If you’ve ever wondered what a Foley artist does, here is a great illustration.
Jim Carrey’s Website Goes Nuts
From the site description: “Explore the eccentric, psychedelic corners of Jim Carrey’s mind on his official site.”
Apple launches UK Movies
Link: Apple finally takes the UK out to the movies - Engadget.
Apple just announced that iTunes UK will finally make films available to British punters. Studios include 20th Century Fox, The Walt Disney Studios, Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros. Entertainment, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. (MGM), Sony Pictures Television International and Lionsgate UK. At kickoff, about 700 films will be available to purchase or rent. Films cost £6.99 for purchased library titles and £10.99 for new releases. Rentals start at £2.49 for library titles and £3.49 for new releases — “HD” titles for £4.49 without requireing an Apple TV, apparently.
Oscars 2008: What’s the big deal?
Yes, it’s that time of the year again, and not even the writer’s strike was able to stop the Academy Awards from rearing its ugly head once again. Writer A.O. Scott from the International Herald Tribune gives his take on the 2008 Oscars and wonders if the Oscars are worthy of all the attention:
Like anyone else I’m glad when my favorites win and dismayed when they fall short. So I am not against the Oscars, any more than I’m dismissive of the Salesman of the Year or the Employee of the Month, or opposed to lavish annual trade association conventions for actuaries or ophthalmologists. But I am nonetheless bothered by the disproportionate importance that the Academy Awards have taken on, and by the distorting influence they exercise over the way Americans make, market and see movies. The Oscars themselves may be harmless fun, but the idea that they matter is as dangerous as it is ridiculous.Releasing ambitious, serious films into theaters has become a brutal blood sport, while going to watch them has become, for the most part, a seasonal activity. From January through August the theaters are crowded with highly commercial franchise entertainment, most of it designed for the adolescent palate, with a sprinkling of alternatives for grown-up cinephiles. There follows in the last third of the year, roughly from the Toronto International Film Festival in September through Christmas, an avalanche of art. Movies arrive on autumn weekends by the dozen: tiny gems and aspiring masterpieces, heavy with significance or filigreed with nuance, all craning toward February, when their midsize budgets and grand ambitions will be validated like parking receipts at a shopping mall on Hollywood Boulevard.
