style="color: #021eaa; letter-spacing: 0px;">gender pay gap is not only real it's ruining her life</span></a> because she is paid way less than her Marvel co-star Robert Downey Jr. for what she considers the "same work."</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Thanks to Downey's role as Tony Stark/Iron Man in the solo films and The Avengers he's raked in over $110 million. Gwyneth Paltrow meanwhile has earned a </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px; text-decoration: line-through;">paltrow</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"> paltry $9 million in the same period, and the highest paid female star Jennifer Lawrence earned around $72 million. Both are making way less than what Downey Jr. made.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Is it sexism?</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Short answer: In Gwyneth's case, no. The long answer is much more complicated than that, but complication requires explanation. It's much easier to just blame it on some unidentifiable villain or delusion and leave it at that.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">However, I do explanations here, and explanations I will dispense.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">First, let's look at Gwyneth Paltrow's case.</span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiD3bGP12zwAqoFAW8zGvxw9AdnCP2t8angySmJMlyWIe9T9spBfqcHkwxMKdZQdji4rTnddKWRB2x2GHOx_gF0xPqYn1aHNcoOlAKxR4aZovRbWhD5THO_wohSW-AhsBINby16UQ/s1600/124362_gal.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiD3bGP12zwAqoFAW8zGvxw9AdnCP2t8angySmJMlyWIe9T9spBfqcHkwxMKdZQdji4rTnddKWRB2x2GHOx_gF0xPqYn1aHNcoOlAKxR4aZovRbWhD5THO_wohSW-AhsBINby16UQ/s320/124362_gal.jpg" width="213" /></a></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I find it ironic that she would use her co-star Downey as her example, since there was a very long time, called the 90s, where she was the reigning queen of young Hollywood and he figuratively couldn't get arrested in Hollywood, because he was almost constantly being literally arrested.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Take look at Gwyneth's box office record and you will start to wonder why she was considered so important, because it is <a href="http://www.boxofficemojo.com/people/chart/?id=gwynethpaltrow.htm"><span style="color: #021eaa; letter-spacing: 0px;">shockingly lacklustre</span></a>. She hasn't carried a film in well over a decade, and in most of the film's she does appear in the ones that do better feature the least Gwyneth they could get away with and still feature her in the credits. Her last starring role, opposite Johnny Depp in <i>Mortdecai</i>, was more than just a bomb, it set the standard for failure in every regard and category. In fact, without her role as Pepper Potts, Tony Stark's love interest she'd be almost entirely off the radar as a major actress. In fact, she could be replaced as Potts, and it's unlikely the audience would notice or care.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Paltrow's many public pronouncements, often via her blog GOOP, haven't helped her appeal at the box office. They make her appear to be a woman who has spent their entire life in a bubble of elite privilege who cannot grasp basic mortal concepts like break-ups and household economics. Every time she opens her mouth, I can't help but feel embarrassed for her and her inability to feel embarrassed for herself.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Gwyneth's mindset might make her fit in real well within Hollywood, but it's not going to win over middle Americans who buy movie tickets. </span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9vXunxT0a7R01D5ZpD902L9B_aodWLDojsPWEsqCplDQptqq7KpAnE2QP8L-yGAOJop970beDvYo0OxtORJbFybWSi1AY-gEsTobQCmeIzmeMbROVO29XmgZwZqVVXkw9xaERew/s1600/425px-Robert_Downey_Jr_avp_Iron_Man_3_Paris.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9vXunxT0a7R01D5ZpD902L9B_aodWLDojsPWEsqCplDQptqq7KpAnE2QP8L-yGAOJop970beDvYo0OxtORJbFybWSi1AY-gEsTobQCmeIzmeMbROVO29XmgZwZqVVXkw9xaERew/s320/425px-Robert_Downey_Jr_avp_Iron_Man_3_Paris.jpg" width="226" /></a><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Robert Downey Jr. managed probably the biggest transformation in movie history, going from being literally unemployable to one of the biggest box office stars in Hollywood thanks mostly to his work as Tony Stark/Iron Man*. Now he hasn't <a href="http://www.boxofficemojo.com/people/chart/?view=Actor&id=robertdowneyjr.htm"><span style="color: #021eaa; letter-spacing: 0px;">done much between his big franchise roles of Stark and Sherlock Holmes</span></a>, doing only a couple of starring roles, and some smaller guest appearances, which means he hasn't tainted his brand with too many turkeys.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">He also has his face on a good chunk of the top selling Marvel merchandise which is pure gravy when it comes to the cash flow. When the Pepper Potts lunchbox outsells the Iron Man one, then Gwyneth might have a case for equal pay on that front.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Which brings us to Jennifer Lawrence, who is the female equivalent of Robert Downey Jr., but <i>without</i> the multiple drug arrests and jail time. She has two popular franchises under her belt; as the central star of The Hunger Games, and as part of the X-Men ensemble, so why doesn't she make as much as RDJ?</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The answer, lies in choices.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Downey chooses to not take the pay cuts necessary to get a starring role in an smaller budget or independent movie. He's not getting any younger, and it looks like he's trying to bank as much as he can so he doesn't have to face the near total financial collapse he endured in his youth. Downey's contract, according to legend, is structured so that if his Marvel movies hit certain box office targets, he gets fat bonuses, and they've always exceeded the targets which make his bonuses bigger.</span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_U6phNw9wdqbDODivsOkybl4PYF2QhwtaDKAvvAwH_xNIu0f1Ifp8A7cnQ8aABnyoVe-GwNQq8H4boh3TRLHDrVMlgbJpqZtQlrucP3gzadqDcoUiZK2PeePqsbWQ1WrjZVotbg/s1600/Jennifer_Lawrence_at_the_83rd_Academy_Awards_crop.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_U6phNw9wdqbDODivsOkybl4PYF2QhwtaDKAvvAwH_xNIu0f1Ifp8A7cnQ8aABnyoVe-GwNQq8H4boh3TRLHDrVMlgbJpqZtQlrucP3gzadqDcoUiZK2PeePqsbWQ1WrjZVotbg/s320/Jennifer_Lawrence_at_the_83rd_Academy_Awards_crop.jpg" width="264" /></a><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">J-Law and money is a very different story. She's young, her career is literally just starting, but starting like a rocket, going from <a href="http://www.boxofficemojo.com/people/chart/?id=jenniferlawrence.htm"><span style="color: #021eaa; letter-spacing: 0px;">zero to supersonic with astonishing rapidity</span></a>. However, Lawrence is following a careful strategy that is designed to prevent her from being a flash in the pan who disappears as fast as she appears.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">That strategy involves forging partnerships with filmmakers, specifically indie darling and the John Ford to her John Wayne: David O. Russell, to forge a career outside of the franchises that shows off her skill as an actress and her charisma as a star. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">It's a smart strategy, because <i>The Hunger Games</i> is coming to an end, and playing the shapeshifter and villainous second-banana Mystique under a coat of blue makeup and prosthetics keeps her from completely making the part hers and hers alone. She could leave that franchise and I doubt it would cause any more than a cluster of incoherence on Twitter.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Working with Russell and his ilk means she can shine on her own without special effects, and it's working. Lawrence can make an indie film commercially viable with domestic box office in the $130-150+ million range, and earn critical plaudits, Academy award nominations and at least one win so far. These films give her both respectability and a commercial track record outside of franchise pictures, which will open doors for her in the future.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Now if she was demanding the same salary as Downey Jr. gets for an <i>Avengers</i> or <i>Iron Man</i> movie, then a lot of them wouldn't be getting made. She's sacrificing some up-front money, and is literally investing what she's not being paid into her career's longevity.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">However, that doesn't mean that J-Law has nothing to complain about.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">She apparently has plenty to complain about. In fact, she wrote an essay about how she was paid less than her male co-stars for their roles in <i>American Hustle</i>. She blames her lower salary on her own unwillingness to fight for a more equitable piece of the action out of fear of being branded "difficult" or be labelled a "spoiled brat" as producer Scott Rudin did in an e-mail about salary negotiations with Angelina Jolie.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I don't want to disagree with J-Law, because I do have a bit of a crush on her, but I have to explain that Hollywood's sexism problem, especially when it comes to salaries is not so much a conspiracy of one gender against another, but individuals, creating an outcome that can be <i>interpreted</i> as sexist, by the choices they make and why they make them.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Salary negotiations are essentially a game of poker. Everyone is placing their bets, not knowing what the other players have, and hoping that they have the winning hand. The cards in this game are box office record, past salaries, the film's budget, the film's expected box office, how much of that box-office can be attributed to the stars, and the amount of clout the players have within the Hollywood community. Actors and producers are competitors with each other at this stage. The stars want to get the most they can get when it comes to salaries and profit shares, and the producers want to pay out the least.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">That means that when an opportunity comes to save a dime, the producers will take it. They're not thinking about the gender politics of it all, they're just seeing numbers and dollar signs going from one column to another.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Now an actor are not supposed to be alone in this fight. They're supposed to have representation; agents, managers, and lawyers. Their job is to basically act the bastard and fight for every penny they can get for their clients. They are supposed to have a good estimate of what cards the other players have, and strategize accordingly.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">All of these factors go into who gets paid what, and can complicate things to where it might look like the dudes are getting a cash-for-genitalia-bonus, but it might really be that someone's reps are the one's lacking in testicular fortitude.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Jennifer Lawrence might kick herself for not fighting hard enough, when she should be asking why her "people" weren't picking up the fight for her. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Does this mean that Hollywood isn't really sexist after all?</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Oh hell no.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Hollywood does have a gender problem, but it's deeper and more complicated than anything that can be condensed into a little article like this one.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">______________</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">*In an odd side note when </span><i style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Iron Man</i><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> first went into development I said on an online film forum that Downey Jr. was the only man who could play Stark, and was promptly corrected that it was an impossibility. Well, guess who turned out to right after all. </span></span><br />
