Here are links to a number of columnists and columnist index pages from newspapers around the country for my commentary writing students, and anyone else who’s interested.
Commentary from Nebraska newspapers:
Note: Many of the posts here are letters to the editor. They are interesting, but they are not newspaper columns. If you use this link, check what you are reading carefully.
Today’s guest post is from Charley Reed, who does public relations work of the University of Nebraska at Omaha. He’s also the guy I turn to when I need critical analysis of pop culture issues such as censorship and the show South Park, the status of video games as mass media, or the deeper meaning of GangnamStyle.
Sunday’s 85th Academy Awards will no doubt be an entertaining spectacle, but how much do the awards really matter – I mean, really?
First, let’s consider the announcing of nominated Oscar films… which is essentially done under the cover of darkness (literally) in Los Angeles at 5:30 a.m. local time. Look, I understand that the time is chosen because by 8:30 a.m. EST New Yorkers are stuck in traffic waiting to get to work and are a captive audience, but why does the announcement need to be made so early that half of the nominees haven’t even woken up yet to hear the news? It just doesn’t make sense. Seth McFarlane said it best “I don’t know why don’t do this at noon – the only people up this early are flying or having surgery.” Understandably, that joke didn’t get a great reception.
Look, if the Oscars are so important… why don’t they handle announcements like everybody else. How many candidates do you see announcing their run for president that early? How many press conferences do you see held that early? How many NCAA tournament selection shows happen that early? None – that’s how many. What’s even more frustrating is that there is so much the Academy could do with the selection show. Just think of all the pomp and circumstance that goes into a normal Sunday football schedule on ESPN – it’d be so easy for the Oscars to have a full hour preview during primetime with commentary, industry guests and a year-in-review recap. For heaven’s sake, E! spends half of Oscar Sunday on Red Carpet coverage.
Speaking of the Red Carpet, if the Oscars are so important to the industry… why are people more concerned about what someone is wearing than the film they were in? Think about it… this is a night that is supposed to be celebrating the best in film and I can guarantee that the heavy-lifting done by this year’s major nominees were done in sweatpants with a Big Gulp, not in a Christian Dior Couture strapless dress.
So let’s take the opportunity to actually talk about the films themselves. The Oscars are important to them right? Well… no, not really. Sure, there will be a box-office bump for all of the films nominated but in a year where Avatar and Hurt Locker were both nominated for Best Picture… the winner earned $50 million and the runner up earned $2 billion.
Again, if the Oscars really mattered as a selection of the year’s best in film, why is this year’s presumed best picture winner, Argo, coming out on DVD the Tuesday before the ceremony? I mean, yeah, people will want to grab the film to see what all the fuss is about before the awards show, but it’s still showing in movie theaters around the country for that very reason. Am I crazy for thinking that movies waiting until they actually WON something before releasing their film and all of its fancy packaging? Right now, the best Argo could do is have “Nominated for Seven Oscars” which doesn’t quite have the same punch; on the other hand, considering Ben Affleck wasn’t nominated for Best Director, I can’t imagine he – or his production team – cares one way or the other.
And that’s another thing that really strikes me as odd given how important the Oscars are supposed to be. Affleck’s snub by the Academy is indicative of the tone-deaf nature and politicking of the Academy – sure it’s nice to see some new faces nominated and getting attention, but when the same guy wins the Screen Actor’s Guild, Golden Globes, Director’s Guild, and BAFTA awards for Best Director, there is something really wrong here. But even if he was nominated, does it really matter? History shows that some of Hollywood’s most successful films and stars have gone years or decades without a nomination or victory (I mean Martin Scorsese wins for an American adaptation of a Japanese crime drama and a kids film over Taxi Driver and Goodfellas? Really?).
The career trajectory of Ben Affleck is such that it’s not a case of IF he will win an Oscar for direction, but WHEN- but even if he doesn’t win one, he’ll be in the company of Stanley Kubrick, Alfred Hitchcock, Orson Welles, Sidney Lumet, Sergio Leone, and Robert Altman – not bad at all.
Also consider how many films have been nominated for Best Picture, only to lose to a film that no one remembers except as “that film that beat ______ at the Oscars,” which one could say about How Green Was My Valley (Citizen Kane), Ordinary People (Raging Bull), Dances with Wolves (Goodfellas), Shakespeare in Love (Saving Private Ryan), Crash (Brokeback Mountain), The Hurt Locker (Avatar) and a few others I am probably forgetting. [Editor’s Note:Rocky (Network).] Some of the most critically acclaimed, popular movies that people return to over and over again today weren’t even NOMINATED for Best Picture, including The Dark Knight, Fight Club, Psycho, Alien, and Vertigo, just to name a few.
