James Cameron: Hollywood's new king of retread cinema (LA Times)

But the bigger story for me is the way so many of our best filmmakers have abandoned--or to hear some of them tell it, been forced to abandon--the pursuit of original film projects.

I wish I could say that I was exaggerating, but I'm not. ... Christopher Nolan is at work on "The Dark Knight Rises." Brad Bird is doing "Mission: Impossible 4." Ridley Scott is coming off a remake of "Robin Hood." Michael Mann is coming off a biopic ("Public Enemies") and a big-screen adaptation of his own 1980s TV series ("Miami Vice"). John Lasseter is at work on "Cars 2." Even the Coen brothers, who have been paragons of originality their entire career, just finished a remake of "True Grit."

I think we all know how I feel about how few movies are based on original (or as yet unmade) stories, but I hadn't really thought about the director-aspect. This kind of reminds me of the flush of big screen actors moving to the small screen - leaving fewer rolls open for lesser known actors and less chance a show will get made without an A-list star. Is it the same thing with film now? It's unlikely a director's going to get their big break with a sequel project if the A-list directors are "forced" to work on them. I'm not sure how yet, but I have a feeling this is going to come back to bite everyone in the ass. What do you think?

Read the full article here.

Joel Silver, a Megaproducer in a Changed Hollywood (NY Times)

“There aren’t a lot of guys like me left,” Mr. Silver says during a break. “But I’m a war horse. I’ve been through it all. And you know something about war horses? Through the sleet, through the snow — they just keep going.”

I wonder if we'll ever return to the days of lots of producer deals. I hope so - not just because I want a bungalow office on the lot - but because I think a relationship between a studio and a filmmaker is actually beneficial to the industry. Think of it as a return to loyalty, something that often seems to be in short supply in Hollywood.
Read the full article here.

Roots of the modern star machine (The National Post, Canada)

Public interest in the famous is particularly insatiable today; consider the proliferation of celebrity magazines and TV shows and the celebrity news in daily papers.

My theory is that celebrities play a crucial role in our collective emotional lives by committing acts that the rest of us can view with disapproval.

Ouch! But a very interesting viewpoint that is investigated with current and past examples by both the article's author, as well as a book that he semi-reviews in the piece (A Short History of Celebrity by Fred Inglis).
Read the full article here.

Warning: Soaring Movie Ticket Prices Have Reached the Breaking Point (The Wrap)

“I don’t think there’s been any pushback,” one major-studio distribution president told TheWrap. “Look at how the box office has been flourishing. Admissions aren’t up the way we’d like them to be, but the market has accepted the higher ticket prices. You can’t expect to pay $5 to go to the movies anymore.”

Concurred a rival distribution chief: “These ticket-price stories are things you read in the press, but I don’t believe any of it."

So glad to see the studios aren't worried about the price of movie tickets. It definitely factors into what I go to the theatres to see, so to me, this just indicates once again how far removed the high-level execs are from what the public wants from the entertainment industry. Do you agree? Disagree?
Read the full article here.

Is Hollywood settling into a prolonged recession of its own? (LA Times)

Wherever you look, there is consolidation and financial stress as people have been forced to adjust to a Darwinian thinning of the herd. "You'd have to say that this summer we probably hit bottom, certainly creatively, with so many studios relying on so much pre-sold branded product," said one top agent. "It's really hard, because so much money has left the business, there are fewer distributors than ever before and many of the ones that are left have cash problems, so it's just agonizingly difficult to get a movie up and running right now."

Let's all hope that this "top agent" is right, and that the industry really has hit bottom. Do you think we have? Why or why not?
Read the full article here.

