Legal downloads! (And they're already screwing 'em up.)

For the first time, movie lovers can legally download feature films. As I've touted this before as an inevitable evolutionary development in film distribution, I'm happy to see it finally exists. But why am I not more enthusiastic? Because again, the industry has gone apeshit with DRM and is slapping ridiculous restrictions on the films you purchase through Movielink and CinemaNow. From the article I've linked:

Usage rules remain restrictive for the movie downloads, which are encrypted and in Windows Media format. Although the files can be burned to a DVD, that disc is just for backup and will not be recognized by a DVD player. Movielink users can put the movie on up to three PCs, which is verifiable since the file connects to the service for a license each time it is loaded onto a computer. CinemaNow users are limited to the PC onto which the movie was downloaded. In both cases, an appropriately networked home could view these digital movies from any connected television or computer screen.

Which immediately prompts the question: If they're charging me the same amount of money for the download as I'd pay for the DVD, why wouldn't I just buy the DVD, especially when I can't burn the downloaded movie I allegedly "own" to DVD in any way that my DVD player will recognize?

Clearly what these folks are envisioning is the digital living room of the future, when everyone will presumably have their PC's hooked up to their plasma screens in the den and everyone's collection of everything — movies; music; hell, even your children and pets — will be in the form of digital files on hard drives. And then what happens when your hard drive crashes? The only disc copy you can have is one that simply stores the movie as data, to be loaded onto a new hard drive instead of just being able to be popped into a DVD player and watched? And then what if your replacement hard drive won't play back the movie downloads you "own," because the DRM doesn't recognize your new hard drive?

Sorry, but for now there are so many things about how this is being launched that I see as half-assed (among other things, neither movie service is Mac or Linux compatible) that I don't think the current programs are ready for prime time. I can understand slapping the sort of DRM on the movies that won't allow anyone to post them to newsgroups or P2P or BitTorrent or that sort of thing. But for chrissakes, if I'm being asked to shell out $20 for a movie download, then what I want, quite simply, is a straight-up "VIDEO_TS" folder from which I can burn a DVD to watch to my heart's content. After all, when you buy music from iTunes, you can listen to the tracks not only on your iPod, but burn up to seven copies of the album on CD (and yes, those CD's aren't just "backup"; you can play them on any goddamn player you have). I mean, it's simple. If I'm being asked to buy these downloads, I should be allowed to watch them in whatever way I choose. Why is that hard to figure out?

UMD dies, surprises no one

If Sony's PSP handheld console weren't enough of a disappointment to the gaming world, now comes word that the UMD format for movies is on the cusp of extinction. Which surprises me not at all. Why would anyone want to pay 30 bucks for a movie on a rinkidink little disc that can only be played on one piece of hardware, when for $15 or $20 you can buy the same movie on DVD, which can be played on home decks, laptops, and any number of portable players, and which feature all those juicy extras and bells and whistles? If anything surprises me, it's that so many studios committed to the format in the first place, before the PSP had had a chance to show its performance muscle in the marketplace. Presumably there was an expectation that the PS2's lightning would strike twice, and PSP would become the next iPod among portable doohickey fans. Oops. Oh well. I wouldn't get much out of watching a movie on a 4-inch screen. Can't imagine why anyone else would. But watch. I bet Steve Jobs will be the guy who makes it work — again.

Catching up on a lazy March: random movie musings

No, I haven't blogged in two weeks, as I've needed a breather and have been busy with other stuff. When work is slow, I donate myself to science, which I've been doing over the last couple of weeks, and that's always like going to camp, but with needles. Still, easy money, and a chance to concentrate on creative things during the long hours of downtime. Happy to be back in the swim now, though, and throughout April my bloody work on Bloody Work will resume in earnest. I plan to have at least one interview in the can before the month is out.

Here is some of what's been on my mind, cinematically speaking, over these last 15 days.

