Showbiz Sandbox 424: Talking Telluride, Toronto and Emmys with Indiewire’s Anne Thompson

September 18, 2018

Every September the annual awards season begins to take shape at three major film festivals; Venice, Telluride and Toronto. Anne Thompson, Indiewire’s editor at large, was at the latter two and she joins us to explain how this year’s Oscars race looks like it will be filled with a bounty of great movies, including one from director Alfonso Cuaron, which is looking for a way to overcome the stigma of being released by Netflix.

Speaking of awards, the timing works out to have Thompson also give us her thoughts on the recent Emmy Awards, honoring the best and brightest prime time television series from the past year.

Meanwhile, the European Union passed reforms to copyright law that have proven to be contentious given that it could mean big changes for tech platforms such as Google, Youtube and others. Content owners, on the other hand, are delighted with the outcome.

Of course we also cover the week’s top entertainment headlines including Time magazine gets another new owner, Spotify allows users to download more music and Paul McCartney enjoys his first #1 debut for his latest album.

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Showbiz Sandbox 107: The Pros And Cons Of Cloud Music Services

June 13, 2011

After months of rumors and speculation Apple finally announced their cloud music service last week. Aptly named iCloud, the new service joins similar offerings from both Amazon and Google. Though each of the services has their benefits, no two are exactly alike. Amazon and Google stream music over the Internet and require you to upload your entire music library. Apple doesn’t do any of those things. We dissect the pros and cons of all three services and wonder why anyone really needs them in the first place.

Something else that’s probably not needed is a sequel to “Tron: Legacy” but thanks to a television series spinoff of last year’s sci-fi blockbuster, we’ll probably get one. And it will probably be in 3D like its predecessor even though Dreamworks Animation head Jeffrey Katzenberg is heartbroken over the decline of the format.

The Tony Awards were handed out on Sunday and as we predicted, “The Book Of Mormon” walked off with the most trophies, including Best Musical. But what is a Tony really worth to a Broadway show’s bottom line? We’ll try and find out.

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