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Furious Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07934529688753875751noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24904037.post-89602664098091061262015-10-01T11:52:00.001-03:002015-10-01T11:52:46.200-03:00The Book Report: When Is A Contest Not A Contest?<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjLm2FKMqWYVRnJKPoVRE4FexjWBUJwSFeBK0qCeNHwa_r4aplDN2svLVYNzLskseyCMo2ZrbV0GhZ1mNEzzoI24mqC99rcwcfb36f2hckFbZRh7-wOCy7MTCU6K5muiJuuNmUIQ/s1600/MYsteriousPress_copy123_twitter.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjLm2FKMqWYVRnJKPoVRE4FexjWBUJwSFeBK0qCeNHwa_r4aplDN2svLVYNzLskseyCMo2ZrbV0GhZ1mNEzzoI24mqC99rcwcfb36f2hckFbZRh7-wOCy7MTCU6K5muiJuuNmUIQ/s200/MYsteriousPress_copy123_twitter.jpg" width="174" /></a><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Mysterious Press is a long running publishing imprint which is part of the Grove Atlantic Group. It specializes, naturally, in mystery and crime fiction, and is very selective about who it even considers publishing. To be looked at your novel must be submitted by an accredited literary agent, and I'm pretty sure that agent being someone they know and do business with regularly, and author having a publishing track record, probably doesn't hurt either.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">That's why it surprised me to see them announce that they <a href="http://mysteriouspress.com/contest/" target="_blank">were having a contest</a>. Writers could submit their novels to them and the winner gets published and a cash prize of about $25,000.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Sounds like a great contest, doesn't it?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Maybe, but it doesn't look like much of a contest to me. I'll get to that in a second, but first I need to give a bit of an explanation:</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgV5VRNWGN6Io20ABWrOdUajk0Qur4A7RX3rr89dtUXopD1sdZ8KatrowYjf9xGazvBjiI0ILdY62SXesIDhCCDtLV8L3zb2aQj1qtZFWd7WDbQ-ehhIAw4MuqQwYGhaI8gfgZXVQ/s1600/Underwoodfive.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgV5VRNWGN6Io20ABWrOdUajk0Qur4A7RX3rr89dtUXopD1sdZ8KatrowYjf9xGazvBjiI0ILdY62SXesIDhCCDtLV8L3zb2aQj1qtZFWd7WDbQ-ehhIAw4MuqQwYGhaI8gfgZXVQ/s320/Underwoodfive.jpg" width="320" /></a><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">You see, to get published a writer needs to win the lottery, <b>multiple times</b>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">First you have to get someone at an agency or a publisher to read your work and like it enough to pass it along up the industry's food chain.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Second, you have to have someone higher up the publishing food chain like it and give it the green-light to be published, and not get what happened to me. One time a novel of mine went right up to the publisher's desk, but he died suddenly, the replacement management lost it for 2+ years. Then an assistant editor found it and asked me to give them a second chance, I agreed, and I didn't hear from them again until 6 years and 11 months after I had originally submitted my novel. Then a bottom rung volunteer slush pile reader sent me a terse rejection letter that pretty much said that all my previous dealings with the company meant nothing, and those that had been promised to look at it, had never looked at it during all those years. And this was by a company that bragged about how respectfully it treated writers in their allegedly open submission policy.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Then your book has to be deemed good enough for them to market aggressively in the hope that it will find an audience. And let's hope that management or ownership doesn't change during this period, because the new regime might just dump your book for reasons that have nothing to do with quality or sales potential.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Then the book has to find that audience and sell well enough to open the door wide enough for the author to get another book published.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>At each step a writer is basically buying a lottery ticket with their blood, sweat, and tears, and each ticket has about 1,000,000 to 1 odds against it.</b></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Which is why when a publisher announces a contest looking for new novels the hearts of writers who haven't won any of these lotteries brightens a little bit.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Then they looked at the rules and wondered why they were calling it a contest at all.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">You see writers, both new or established, cannot enter their novels into Mysterious Press' contest. The novels must be entered, both electronically, and in print, by the writer's accredited literary agent.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Basically, the contest is them operating as usual, looking only at the people they would normally be looking at who already <b>won at least one of publishing's lotteries</b>, and would probably give more attention to someone who won two or more. And the prize, when you look at from that way, looks like a pretty standard publishing advance.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Why call it a contest if the company isn't changing any of its procedures and only pre-existing winners need apply?</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Contests for writers are supposed to be about beating the odds, and selling the myth that quality is all a book needs to be discovered, not pre-existing connections to the publishing world. This "contest" totally flops in that respect.</span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaJ7SH2U7NoMh-1qVTBHMOTVMik4i0zhyphenhyphenup8KL-Hvq3fAYASuVshBtmRrqcqQVmvMcbTQCJawve9yfzU4jL7cHM8KKsVJ37Gkxk_1tL2gmsFrplpxRHZEMQlSBAJvm1028VbKB5Q/s1600/1280px-Urval_av_de_bocker_som_har_vunnit_Nordiska_radets_litteraturpris_under_de_50_ar_som_priset_funnits_%25283%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaJ7SH2U7NoMh-1qVTBHMOTVMik4i0zhyphenhyphenup8KL-Hvq3fAYASuVshBtmRrqcqQVmvMcbTQCJawve9yfzU4jL7cHM8KKsVJ37Gkxk_1tL2gmsFrplpxRHZEMQlSBAJvm1028VbKB5Q/s320/1280px-Urval_av_de_bocker_som_har_vunnit_Nordiska_radets_litteraturpris_under_de_50_ar_som_priset_funnits_%25283%2529.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">It reminds me of an institution in Canada that was started in the late 1980s by some up and coming Canadian film and television companies. It's mission statement was to foster NEW Canadian writers to write NEW Canadian films.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I called them and asked them what it took to qualify for the programs. Their answer was that to qualify as a NEW Canadian writer you had to have had 2 feature films produced in Canada by a company they recognized, and at least on screenplay under option with a Canadian company they recognized.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">At the time there were about 2 writers in Canada under forty who might have qualified as "NEW" but even that chance was slim.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I asked an employee what they expected to accomplish with these guidelines and they just shrugged and said they didn't know. It did make the companies sponsoring this foundation look like they were doing something about the image that Canada's film industry was a closed shop run by a bunch of middle aged bureaucrats and near-bureaucrats who didn't give a toss about new people or even audiences.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">This looks like that mindset has spread to American publishing.</span></div>
Furious Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07934529688753875751noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24904037.post-31057753609712389992015-09-30T13:08:00.001-03:002015-09-30T13:10:46.778-03:00Hollywood Babble On & On #1252: An Open Letter To Quentin Tarantino<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Dear Quentin Tarantino.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZZSY3V1paOiPCS7fu0FkR1gtJixfS99uMx7GALxIwjG2D4zBgCEFJvJD8PIXUk_S2Nowr7rZs8aqtcAhyphenhyphen28NHtsQA0DQHLG7qMWiCfPb964mZpGFjb-MWhuF1w9X_StOKoyfv4Q/s1600/VHS-cassette.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"></span></a><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I respect, and even understand, your love of the look and feel of classic film stock. The hyper-vivid spectrum seen when watching early technicolor epics in high definition is a look and style I really love.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZZSY3V1paOiPCS7fu0FkR1gtJixfS99uMx7GALxIwjG2D4zBgCEFJvJD8PIXUk_S2Nowr7rZs8aqtcAhyphenhyphen28NHtsQA0DQHLG7qMWiCfPb964mZpGFjb-MWhuF1w9X_StOKoyfv4Q/s1600/VHS-cassette.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZZSY3V1paOiPCS7fu0FkR1gtJixfS99uMx7GALxIwjG2D4zBgCEFJvJD8PIXUk_S2Nowr7rZs8aqtcAhyphenhyphen28NHtsQA0DQHLG7qMWiCfPb964mZpGFjb-MWhuF1w9X_StOKoyfv4Q/s320/VHS-cassette.jpg" width="320" /></a><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">But I don't get this whole "<a href="http://www.avclub.com/article/quentin-tarantino-doesnt-stream-movies-still-tapes-226005" target="_blank">I hate Netflix and still tape everything on VHS</a>" thing you're going on about. VHS was a mixed bag with many pros and cons.