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spiderbraidsJust felt like rambling a bit this week...
The great linear television mess-up (with apologies to a deprecated TVTropes entry name)
Arguably, the real great linear television mess-up was the viewers Disney ditched along the way when they decided to shutdown their entire gaggle of regional linear TV networks, and also stopped letting linear air their wide-spanning range of entertainment (not just Disney and Pixar, but also Star Wars and non-Spidey Marvel), to push Disney Plus streaming instead, thus taking away not one, but two major post-theatrical outlets for their cinema product (the other being disc media, but at least locally there are places that will import Disney discs from the states, as this owner of an Inside Out 2 Blu-ray can attest :-)) But since then, it seems as if most of the remaining studios are simply reluctant to let linear channels in the region air their post-pandemic era product, just leaving modern product to streaming and letting linear air their older catalog product, even when they own channels themselves (Warner, for example)... What little newer product that does get aired tends to be from the smaller studios; one of our locals aired 2022's The Whale, from A24, on the same day as this year's Oscars, but there's been no sign of Barbenheimer on the linear channels (and somehow, I don't think they're coming any time soon :-\) Doesn't help that we're relative luddites, as we don't subscribe to streamers :-\ (Now you understand why I have an Inside Out 2 Blu-ray? ;-) Set me back a good 75 USD :-))
That said, Sony is still letting linear air its latest product (including streaming product originally intended for cinemas), and in another sign of how things have changed for linear television, one of our ad-supported regional stations (so, not a fly-by-night operation) showed Bad Boys: Ride or Die a while ago, and is airing Venom: The Last Dance and Kraven the Hunter this month, less than half a year after their theatrical bows (!) I remember that it would take about a year for films to go from cinema to premium ad-free pay TV (with them hitting disc after 3-4 months), then another year or so to hit ad-supported pay TV, then another year to hit free-to-air (for example, the original Inside Out from 2015 hit ad-free pay TV in 2016, only a month or so after disc due to change in local distributor, then eventually free-to-air in 2018, just before the end of analog; yep, more product you wouldn't expect to have been shown in analog, but there you go) Just before the pandemic upended things, the intervals were getting shorter, to somewhere around 8-9 months or so; I was already finding it weird that one of our ad-free premium locals aired Madame Web before 2024 was out, but at least it was more or less consistent with the pre-pandemic cycle... Getting to see Aaron Taylor-Johnson's stab at the extended Spiderman universe on ad-supported pay TV in about the time you'd expect it to hit disc/streaming though, now that's wild :-\ (Indeed, Kraven's hitting disc in the states as I'm typing this)
One of our local free-to-air channels not only brags about having the most movies on free-to-air, they actually post their schedules for primetime blockbusters on a local forum board, so I decided to do a little look back to see what that channel has been offering the past few months:
- Seems like most of what's been on covers the 2000s and 2010s, with a fair amount of 1990s in the mix, as well as the original Top Gun (!) as part of a Tom Cruise weekend
- They've aired both the Brendan Fraser Mummy and the lesser-regarded Tom Cruise Mummy
- The only post-pandemic era movies I noticed on a cursory glance are Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard, Morbius, Uncharted, The Lost City, Spiderman: No Way Home, Top Gun: Maverick (also part of the Tom Cruise weekend), Gran Turismo, and the new Dungeons and Dragons (the last two being promoted as their first appearances on free-to-air), plus a late-night screening of The Forever Purge... Not surprisingly, most of these are Sony
- I also looked briefly into their weekend morning family fare, and there's quite a bit of obscure B-grade stuff there, even at least one live-action from France (!) They've also aired both Babe and Abominable twice in the past three or so months, and the only post-pandemic era stuff I've noted is the first Paw Patrol movie, Rumble, and Spirit Untamed (the last two never even got a cinema release here), and I remember seeing an afternoon airing of Across the Spiderverse
The other major studios might not be giving linear much of a look when it comes to actually showing their (newer) wares there... but weirdly, I see that Warner is still using it to advertise its latest cinema releases, as I saw one of our free-to-air channels air a quick ad for Mickey 17, which, HUH. (Meanwhile, Disney has advertised its wares at subway stations and even on skytrains: here's one for Inside Out 2 :-))
