BrerJon
Well-Known Member
"Powerful you have become. The dark side I sense in you."
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A Spirited Perfect Ten
- Thread starter WDW1974
- Start date
"Powerful you have become. The dark side I sense in you."
BrerJon
Well-Known Member
So Iger is implying Willow is his Yoda, so I guess he's saying he's Luke Skywalker. Man, is that guy's ego big!
BrerJon
Well-Known Member
If any of us were promoted to that job you can guarantee we'd give PR a quote about having always loved Disney parks, or being thrilled to move to a unit with such promise and possibilities... something to give people hope, but there's nothing like that, the press release implies he's barely heard of the parks before.
BrerJon
Well-Known Member
Big Hero 6 and Feast winning showed real laziness, with the Academy just voting for what they'd seen or heard of. Both were good, but nothing remarkable, and neither were the best nominated in their category by a long shot.
BrerJon
Well-Known Member
Do you really think there's anyone at Disney who remembers life before 1993? A trip to WDW is all you need to show you that!
Travel Junkie
Well-Known Member
I mean this in the nicest way possible but you are not the gatekeeper of what constitutes the "highest quality" film.
The English (really theater) majors I went to college with pretty much hated anything that became popular. Back in my day, they loved Chariots of Fire, telling me I just had to see it. However, once it became popular, those same people belittled the movie because of its success.
That's not just elitist; that's stupid.
Today, some of those same theater majors are voting members of the Academy. You might even have heard of a few.
The Academy votes for the "Best" in various categories but what is "Best"?
As an actor, if you give the most amazing performance ever but then openly express that you're anti-X when X is the Hollywood's cause-of-the-day, you have a zero percent chance of winning the Oscar.
If you belittle something I believe in, I can't help but be affected when I judge your performance.
In my opinion, an actor or film should be judged solely by what's seen on the screen but that rarely happens.
Paul Newman, one of America's greatest actors, won his Oscar for probably his worst Best Actor nomination. He received the Oscar because he had lost 6 times before.
Just search the Internet for "best movies not to win Oscar" or "worst movies that won Best Picture".
Yes, I agree with what I think is your larger point that the most popular movie often is not the "best" movie, but very often neither is the one that wins "Best Picture".
And, by the way, I suspect that my artsy college friends working in today's Hollywood would not agree with you on what are the "highest quality films".
I never pretended to say I was some gatekeeper. You may laugh though if you knew what I do for a living. I was probably one of those college kids you are talking about.
Films are subjective, no question about that and members are fallible and often vote for political reasons. Check out the trades during award season and see the lobbying for awards. That is just the public lobbying. Imagine what occurs behind the scenes. The Academy is far from perfect but get it right more than they get it wrong in my opinion. Often the “mistakes” the Academy makes are nothing more than not appreciating a film in the moment. Famously Ordinary People picked over Raging Bull for Best Picture and more recently Titanic (A box office success!) beating out LA Confidential, which now feels like the wrong choice.
This isn’t really the thread for an examination of why box office successes are largely shut out of the Academy Awards process in recent years and the subject could be the subject of many books. Suffice to say that it has a lot to do with when publicly traded companies demanded sure fire money makers and the decision making was taken away from creatives and handed over to accountants. More and more creatives broke off from the studio system and created the independent film movement where “true artists” have more freedom. The studio system then turned around and embraced this “edgy” product while most moviegoers prefer the tentpole tried and true. I hope that doesn’t come off incorrectly.
You have some amazing power to diagnose people you don’t know. You are a very close-minded and stereotypical person. I have stronger language than that but I'll leave it at stereotypical.
ford91exploder
Resident Curmudgeon
Exactly - one of the best environmental films made was Princess Mononoke ZERO interest by the Academy
ford91exploder
Resident Curmudgeon
^^^^THIS^^^^
TalkingHead
Well-Known Member
While I agree with the two examples you mentioned, I think the Academy gets it wrong far more often than it gets it right.
Relatively few of the consensus "best movies of all time" won Best Picture. I think the Best Picture winners from the last fifteen years are particularly weak. I count one masterwork in that time span (No Country for Old Men). The others are good to mediocre to awful (Crash).
