Word: budgets
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...local bookstore had a waitlist that totaled more than 100 names. Dave Eggers, McSweeney's founder and Panorama's mastermind, was shocked. "I thought there'd be some excitement, but this went beyond anything I expected," he said. With traditional media outlets facing staff cuts, budget restraints and buyouts - 139 newspapers folded in 2009 alone - the demand for Eggers' publication was unprecedented. But then again, the Panorama isn't really a newspaper - just a literary experiment masquerading...
Years in the making, and with a production budget from $200 million to $300 million plus marketing costs, Avatar arrives in theaters on Dec. 18 to colossal expectations. The movie industry hopes its immersive special effects spark a big-screen renaissance. Fans crave the next Star Wars. It's a heavy burden, even for a man who seems to enjoy doing only things that are hard. Cameron first laid out his vision for the technology he would use in the film in a digital manifesto in the early 1990s; he then labored to perfect it over the course...
...page draft of the script months later, the studio balked. Here was an ambitious project with a lot of risky elements, including unproven technology, blue protagonists with tails and a script that wasn't based on a comic book, novel or video game - making it unique for a big-budget film in its time. In September 2006, Fox formally passed on Avatar. Only after another studio (Disney) seemed poised to take it on - and after Cameron made concessions in both his script and his compensation - did Fox green-light the film. Now he just had to make...
...President Obama, the era of big Government is not over. "It is true, we cannot depend on government alone to create jobs or generate long-term growth," he proclaimed in his first budget to Congress. But "at this particular moment, government must lead the way." A partial Obama to-do list, only some of it done, includes a remake of the health care and energy sectors; a $787 billion stimulus bill aimed, so far, mostly at public employment; takeovers of General Motors and Chrysler; a "pay czar" to cut salaries at bailed-out banks and a proposed new consumer-protection...
That's particularly true in California, a state in almost perpetual crisis - it's "effectively bankrupt," as Whitman likes to put it - with a budget deficit befitting Argentina and crises with water, highways, prisons, schools, immigration and unemployment. The legislature and the governor are openly hostile to each other, and the electorate is disgusted with both of them. (Their approval ratings are 18% and 28%, respectively.) This state of affairs is alternately described as the end of civilization or America's bright future, depending on whom you ask. Driving around the state, you'd never know that California...