By George Robbins
There are many memorable movies and characters from said movies that have been prevalent over the years, but none so much as ones which feature Sacha Baron Cohen. Cohen’s existence within the movie industry has been pervasive since he first started with roles that existed solely for the purpose of messing with people while giving sometimes scathing criticisms through his work. Cohen has become well known over the years for the fact that he works on mockumentary movies that often times exist solely to poke fun at politics and the state of the nation in general. Cohen’s movies are often based around the United States in some fashion and they are based on the fact that there are countless problems among both the government and the general populace at large. This all began, by the way, with ‘Ali G Indahouse‘ where he actually focuses on Great Britain.
After he played the character of Ali G, he would move onto the United States instead of Great Britain afterwards when he made the movie ‘Borat.’ The point of said film was mostly just to point out all of the issues that were being faced in the United States at the time in a way that would be simple enough for people to understand. While it was mostly satirical, there were a lot of problems which had arisen from the movie, such as the fact that people didn’t exactly like the idea of being put on screen looking like idiots. The main driving force behind the movies that Cohen does is that he essentially tricks people by pretending to be these outlandish characters, but the reactions that he gets from the public are pretty much genuine reactions. Whatever someone says or does in those movies is usually unscripted and comes straight from the mouths and bodies of the people being shown on screen. As people, these reactions are completely legitimate and unscripted and people don’t like being portrayed that way since it makes them look dumb.
Unfortunately for those who look a fool on the big screen in Cohen’s movies, there is no way to change the fact that they are who they are and this is what he and his producers hoped for while making the films. What they strived for was to show just what the world is like and how people functionally think and act on a regular basis while showing what is wrong with the nation. This is why so many people took to the movie and the characters, because they were something for us to understand, and while we laughed at them, we also got a glimpse at the world we would probably never see otherwise. The shenanigans would only end up going on for so long though because Cohen gave up the act of going out in disguises and trying to trick people after he worked on the movie ‘Brüno.’ While people were upset that they wouldn’t get to see Cohen in those roles anymore, there was a solid reason for why he stopped doing it.
‘Brüno’ was a film where Cohen went in the same style he usually did, making sure to follow the mockumentary style to give incredibly frank interviews while simultaneously engaging in extremely over-the-top public displays of homosexuality. While playing the Austrian television reporter, he finally reached a tipping point where things got way too out of hand for him because his anxiety started spiraling out of control. As it turns out, despite how he portrays his characters on screen, he is a very neurotic man who can’t handle things like what he portrays on screen for very long. According to Seth Rogan, a friend of Cohen’s, “He’s a neurotic Jewish guy when you get down to it, and the fact that he has chosen a line of work where he genuinely puts himself in danger doesn’t add up.” This just goes to show how much he dedicates himself to his craft and tries to make something that will make some kind of difference.
After his work on ‘Brüno,’ Cohen admitted that for the months to follow, he couldn’t even live his life normally because every time he heard a noise, he would think there were police sirens. His everyday life became more hectic because he couldn’t stop thinking of the danger he put himself into with those movies and thus he hung up his metaphorical hat and decided that he would stick to making films on sets instead of trying to make something more unscripted from the real world. Once the 2016 presidential election rolled around, he decided that this may no longer have been something he wanted to do. He continued work on a variety of projects in studios by doing interviews in-character as one of his original creations, but there was one time where he refused to do so. In November 2019, he appeared at the Anti-Defamation League’s Never Is Now summit as himself where the actor gave a keynote address in which he pinned the blame for the rise in hate crimes and prejudice on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other social media platforms. He argued that their refusal to police political ads and take down inaccurate commentaries in the name of free speech turbocharges conspiracy theories and imperils democratic ideals.
Cohen advocated heavily to help stop the spread of disinformation on social media because he felt that such disinformation was the reason why the democratic process was beginning to fail. With so much misinformation available online being presented as fact, there are people everywhere who want nothing more than to create conspiracies that fit their own narrative and start to downplay the democratic process which helped build nations. This is what he wanted to convey, but after this past year, this venture has only become much more difficult for him to achieve because the amount of misinformation to make its way into the world basically exploded because of the pandemic. With everything that was going on during the time of the pandemic and with the rising tensions due to the upcoming elections, Cohen felt it was time to finally bring out his old characters once again. This time, it ended up being Borat who was known for his initial mockumentary about the character.