Still not time enough at last for Dreamworks
With Flow beating The Wild Robot in the Best Animated Feature category, animation Twitter (and the other social medias, to be fair) can talk until the cows come home about the merits of the indie darling's victory over major studio product, whereas Dreamworks fans are probably wondering, what the heck do they have to do to win another Oscar? After winning the first ever award in the category in 2001 with Shrek, which has since become more meme than actual quality animated franchise and is already raising eyebrows (not necessarily in a good way) with its recently-announced comeback, and having a finger in the pie for Curse of the Wererabbit in 2005 (the irony that they had to compete against another Wallace and Gromit film this year does not escape me), it's been a big fat goose egg (found and hatched by Roz ;-)) since then:
- 2008: Kung Fu Panda was beaten by Wall-E, which, understandable, it's peak Pixar
- 2010: How to Train Your Dragon was beaten by Toy Story 3, which again, understandable, it's peak Pixar
- 2011: KFP2 was beaten by Rango, which, okay, sequel aversion
- 2013: The Croods was beaten by Frozen, which, fair enough; if anyone was threatening to beat that juggernaut, it certainly wasn't going to be a silly-looking movie about cavemen
- 2014: HTTYD2 was beaten byBaymax Big Hero 6, which was arguably their best shot before this year (and one could argue Baymax had even less of a case for winning than Flow did)
- 2017: The Boss Baby was beaten by Coco, which, let's say it again, understandable, it's sort-of peak Pixar; if anything, Boss Baby arguably had no business (huh, pun) being in the mix to begin with
- 2019: HTTYD3 was beaten by Toy Story 4, which, somewhat understandable; it wasn't quite peak Pixar, but the law of diminishing returns hit Dragon more than Toy Story
- 2022: Puss In Boots 2 was beaten by Netflix's Pinocchio, which, eh; it also gave us the "animation is cinema" soundbite, which may very well have informed the last couple years of this category
- And now, Flow over The Wild Robot :-\
Which means that three studios (Paramount, Disney Animation, Netflix), and now indie fare, have won their first Oscars in the category over Dreamworks product since their last win... Used to be that the nomination itself was the win for indies, as I remember Aisling from 2009's Secret of Kells quipping about host Steve Martin's "lovely silver hair" while using the nomination to promote the movie, which was such a refreshingly honest moment, compared to Princess and the Frog's bombastic clip of an alligator sitting on a frog and wondering if it'll end up on YouTube :-) It almost seems like some Dreamworks fans might see the similarly-themed Flow landing on the radar of the voters after winning the Golden Globe like Burgess Meredith looking at his broken pair of reading glasses (as they say, if you know you know; hint in the section title), because if getting "the greatest Dreamworks film ever" raves from The Wrap, being directed by previous three-time nominee Chris Sanders (Lilo and Stitch, Dragon, and Croods), coming out in a year where both Disney and Pixar came out with sequels (no offense to Inside Out 2, but outside of Toy Story, sequels just never win), landing nominations in other categories (sound and score, but still), and grabbing nine Annie Awards (the animation industry's own accolades) was still not enough to finally earn them another statue, one has to wonder what it's going to take? Especially given that The Wild Robot was fully animated in-house, whereas moving forward, they're outsourcing (at least some of) their feature animation to other studios :-\
Well, the irony is, despite Oscars' general aversion to sequels (not just this category), I can see them waiting to award the sequel :-\ The Wild Robot is based on the first of a trilogy of novels, and I've heard the second one is even better than the first... And it wouldn't even be first time a front-runner may very well have been affected by the promise of more, since just last year, Oscar gave the statue to Miyazaki's swansong (heron song? ;-)), over a film that, however good it is, is very explicitly a "part one" building up to a bigger story in part two (that said, Spiderverse already has a statue for the previous film, so this kinda hits different) The real issue is which one they'll pick if both of them end up coming out the same year (or even if they'll just revert to their usual sequel aversion and pick an original), because the next Spiderverse film (that was originally supposed to come out last year, mind you) is still undated and only just had its directors announced late last year, and Dreamworks just formally announced the development of the Wild Robot sequel...