Now that the Academy Awards has upped the limit of best picture nominees to ten, it’s a lot easier to have a “nominated” film, including popular fare, like this year’s Les Miserables and Django Unchained, even though they don’t have a shot of actually winning the prize. However, the powerfulness of recent Best Picture winners has seemed incredibly lacking in the way of being memorable – for example, in 20 years, who is really going to remember The Artist or The King’s Speech compared to films like Inception, The Social Network, The Descendents and Moneyball? Chances are – not many. In fact, this year might be the first year since LOTR: Return of the King won that a film that is both incredibly popular and critically acclaimed – with staying power – will win Best Picture.
So this gets us back to the original question, how much to the Academy Awards matter? Well, on the surface … not much. That said, if the Oscars do have something to offer it is a shared experience during a time when they are becoming fewer and more far between. When you look at it that way… Sunday’s awards, as trivial as the ceremony might seem or as unfair as the victories might be, we will be watching it together, arguing about it together, and laughing about it together. It shouldn’t be surprising, actually, since that’s what all movies do – and have done since their early years at the turn of the 20th century. So, as the Academy Awards celebrates its 85th year with a focus on the films of 2012, I think it is important focus on what cinema has offered this country over the last century: entertainment, escape, and community.
So, if I have to answer my own question … how much do the awards matter, really? Actually… quite a bit. Really.
By now, virtually everyone in America knows about the mess that is the Carnival cruise ship Triumph. The ship suffered an engine fire earlier this week that resulted in the ship being without electricity and drifting in the Gulf of Mexico. The stories coming out of the Triumph were pretty ugly. Raw sewage was reportedly seeping down walls, food was scarce, air conditioning was out, the ship was wallowing in heaving seas, and people were definitely not having a good time. The LA Times wrote that the cruise was a cross between television’s Survivor and the novel Lord of the Flies.
Then on Thursday, as the ship was under tow to port in Mobile, Alabama, CNN started doing wall-to-wall coverage of the “cruise from hell.” And passengers have not been shy about sharing their feelings via cell phones on social media.
So for those of us living in the media world, the question we all need to ask is: How will Carnival respond and recover from this public relations mess/crisis/disaster?
Ad Age reports that Carnival has done a good job with its initial response of compensating passengers and engaging in transparent, public communication. The bigger question, Ad Age says, will be what happens now that the ship is docked.
The transition of NBCUniversal from being owned primarily by General Electric to Comcast had been expected to be an extended process, with the cable and phone giant gradually acquiring the entertainment company’s stock. But that changed this week with the announcement that Comcast would be completing the purchase of NBCU by the end of March.
Amy Chozick and Brian Selter of the New York Times report a variety of reasons for the faster pace of the acquisition, including:
A conflict between the corporate cultures of Comcast and GE,
Comcast’s desire to control programming sources as well as channels for distribiution, and that
Now was financially a good time for Comcast to make the purchase.
Chozick and Selter report that:
The transaction made Comcast, the single biggest cable provider in the United States, one of the biggest owners of cable channels, too. NBCUniversal operates the NBC broadcast network, 10 local NBC stations, USA, Bravo, Syfy, E!, MSNBC, CNBC, the NBC Sports Network, Telemundo, Universal Pictures, Universal Studios, and a long list of other media brands.
London Sun may discontinue topless Page 3 Lovelies
There’s been a campaign to bring the tradition of the Page 3 pinup in the popular London tabloid newspaper to a close. BTW, the Sun is owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, the same people who own Fox News. (Please note that the link to Page 3 pinup is to a BBC story, not actually to Page 3.)
I’ve been planning for several days to write a blog entry today about three movies from 1968 that I’ve watched over the last couple of weeks – 2001: A Space Odyssey, Ice Station Zebra, and The Shoes of the Fisherman.
Why these movies?
When I was eight years old and growing up in Iowa, my parents took the whole family to the River Hills Theater in Des Moines to see 2001. River Hills was a spectacular theater designed for Cinerama and 70mm films, featuring a 90-foot wide curved screen. Sort of the commercial IMAX of the time. In addition to being blown away by 2001, I was also impressed by the two trailers we saw – Ice Station Zebra and The Shoes of the Fisherman. Even more than 45 years later, I still remember seeing both the movie and the trailers. In fact, that evening helped set in motion my lifetime love of seeing bigger than life movies in big theaters.
A couple of weeks ago, I found Ice Station Zebra showing on Turner Classic movies, and that prompted me to go ahead a watch those three 1968 blockbusters. I had, of course, seen 2001. And I suspect, though I’m not certain, that I’ve seen all or most of Cold War submarine thriller Ice Station Zebra at one time or another. But this was definitely my first time to see Shoes of the Fisherman. The movie tells the story of a Ukrainian bishop who has been imprisoned in a Soviet gulag for 20 years. He’s released in a deal with the Vatican to help prevent the outbreak of WW III between the Soviets and the Chinese. In a strange turn of events, the Ukrainian bishop is quickly elevated from being a political prisoner to being the first non-Italian pope in centuries.
