CROWDFUNDING, ACCELERATORS, START-UPS: OH MY!

Ten days ago I posted a piece on my blog that analyzed the need for an incubator for entertainment start-ups (A version was also posted on Tribeca's Future of Film site and on TheWrap.com)

The fascinating feedback I received was punctuated all last week by the unfolding of a related drama -- US Senate passage of the JOBS Act (Jump Start Our Business Startups), a law designed to allow start-up businesses to raise investment capital from virtually anyone, unconstrained by most of the current regulations. Efforts like a petition created by Angel List helped corral support. 

The law passed, tweaked with certain safeguards in the crowdfunding provisions. Many consider passage a miracle, given that there was opposition from the Securities and Exchange Commission, public interest groups and others who fear an avalanche of fraud. One observer from within the investment community even called the bill "a train wreck." 

Espect existing crowdfunding sites like Crowdfunder, WeFund, Symbid, Peerbackers and Sprowd to pivot their models. Expect an onslaught of new crowdfunding sites. Expect a ripple effect through the start-up and investment ecosystem. 

For instance, Slated.com raised $2 million in a Series B round just this week. Slated is sort of an Angel List marketplace for film finance, with productions and investors meeting. For now, investors must be "qualified," but with the passage of JOBS Act, it will be interesting to see what happens. 

Some have compared Slated with Kickstarter, which has certainly played the starring role when digerati need to explain how "crowd-based" markets might work. Funds raised for films and other projects on Kickstarter are donations --- no strings attached, especially no equity in the property or company.

The JOBS Act will flip that model on its head, allowing equity to be acquired by a vastly larger body of investors than is currently possible. Even so, Kickstarter is already having a huge impact on film funding, with an estimated 10% of the recent SXSW slate had funding from the site.

CROWDFUNDING AND ACCELERATORS

Crowdfunding for the equity markets is likely to further stimulate the surge of early stage start-up incubators and accelerators that we have seen in recent years, and will likely morph some models away from focus upon a narrow group of VCs and angel investors. 

Moreover, if a true and open marketplace evolves for broad public investment in start-ups, consumer-facing content start-ups could benefit. "Average" people may find a company producing a digital media property more understandable than a specialized tech startup. 

In which case, an incubator for show biz should be even more desireable a week after I wrote about it!

In the meantime, here are some factoids gleaned in the week since my post went live:

• A new "start-up academy camp for Media Innovations called "Media Camp," was launched by Turner Broadcasting during SXSW. I spoke with its director, former Apple technologist David Austin, who told me that MC's focus us early-stage tech companies working on problems that would impact the broadcasting business in general, and Turner in specific. The unit is premised on the assumption the start-up and VC culture simply don’t understand the media business – the revenue flow, importance of rights, business models, etc. The accelerator's boot camp helps startups understand the media biz. Applications can be submitted theough April 16 for the summer session. 
• MovieLabs, the Hollywood-backed R&D center in the Bay Area does not invest in start-ups, but VP Kip Welch told me that they do informally confer with start-ups, investors, incubators and the whole Silicon Valley ecosystem. While a big chunk of the unit's budget is piracy-related, MovieLabs supports standards and research in metadata, identifiers, and other technical issues that make consumer media work better. 
• New hybrids emerge all the time: for instance the MIT Open Documentary Lab: it seems to be part think tank, and part incubator for filmmakers and hackers. 
• Not everyone loves the incubator idea: “Most incubators are cultivating a garden of startups that are dead on arrival,” said Kendall Wouters, a Cleveland-based entrepreneur and investor. He suggests that incubators fail to assess the market potential of ideas that entrepreneurs bring to them. As a result, companies won’t make it through the dreaded “valley of death” -- the time it takes to identify a sustainable and repeatable business model. 

ONE MORE THING...

Transmedia Hollywood 3 is coming up on April 6 at USC --  organized this year around the topic "Rethinking Creative Relations." I'll be on a panel moderated by Henry Jenkins called "Creative Economies: Commercial vs. State-based Models", along with Morgan Bouchet from France, Sara Diamond from Canada, Christy Dena from Australia, Jose Padhila from Brazil,  

AN ACCELERATOR FOR ENTERTAINMENT?

IndieWire editor Dana Harris's post on the "8 Film Startups You Should Know from SXSW" got me thinking about entertainment start-ups and what we must do to create more and better companies in this industry. 

