Anne Helen Petersen, the voice behind "Scandals Of Classic Hollywood" (previously) and "doctor of celebrity gossip" gives us an academic rundown of the hows and whys of the last hundred years of Hollywood Star Making, celebrity, PR, marketing, fandom, and scandal management.
posted by The Whelk on Jan 24, 2013 - 7 comments

A visitor to the Rotten Tomatoes site can check out the data for individual Hollywood careers—that's how Tabarrok came up with the Shyamalan graph—but there's no easy way for users to measure industrywide trends or to compare different actors and directors side-by-side. To that end, Rotten Tomatoes kindly let Slate analyze the scores in its enormous database and create an interactive tool so our readers might do the same.
posted by Trurl on Jun 7, 2011 - 69 comments

With only three of the ten nominated best pictures in this years Oscars having big name leads and last year's top five earners in the film business being directors, is this the end of the big name, big earning, Hollywood star actor?
posted by fearfulsymmetry on Mar 6, 2010 - 61 comments

Oscarology is a system of astrology I invented -- excuse me, that was revealed to me in a powerful mystical experience -- based on what movie won the Best Picture Oscar for the year you were born. I have been communing with the Spirit of the Oscars and transcribing the visions it has vouchsafed to me.
posted by arcticwoman on Jan 25, 2008 - 64 comments