Oscar gets a (potentially profitable) makeover

3 comments October 9th, 2008

 

When the Academy Awards ceremony airs on Feb. 22, 2009, things will look a bit different. Not with the show itself — that’ll probably be the same combination of poorly chosen film clips, convoluted acceptance speechs and ill-conceived musical numbers. No, the change I’m talking about will involve the commercials.

For the first time, they’ll actually be advertising movies. According to an Associated Press story…

“The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences board voted to allow commercials for movies to air on the Oscar telecast for the first time starting with the Feb. 22 ceremony on ABC, academy spokeswoman Leslie Unger said Wednesday. The vote Tuesday night lifts a ban on movie advertising that had been in place since the Oscars hit the airwaves in the early 1950s.”

The rules will limit ads to one spot per distributor, and the ads must (a) be brand new, (b) promote single movies opening two months after the Oscars or later, and (c) not contain the words “Academy Awards” or “Oscars.”

These restrictions are aimed at making sure no one gets the idea that just because a studio is advertising during the Oscars it might be influencing the winners. Personally, I’m just glad that while watching a TV show about movies, I’ll be able to actually see ads for upcoming movies.

Let’s just hope they’re good movies.

The original monster mash (up)

1 comment October 9th, 2008

Over at his fascinating movie blog, Greenbriar Picture Shows, John McElwee takes a loving look at the pairing of FRANKENSTEIN and DRACULA in movie theaters. Seems like a natural, almost inevitable idea now, but that wasn’t always the case. As McElwee says…

“For seven years after their initial release in 1931, showmen regarded them separately. Playdates were infrequent as Universal provided sequels (BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN, DRACULA’S DAUGHTER) beginning right where originals left off, but there were gold deposits untapped even as the mine’s route lay not hidden, but in plain sight. The magic was in combining them, but nobody thought of that until seemingly bungled reissues of FRANKENSTEIN and DRACULA suddenly caught fire together in August 1938.”

Here’s part one, and here’s part two. They’re long articles, but well worth reading. And Greenbriar always features an amazing amount of rare promotional art. I can only image what McElwee’s personal archives look like — and boy, and I jealous.