Lady Gaga and Tyler the Creator lead MTV’s newly inaugurated O Music Awards with three nominations each.
MTV announced Tuesday the categories and nominees for its new Web-based awards show, a celebration of digital music. Categories include best fan cover, most viral dance and best music hashtag meme.
Lady Gaga and rapper Tyler the Creator are among the nominees for most innovative artist and must-follow artist on Twitter. Lady Gaga is also nominated for favorite animated GIF, a kind of avatar. Tyler the Creator, of the much buzzed-about hip-hop group Odd Future, is also nominated for his remix of Lykke Li’s “Follow Rivers.”
Winners will be decided by fan voting in social media, with the results shown in real-time. The awards will be presented in a live hour-long webcast April 28 on MTV websites and mobile apps.
MTV, which is part of the Viacom-owned MTV Networks, hopes the show will do for digital music what its Video Music Awards, launched in 1984, did for the music video. As a reference to the rapidly shifting online world, even the “O” in the OMAs is being left undefined and open to interpretation by viewers.
“Some elements of this will be experimental,” said Dermot McCormack, head of digital media at MTV Music Group. “If there is such a thing as a beta award show, this is it.”
Several of the awards will go to fans or even pets. Best animal performance is a category, with nominees like a parrot dancing to Willow Smith’s song “Whip My Hair.”
Other categories fete the new epicenters of online music, such as best independent music blog, best music discovery service and best performance series. The latter features a group of nominees that pits acclaimed online series like NPR’s “Tiny Desk Concerts” and La Blogotheque’s “Take Away Shows” against MTV’s own “Unplugged.”
“We’re really launching a new franchise here, something that we’re investing in,” says Shannon Connolly, vice president of digital music strategy for MTV Music Group.
Other nominated artists include Kanye West, the Flaming Lips, Nicki Minaj, Arcade Fire and Justin Bieber. Among the non-artist nominees are the comedy site Funny or Die, the music discovery service Pandora and Andy Samberg’s comedy troupe, the Lonely Island.
The network says success for the O Music Awards won’t be assessed by ratings or view counts, but by its cultural influence.
“We won’t be judging by how many streams we do on several websites,” says McCormack. “We will be judging it by how much we can affect the conversation around digital music in the lead-up and beyond.”
Netflix Series “The Leopard” Spots Classic Italian Novel, Remakes It As A Sumptuous Period Drama
"The Leopard," a new Netflix series, takes the classic Italian novel by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa and transforms it into a sumptuous period piece showing the struggles of the aristocracy in 19th-century Sicily, during tumultuous social upheavals as their way of life is crumbling around them.
Tom Shankland, who directs four of the eight episodes, had the courage to attempt his own version of what is one of the most popular films in Italian history. The 1963 movie "The Leopard," directed by Luchino Visconti, starring Burt Lancaster, Alain Delon and Claudia Cardinale, won the Palme d'Or in Cannes.
One Italian critic said that it would be the equivalent of a director in the United States taking "Gone with the Wind" and turning it into a series, but Shankland wasn't the least bit intimidated.
He said that he didn't think of anything other than his own passion for the project, which grew out of his love of the book. His father was a university professor of Italian literature in England, and as a child, he loved the book and traveling to Sicily with his family.
The book tells the story of Don Fabrizio Corbera, the Prince of Salina, a tall, handsome, wealthy aristocrat who owns palaces and land across Sicily.
His comfortable world is shaken with the invasion of Sicily in 1860 by Giuseppe Garibaldi, who was to overthrow the Bourbon king in Naples and bring about the Unification of Italy.
The prince's family leads an opulent life in their magnificent palaces with servants and peasants kowtowing to their every need. They spend their time at opulent banquets and lavish balls with their fellow aristocrats.
Shankland has made the series into a visual feast with tables heaped with food, elaborate gardens and sensuous costumes.... Read More