Great article, thanks for putting this together. I love the Oscars and enjoy putting a ballot together with friends for a friendly competition. Every year I hope the producers will capture some of the magic of previous shows that I felt understood the assignment of “show love of cinema.” That’s all the ceremony needs to do. Just love the movies.
One reason why Hollywood remains central to world moviemaking is because so many films are financed there. That’s due to the relative ease of raising investment capital in the U.S. and the sheer quantity of capital available. That’s also the reason why so many high-tech startups are founded in the U.S. by people from other countries rather than in their home countries: access to capital.
I see the Oscars as mostly about your second point, glamour, and shrug. It’s part of the paradox of Hollywood: a combination of lifestyle unseriousness and the possibility of huge amounts of money to be made via the movie art-form. Maybe that’s partly a California thing: Silicon Valley presents a similar paradox in its combination of laid-back, dressed-down casualness and fierce competition between high-tech firms (surfing might be a good metaphor).
Hollywood has always been an international place and not just because that’s where the world’s talent went. In the 1930s, Hollywood employed many European film people, quite a few of them refugees, including Kurt Weill, Lotte Lenya, Bertolt Brecht, Billy Wilder and Marlene Dietrich.
Perhaps like you, I appreciate the Netflix model and not just because they seem serious about scouring the world looking for things their viewers might like once they’ve sampled them. I particularly like the serialized shows they acquire and, along with their competitors, are now producing. In the last few years, the streamers have brought me things that might never have fit into either conventional films or TV, including Coffee Prince, Tientsin Mystic, The Beatles: Get Back, Andor and especially Maniac:
Great article, thanks for putting this together. I love the Oscars and enjoy putting a ballot together with friends for a friendly competition. Every year I hope the producers will capture some of the magic of previous shows that I felt understood the assignment of “show love of cinema.” That’s all the ceremony needs to do. Just love the movies.
One reason why Hollywood remains central to world moviemaking is because so many films are financed there. That’s due to the relative ease of raising investment capital in the U.S. and the sheer quantity of capital available. That’s also the reason why so many high-tech startups are founded in the U.S. by people from other countries rather than in their home countries: access to capital.
I see the Oscars as mostly about your second point, glamour, and shrug. It’s part of the paradox of Hollywood: a combination of lifestyle unseriousness and the possibility of huge amounts of money to be made via the movie art-form. Maybe that’s partly a California thing: Silicon Valley presents a similar paradox in its combination of laid-back, dressed-down casualness and fierce competition between high-tech firms (surfing might be a good metaphor).
Hollywood has always been an international place and not just because that’s where the world’s talent went. In the 1930s, Hollywood employed many European film people, quite a few of them refugees, including Kurt Weill, Lotte Lenya, Bertolt Brecht, Billy Wilder and Marlene Dietrich.
Perhaps like you, I appreciate the Netflix model and not just because they seem serious about scouring the world looking for things their viewers might like once they’ve sampled them. I particularly like the serialized shows they acquire and, along with their competitors, are now producing. In the last few years, the streamers have brought me things that might never have fit into either conventional films or TV, including Coffee Prince, Tientsin Mystic, The Beatles: Get Back, Andor and especially Maniac:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6cDDmk-O5A