Author Archives: Scott Bowles

Streaming analysis: Could Roma upend the Oscar Race?

Roma, Alfonso Cuarón’s latest masterpiece, wears several hats: It’s part homage to his Mexican upbringing, part love poem to his nanny and part examination of the political and social schisms of his country in the 1970s.

It’s also something of a Hollywood double agent.

The black-and-white film, which is garnering substantial Oscar buzz, underscores the latest power struggle over who holds sway over the industry’s biggest movies: streaming services or theaters. The question is nothing new for Hollywood, but the film marks the fiercest battle yet in the struggle for audiences, whose attendance has flat-lined in recent years.

To qualify for Oscar consideration, a film must make at least a two-week run in theaters in New York or Los Angeles. So Netflix, which produced Roma, gave it a brief vanity run on the big screen before returning it to the small, setting up a duel between traditional exhibitors and executives at streaming outlets, which have been expanding as competitors such as Netflix, Amazon and Apple ramp up original content.

Essentially, Roma needed movie theaters to battle movie theaters.

And while streaming outlets have already changed the landscape for television awards (Netflix won seven Emmys at last year’s awards, while Amazon claimed five), Oscar remains the gold standard among laurels.

Already, skirmishes for smaller Oscars have broken out between studios and streamers. Amazon and Casey Affleck picked up a Best Actor Oscar for 2016’s Manchester by the Sea, while Allison Janney won Best Supporting Actress for I, Tonya last year after Neon productions turned down Netflix in favor of a theatrical run.

But a Best Picture statue could alter the landscape permanently. Studios and actors prefer the big-screen experience and argue it remains the art’s truest form. And a Best Picture nomination is no guarantee for Roma (although it’s one of the year’s best-reviewed movies, with a 96% thumbs-up rating on Rotten Tomatoes). The film is subtitled with an unknown cast, possibly limiting it to a Best Foreign Picture nod.

On the other hand, it’s directed by Cuarón, a previous Oscar winner and awards darling. And, as Joe Pichirallo, a former executive at Fox Searchlight Pictures and a professor at NYU told NPR, audience size may soon trump audience experience.

“Suddenly (Cuarón’s) film can be seen right away, in 190 countries around the world, at a potential audience of 130 million people,” he said. “Roma is now being taken seriously, at least right at this stage. It’s still early. But right now Roma is being talked about as a serious Oscar contender.”

Well a Hush Fell Over the Pool Room

 

It’s time to return to Jim Crow laws.

Settle down, Trumpanzees. Not the Jim Crow literacy tests for which you yearn to return. Go retrieve the MAGA ball caps you surely tossed in the air at the prospect (when, exactly, was America great; can you give me a year or even era?).

No, we at the HB call for Jim Crow laws for you. But to make it equal between all parties, let’s make it applicable to every American.

Make no mistake: The Jim Crow laws of the 60’s were an abomination. I unearthed a Jim Crow literacy test from  a half century ago, administered to black voters to keep them out of the polls. I challenge any voter, black or white, to ace just the first five questions:

labially 1965 Alabama Literacy Test
1. Which of the following is a right guaranteed by the Bill of Rights?
_____Public Education
_____Employment
_____Trial by Jury
_____Voting
2. The federal census of population is taken every five years.
_____True _____False
3. If a person is indicted for a crime, name two rights which he has.
______________________ ________________________
4. A U.S. senator elected at the general election in November takes office the following year on what date?
_________________________________________________
5. A President elected at the general election in November takes office the following year on what date?
_______________________________________________________

The test went on like that for six pages and 68 questions. I’m not sure your president can even count that high.

No, this test — let’s rename them Jim Croce laws, since the sublime singer appealed to all races and creeds, and loved to skewer dumbasses — would be far fairer.

The Jim Croce test would require to correctly answer just three true-false questions:

  1. Is the Earth round?
  2. Is the Earth getting warmer?
  3. Did dinosaurs live millions of years ago?

I was considering including evolution in there, but realized a Trump base may not know how to pronounce the word, let alone understand it. So we’ll stick to dinosaurs. If you can’t answer those questions, you shouldn’t be allowed to vote. Consider the questions to get a driver’s license; if that requires a provable level of intelligence, shouldn’t voting?