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">One big pro for VHS was that it made renting and owning a movie that a movie lover can watch whenever they want a possibility. I have a reminder of the golden age of VHS because right next to my desk is a set of shelves where I still keep my old VHS tapes. (Among them <i>Reservoir Dogs</i> and <i>Pulp Fiction</i>)</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">However, there are many cons to VHS.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">#1. The initial picture quality ain't that great. It's like watching a washed out print, and most movies released on VHS were "pan & scanned" and badly at that, damaging even further the viewing experience when compared to a theatre, or even a decent television broadcast.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">#2. VHS tape decays over time. I'll bet a <i>diddle-eyed-joe to a damned-if-I-know</i>* that most of my old VHS collection, the youngest being 20 years old, are just plastic bricks with overwrought cover-art.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">#3. Recording something onto VHS from a modern hi-def cable-box is just a real pain in the ass when most have the option of a DVR included.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I'm not saying that online streaming services are perfect. They have their pros and cons, and being someone who loves collecting movies, I like being able to physically own a copy that I can keep on a shelf to watch whenever I want and not be dependent on the whims and algorithms of a streaming service. That's why, when I can, I get the DVDs and Blu-Rays of the movies I really love.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Now most are writing this off as "Oh there goes eccentric Quentin again" but I'm not.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I suspect that this is not out of a deep seeded eccentricity, but a very shallow affectation.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Look deep and ask yourself: "Am I doing this because I really feel that I need to, or am I doing this because I think this is the sort of thing I'm <i>expected</i> to do?"</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">That is the difference between a real eccentricity, and an affectation.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">If you're honest with yourself, you might be surprised by the answer.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">-Furious D.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">*Reservoir Dogs Reference Alert.</span></div>
Furious Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07934529688753875751noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24904037.post-45676054482191717112015-09-23T14:18:00.001-03:002015-09-23T14:18:14.065-03:00Hollywood Babble On & On #1251: The Stonewall Mystery<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4WQcLPuAw5vEQiNGZ4oZZ8UjFmq_L4cn8nug6fzJ_uKEO5EBHNMg1iPTuvKePRvSIRvIuw7nr0EGSZ_QJhS8fqcHU3eYtsUbIwVgAKdSefqtv6Atg6IzaelxArxCh15xT4JWpQg/s1600/Stonewall_%25282015_film%2529_poster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4WQcLPuAw5vEQiNGZ4oZZ8UjFmq_L4cn8nug6fzJ_uKEO5EBHNMg1iPTuvKePRvSIRvIuw7nr0EGSZ_QJhS8fqcHU3eYtsUbIwVgAKdSefqtv6Atg6IzaelxArxCh15xT4JWpQg/s320/Stonewall_%25282015_film%2529_poster.jpg" width="209" /></a><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Director Roland Emmerich, best known for his tendencies to spend massive amounts of money to pretend blowing up landmarks on screen, and for a <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/gallery/2008/oct/25/roland-emmerich-london-home" target="_blank">dubious taste in home decor</a> has a new film out called <i>Stonewall</i>, about the 1969 Stonewall Riots, and guess what: everybody hates it.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Critics are calling it a disaster, the gay community, whose story the film claims to tell, is calling it an abomination, and most likely audiences are going to call it a miss.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Now this presents a mystery that I would like to solve, but before I get to that, I think you might need a little background.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Our story begins in the late 1960s. At that time there was no gay rights movement. In fact, most of what is now called the LGBT community were more interested in not getting assaulted, locked up, either in prison or a mental hospital, or blackmailed. Places for them to socialize were rare, and the few that did exist were usually owned by gangsters, and regularly harassed by the police, either through constant raids or demands for payoffs.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">One such place was The Stonewall Inn in New York's Greenwich Village. It was often described as a dive. The place was ugly, seedy, usually crowded, with more than a few shady customers, the staff wasn't big on checking ID, or doing their jobs all that well, and the less said about the state of the bathrooms, the better.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEha0Jpku1Nwc33JLPYf0KTSPFzKvznJLq9QyHDU0iHydkQYZDoMsXrCDtHWmE-_jyyedbQv-G6JkDAG1VCn466SV8UcKJbKNqxPebQrxj7Ka5x2sT9JFt3rwGUs12z-uu3wbvmbmw/s1600/Stonewall_Inn_1969.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEha0Jpku1Nwc33JLPYf0KTSPFzKvznJLq9QyHDU0iHydkQYZDoMsXrCDtHWmE-_jyyedbQv-G6JkDAG1VCn466SV8UcKJbKNqxPebQrxj7Ka5x2sT9JFt3rwGUs12z-uu3wbvmbmw/s320/Stonewall_Inn_1969.jpg" width="209" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">But Stonewall was relatively large, it allowed the customers to dance, another rarity, and its mobbed up owners usually made sure the NYPD's Public Morals Squad were paid off, making it a bit safer than many of the other places in the city. One night in 1969 something went wrong. No one is sure if a payment was missed, or if the cops were just feeling ambitious, but the place got raided right at the peak time for trouble. The place was packed, the weather was hot, and the crowd's mood was fired up by a combo of intoxication and anger at years of regular harassment.</span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">The raid didn't go to plan, the cops lost control of the situation quickly, and a full scale riot broke out.</span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">That riot sparked what is now called the Gay Pride movement, and is seen as a pivotal </span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">moment in the history of America's gay community.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">It's a story that's more dramatic and complex than my little summary could possibly tell, full of colourful characters, and is the sort of underdog story that might take it from beyond a niche audience to somewhat wider appeal.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4sHI9hyphenhyphen1HXVgiwE4Ve9MIR3MchPty3bgwFfOGHbDu6lUKEG8wQysxMUvh9IeoxH3vkTE4kI4UwOiQgmMSskmNkyo2NfiMpbfwA5wBAz2ZEngW6Qzz6WauPdzleNYRpxdeAaDv8w/s1600/800px-Roland_Emmerich.5228.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4sHI9hyphenhyphen1HXVgiwE4Ve9MIR3MchPty3bgwFfOGHbDu6lUKEG8wQysxMUvh9IeoxH3vkTE4kI4UwOiQgmMSskmNkyo2NfiMpbfwA5wBAz2ZEngW6Qzz6WauPdzleNYRpxdeAaDv8w/s320/800px-Roland_Emmerich.5228.jpg" width="239" /></a><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Which brings me to the mystery of the <i>Stonewall</i> movie: <b>Why did they give the green-light to Roland Emmerich?</b></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The Stonewall story requires a filmmaker who can express and explain the complexities inherent in it. Someone who can bring the stories of the real people to life, and use it to possibly bridge the gaps between the LGBT community and the wider "straight community."</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Emmerich is not that filmmaker, and in no possible way can he be mistaken for that kind of filmmaker.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Emmerich's the crass vulgarian spawn of blind commercialism and a particularly childish kind of post-modernism where as long as he looks down on what he's doing, he doesn't have to try to be good at it. His specialty is destroying famous landmarks with CGI while cardboard cut-out <i>Hollywood-marketing-executive-friendly</i> stereotypes recite hackneyed dialogue written with a shovel from a compost heap of cliches.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">He's also known for tossing scientific and historical accuracy out the window. And not for taking liberties in the name of narrative cohesion, character development, or even to compress events for time. Emmerich does it for stuff he thinks looks good in the trailer.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The investors and producers who financed this film should have known that.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">They also should have known that we live in the Golden Age of Offence. People get horribly outraged over little things, so the people behind the film should have known that something as inherently politicized as the story behind <i>Stonewall</i> would be nitpicked for so-called micro-aggressions and macro-douchebaggery.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Getting the film would require diplomacy, and class, two things Emmerich doesn't have.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">When asked about why he downgraded all the real people, who were predominantly black and hispanic, to focus on a fictional caucasian lead/saviour, Emmerich replied by saying he knows what sells and they don't.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">That's only going to make it worse, especially in this hypersensitive day and age. It only serves to alienate the core audience the film needs to take that step towards a more mainstream audience.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">You see it is possible to take a story like the Stonewall Riot, and make a film that's both compelling and possibly successful. You just have to follow these simple steps:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>1. Be as accurate as you can be.</b> Everyone knows that liberties and changes have to be made when bringing a true story to the screen, but there's a limit to how far you can go. It may be necessary to create a fictional "gateway" character that would allow the audience to get the know the milieu they're being brought into, but that character should not overshadow, or outrightly replace the real people at the heart of the story. A good gateway character would be a tabloid journalist, assigned to write a lurid exposé about an underground subculture witnessing history and learning about the shared humanity I'll be getting to shortly. That way you have a someone who has an excuse to witness events without taking anything away from the actual participants.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>2. Don't offend the core audience.