• Bite this! Superman Returns? Bleh. X-Men: The Last Stand? Yeah, whatever. Mission: Impossible III? Don't make me laugh. The DaVinci Code? Okay, that one's a given. But is there anyone out there who still hasn't realized that the sleeper monster hit of the summer is going to be none other than...
It just doesn't get any better than this! This may be the most honest movie Hollywood has made in decades. As everyone has already pointed out, you know exactly what you're getting with that title. And when you add to the movie's self-aware cheese value the presense of Sam Jackson in full badass mode, and a studio thoroughly conscious of the unprecedented level of advance internet fan buzz and responding to it by scheduling reshoots specifically to get a hard-R rating — well, there's just no way this can miss! I mean, it's snakes...on a plane! $50 million opening weekend, minimum.

• More horror-related good news. Though I didn't win the Silent Hill poster contest (and yet it's eeenteresting how similar the poster they seem to be using looks to mine — scum! where's my money!?), I'm still stoked about the movie, which opens the week before my birthday. The trailer is pure bliss if you're a fan of the game, really capturing the look and mood and creep factor! In even better horror news, that dreaded remake of Suspiria looks like it's no longer happening. Sometimes, the forces of good win one. And, after a long dry spell, it looks as if John Carpenter is back in the saddle with two features on his plate! Huzzah!

• The post-Oscar Brokeback curse continues. It seems that the worst enemies of Brokeback Mountain are turning out to be not so much homophobic Christian fundies, but the movie's most ardent supporters themselves. First, author Annie Proulx publishes that petulant, embarrassing rant that got the entire blogosphere talking (and not in a flattering way), and now it turns out that co-star Randy Quaid is suing the producers for allegedly misrepresenting the earnings estimates of the film so they could get him for far below his usual fee. While I find it baffling that a man with Randy Quaid's experience in the business would be caught off-guard that people in Hollywood — gasp! — lie about money, what's more interesting is how all the love that this movie had gotten before Oscar now seems to be waning bigtime, as its biggest boosters collapse into sour-grapes whining and infighting. Shame, because that movie's merits should be its legacy, not the behavior of stupid people who happen to be associated with it.

• Asian cinema continues to dazzle me...even when it's not across-the-board brilliant. And it continues to get easier and easier to find the best movies over here. Perhaps the most stunning and unique movie I've seen recently: Shinya Tsukamoto's Vital, in which a young medical student who's suffering amnesia after an auto accident that killed his girlfriend discovers that the body on his dissection table in gross anatomy class is none other than hers! By literally digging into her remains, he begins the process of digging into his past, who he was as well as who she was, and what they meant to each other. The themes concern exactly who we are in relation to the bodies, the machines we inhabit. The student, played with focused intensity by Asano Tadanobu, barely has any personality left at all due to his amnesia; he's like a human blank slate, an uninhabited body going through the motions of a day. So are we nothing more than our accumulated memories? Without a past, is there any person inside us at all? Beautifully directed, with some of the best cinematography I've ever seen in a Japanese film, and, given the subject matter, not nearly the exercise in grisly death imagery you might expect. You should absolutely check this out. I'd go so far as to say it would have easily deserved a Best Foreign Film nomination, if I thought the Oscars were all that important any more.

I was less satisfied by Marebito, from Takashi Shimizu, who gave us the chilling Ju-on and its markedly unchilling U.S. remake The Grudge. I give the movie all props for a swell premise and for being shot on the fly in eight days. A video-obsessed loner (played, coincidentally, by Vital's director Tsukamoto) who tapes everything around him all day long, and only ever sees fit to view the world through his viewfinder and on his monitors, records a grisly suicide in a Tokyo subway station in which the victim drives a knife into his eyeball. It appears the victim saw something that paralyzed him with fear, and the video geek becomes obsessed with discovering what it was. He ends up venturing into the dark tunnels (dating from WWII) beneath the city, where he discovers a feral young girl chained to the wall. (The US art, as you can see, drapes a blanket chastely over the girl and doesn't actually attach the chain to her leg, because the MPAA has a strict rule that no movie poster art is allowed to depict violence against women.) He brings her home and eventually finds she'll only consume blood. Great idea, but as it goes on, the movie's explanations become more contrived and confused, and the final act crumbles into some J-horror clichés — many of the type Shimizu established in Ju-on, ironically — and nonsensical explanations that suggest unbelievable relationships between the characters. Still, it's worth at least a look on DVD, if only to see the most twisted excuse for a love story made in recent memory.

