(1) ANOTHER FANS V. HOLLYWOOD DUSTUP. This is fascinating. Business Insider, in the process of crabbing that “The last 15 best-picture Oscar winners prove how out of touch Hollywood’s biggest night is with general audiences”, shows that the top box office picture in all but one of those years was a genre film, or else an animated movie.
We looked back at the lifetime domestic gross for the last 15 best picture Oscar winners and matched those with the lifetime gross for the movies that topped those years at the box office. And only once did they match up (2003’s “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King”).
In fact, most of the best picture Oscar winners didn’t crack $100 million at the box office and only two crossed the $200 million mark — and that’s counting inflation!
Nevertheless, in 2012 when genre films went head-to-head and Oscar winner Argo beat box office champ The Avengers, I was pretty happy about that result.
(2) ABOUT THE HUGO ANNOUNCEMENT. Annalee Flower Horne explores important nuances in the argument over when the Hugo finalist announcement should be scheduled. Jump on the thread here —
https://twitter.com/leeflower/status/979088043310223361
(3) NO THANKS. Wendy S. Delmater helps authors read the entrails when it comes to “What Rejection Letters Really Mean”.
Oh no. Your literary creation—poem, article, novel, or story—has been rejected. What do you do now?
One of the first questions you should ask is, was this a Form Rejection or a Personalized Rejection? When you use The Grinder (by Diabolical Plots) to keep track of your submissions, it even gives you those options on a drop down menu. And there a shades of rejection letters, something called “tiered rejections.” Every publication has different rejection letters, too. One thing you can do is to take a look at the rejection wiki to see if the market you submitted it to has sample rejection letters.
(4) EYE-OPENER. Laura Dale tells Polygon readers “Why I helped create a game about being trans,” in the article “When simply existing is dangerous, everything is a risk”. Thid video role-playing game is designed to help cis people understand what it feels like to have gender dysphoria, to be forced to live as a gender which does not match the one with which they identify.
As a trans woman, I hear stories of transgender individuals dying by murder or suicide depressingly often. At least 81 transgender people were murdered in 2015, while 41 percent try to kill themselves at some point in their lives.
I don’t always have the emotional energy to engage with the topic, but in the wake of Leelah Alcorn’s suicide, I decided to try and do something to help raise awareness of what it’s like to go through the rough early stages of gender transition.
I got together with coder Alex Roberts, artist Joanna Blackhart and writer 8BitGoggles to develop a game called Acceptance.
(5) THE RISK OF OOPS. Scientists are the only ones…. “Why Scientists Aren’t Fans Of Creating On-Demand Meteor Showers” …because, of course, nothing could possibly go wrong.
AILSA CHANG, HOST:
In this video, the firm Astro Live Experiences explains how it hopes this will work. A satellite in low orbit around the Earth releases a cluster of small spheres. Those spheres fall through the atmosphere. And as they do, they burn up. Here on Earth, that translates into an artificial shooting star show.
SHAPIRO: Sounds like it could be pretty. But if the idea of manmade spheres hurtling through the atmosphere also sounds alarming, you’re not alone. Some scientists have objections. For one thing, they say we need to be able to observe objects beyond our atmosphere.
(6) PROBLEMATIC SURVEY. Lauren Orsini, in the Forbes.com column “Why Did The Flying Colors Anime Census Lose Fans’ Trust”, says anime fans were disturbed by a quiz sent out by previously-unknown Flying Colors Foundation, because the foundation didn’t explain who they were and then asked if anime fans had mental health problems, including social anxiety, body image issues, bullying, and depression.”
Why does the survey ask about mental health?
Near the end of the Anime Census, survey-takers are asked if they have ever experienced social anxiety, body image issues, drug addiction, or other “health complications.”
However, the survey website does not inform fans about how the information will be used, so it’s no wonder that some survey-takers assumed the worst.
“The intention of the mental health question is threefold,” [spokesperson Daniel] Suh told me, “To let the community know that they are not suffering alone, to prove that anime can quite literally change lives by helping fans endure and grow through difficult times, and to understand and measure the benefits of anime on mental health. We want to help prove that anime is a global medium that could be used for good. We are aware of HIPAA regulations and, although we are not a health service provider, we are complying with its strictest rules. Any responses we receive about mental health will not be shared with anyone outside of FCF.”
(7) TODAY IN HISTORY
- March 28, 1963 – Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds premiered in theaters.
(8) TRIVIAL TRIVIA. Trivial Trivia: Ray Bradbury was approached to write the original screen treatment of The Birds but declined.
Later, when he’d watch the movie at home, he’d yell at the TV, “You should have used the ending from the book!”
(9) CANCELLED. Starbase Indy, a convention that has been held for 30 years, will not be back in 2018 the chair announced on Facebook.
Like any fan-run not-for-profit, Starbase Indy relies on the community around the event for all the labor required to run it and also for all of the money that goes into the event. Taking a clear-eyed look at our financial and volunteer situation, there is no responsible way to hold an event this year.
…To bring the event back in the future, we would need to build a Board of Directors capable of guiding the event, and a convention staff excited about running the event. Currently I’m the only Board member remaining. That’s not a sustainable base from which to build any organization, especially not a volunteer organization with no paid staff.
