Hearing Voices: The Entertainment Blogosphere

In a previous post, I analyzed the strengths and weaknesses of a number of entertainment news resources that I found while searching the web. Most of the sites were of general news and information, so this week I decided to look for entertainment blogs. I again applied the Webby Awards and IMSA criteria and added the blogs to the linkroll on the right. The first blog I came upon was Blogs.NYPost, which is well-organized with the posts in the center of the page and a simple search bar on the right. However, the lower section of the page has much unused space, which is obvious due to its different color from the post area. The Projectionist uses large, high-quality graphics to complement the posts, but because the bottom post of the page dates back so far as six months ago, the page is slow to load with the high number of posts. Similarly, In The Company of Glenn has multiple posts on its front page which should be limited. The blog makes up in visual comfort with a basic black and white interface that allows easy reading. The next two blogs have numerous authors, resulting in multiple posts in only a few days. Cinematical mixes advertisements in between posts, though, and the “Explore” drop-down navigational menu on The Movie Blog is blocked by an advertisement. Film Rotation provides many links to news sites, other blogs, and comments to posts, but among these links are advertisements that are discreetly blended in. IndieWIRE presents blogs from their own writers and also blogs around the web. The large site map at the top of the page is distracting but can be closed. A younger audience is addressed in MTV Movies Blog, but the three columns of text are too close and need to be distinctly separated with either more space between them or with vertical lines. Two of the blogs struggle with utilizing space on the left and right of their pages. Starplus Entertainment News Blog, though, abbreviates the posts to the starting few sentences and a picture, which make it simple to quickly search through the topics. BlogDance takes posts from all over the world and puts them onto one page. There is much to be said about the current events taking place in the entertainment industry, and the presence of these blogs and many others prove that people are out there spreading their voice.

Entertainment in War: What Is It Good For?

As soon as President Bush declared war, Hollywood had a party. It had been the subject for many famous and successful films in the past, and after a short absence, the war films returned to the big screen. 2007 marked the biggest year of such films. Three of the five nominees for "Best Documentary Feature" in this year's Academy Awards examined the war in the Middle East. With good odds, the winner, Taxi to the Dark Side, was one of those three films. But war was not just examined in documentary form; it had a large presence in the narratives. The intention of the pictures was to comment on the supposed unruly actions taking place overseas, and to provide insight of the Iraq War, no matter how fictionalized the surrounding storylines might have been. The problem was that not many people went out to listen to what the films had to say. Studios need to stop releasing anti-war films, because the American audience does not want to see them, and in turn, money will not come in.

In order to sell movies these days, studios need big Hollywood names attached to their projects. The narrative war-commentaries that were released in 2007 set out to get big-budget stars, and they did. In the Valley of Elah follows Hank Deerfield, played by Tommy Lee Jones, on his quest to find his AWOL military son and unravel the mystery that surrounds the search. In The Kingdom, FBI special agents (Jamie Foxx, Jennifer Garner, Chris Cooper and Jason Bateman) are sent into Saudi Arabia to investigate an attack on Americans. With Reese Witherspoon, Jake Gyllenhaal and Meryl Streep, Rendition is about an American woman whose Egyptian-born husband is arrested, and the CIA analyst who is assigned to interrogate him. Lions for Lambs revolves around a university professor's (Robert Redford) influence to fight in the war in Afghanistan, a presidential hopeful's (Tom Cruise) new war strategy, and a probing television journalist's (Meryl Streep) report of the strategy. John Cusak in Grace is Gone decides not to tell his two daughters that their enlisted mother was killed in Iraq.

Four out of the five films mentioned above are considered anti-war films (Time, Entertainment Weekly), while The Kingdom holds back on any particular stance during its runtime. Interestingly, the total gross of those four anti-war films is less than the total for the neutral. Elah, Rendition, Lions for Lambs, and Grace is Gone together brought in a mere $31.5 million, while Kingdom raked in $47.4 million. Although Elah was the only film to receive critical praise and Oscar recognition with the nomination of Jones, studios only care about the dollar signs. Hollywood loves to criticize the current Presidential Administration and illuminate the supposed problems, but if these films are not making money, should they keep releasing them?