We can safely say, though, that Dreamworks' drought will continue in 2025, because their slate is Dog Man, Bad Guys 2, and Gabby's Dollhouse, which, as much as kids like cute (or otherwise) animals, that ain't it, chief ;-)
The great linear television mess-up (with apologies to a deprecated TVTropes entry name)
Arguably, the real great linear television mess-up was the viewers Disney ditched along the way when they decided to shutdown their entire gaggle of regional linear TV networks, and also stopped letting linear air their wide-spanning range of entertainment (not just Disney and Pixar, but also Star Wars and non-Spidey Marvel), to push Disney Plus streaming instead, thus taking away not one, but two major post-theatrical outlets for their cinema product (the other being disc media, but at least locally there are places that will import Disney discs from the states, as this owner of an Inside Out 2 Blu-ray can attest :-)) But since then, it seems as if most of the remaining studios are simply reluctant to let linear channels in the region air their post-pandemic era product, just leaving modern product to streaming and letting linear air their older catalog product, even when they own channels themselves (Warner, for example)... What little newer product that does get aired tends to be from the smaller studios; one of our locals aired 2022's The Whale, from A24, on the same day as this year's Oscars, but there's been no sign of Barbenheimer on the linear channels (and somehow, I don't think they're coming any time soon :-\) Doesn't help that we're relative luddites, as we don't subscribe to streamers :-\ (Now you understand why I have an Inside Out 2 Blu-ray? ;-) Set me back a good 75 USD :-))
That said, Sony is still letting linear air its latest product (including streaming product originally intended for cinemas), and in another sign of how things have changed for linear television, one of our ad-supported regional stations (so, not a fly-by-night operation) showed Bad Boys: Ride or Die a while ago, and is airing Venom: The Last Dance and Kraven the Hunter this month, less than half a year after their theatrical bows (!) I remember that it would take about a year for films to go from cinema to premium ad-free pay TV (with them hitting disc after 3-4 months), then another year or so to hit ad-supported pay TV, then another year to hit free-to-air (for example, the original Inside Out from 2015 hit ad-free pay TV in 2016, only a month or so after disc due to change in local distributor, then eventually free-to-air in 2018, just before the end of analog; yep, more product you wouldn't expect to have been shown in analog, but there you go) Just before the pandemic upended things, the intervals were getting shorter, to somewhere around 8-9 months or so; I was already finding it weird that one of our ad-free premium locals aired Madame Web before 2024 was out, but at least it was more or less consistent with the pre-pandemic cycle... Getting to see Aaron Taylor-Johnson's stab at the extended Spiderman universe on ad-supported pay TV in about the time you'd expect it to hit disc/streaming though, now that's wild :-\ (Indeed, Kraven's hitting disc in the states as I'm typing this)
One of our local free-to-air channels not only brags about having the most movies on free-to-air, they actually post their schedules for primetime blockbusters on a local forum board, so I decided to do a little look back to see what that channel has been offering the past few months:
- Seems like most of what's been on covers the 2000s and 2010s, with a fair amount of 1990s in the mix, as well as the original Top Gun (!) as part of a Tom Cruise weekend
- They've aired both the Brendan Fraser Mummy and the lesser-regarded Tom Cruise Mummy
- The only post-pandemic era movies I noticed on a cursory glance are Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard, Morbius, Uncharted, The Lost City, Spiderman: No Way Home, Top Gun: Maverick (also part of the Tom Cruise weekend), Gran Turismo, and the new Dungeons and Dragons (the last two being promoted as their first appearances on free-to-air), plus a late-night screening of The Forever Purge... Not surprisingly, most of these are Sony
- I also looked briefly into their weekend morning family fare, and there's quite a bit of obscure B-grade stuff there, even at least one live-action from France (!) They've also aired both Babe and Abominable twice in the past three or so months, and the only post-pandemic era stuff I've noted is the first Paw Patrol movie, Rumble, and Spirit Untamed (the last two never even got a cinema release here), and I remember seeing an afternoon airing of Across the Spiderverse
The other major studios might not be giving linear much of a look when it comes to actually showing their (newer) wares there... but weirdly, I see that Warner is still using it to advertise its latest cinema releases, as I saw one of our free-to-air channels air a quick ad for Mickey 17, which, HUH. (Meanwhile, Disney has advertised its wares at subway stations and even on skytrains: here's one for Inside Out 2 :-))