What Is It About 20-Somethings? (NY Times Magazine)

The whole idea of milestones, of course, is something of an anachronism; it implies a lockstep march toward adulthood that is rare these days. Kids don’t shuffle along in unison on the road to maturity. They slouch toward adulthood at an uneven, highly individual pace. Some never achieve all five milestones, including those who are single or childless by choice, or unable to marry even if they wanted to because they’re gay. Others reach the milestones completely out of order, advancing professionally before committing to a monogamous relationship, having children young and marrying later, leaving school to go to work and returning to school long after becoming financially secure.

Even if some traditional milestones are never reached, one thing is clear: Getting to what we would generally call adulthood is happening later than ever. But why? That’s the subject of lively debate among policy makers and academics. To some, what we’re seeing is a transient epiphenomenon, the byproduct of cultural and economic forces. To others, the longer road to adulthood signifies something deep, durable and maybe better-suited to our neurological hard-wiring. What we’re seeing, they insist, is the dawning of a new life stage — a stage that all of us need to adjust to.

This is a seriously lengthy but fascinating article on a trend I'd guess a lot of us were aware of long before the media started thinking about it. Maybe we weren't thinking in terms of the "traditional milestones" but I know many of us simply don't feel our age, and aren't even remotely concerned about the fact that we might not be married with children by the time we hit our 30s. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this "phenomenon" - is it a good thing, a bad thing, or just a thing?

Read the full article here.
And read one Atlantic Monthly writer's response here.
Finally, check out Slate's discussion of / reader comments on the article here.

The Sofa Wars - In the Living Room, Hooked on Pay TV (NY Times)

It is a fantasy shared by many Americans: dropping cable television and its fat monthly bills and turning instead to the wide-open frontier of Internet video.

Some are finding that the reality is not that simple. ...

Entrepreneurs will “keep storming the castle until somebody figures it out,” Mr. Moffett wrote in a recent note to investors. But he also called cord-cutting “perhaps the most overhyped and overanticipated phenomenon in tech history."

I cut the cord over a year ago and I've never looked back. No, watching on my laptop is not as comfortable as watching on my TV, but for me, it's a small price to pay when compared with shelling out $100/month on cable. Anyone else braving the world without cable?
Read the full article here.
Find links to all articles in "The Sofa Wars" series here.

Generation Me - Are We in a Narcissism Epidemic? (Newsweek)

But no matter how you were raised, the handiest cure for narcissism used to be life. Whether through fate, circumstances or moral imperative, our culture kept hubris in check. Now, we encourage it. ... Treating the whole world as if it works for you doesn't suggest you're special, it means you're an ass.

This article is actually from an old issue of Newsweek (I'm finally getting around to my Spring cleaning) but it's still 100% relevant. Not so much because I think we are all narcissistic asses, but because Hollywood has influence on the hubris-checking culture mentioned above. And I'd guess about 99% of biz bosses firmly believe the world works for them. The industry is certainly not the only culprit, but change has to start somewhere, right?
Read the full article here.

This Is Series Business (Texas Monthly)

The Texas Film Commission, together with the Dallas Film Commission, may have succeeded in creating a transitory burst of excitement and jobs, which is no small task in a lousy economy. Yet in terms of nurturing Texas viewers’ imaginations—and serving up entertainment that expands our understanding of the city of Dallas—these shows are proving worthless. ...

If Texas allows itself to become known as a land of cheap hotel rooms, low-cost locations, and tax rebates galore for a gaggle of artless network dramas and comedies, then we’ll never have much hope of refining our own artistic legacy.

An interesting counter-view to the ongoing discussion of incentives, and while it focuses on Texas, it's certainly applicable to other locations - including Los Angeles.
Read the full article here.

Europe Braces for More Product Plugs (Wall Street Journal)

This U.S. style of marketing is set to take off in shows produced in the U.K. and continental Europe as well, thanks to a recent change in the rules governing the mix of advertising and content in home-grown television programs. ... A recent change to European Union law says editorial and advertising can now be mixed, but they must be distinct from one another, and EU members are given room to write their own rules. While keen to allow commercial broadcasters access to a new source of revenue, the EU authorities also want to ensure viewers know when they are being sold to.