Travel Junkie
Well-Known Member
I agree with a 5 year waiting period or at least 1 year. The extra time would do a lot of good, especially a film like The Dark Knight. On the flip side box office dynamo Titanic would not have won if there was a five year waiting period.
GOTG was a fun popcorn movie but IMO that’s the extent of it. Same with The Avengers although I give it very high marks for how they intertwined so many storylines and juggled all those leading characters. That is extremely difficult to do and I predict Batman vs Superman will not manage this nearly as well.
ford91exploder
Resident Curmudgeon
Yes I'd agree with that - and gee it was an ENTERTAINING movie as well.
Travel Junkie
Well-Known Member
Crash is one of the biggest misses no doubt. It was a pretty bad year overall looking back. I suppose Brokeback Mountain wins if it were held today. Of the 5 nominated that year Crash would probably finishes 4th or 5th if voted on today.
BrerJon
Well-Known Member
So what can we do to get wider press interested in Igergate? How do we bring this to the public's attention like SaveDisney managed to with Eisner?
It should be a good one for many publications - the boss of Disney is on course for a bumpy opening for Shanghai that will make EuroDisney's first years look quite healthy in comparison, losing stockholders tons of money, and in the process $800M has disappeared, possibly into the pockets of Chinese officials.
The only article to give negative analysis on Shanghai gets shut down by Iger's wife, in a big breach of journalism ethics.
These events should be really interesting to Wall Street publications, and anyone doing corporate investigative journalism, but nobody seems to care except us. Has Iger really built such an impenetrable wall of love around him that nobody has the slightest interest in questioning him anymore?
It should be a good one for many publications - the boss of Disney is on course for a bumpy opening for Shanghai that will make EuroDisney's first years look quite healthy in comparison, losing stockholders tons of money, and in the process $800M has disappeared, possibly into the pockets of Chinese officials.
The only article to give negative analysis on Shanghai gets shut down by Iger's wife, in a big breach of journalism ethics.
These events should be really interesting to Wall Street publications, and anyone doing corporate investigative journalism, but nobody seems to care except us. Has Iger really built such an impenetrable wall of love around him that nobody has the slightest interest in questioning him anymore?
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the.dreamfinder
Well-Known Member
Actually, I've been working on a post regarding FCPA in my free time over the past two days. From what I've been reading and this is all I will say for now, we are sitting under a powder keg.
PhotoDave219
Well-Known Member
You can't.
NearTheEars
Well-Known Member
I musta missed that story. Didn't see the film either.
WDWFigment
Well-Known Member
Slightly off topic, but I recently watched a clandestinely filmed documentary on North Korea (sorry, don't recall the name) which, in part, covered individuals who were risking their lives smuggling in DVDs of Hollywood films (a crime punishable by execution). They postulated that the key to changing public perceptions about the West was to turn people onto our pop culture, and then they would stop believing the views being pushed by the gov't.
There's a lot more to it than that, but that's the basic theory. When you give it some thought, it makes sense. For better or for worse, just think of how influential pop culture is here in terms of politics, social issues, etc.
WDWFigment
Well-Known Member
Sorry, I should have been clearer: this was a public holiday in PRC and numerous tour groups from the mainland (those who arrived before the travel ban) were in Hong Kong.
The government of China may try to paint consumerism in whatever light it wants, but China (not Hong Kong, although it is, too) has become as much of a consumer culture as the United States. If the people themselves are consuming these brands in mass quantities, I'm skeptical that the government's presentation of America matters quite so much.
Cesar R M
Well-Known Member
Well you know.. most voters for animated film do not even care.. unless it has the "disney" brand all stamped.
GoofGoof
Premium Member
Honestly, there's no smoking gun...yet. Most of what has been talked about here isn't going to interest main stream media or Wall Street. If the SEC or some other federal agency starts a formal probe into TWDC's actions in China or if a Congressman calls for an investigation (like the child privacy one from a few years ago) that would be a major story. Right now the only story is that Iger and his wife got that story killed, but there's still really no smoking gun there either. We all know it happened, but without actual proof or at least a well connected source going on the record to confirm it major media probably won't touch it. The best anyone here can do is continue to talk about it and hope enough buzz is generated to encourage further investigation or possibly encourage a whistleblower if something highly illegal is really going on.