Still not time enough at last for Dreamworks
With Flow beating The Wild Robot in the Best Animated Feature category, animation Twitter (and the other social medias, to be fair) can talk until the cows come home about the merits of the indie darling's victory over major studio product, whereas Dreamworks fans are probably wondering, what the heck do they have to do to win another Oscar? After winning the first ever award in the category in 2001 with Shrek, which has since become more meme than actual quality animated franchise and is already raising eyebrows (not necessarily in a good way) with its recently-announced comeback, and having a finger in the pie for Curse of the Wererabbit in 2005 (the irony that they had to compete against another Wallace and Gromit film this year does not escape me), it's been a big fat goose egg (found and hatched by Roz ;-)) since then:
- 2008: Kung Fu Panda was beaten by Wall-E, which, understandable, it's peak Pixar
- 2010: How to Train Your Dragon was beaten by Toy Story 3, which again, understandable, it's peak Pixar
- 2011: KFP2 was beaten by Rango, which, okay, sequel aversion
- 2013: The Croods was beaten by Frozen, which, fair enough; if anyone was threatening to beat that juggernaut, it certainly wasn't going to be a silly-looking movie about cavemen
- 2014: HTTYD2 was beaten by
- 2017: The Boss Baby was beaten by Coco, which, let's say it again, understandable, it's sort-of peak Pixar; if anything, Boss Baby arguably had no business (huh, pun) being in the mix to begin with
- 2019: HTTYD3 was beaten by Toy Story 4, which, somewhat understandable; it wasn't quite peak Pixar, but the law of diminishing returns hit Dragon more than Toy Story
- 2022: Puss In Boots 2 was beaten by Netflix's Pinocchio, which, eh; it also gave us the "animation is cinema" soundbite, which may very well have informed the last couple years of this category
- And now, Flow over The Wild Robot :-\
Which means that three studios (Paramount, Disney Animation, Netflix), and now indie fare, have won their first Oscars in the category over Dreamworks product since their last win... Used to be that the nomination itself was the win for indies, as I remember Aisling from 2009's Secret of Kells quipping about host Steve Martin's "lovely silver hair" while using the nomination to promote the movie, which was such a refreshingly honest moment, compared to Princess and the Frog's bombastic clip of an alligator sitting on a frog and wondering if it'll end up on YouTube :-) It almost seems like some Dreamworks fans might see the similarly-themed Flow landing on the radar of the voters after winning the Golden Globe like Burgess Meredith looking at his broken pair of reading glasses (as they say, if you know you know; hint in the section title), because if getting "the greatest Dreamworks film ever" raves from The Wrap, being directed by previous three-time nominee Chris Sanders (Lilo and Stitch, Dragon, and Croods), coming out in a year where both Disney and Pixar came out with sequels (no offense to Inside Out 2, but outside of Toy Story, sequels just never win), landing nominations in other categories (sound and score, but still), and grabbing nine Annie Awards (the animation industry's own accolades) was still not enough to finally earn them another statue, one has to wonder what it's going to take? Especially given that The Wild Robot was fully animated in-house, whereas moving forward, they're outsourcing (at least some of) their feature animation to other studios :-\
Well, the irony is, despite Oscars' general aversion to sequels (not just this category), I can see them waiting to award the sequel :-\ The Wild Robot is based on the first of a trilogy of novels, and I've heard the second one is even better than the first... And it wouldn't even be first time a front-runner may very well have been affected by the promise of more, since just last year, Oscar gave the statue to Miyazaki's swansong (heron song? ;-)), over a film that, however good it is, is very explicitly a "part one" building up to a bigger story in part two (that said, Spiderverse already has a statue for the previous film, so this kinda hits different) The real issue is which one they'll pick if both of them end up coming out the same year (or even if they'll just revert to their usual sequel aversion and pick an original), because the next Spiderverse film (that was originally supposed to come out last year, mind you) is still undated and only just had its directors announced late last year, and Dreamworks just formally announced the development of the Wild Robot sequel...
We can safely say, though, that Dreamworks' drought will continue in 2025, because their slate is Dog Man, Bad Guys 2, and Gabby's Dollhouse, which, as much as kids like cute (or otherwise) animals, that ain't it, chief ;-)