I'm sure Europe will soon thank us for another fantastic "import." Put it on the list with McDonald's and Wal-Mart.
Read the full article here.

The Big Cable Channels Keep Getting Bigger (NY Times)

Chalk it up to an incredibly competitive environment among programmers and an appetite for new shows year-round among viewers. Speaking to TV critics in Los Angeles this month, John Landgraf, the president of FX, said cable had become a “much more crowded marketplace” in the last 10 years. When FX’s groundbreaking series “The Shield” started in 2002, “there were about 40 scripted original series in all of cable,” he said. “And now there are 140.”

Personally, I'm definitely a bigger fan of cable channels vs. the networks. I think it's safe to say that many of the shows that have been hits on cable (The Shield, Army Wives) would have been yanked from a network schedule within a handful of episodes - too edgy or too narrow a focus. Since when were those bad things?

Read the full article here.

Sony's Amy Pascal: The Movie Theater Is Our Soul; We Just Need Better Films (The Wrap)

We feel like we’re under such a microscope these days. And I think there’s a rush to judgment from all of us. (People said) “‘Robin Hood’ is a disaster.” Robin Hood’s done $300 million. To me that’s a good start. You know, sometimes I get the matinee figures at 9 a.m. on Friday, and I myself am guilty of saying ‘Oh my God, we’re in trouble.’ Five theatres in New York! It’s just not always representative of what’s gonna happen. ...

To be fair to all of us, nobody sets out to make a crappy movie. Nobody says, "Let’s make this one bad." You’re always trying to make it good. Now, sometimes you succeed in making it good, sometimes you really succeed at making it great, and sometimes you massively fail and make a bad movie. ... Which you still have to sell. But it wasn’t as if he thought, "Oh, this one doesn’t have to work."

This interview is quite long, but definitely worth the read. She's saying lots of the things we want to hear, about making better movies, so let's just hope she really means it.
Read the full article here.

Are Women Getting Short Shrift in Late Night? (Time)

More and more, such disparity is at odds with the real world that these shows spoof, in which women were the past two Supreme Court nominees and anchor two of three network news programs. Saturday Night Live's biggest stars lately have been women: Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Kristen Wiig. Ellen DeGeneres is hugely successful in daytime. Are women funny only on weekends and before local news?

In the interest of full disclosure, the only late night shows I watch are The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. I think Craig Ferguson's "Murder She Wrote" skits are brilliant ("Has there been a muuuurder?), but I don't tune in regularly. With that said, is the lack of women hosts in the land of late night something anyone in the audience is actually thinking about, or is it just writers and researchers? "Well over half of Jay and Dave's viewers are women, says Nielsen," but I'm not hearing a clamoring for a woman behind one of the talk show desks. What are your thoughts?
Read the full article here.

The Creativity Crisis (Newsweek)

... there is one crucial difference between IQ and CQ [Creativity Quotient] scores. With intelligence, there is a phenomenon called the Flynn effect — each generation, scores go up about 10 points. Enriched environments are making kids smarter. With creativity, a reverse trend has just been identified and is being reported for the first time here: American creativity scores are falling.

Creativity has always been prized in American society, but it’s never really been understood. While our creativity scores decline unchecked, the current national strategy for creativity consists of little more than praying for a Greek muse to drop by our houses. The problems we face now, and in the future, simply demand that we do more than just hope for inspiration to strike. Fortunately, the science can help: we know the steps to lead that elusive muse right to our doors.

Not sure about you, but I definitely feel less creative now than when I was a kid. The article goes on to talk about how creativity works, whether it can be learned (Good news! It can!), and the roles of schools and society on our creativity. Maybe if we all put our creative-thinking caps on, we can figure out a way to reverse this trend.
Read the full article here.

