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.
From Wall Street to Silicon Valley, these are the top stories that moved markets and had investors, business leaders, and entrepreneurs talking this week on Cheddar.
Former Take-Two CEO Kelly Sumner is looking for the next big game. But rather than investing hundreds of millions, his blockchain-based video game publisher Planet Digital Partners is targeting mid-level games often ignored by big publishers.
"Electronic Arts, Take-Two, Activision ($ATVI), etc., they are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on a game, expecting to be ... getting billions. And the kind of middle, where there's sort of really good, exciting games, isn't there," Sumner told Cheddar Friday.
Rapper Tip "T.I." Harris has already built a reputation as a musician, producer, and actor, but now he's looking to add tech investor to his credits with the launch of his new company, TechCypha. TechCypha is a "group of entertainers, entrepreneurs, executives that all want to pool our funds together for the purpose of providing technology to add culture," T.I. told Cheddar in an interview Friday.
Goop, Gwyneth Paltrow's 10-year-old lifestyle and wellness brand, now counts stores in southern California, New York and London, where the Goop pop-up was recently given permanent brick-and-mortar status. Soon, an eponymous Netflix show will launch, joining a book imprint, podcast and website. But, as CCO Elise Loehnen told Cheddar, the content strategy is but one arm of the expanding business ー retail is the other.
New Age Beverages Corporation knew there was one thing missing from the cannabis-infused drink industry: Bob Marley. The company is getting ready to distribute three CBD-infused drinks bearing the name of the reggae legend. New Age Beverages CEO Brent Willis told Cheddar that combining Marley's likeness with a cannabis beverage was a natural fit.
These are the headlines you Need 2 Know for Friday, Jan. 18, 2019.
LiveXLive is a platform that brings festivals and other live events to music enthusiasts who can't afford to attend in-person. "We set out to take the playbook from ESPN, to create the next generation MTV," founder Robert Ellin told Cheddar Thursday.
Shares of Netflix tumbled after the market close on Thursday after the streaming giant just missed analyst expectations on revenue, and forecast weaker than expected earnings and revenue for the current quarter.
Inflated housing prices and long commute times in tech hubs nationwide is "sapping the vitality" from cities, Microsoft President Brad Smith told Cheddar Thursday following the company's announcement it would invest $500 million to address affordable housing and homelessness in and around Seattle, Wash.
Marty McFly's self-lacing sneakers from "Back to the Future" are here at last. Kind of. Nike on Tuesday launched the Adapt BB, its first mass-market "smart" sneaker, that uses elastic mesh and a small internal motor with Bluetooth connectivity to allow the wearer to tighten and loosen the fit of the shoe via a smartphone app.