Cohen felt that it was his duty at that point to bring the character back in an effort to remind people what it means to be a part of a democracy. He went on to play the character once again to show what kind of people are out there in the world at the moment and what they think about what is happening in their nation. In ‘Borat 2,’ he plays the character in his return to America as he felt that the nation was in a lot of trouble with much of the democratic process going out the window and the pandemic wasn’t helping it at all. Thus we ended up getting a film no one really knew was going to exist until it finally released near the end of the year. With that, we got the return of Cohen to the big screen the way he originally did so, even just temporarily with a mockumentary made to make people think about what is wrong with the nation. There are a lot of people that agree that this was probably a good move to make on his part and they are glad that he made this return to the big screen given all that has happened.
By George Robbins
This New Year is one that many people are trying to meet with much enthusiasm after the whole of last year since last year was an outright failure in the minds of many. In an effort to make up for the horrible year that was last year, many a company and organization are now doing their best to make their way into the new year. One such organization which is making their changes and making sure they are known to the world is the Television Academy which decides which shows on TV will be given awards in the upcoming year. Among the new committee members to be added to the executive board this upcoming year are actress/executive producer Issa Rae and executive producer Gloria Calderón Kellett. They are but two of the newest additions to this year’s six new committee members as decided by head of the board, Frank Scherma.
The new members also include ABC’s Rob Mills, Anonymous Content’s Dawn Olmstead, Amazon Studios’ Vernon Sanders and Apple TV Plus’ Zack Van Amburg. Scherma has said, “Their leadership provides invaluable insight that will allow the Academy to play an integral role in shaping the evolution of the medium.” After this past year, and even within years prior, there has been a lot of public outcry to try and get people to be involved within the industry in reforming it as an institution. According to what Scherma is saying, he believes this group of people would be very effective at being able to make the necessary changes in the industry that people are trying to make a reality. This group is now the group of people responsible for the reformation and direction that the academy will take over the 2021 term and how Television as an institution will turn out.
For those who may be wondering more about the headlined board members: Gloria Calderón Kellett is an executive producer, co-creator, co-showrunner, director and actress on ‘One Day at a Time.’ She was also a writer/producer on ‘Devious Maids,’ ‘Rules of Engagement‘ and ‘How I Met Your Mother.’ Issa Rae is recognizable for the fact that she is responsible for creation of, as well as starring in, HBO’s ‘Insecure,’ for which she has received multiple Emmy and Golden Globe nominations. Rae’s film credits manage to include ‘The Hate U Give,’ ‘The Lovebirds‘ and ‘Coastal Elites‘ as well, giving her time on the big screen as well. The remaining members of the board are all accomplished as well with many of them serving as the heads for officers for major divisions within their original companies.
Dawn Olmstead was recently named CEO and partner of Anonymous Content and prior to that, she served as president of Universal Content Productions. This meant that she was responsible for overseeing all creative and business operations of scripted and non-scripted content for the studio during her tenure there. Robert Mills is Senior vice president for alternative series, specials and late-night programming at ABC Entertainment and it is his duty to essentially oversee current productions and specials for ABC. Vernon Sanders is the Co-Head of Television at Amazon Studios where he oversees scripted and unscripted original programming produced for Prime Video and IMDb TV alongside Albert Cheng. Zack Van Amburg is the Chief content officer and head of worldwide video for Apple TV Plus which means he oversees all aspects of strategy for video programming globally including the launch of the platform. Even before then, he was the president of Sony Pictures Television.
Needless to say, the choices for the Executive Board which were made for this year were unlike the previous years in the fact that they are more geared towards the reformation people are hoping for within the industry. More specifically, people are looking forward to seeing how this new board will be able to handle the ceremonies and awards that the Television Academy are responsible for over the next year. They are responsible for decisions that can help shape how people both within and out of the industry will see the industry as time goes on becoming more inclusive and fair which is what people have been asking for over the years. Instead of shows releasing with the obvious clichés and exclusivity that they have been over the years, they are hopeful that this will start to wrinkle out over the next year with this Board in place. While things won’t immediately start to change, they will start being a bit different and things will eventually get better as time goes on.
