Post-Oscar Career Suicide Syndrome

Chronicle: Oscar winners turn on-screen success into mediocrity. "It applies to actors who've never before been highly regarded for their thespian abilities yet who win an Oscar, converting a nation of naysayers in the process. POCSS is the tendency for them to dash, lemminglike, into the worst dreck imaginable.

Every once in a while Lauren Bacall, who's never been shy about speaking her mind, grouses publicly about how today's stars lack stature. It's hard to have stature when you're flouncing about in skin-tight elastic duds spouting inanities. Indeed, it's hard to imagine Katharine Hepburn or Bette Davis following up Oscar-winning performances with the kind of roles some of today's top actresses take.

For women especially, winning an Oscar simply is no guarantee of a healthy career... Of course, some actresses take roles that some might consider undignified not because they have no choice but for the money." I think their logic goes, trade money for the good role in the other. It's hard to support your million-dollar life style with low-budget, meaningful, laden with great characters movies.

Cellphone film contest inspires small thinking

USAToday: [An Ithaca College] has invited high school and college students across America to submit a 30-second movie shot entirely with a cellphone... About 130 million of those Americans own cellphones with camera capabilities, and approximately half also possess video functions, said Roger Entner, an analyst with Ovum, a Boston-based technology consulting firm.

This fall, MTV launched Head and Body, a comedy series of eight programs created exclusively for cellphone users. Last year, Zoie Films, an Atlanta-based producer of independent films and festivals, ran what it billed as the world's first cell-phone film festival.

"It will be about my generation's mobility and the falling down of borders," she said.

Attack of the Baby Pixars

Fast Company: They want to make computer-animated feature films for family audiences, too, but they're looking to do it on an entirely different scale: smaller, cheaper, faster... As Kasanoff puts it, "Animation is the only part of film production where quality is going up while costs are going down." What's more, kiddie cartoons are the sweet spot of the industry. While the average feature film produces $33 million in U.S. box-office receipts, the average for family films is $90 million. The figure is an astonishing $225 million for digitally animated films.

Astonishingly, the low-risk, high-reward potential of digital animation has generated tremendous interest in investors far from Hollywood. Phil Knight, cofounder of Nike, recently bought Will Vinton Studios, the animation house in Portland, Oregon, where his son worked. Knight renamed it Laika (after the 1950s Soviet cosmo-dog) and bankrolled it to make animated feature films. And "there's an enormous amount of money in Asia to produce animated motion pictures in the $25 million to $50 million range," says Ellen Goldsmith-Vein, who runs the Gotham Group, a management company for many of the top writers, directors, and producers of digital animation. Taiwan's Digimax, for example, has committed financing for her low-budget animation flicks.

"Intellectual property rights--that, frankly, is the essence," says Vanguard's founder John Williams, who produced Shrek and Shrek 2, both owned by DreamWorks. For an upcoming animated film that Vanguard is producing, with Fox distributing, Williams says, "We've held back all the merchandising, licensing, and video-game rights. If and when we get a significant franchise"--a film with lucrative sequels, such as Shrek or Toy Story--"we'll own those rights. The intellectual-property rights are the treasure trove."

'Rent' review

Rent is quintessential, young, New York musical. I saw it couple years ago and I loved it. I love the songs, I love the characters, the setting, etc, even though they may have become cliched since passing 1990s. It was a good love story told in some of most beautiful songs. Finally, Hollywood got around to make the movie because musicals were not popular until Chicago proved there still was an audience left for the genre.

The movie version supposedly features returning original casts, but they don't exhibit strong presences in the movie, as captivating Rosario Dawson steal the show & the movie. It shows the difference between stage actors and movie stars where I would've love to see & hear the original casts intimately at the theater, but alas, this is a movie. The songs are also rearranged with HEAVY musical beds that frequently drown vocals. I was so annoyed at the "I Should Tell You" part that I wanted to scream, cut the music! So that I can FEEL the emotions in the vocals. And I was annoyed that whenever they start singing, they sounded like recorded songs, cutting off all other environment sounds. I know this is a movie with pre-recorded tracks, but it doesn't have to be a series of music videos. Thus, this is a movie cherrypicking, highlighting some scenes from the musical, with larger venues and rearranged tracks. Sigh.

