Slumdog Benefactors
Watching Jerry Lewis receive his humanitarian award at the Oscars tonight, I was struck by the swell of respect that I felt for this classic comedian, who had raised $2B for muscular dystrophy. Showing his first function in 1951 for the Muscular Dystrophy Association (yes, 58 years ago), it was hard to pull back and enjoy the extravagance of the Oscars afterwards. On the other hand, seeing “Slumdog Millionaire” take home award after award with such honest dignity and a sense of humanitarian-meets-cinematic integrity was rewarding. Read more >>
Reelist.com: Oscar Night
A swell of interest in this year’s Oscars with a lot of predictable winners. A spirited Independent Spirit Awards yesterday with a few surprise winners (Penelope Cruz, Tom McCarthy for The Visitor, and The Wrestler as best feature, among others). And to top it off, a river of new blogs with more penetration into Hollywood studio behavior.
Here’s a few we’ll be watching tonight via RSS and comparing to tomorrow’s trade coverage:
- The Wrap: Sharon Waxman’s new Hollywood, trade-scrimmager.
- The Daily Beast: Tina Brown’s tabloid-take on politics and media. Read more >>
What’s the “Thread Count” of Your Friend Count?
I had coffee with a longtime investor colleague who threw a nice metaphor in my direction: “thread count” as it related to the depth of your friendships. As we all initiate, accept or add new digital relationships into our lives (yes, I did get ‘social’ with LinkedIn back in its early years with 1,500 linkedins; more recently with ~650 Facebook friends), how do we measure the relative quality of the quantity of friends we connect to? Do we connect to add relative quality value to our own persona, or is it done merely to create a personal, i.e., quantitative, fan club of sorts? Read more >>