I've read that Shimizu's latest, Rinne (Reincarnation), flopped abysmally upon its Japanese theatrical debut, indicating that the J-horror thing is well and truly over and done with. Still, I'm eager to see it, as well as The Loft, the latest from the understated genius Kiyoshi Kurosawa, who gave us such cerebral thrillers as Pulse and Cure.

Finally, those amazing folks at Criterion keep the Japanophilia running at full steam with more movies by Yasujiro Ozu and Akira Kurosawa on their slate. Having already given us one of the best DVD releases ever with Kenji Mizoguchi's Ugetsu, as well as Ozu's Tokyo Story, Floating Weeds, Good Morning and Early Summer, they're now bringing out the much-demanded Late Spring. Plus this year will see long overdue DVD remasters of Kurosawa's Seven Samurai, Yojimbo and Sanjuro. Truly these are good times to be a Japanese movie übergeek!

See everyone again soon — much sooner than two weeks.

Come on, people, it's only the Oscars

Okay, so the ceremony is over for another year, and Crash pulls an upset and wins. Fine. Whatever.

But the Brokeback supporters aren't yet willing to let go. Among the latest challenges to the loss is a weird claim, similar to the "hanging chads" controversy of the 2000 presidential elections, suggesting that Oscar voters are boobs who misread the voting ballot and voted for Crash when they really really meant to vote for Brokeback. The following image has been making the rounds online.

Personally, I find the ballot (assuming it is an accurate reproduction of what the real ballot looked like, and there's no evidence of that) easy to comprehend. You follow the black arrow. But maybe when I'm old and stupid, I might make such a mistake. I'll let you know when I'm old and stupid.

Next, a group of Brokeback supporters have successfully solicited thousands of dollars online to place a full-color ad in next weeks' Variety that looks like this.

Well, that'll show 'em, won't it?

Look, I'm delighted to see any movie garner a following of passionate fans who will get behind it to this degree. That's wonderful. But this has nothing to do with the relative merits of either movie. It has to do with placing too much importance on the wrong thing — to wit, the Best Picture Oscar. Here's the deal. Brokeback Mountain exists, and it will always exist, for this generation and future ones to see. It has made its mark on film history, and the loss of a glitzy but increasingly meaningless industry award has no bearing on that legacy. For those who think its loss is a grave injustice, newsflash: it's not the first one in history. Forrest Gump over Pulp Fiction? Shakespeare in Love over Saving Private Ryan? Chicago over The Pianist? There are more examples over the last 78 years of Oscar getting it wrong than getting it right.

I've often said, and many of my friends seem to agree, that regardless of whatever awards a film may have on its mantlepiece, if that movie isn't on my DVD shelf then said awards aren't that special to me. I'm not more likely to hold a movie in higher regard than another one simply because it has "Academy Award Winner Best Picture!" emblazoned on the DVD package in 48 point type. If I had a choice, right now, between watching Oscar winner American Beauty or the couldn't-get-near-the-Oscars-with-a-ten-foot-pole Big Trouble in Little China, could you guess which I'd pick?

Brokeback's legacy doesn't lie in a gold-plated statuette. It lies in the hearts of the audience that loves it. Life goes on.

Since I'll be doing something else Sunday night...

I really don't have a horse in the Oscar race this year. I felt heaps of personal gratification when Spirited Away won the very first Best Animated Feature award. And naturally, the Best Picture for The Return of the King, which was really an award for the achievement of the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy, made my inner geek squee. But this year, while I think by and large there are some good movies up, it isn't a ceremony to get all excited about, with the exception of John Stewart's hosting. And this will be the easiest ceremony to handicap in ages. Herewith, my predictions.

