Saturday Hot Links
Time for the 319th installment of Saturday Hot Links, your week’s essential reading about movies, TV, streaming, Hollywood, and other…
Time for the 319th installment of Saturday Hot Links, your week’s essential reading about movies, TV, streaming, Hollywood, and other things of writerly interest.
Oscars: Decoding the Best Picture Contenders With Fun Facts and Stats.
Oscars to Start Half Hour Earlier, May Finally End Before Dawn.
How to Fix Oscar’s Foreign-Language Problem.
Academy Board Approves Standards of Conduct for Members.
2018 Writers Guild Awards: Television, New Media, News, Radio/Audio, & Promotional Writing Nominations Announced.
Patton Oswalt Returns to Host 2018 Writers Guild Awards L.A. Ceremony.
‘Darkest Hour,’ ‘Three Billboards’ Among Films Not Eligible for WGA Awards.
2017 Black List of Best Unproduced Screenplays to Be Unveiled.
Announced: 2017 Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards.
‘Coco’ Tops 2018 Annie Awards Nominations With 13.
How ‘The Post’ Became the Hottest Screenplay in Hollywood.
‘I, Tonya’ and the Great “Unlikable” Female Characters of 2017.
The Year of the Woman: 5 Ways Female Filmmakers, Actresses, and Advocates Forever Changed Hollywood in 2017.
2017 Was a Year of Reckoning in Hollywood. Will 2018 Be the Year of Change?
The Hollywood Reporter’s 2017 Women in Entertainment Power 100.
ICM Partners Pledges to Reach 50–50 Gender Parity by 2020
Disney Is Back in the Hunt for Parts of 21st Century Fox.
Disney And Fox Could Close a Deal As Soon As Next Week.
Disney-Fox: What Happens To FBC, Will Disney Become OTT Powerhouse & How Will Teams & Cultures Mesh If Deal Makes.
Will Disney Eventually Split in Two Post-Fox Merger?
Fox International Productions to Shut Down.
Warner Bros. Builds Next Movie Slate Under Cloud of Uncertainty.
‘Justice League’ Disappointment Leads To DC Films Shakeup.
No, China’s Not Over for Hollywood: Why It’s Just a “New Beginning”.
Study: New Zealand’s Film Industry Worth $720M to Economy .
Cinemark Takes Aim at Movie Pass with Monthly Subscription Service, Movie Club.
‘Westworld,’ Among Other TV Shows, Shuts Down Production Amid SoCal Wildfires.
Record Opener ‘Disaster Artist’ and ‘The Shape of Water’ Lead Specialty Box Office Surge.
Sundance 2018 Competition Lineup Is 38 Percent Women-Directed.
15 Most Anticipated New Films From The 2018 Sundance Film Festival.
Sundance 2018 Ushers In the Age of Independent TV With Indie Episodics Line-Up.
New Study Shows That Millennials Are Still Interested in Going to the Movies.
The secret history of the Star Wars movies we never got to see… and one that could still happen.
Quentin Tarantino Pitches ‘Star Trek’ Idea to Direct, As J.J. Abrams Plans Writers Room.
Bryan Singer Fired From Freddie Mercury Biopic ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’.
David Lowery Says He Wrote A Script Similar to Netflix’s ‘Godless;’ Steven Soderbergh Fires Back.
‘The Post’: Screenwriters Liz Hannah and Josh Singer on Revisiting History with Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks, and Steven Spielberg.
‘I, Tonya’: How the Man Who Wrote ‘Hope Floats’ Created the Year’s Most Unexpectedly Empowering Feminist Biopic.
Before I wrote the screenplay for ‘Murder on the Orient Express,’ I hated Agatha Christie.
James Franco Has Been Answering Phone Calls as Tommy Wiseau, and They’re Incredibly Bizarre.
Ridley Scott Plans to Take ‘Alien’ Franchise in a New Direction.
Why the future is not female in science fiction cinema.
This Is the Movie Essay We Need Right Now.
