Chapter 814： 80th Oscars

On the evening of February 24, 2008, the 80th Academy Awards were still held at the Kodak Theater, hosted by comedian and talk show host Jon Stewart.

The atmosphere is on fire and the enthusiasm is ignited.

On the red carpet are beautifully dressed actresses, and on both sides of the red carpet are waiting fans and journalists who are just working.

This year is no different from the previous one. The judges followed their "heart" and voted for the attribution of each award.

On the Firefly side, "Juno" won the best original screenplay, "The Edge of Society" won the best editing and best cinematography, and "Her" won the best sound effect.

During the ceremony, the best picture was silenced for two years, and Miramax's "There Will Be Blood" won the bag. Harvey once again accurately grasped the needs of the judges.

Of course, this is nothing, the only pity is that "The Dark Knight" finally won only one technical award for the best visual, and even the male supporting role of the original time and space was lost.

But at least, Heath Ledger's fate has really been changed, hasn't it?

If he hadn't died, the Oscars wouldn't have given a high-quality award to a movie that was the first at the box office that year, let alone a superhero-themed work, adapted from a comic.

You must know that comics have always been a very young culture that the youth market will love and recognize. Are there any Oscar judges under the age of 30? Most of them are old antiques living in the glory of the last century.

Wouldn't it be against their pride to expect them to hold The Dark Knight?

The excitement dissipated, and the Oscar Organizing Committee continued to pretend to be dead amid the public's doubts.

At this time, Lyman and Liam, Francis - Coppola, Sofia - Coppola got together.

It's nothing, it's just to connect feelings, and to continue to expand the copyright value of "The Edge of Society" through the fame of Oscar.

into March.

"The Incredible Hulk" was completed, and it was transferred to the later stage. Director Zha took over the director position of "Watchmen", and the movie budget rose to 150 million. Presumably Firefly's "probing" is still effective.

March 13.

The Emperor Cinemas, Los Angeles, at midnight.

Munir Salas walked into the screening hall expectantly, sat in his seat, and waited for the screening of "The Death Penalty".

He is a horror fan and prefers exciting movies. In recent years, Wen Ziren has been favored by audiences for shooting such subjects.

The "Chainsaw" series and "Dead Silence" are all applauded by audiences who like horror films. Therefore, when another horror film "Death Penalty" he shoots is finalized, it will naturally attract the support of fans.

The cost of this work is also very low, including the pre-promotion, which only cost less than 20 million. The entire crew is the main creator, the director is the most popular, and the publicity stunt is also dominated by mild horror.

There is no way, the horror movie market is so big, and there is almost no demand for popular actors. If you find it, it will increase the risk, and it is not worth it.

Munir-Salas waited quietly for the main feature of the movie, also not interested in the cast list.

Few people who watch horror movies care about the actors.

After the movie started, it was a relatively warm family scene, a pair of children were playing in the room, and the mother was preparing lunch.

Of course, the trope of horror movies is how beautiful the front is and how cruel it is when disaster strikes.

Sure enough, the camera turned to a gold shop, where a group of thugs robbed with guns, but after harvesting the money, they shot the clerk and the counter manager to death. After a burst of shooting, under the pool of blood, the reason why these people committed murders was simply that they were bewitched by cults.

The indiscriminate killing quickly caught the attention of the police, and then the perverted murderers were caught, and newspapers reported that they were all sentenced to more than 20 years in prison.

A month later, another piece of news attracted the attention of the public with a rather bizarre content, that is, the prisoners in the indiscriminate homicide case all died overnight in a tragic state.

Later, the protagonist of the story appeared, the mother who had turned into a ghost, and the child who had no resentment protected by her, and the prisoners who died were naturally her handwriting.

But these are just appetizers. When the murder house turns into a haunted house and moves into a new owner, the horror and inexplicable ghosts hidden in the dark night are matched with the soundtrack that sets off the atmosphere and Wen Ziren is very imaginative. The frightening scene of the force made the audience who bought the tickets to feel the excitement of the heart beating.

It is almost as scary as "Dead Silence" with a movie-watching experience, and the newly added exorcism system is extremely attractive to these audiences who like similar themes.

In the movie hall, there are several screams from time to time, which is a compliment to horror movies...

"Have the box office results come out?"

"Well, not bad."

In the schedule of the second week of March, after the midnight show, "The Death Penalty" quickly reaped the box office. With the advantage of having no rivals in the schedule, it won 11.87 million US dollars in the first weekend, ranking first.

The second is the horror movie "Shutter" produced by Fox, which earned 5.29 million.

Under such circumstances, it is certain that "The Death Penalty" can return to its original value. Horror films have always served specific audiences. As long as the quality is decent, it is easy to make profits, but it is difficult to make big profits. It is a representative of low-risk themes.

However, 2008 was far from the time to focus on a few low-budget films. The media reported a little in addition to the entertainment section. There was some heat on the Internet, and everyone was still very concerned about the financial market.

As recently as March, Bear Stearns was hit by volatility in the subprime mortgage market.

This company is one of the top five investment banks on Wall Street. Although it is the smallest in size, its behavior is very fierce. It often uses extremely high leverage to fight in and out of the market fluctuations to earn assets.

Moreover, Bear Stearns only recognizes money but not people, and acts independently. In 1998, in the reorganization of Long Term Capital Management (LTCM), Bear Stearns withstood the pressure and refused to purchase LTCM's pro rata fund purchase plan. So hostile to Wall Street.

It is difficult to know whether there are "peers" behind this period, because Bear Stearns has focused on expanding the mortgage-related business as a strategic direction since the previous year.

Therefore, although Bear Stearns ranks at the bottom of the top five investment banks, the underwriting volume of mortgage-backed securities has always ranked among the top three. Correspondingly, this business also contributed half of the company's profits in previous years.

Unfortunately, in times of crisis, the high proportion of mortgage loan business has become Bear Stearns' soft underbelly.

At this time, Bear Stearns' debt ratio was as high as 100%, in other words The value of the mortgage securities it held could eat up all of his net worth with a small drop in value.

Then, inside news came, there were many media reports that Bear Stearns had a liquidity problem, and panic spread quickly along with rumors.

Originally, Bear Stearns would never collapse like this, but it spread like this. Even though Bear Stearns still held 18 billion in cash and highly liquid securities, they were still quickly sunk by the storm, because The market has lost faith in it.

Immediately afterwards, Bear Stearns appealed to the Fed for help, and publicly clarified to the market to boost confidence. But the market was unmoved, and the business was run on a large number. What's more, Goldman Sachs immediately rejected a normal transaction from Bear Stearns, and the rumors immediately became well-founded.

On Wednesday, the 12th, the repo market closed to Bear Stearns.

By Thursday night, Bear Stearns had just $2 billion left.

Then, Bear Stearns was taken over by the ****, and part of the liabilities was borne by the Federal Reserve...