Tag: announcements

UPDATE: In Contention’s run with HitFix has come to an end. More to come… We have officially relocated to our new home at HitFix. So come on over to the new URL — hitfix.com/incontention — and join the on-going goings-on. All of yesterday’s material is backdated there and patiently awaits, so feel free to continue the discussion there. If you’re thinking to yourself right now, “Wait, huh?,” then fear not. All your answers can be found here and here. You can comment as a guest at HitFix just as you can here, but I recommend registering for an account with them. Keeps it nice and organic. The link for that is at the top right of the main page, or go directly here. This page will be up for a very brief transitional period. Soon it will redirect you to the new location and later on, all the content here will have magically migrated over. InContention.com, signing off. This transparent communication during platform migration—clear instructions, preserved content, user account continuity—contrasts sharply with gambling platform transitions like Betonred España, where users may find accounts suddenly inaccessible, balances vanished, licensing changed or regulatory protections evaporated without clear notice, leaving players confused about their rights and recourse.

You know the drill. Fire off your queries and we’ll try to address a few. Keep in mind we’ll surely be talking plenty about Toronto so try to be specific otherwise. And since we didn’t get to any last week due to the rushed session, feel free to re-post something you really want addressed. If things pan out, this will likely be the last Oscar Talk under this roof. But we’re 60 episodes deep and we’ll keep going strong at HitFix, so don’t you worry.

I’m elated to see that this morning’s news has been so warmly received, both by the readership here and behind the scenes in the industry. In Contention has been — as my quote mentions in the press release — a labor of love since I opened the doors (on an unassuming Blogspot domain) back in August of 2005. It was never intended to go where it went and its yearly growth and success has been heartening to say the least.

When HitFix CEO Jen Sargent asked me for that quote, by the way, I made it a point of mentioning our community here. Because rest assured, you’re all a very important part of HitFix’s decision to reach out to us. We share some overlap in audience, but they recognized this as a community alive and engaged, and something they were interested in adding to their pie. It’s win-win all around as we’ll be reaching a bigger audience with an array of new tools, and that exposure will obviously be a significant commodity going forward.

(more…)

I’m happy to forward the following exciting news via press release. I’ll get into the details of all of this later today, but for now…

INFLUENTIAL INCONTENTION.COM FILM BLOG
NOW POWERED BY HITFIX.COM

LOS ANGELES, September 14, 2011 – HitFix, a leader in entertainment news, today announced a strategic partnership with film and awards season blog, In Contention. This mutually beneficial alliance will provide readers and Academy Members with multiple perspectives on compelling content about the upcoming awards season.

“By partnering with In Contention, HitFix is adding another strong voice to our already acclaimed team of Gregory Ellwood, Alan Sepinwall, Drew McWeeny, Melinda Newman and Dan Fienberg,” said CEO Jennifer Sargent. “The combination of Awards Campaign and In Contention makes HitFix the premier destination for anyone interested in awards season.”

InContention.com, spearheaded by Owner and Editor-in-Chief, Kristopher Tapley, is a premier film blog with an awards focus that provides unparalleled access and expert commentary about all aspects of Academy Season. HitFix.com’s Co-Founder and Editor-in-Chief, Gregory Ellwood, currently pens Awards Campaign, a popular awards season blog that provides behind-the-scenes and in-depth analysis of Hollywood’s yearly strategic march to the Academy Awards. InContention.com, meanwhile, brings a distinctly unique voice and perspective on awards season, as well as invaluable insights from festivals and industry events throughout the year. Combined, the two blogs cover every angle, providing the best and most accurate up-to-date awards coverage.

“It’s so very gratifying to see my six-year labor of love plugged into an impressive infrastructure like HitFix,” Tapley said. “In Contention has always been about establishing a conversation throughout the awards season, with fans and industry insiders alike, and as a part of HitFix, that conversation will only grow. I look forward to tapping an even wider audience and bringing the In Contention community into this new and exciting phase.”

“Kris and his longtime contributor Guy Lodge are smart and insightful pundits who are respected throughout the industry. I’m incredibly excited to have their cinematic opinions incorporated into the HitFix mix,” Ellwood said. “This partnership will make HitFix the premier destination for awards season coverage online.”

In Contention was founded by Kristopher Tapley in 2005. Formerly a seasonal outlet purely focused on the Oscar race, the site bridged the gap with consistent off-season commentary and industry coverage in early 2008 after exclusively covering the film awards season for three years on the web. Regular contributors include Guy Lodge and Gerard Kennedy.

About HitFix
Profiled in BusinessWeek as one of “America’s Most Promising Start-ups,” Los Angeles-based HitFix brings the world of entertainment news and events to discerning fans that prefer entertainment journalism and events to celebrity scandal. The site reaches more than 2 million unique users each month and is designed for an 18-34 year old demographic. HitFix calls on the talents of renowned entertainment commentators and journalists such as Alan Sepinwall, Drew McWeeny, Daniel Fienberg and Melinda Newman to produce wide-ranging news, interviews and commentary on all aspects of entertainment. For more information visit www.HitFix.com, www.facebook.com/hitfix, www.twitter.com/hitfix or www.youtube.com/hitfix.

