Awards Archive for September, 2007
Docs
Kim Vonyar does a nice job starting down the doc road for the year in Cinematical.
But she misses the most important doc of 2007 by a country mile… Tony Kaye’s best-ever-in-the-category Lake of Fire.
If you think I am exaggerating, go see the movie. It’s no cuddly Moorian tour of abortion clinics with wacky right-wingers out on the lawn, happy to be humiliated by a celebrity.
If you haven
Who'll Do It?
It occurred to me last night…
The battle between Blu-Ray and HD-DVD is hot and heavy… both companies are willing to spend millions to get studios to join the effort on one side or the other…
The biggest challenge for the marketers is to get people to, finally, commit to buying these machines.
And what group would be an obvious key demographic for the players involved? How about 6000 members of The Academy and the 9000 or so people who are in guilds, groups, and media who also get screeners?
Of course, the majority of these folks can afford to buy machines if they so choose. But getting them/us off the dime is a challenge.
So what if either Sony, on the Blu-Ray side, and Microsoft on the HD side made a play to make sure that those who get 50+ screeners this awards season get them in traditional DVD AND in the High Definition version of their creation?
If I have 20 of the top movies of the year sitting on my shelf in one of these formats, even if I can just pop in the regular DVD, isn’t the temptation to consider a new player increased significantly… especially if I have the hi-def TV, which this demographic has more in larger numbers than most?
It’s the old razors and razor blades concept, except that in this case, the cost of the initial razor is what is prohibitive… and if you can get them to buy the razor at all, there is an incremental value to selling these blades instead of the old one… but the bigger issue is not making a fortune on DVD “razors,” but market share for these players, which is life and death… especially to the Japanese business model.
Of course – and not entirely unfairly – some of you will think I just want a bunch of free High Definition DVDs on my shelf. Guilty.
But had I not recently joined the hi-def game. After a week with a souped up DVR
Can Lars & The Real Girl Be This Year
I saw just under an hour of Lars & The Real Girl a few days ago, having to run out to see another film whose last TIFF screening I had to catch while here. The film was charming and odd and unexpected
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