Best Picture: Brokeback Mountain

Best Actor: Philip Seymour Hoffman for Capote

Best Actress: Reese Witherspoon for Walk the Line

Best Supporting Actor: George Clooney for Syriana

Best Supporting Actress: Tossup — either Amy Adams for Junebug or Rachel Weisz for The Constant Gardener. I'm leaning toward Weisz.

Best Director: Ang Lee for Brokeback Mountain

Best Animated Feature: Wallace & Gromit in the Curse of the Were-Rabbit

There. Three years ago, when my then-roommate was working on The Alamo (interesting to recall how that notorious megaflop was at the time really expected to represent at the Oscars), the crew had an Oscar pool and I helped her on her entries. We won it and split $180 between us! Wish that were happening now; I feel more confident now than I did then. And I'm not even all that excited about it.

Damn damn damn!

Darren McGavin has died. Yes, I know Don Knotts has died too. And that's a huge loss to the comedy world. But I was always less into Andy Griffith than Kolchak, the Night Stalker, whose show was a direct inspiration for The X-Files. What a bummer. But both men were in their 80's, a long healthy life we should all hope to have. Ah well. So long.

Update, Monday evening 2/27: Good grief! The Reaper really cut a swath over the weekend. In addition to McGavin and Knotts, we lost Dennis (McCloud) Weaver as well as the brilliant science fiction writer Octavia E. Butler. What up? Maybe this would be a good week to stay indoors. I'm gonna go hug my dog or something.

Biggest lamers on net found!

A bunch of goofballs with too much time on their hands have launched the website craignotbond.com to protest in the most petulant fanboy fashion the casting of Daniel Craig as James Bond. While I thought Brosnan was a fantastic Bond (his movies not exactly canonical, though), it's pretty pathetic to slag an actor, particularly when no one has even seen a frame of film he's shot yet. Much of the website is a pretty uncool exercise in character assassination against Craig himself, most of which appears to be motivated by the fact he doesn't have Brosnan's male-model looks. They also mock a lot of the roles he's already done, as if versatility in an actor is a liability. As anyone's who's seen Munich or Layer Cake can tell you, Craig's acting skills should not be in doubt. And however "odd-looking" these webdweebs think Craig is, I'd bet he's probably handsomer than they are. They do not, of course, post pictures of themselves nor identify themselves by name. There's nothing like having the courage of your convictions, eh?

This kind of stupid bullshit is fanboyism at its worst. So who cares if these dinks boycott Casino Royale? Millions of people will see it anyway, and those with brains will know not to judge Craig in the role until they've actually, like, seen him in the role. And as for Craig not being good-looking enough for the role...since when was that the criterion? Connery and Brosnan were handsome and tough, Moore had the handsomeness but no depth (never a hair out of place on that man).

But it might interest these folks to realize that Ian Fleming himself (you know, the guy who wrote the Bond novels, which I bet no one associated with this dickless "boycott" has read) didn't exactly see Bond as a Calvin Klein studmuffin. Fleming described Bond as looking something like musician Hoagy Carmichael, whose photo is to the left there. One can imagine heads exploding over at the craignotbond.com guy's mother's basement offices if a big-nosed guy like this was cast as double-oh-sebbin.

While I bemoan the departure of Brosnan — hell, I bemoan the shittiness of the last three Bond movies overall, plus the producers' idiotic choice to turn down Quentin Tarantino's offer, which, had that movie been made, would have racked up more box office than all the previous ones combined — I'm open to a newer, rougher, tougher, nastier Bond who will fuck people up and not mess around. Hell, Craig has already broken two teeth in a fight scene for the movie. If that isn't throwing yourself into your role, I don't know what is. I kind of wish he'd leave them unfixed, just to piss these guys off more.

Annihilator title revision, thank ghod

As I just couldn't get over how much Annihilator sounded like some Dolph Lundgren movie from the 80's, I've finally figured out the title I like for the documentary — and it was staring me right in the face, from the very first newspaper headline about the crimes. The actual title for the movie will now be Bloody Work: The Unsolved Mystery of the Servant Girl Annihilators. That still allows for the actual killers' media names to be part of the title without any risk of sounding cheesily Dolphish.