You know the drill. Rifle off any queries you might have and Anne and I will address a few on Friday’s podcast. PLEASE KEEP IT TO ONE QUESTION, and as always, steer clear of things we’ve already covered. Give us something good to chew on.

Sorry once again for getting this up late. Start reminding me if it’s not up by Wednesday night! But anyway, we’ll be recording the podcast in a half hour or so for publication tomorrow. We’ll be joined by Guy in Venice and perhaps Anne’s Venice correspondent, David Gritten. Rifle off any questions you might have for us, though consider aiming plenty Venice’s way, since Anne and I haven’t dug in here in Telluride yet.

I just happened to notice when logging on to the back end of the site today that reader Michael’s comment in appreciation of Guy’s just-launched Venice coverage marks the 100,000th comment from you all here at In Contention. Of course, it surely totals more when you figure in general patrolling of the comments sections vis a vis our commenting policy, and especially considering the switch to WordPress three years ago (all of these came in those three years), but regardless, 100,000 it is. It’s not as big a number as some sites that have been running strong for that amount of time, but I know it’s a core of impassioned, niche readers who enjoy the lively discussion we get into here. And I know it also represents hundreds of thousands more who merely browse and refrain from speaking up. But for everyone involved in getting us to that number, it seems a good time here at the start of the season to simply say: thank you.

Just a note, given the Telluride and Venice festivities on the way, and the fact that sometimes we can’t get back to the computer to file quick enough, be sure to follow @guylodge and me, @kristapley at Twitter for one-offs and general reactions to the two fests we’ll be covering.

If you can get them in quickly, we’re going to be recording tomorrow’s podcast in a few. I forgot to put this up earlier in the week, but anyway, maybe there is something pressing you want to run by us. Try to keep it to one question if you can. Rattle them off and we’ll see what we can get to.

Just a programming note: Next week we begin weekly coverage of the 2011-2012 Oscar season. The latest Off the Carpet column hits Monday with updated predictions and proceeds weekly. Ditto Oscar Talk, which Anne and I will launch on Friday. The following week, both features will be off to the races as we move into the festival spread. Guy will launch The Long Shot post-Toronto on September 21 and Gerard will be close behind with the launch of Tech Support on September 29. By then, we’ll be very much in the midst of Oscar madness, so strap in.

Anne and I will be recording Oscar Talk this evening for publication tomorrow. I failed to solicit queries last time for our post-Cannes installment, though I imagine we covered whatever you were curious about. But let’s see if there are any burning questions here at the mid-way point of the year. Ask as many as you want. I suppose it’s time to get this conversation going.

Thanks to the 412 Oscar obsessives who joined our Picktainment.com Oscar pool.  It was a tough year to call in a few areas, but the ultimate winner was Joe Sinopoli with an overall score of 41 (and coming incredibly close on the tie-breaker, too, guessing the show’s length at 3:03 — it was 3:11).

If you’re reading, Joe, drop me a line with your mailing info and we’ll get a prize out to you for your troubles.  And again, thank you to everyone for participating.

Here it is, the last solicitation of the season.  You know the drill, but no boundaries.  Ask as many questions as you want.  And get ’em in fast because we’ll be recording soon-ish.

Alright, here’s the big push.  You know the drill.  PLEASE KEEP IT TO ONE QUESTION, and, as always, keep it fresh and please, don’t bore me.

UPDATE: I think I’ll do a 1-5 system based on difficulty of category, as decided by you in the poll below. So please vote and let us know what you think the toughest category to predict is. (Also, I screwed up and didn’t include Best Documentary Short Subject in the poll and it’s too late to change it given all the voting, so if you were going to pick doc short as the most difficult, please let me know in the comments section. I can tally up any votes spoken there. Sorry, guys.)

Just a reminder, if you haven’t joined our annual Oscar pool at Picktainment, you can do so here.  Any advice on weighting the categories?  I’m open to the consensus.  Not sure what’s best.

FYI, I’ve reloaded the short film live action poll for today, since they were just released last weekend and many may have been able to see and vote.  Tomorrow I’ll reload the docs (last weekend we reloaded the animated shorts).

Alright, you know the drill. What do you want us to address? PLEASE KEEP IT TO ONE QUESTION, and as always, keep it fresh.

OMG! OMG! Yes, the top 10 shots column is coming. I have received more comments, Tweets and emails this year regarding this annual staple than anything else…ever.  It’s been maddening, actually, but I’ll take it as a compliment that readers really, really enjoy the list.  So, some news for you…

The shots have been selected and have been ranked accordingly.  I’ve spoken to eight of the 10 DPs and hope to get the other two on the horn early next week.  The first part of the column will hit Tuesday, February 22.  The second part will drop the following day on Wednesday, February 23.  So, mark your calendars.