While there's a gratuitous Hamas mention that seems pretty much obligatory for all Tablet articles published since 10/7/23, this is still a pretty meaty article. Sasha Stone's scrappiness in establishing her own Oscar beat is rather impressive. She also has fun talking about the rise and fall of Emilia Perez, a multiple-award-nominated musical that―as far as I can tell―contains nothing I actually recognize as music.
But I think she undersells the financial aspect to this decline. Netflix has bigfooted its way into being considered a major film company even though it doesn't even really want to be anything other than a streamer. Amazon bought venerable MGM and recently bribed the Broccoli James Bond team to go away. All the other major studios either have or are trying to build their own streaming services.
This creates perverse incentives. Their traditional business is trying to get asses into the seats when movies play in the theaters. But in reality everything is geared towards getting you to watch at home. Or, God help us, on your phone while commuting.
If you have a problem with wokeness and political grandstanding in general, that's all downstream from the money. Hollywood liberals can make works that move a large audience. They've been doing it for decades. But they're not likely to do so if the audience dematerializes, leaving them no one to play to except each other.
1 comment:
I thought it was pretty funny that she started her essay about Biosphere II since it was an experiment not only did I remember well and the utter disaster that became of it but just yesterday I'd written to Belle about how mad Musk was planning to get humanity, well, a large portion of it, to the Red planet for exactly the same reason, that it will be a nice place to hang out once we've destroyed the Earth. Sheesh.. It's like he never heard of poisonous perchlorates that are dangerous to equipment and deadly to warm blooded creatures or the fact the planet has no magnetosphere to protect frail beings from solar radiation. Sorry..
You're right that it was an amusing piece to read and Sasha Stone deserves a lot of credit for discovering such an entertaining way to earn her living. I agree Emilia Perez appeared to be a musical with no music and what more does one need to know beyond that? A gen-u-ine trans person as best actress? Spare me. In that case Divine deserved one for Hairspray. it was a good musical at least.
A month or so ago Jer reopened our Netflix account so we could watch the Graham Hancock program Ancient Apocalypse. It was fun over the course of its few episodes but before cancelling the service he checked for other movies. There were only a couple of dozen made earlier than 2000, this from a company that used to send out real dvds in little envelopes. It's good that Sasha Stone managed to develop a marketable website but it looks as if she got there for the end of the party. The Hollywood moguls are long gone and Hollywoke is DOA.
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