Screening Room Attempts to Recreate Theater Experience In Your Living Room By Subtracting Everything That Makes It A Theater Experience

Daniel Crooke, here. In one corner: art house cinemas, regional and independent theater chains, and the flickering hope that sitting in a dark room while watching strangers’ problems projected onto a screen will warm you from the inside out. In the other: Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Peter Jackson, Justin Timberlake in The Social Network and the redheaded squirt from The Andy Griffith Show. Somewhere beyond the ropes, off in the stands, or wherever spectators chill in a sports metaphor: you, the audience, wondering how the hell you can just lean back and watch a damn movie. The fight: whether Sean Parker’s in-home moviegoing composite, Screening Room – which offers the chance to stream day-in-date releases of top shelf studio releases in the comfort of your own home – accessibly accessorizes or fundamentally destroys movies as we know, watch, and profit from them. Is it a forward thinking, easy-making application or Napster’s file sharing, older sister with a Friedkin poster on the wall? A brave new venture or a brave new world?

Doomsday scenarios and potential benefits after the jump...

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Q&A: Brie & Saoirse, Superhero & Oscar, Actors & Politics

As promised it's time to answer ten reader questions, pulled from your comments. We'll try to do this weekly for awhile because I don't want you to abandon us in the offseason. "DON'T LEAVE US," he cried out, voice trembling, mascara running. 

Pedro: Who are your top ten actors/actresses that also participated in politics (were appointed/elected to office or just participated in an election but were not elected, for example)?

You guys aren't supposed to ask top ten questions! I have not paid close enough attention to this weird occurrence, so I dont even know who has done this really. The most famous examples are surely Ronald Reagan, Nancy Reagan, and Arnold Schwarzenegger with Glenda Jackson a distant fourth. But I have no personal favorites since basically I don't like it when actors shift careers. My 11th commandment proposal: Acting is a rare gift - thou shalt not waste it!

Of course Nancy Davis and Ronald Reagan were no great shakes in the acting department before they became POTUS & FLOTUS so the loss wasn't extreme. We're supposed to be saying nice things about them this week since Nancy just died (RIP) so I'd better just move on before I get myself into trouble since our national fantasy about how great the Reagans were is all kinds of f***ed up and problematic...

But, P.S., I did find it momentarily fascinating when there were rumors that Ashley Judd was going to do it.

DJDeeJay: what's your favorite example of male objectification in a movie?
[The answer and 8 more questions after the jump...] 

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Podcast Season Finale: 88th Oscars

Nathaniel, Nick, Joe and Katey close this season of the podcast with their final "it's all sunk in now" feelings

42 minutes 
00:01 "So Spotlight won..."
02:15 Katey's Party / Nick's House Rules 
05:25 Stallone's Loss / Compton Moviegoing
09:30 How much changes if Idris Elba had been nominated?
15:00 Sam Smith, The Gays, and Original Song
20:00 What wins will age well and much randomness
37:54 That moment when we thought George Miller was possible...
40:00 Girl Scout Cookies and Goodbyes

You can listen to the podcast here at the bottom of the post or download from iTunes. Related Reading: Index of Oscar Ceremony Coverage

Oscar Wrap Up

Retro Sundance: 2001's Memento

When Memento arrived in 2001, it was a total buzzfest: Everyone was talking about it. It had a Wachowski level of cool (even co-starring Wachowski favorites Joe Pantoliano and Carrie-Anne Moss), it had a gritty noir sensibility, and an innovative time-bending structure deftly designed to get you inside the brain-damaged mind of Leonard Shelby (Guy Pearce). It left Sundance that January with the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award, hit movie theaters in March, and when awards season came it was nominated for an Oscar for the Screenplay (Chris Nolan's first Oscar nomination) as well as the Editing prize. The movie has lost none of its cachet in the intervening years, retaining a 92% “fresh” rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and clocking in at #46 on the IMDb Top 250.

But I have a personal reason for loving this movie, as well as a story (I always have a story) if you'll indulge me after the jump...

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Links: Dolls, Dancers, Disney, and Agent Scully

Some links as we hole watching movies and writing future articles during the blizzard...

• John August on torrenting the Oscars
• MNPP remembers 5 great experiences at New York City's historic Ziegfeld Theater (about to close). Oh the memories
• Boy Culture a documentary about the dancers from Madonna's classic Truth or Dare film / Blonde Ambition tour to premiere at Berlinale
• Deadline new projects for JC Chandor (A Most Violent Year) including a remake of that extremely tense Austrian film The Robber - good luck topping the adrenaline of the original

• Awards Daily Lady Gaga will perform "Til It Happens to You" at the Producers Guild gala
• Pajiba Charlie Cox has not yet been invited to Marvel's Infinity Wars. He is waiting impatiently
• Fandor breaks down the Best Actor race
• Salon talks up Tori Amos's "Boys for Pele" (my favorite of her records) on its 20th anniversary
• Interview Magazine talks to the "unusually busy" Gillian Anderson about her recent roles
• Vanity Fair on Gillian Anderson fighting for wage equality on X-Files reunion
• Deadline a list of hot actors everyone wants for pilot season. Whenever I read about pilot season I realize how little I understand about the strange flickering alien world of television. Where people can even have whole careers without anyone seeing their work (with the amount of pilots that don't make it to series) How can the same actors be wanted for every drama? No actor is right for every role.

Disney & Girls
• Bloomberg Business how Hasbro snatched Disney's all powerful Princess line of dolls away from Mattel. They also got facial adjustments. Terrifyingly Hasbro promises to make the Disney Princesses even more ubiquitous than they already are. This article even has the story reenacted by dolls (with Avengers cameos naturally) in a video
• Sweatpants and Coffee Ooh i knew Disney was throwing up smokescreensto distract us. Turns out toymakers were 'specifically directed' to exclude Rey from toylines due to her gender! It wasn't from "secrecy" as they tried to peddle earlier. #WheresRey
• Comics Alliance ...but Black Widow will be part of the toyline from Captain America: Civil War (with a new costume)
• i09 has an interesting piece on the story work behind Zootopia and how the secondary female character, a bunny named Judy Hopps, took over the leading role from the male fox who was originally its protagonist.