This, of course, would be assailed by the GOP and Mitch “chicken scrotum” McConnell, who somehow seriously claimed last week that proposing making Election Day a holiday was an attempted power grab by those crafty liberals. He similarly would intuit those three questions alone would spell doom for his party.Image result for mitch mcconnell wrinkly neck

So let’s just stick with something simpler: Slapfacts. And don’t worry; none will be on the test.

  • Chuck Berry had a degree in hairdressing.Image result for Chuck Berry had a degree in hairdressing.
  • Humans share the planet with as many as 8.7 million different forms of life, scientists estimate.
  • John Williams has never seen any of the Star Wars movies he composed the music for.Image result for star wars
  • More people in America own more than 10 guns than there are people in the whole of Denmark.Image result for southerner with many guns
  • Serbia is home to the World Testicle Cooking Championships.Image result for Serbia is home to the World Testicle Cooking Championships.
  • California was named after a fictional island in a 16th-century romance novel, Las Sergas de Esplandián (The Adventures of Esplandián).Image result for Las Sergas de Esplandián (The Adventures of Esplandián).
  • Actress Carrie Fisher once delivered a cow tongue inside a Tiffany box to a predatory Hollywood producer who assaulted her friend.Image result for carrie fisher cow tongue buzzfeed
  • Before he became an actor, Clint Eastwood survived a plane crash, avoided jellyfish, and swam to shore.

 

How to Save Journalism

Amid the layoffs, the dire world and domestic developments, the exclamations of fake news, journalism appears doomed.

Here’s how you fix it. Run just one story, like this out of Chicago, on your front page everyday. Show that real journalism doesn’t need to lead with what bleeds. Counter punch the villains of this world.

Starting now.

Your turn.

Chicago Woman Got 30 Hotel Rooms for Homeless People During Severe Cold Snap

As temperatures plunged to life-threatening lows this week, more than 100 homeless people in Chicago unexpectedly found themselves with food, fresh clothes and a place to stay after a local real estate broker intervened.

The broker, Candice Payne, 34, said it was a “spur-of-the-moment” decision to help. “It was 50 below, and I knew they were going to be sleeping on ice and I had to do something,” she said on Saturday.

Ms. Payne contacted hotels and found 30 rooms available at the Amber Inn for Wednesday night at $70 per room. Temperatures in Chicago reached lows of minus 25 and minus 26 on Wednesday and Thursday, according to the National Weather Service.

After Ms. Payne paid for the rooms on a credit card, she asked on her Instagram account for anyone who could help transport the homeless people. Soon she had a caravan of cars, S.U.V.s and vans with volunteer drivers.

“We met at tent city, where all the homeless people set up tents and live on the side of the expressway,” Ms. Payne said. “It is not a secret. The homeless have been living there for years.”

She asked as many people as she could to go with her to the Amber Inn as donations were pouring in to her Cash App account.

Ms. Payne met two pregnant women and a family of five in the first group of homeless people who went to the inn.

“We had to accommodate everyone. It was really overwhelming,” Ms. Payne said. “They were so appreciative. They couldn’t wait to get in a bath and lay in a bed.”

Ms. Payne bought toiletries, food, prenatal vitamins, lotions, deodorants and snacks and made care packages to help make the people feel comfortable. Restaurants donated trays of food, and many people called the inn.

She said she has spent about $4,700 so far on the rooms and other materials.

“People from the community, they all piggyback off Candice,” said Robyn Smith, the manager of the Amber Inn. “Other people started calling and anonymously paying for rooms,” she added, and Ms. Smith lowered the price to accommodate more people.

What started out as 30 rooms doubled to 60, Ms. Smith said. The rooms were only supposed to be occupied until Thursday, when temperatures in Chicago were expected to moderate. But with the donations Ms. Payne has received — more than $10,000 so far — she has been able to house the people in the hotel and feed them until Sunday.

“I am a regular person,” Ms. Payne said. “It all sounded like a rich person did this, but I’m just a little black girl from the South Side. I thought it was unattainable, but after seeing this and seeing people from all around the world, that just tells me that it’s not that unattainable. We can all do this together.”

Ms. Payne wants to organize other ways to help homeless people in Chicago.

“This was a temporary fix, and it has inspired me to come up with more of a permanent solution,” Ms. Payne said before she received a call on her other line — from J.B. Pritzker, the governor of Illinois.

“He thanked me,” Ms. Payne said. “He said it was one of the biggest acts of kindness we have seen in a long time.”

NYT, 2/2/19