By George Robbins
There are plenty of people who have unfortunately lost their lives over this past year for a variety of reasons and things aren’t starting off all that well going into the next year. It has been announced that actress Tanya Roberts has recently passed with the cause for it being considered completely unknown to the general public. Roberts’ partner Lance O’Brien did not give a statement as to what really caused her death, but he did make it clear that it was not Covid that caused the death of the actress. The actress passed away officially on Monday but before the official statement could be made, her publicist released information prematurely before her death was announced. This led to obituaries being made prematurely about the actress’ death before the official proclamation was made.
Roberts was born on October 15th, 1955 in The Bronx, New York as Victoria Leigh Blum and eventually she would go on to start acting in her 20’s. By the time she reached her mid-20’s, she made her big break as an actress where she was cast in the fifth and final season of the show ‘Charlie’s Angels.’ She ended up on the main cast of the series after main cast member Shelley Hack left the cast after just one season and the show was going into its final series run. The ratings for the show ended up plummeting even after Roberts took her role on the show and there was no way to stop the coming ending for the show. While that might have been an inevitable failure, it was a huge deal for her that she landed this role because it led to a strong career for her as time would go on.
Perhaps the biggest role she managed to land after her introduction to the Hollywood scene was the role of a “Bond Girl” in the 007 movie ‘A View to a Kill.’ Alongside Roger Moore’s 007, Roberts’ character encountered a microchip-monopolist madman played by Christopher Walken whom she had to work with Moores’ Bond to stop his plan. This was Moore’s last outing as the character of Bond, so it is interesting that Roberts got to see how this all played out with Moore’s last role as the character. This was far from the only thing she contributed to however, as Roberts had also appeared in ‘The Beastmaster,’ which was a fantasy film from 1982. Beyond that, she even starred as the titular character in a movie called ‘Sheena‘ in 1984 which ended up flopping in the end. This would become the start of a decline for her as time went on, but this was not the end for her.
It would be well over a decade later, but she found her place among the industry with the show ‘That ’70s Show‘ where she once again found herself back in the limelight. She played the role of one glamorous, youngish Midwestern mom of a teenage girl who was also a little dimwitted which gave way to a lot of entertaining moments from the show. Needless to say, for the younger generations today, her role on the show was easily the one that most people recognized the best because of her good looks and her dimwitted personality. How was it that she even became an actress? The answer to that question was that she started as a model before becoming an actress and she only managed to do so by running away from home at the age of 15.
Roberts had various other roles through the years which allowed her to become a big inspiration to the people in the industry or those who wanted to follow her footsteps. She followed her dreams, and while starting small in some advertisements, she eventually worked her way up to a point where she managed to get on the big screen as well as the silver screen. She is an actress that will be sorely missed and it will be difficult for people to see those old films without thinking about the fact that she is no longer with us. She is survived by her partner Lance O’Brien and her sister, Barbara Chase who was actually the fourth wife of Timothy Leary. Yet another long running celebrity has passed, and without any warning, but hopefully this is not a sign of a bad year to come.
By George Robbins
This long past year is one full of ups and downs with a tremendous number of downs attached to it given the entirety of events to unfold over the year. Beyond just the ups and downs were a lot of twists and turns as well, making the entirety of the year just one big rollercoaster for everyone all over the world. Now that we have entered an entirely new year, there are many who are hoping that things will end up being better overall as compared to last year, but the start isn’t so great. To no one’s surprise, the beginning of the year was almost immediately similar to the end of last year, almost as if events are going to continue as-is until later in the year. Surprisingly though, new twists and turns are becoming apparent as time goes on and we reach just a few days into the new year with news being presented to us over the past couple of days.
