Category: LFM in the News

LFM’s Jason Apuzzo at The Huffington Post: Stormtroopers and Dinosaurs: Why George Lucas and Steven Spielberg Still Ruled the Box Office in 2015

Rey Headline

[The post below is a featured post on the front page of The Huffington Post.]

By Jason Apuzzo. “There’s been an awakening. Have you felt it?” – Supreme Leader Snoke, in Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

Supreme Leader Snoke wasn’t kidding. In 2015, the Force not only awakened – it drank a whole pot of coffee, scored two touchdowns in the Cotton Bowl, and entered the New Hampshire primary, all before noon. Saturday Night Live even wants the Force to host the show this weekend – but the Force is apparently too busy interviewing for the Eagles’ head coaching job.

Let’s face it, Star Wars and the Force are back in a fist-pumping, Rocky Balboa-kind of way. Interestingly, Star Wars‘ only competition at the box office this past year was Jurassic World – another movie coming from a franchise that otherwise seemed to be enjoying its retirement, sipping guaro somewhere out on Isla Nublar.

The question is: how are these venerable film series still lighting it up at the box office, so many years on? And is there some vital secret about the entertainment legacy of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg – some clue to the amazing, ongoing appeal of their work – that in all the chatter on the Internet we still might’ve missed?

To recap, 2015 was truly a huge, record-smashing year at the movies – #1 all-time, unadjusted for inflation – and the surreal, gravity-defying numbers are still rolling in. Both Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Jurassic World are now among the top 4 grossing movies of all time – with The Force Awakens suddenly becoming the highest earning domestic film ever. Even adjusted for inflation (a more rigorous standard), both films will end up among the top 25 films of all time. That’s apparently even including Taylor Swift videos and Geico commercials.

How unusual is this sort of one-two punch at the box office? Over the past 50 years, only four times (1965, 1973, 1994, 2015) have two films cracked the top 25-adjusted list coming out of the same year. So clearly there’s something going on here.

From "Jurassic World."
From “Jurassic World.”

As most people know, the original Star Wars (released in 1977) and Jurassic Park (released in 1993) were gigantic, sci-fi bookends to an era in popular entertainment largely dominated by Lucas and Spielberg. Working separately or together (as in the Indiana Jones films), the two directors forced a tectonic shift in Hollywood’s business strategy away from making movies to please grouchy East Coast critics and Oscar voters to producing fan-friendly, sci-fi and fantasy fare for teenagers and kids. The industry hasn’t looked back since.

What’s surprising, though, is how popular their signature film series still are. The explanation for this is both simple and complicated.

<<For the rest of the article, please visit The Huffington Post.>>

Posted on January 8th, 2016 at 7:08pm.

LFM’s Jason Apuzzo Receives 2015 Folio Eddie Award

Big Trail header

Earlier this week, LFM’s Jason Apuzzo was honored with a 2015 Folio Eddie Award for Best Single Article (Media/Entertainment) for his article Visions of Grandeur: The 85th Anniversary of The Big Trail.  The article appeared in the April 2015 edition of American Cinematographer.  American Cinematographer also received an award for Best Full Issue for its Sept. 2014 issue (featuring Guardians of the Galaxy on the cover) and earned an additional honorable mention for its Oct. 2014 Gordon Willis tribute issue.

Jason wishes to thank the team at Folio, and also thank and congratulate AC editor-in-chief and publisher Stephen Pizzello, managing editor Jon Witmer, and the entire AC team.

Posted on October 23rd, 2015 at 11:38pm.

LFM’s Jason Apuzzo Receives 2015 Folio Eddie Award Nomination

LFM’s Jason Apuzzo recently received a 2015 Folio Eddie Award nomination for Best Single Article for his article Visions of Grandeur: The 85th Anniversary of The Big Trail, which appeared in the April 2015 edition of American Cinematographer. American Cinematographer received a total of five Folio Eddie Award nominations this year, two in the category of Best Full Issue and three in the category of Best Single Article.

The winners will be announced Oct. 19th at the Folio Eddie & Ozzie Awards Luncheon in New York. Jason wishes to thank the team at Folio, and also thank and congratulate AC editor-in-chief and publisher Stephen Pizzello, managing editor Jon Witmer (also a fellow nominee), and the entire AC team.

Posted on October 16th, 2015 at 2:25pm.

LFM’s Jason Apuzzo in American Cinematographer: The Dawn of Technicolor

[The article below appears in the on-line edition of July’s American Cinematographer magazine.]

By Jason Apuzzo. Over the course of its storied first century, Technicolor came to represent more than a motion-picture technology company. Marked by a vividness of color and an exuberant style, Technicolor became synonymous with an entire era of Hollywood filmmaking, the golden age of studio production from the late 1930s to the early 1950s. This era did not emerge overnight, however, and a new book by James Layton and David Pierce, The Dawn of Technicolor 1915-1935, published by George Eastman House to coincide with Technicolor’s 100th anniversary, documents the company’s earlier, groundbreaking “two-color” era.

