- Would the Oscars Be More Relevant If They Rewarded Mainstream Movies?
When the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced that this year’s Oscars would have 10 best picture nominees instead of five, everyone assumed there was only one reason for the change: to boost the show’s TV ratings. And despite the Academy’s assertion that the expanded category is merely meant to give more great movies a chance to be nominated for Best Picture, everyone still pretty much believes that yeah, it’s for the TV ratings. - The Sound Of Cinema Part I: Beyond the Bard
Music and movies have a grand history together so, because of the scope of the subject each post will have a set of parameters to which it must adhere. Articles with inspired insight and musical memories from my some of my favorite flicks. Part One: The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. - IFC Films Takes Sundance’s ‘Void’
Numerous contributors from across the globe offer their selections and thoughts on their movie-going experiences in 2009. Readers should find it a fascinating overview of cinema from a multitude of countries and cultures. - Spielberg to make TV Doc. on World Trade Center rebuild
The Science Channel said on Thursday that Spielberg would executive produce the six-part documentary series “Rebuilding Ground Zero”, due to be shown in 2011. - 2009 World Poll
Numerous contributors from across the globe offer their selections and thoughts on their movie-going experiences in 2009. Readers should find it a fascinating overview of cinema from a multitude of countries and cultures. - Top 10 Most Overrated Directors of All Time
Unbelievable. Just unbelievable. - 2010 Sundance Film Festival Announces Jury Members
The juries collectively are comprised of individuals from the global arts community, each of whom brings unique perspective and range of experience. Distinguished International Group Includes Alison Maclean, Russell Banks, Sterlin Harjo, Parker Posey, Morgan Spurlock, Ondi Timoner and Christine Vachon. - Oscars: The Best of… Everything?
If you’re an inveterate Oscarologist and film enthusiast like me, you may have found yourself following not just the Oscar nominations themselves, but the precursor awards too. Each decade more and more organizations try to muscle in on Oscar’s territory, with varying degrees of success. None of these organizations can quite claim Oscar’s 82 years’ worth of longevity, but subsets of them are actual movie industry institutions in their own right.
You can now take a look at RowThree’s bookmarks at any time of your choosing simply by clicking the “delicious” button to your left. It looks remarkably similar to this:
I’m very, very, very happy that IFC is putting out ENTER THE VOID, not because they will give it much of a theatrical, because if you are outside of NY, LA or Chicago, you are probably shit out of luck, And really, this film should be blown up to IMAX for viewing, theatres that AVATAR, and the other 3D movies (Hubble?) are probably not going to give up to a ‘weird and rauchy sex laden art film’.
But since IFC has been allowing Criterion to give some of their titles the deluxe release (as in the recent CHE), that is very cool for those who want a pristine possibly feature-laden R1 DVD/BLU release.
Boy, that Top Ten Overrated Directors list makes my blood boil something fierce.
David Lean on the list is just baffling, I don’t think he has made a film that wasn’t a masterpiece.
the only reason he created that list was to create contreversy and get web hits. there is no way he believes that shit he wrote, unless he is a complete moron.
David Lean had some misses.
Ryans daughter was not great, and I thought Passage to india was bizzarre at points. Some of his war time films were not fantastic either. The one thing David Lean always did was amazing camera work. His films were almost always visually great.
The guy who wrote that piece is a tool. Everything from G.E. was down hill… LOL
I knew I was in trouble with that overrated directors link when I saw that it was hosted on Big Hollywood. Not exactly a fount of deep film knowledge, they typically prefer to flog their political views through talking about movies.
I think murph is spot on – the only reason that list was made was to generate web hits. There was 624 comments last I checked (dammit, he made me click to it too!), so it’s obviously working. Shapiro is working on the black/white scale of writing – it’s shit or it’s not. Nor does he seem to understand that writing and film are two different art forms.
But yeah, nothing to get excited about. Turn that blood down to a simmer Marc. B-)
The guy with the overrated director’s list has three issues: 1) He apparently doesn’t like any good films, 2) He doesn’t understand the auteur theory, and 3) He’s an idiot. I would be morbidly curious, though, to see his list of underrated directors.
On Eric Snider’s Oscar article – don’t the Oscars already reward mainstream movies? Maybe I just have a skewed version of “mainstream.” All the ones the Snider mentions as non-mainstream I saw in a multiplex. That makes them mainstream to me. His assertion that the Academy somehow has “shiny and untarnished” ideals is a bit laughable.
Yeah, I know. It’s certainly going to take a lot more than this bozo to shake my tastes and preferences in film. But it’s worth a bit of grumbling…
I’m with Jandy on the Oscars thing, the Oscars always reward mainstream movies, that’s why people like us always get so p*ssed off at the winners!
And that directors list…. there are one or two I could feasibly go along with, but some of the comments about Hitchcock – ‘never made a great film’ and ‘Rear Window makes one reach for the fast forward button’ – hmmmmmm