The best song category has become a vital platform for addressing social and political issues and this season it has intensified. Damien Chazelle’s frontrunner musical “La La Land” boasts two songs about the cost of love and ambition (“City of Stars,” and “Audition”); Justin Timberlake’s happiness anthem from DreamWorks’ animated “Trolls” (“Can’t Stop the Feeling!”) became last year’s best-selling single; J. Ralph and Sting collaborated on “Empty Chair” from the HBO doc about the eponymous slain photojournalist and social activist (“Jim: The James Foley Story”); and Tori Amos offered “Flicker” from the Netflix doc, “Audrie & Daisy,” about teen sexual assault and cyberbullying.
See more: 2017 Oscar Predictions: Best Original Song
“City of Stars,” “Audition” (“La La Land”)
Tony and Emmy-nominated composers Benj Pasek and Justin Paul were tasked with creating two very different odes to dreamers and dreaming in collaboration with writer-director Chazelle and composer Justin Hurwitz.
See more: 2017 Oscar Predictions: Best Original Song
“City of Stars,” “Audition” (“La La Land”)
Tony and Emmy-nominated composers Benj Pasek and Justin Paul were tasked with creating two very different odes to dreamers and dreaming in collaboration with writer-director Chazelle and composer Justin Hurwitz.
- 1/6/2017
- by Bill Desowitz
- Indiewire
The Academy will announce its list of Oscar-eligible documentaries this week, a field that counted just 82 entries in 2005; last year, there were 124. And along with this growth comes a new attribute for the much-admired/often ignored genre: Power.
Under Sheila Nevins, HBO led the way in showing how documentaries could draw audiences with nonfiction programming that’s skillful, dynamic, and relevant. Under Lisa Nishimura, Netflix upped the ante with deep-pocketed algorithms that not only proved audiences craved this content (after all, documentaries are the original reality TV), but also guided exactly where those viewers could be found, and what they wanted to see. And while social justice has always been the balliwick of documentary filmmakers, Diane Weyermann at Participant has given that niche the financing and clout it deserves.
While their business models differ, they’re all producing documentaries that might not otherwise exist, making them better and getting them seen.
Under Sheila Nevins, HBO led the way in showing how documentaries could draw audiences with nonfiction programming that’s skillful, dynamic, and relevant. Under Lisa Nishimura, Netflix upped the ante with deep-pocketed algorithms that not only proved audiences craved this content (after all, documentaries are the original reality TV), but also guided exactly where those viewers could be found, and what they wanted to see. And while social justice has always been the balliwick of documentary filmmakers, Diane Weyermann at Participant has given that niche the financing and clout it deserves.
While their business models differ, they’re all producing documentaries that might not otherwise exist, making them better and getting them seen.
- 10/24/2016
- by Anne Thompson
- Indiewire
Developing a documentary about the murder of an innocent photojournalist at the hands of Isis would be an emotional experience for any first-time feature filmmaker. Now imagine that the slain journalist in question, Jim Foley, is someone you’ve been friends with since childhood. This is the situation filmmaker Brian Oakes found himself in when making Jim: The James Foley Story, a film that looks at his friend’s death as well as the chilling aftermath the Foley family had to endure stateside. An intensely personal experience, Jim will air on HBO next month following its world premiere in the U.S. Documentary Completion section of […]...
- 2/2/2016
- by Erik Luers
- Filmmaker Magazine - Blog
Developing a documentary about the murder of an innocent photojournalist at the hands of Isis would be an emotional experience for any first-time feature filmmaker. Now imagine that the slain journalist in question, Jim Foley, is someone you’ve been friends with since childhood. This is the situation filmmaker Brian Oakes found himself in when making Jim: The James Foley Story, a film that looks at his friend’s death as well as the chilling aftermath the Foley family had to endure stateside. An intensely personal experience, Jim will air on HBO next month following its world premiere in the U.S. Documentary Completion section of […]...
- 2/2/2016
- by Erik Luers
- Filmmaker Magazine-Director Interviews
The dreaded "O" word has reared its ugly head and onto my radar screen: Optics. It is a much-discussed word of the Obama presidency (golfing at the most inappropriate times, as seen 20 minutes after announcing the Isis beheading of American journalist Jim Foley) and before (the Greek columns at the '08 DNC, which elevated his image even higher at the time).
- 7/5/2015
- by Joe Concha
- Mediaite - TV
President Barack Obama denounced the Islamic State group Sunday after they released a video of a masked militant standing over a severed head it claimed was Peter Kassig, a former U.S. soldier-turned-aid worker who was taken hostage while delivering relief supplies to Syrians caught in that country's brutal civil war. Hours later, the White House confirmed Kassig's death after a review of the video, which also showed the mass beheadings of a dozen Syrian soldiers. The 26-year-old Kassig, a former Army Ranger who returned to the Middle East to help wounded and displaced Syrians, "was taken from us in...
- 11/16/2014
- by Associated Press
- PEOPLE.com
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