Throughout the entirety of this past year, the film industry has been trying to figure out exactly how they wanted to handle the way they wanted to get their projects done during the pandemic. This act resulted in the work on many productions going longer throughout the year than originally anticipated which is why, beyond just the fact there was a pandemic, productions were harder to finish overall. What would then follow was a period of time where numerous other projects were announced on top of the fact that most everything was being worked on. This is where we are starting to get into the territory of new films being made that no one would have normally expected. From the very start of the pandemic last year, we started seeing the birth of movies and their scripts which has now given rise to many new upcoming films. Even if we may not end up seeing them for quite a while, it would appear that new movies are abound and they are coming sooner rather than later.
One of the first people to announce the creation of a new movie was Kevin Smith who announced that he was going to take advantage of the time off during the pandemic to work on ‘Mallrats 2.’ This was not the first future movie to be announced as there were a few of them made throughout the entirety of last year. This year has become not much different as it would appear that new movie announcements are being made right from the beginning of the whole year already. Among those announcements are the ones like the fact that there is going to be a ‘Rubik’s Cube’ movie now which makes us all wonder what that really means. Were people really just starting to get bored thinking of ways to make money or was the idea to make a documentary of some kind? It appears as though they will be going with the former option in this situation.
A ‘Rubik’s Cube’ movie is certainly bound to raise some questions such as what it will be about and the primary plot of the film and how it will play out. As of now, it would appear that it will be a puzzle movie of some kind, go figure, and it still doesn’t really have a plot to it as it can apparently play out any number of ways still. This essentially means that they have no way of actually coming up with a plot at the moment, or that they don’t really have a plan in mind as of this moment in time. This isn’t the first movie being made based on a toy or game of some kind, but it has, within the first few days of the year, become possibly the most interesting toy movie based solely on the fact we don’t know what it is. Only time will tell just how interesting this will get as we start hearing more details about the upcoming film over the course of this year, presumably.
By George Robbins
This has been a long arduous year thus far and ain’t quite over just yet with just a couple of days remaining before it finally ends once and for all. Despite this fact, we still have the issue that most everything that has been plaguing us this year which is still plaguing us is going to follow us into the new year. There isn’t really anything that we can do about this mess, but we can try our best to prepare for it before the new year begins and everything immediately starts going down the drain. Many people, locations, and businesses are preparing because it doesn’t matter what year it is, events are just going to keep unfolding regardless of the date. This is why we are now reaching a point where many people are just hopeful that the number of the year changing will genuinely help us in the end after all.
Movie studios easily had one of the more interesting times of what exactly they were going to do when the pandemic first began because they didn’t know how to handle their productions being shut down. When the whole pandemic began, just like everything else out there in the world movie and TV productions all ended up being shut down in order to further prevent spread of the virus. It is due to this that they had to make their plans ahead of time of how they wanted to handle things once they were given the greenlight to resume whatever it was they were working on. In the end, they continued work as usually with the new set rules and regulations in place to keep working on their upcoming projects. Following the reopening of their productions, studios decided to speed things up even more instead of waiting things out any longer.
Even though there was already a massive pile-up of films being put on the backburner because of the lack of people going out to movie theaters, studios have still made it their goals to keep working on new films. The back-catalogs of new films they are producing is going to be so vast that they will not have to worry about having new films to show any time in the near future. This also sets them up to survive the post-pandemic market as well because there is no telling just what the market will end up looking like when everything is said and done. More than likely, they are bound to end up losing a lot of money on their upcoming releases over the course of the next couple of years, but it is not enough to keep them from making mile-long lists of new films they can show off when the time is right. Not only this, but they have been announcing new films left and right all year since the pandemic began in order to keep people interested in what is coming next.
One such film that people found out more about this past year is yet another entry in the ‘Lethal Weapon‘ series, aptly named ‘Lethal Weapon 5’ which is based on the original films. While many people were hopeful that this may be the return of their favorite buddy cop series, it really won’t be as it is being confirmed to be the last entry to the series which will end after its release. Featuring the return of the main stars Mel Gibson and Danny Glover, this will be the last movie in the series as confirmed by director Richard Donner who directed and produced every other film in the series in the past. It may have been well over 20 years since the last film, but this hasn’t changed the overall level of excitement being felt for the film’s inevitable release. While it may still be awhile before we get to see the film, it is sure to completely punch fans in the gut knowing that it is going to be the last one ever made for that series. Despite this, people are undoubtedly excited for the movie to end up dropping and giving audiences everywhere one last look at the buddy cop combo they loved when they were younger.
