Showbiz Sandbox 138: Lessons Learned At This Year’s Oscars
February 27, 2012
Predicting who will win Academy Awards each year isn’t as easy as it looks. Just ask IndieWire’s Anne Thompson. She managed to pick 19 out of 24 winner’s at this past weekend’s Oscar ceremony, but there were a few categories which had everyone guessing. Thompson takes us backstage on Oscar night and explains how easy it is for someone covering the awards season, like herself, to over think how Academy voters will respond when ballots are cast.
Meanwhile, Google filed applications last week to become a cable television provider in Kansas City. What remains to be seen is whether the tech giant can obtain enough programming to attract customers.
Maybe Hollywood will welcome Google with open arms as they have with the glut of streaming video providers all vying to license premium content. Ironically, the industry seems to be ahead of the curve on a new technology they hope will make up for falling DVD sales.
We also cover the week’s top entertainment headlines including a new book from J.K. Rowling, Barbara Streisand’s new record deal and how advertising at movie theaters is being taken more seriously.
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Showbiz Sandbox 16: Hollywood Thinks Outside The Redbox
August 17, 2009
David Poland of Movie City News joins us this week. You might know Poland from his days at the Chicago Tribune, Entertainment Weekly or Roughcut, but he is most known as the columnist behind The Hot Button which has morphed into his blog, The Hot Blog. He can also be seen on DP30 or his new video podcast Super Movie Friends. You can follow Poland on Twitter by visiting twitter.com/davidpoland.
“District 9” topped the box office in North America over the weekend with $37 million, but will it have legs? Warner Bros saved a New Line movie once again with “The Time Traveler’s Wife,” which had been sitting on the shelf since last year. It made a respectable showing with $19.2 million.
Some interesting/baffling/exciting movie news this week. Aaron Sorkin uh, is writing, uh, a draft of the Facebook movie, which, um, is a movie about social networking. (Listen to the episode to, ah, get the joke). And if you think that’s crazy, Warner Bros is putting together a movie based on the Legos toys, and Bryan Singer is directing a big screen version of “Battlestar Gallactica.” Will Starbuck still be dead? Does anyone care? Read more
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Showbiz Sandbox 9: I Loves Me A Good Ouster Story
June 22, 2009
Entertainment journalist Michael Giltz provides his insight and wit again this week.
“The Proposal” topped the box office, and was Sandra Bullock’s biggest movie opening ever. Which begs the question, why is this not also “a Ryan Reynolds movie”? Sean Penn is taking a year off for some “personal time,” or perhaps he just wants to get out of “The Three Stooges.” Other people taking time off are Steven Soderbergh and Brad Pitt, after Colombia Pictures President Amy Pascal pulled the plug on the Steven Zallian-scripted “Moneyball” which was set to shoot on Monday, June 22. Sam Mendes is having better luck, having just signed a two year deal with Focus Features, and he will direct the film adaptation of George Eliot’s classic “Middlemarch.”
It was a shoot ‘em up between NY Post Critic Lou Lumenick and Universal over Lumeneck’s early review of “Public Enemies.” Turns out there was an embargo on when the reviews could be published. Lumenick claims he didn’t know that, but according to Michael Giltz, it’s a rule of thumb that all reviewers know. Read more
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