As expected, Quillnews enjoyed the Oscars, the beautiful people were on display performing beautifully. Jon Stewart turned out to an smoothie - very easy to take, and the overt lefty politics was confined to a perfectly defensible (if self-important and narcissistic) statement by Oscar winner George Clooney that he's glad to be part of a creative commuinity that historically has been "out of touch" but on the side of the moral right (HIV/AIDS, civil rights, artistic freedom) and not with the (Main Stream in touch?) which is in favor of discrimination, repression...? I didn't quite get it. But it has just the right touch of muddled arrogance of us vs. them the Trendy Hollywoodies love... Still three awards to King Kong for sound, three to Geisha for art; three each to Crash and Brokeback Mountain for the big shot awards, and singletaries to Clooney, Reese Witherspoon, and that Philip Seymour Hoffman, a regular local guy about the Village, who my daugther seems to keep running into all the time. Well deserved all. (Nominees, Winners). I've written about Syriana, so enough of that; and I am completely in the dark about the significance of the "Its hard out here for a pimp" side show. I just don't get it, any of it. But the one Oscar that was so well deserved and ran rings over all the heavy handed political and ecological polemics offered elsewhere in the nominee list was March of the Penguins, Quillnews favorite film hands down! It had everything: beauty, committment, contending with unforgiving natural forces, technical mastery and even enough haunting questions about our own human impact on this world to take a second look and wonder anew on climate change: what can we do to make it right?
Quillnews business report: no question, the big time Hollywood biz is breaking up. The TV audience for the 78th Oscar telecast apparently fell 8% from last year, with viewers reaching 38.8 million the second time since '87 it fell below 40 million, the other dip in '03 when the telecast came just as the beginning of the Iraq war. Demographics, market tastes, technology and prices are all having their impact. Recall after WW2, 100% of movie revenue came from ticket sales in theaters; in 2003 it was 18%. The rest is made on the back end - DVD, subsidiary sales, home use, etc. Even the Oscar producers believed they were required to remind viewers that big time movies are best seen in the big time movie theaters! That's all fine Oscar, but the people have moved on. Will Hollywood? Check out Slate, and Edward Jay Epstein's book The Big Picture.
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