I don't know why Rob Marshall didn't choose this project over a Geisha movie--more on this movie later. Instead, we have Christopher Columbus who is so steep in Hollywood sensibility that the movie feels safe. Characters feel safe. The story feels safe. The ending feels safe--I almost laughed Rosario Dawson came back from the near-death experience. This movie should've taken bigger risks by choosing an 'edgy' director who FEELS the moments between the beats, instead of following the beats.

One thing for sure; I would go see the the musical again, listen to the music again, but I wouldn't watch this movie again or listen to it's soundtrack. I would spin the original cast recording once more, to refresh myself, to remind myself, "measure your life in love."

A Digital Tsunami hits Tinseltown

The New Wave. Remember, it's all about the benjamins.

iTunes gets more TV

CNet Commentary. "I'm reminded of what happened at the beginning of the online music business, when the labels told me that the contracts were difficult to track down and that it would take a long time for all the artists to accept getting their music distributed online. Then iTunes became a hit and the money started flowing. And somehow, all those contractual questions got washed away. Hmm....

The lesson here for other forms of distribution--cable video-on-demand, streaming, mobile phones--is this: Start with some popular content and prove the business model. Once the money starts flowing, the rest of the content will follow." iPod Video is becoming more attractive every passing day. Less than 20 days before Christmas, and it shall all pass. :-)

X3

Announcement Teaser in HD. I love these hi-definition trailers. Especially on my 20" Wide LCD monitor, even though my G4 is sluggish on the full screen mode.

The trailer looks promising. It seems like Brett Ratner is giving what the fans clamored since the first movie. Big badass mutant warfare. I dig Halle Barry/Storm's new do. X-Men vs. Superman, hmmm, my money is on X-Men because of its advantage in number of cool mutants.

Cut & Bleed

"Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity."

- Charlie Mingus, Jazz bassist and composer.

That describes the work I've been immersed for last three weeks as an editor for upcoming DVD documentary of an infamous rapper. (I'll tell all about it when the DVD hits the store next year.) I've endured with hours and hours of shaky cam footage that was not intended to be anything except for fun and turning it into a full-blown feature length DVD that is for fans consumption. Like Jay-Z rapped, I'm not a businessman, I'm a business, man. And I'm getting paid good money to stuff my stockings.

Now that I've presented the rough cut after wading through all the footage and culling presentable and most importantly entertaining moments, I and my producer finally found a workable narrative structure that we can "exploit" and tell a cohesive story. Now that first hurdle is over, I'm taking well-deserved weekend break away from my computer, away from my desk, and away from my room to find some fresh air and fresh perspective when I go back to refinning the cut next week.

I'm finally planning to watch Hoop Dreams and catch up with some editing books, notably, The Eye is Quicker. Now, only if that check arrives next week, I would be in much better mood to go shop for a digital camera...

Paper Mac

It's free. Sorta, if you have a printer, which brings me another painful reminder that I need to call Epson and find out how to clean my inkjet printer head so that it will resume spewing precious BLACK ink. Seriously.

Enough negativity. Have fun weekend, everyone!

View from the Outside

Everyone Who's Anyone is a site by a frustrated writer who amassed long list of anyone who's anyone in the entertainmnet industry. It gives me a tickle to look up my favorite director/writer's name and their contact info, but if I were you, I wouldn't bother sending any email yet.

My principal of approaching celebrities and alike is that I wouldn't make the move unless they ask for me first, AND when I have something tangible to offer to them in return.

It's funny how you long to reach the inner circle of this Hollywood/Publishing by promoting/whoring yourself and then once you are in, you need the invisibliity cloak because everyone's anyone who wants a piece of your action. Hahaha. Whatever. The game goes on. Peace.

A Break-down for Small Indie Doc DVD

Aardvark'd DVDs Ship; Final P&L. "Total: $15125. So we need to sell 1694 copies to break even. As of today, we've sold 2595, so we made a profit on the movie of about $8048... With 2 SKUs and batches of 1000 we'll waste an expected 500 units per SKU which is $2000, so deduct $2000 from the profit giving you a final figure of $6048." For any economical, small indie filmmaker, 6 grand is nothing to sniff at. I'm also waiting to get this DVD, and if you find niche audience that will embrace your compelling story, I think modest success is very much real to realize.