Welcome to two members of the Indiewire Blog Network, who will add more depth and breadth to our offerings.
Animation expert Jerry Beck, co-founder of Cartoon Brew, will keep us posted on daily doings in the animation world via Animation Scoop, while Media Web columnist Jon Friedman, who recently left Marketwatch after 14 years, brings his inside look at players and trends in the media industry to Media Matrix.
Beck, an animation historian, filmmaker, film distributor, book author (“The Animated Movie Guide,” “Looney
Tunes: The Ultimate Visual Guide,” “The 50 Greatest Cartoons”) and former studio exec with Nickelodeon Movies & Disney, will dig into his industry know-how to showcase new aspects of the animation industry unknown to the general public. Beck has
programmed animation retrospectives for the Annecy and Ottawa Animation
Festivals, The Museum of Modern Art and The Academy of Motion Picture
Arts and Sciences. He has taught animation history at NYU, SVA, the AFI
and at UCLA. Beck was instrumental in
launching Animation Magazine, has written for Kidscreen, The Hollywood
Reporter and Variety. He teaches Animation History at Woodbury University and is writing a coffee table book on the art of Spongebob
Squarepants for Nickelodeon. He left the authoritative and popular animation site Cartoon Brew that he helped to build in February in order to pursue his own vision.
Beck will be joined at Animation Scoop by a team of animation experts and writers including TOH’s Immersed in Movies columnist Bill Desowitz, animation historian and critic Charles Solomon, computer animation and video games expert Floyd Bishop, DVD/Blu-ray critic Greg Ehrbar, and book and TV animation reviewer Martin Goodman.
New York-based media pundit Friedman hopes to provoke, inform and
entertain via such regular features as “What Were They Thinking?” and
“There Ought to Be a Law,” which will create a forum for readers to
debate current events in media. A former reporter, columnist and editor
for Bloomberg, USA Today,
BusinessWeek, Investors Daily and other publications, he is also the
author of “Forget About Today: Bob Dylan’s Genius for (ReInvention,
Shunning the Naysayers, and Creating a Personal Revolution” (2012,
Penguin) and the co-author of “House of Cards: Inside the Troubled
Empire of American Express” (1992, Putnam).
“We are very excited to have Jon and Jerry join the Indiewire family with the addition of their new websites,” said Rick Allen, CEO of Indiewire owner SnagFilms. “With Indiewire expanding its coverage of the entertainment world, Jon and Jerry represent the very best incisive analysis of their respective beats.”
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