"Film, to put it mildly, is not a priority for tech people," says Ms. Harris, and the obverse is even truer, namely that studios aren't likely to be the source of tech-enabled innovation to solve problems in the film industry.

Noting that a trade show isn't a great place to concentrate on problem-solving, she boldly suggests an idea that I've been peddling ever since AFI shuttered the Digital Content Lab:

"A startup incubator entirely devoted to problem-solving for the entertainment industry."

Yes, it's just what we need: a year-round community of tech, creative and business innovators who tackle the pain points and create innovation (and disruption) in the entertainment business, broadly defined. 

One way to think about why and whether an Entertainment Industry Accelerator makes sense is to look at some of the start-ups in the space. Are they solving big problems? Is there an audience? Does the business model make sense? Here are Harris' 8 movie-related start-ups: 

• Tugg offers "crowd sourced exhibition" 
• JuntoBox Films is a "global collaborative film studio" which plans to invest $2.5m in five films, all embedded within its social site
• Fandango's Movies With Friends - a FB timeline app that enables you to embed clips from movies you watch and rate.
• Indiefilmz.com - a VOD site for indie films 
• Moviepilot.com - you subscribe to upcoming movies and follow them as they roll out. 
• Milyoni.com - Facebook-based film distribution, including social commentary with friends while watching
• Filmaster.com - a recommendation engine for movies
• Veam.co - allows filmmakers to post films and charge consumers directly, all via a custom app.

To those I'd add a few others that I've encountered in recent months: 

• WatchIt  a platform that aggregates your movie queue for all forms of movie exhibition into a single list, including theatrical, DVD, kiosk, digital download and streaming. 
• Scene Chat, which adds social commenting to videos on YouTube, Vimeo and more. 
• NanoCrowd which uses "reaction mapping" to zero in on picking movies (and why). 

Notice that only one uses movie clips (Fandango which is owned by a movie studio). Why? Maybe because dependency upon the rightsholders is not good for a start-up --- thus, illustrating one of the key challenges to any Accelerator in this industry, e.g., resistance from the keepers of the status quo. Believe me, this I know from years of dealing with movie clips and studios while at the AFI.

DEFINING MONUMENT OF THE REMIX ERA

It all rushed back to me as I read Daniel Zelewski's superb profile of mash-up artist extraordinaire Christian Marclay in last week's New Yorker (subscription required) This is the story of "The Clock" -- dubbed "the defining monument of the remix age." I devoured two of the 24 hour montage masterpiece at the LA County Museum -- movie clips featuring clocks keyed to the actual time of day. It's amazing. 

At the time it reminded me of the Apple ad introducing the iPhone ("hello….hello…"). Turns out, Marclay had created a 1995 piece "Telephones" which was one of the first real mash-ups, long before YouTube. Evidently Apple tried to license it. When Marclay refused, Apple ripped it off to create its own ad. 

Marbray did not seek "rights" for any of the clips in this massive montage,but then, he is using a fine-arts distribution model, built on a  VERY small number of authorized copies (Five copies of the computer program had been made for sale to museums for hundreds of thousands of dollars, and a sixth to a hedge fund manager is Connecticut.) Very different than distribution via theaters, TV, or the web. Filmmakers usually have to pay for rights, though there is fair use.  

During the last decade, a slew of start-ups began to sprout up offering the use of movie clips. 

• Killerclips launched in 2002 with a movie clips search engine When you go there now, you're are greeted with a rather forlorn Eddy Murphy clip and this text: "Sorry fans, the movie companies finally decided to kill all of our clip content although we make nothing -- it's only a labor of love. Why does YouTube get away with it?"
• AnyClip launched in 2008 to considerable acclaim, at least in Silicon Valley where it was an audience favorite at the TechCrunch 50 event. Alas, the company could not license enough studio clips to realize its dream of a universal movie search engine, and has pivoted its model, though it claims more than 50,000 live clips.  
• MovieClips.com launched in 2009 with 12,000 two-minute clips from most Hollywood majors (not Disney). It seems to be holding on,  
• Movie Tagger is a crowd-sourced concept which would, like Wikipedia, allow anyone to add tags down to the single shot of a movie from Michael Naimark and a team at USC. The project has not yet launched.

AN ACCELERATOR FOR ENTERTAINMENT?

It's such an obvious idea, one might ask, why has the accelerator model never been applied to the support and funding of entertainment-industry start-ups?