</b> If the front line of people most interested in the Stonewall story are going to feel short-changed or even insulted by your film, then your film will fail on every level. The only way you can defuse criticism is by embracing as much of the truth of the source material as you can. If they say "I don't like that part" the only viable defence is to say: "I'm sorry, but that's what actually happened, and I'm trying to tell the truth." If you're just making shit up, and that angers the core audience, you have no defence.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>3. Emphasize what's shared.</b> For any film about the Stonewall Riots to succeed it would need to cross over to at least part of the mainstream audience. Now Emmerich fails because he thinks along the lines of marketing, by casting someone who goes too far when it comes to identifying with the mainstream audience. According to some reports they just barely stop short of giving him a girlfriend, which sort of defeats the purpose.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">You don't sell a film about a minority to the majority by trying to hide the differences. Instead you acknowledge those differences quite clearly, but emphasize what they share on a deeper human level.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Going just be surface appearances the average American doesn't look like they have much in common with the average citizen of India. So how did <i>Gandhi</i> become a success in an era less "diverse" and "politically correct" than today?</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Because when they sold the film they emphasized that the characters, despite their ethnic/religious background, were human beings facing the all too human problems of being outcast and harried as the underdogs.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Emmerich doesn't seem remotely interested in shared humanity. He seems interested in padding his resume with what he thinks will be Oscar bait simply because of its subject matter without the work and sensitivity to make something that does justice to the subject matter and the audience.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Anyway, if the people who financed this picture still have some money lying around, and still want to make movies, call me. For a reasonable fee, I can do research about subjects and people to help save you the hassles you're facing now.</span></div>
Furious Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07934529688753875751noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24904037.post-43666515588195192762015-09-10T11:23:00.000-03:002015-09-10T11:23:28.271-03:00Hollywood Babble On & On #1250: Deserving Better Than A Remake?<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">Here's a great video about Remakes from Good Bad Flicks (h/t Nate Winchester):</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/34yKiPq0kCs?rel=0" width="560"></iframe></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">Which is a good segue to today's topic, which is the news that MMA fighter Ronda Rousey will star in a "re-imagining" of the 1989 Patrick Swayze vehicle <i>Roadhouse</i> for MGM.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOEAZFKjDK2eDzVkVW6DuP83Ks1NZGjV1EQae1vwGaRdBnIk5krAOIRDME-OxlIYXo2E86nrkZ2i2z9QyDPIQugOWwRouWnlWG-sJCcnGeKbtDUFhKVJfV217WGZ5E3cFrOvsSgA/s1600/COerRU5U8AAvJzI.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="224" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOEAZFKjDK2eDzVkVW6DuP83Ks1NZGjV1EQae1vwGaRdBnIk5krAOIRDME-OxlIYXo2E86nrkZ2i2z9QyDPIQugOWwRouWnlWG-sJCcnGeKbtDUFhKVJfV217WGZ5E3cFrOvsSgA/s400/COerRU5U8AAvJzI.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">When I heard the news my first thought was that she should beat up her agent.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">Why?</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">Because if she's serious about a movie career would remaking a movie that marked the death knell of the 80s action movie golden age that started with <i>The Terminator</i>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgp_cYCsNPv9fMFQAbBTF5nVgaqWkA_FCUkzyulEG1f0XV5AK24ZfYHnsXC2Egr8-xPExBLe7mXF5uT4obvwFpP7LRai1GlUzYvmiwFrQmIcCGuOZe0KKxu9ZOoqCJcsc9wfqKrng/s1600/Road-house-poster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgp_cYCsNPv9fMFQAbBTF5nVgaqWkA_FCUkzyulEG1f0XV5AK24ZfYHnsXC2Egr8-xPExBLe7mXF5uT4obvwFpP7LRai1GlUzYvmiwFrQmIcCGuOZe0KKxu9ZOoqCJcsc9wfqKrng/s320/Road-house-poster.jpg" width="216" /></a><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">You see, by 1989 Hollywood was worried that action movies about cops, soldiers, and secret agents were passé and tried to reinvent any occupation that might throw a punch as some sort of ninja-combat master.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">Which is how we ended up with a movie about a ninja-bouncer taking on a small town gangster whose whole operation looked like it came from a rejected script from the <i>A-Team</i>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">The film fizzled at the box-office, but gained a cult following on home-video and cable by those who watch cheesy movies to enjoy them ironically. It also marked the beginning of the end of mainstream street-level action movies that went on to become more and more dominated by special effects and eventually superheroes.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">This has given MGM the delusion that the general audience is hungry for more <i>Roadhouse</i>, ignoring that they already had a 2006 sequel that came and went on DVD without even the studio noticing.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">I think shoving her into an over-priced un-imagining of a film that left most of the audience cold when was first released is a big mistake when it would be so easy to come up with a catchy original premise for her to star in, that would be hers and could mark the beginning of a new franchise.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">She's young, attractive, and can kick ass with extreme prejudice. Coming up with starring vehicles she can call her own would be the easiest thing to whip up.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKzGjGgQ_1aBoTgqAMUJcspYyQRyLfsyvizMiKE81e3cmV_RC6pO5Q9j4Uu2GbZmSwXiQs2vioS2C2UYFqqge07KtHfMpLVR2Kwqxx0K6WzQX_IiJY1npPJhkv5O8dUBBiogGU7Q/s1600/COe2pRUWEAAtp62.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="223" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKzGjGgQ_1aBoTgqAMUJcspYyQRyLfsyvizMiKE81e3cmV_RC6pO5Q9j4Uu2GbZmSwXiQs2vioS2C2UYFqqge07KtHfMpLVR2Kwqxx0K6WzQX_IiJY1npPJhkv5O8dUBBiogGU7Q/s400/COe2pRUWEAAtp62.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">To show you how easy it is I will pull some out of my ass right here, right now:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;"><b><u>THE LONG DROP</u></b>: Rousey's a rookie detective sent to pick up a witness working in a half-completed skyscraper. The witness is the only one who knows where a fortune in laundered money is hidden. When she arrives the place is crawling with hired killers, gangsters, and thieves, all out to find the missing money, including her own partner.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">Ass-kicking, rescuing, and dangling from great heights ensues.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">There, you got everything you want to kick off a good two-fisted action franchise without the baggage and nonsense associated with a remake.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;"><b><u>THE STARLET</u></b>: This is more of an action comedy premise which would depend heavily on her comic talents. Rousey plays a seemingly harmless and slightly klutzy actress who is targeted by crooks either to be kidnapped for ransom or because she has or knows something they want. What the crooks don't know is that, despite appearances, she has a devastating punch and a knack for foiling their schemes even unintentionally.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">Naturally, lots of slapstick insanity ensues.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">See, two very different and lively original premises that are guaranteed to work better than remaking some old nonsense.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">Plus, my premises are for sale. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">Cash up front please.</span></div>
Furious Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07934529688753875751noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24904037.post-95282385533973222015-08-31T15:57:00.000-03:002015-08-31T15:59:38.647-03:00Hollywood Babble On & On #1249: An Open Letter To International Audiences<div style="margin-bottom: 6px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Dear Movie International Movie Audiences.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Stop it.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">You know what I'm talking about, if not, here's a little reminder from the twitter feed of Exhibitor Relations, the service that monitors the global movie box office:</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">TERMINATOR: GENISYS has scored $82.8M in China in 8 days. Int'l total: $320M, $400M+ worldwide. That's the magic #, folks. </span></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">— Exhibitor Relations (@ERCboxoffice) <span style="color: #021eaa; letter-spacing: 0px;"><a boxoffice="" href="https://www.blogger.com/%3Ca%20href=" https:="" status="" twitter.com="">https://twitter.com/ERCboxoffice/status/638118978741739522</a> </span>August 30, 2015</span></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"></span></span></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">PIXELS is now the highest grossing Adam Sandler film of all time overseas with $115M. Real nice, foreigners, real nice. </span></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">— Exhibitor Relations (@ERCboxoffice) <span style="color: #021eaa; letter-spacing: 0px;"><a boxoffice="" href="https://www.blogger.com/%3Ca%20href=" https:="" status="" twitter.com="">https://twitter.com/ERCboxoffice/status/638118367719653376</a> </span>August 30, 2015</span></span></span></blockquote>
