2015 OSCAR WINNERS
Last night's Oscar ceremony as per usual held few surprises, while giving several well-liked stars their first wins.
But they were more like mini "lifetime achievement" awards than a show of appreciation for just one particular film.
Skipping through further envelope please blah-blah, the main winners were:
BEST PICTURE
Birdman
Alejandro G. Iñárritu, John Lesher and James W. Skotchdopole, Producers
BEST DIRECTOR
Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Birdman
BEST ACTOR
Eddie Redmayne in The Theory of Everything
BEST ACTRESS
Julianne Moore in Still Alice
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
J.K. Simmons in Whiplash
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Patricia Arquette in Boyhood
BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
Birdman
Written by Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Nicolás Giacobone, Alexander Dinelaris, Jr. & Armando Bo
BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
The Imitation Game
Written by Graham Moore
BEST ORIGINAL MUSIC SCORE
The Grand Budapest Hotel
Alexandre Desplat
BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE
Citizen Four
Laura Poitras, Mathilde Bonnefoy and Dirk Wilutzky
BEST ANIMATED FEATURE
Big Hero 6
Don Hall, Chris Williams and Roy Conli
BEST COSTUME DESIGN
The Grand Budapest Hotel
Milena Canonero
BEST VISUAL EFFECTS
Interstellar
Paul Franklin, Andrew Lockley, Ian Hunter and Scott Fisher
TOP 20 MOVIES OF 2014
Here at the Mush we're continuing the recent tradition of looking back to see who made the most dough last year.
One word: Groot!
1. Guardians of the Galaxy
$332,862,030
2. The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1
$316,174,548
3. Captain America: The Winter Soldier
$259,746,958
4. The Lego Movie
$257,784,718
5. Transformers: Age of Extinction
$245,439,076
6. Maleficent
$241,407,328
7. X-Men: Days of Future Past
$233,921,534
8. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
$208,545,589
9. Big Hero 6
$206,452,220
10. The Amazing Spider-Man 2
$202,853,933
11. Godzilla
$200,672,193
12. The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies
$198,869,927
13. 22 Jump Street
$191,719,337
14. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
$191,204,754
15. Interstellar
$180,342,023
16. How to Train Your Dragon 2
$177,002,924
17. Gone Girl
$166,330,156
18. Divergent
$150,947,895
19. Neighbors
$150,086,800
20. Ride Along
$134,202,565
TOP 20 MOVIES OF 2013
Let's see who made the most movie money last year.
It's always good to iron these things out, once in awhile.
1. Iron Man 3
$408,992,272
2. The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
$400,088,390
3. Despicable Me 2
$367,860,095
4. Man Of Steel
$291,045,518
5. Frozen
$277,116,204
6. Monsters University
$268,488,329
7. Gravity
$255,144,426
8. Fast And Furious 6
$238,679,850
9. Oz The Great And Powerful
$234,770,996
10. Star Trek Into Darkness
$228,778,661
11. The Hobbit: The Desolation Of Smaug
$213,384,422
12. Thor: The Dark World
$202,972,697
13. World War Z
$202,359,711
14. The Croods
$187,168,425
15. The Heat
$159,581,587
16. We're The Millers
$150,394,119
17. The Great Gatsby
$144,840,419
18. The Conjuring
$137,400,141
19. Identity Thief
$134,506,920
20. Grown Ups 2
$133,668,525
TOP 20 MOVIES OF 2012
It's that magic time once again, as we peep into the financial world to see which films fielded the most financials last year.
And our honor shall be avenged!
1. The Avengers
$623,279,547
2. The Dark Knight Rises
$448,139,099
3. The Hunger Games
$408,010,692
4. Skyfall
$293,729,570
5. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, Part 2
$287,756,286
6. The Amazing Spider-Man
$262,030,663
7. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
$246,289,507
8. Brave
$237,236,938
9. Ted
$218,665,740
10. Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted
$216,391,482
11. Dr. Seuss' The Lorax
$214,030,500
12. Men in Black 3
$179,020,854
13. Wreck-It Ralph
$177,319,916
14. Ice Age: Continental Drift
$161,168,962
15. Snow White and the Huntsman
$155,136,755
16. Hotel Transylvania
$145,706,677
17. Taken 2
$139,076,968
18. Lincoln
$138,675,219
19. 21 Jump Street
$138,447,667
20. Prometheus
$126,477,084
AW, SHUCKS - 48 FPS SUCKS
The little buggers run around like they're on a coffee high:
Maybe it all part of a plot to get Starbucks as a sponsor.
