With critics' groups across the country starting to hand out their awards, the Oscar race is officially on. Cinemablend's Sean O'Connell joins us to handicap the major categories. With no clear frontrunner, it's anyone's guess which movie is going to break out before the big night.
In the Best Picture category, it's looking like things are boiling down to a showdown between "The Post" and "Lady Bird." O'Connell weighs the pros and cons of each, noting that he thinks the Steven Spielberg political drama is the best movie of the year. We also consider whether "Star Wars: The Last Jedi" could be the franchise's first Best Picture nominee since the 1977 original, "A New Hope."
Then, we tackle the contenders duking it out in the acting categories. Meryl Streep is looking to win her fourth Oscar for her leading role in "The Post." If anyone can stop her, O'Connell says it will likely be "Lady Bird's" Saoirse Ronan or "I, Tonya's" Margot Robbie. As for the actors, "Darkest Hour's" Gary Oldman is pulling ahead as the one to beat for his portrayal of Winston Churchill.
Even as e-commerce explodes, and digitally native brands appear to control nearly every segment of retail, legacy mall brands like American Eagle are finding that their most important customers ー teenagers ー are gravitating to an old-fashioned in-store experience. "Unlike millennials, the majority of Gen Z kids would rather shop in a physical store," said Chad Kessler, American Eagle's global brand president. "We're seeing a return to wanting to interact with people."
The power of Black Twitter, the name given to a loose network of black Twitter users behind both viral memes and social campaigns, is the premise of "Power Star Live," a 30-minute show that will live stream every Wednesday on the social platform. Jessie Woo and co-host Xilla Valentine aim to dissect how the Twitter users influence pop culture.
It was an urgent warning from a group of professionals not known for a proclivity to scare the public. "In our risk averse industry, we cannot even calculate the level of risk currently at play, nor predict the point at which the entire system will break. It is unprecedented," the statement read in part. It was issued jointly on Wednesday, from the unions representing America's air-traffic controllers, pilots, and flight attendants.
The internet is moving away from an ad-based revenue system says Jack Conte, co-founder and CEO of Patreon, a platform that allows people to pay for access to exclusive content from digital creators. That trend is evidenced by the growth that Patreon saw in 2018, Conte said in an interview on Cheddar Wednesday, the same day the company announced it now has more than 3 million subscribers, or "patrons," with more than 100,000 creators on the platform. The company began 2018 with 2 million patrons supporting its content.
These are the headlines you Need 2 Know for Thursday, Jan. 24, 2019.
Wellness advisor Joyce Chang left her job as editor-in-chief of SELF Magazine to experience an "'Eat, Pray, Love' moment." After returning from her travels and talking to other high-achievers in her life Chang realized she wasn't alone in her quest for more happiness ー despite the perks of a high-powered job.
Michael Liebman caught the financial bug young. At the age of 13, he started trading stocks. At 15, he got a job as a bank teller, and started saving for retirement at 16. Now in his early 20s, Michael has teamed up with his sister Rebecca Liebman to co-found LearnLux, an enterprise company that aims to help workers achieve the kind of financial wellness he has been chasing throughout his young life.
The NBA is transparent about its approval of legalized, regulated sports betting ー but the league is also clearly communicating that it wants a fair share of the money wagered on its games. "It's our view that if state governments are going to be authorizing private entities, in most cases casinos, to generate significant revenue ー billions of dollars of revenue ー off of the NBA competitions, that the NBA participate in some way," said the NBA's head of fantasy and gaming Scott Kaufman-Ross.
It has become a hallmark of the modern millennial: Babies? Maybe later. Fur babies? Absolutely. Seven out of 10 members of the millennial generation own a pet at an average cost of around $1,000 per pet yearly. Given that pets are increasingly treated as family members, more animal owners want to insure them against accidents and illness. Indeed, the gross written premiums for pets in North America doubled ー from $575 million in 2013 to $1.15 billion in 2017, according to the National Association Pet Health Insurance Association. Whether that's a smart use of funds is another question.
The addition of Netflix to the exclusive Motion Picture Association of America on Tuesday is likely to prompt a shift in policy, both for the movie industry and for the streaming giant.
"Netflix ($NFLX) is going to shape the MPAA's agenda as much as the reverse," Eriq Gardner, a senior editor at The Hollywood Reporter, told Cheddar.