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</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0px;"></span> <script async="" charset="utf-8" src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Now do you see what you've done, or do I have to rub your nose in it?</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">You took two movies that North American audiences had the good sense to spurn as one would spurn fly-laden dog turd and you made them, not successful, but given them the APPEARANCE of being successful.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6px; text-align: justify;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpPpLVoR6Sk8zKSqcb6eRvB3Nc2HSBGw2ILpRD-c8Y3EIALkWA_BYZXHUENokkFuCbafFGiggxqDBRLLsIA2ZRD_LvoyCFtgVvc0USEV2_MC62d8t_bkCRvzLt3g-MBv0iLCD37A/s1600/rant-small.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpPpLVoR6Sk8zKSqcb6eRvB3Nc2HSBGw2ILpRD-c8Y3EIALkWA_BYZXHUENokkFuCbafFGiggxqDBRLLsIA2ZRD_LvoyCFtgVvc0USEV2_MC62d8t_bkCRvzLt3g-MBv0iLCD37A/s200/rant-small.jpg" width="173" /></a><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">You see, Hollywood operates along a philosophy of appearance over substance. </span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">But to understand it, you have to understand how films make money.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">It's next to impossible for a major Hollywood movie to profit in the theatres. It just costs too damn much to make and release a so-called blockbuster these days. Even including the international markets doesn't help, because the studios don't have as big a share of the box office, called "The Rental," in Asia and Europe as they do in North America. </span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">If the film is going to turn a profit it needs to be seen as worthy of repeat viewing either on DVD, Blu-Ray, or licensing to television channels and video streaming services like Netflix, or Amazon.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">To key is the licensing deals. They are where the profits lie, but there's a catch.</span></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1k5_DOONQkSa6HHS-Bd36HxACiOpbP4QVlpze3arnqLIQWzet18sZtIQo8OsMsIqiqFBOvBh4NLH7HRYlaDrCV6ltnUawt2V5eS-WGwldJcbiIUaS0iTggd1EyXkWO6l_HgtuWQ/s1600/Copy+of+meteor8.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="134" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1k5_DOONQkSa6HHS-Bd36HxACiOpbP4QVlpze3arnqLIQWzet18sZtIQo8OsMsIqiqFBOvBh4NLH7HRYlaDrCV6ltnUawt2V5eS-WGwldJcbiIUaS0iTggd1EyXkWO6l_HgtuWQ/s320/Copy+of+meteor8.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The people who run TV channels, and streaming services will only pay the big bucks to license hits, or, what look like hits.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">That means that the studios can now take a dropped deuce like Adam Sandler's Pixels and say: "Look, it was a huge success internationally, you show things internationally, so give us some big money."</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Then there is message the international audiences give studios, filmmakers and stars.</span></span></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFeBgkM_DPUr8GTwQARdIM0St7HDIdmXj8iO7mZBleI5HepLOt0GSkrulrF_uKH95NFMJyYUfvBkQy_w66yjvS8Z8TAcdo8eeF2xka2ko6KWBI4JRquVyMr9iRjUaVIVM2NHOewg/s1600/Terminated+Companies.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFeBgkM_DPUr8GTwQARdIM0St7HDIdmXj8iO7mZBleI5HepLOt0GSkrulrF_uKH95NFMJyYUfvBkQy_w66yjvS8Z8TAcdo8eeF2xka2ko6KWBI4JRquVyMr9iRjUaVIVM2NHOewg/s640/Terminated+Companies.jpg" width="204" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;"><b>Companies that went under after making<br />a Terminator movie.</b></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">In the case of <i>Tyrmynatyr: Gynysys</i> it means that producers won't take the franchise off the life support it's been on for 20 years, and will keep grinding out more installments, regardless of quality, or how many producers go bankrupt.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">In Adam Sandler's case it means he'll just keep on squeezing out the lazy, tedious, and unentertaining movies and not stop and buckle down, and put his nose to the grindstone to do something that might actually be entertaining.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">This makes you, the international audience, the equivalent of an uncle who greets his nephew, who is fresh out of rehab, with a celebratory crock of rum and a dime bag of heroin.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Is there a way to stop this?</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Not really.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">That's because Hollywood doesn't see that it has a problem, because the "international audiences" seem to love what they're doing, and it gives them the illusory appearance of not only success, but of being cosmopolitan and shrewd.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">It's just that, an appearance, and it's a lie, but appearances are all that matters.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">So if you're a member of the international moviegoing audience, and you're wondering why Hollywood keeps putting out so many bad movies, take a look in the mirror.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">You're a part of the problem, please become more discerning, and then you'll be part of the solution.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Sincerely</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 6px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">--Furious D.</span></span></div>
Furious Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07934529688753875751noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24904037.post-27734654295509401262015-08-24T14:02:00.002-03:002015-08-24T14:02:28.988-03:00Hollywood Babble On & On #1248: A Matter of Sex?<div style="font-family: Helvetica; margin-bottom: 6px; text-align: justify;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYNaqZJ34YTjnaH2hk2WPSXcV2H9c008wXtB0GtaQPUduezSWTNjTvXKtrl3BWrx3mwqmeiAIn-RB2A5o7cSQiEcoZeDHyUNddl6SVVdi8gG__kPQij1O25wOWBTKeWa77xXTK2w/s1600/Jurassic_World_poster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYNaqZJ34YTjnaH2hk2WPSXcV2H9c008wXtB0GtaQPUduezSWTNjTvXKtrl3BWrx3mwqmeiAIn-RB2A5o7cSQiEcoZeDHyUNddl6SVVdi8gG__kPQij1O25wOWBTKeWa77xXTK2w/s320/Jurassic_World_poster.jpg" width="202" /></a><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Director Colin Trevorrow is the latest target of the Twitter outrage mob, but it's not for stealing jokes, instead his sin appears to being successful while in possession of a penis.</span></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; margin-bottom: 6px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Trevorrow's career is being touted as an overnight success story, ignoring the fact that he spent well over a decade struggling to get things made before he finally was deemed employable on a major gig with the offbeat and critically acclaimed sci-fi film <i>Safety Not Guaranteed</i>. That film got him the gig on <i>Jurassic World</i>, and <i>Jurassic World</i> went on to make over $1.6 Billion at the box office, and that led to him getting signed to direct an upcoming <i>Star Wars </i>movie for Disney.</span></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; margin-bottom: 6px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Naturally when someone explodes into success like that there are critics who imply that Trevorrow's success isn't due to his hard work, that he had some sort of privileged "in" with the industry. In the old days that alleged "in" was a rumoured relationship with someone high up, be it familial or sexual, but these are modern times, and the critics now say it's all about gender, which one you have, and which one you would like to have sex with.</span></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; margin-bottom: 6px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Overnight Trevorrow went from indie darling to twitter's favourite cisgendered boogeyman who only gets the big jobs because he has the correct genitalia.</span></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; margin-bottom: 6px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">When asked directly on twitter Trevorrow made a horrible mistake, he tried to defend himself:</span></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLk7Y3hDAyzyEezsEmr7IezhElgKEBbjhe9iRKIQsMHBRt_WYF69GY-mCyRuETd7IJQQk9XTyEHg3WYf0ego-nRlOrGLMoE4IDUqiC6nhFAkoZWEh_vP0hZKtI2Ci8FwM9wUubxA/s1600/Trevorrow+Twitter+Crisis.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLk7Y3hDAyzyEezsEmr7IezhElgKEBbjhe9iRKIQsMHBRt_WYF69GY-mCyRuETd7IJQQk9XTyEHg3WYf0ego-nRlOrGLMoE4IDUqiC6nhFAkoZWEh_vP0hZKtI2Ci8FwM9wUubxA/s640/Trevorrow+Twitter+Crisis.jpg" width="496" /></span></a></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; margin-bottom: 6px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Now some say that Trevorrow chose the wrong words, but let me explain something about crises like these:</span></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; margin-bottom: 6px; text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><span style="font-size: x-large;">THERE ARE NO RIGHT WORDS.</span></b></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; margin-bottom: 6px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Nothing he can say or do, short of announcing that he's quitting Hollywood to join a monastery in Tibet, and can somehow magically force all the jobs he's signed for, and will ever would be signed for will now go to women directors, whether they want to do those jobs or not.</span></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; margin-bottom: 6px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">If he explains how he got the job then he's "mansplaining," and is thus officially worse than Hitler, and if he says nothing, then he's acting disdainful towards women, and is officially worse than Hitler.</span></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; margin-bottom: 6px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">It's the ultimate Catch-22 of the Internet. Be damned for existing, be damned for defending yourself, or be damned for <i>not</i> defending yourself.</span></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; margin-bottom: 6px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Now I'm not saying that Hollywood doesn't have a gender problem.</span></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; margin-bottom: 6px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">It does have a bad gender problem. </span></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; margin-bottom: 6px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">When Sandra Bullock, who is a pretty reliable box-office player, capable of carrying a dead weight like George Clooney into blockbuster land, has a hard time finding a decent role, Hollywood has a gender problem.</span></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; margin-bottom: 6px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">The problem's roots are not a bunch of men sitting around a conference table saying "How many qualified women can we deny employment this month?" If it was, then it would just be a matter of getting around or rid of those guys.