Hollywood thinks so. By the end of March, already two anti-war films will have been released: Chicago 10 and Stop-Loss (seen on the left). Chicago 10 has not shown much promise in its two week limited release with a $42 thousand box office number. I attended a screening of the film and a question and answer session with the director, Brett Morgen. He expressed his concerns about the marketing of the film and worried whether the right audience (late teens to twenty year-olds) would make its way out to see the documentary. It uses a modern style that is visually stimulating to appeal to the current generation as it follows the story of eight Vietnam War protestors who try to lead a march toward the 1968 Democratic Convention. Morgen said he wanted to appeal to the young audience to encourage them to act out against the current war. I was also able to attend a screening of Stop-Loss. The drama is about a sergeant in the Iraq War who is sent home to Texas only to find out that he must immediately be shipped back for duty. Although the previous numbers presume that the film will also be unsuccessful, it has the backing MTV Films, which should bring in a large young audience. Heart-throbs Ryan Phillipe, Channing Tatum, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt make up the cast of the film, which should help attract the female demographic.

If Hollywood must continue to make commentaries about the war, they should at least give pro-war movies a chance in the box office, for the sake of not only the viewing public, but also the studios. While it was neutral, The Kingdom brought in the money and pleased Universal Studios. Bruce Willis (seen on the right) is one artist that has been pushing to release more pro-war films. It was reported that he is developing a story about the Deuce Four, members of the 1st Battalion, 24th Infantry, who spent a year fighting terrorists in the northern Iraq town of Mosul. However, it seems Hollywood is having a hard time accepting the idea, as they continue to disregard any storylines pertaining to patriotism or pride for our United States of America.

Willis, who has visited Iraq, is frustrated with how the media handles the coverage of the war. He was quoted saying that he saw soldiers "helping people in Iraq; helping getting the power turned back on, helping get hospitals open, helping get the water turned back on and you don't hear any of that on the news." The Hollywood celebrity is right. It is more often that when tuning into a news channel, a viewer has a better chance of hearing a report on how many people were killed that day in Iraq, than how many citizens were helped. Hollywood is using the war in the Middle East an easy selling point.

Unless it involves pirates, robots, or blood-thirsty Spartans, none of the top fifteen highest-grossing films of 2007 have anything to do with war. Clearly it does not take criticism or analysis of what is happening in the Middle East to sell films. Movie-going is a time to escape from the realities of the world around us. Audiences already see coverage of the war on their television sets and do not want more of it on movie screens. They want to be moved, captivated, enthused and, overall, entertained when they visit the theater. Until Hollywood decides to bring forth the positive stories of the Iraq War, viewers will continue to shrug off the pessimistic commentaries that studios repeatedly churn out.

Entertainment News: Some Like It Hot

Headlines are created every minute in Hollywood, and the Internet is the first place to deliver the breaking news and rumors. Because my blog focuses on the current events in the entertainment industry, I recently searched the Web for outstanding resources that provide up-to-the-minute information. The resources I discovered have been added to the linkroll on the right of my blog. In selecting these sites, I not only applied the Webby Awards and IMSA criteria, but also examined the pro's and con's according to my own tastes. And the Winner Is... is simplistic, with blog posts on the left and credentials on the right. A large empty space at the bottom of the page is detrimental. ComingSoon.net might steer visitors away with its amateur, 80s-looking logo, but the content of the site attracts attention. News stories are categorized (e.g. horror, super hero, DVD, etc.), making specific articles easily findable. There are a number of large distracting advertisements on the pages which also tend to slow down the loading speed. From the popular television network is E! Online, arranged to be visually-stimulating. An extensive search engine breaks down results into the site’s many unique departments. There are scattered advertisements for the network’s programming, and some even discreetly blend into the headlines. Empire stems from the magazine counterpart and features most of its front-page news with high-quality graphics. Along with these graphics, though, are animated advertisements that can be distracting. I Watch Stuff delivers the latest news material in visual form. Constantly new trailers, production stills, or promotional posters for highly-anticipated films are updated to the main page. The large visuals might make it difficult to load the site, but the waiting creates anticipation for discovering the news. Metacritic.com is a dependable source for various film opinions. Reviews from well-known magazine and newspaper critics are scored and ranked using a simple color categorization. Movie Blog is similar to "I Watch Stuff" presenting posts with large pictures or videos. It provides more of an opinion toward the material, making it worth the read. Navigating the site, occasionally a sponsor page disrupts the flow into another area. An additional movie review site is Rotten Tomatoes. Like "Metacritic.com," this site takes the reviews of established critics and scores films. Although a large advertisement takes up almost a third of the front page, "Rotten Tomatoes" has established itself as the number one Internet movie review website. The largest database for film and television is IMDb.com, and almost every aspect of a production can be searched for. However, the site should change its novice font choice; it would visually exemplify its reputable status on the web. Variety is another site that comes from its own magazine and provides an immense amount of entertainment news. There are numerous stories on the front page, but there is no separation among them. I will continue to visit these resources, as all of them provide valuable news to attribute to my future posts.