LA, like many second-tier tech hubs, has seen an explosion in the creating and growth of incubators, accelerators and other instruments designed to help start-up companies race towards launch, viability, funding, and exit. (For a good overview of incubator and accelerator models, and some examples of those here in LA, check out Joey Tamer's blog post. One of the new start-ups, Amplify.LA touts its showbiz connections. Indeed, many of LA's leading tech investors are high net-worth refugees from mainstream entertainment companies. 

The accelerator movement is intended to find winning companies that deliver the kind of profits sought by investors in the angel and VC world, preferably 10 to 20 times investment. Tech companies with business models that can grow quickly and scale across the globe are what accelerators want to fund. Start-ups that require battle with incumbents like the studios are less attractive. Truly disruptive start-ups like Neflix or Tivo, as you may have noticed, launched up north where there's less reverence for the legacy of the studios. 

An instructive discussion on the topic is currently ranging on Q&A site Quora around the question "Can start-ups one day really Kill Hollywood?"  -- triggered by a manifesto from accelerator pioneer Paul Graham of YCombinator calling on start-ups to, in fact, innovate Hollywood out of existence. 

Hollywood is just not about start-ups, even when many of its richest executives invest in them as angels and VCs. Instead we have organizations like this:

• Movie Labs, an attempt by the studios and MPAA to lure engineers into solving a narrow set of tech problems (they even have a Palo Alto address.
• USC-based Entertainment Technology Center brings together senior tech executives from both studios and interested technology companies to address industry-wide challenges. ETC played a major role resolving business and tech issues around digital cinema and 3D, and created an master technical standard -- all problems the studios needed to solve.  
• Across the USC campus, the year-old Annenberg Innovation Lab, headed by Jon Taplin, is an R&D Lab conducting interesting projects, but not yet incubating new start-ups. 

Clearly, there's a gap, an unmet need, a vacuum waiting to be filled with investors and visionaries with a passion for entertainment solutions driven by technology.

The whole accelerator movement is exploding, powered by the relatively low barriers and cost of entry for start-ups building web- and mobile-based products. We're seeing examples every day of accelerator-inspired models that seek to incubate all manner of enterprises, not just return a 20x profit. These include the announcement this week at SXSW of the Public Media Accelerator, an accelerator focusing on women-run mobile businesses, and purpose-focused accelerators for education, government, social entrepreneurs, journalism, and health, to name a few. 

I'm currently working on the development of a new accelerator-inspired Lab in Toronto that will focus entirely upon digital entertainment content -- what we're calling "engaged entertainment." Historically, content hasn't been seen as having a predictably "scaleable" business model, but that's changing, given the blur between content, technology, social, and audience.

In every case, the success of the incubator or accelerator is due to the commitment of a core community of true believers whose interests (and resources) converge to generate a critical mass that gets the program up and running. I have no doubt, based upon my 20 years of running innovation programs at the AFI, that this community will flock to support such a venture. Now we need some deep pockets. Call me if you have ideas on how to make this real. 

CURATION IN THE SPOTLIGHT (+ Kony, Startup Trends, Big Data)

A WORD ON CURATION

 This newsletter has emerged from a thirty-year habit of mine, which now carries the nifty handle "curation." I started by clipping and then sharing newspaper and magazine articles, moved on to massive PDFs, then a blog with links, and then social media, especially Twitter, which is a festival of curatorial discovery. Now I've come full circle with my weekly posts that attempt to provide context to the flood of fascinating reading that crosses my screen every week. 

My simple effort seem to be striking a responsive chord, but I'm a rank amateur compared to curator extraordinaire Marie Popova whose site and newsletter called Brain Pickings sets a very high bar, indeed -- in terms of the quality of what she finds, and the style with which she shares (curates).

Now, Popova has developed what she calls "The Curator's Code," which provides standards and tools to honor attribution to those whose work you choose to share online. She introduces bespoke symbols for the two essential attribution actions, namely "via" ( ᔥ )and "hat tip" ( ↬ ). It will be interesting to see if the practice catches on, given her influence and credibility. 

"Why Startups Should Curate Content" is a thoughtful post with a self-explanatory title, unusually good in that it comes from the Intigi corporate blog (the company offers a web app that helps sites find, curate and share content).

Speaking of curation, Simon Pulman offers a great catch-up summary for great reading about Transmedia during the past three months -- ranging from links for the current hot-button commercial transmedia projects (John Carter, Hunger Games) down to legal issues for T-M practitioners, and a whole lot more.