</span></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; margin-bottom: 6px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Only the problem is more complex, and the solutions aren't coming because of these major problems:</span></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; margin-bottom: 6px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">1. THOSE IN POWER DON'T SEE THAT THEY'RE THE PROBLEM.</span></b></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; margin-bottom: 6px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Imagine that you're a studio mogul and you hear that not enough women are working in Hollywood your first thought will be: "Those other guys must be horribly sexist." That's because you can't conceive that you might contribute to the problem in any way. There are lots of women working in your office, you might be a woman yourself, you also hold fundraisers for the correct candidates and the correct causes, and you vote for the correct candidates. There's no way in your mind that you can see that you're causing this inequity, and you won't hear it from the critics because...</span></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; margin-bottom: 6px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">2. THE CRITICS PICK ON THE WRONG TARGETS.</span></b></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; margin-bottom: 6px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Now Colin Trevorrow did not hire himself to direct Jurassic World. He was hired by Stephen Spielberg's production company and Universal Pictures to direct the movie.</span></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; margin-bottom: 6px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">So why is Trevorrow the target of so much anger and blame?</span></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbkO3v_cs56pd0rPJEJaVhRDUthyjlMuhHP68Q06Ms8XaWyFEwKiYKZaf6FxyVuWCXIMeZhJYmaVv8Xd8Y57nqh6MbDJ29fb0Kg0lSbVN6w6cl-g_tsVPIwY62TU_if5JPdzLBvQ/s1600/SafetyNotGuaranteed.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbkO3v_cs56pd0rPJEJaVhRDUthyjlMuhHP68Q06Ms8XaWyFEwKiYKZaf6FxyVuWCXIMeZhJYmaVv8Xd8Y57nqh6MbDJ29fb0Kg0lSbVN6w6cl-g_tsVPIwY62TU_if5JPdzLBvQ/s320/SafetyNotGuaranteed.jpg" width="216" /></a></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; margin-bottom: 6px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Because Trevorrow is essentially powerless when it comes to people's careers. Amblin and Universal are not. If they're doing a Google search on a female director they're considering hiring and find her bad-tweeting them as sexist pigs, they're not going to hire that person.</span></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; margin-bottom: 6px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">However, if they see her picking on some other hired gun, then it won't matter to them, because unless they're mentioned by name, they can't imagine that they're involved in any way.</span></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; margin-bottom: 6px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">3. NO ONE TAKES INDIVIDUAL CHOICE INTO THE EQUATION.</span></b></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; margin-bottom: 6px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Trevorrow's defence mentioned cases of female directors turn down the big monster and superhero heavy blockbusters the studios are dependent on, and he might be right.</span></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; margin-bottom: 6px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">I don't know, and you don't know, because neither of us can read the minds and souls of other people, and fully understand why they take or turn down jobs.</span></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; margin-bottom: 6px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">It's the same problem with the whole women are paid 75¢ for every $1 a man is paid. People are led to believe that a female teller is paid less than a male bank teller with the same seniority because he gets a magic 25% penis bonus. </span></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; margin-bottom: 6px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">That's not true.</span></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; margin-bottom: 6px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">The inequity in incomes comes from the simple fact that it encompasses all occupations. That means that the women who choose to take a lower paying retail or office jobs over the high paying, but dangerous male-dominant job of Alaskan oil rig roughneck because they don't want to give up a few fingers for cash, are skewing the results. </span></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; margin-bottom: 6px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">4. ALL THIS ILLOGIC MAKES HOLLYWOOD A TERRIBLE OFFENDER.</span></b></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; margin-bottom: 6px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Ironically, Hollywood who is a big proponent for the 75¢ myth is the one workplace where actresses actually are paid less and have a smaller choice of roles than actors of equal box-office appeal. </span></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; margin-bottom: 6px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">So what can be done?</span></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; margin-bottom: 6px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Well, many moons ago I worked out a formula to determine star power, and thus the appropriate salary, and it'll solve this problem, because it doesn't include genitalia in the calculations.</span></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; margin-bottom: 6px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Here it is:</span></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; margin-bottom: 6px; text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><span style="font-size: x-large;">(A+B)-C= B.O.S.S.</span></b></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; margin-bottom: 6px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">B.O.S.S. stands for "Bums On Seats Status" or if you want to be more scientific sounding "Box-Office Sales Status" and is a fair and accurate assessment of what a movie star's real box-office appeal is.</span></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; margin-bottom: 6px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">So here is how you do it.</span></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; margin-bottom: 6px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>A</b>: This is a percentage of how many profitable films the star has been the lead in for the past 5 years. </span></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; margin-bottom: 6px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Don't go by the studios profit/loss statements, they contain more fiction than a Barnes & Noble superstore. </span></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; margin-bottom: 6px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">For the purpose of this formula you take the production costs of the film, double it, and add $30 million. This will give you a rough estimate of the total costs of the film, including prints, marketing, distribution as well as the theatre's piece of the action. If the box-office take is more than this amount, it's profitable, if it's less, it's a money loser.</span></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; margin-bottom: 6px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>B</b>: Now this is the only part of the formula where market surveys are used. You do a poll of average moviegoers about the star in question and take the percentage of people who say that they would pay to see that star in a movie, and deduct 90% of that value. </span></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; margin-bottom: 6px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">I call for the chopping of the 90% because the majority of people who answer the poll are just being polite, or so lonely they will talk to anyone and say anything to keep the talk going.</span></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; margin-bottom: 6px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Trust me, I know how wildly inaccurate they can be having been involved with a clever sketch comedy pilot that was bastardized into a sitcom about mischievous angels based on a cream cheese commercial because of market research.</span></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; margin-bottom: 6px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>C</b>: This is a percentage of movies that have been <i>negatively</i> affected by the star. Now this can be interpreted in several ways. The most concrete involve profitability lost due to the over-sized salary or unprofessional behaviour of the star in question. A star who drives up the budget isn't really worth it.</span></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; margin-bottom: 6px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Now you add all that up together and you should get a score between 1 and 100, you then compare that score to this easy to read chart.</span></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; margin-bottom: 6px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>SCORE 0-10</b>: This actor's next role should feature the line: "Do you want fries with that?"</span></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; margin-bottom: 6px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>SCORE 11-30</b>: This actor might be okay cast as a wacky neighbour on a sitcom on the CW network.</span></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; margin-bottom: 6px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>SCORE 31-50</b>: This star could be either on the way up, or on the way down. Stick to supporting roles in big-budget projects, leads in small budgets.</span></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; margin-bottom: 6px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>SCORE 51-70</b>: You can call this person a "star" but unless you have a good script and a good director making a good film, it will still be a bit of a crap-shoot. They should get good money, but not so much that it cripples the budget, and points only if they are willing to take a cut in the up front money.</span></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; margin-bottom: 6px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>SCORE 71-90</b>: The word 'bankable' might be used now. They have the charisma to sell a picture, and may even be forgiven the odd stinker or two, but you shouldn't push it too far. They should get good money, and a modest points deal.</span></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; margin-bottom: 6px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>SCORE 91-100+</b>: These actors can sell out a theatre with dramatic readings of the Peoria Illinois phone book. They are worth every penny they can get, and a heap of points too because you're going to be swimming in money like Scrooge McDuck on a meth binge.</span></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; margin-bottom: 6px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">My solution is rational, logical, can be adapted to handle hiring behind the camera as well, and it leaves gender out.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; margin-bottom: 6px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Which means it will <b><i>never</i></b> be used.</span></span></div>