Of course, it's just like me to have changed my mind on the title after dropping 27 bucks to register domains under the old one. There's a Homer Simpson moment for you. Well, hey, I can still use those domains. You can rest assured my usual filmmaking skillz are just a teensy bit less disorganized than this.

I'll continue posting kewl historical info about the crimes here over the next few weeks, and this blog will still be the home of my production diaries when that begins as well. I intend to have an official movie site up soon, too.

Feeling very auteurish and stuff right now!

If he builds it, will they come?

Just read this article from News 8 Austin about developer David Cuddy and his elaborate plans to build several sound stages on about 250 acres of land near Neiderwald. It's great, in that the Austin area does need full-fledged state of the art production facilities of the type Cuddy plans. The Austin Studios in the old hangars of what used to be Robert Mueller airport are, like so much else in the Austin filmmaking "industry," pretty half-assed. But the immediate concern is whether facilities like this will actually lure a few productions to this area for a change. There's a lot the city and the state need to do to get studio and quality indie productions happening here again. Right now, there is simply no work. Is part of the reason we don't get more projects shooting out here the lack of first-rate sound stages and post houses? Could the construction of some bring in the work? I'm rooting for Huddy. It's cool to hate developers in Austin, but not when they're developing something kickass. You go, bud.

Annihilator: The first murder

So this ought to start you off with a little taste...

From the Austin Daily Statesman, January 1, 1885, comes the first of many news reports abut the serial killings that were to be attributed the "Servant Girl Annihilator" (or "Annihilators"). The body of Mollie Smith, a "light-colored mulatto" about 25 years old, was found "nearly nude" by an outhouse roughly fifty paces outside the bedroom where she had been sleeping with her commonlaw husband, Walter Spencer. The assailants — and there were probably two here — first bashed poor Spencer's face in with some kind of heavy object, either a brick or metal pipe. Mollie was then dragged outside; she apparently put up a heroic struggle, but she wasn't heard to scream (there were other people asleep in the same house). This indicates the assailant probably was covering her mouth while dragging her outside. Spencer came to some time later, noticed Mollie missing, went for medical help himself (his facial bones had been cracked up pretty good by the blows), but didn't find Mollie's body until the morning.

A number of interesting questions about this event. For one thing, a bloody axe was found on the floor by Mollie and Spencer's bed. Since Mollie was still alive when she was being dragged out of the house, she wasn't killed until she had been taken out by the outhouse. Where she was killed...with an axe. (One out-of-town newspaper reports she was so hacked up her body was falling to pieces as it was being lifted into a casket, but that can't be confirmed and is probably an example of the kinds of lurid reporting you see in Victorian era newspapers.)

This suggests the killer either went back inside to leave the axe on purpose, or, perhaps, went back inside to do something else (subdue another victim? look for valuables?) and left it behind either uncaringly or accidentally. But moreover, it strongly suggests two assailants. Spencer was not hit with the axe but some other object. The axe had definitely been brought to the scene by the assailants; everyone living at the house testified no one there owned an axe. So whatever the other object was that struck Spencer, it must have been brought and taken away, since there were no reports of another bloody weapon on the scene. So, if there were only one assailant that night, we're left with the spectacle of a man dragging the thrashing, panicked Mollie outside while covering her mouth to stifle her screams, and simultaneously schlepping a big axe and whatever he hit Spencer with. Seems implausible. Two men that evening are more likely.

Spencer recovered, only to be arrested as a suspect then released. (No one really thought he did this or any of the subsequent murders.) There were other arrests, other suspects, and more ghastly killings to come.

Announcing Annihilator!

The journey of a thousand miles begins with blah blah blah. I'm really excited. Today I officially announce my next film project, the feature documentary Annihilator: The Unsolved Mystery of the Austin Axe Murders.