STARTUP FRENZY. TRENDING NOW

In a sense, conferences and festivals are real-time live curation experiences. Combined with decent connectivity and social media, an event like SXSW takes on disproportionate importance, even for those of us not attending -- jeez, at least half of Twitter this week seemed to be about the tech-film-music event, so in deference to the vortex that Austin has become, I call your attention to this mash-up of old media and new: The Hollywood Reporter's interview with Lost co-creator Damon Lindelof and futurist Ray Kurzweil, who participated in a join opening panel at the iconic Texas festival.

One of the zillions of presenters at SXSW Interactive was startup maven and biz-school leader Steve Blank, whose posted his presentation slides: THE STARTUP OWNERS MANUAL. Yes, he's promoting his new book by the same name (which I'm waiting for Amazon to send me.) Still great info.

Another startup visionary, Y Combinator founder Paul Graham, uses a list of "frighteningly ambitious startup ideas" to dramatize his vision of the start-up life. (Examples: new search engine, replacing email, replacing universities  -- you get the idea). "The biggest ideas seem to threaten your identity: you wonder if you'd have enough ambition to carry them through." 

Speaking of Graham, his recent and provocative manifesto called on startups to step up the effort to "kill Hollywood," meaning the old closed business models. The challenge has appeared on Quora, including this interesting post by Gunther Sonnenfeld.

If the startup culture can capture light in a bottle shouldn't it work to launch new enterprises beyond those in high-tech? With the formation of the "Public Media Accelerator, a joint venture of PRX and the Knight Foundation, the focus is "public media," especially journalism, which has been the focus of newly appointed director, Corey Ford, a veteran Frontline doc producer with close ties in Silicon Valley. Accelerators have been created with a focus on women-owned businesses, mobile applications, health care, government solutions, and other categories. Can it work with the notoriously disfunctional public broadcasting sector?    

"Entrepreneurship education is an oxymoron" shouts Allen Gannett's post that proclaims: "Entrepreneuers are Born." Simple premise: You cannot teach people to be entrepreneurs in a typical educational sense, but you can support those who have the passion. Same with artists, actually. 

GET KONY

Seemingly out of nowhere this week comes a remarkably successful social media campaign by nonprofit Invisible Children to focus world attention on murderous African warlord Joseph Kony. While the NY Times did a nice job of explaining "how the Kony Video went Viral,"  the best analysis of the campaign and its implications is Africa expert Ethan Zuckerman's very long post (with many interesting comments). It's worth the read.

Not the least because each day brings new examples (like this one) that show the strengths (and weaknesses) of the social mediaverse we all live in today. It makes me think back to all of the projects, movements, companies, and products I've worked on over the years, especially how they might have been very different had I been able to leverage the lightning fast power of our global social networks. It no longer seems to matter whether the initiator is a team, a company, a person, a nonprofit -- what matters is traction, shareability, and effective understanding of the mechanics of the medium. 

FINALLY: RANDOM, BUT EXCELLENT LINKS

We talk about "big data" driving the future of networked media -- that is, the ability to extract meaning and predict behaviors based upon the existence of heretofore unavailable volumes of data generated by the increased use of media by millions of people. Now comes a superb post by certifiable genius Stephen Wolfram, who turns the lens around with a deep dive into some very granular data generated by a single person, namely Wolfram himself. Most of us have not tracked every keystroke we've ever made, or saved every email since 1989. Wolfram has, and his journey through these aggregate artifacts of his life are really fascinating. 

"I Killed the Internet" is Tristan Louis' beautiful, personal jeremiad against the growth of walled gardens (think Facebook, Twitter, Google, Path), which is strangling the wide-open Internet. This is a topic that will increase in relevance, with tendrils that weave into such issues as identity, privacy, business model strategies, and much more. 

Have you caught "The Stream," perhaps the first, and certainly the most extensive TV series that embeds social media into its program format.  If not, it's worth your time, if only to glimpse what RWW claims is the "future of social TV."

CROWD-FUNDING & PRIZES: INNOVATION IN FUNDING INNOVATION. (Week's best posts)

If you follow my Twitter feed (@nickdemartino), you will have seen a distinct tilt towards news and stories that explore new fundraising models for start-up businesses and creative projects. How do we stimulate innovation? It's a question I am obsessed with, and so with fair warning, I'll be taking a dive into the topic over the coming months. 

