Tonight the DGA awards may finally give us a frontrunner in one of the tightest Oscar races ever. Tomorrow the Grammy Awards will be resoundingly ignored by yours truly. It’s too cold to go outside, so here’s a handful of distractions for your weekend…
- Apparently the new Star Wars VII will NOT be shot in IMAX. Maybe the use of standard (can we say “old-school” yet?) film will help give it that warm, lived-in, epic feel of the old ones that the prequels so sorely lacked. Either way it’s fun to hear the script is complete.
- The Oscar for Best Picture and Producer’s Guild Award both use a complicated preferential ballot, or “instant run-off,” to determine their winners. Basically the ballots are organized according to the first place votes, and then the one with the fewest… OK, there’s no way I can explain it, myself. Here, watch this 4-minute video instead. It seems crazy and unbelievably impossible to me that with 10 films and 4,700 votes that system somehow ended up in a tie.
- The Shorts are always the most obscure categories at the Oscars. I’ll go over predictions in a few weeks, but or now here’s a breakdown of all 15 films with a one-line synopsis of each.
- The Onion “reports” that all 10 of this year’s Oscar nominated screenplays were written during the same continuing education screenwriting class. I want to take that class!!!!
- “Let It Go” from Frozen, sung in 25 different languages, and it’s still gorgeous.
- “100 Films / 100 Behind the Scenes Photos” is exactly what it sounds like. Except it’s a 3-part series, so that’s actually 300 photos. Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3
Ok, that’s all for this week. If you have any suggestions for future editions of GrabBag, please email me or post them in the comments. And once again, here’s my plea for any designer willing to donate their skills to help create an original GrabBag logo. Any takers?
The Screen Life 