Two things about this project have me super-excited. First of these is that I have always, up till now, pursued narrative filmmaking projects, and I never really thought of myself as a "documentary filmmaker." But then I realize that the distinction is meaningless. If you're a filmmaker, you're a filmmaker. Period. There's nothing carved in stone that says a director can only pursue one area of the filmmaking art. Orson Welles and Martin Scorsese made documentaries, and Scorsese has also made a concert film and (in one admitted lapse of judgment, though I imagine the check was wonderful) a Michael Jackson music video.

The other thing is that it's amazing to think that virtually no one in Austin today knows that this city had its very own Jack the Ripper, who went about his nasty business a full three years before Jack did. (Some armchair sleuths think that the murderer — murderers? — who came to be called the "Servant Girl Annihilator" fled justice overseas and picked up his old trade in Whitechapel, but I find that doubtful.) The more I've read about these killings, the more my filmmaker's bells have been going off. What a fan-fucking-tabulous subject for a documentary. There was simply no question — Holmes is on the case! I'm officially underway on my research, and as writing and shooting commences, I'll post updates here. This will be one kickass movie. If I do say so myself. I can't wait to get it made. I can't wait for you to see it.

Addendum: I admit there is something about the current working title that sounds a bit like a PS2 game or a Dolph Lundgren movie. "Servant Girl Annihilator" was, in fact, the name given the killer(s) by writer O. Henry, living in Austin at the time. As there is strong evidence that at least two killers were involved in some of the killings, I considered Annihilators plural, but thought that didn't sound quite right. The Servant Girl Annihilator just sounds like some bad imitation-Argento cheapass Italian horror movie, and The Austin Axe Murderer is too bland, like an episode of some History Channel show. Any readers with better suggestions will find me receptive.

Cake and Ice Cream of the Dead

Yoiks! To think Saturday has almost passed and I didn't notice this on IMDb until almost midnight. Today was George A. Romero's birthday! Happy 66 to the Zombiemeister! Here's a filmmaker who's a legend in his field, and spent years being chewed up and spat out by that ultimate zombie of all zombies, the Hollywood system. I'm happy to see him back in the saddle making movies again, even if it's late in life.

Dumbest thing this week

Can't this guy figure out the concept of "turn it down"?

This week on that reality-TV hit, Fundies vs. Hollywood...

Funny bit in IMDb's news today. That gay cowboy movie is actually doing decent business in Montana, a state so red it's almost infrared. Here's a lengthy quote to spare you clicking over.

Contradicting predictions by commentators that Brokeback Mountain would not attract ticket buyers in red-state strongholds like Montana, the film has actually performed strongly in many of those areas, distributor Focus Features has maintained. (Fox News commentator John Gibson remarked: "I think most people do not want to go into a darkened room with a tub of popcorn and munch away watching two guys get it on." His colleague Bill O'Reilly has opined that the film has received critical praise because the media "want to mainstream homosexual conduct." And he predicted, "They're not going to go see the gay cowboys in Montana.") However, the online magazine Salon today (Thursday) quoted the manager of the Wilma Theater in Missoula as saying that the film grossed $33,006 in its first four weekends there — "one of our best starts for a movie we've ever had." In the conservative town of Kalispell, the film opened last Friday with $3,656. In the town of Whitefish, it took in $2,312 and beat out the three top national draws, including the No. 1 film, Big Momma's House 2.

Hilarious. The piece then goes on to debunk the notion that Hollywood is a town populated entirely by librul fudgepackers, by mentioning that some observers think there may be enough homophobes in the Academy who'll refuse to watch their Brokeback Oscar screeners that the film may be denied its universally-expected Best Picture statuette. It could happen. Then again, it's not like the Weinsteins have a high-profile nominee they can steal it for this year, the way they stole Spielberg's Best Picture for Saving Private Ryan.

Back with other religious-right-goes-nuclear news after the break. (Commercials zapped by BlogiVo.) Welcome back. As you may have heard, fundamentalist hand-wringer Donald Wildmon and his organization of angry-email-senders The American Family Association have been crowing over NBC's cancellation of the series The Book of Daniel, which they didn't like for its (in their words) "depiction of a pill-popping Episcopal priest, his unbelievably dysfunctional family, and a recurring appearance of a ‘Jesus’ character described as ‘sardonic’".