The movie holds up surprising well over the years, with a beautiful look at the papal election process and the role that our religious leaders can play in world events.
So I’ve been planning to blog about this 45-year-delay from seeing the trailer to seeing the movie, and then the news catches up with me with surprise announcement this morning that Pope Benedict XVI is resigning because of old age. And in a strange coincidence, Turner Classic Movies already had two screenings of Shoes of the Fisherman scheduled over the next month. Though it wouldn’t surprise me now if they move up and expand their showing of it.
At any rate, I highly recommend both 2001 and Shoes of the Fisherman. Ice Station Zebra was fun, but largely dated. If you decide to watch Shoes, try to catch it on TCM. The print available on DVD is pretty bad. Here are the trailers for these three movies:
A round up of unexpected things I’ve read recently. None of these are from The Onion!
NPR Station Urges Listeners to Have Sex and Make More Listeners
“Chicago’s NPR station, WBEZ, is making a more intimate appeal than usual during its current membership drive. Rather than simply asking you for a few bucks, the station is asking you to “Go make babies” with other “interesting people”—who may be likely to become “interesting people” and future WBEZ listeners themselves.”(AdWeek, HT @ojezap)
Why Red State’s Erick Erickson is an interesting addition to Fox News “We no longer have to transport ourselves to a magical alternate reality to ponder what a love child between Richard Nixon and Dick Cheney would look like. Given a Justice Department memo obtained by NBC News, we can conclude that child would look like none other than President Barack Obama.” Erick Erickson of RedState.com and Fox News.
When social media PR goes bad – Applebee’s edition
“One would think that in 2013 anyone who does social media professionally has the social Web figured out, particularly when one works for a big brand that has hundreds of thousands of customers who know how to use Facebook and Twitter.”But I guess we know what happens when one assumes.
Let’s take Applebee’s as case in point.” (Ragan.com)
We’re really living in a mobile media world
“By 2017, there will be an estimated 5.2 billion people using mobile phones, up from 4.3 billion in 2012. There will also be about 1.7 billion connected machines — anything from a home appliance to a car — in five years.” (Cecilia Kang, Washington Post)
“John Carter and the Gods of Hollywood” about what went wrong with the Disney/Andrew Stanton adaptation of John Carter of Mars is free on Kindle through Thursday, February 7th.
It pains me to say this, but I’m bored with Super Bowl advertising. Instead of being innovative, exciting, new and different, they mostly have a predictable sameness to them. This supercut of Super Bowl ads posted over at Deadspin highlights the problem of “How many boobs and nut shots were there in the Super Bowl commercials?” As they say:
Another year, another 70-plus multimillion-dollar round of hyper-produced spots for the Super Bowl featuring silent women in bikinis, abused consumers, and CrAzY CoLLiSiOns. May we never forget the two magic words—sex and violence—and may we never evolve.
To be sure, there were memorable, heart touching ads out there. Dodge had the 2-minute-long “So God made a farmer” Paul Harvey-voiced ad for their trucks which attracted mixed response, depending, I suppose, on what part of the country you’re from. (I live in Nebraska and liked it, though I don’t think it was as good as the Eminem “Imported From Detroit” ad from a couple of years ago):
Another ad that attracted a lot of positive attention (and romanticized farming) was the Budweiser ad featuring a newborn clydesdale. It was USA Today’s highest rated commercial of the evening, and the clydesdales have long history as part of the Budweiser brand image. (The version I’ve linked to is an extended web-cut of the ad.)
(Ok, after rewatching this one, I have to admit it’s a heartwarming ad that does a lot to build good feelings about the brand.)
But overall, I can’t say that any of the ads this year stood out as giving a strong message positive message about the product as well as being enjoyable to watch. Yes, I liked the Paul Harvey-based Dodge ad. But I would have been hard pressed to know that it was an ad for Dodge trucks. Instead, I’m going to remember the great short film about farmers.
Argue as much as you want about the Eminem Imported From Detroit playing fast and loose with labor history, it made me proud of Chrysler, even if I shouldn’t have been.
And that’s what I think makes for a great commercial.
When the lights went out on the Super Bowl Sunday, Raven’s coach John Harbaugh looked a bit upset about his team losing its momentum. And the big advertisers like Coke and and Pepsi didn’t like having their carefully planned series of ads disrupted.
As Ad Age reports, other advertisers also jumped in, but few did it as well as Oreo did. They note that Oreo’s agency put together the creative (the image) and got it approved within minutes. And once it was out there, people retweeted the message more than 10,000 times within an hour. Ad Age was arguing on Monday that Oreo got a bigger bang out of this simple message that the cookie company did out of its elaborate (and expensive) TV commercial.
To me, this commercial represents everything that’s wrong with Super Bowl commercials these days. They work so hard at giving us something exciting and fun to watch that they forget to tell us anything about the brand. The TV ad is funny, but the lights out quickie ad made me want cookies and milk.