From Technicolor's two-color "The Black Pirate" (1926).

It was during this formative period that Technicolor based its technology on the innovative use of red and green filters and dyes — colors chosen to prioritize accurate skin tone and foliage hues. Two-color Technicolor was achieved by way of a beam-splitting prism behind the camera lens that sent light through red and green filters, creating two separate red and green color records on a single strip of black-and-white film. Separate prints of these two color records (with their silver removed) were later cemented together in the final printing process, with red and green dyes then added; this was a complex and error-prone process that later gave way to a two-color “dye-transfer” printing process, in which the color dyes were pressed onto a single piece of film, one color at a time.

As Layton and Pierce’s book reveals, this early two-color system, which was unable to properly reproduce blues, purples or yellows, was eventually superseded by Technicolor’s more famous, three-color process. Yet surviving motion pictures from Technicolor’s two-color period, such as Douglas Fairbanks’ The Black Pirate (1926) and the color sequences inBen-Hur (1925), reveal a subtlety and understated elegance unique to the technology.

TO READ THE REMAINDER OF THIS ARTICLE, PLEASE VISIT AMERICAN CINEMATOGRAPHER.

Posted on July 10th, 2015 at 5:02pm.

LFM’s Jason Apuzzo in American Cinematographer on The Big Trail

LFM’s Jason Apuzzo has an article in April’s edition of American Cinematographer commemorating the 85th anniversary of 1930’s The Big Trail, directed by Raoul Walsh.  The Big Trail was the first major 70mm studio film, and also featured John Wayne’s first starring role.  Walsh’s innovative film also debuted a new sound system for the cinema, and was otherwise one of the most influential films in history.

The article delves into the colorful production history of The Big Trail, examines its ground-breaking technology, and features interviews with Richard Schickel, Leonard Maltin, Ben Burtt, John Hora (ASC), Ethan Wayne (son of John Wayne) and others. Copies of American Cinematographer can be found at Barnes and Noble, at your local newsstand, or on-line at the American Cinematographer website.

Posted on April 9th, 2015 at 2:59pm.

LFM’s Jason Apuzzo at The Huffington Post: The Time a UFO Invaded Los Angeles: UFO Diary Recreates the Great LA Air Raid of 1942

[Editor’s Note: the post below appeared today at The Huffington Post.]

By Jason Apuzzo. Today marks the 73rd anniversary of The Battle of Los Angeles, also known as The Great LA Air Raid, one of the most mysterious incidents of World War II — and one of the most colorful tales in all of UFO lore.

It’s also a tale we couldn’t resist turning into a movie.

Between the late evening of February 24th, 1942 and the early morning hours of February 25th, the City of Angels flew into a panic as what were initially believed to be Japanese enemy aircraft were spotted over the city. This suspected Japanese raid — coming soon after the Pearl Harbor bombing, and just one day after a confirmed Japanese submarine attack off the Santa Barbara coast — touched off a massive barrage of anti-aircraft fire, with some 1400 shells shot into the skies over Los Angeles during the frantic evening.

Strangely, however, the anti-aircraft shells hit nothing. Despite the intense barrage, no aircraft wreckage was ever recovered.

Indeed, once the smoke had cleared and Angelenos calmed down (the public panic over the raid was mercilessly satirized by Steven Spielberg in 1941), no one really knew what had been seen in the sky or on radar. Were they weather balloons? German Zeppelins? Trick kites designed by Orson Welles?

Many people believed the aircraft they’d seen was extraterrestrial – one eyewitness even described an object he’d seen as looking like an enormous flying “lozenge” – and some accused the government of a cover-up. Conflicting accounts of the incident from the Navy and War Departments didn’t help clarify matters.

An image from the Great Los Angeles Air Raid.

As if to confirm public fears of extraterrestrial attack, one famous L.A. Times photograph (see left) emerged from the incident showing an ominous, saucer-like object hovering over the city. This much-debated photograph inspired America’s first major UFO controversy — a full five years before Roswell.

To this day, no one knows for sure what flew over Los Angeles that night and evaded the city’s air defenses. But since it’s more fun to assume that it was aliens than weather balloons, we decided to honor The Battle of Los Angeles by dramatizing it in our film UFO Diary as an encounter with the unknown. And as a special treat for UFO enthusiasts and history buffs, we’re releasing the trailer for UFO Diary today. Continue reading LFM’s Jason Apuzzo at The Huffington Post: The Time a UFO Invaded Los Angeles: UFO Diary Recreates the Great LA Air Raid of 1942