Youthquake: Where Is the Under 30s Audience For Indie Film? (FilmMaker Magazine)

What is the consequence of this disconnect between millennials - those aged 18 to 29 - and today's American indie cinema? As New York Times critic Manohla Dargis wrote in a piece that picked up on Hope's blog, "Any future alternative film culture will depend on the cultivation of younger patrons," she wrote. Not only that, but this is a demographic, she added, "who are used to receiving much if not all of their entertainment at home and on handheld devices."

This article points out that people tend to get more interested in art house films as they get older, but I do believe the lack of indies interesting to young adults is an issue that will probably only get grow if we aren't cognizant of it. Just something to think about.
Read the full article here.

'Leverage' and the Rise of 'Nerd-Friendly' Television (The Wrap)

I'm a member of the target audience for said nerd-friendly television, and don't find the term nerd to be terribly offensive. Personally, I interpret it as a label defining the way in which I and others approach certain shows -- as complex, evolving and entertaining beasts that demand or deserve our full attention.

But in truth, the qualities that define shows that might appeal to audiences previously devoted to shows like "Battlestar Galactica" or "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" don't always involve genre.

Yeah, what she said. And if you haven't checked out "Leverage" you definitely should! "White Collar" is another fun show on cable that would fit the bill of "nerd TV" in case you're looking for another show to put on your Netflix queue.
Read the full article here.

TV’s New Summer Dramas Are Struggling, But They Still May Be the Networks’ Best Option (New York Magazine)

However, as awful as these [network] numbers might seem, they're in line with the ratings of most mid-level scripted cable summer shows, like Lifetime's Drop Dead Diva and TNT's Leverage. More important, most are actually doing better than the ratings Fox and ABC generated last summer with repeats. "Even at a 1.1 [in the key demo of 18-49], The Gates is doing better than the 0.6 we did last year in the time slot with a repeat," notes ABC scheduling chief Jeff Bader.

The summer TV season includes many of my favorite shows, but what networks don't seem to understand is that the reason they're successful on the cable networks is because they're actually good shows, not just cast-offs made on the cheap. Will anyone in this town ever get that it's about quality content?!
Read the full article here.

Begun, The Digital Age of Comics Has (NPR)

Marvel has gone out of its way to assure parsimonious fans (and nervous retailers) that today's experiment is just that, and that they're still figuring things out, particularly when it comes to pricing. DC, on the other hand, has signaled that they're prepared to barrel ahead, even hinting that several series will be going the same-day-download route soon.

I guess my only surprised is that anyone is still surprised by this. This is no different than the e-book/Kindle revolution - it's just happening later since comics fans had to wait until a device could show graphics in color. I'm not a huge comics reader but would definitely be interested in checking out some of the classic books I've missed, and am certainly more likely to do so on an iPad than head down to my local comics shop. You?
Begun, The Digital Age of Comics Has : NPR

Today's vampire – a needy, neurotic wimp (The Independent, UK)

"The saddest thing is that it runs the risk of making vampires not scary. I will be glad when the glut is over. Maybe they will be scary again. I like my creatures of the night a little nocturnal," he said. "My next big novel was going to have a vampire. Now, I'm probably not. They are everywhere, they're like cockroaches." - Neil Gaiman

Once again, Neil Gaiman speaks the truth. Where's Anne Rice when you need her?
Read the full article here.

Have We Finally Had Our Fill of Hype? (Movieline)

This feels like it’s been the year of submission. For the first time in a long time, movies feel purely temporary, transitory and overcompensating with unprecedented avalanches of hype — a viral incursion here, a shadowy publicity still there, cynically manufactured and yielding nothing to show for our engagement. Conversely, if this really is the new golden age of television, it’s perhaps because only serialized TV can realistically pay off the deep investment we’ve made in its ideas, its romance and its spirit.

Is there a way out of this cycle of hype? Huge production budgets = the need for huge box office = huge marketing efforts = huge overall budgets = the need for huge box office. It's worrisome, I'm not going to lie.
Read the full article here.