But First: Speakers (including me) were announced this week for two upcoming conferences. : Henry Jenkins' Transmedia Hollywood 3 on April 6 at USC in Los Angeles and WyrdCon, June 21-24 in Costa Mesa CA.

CROWDFUNDING, COMPETITIONS & START UP CULTURE

See why serial entrepreneur Jason Calacanis calls AngelList and Kickstarter "the two most important startups in the world." This is a manifesto on disruptive fundraising models, and, notwithstanding the author's posturing, is a really interesting dive into why the "wisdom" of the crowds should justify risk by all, not just a select circle of "investors." 

Just this week, AngelList launched a tool that could lead to the standardization of pitch decks for startups. Why? "Most investors (and journalists) receive hundreds of pitches every month, so finding (as he says) crisp yet complete ways to express your startup’s vision, impact, traction, and so on can be the difference between going on to success or finding yourself in irrelevance."

Of course, the Kickstarter model is itself an innovation -- donors do not get equity like traditional investors, and yet, millions of dollars have been raised for a dizzying array of projects. And, indeed, for-profit businesses may turn to the crowd-funding model. For instance, here's a post that urges start-up businesses to consider crowd-funding their capital needs.

And recently CrowdBackers launched to bring Kickstarter-style crowd sourced financing to the world of early-stage start-ups. 

Meanwhile, with three $M-plus projects in just the past month, Kickstarter is on a roll, entering its growth stage that success brings. More projects need to understand how the modle works. Here's a useful tip sheet on how to launch campaigns in Kickstarter (and smaller crowd funding site IndieGogo)

Even more interesting is this post that analyzes the performance of different Kickstarter "perks" in raising money.

A completely different model for stimulating innovation or novel solutions is the cash-driven competition or prize, examined in some depth in a NY Times piece just this week..

The Knight Foundation has been running its "News Challenge" online for several years, a variation of the competition model for innovation in news and journalism in the digital era.  This year the foundation has restructured, with the first of three cycles launching now through March 17. Even if you are not working on an eligible project, the model for stimulating solutions through competition is fascinating.

Entrepreneurs of all stripes will benefit from the launch of Cofounder.tv, a video-based learning site comprised entirely of talks from investors and founders. The site is a passion project by Rony El-Nashar, a VC at SeedStartup, according to this post at Arabnet. 

Finally: These models argue for the democratization of innovation, but Jon Gertner's piece in the NY Times reminds us that the centralized corporate research model, as epitomized by Bell Labs, produced an astonishing volume and range of innovation during much of the 20th Century, much of it forming the foundation for innovations that we see today.

THE MEDIA-TECH BIZ

The battle of prognosticators over whether cable TV is collapsing or thriving continues with posts that flat-out contradict each other. You decide. My friend Seth Shapiro debunks five theories on the death of cable TV on Media Shift. "Goodbye Cable TV" is Business Insider's story, occasioned by 2.3 million cancelled subscribers since 2010. Which of course is contradicted by Paid Content's post entitled "Cord Cutting Can Wait," triggered by a surge of nearly 350,000 new subs in Q4. You decide!

Meanwhile, the future of cable TV, as I've written, is better use of data. Check out Mark Phillip's app, called "Are You Watching This?" or RUWT, which points to a future that leverages viewing and channel data in service to nice audiences, in this case, sports as a bellweather category that could impact all of TV. 

All you ever wanted to know about Twitter (perhaps), in this exhaustive profile from Business Week. One of our smarter digerati, Brian Solis, offers his thoughts on the "state of the Twitterverse," c. 2012.

All Things D interviews YouTube chief Salar Kamangar. 

The Guardian offers a very nice overview of "how apps have taken over the world" since Apple created the platform in 2007. 

Henry Blodget deconstructs Apple's financials to see what it would take for Apple to go to $1,000 per share.

"Why Are Harvard Graduates in the Mailroom?" asks Adam Davidson, as he explores the "lottery system" of labor economics, and worries that the whole economy is shifting to this cutthroat model with no Plan B.

Broadcasters sued Aereo, the start-up that brings over-the-air TV to the Internet. It took less than 2 weeks.

