Showing posts with label oscar. Show all posts
Showing posts with label oscar. Show all posts
Sunday, February 27, 2011
U.S. film industry cashes in abroad
Hollywood has always been an international business, but it is becoming dramatically more so. In the past decade, total box-office spending has risen by about one-third in North America while more than doubling elsewhere. Thanks to Harry Potter, Sherlock Holmes and Inception, Warner Bros. made $2.93 billion outside North America last year, smashing the studio's previous record of $2.24 billion. Falling DVD sales in America, by far the world's biggest home-entertainment market, mean Hollywood is even more dependent on foreign sales.
The rising foreign tide has lifted films that were virtually written off in America, such as Prince of Persia and The Chronicles of Narnia: the Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Despite starring the popular Jack Black, Gulliver's Travels had a disappointing run in North America, taking $42 million at the box office so far. But strong turnout in Russia and South Korea helped it reach almost $150 million in sales elsewhere. As a result, it should turn a profit, says John Davis, the film's producer.
The growth of the international box office is partly a result of the dollar's weakness. It was also helped by Avatar, an eco-fantasy that made a startling $2 billion outside North America. But three things are particularly important: a cinema boom in the emerging world, a concerted effort by the major studios to make films that might play well outside America and a global marketing push to make sure they do.
Russia, with its shrinking teenage population, is an unlikely spot for a box-office boom. Yet cinema-building is proceeding apace, and supply has created demand. Last year, 160 million movie tickets were sold in Russia ---- the first time in recent years that sales have exceeded the country's population. Ticket prices have risen, in part because the new cinemas are superior, with digital projectors that can show 3D films.
The big Hollywood studios are muscling domestic film-makers aside. In 2007, American films made almost twice as much at the Russian box office as domestic films -- 8.3 billion rubles ($325 million) compared with 4.5 billion rubles. Last year, the imported stuff made some 16.4 billion rubles: more than five times as much as the home-grown product, estimates Movie Research, a Moscow outfit. Earlier this month, Vladimir Putin, Russia's prime minister, said the government would spend less money supporting Russian film-makers and more on expanding the number of screens.
Growth is much quicker in China, where box-office receipts reached $1.5 billion last year. China's regulator has claimed that cinema screens are going up at a rate of three per day; some are IMAX screens that command higher ticket prices. The government allows only 20 non-Chinese films into the market each year, virtually guaranteeing big audiences for those that make the cut. Moviegoers and censors alike warm to family films and movies that seem to reflect China's central place in the world. Thus, expect long lines for Kung Fu Panda 2 this summer.
Unfortunately, Hollywood has learned (as have many other industries) that great sales in China do not always translate into great profits. In America, distributors tend to receive 50 to 55 per cent of box-office receipts, with the rest going to the cinemas. Elsewhere, the average take is 40 to 45 per cent. In China, where Hollywood must use a domestic distributor, the proportion is roughly 15 per cent. American films may be yanked in favour of domestic ones (Avatar had to make way for Confucius last year). The World Trade Organization has ordered China to reform, but few moguls expect it to.
Growing fears of piracy have led studios to release films almost simultaneously in many countries; increasingly, the premiere takes place outside America. That changes the marketing game, says Michael Lynton, head of Sony Pictures. Studios used to rely on rumours of American success seeping out of the country, priming audiences elsewhere to see a film. Now they must conduct co-ordinated global campaigns. These are more expensive and tougher on the talent. Stars are corralled for two-week marketing blitzes that may take them to 10 countries -- "like a political campaign," says Lynton. Actors who are willing to do this (such as the indefatigable Black) may find themselves working more regularly.
Big noisy spectacle travels best. Jason Statham, the close-cropped star of many a mindlessly violent film, is a particular Russian favorite. Films based on well-known literature (including cartoon books) and myths may also fare well. Films that trade on contemporary American cultural references are about as popular abroad as an oil slick on a NASCAR track. Comedy travels badly, too: Will Ferrell and Adam Sandler provoke guffaws at home but incomprehension abroad. As the market swings away from America, funny films are less likely to find financing or broad distribution anywhere. "You won't see us doing a lot of comedies," says Brad Grey, head of Paramount Pictures.
The growing internationalization of the film business suits the biggest outfits, and not just because they can afford explosions. The major studios' power lies not so much in their ability to make good films -- plenty of smaller operations can do that -- but in their ability to wring every possible drop of revenue from a film. With their superior global marketing machines and their ability to anticipate foreign tastes, they are increasingly dominating the market. For everyone else, there is a chance to win a gold statue.