Furious Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07934529688753875751noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24904037.post-74763250491503314232015-08-17T14:10:00.000-03:002015-08-17T14:26:38.694-03:00On Comedy: Stop Thief!-- Joke Stealing Is No Laughing Matter!<div style="margin-bottom: 6px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Hardly a week goes by without Twitter exploding in righteous indignation about one offence or another. Be it a dead lion, or an insensitive quip, livelihoods and lives can be ruined by a wave of righteous torch-bearing mob-indignation. Normally I steer clear of such outrage, but this time I just had to comment.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">It all started when someone on my timeline retweeted this:</span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7WbxIE46p668BK3aRT9p4eaZh1zSM-qdFKlBc1yH7gdgP_RSEDEfEmMs_OF5EzDk5zQPAN75sAgK7LGbU29ci43foNZjQzzPIKlB_1BLPomTfx76ojAYOad2qhZOj56j1wkcIPw/s1600/Screen+Shot+2015-08-17+at+8.13.31+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7WbxIE46p668BK3aRT9p4eaZh1zSM-qdFKlBc1yH7gdgP_RSEDEfEmMs_OF5EzDk5zQPAN75sAgK7LGbU29ci43foNZjQzzPIKlB_1BLPomTfx76ojAYOad2qhZOj56j1wkcIPw/s640/Screen+Shot+2015-08-17+at+8.13.31+AM.png" width="452" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Before this post, I had never heard of Josh Ostrovsky who tweets and instagrams under the nom-de-douche "The Fat Jew," but I felt compelled to investigate.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Why?</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Because while jokes are inherently silly, joke theft is not. </span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcPb1CU24uQSLSS4e_KYiEFI1Bb6q7UgOqUU_5ycD9WYztHmrvH7a1zsz6SgB5hHAn5o_T4nJ9UkDmTjk6y3j2OneJXTHe3p1VAoGB0-sJ44Bf4NOP0zyVaH20-fsmPlKanZQR4A/s1600/jaccuse.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="170" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcPb1CU24uQSLSS4e_KYiEFI1Bb6q7UgOqUU_5ycD9WYztHmrvH7a1zsz6SgB5hHAn5o_T4nJ9UkDmTjk6y3j2OneJXTHe3p1VAoGB0-sJ44Bf4NOP0zyVaH20-fsmPlKanZQR4A/s320/jaccuse.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">My research, thin as it was, revealed that Ostrovsky fancies himself a "performance artist" and the "curator or aggregator of the internet." Those titles require a little translation. "Performance Artist" really means unimaginative hack who seeks to get paid for acting like a pretentious hipster dickhead, and "Curator or Aggregator" is pretentious hipster douchebag-speak for "guy who steals other people's jokes and passes them off as his own." Not only has he been <a href="http://starcasm.net/archives/325801"><span style="color: #021eaa; letter-spacing: 0px;">stealing jokes</span></a> from <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Op0qLefURHbnK7wL9Pbm3cuRlOc3pauNBsHQvd-Deic/edit%23gid=0"><span style="color: #021eaa; letter-spacing: 0px;">hundreds</span></a>, maybe thousands of people, he's been, according to professional Canuck shit-disturber Gavin McInnes, <a href="http://streetcarnage.com/blog/fat-jew-steals-jokes/"><span style="color: #021eaa; letter-spacing: 0px;">doing it for years</span></a>.</span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4E-T77EVu_hTIUa3FMtlDmhshY-nlO9J0hgFwK0xOzMn3_qT-1t-TMQVUtxsS37rVz5-HeAFAd8-JUlscpV3m39nF5GXrD6S8-VGs8kOFq6WIw0g6Rmz7GCA2l9lbHluZ4em3Zg/s1600/250px-Creative_Artists_Agency_logo.svg.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4E-T77EVu_hTIUa3FMtlDmhshY-nlO9J0hgFwK0xOzMn3_qT-1t-TMQVUtxsS37rVz5-HeAFAd8-JUlscpV3m39nF5GXrD6S8-VGs8kOFq6WIw0g6Rmz7GCA2l9lbHluZ4em3Zg/s1600/250px-Creative_Artists_Agency_logo.svg.png" /></a></div>
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Now if he just stuck to just tweeting stolen jokes, he'd be nothing more than a nuisance. However, Ostrovsky landed TV and radio gigs with E!, Comedy Central, Apple's Beats Radio, and representation with CAA, one of Hollywood's most elite agencies on the basis of his douchebag image, and his alleged wit on social media.</span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0px;"> </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Now he's making serious money off of the work and sweat of others, which makes his thievery more of a crime against comedy than a nuisance. He's literally taking money out of the pockets of real joke-makers.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Sadly, crimes against comedy aren't punishable under the law, but we can name, shame, not only the thief, but the media companies and agencies who are literally rewarding him for being a thief.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Joke theft is not a new phenomenon borne from the internet. It goes back to the stone age when Ag stole Ug's one about the hunter and the gatherer's daughter.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Ug responded by clocking Ag on the head with a rock.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">And thus the concept of intellectual property was born.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">A more civilized response was one done by Bob Hope against fellow vaudeville star Milton Berle back in the 1920s. Showbiz insiders considered Berle most famous for two things; he had the biggest schlong on the circuit, and he was terrible for stealing jokes.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Hope and a young writer, who both just made successful leap to Broadway, wanted to teach Berle a lesson. So Hope and the young writer made a careful and exact plan of attack, and waited for the right moment to strike.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">That moment came on a fateful Monday night.</span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj04bTT8ajU6prKy4JaticPE1lbui__Drrg9pVB2IDXiDWJKcNWQE0XFhAQ4kAT9sHLDx49hbnW1d3wS_Nx8Hm92AUCFp2isc-MlPNlAWiu7LVs8mdV4KtxT51JXcaodr1YKHR4og/s1600/200px-Comedy_Central_2011_Logo.svg.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj04bTT8ajU6prKy4JaticPE1lbui__Drrg9pVB2IDXiDWJKcNWQE0XFhAQ4kAT9sHLDx49hbnW1d3wS_Nx8Hm92AUCFp2isc-MlPNlAWiu7LVs8mdV4KtxT51JXcaodr1YKHR4og/s1600/200px-Comedy_Central_2011_Logo.svg.png" /></a><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">On Monday's the musicals traditionally go "dark" or don't perform, because they're doing an extra matinee on Sunday and the cast needs a break. Back in the 1920s they used to use the theatres on Mondays for charity variety shows called Benefits.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Benefit Night, as it was known then, was a big deal. All the top show-biz people and New York power players were in the audience, and it was the perfect spot for an aspiring vaudeville comic like Berle to get off the circuit and into a major Broadway show.</span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWIpSHqpaptyAZuVPe3m09N3mDgIMIoX2EsXZYApGX_qQOX2_4TpukOTfTl-6QOjiavierI-nytWTkYSgS6JoGos0tHCEiAMIv-iFyeiRduEsn9TWslWmFfGwLiqJwIFdwweOK5w/s1600/EEntertainment_logo111010172515.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWIpSHqpaptyAZuVPe3m09N3mDgIMIoX2EsXZYApGX_qQOX2_4TpukOTfTl-6QOjiavierI-nytWTkYSgS6JoGos0tHCEiAMIv-iFyeiRduEsn9TWslWmFfGwLiqJwIFdwweOK5w/s200/EEntertainment_logo111010172515.jpg" width="67" /></a><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Now every theatre would be having a benefit show, and it was common practice for comics to perform in one theatre, run up the street, perform there, and so on, literally until the wee hours of the morning.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Hope and his partner arranged to perform right before Berle, which was literally the time Berle was closing his act in the last theatre and he was literally running to the next one. Berle would arrive just as Hope was leaving the stage and heading for the next theatre.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Berle would then go on stage, start his act and....cue the cricket sound.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">You see, Hope would go out and do Berle's mostly stolen act, verbatim, which meant that it looked like Berle was just repeating Hope's act.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Berle learned his lesson and didn't steal another joke...for a while.</span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjC48tcnfF5H-CicAdhRzws6RUX1x6JFVThaAWDIfRlaTWupP1BENcRbz3O5RuSC2dZVhzLui0FkyaHXF5VfsdyAuiMfoS3dld_c18sMYzG4tMarMaqmaTIqaOxeysjzwc_G8cmoQ/s1600/truth-000.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjC48tcnfF5H-CicAdhRzws6RUX1x6JFVThaAWDIfRlaTWupP1BENcRbz3O5RuSC2dZVhzLui0FkyaHXF5VfsdyAuiMfoS3dld_c18sMYzG4tMarMaqmaTIqaOxeysjzwc_G8cmoQ/s320/truth-000.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Now there isn't one kind of joke theft, and some is not really theft at all, and I'll attempt to explain most of this probably incomplete list.</span></span></div>