A certain recent Peter Jackson-directed movie called The Hobbit, which will now be expanded to a trilogy, ala The Lord Of The Rings, uses 48 frames per second - which is very dumb.
(In fact, by comparison it makes the awkward and half-baked success of 3D look like a totally genius idea.)
Frame rates must be adjusted in subtractive or additive form in 6 frame increments only, and 30 fps is the max viewing rate without getting eyeball distraction.
Which is why it has been the standard for most computer video files. 36, 42 or 48 fps is too high. Frame rates over 30 only work for very heavy action, sports and animation.
Sure the 24 fps standard of the film industry could be hiked up a bit to 30 fps, but why bother? The very small bump in clarity it would demonstrate wouldn't really be worth retooling all the systems to display it.
And besides, these days viewers will get a nice high def picture when they soon-after get it on Blu-ray, anyway.
The biggest drawback to 48 is that it kills the cinematic FILM look, and reduces images to a mere "behind the scenes" VIDEO rehearsal look.
You know, folks - what today's newbies repeatedly ignore is the fact that nine out of 10 times there's a very good REASON why certain things haven't been "updated" for many decades:
Because said "updates" in reality have already been tried and found to be major FAILS.
So everybody, just ignore Jackson and go back to 24 fps.
THREE STARS, THREE DEATHS
All diagnosed with abdominal cancer in 1991:
None of them ever worked together, even though both
Landon and Bixby starred in three TV series each.
Something very strange happened in the otherwise uneventful year of 1991. We're not entirely sure what it all points to, but we're just reporting the facts from our research and letting the world figure out the rest.
Actor Michael Landon was diagnosed with stomach/prostate cancer at the very same time fellow actor Bill Bixby was diagnosed with the same thing.
In fact, coincidentally, both Bixby and Landon were at the same hospital, on April 5, 1991. Landon died less than three months later, on 7/1/91. Bixby held on until 11/21/93.
Musician/actor Frank Zappa, who was also diagnosed with stomach/prostate cancer in 1991, died on 12/4/93, less than two weeks after Bixby.
(BTW, we're publishing this item on 12/4/12, in observance of the 19th anniversary of that last date.)
Meanwhile, as absurd as it may sound, could such happenings be a political plot of some kind?
True, Zappa and Bixby were known liberal Democrats, but before the "conservative conspiracy" folks jump on this, bear in mind that Landon was not. In fact, he was such a dedicated Republican supporter that Ronald Reagan himself attended his funeral.
But let's also look at some other famous influential people who died between 1991 and 1993, to see how the whole liberal-versus-conservative thing shakes out.
Of course we'll limit it to those with a similar age and occupation and cancer diagnosis (and yes, AIDS is also a form of cancer) as the three stars we've already mentioned.
1991:
Bert Convy
Ken Curtis
Brad Davis
Freddie Mercury
Lee Remick
1992:
Chuck Conners
Jack Kelly
Cleavon Little
Anthony Perkins
Robert Reed
1993:
Audrey Hepburn
Janet Margolin
Rudolph Nureyev
Ray Sharkey
Conway Twitty
As can be seen by the above, again the liberals far outnumber those with conservative leanings.
However, it must be noted that it can probably be said that Hollywood and the music scene in general - the "artsy" crowd - would tend to exhibit more liberal tendencies than conservative.
Be that as it may, in the early 1990s they were sure dropping like flies, especially thanks to suddenly being seized by cancer, although most of them weren't very old, few of them smoked, and many were even all out "health nuts" as well.
The above is certainly something to wonder about, and we hope that someone will be inspired to research this phenomena much closer and more completely.
It's just that we didn't like the way it all went down.
CURRENT LIST OF MOVIE STUDIOS
THE GATEWAY TO GREATNESS:
OR
THIS SUBJECT IS PARAMOUNT IN OUR MINDS:
The best studio of all time? Well, it's at least our favorite,
since Jerry Lewis made most of his best movies there.
Happy Thanksgiving Day and Dead Kennedy Day. What we're thankful for today (besides not being a Kennedy) is our beloved movie studio system, of course.
The following A-Z list features most film production and distribution companies. It includes all major movie studios (The Big Six: Disney, Fox, Paramount, Sony Pictures, Universal and Warner Bros.) plus many more.
Soon to be dumping their wares on a theater near you!
THE MOVIE STUDIO STORY
A-FG-LM-RS-Z
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