Showbiz Sandbox 33: “Avatar” Is A $100 Hamburger

December 14, 2009

James Rocchi was one of the lucky entertainment journalists invited to the “Avatar” premiere and press junket in London and he joins us this week to tell us all about it. Rocchi also helps us dissect all those year-end “Top 10” critics lists, not to mention one that rates the year’s best unproduced screenplays. Who do you think will be on the red carpet at Oscar time?

And the Best of 2009 lists extend into television and music territory as well. The Los Angeles Times rounded up the TV winners and losers for the season (and we compare them to our own predictions for this year’s television series from Episode 22). Meanwhile, SoundScan released the best selling albums and artists of the decade. Guess how many of them were released before 2002? Listen to the podcast to find out.

We sail through some of the week’s top entertainment news headlines in our Big Deal/Big Whoop segment, including the possibility of a “Ghostbusters 3” sequel in the works. Read more

Showbiz Sandbox 32: Grammys and Spirits and Comcast, Oh My!

December 7, 2009

Rolling Stone contributing editor David Wild joins us this week to talk about the 52nd Annual Grammy nominations, a subject he knows a lot about since he’s one of the writers on the awards show. If music isn’t your thing than maybe independent film is. Eugene Hernandez, editor of indieWIRE drops by to discuss the Spirit Award nominees as well as the official selections of the 2010 Sundance Film Festival.

In other news, Sandra Bullock continues to impress moviegoing audiences in “The Blind Side” which knocked “Twilight Saga: New Moon” out of first place in the North American box office over the weekend. Speaking of “Twilight” who would you like to see direct the fourth installment of the franchise, “Breaking Dawn”? J. Sperling Reich, Michael Giltz and Karen Woodward agree that it’s probably not going to be Tim Burton, Peter Jackson or Quenten Tarantino as Moviefone suggests. But then stranger things have happened. Kind of like Apple buying Lala. What could they possibly be planning to do with the struggling music social network?  Read more