By George Robbins
This has been an incredible year though that does not mean that it has been a good year by any stretch of the imagination, it just means that it was just a different year all around in general. This has led to countless things going into affect this year as we have obviously seen countless businesses going in various directions in order to make up for the fact that they could not compete normally this past year. Hence we now have many different businesses working very differently from how they would otherwise just to try and survive this pandemic. They aren’t so much trying to keep up at the moment as they are trying even harder just to survive what is happening during this pandemic. As of now, many businesses across the world have taken to trying to adjust to the rules and regulations in place just to try and make up for the loss in overall transactions they have been facing since the start.
When this pandemic first began back in March earlier this year, we saw the immediate closure of just about every single business out there with the exception of those deemed to be essential. What this meant was that all businesses out there which were deemed to be useful to the continued everyday lives of civilians were able to stay open with restrictions. Those restrictions would essentially be the same ones that we would continue to follow as time went on and this is how we ended up where we are now over 9 months later. Those restrictions were ones such as having to wear masks, keep to distances of around 6 feet from one another, and limit the overall capacities of stores and services. The first rule is one that has caused a lot of issues over the months with some people not wanting to listen to the rules and thus causing the virus to spread even more.
The biggest catch-22’s are what is being seen in the economy today as many businesses are trying to cope with the various issues being presented at the moment. Obviously, with the massive rise in cases over the past months, they have been trying to figure out how to move forward and follow the rules while bringing in new business. Most stores are not truly suffering from this same sense of stagnation or loss of customers because people will never stop going out to stores to buy things when they need them. Online stores and distribution sites have essentially been booming because people are far too afraid to take the risk and travel out to stores to get what they need. Stores that have their own online distribution have pretty much been booming and it has led to them being able to outlast this whole pandemic.
Distribution centers which have their homes online have always been set up to do well in these types of situations so of course they would be doing even better now that people have started ordering even more frequently off of the internet. That aside, there are some industries which are now suffering tremendously from all of this and among those industries is the film industry. From the very moment where the pandemic first began to now, the film industry has easily become one of the more interesting cases to follow because they really have no idea how to handle this pandemic. When everything first kicked off back in March, the pandemic immediately caused the shut down of every single business out there including both movie theaters and studios. From that moment on, studios have been trying to come up with some way of getting back to work why simultaneously coming up with ways to release their films.
Movie theaters, on the other hand, have essentially been shut down for the most part until some time in August when they decided they no longer wanted to wait in order to open their doors back up again. The result of which was something that should have been expected but simultaneously surprised most people in the theater industry because they immediately started losing out on business. Movie theaters started losing business the moment that they were forced to close their doors because that is their entire lay-out for how they get paid. Without being open to show people new movie releases, theaters immediately began the slow and painful process of exsanguinating money that they would never get back. Whether it be from the cost of maintenance even while their buildings were not in use, or the simple fact that while they were not open for business they were losing out on potential revenue, they were losing money in some way.
In August, when they reopened once again to the public, theaters found their opportunity to once again try and make money and that was where things once again took a turn for the worse and the industry took a tumble. Warner Bros. had a movie for them to show not long after the reopenings that theaters had taking place all over the world and that was their newest Christopher Nolan blockbuster ‘Tenet.’ Unlike other movies, ‘Tenet’ was not a sequel nor was it a movie with any big background to it which made it much more difficult for people to get excited for it. All the movie truly had going for it was the fact that the movie was a new Christopher Nolan original blockbuster, which, under normal circumstances, would have been enough to get people out and about to see the film. Unfortunately, this movie simply wasn’t bound for anything great in the middle of a pandemic and it failed to even come close to its marks that the studio wanted.