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<li><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><b>COINCIDENTAL</b></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><b>:</b> Now this doesn't really count as joke theft, but is often mistaken for it. The world is big, there are literally billions of people and if it's something topical, then more than one person is going to make the same joke. I know, it happens to me all the time, probably because my sense of humour is so obvious and banal, and I'm probably even a victim of it as well. When that guy threw a shoe at President Bush I sold a joke to a comedian for $50 about how the Shoe Thrower was hired as MSNBC's new pundit. The comedian used it in a web video, and two days later it was in Jay Leno's opening monologue. I'm sure that was </span><i style="letter-spacing: 0px;">purely</i><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> coincidental, he said while rearranging the pins in his Jay Leno voodoo doll.</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><b>SUBCONSCIOUS</b></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><b>:</b> Now this does count as joke theft, but it lacks one key ingredient that separates it from what I consider criminal joke theft: INTENT. It happens when you hear a joke, forget where you heard it, and then blurt it out fully convinced that you just came up with it out of the blue. Robin Williams used to be bad for this, but I don't recall anyone resenting him for it, because it was mostly because his memory and rapid fire style was better at remembering the joke itself rather than the source.</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> </span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><b>AMBITIOUS, YET INSECURE</b></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><b>:</b> Now we're delving into the realm of deliberate joke theft. Theft, and intent are arm in arm in this one, but motive can be a contributing factor. You see intent means that you mean to deliberately commit a crime, but MOTIVE is your reasoning behind your intent. Many comedians, Berle being a classic example, can often let their ambition outrun not their talent, but their faith in their own talent. They want to reach the top, but aren't sure if all their material is "A Grade" so they poach material that they're sure works because they've seen it work with someone else. Often these kinds of joke thieves present a cocky and brash exterior to hide the mouldering bucket of anxiety worms that makes up their psyche.</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><b>MALICIOUS</b></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><b>:</b> These kinds of joke thieves are the lowest and worst kind. They know they are deliberately stealing material from people who burnt the calories needed to create original material, they just don't care. They also aren't acting out of insecurity, but entitlement. They assume that they are entitled to fame and success but don't want to actually work for it beyond making sales pitches to surprisingly gullible media insiders who all yearn to be one of the "cool kids." If getting that fame and success requires stealing, then that's just fine, because this joke thief's victims aren't viewed as cool enough to be worthy of consideration. When caught, they usually try to brush it off with lame excuses/double-talk, and/or jump straight into attacking their accusers.</span></span></li>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">That Josh "The Fat Jew" Ostrovsky committed joke theft is pretty much beyond doubt. What's being discussed here is what kind of joke theft did he commit, and that, ladies and gentlemen of the jury of public opinion, I leave to you to decide.</span></span></div>
Furious Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07934529688753875751noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24904037.post-58018956403780549052015-08-13T13:49:00.000-03:002015-08-13T13:49:56.000-03:00Hollywood Babble On & On #1247: Friday The 13th The Series?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_W7Y6RjrRkCN-x6MRkjZf57YLZ1RG3M88ngu_LiJE5_u75PnbPtwA6ufkNVMkByYBEF94AX8HY4bW_uSpJmRXYq-ST5WQ6ZZVwJT_DnH_fjEU_hgCA6FCIAVcE16PVitBvOe6wQ/s1600/F13Variety.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_W7Y6RjrRkCN-x6MRkjZf57YLZ1RG3M88ngu_LiJE5_u75PnbPtwA6ufkNVMkByYBEF94AX8HY4bW_uSpJmRXYq-ST5WQ6ZZVwJT_DnH_fjEU_hgCA6FCIAVcE16PVitBvOe6wQ/s1600/F13Variety.jpg" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Flush with success from DC superheroes, magicians, and a pregnant virgin, the CW Network now thinks it can work miracles by raising the dead. The stinking foetid corpse in question is the <i>Friday The 13th</i> franchise which they hope to adapt into a <a href="http://io9.com/friday-the-13th-is-coming-to-tv-with-a-grounded-jason-1723687335" target="_blank">TV series about the people of Crystal Lake</a> facing the return of a more "grounded" version of the unstoppable killer.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Now I've never been a fan of the franchise, it came to embody the worst of the 1980s slasher-horror boom, coming up with lamer and lamer excuses to ramp up the gore and keep Jason coming back no matter what happened to him. It got very silly and very boring, and it showed in the diminishing returns at the box office.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Even a big budget remake failed to revive interest in a franchise that was deader than a Voorheez victim.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The funny thing is that the franchise had already branched into TV back in the 1980s.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Sort of.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Back in 1987 the producers of the <i>Friday the 13th </i>movies were branching into television with a Canadian-USA syndicated late night horror series that was originally going to be called <i>The 13th Hour</i>.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUJwU5p8zkW8Hd3t2GXrnD0AKWSJ7HcSAGRhdx-vyFesg0s0gcJa3YHFS2squEjl3xWMMW1sd2F-ytwM9KIwQ7xX77d8B_QzBmWZ6uJaE4vBG_ahW8Z9-DVihpX1dR4ATBjNxIjw/s1600/Friday_The_13th_The_Series.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUJwU5p8zkW8Hd3t2GXrnD0AKWSJ7HcSAGRhdx-vyFesg0s0gcJa3YHFS2squEjl3xWMMW1sd2F-ytwM9KIwQ7xX77d8B_QzBmWZ6uJaE4vBG_ahW8Z9-DVihpX1dR4ATBjNxIjw/s1600/Friday_The_13th_The_Series.jpg" /></a><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">They decided that title was too obscure and went with the more famous "brand" even though the show had nothing to do with Jason Voorhees.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The premise of the show was pretty straightforward. An antiques dealer named Louis Vendredi made a pact with the devil for wealth and immortality. To cash in the stock in his store had been cursed to lead those who buy them into madness and murder by bombarding them powerful temptations.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">But in the pilot Louis had an attack of guilt and broke the pact, and ended up dead and in hell.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Two distant relatives then inherited the store, which they then cleaned out in a huge sale. Shortly afterward, with the help of their uncle's ex-partner, they discover the curses and spend the rest of the series trying to get the stuff back and locked up safely in a supernaturally fortified vault.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Now I was just a kid when I saw it, and it ended 25 years ago, but I remember that it was one of the scariest things I had ever seen made for TV, and that includes <i>Dark Night of the Scarecrow</i>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">As far as I can remember, it sure was scarier than anything the <i>Friday the 13th</i> movies dished out.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Which is why I'm not holding out much hope for the CW's idea.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">They should stick to DC superheroes.</span></div>
Furious Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07934529688753875751noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24904037.post-42582651060709031552015-08-10T12:10:00.001-03:002015-08-10T12:10:26.471-03:00Hollywood Babble On & On #1246: Can Relativity Media Be Saved?<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">As a regular reader of <a href="http://dknowsall.blogspot.ca/2015/07/hollywood-babble-on-on-1243-last-theory.html" target="_blank">this blog will know</a> indie production company and distributor <a href="http://deadline.com/2015/07/relativity-bankruptcy-ryan-kavanaugh-chapter-11-filing-1201485656/" target="_blank">Relativity Media has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection</a> because it has about $500 million in assets and about $1 billion in debt.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Can it be saved?</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTmfp54OEdFCq86ggtYXi7FMYnUbU-vWVCnPiVXRN8HsDWpfSN1XFxtHK6Cc7BkWSKnP0_JFCEtGF1FhS-aZeqN1BXkId3Ee6vEZJV8ibnvuFTvZXJIl6oAI6pWL4y9lSeQsvc8Q/s1600/Relativity_media_logo_2014.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><img border="0" height="111" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTmfp54OEdFCq86ggtYXi7FMYnUbU-vWVCnPiVXRN8HsDWpfSN1XFxtHK6Cc7BkWSKnP0_JFCEtGF1FhS-aZeqN1BXkId3Ee6vEZJV8ibnvuFTvZXJIl6oAI6pWL4y9lSeQsvc8Q/s320/Relativity_media_logo_2014.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The answer is "Yes" but with caveats. It would have to meet certain conditions if it is going to have a second chance. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>1. Dump Ryan Kavanaugh</b>. Sure, the <a href="http://deadline.com/2015/08/ryan-kavanaughs-relativity-chapter-11-josh-trank-fantastic-four-1201496034/" target="_blank">Hollywood business press seems to love him</a>, and he seemed to be really good at getting investors to pony up the dough for a while, but he still managed to rack up a hell of a lot of losses and debts in a whole variety of hare-brained schemes that were heavy on sales jargon but low on results. I know he's a major shareholder, but if former newspaper mogul Conrad Black can be forced out of two companies, one where he was the sole proprietor, on the basis of crimes that the appeals court ruled hadn't actually happened. If that's possible then you can get rid of Kavanaugh for driving the company into the ground.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>2. Trim Fat/Find Money</b>. One big problem the company has is that there isn't enough money coming in to service the debt and keep the company running. Naturally a selling off of assets will have to come. The sports agency, the "branded content" agency, and all the other schemes will have to be either sold off, or shuttered completely. Then there's the company's distribution capability. They may have to open themselves to even more distribution only deals with other independent producers than they already have.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>3. Stick To The Core Business</b>. Relativity was originally founded to produce, and eventually distribute, movies and television shows. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Maybe it needs to do that and only that.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">It should also avoid trying to compete with the studios for the massive blockbusters. The new Relativity should target the middle ground, smaller scale pics that the big studios don't seem to make anymore even though, back in the day, they were seen as the profitable backbone of the industry. They should also be budgeted tightly to decrease risk, and increase the potential for reward.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">They should just follow this simple formula:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>STORY > STARS + QUALITY > BUDGET</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">No more wacky schemes to produce only hits, no more "lifestyle brands" and no more BS, just stick with making stories people would enjoy seeing more than once.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Then Relativity <i>might</i> have a shot to live again.</span></div>
Furious Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07934529688753875751noreply@blogger.com1