CONTENT AND TOOLS

Congrats to Moonbot, the Louisiana based animation startup that won the Oscar for best animated short film, "The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore," a form of which also debuted as an engaging iPad app. Venture Beat interviewed Brandon Oldenburg, a partner (and Oscar winner). I met Brandon at the Dallas Video Fest and have been so impressed with Moonbot's strategy for sustaining creativity in the new digital marketplace.

If you're a Godard freak (me), you won't want to miss these remixes of his classic Alphaville. Thanks to Anne Thompson (@akstanwyck), whose commentary is a lovely lecture in itself. 

ZED.To is an 8-month immersive narrative adventure chronicling the end of the world in Toronto, currently raising money on IndieGoGo.

Transmedia LA members have launched the "Miracle Mile" ARG, which will roll out this spring and summer. The first draft of a storyline has been posted on FB here, though the group is by invitation only. 

Meghan Gargan discusses "what Facebook's Timeline means for Transmedia"

Graphicly is a publishing platform born to support the needs of graphic novels. With the tools and especially analytics it has developed, the company is now expanding to other types of books. Take a look at the value proposition.

This week's update: In a tsunami of innovation, can Oscar compete?

Yes, Sunday is the Oscars, and I'll have something to say (and maybe win the pool at my Oscar party)... But first, here's my weekly rundown on the most interesting developments in media & technology. If you missed my piece on user-generated storytelling site Beckinfield, you can now read versions of the post on The Wrap and Reuters. 

TELEVISION

I moderated a panel on "Curated TV" this week at the 2nd Screen Summit/TV Goes Social event in Santa Monica, steering a conversation with four smart folks: Adrian Sexton from New Medici, social marketing whiz Carri Bugbee, Revision 3's Steve Smith, and Social Samba's Aaron Williams. 

This first-time conference addressed the accelerating upsurge of second-screen apps related to television. Lots of stakeholders weighed in. The biggest take-away for me was the fact that, according to Technicolor's Renaud Fuchs, more than 100 TV-related second-screen apps have been released in the market in less than five years. Clearly there will be consolidation in the coming years, but in the meantime, a surge of investment and continuing new product launches make the space quite interesting.

Even though I track this space carefully, many of the companies were new to me, including Fanhattan, Buddy TV, Be Recruited, Yap TV, Snappy TV, TV Chatter, Play Up, Viggle, Connect V, Fav.tv, Peel, ShopKick, Movie Night Out, Get This  -- along with those I've already written about, like Miso, Philo, IntoNow, the UK's Zeebox, Nielsen's Media Synch, RCDB, Rovi, IMDB and others. Whew!                                                      

I couldn't help myself by asking a panel with two studio execs to assess the success to date of UltraViolet, the so-called "locker" for movie content. Suffice it to say, nobody wanted to comment, given how bumpy the introduction of the technology and services package has been. Nevertheless, according to one report, UltraViolet has attracted more than 800,000 US customers. 

For those who bothered to track the cable industry's interactive TV unit Canoe Ventures, it comes as no surprise that the plug was pulled. Here's a rundown from ITVT. 

Of course, the storm that has blown cable away is proliferation of alternative content sources via tablets and so-called 'over-the-top' networks that stream directly to the TV set. Funny, another byproduct of this disruption is the return of over-the-air TV antennas, which cord-cutters need if they want to continue receiving conventional network TV.

Four new minority-owned indie networks have been launched by Comcast, part of the terms of the acquisition of NBC Universal. It's hard not to compare these projects with high profile partners like P.Diddy, Magic Johnson, and Robert Rodriguez with the nearly 100 channels being launched this same year by YouTube.  

"Why Transmedia is a No-Brainer for TV" is Simon Staffans' nice summary of his recent ebook "One Year in Transmedia" over at the MIP Blog (which also includes an interview with yours truly).

FILM & CONTENT BUSINESS

Yes, the finale of the movies' "high holy days" will end on Sunday with the show we love to hate: The Oscars. If you want to consume even more silliness, download the Oscar iPad app. Meanwhile, the LA Times ran an old-school article that analyzed the demographics of the Academy membership, which were discovered to be (surprise!) old, white, and male. 

The Oscars aren't the only remaining awards event this week -- yes, Saturday is the Independent Spirit Awards, where you'll find more of the interesting and challenging films of the year. Here's IndieWire's handicap.

I'm enjoying a new site called "Watch It" -- which lists all of the venues where I could possibly see a movie, including theaters, DVD/Blu-Ray, streaming, downloads, etc. One Queue rules them all.  

Click to read more ...