A 7-Year-Old’s Hilarious (and Heartbreaking) Review of ‘Empire Strikes Back’.
‘Night of the Living Dead’ Is Getting a VR Remake.
‘The Usual Suspects’ Reportedly Stopped Filming Due to Kevin Spacey’s ‘Sexually Inappropriate Behavior’.
Growing Pains: ‘Juno’ at 10.
Why Boston’s college students are still obsessed with ‘Good Will Hunting,’ 20 years later.
Ferris Bueller Confronts His White Privilege.
IMDb’s Top 10 Stars of 2017.
The Best Movies of 2017.
New York Times: The Best Movies of 2017.
AFI Top 10 Movies Of 2017.
The Best Cast Films of 2017, According to Top Casting Directors.
The 100 Most Anticipated Films Of 2018.
Discovery Buys Majority Control of Oprah Winfrey Cable Network.
Jordan Peele’s reboot of The Twilight Zone has officially been ordered to series.
‘Stranger Things’ Renewed for Season 3 at Netflix.
Netflix Signs Large Overall Deal with ‘Stranger Things’ Producer Shawn Levy.
Apple TV Adds Amazon Prime Video After Years of Haggling.
Apple to Acquire Shazam for About $400 Million.
Amazon’s Streaming Service Launches in 28 New Countries.
DePaul profs create series zinging parent-teacher conferences.
Facebook, Google Leading to Internet Domination of Advertising.
IMDbPro Launches an iPhone App, Available to Download Now.
Pivot to nowhere: The once-vibrant market for digital video series has deteriorated.
Video games look beautiful. Too bad their stories suck.
37 Incredible Writing Retreats to Attend in 2018.
The 10 Best Comics of 2017.
The 10 Best Theatrical Productions of 2017.
The 10 Best Art Achievements of 2017.
The Best Science Fiction & Fantasy of 2017.
The 10 Best Albums of 2017.
The 10 Best TV Shows of 2017.
The 25 Biggest TV Deaths and Cast Departures of 2017.
YouTube Reveals 2017 Top Viral and Music Videos.
New Jimi Hendrix Album With Unreleased Songs to Be Released in March.
Postmortem: Every Frame a Painting.
Watch: Jean-Luc Godard as Architect.
Watch: The Best Action Movie Scenes in 2017.
Screenwriting Master Class tip of the week
It’s not too soon to be thinking about courses I am offering through Screenwriting Master Class in 2018.
January 8, 2018 — Craft: The Coen Brothers and the Craft of Storytelling
presented by Scott Myers
January 22, 2018 — Craft: Story Summaries — From Loglines to Beat Sheets
presented by Scott Myers
February 5, 2018 — Craft: Handling Exposition
presented by Scott Myers
February 19, 2018 — Craft: Scene Description Spotlight
presented by Scott Myers
March 5, 2018 — Craft: Character Development Keys
presented by Scott Myers
March 19, 2018 — Craft: Create a Compelling Protagonist
presented by Scott Myers
April 2, 2018 — Craft: Write a Worthy Nemesis
presented by Scott Myers
April 16, 2018 — Craft: Scene-Writing Workshop
presented by Scott Myers
April 30, 2018 — Craft: Dialogue-Writing Workshop
presented by Scott Myers
May 14, 2018 — Craft: Pixar and the Craft of Storytelling
presented by Scott Myers
May 28, 2018 — Prep: From Concept to Outline
presented by Scott Myers
June 11, 2018 — Pages I: Writing First Draft
presented by Scott Myers
July 9, 2018 — Prep: From Concept to Outline
presented by Scott Myers
I only offer my Craft classes once per year. Moreover the two Prep and one Pages I workshops I have scheduled in summer 2018 are the only times I will be leading group versions of these courses.
Consider the Craft Package: All 10 Craft classes for $40 per course. Exclusive access to the Craft curriculum. Automatic enrollment in each Craft class.
For more information, go here.
As always, I look forward to the opportunity to work with you!