This whole event would go on to cause the current predicament that the movie industry as a whole is now facing as many studios then realized that that was not a good time for them to release their films. Thus, they immediately pushed back nearly all of their remaining 2020 films into some time in 2021 with some other plans of attack being drawn up in the meantime. While many small studios don’t really have much of a choice available to them other than waiting to see what will happen, the bigger studios have been taking steps to create new options for themselves over the years. Of course, no studio really thought that there was going to be a pandemic which would change the world and the way it functions, but they were merely adapting for the new age we are currently in. This is why so many companies are no focusing so much on the advent of the streaming age where people could view any content they wanted whenever they wanted.
Streaming services aren’t really anything new or revolutionary at this point, but they are the future for media across the world at this moment and the moments to come. People have always been bound to watching movies and shows they have liked on TV for years but with no real way of controlling what they get to see and when. These types of things have led to scheduling issues over the years that no one has been able to truly rectify but there have certainly been attempts to help fix these things including features like DVR. Other than DVR, there is nothing for TV networks to do that would allow them to help their customers because they can’t just make their content available whenever they want. They all have set schedules that they need to follow if they are going to make it out alive because that is how they fit in all of their content on their line-ups to fit every demographic.
With streaming services becoming more and more popular this has become less of an issue, but there are still a few problems which have arisen as a direct result of all of this. Those problems would be the fact that not every streaming service has the shows and content that people want to watch available on them and thus, various services are necessary for the full spread of content. This is how we ended up with so many services having different content which has driven people to have to get those services like television station packages. Unlike those packages however, those who get those services can watch all of that content whenever they actually feel like watching it meaning that thousands of hours of content is always readily available at peoples’ fingertips. Among those services which have made themselves available to the public at large are the Disney+ and HBO Max services which have been pushing hard to sell subs over these past months.
Primarily, the subscriptions they are trying to sell are almost entirely based on the exclusive content that they try to make available on their streaming sites. This is how we ended up with so much effort going into the creation and maintenance of these two sites over this past year since they vary so wildly. What really ends up selling subscription based services after all is the fact that they have exclusive content that really can’t be seen anywhere else in the world which draws in the traffic to their services. This is how the biggest services these days make the money on subscriptions that they do. Hence now, the ones that are trying their best to draw people in are the ones like Disney+ and HBO Max which have literally thousands of hours of content to give to the public.
HBO Max seems like they are losing the war for new subscriptions as of late however, because they have not been getting as many as they hoped they would since they launched back in May earlier this year. In fact, despite the countless hours of content they have made available to people who subscribe to their service, people don’t feel incentivized to really give their money to Warner. This has resulted in Warner Bros. now going through the trouble to do things that are making them hated among the industry including taking money away from the already failing theaters. These theaters have been trying their best to get business back after the pandemic began, but nothing they are doing is really considered enough at this point because people just don’t want to take the risk and go back out to theaters. Despite this fact, Warner now feels the need to make things difficult for theaters by putting their new content out on both HBO Max and in theaters simultaneously upon release.
Their most recent and first actual venture into this was to the release of their ‘Wonder Woman 1984’ which actually managed to have the best pandemic box office opening this year. With the movie actually doing well, some were wondering just how much of an effect the movie had on the HBO Max side of things since it was such a big deal to release through both mediums on the same day. In truth, it worked out like they intended, but there is no way that it worked out exactly as they intended it to because their numbers do not lie. As it turns out, they may have won the box office, but the points that really matter, the HBO Max subscriptions, did not end up being as high as they were hoping for them to be upon the film’s release. In fact, they ended up losing out on that win this past weekend to Disney+ which is just continuing a winning streak at this point.
Disney+ had their premiere release of the new Pixar movie ‘Soul’ this past weekend which managed to outclass the much looked forward to ‘Wonder Woman 1984’ which released the same day. Unfortunately for HBO Max and Warner as a whole, this also meant that Disney+ ended up getting more overall subscriptions to their service as opposed to HBO Max. So in conclusion, HBO Max did get something but it was nothing like what they truly wanted and some of their thunder was stolen by Disney and Pixar. Hopefully for Warner this will not be a foreshadowing of things to come, but who really knows at this point. They are going to have a long year ahead of them which hasn’t even really started yet so it will be interesting to see how things turn out in the not too distant future.
Get Some Strange!
