Oscars for sale

Premiya-Oskar

It's well-known that the British cinema industry is concentrated around a few airing-cupboard offices in London's Soho. In fact, with the digital revolution a tiny room at the top of a west-end stair can be enough to run the show. The Soho connection is important - and the important word is "connection". Same as in the music and broadcasting business. If you want to make your mark you probably are still best doing it in Soho (despite the universal complaints that it's not what it used to be) - and the other two requirements are tenacity and loads of money. If you have all these sorted you can join the struggle for an Oscar, which nevertheless has to look like an unexpected surprise when it comes. Today (Thursday January 15th), the nominations are announced, and over in the USA backstage the struggle continues. This week's guest blog has the story: http://stephenfollows.com/how-much-does-a-hollywood-oscar-campaign-cost/

a propos Charlie Hebdo

Old Hanley's Almanac

I hesitate to blog opinions here rather than facts, but as we watch the current rapid shifts in world power I'm prompted to go into print with what I've been saying in the pub for a few years. As the USA, for so long the all-powerful entity hanging over us like God, with a never-ending supply of money, rewards and retribution, dwindles to third-world status, with Detroit, Motor City itself becoming the world's biggest city farm, at the same time as India and China are rising. China has been topping-up America's economy for long enough. Waging war has no doubt kept the US economic system working but without exports and with increasing reliance on imports this has just been window-dressing. If China decides to stop giving the USA credit, as it could, that will most likely lead to the end of the Israel regime in Palestine; it could be the first cut if America really has to shape up - a lot of money the USA really doesn't have goes that way annually, and the Israelis are getting ever more stroppy with their sponsors, just as the Revolutionaries did with the British. The most important thing about China's status now is not a readiness to wage war like the US/UK axis but the fact that it is backing up its rise as an economic power with its new role as the planet's centre of industry.