Credit : Winnipeg Free Press
Saturday, February 12, 2011
Now this comes as a shocker. We've got to know that Hollywood heartthrob James Franco was in two minds when asked to host Oscars'2011.
James recently revealed he initially said no to host the Oscars because he was too surprised to be offered the coveted role!
Franco revealed: "I was very very surprised, and my initial reaction was 'No.' Then I thought about it and I thought, 'Well, why not? Because I'll look bad?' Well, I don't care. I'm happy to take the criticism. Even if it's 'The Worst Oscars Ever,' I don't care. It's one night of the year."
He further added, "There might be some singing, there might be some dancing", dropping hints on how he and co-host Anne Hathaway will try to make the event most entertaining.
Apart from hosting the awards ceremony, Franco could win an award for Best Actor for his role in new film 127 Hours. And if he does, he said he already has a back-up plan in place – his friend and publicist Barry Johnson will accept it for him.
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Earlier he had bagged three nominations and won two Oscars in the 81st Academy Awards for Danny Boyle's film Slumdog Millionaire.
Buzz up!The Music Maestro Rahman has been nominated in the Best Original Song for the song ' If I Rise' and the Best Original Score from the film 127 Hours.
We congratulate AR Rahman on his success and hope that he will win the show too.
When people are complaining about who didn't get into the golden circle, rather than who did, you know that Oscar got most of it right. There weren't any embarrassing nominations, keeping in mind that one man's embarrassing nomination — Sandra Bullock for The Blind Side? — is another man's Oscar-winner.
And it's hard to think of whom you'd omit from the best actor category, for instance, to make room for Gosling, or Giamatti, for that matter. It would have been good for Mila Kunis to have been nominated for her supporting performance in Black Swan, but it's great that the academy reached out to the little-known Australian actress Jacki Weaver for Animal Kingdom.
Such indie names — including Blue Valentine's Michelle Williams, John Hawkes and Jennifer Lawrence from Winter's Bone, and Winter's Bone itself — are sprinkled throughout the Oscar nomination list. It's no longer a collection of movie stars, but a more interesting roster of familiar names and worthy newcomers.
When the academy expanded the best picture category to 10 movies, some critics thought it would dilute the honour of being nominated — there goes the neighbourhood — and suddenly everyone and his uncle was going to be able to put "Academy Award Nominee" in the movie ads. But it has opened up the category to smaller films, such as The Kids Are All Right and Winter's Bone, that deserve the added attention. They're among the Top 10 movies of the year, so why not salute them in some official way?
Blue Valentine would have been another worthy choice, and there would have been room for it, too, if Toy Story 3 hadn't been among the nominees. It's a wonderful picture — another of the year's best — and it provided one of the most moving moments in its final valedictory to childhood. But the academy should change its rule so that animated movies, which have their own category, can't be nominated in both. The producers of Toy Story 3 should have to decide whether they want their movie to be a nominee for best picture, where its chances of winning are slim, or the Oscar-winner for best animated movie, where it's the front-runner.
If they went for best picture, it would have opened a spot for Despicable Me or Megamind, two fine animated movies that were left off this year's list. If they stayed in the animated category, Blue Valentine might have made it.
That's one change I would like to see in the Oscar nomination process. Here's another.
In 1996, the jury at the Cannes Film Festival created a special award for "audacity" to honour David Cronenberg's strange and violent sexual fantasy, Crash. It was an award made on the run, because Crash didn't fit into any of the other categories at Cannes. It still doesn't, in fact.
At the time, I remember thinking that it's too bad the Academy Award people hadn't thought of that 10 years earlier, for David Lynch's strange and violent sexual fantasy, Blue Velvet. It was a riveting experience, certainly the best movie I saw that year, but it was snubbed by the Oscars (except for Lynch's direction). The Oscar that year went to Platoon.
I still think it's an idea worth considering. The Oscars have a far more formal, bureaucratic system than the hit-and-run mischief of a Cannes jury of a dozen people meeting for a couple of weeks. But there's no reason the academy couldn't build in provisions for the occasional special Oscar, something unannounced that could constitute an Oscar-night surprise. This year, for instance, a small jury of filmmakers within the academy could meet and decide that perhaps Gosling's performance — his immersion in the role of a desperate husband who just doesn't know how to make his wife happy — should get something. The ukulele scene alone is worth some kind of parallel Oscar, an acknowledgment that film acting has been advanced a little bit by what he was doing. Or maybe Nolan could get an award for the boldness of his imagination. Or one of a dozen other smaller movies could move from the cozy precincts of independent movie awards to get some of the big-league brass of Oscar.
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