(10) 2001 TRIBUTE. Cora Buhlert recommends “50 Jahre Kubricks ‘2001’”, a video about an exhibition in Frankfurt/Main honoring the 50th anniversary of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 – A Space Odyssey. Cora explains, “The video is from a German culture program and therefore only in German, but you can see plenty of the exhibits. Not sure how long it will stay online.”
(11) PILES OF PIXELS. Furthering a trend, “The National Museum of Scotland is putting its entire collection online”.
People across the world can now view all the National Museum of Scotland has to offer without even leaving their sofas.
Using Google Arts and Culture’s museum view experience, which is similar to how Google’s Street View works, tourists can view the 20,000 objects on display at the National Museum. The virtual display also includes 1,000 pictures of objects from the Edinburgh museum’s collection.
It’s the first museum in Scotland that can be toured online, but not the first in the world. The Taj Mahal in India and the Palace of Versailles in France have also opened up their exhibit in a similar way, giving visitors from around the world a novel opportunity to explore their interior. Google Arts and Culture hopes to continue working with institutions to make cultural and historical materials across the globe more easily accessible.
(12) DOCUMENTARY WILL TRACE BRADBURY’S IMPACT. For fans who like to be heard –
Are you a fan of Ray Bradbury’s works? Have you had contact with him at some time in your life? Maybe he signed a book you still own. Or, maybe you met him in Waukegan, his hometown. You might even have a letter from him. Or, maybe his writing influenced you in a special way.
If so, we want to hear from you! We invite you to be interviewed as part of a video documentary. You will have a chance to tell about your “I Met Ray” moment in your own words.
This video documentary project is sponsored by the Ray Bradbury Museum Committee, which is working to preserve these unique Bradbury moments and memories for posterity.
For more information, please contact us at one of the following:
RBEM office
13 N. Genesee Street
Waukegan, IL 60085847-372-6183
(13) JEOPARDY! More sff on Jeopardy! The category was “Entertaining Inspirations.”
Steven H Silver says, “They got it right for $400. The previous clue was about the film Alien.”
(14) THE ANSWER IS YES. Someone asked Anna Nimmhaus if things could be verse:
If you want to be happy and go without strife,
Never make the pixel-scrolling your life.
So from my personal point of view
Get a paper book to a-muse you.(apologies to J. Soul, J. Royster, C. & F. Guida, 1963)
(15) BALLGAME OF THRONES. Sports Illustrated promises “This ‘Game of Thrones’ MLB Promo Will Get You Ready for Baseball Season”.
If you’re looking forward to the return of baseball and the return of Game of Thrones, I have good news and bad news.
The bad news is that the hit HBO series won’t be back until 2019. The good news, though, is that baseball is back this week and there’s even a Game of Thrones tie-in.
There were 19 GoT promotional nights by MLB teams last season and HBO has renewed its agreement with the league to make it happen again this year. To mark the occasion, the network produced this really cool video based on the show’s title sequence.
[Thanks to JJ, Cat Eldridge, ULTRAGOTHA, Cora Buhlert, John King Tarpinian, Steven H Silver, Rich Lynch, Martin Morse Wooster, Carl Slaughter, Chip Hitchcock, Daniel Dern, John Hertz, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor Kip W, who reminded me of the days when I was a fan of Everett Dirksen.]
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@P J Evans: ISTM that having some concom who have some flex in their day jobs is typical (at least); possibly Worldcon bidders should be asked point-blank how many such people they have, as there are a lot of things besides publicity for which action during working hours is useful. Some mundane vendors have increased hours; some have not.
@Hampus Eckerman: the harsh counter to your observation is that people with thin skins shouldn’t be running Worldcons; anything with that many attendees is going to have some unreasonable complaints. Maybe not as unreasonable as Ted White’s thinly-veiled accusation that the N2 (1980) committee was planning to do something illicit with the low-five-figures that it took home after being selected — but there will be issues for which the best response is turning the other cheek (no matter how tempting turning the third cheek may be). wrt the concoms that burned out due to hostility: how often was that hostility really undeserved? I remember seeing a con chair led away in tears from a closing (“gripe”) session — but that was a legendarily badly-run con.
True. But that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t try to shield staff from unreasonable complaints to let them spend time on convention instead.
Of course, sometimes “shielding” creates a bigger storm which sucks even more energy instead (many are the times I’ve thought “stop helping me!”).
I recognize that my experience is from much smaller events when the loss of two persons can have an enormous impact.
Anytime you produce something for public consumption, you’ll have to expect criticism, whether it’s a blog post, poem, short story, novel, comic, movie, TV show or WorldCon.
Though I generally feel more comfortable being harsh about movies and TV shows, since they are produced by a large number of usually well paid people, so it’s unlikely that one individual will feel singled out, than about books, short stories, comics, etc… which are produced by individuals or small teams. For example, I don’t feel very sorry that I was harsh about Star Trek Discovery – though I aimed more at the umpteen different producers than at the cast, who generally did good work with not very good material.
Regarding cons, while WorldCon 75 was going on, I have seen quite a bit of criticism, some justified and constructive, some not IMO. And some of the harshest criticism came from people who weren’t even there and hadn’t been involved with the con either. By the way, I did make a point to thank the volunteers I interacted with (all of whom were helpful and did a good job) and even brought the hardworking folks at WorldCon 75 program ops some candy on the last day of the con.
I did not recall Tim Illingworth’s observation, but I’ve now gleefully quoted (and attributed) it today while sitting at the San Jose info table at Norwescon.