Now, here's the thing. As much of a godless liberal as I am, I happen to be all in favor of the right of Wildmon and Co. to try to get a show taken off the air if they thought it portrayed Christians in an insulting way. Just as I think African-American groups, or gays, or Jews, or Wiccans, or Hispanics, or atheists, or any group who feels they're being maligned, stereotyped, or attacked in a TV show should do the same thing. And just as I think the producers of The Book of Daniel ought to have the right to continue to create their show and seek either a more supportive network, or go via Internet distribution, or DVD, or otherwise, if they feel that criticisms coming from a special-interest group are unjustified and their show's cancellation unfair. That's the fugged-up thing about freedom of speech: it applies to people who don't see eye to eye with you, too!

But...you know...I seem to remember something. Remember back before Mel Gibson released his Catholic snuff film The Passion of the Christ, when the Anti-Defamation League was expressing concerns that the film might be anti-Semitic? Remember that? And wasn't it, if not Wildmon himself, certainly right-wingers cut from the same cloth, who were attacking the ADL for expressing their concerns about the movie's depiction of Jews? Hmm? I seem to think it was.

So what's good for the (Christian) gander isn't necessarily good for the (Jewish) goose, it would appear. Ah well. Double standards. Where would religious fundamentalists be without 'em?

Moira Shearer

This will only probably mean anything to classic movie fans, but dancer Moira Shearer has died. Shearer was the star of The Red Shoes, a fantasy/romance film by seminal British filmmakers the Archers, better known as Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. Powell and Pressburger made 17 movies together, most of which rightfully belong on the list of Greatest British Films Ever, and their works ran the gamut from exciting action adventure (The 49th Parallel, The Battle of the River Plate), to romantic melodrama (Black Narcissus, I Know Where I'm Going!), to far-out artsy-fartsy experimentation (The Tales of Hoffman). The Red Shoes is considered their masterwork, a movie Martin Scorsese calls one of his all-time favorites, and one which Kate Bush named a whole album after. And it's in a genre that few "serious" filmmakers worked in in those days: fantasy.

Yes, on the surface, it's a straightforward romantic-triangle movie about a ballerina, the Svengali empresario who makes her a star, and the composer whose music makes her dance. But its overtly melodramatic elements go down convincingly because of the overt inclusion of fantasy. The 17-minute ballet sequence is one of the most famous setpieces in history, a dazzling display of color and pre-CGI visual effects that is still wondrous to look at in the post-Peter Jackson age. Indeed, the whole movie is thought of as having some of the finest use of Technicolor in all cinema. (The Archers also delved into fantasy filmmaking in Hoffman and Stairway to Heaven.)

I remember, ten (choke! gasp!) years ago, going to see a whole lineup of Powell/Pressburger films with my friend Hollye at the now-closed Texas Union Theater, as part of a retrospective program UT-Austin's film program was running. To see these old movies on a theater screen — The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, now one of my all-time favorites, was also one of them — is the kind of privilege that just doesn't come along any more. It's just one more awesome thing that no longer exists in this town, that those of us who have lived here for years have come to lament.

Moira Shearer was 80. But the few films (with the possible exception of the badly dated Peeping Tom) she made with the Archers are timeless. I think I'll pop the Criterion DVD of The Red Shoes in my player tonight. And if you consider yourself a classic movie fan and haven't seen it, you really ought to add it to your Netflix queue.

Yet more articles about Bubble with titles punning on the word "bubble"

The rest of the entertainment mediasphere has taken note of Bubble's yawnerrific box-office performance. In an IMDb piece today, we read:

Mark Cuban, who owns Magnolia and the Landmark Theatres chain, said in a statement, "We are very happy with the results so far of this first day-and-date release, and while theatrical performance was not as high as we would have liked, it compared favorably to other similar films released this weekend."

Which it didn't, actually, as a quick scan of the weekend's numbers will clarify. In any case, I'm still intrigued by the strategy; I happen to think the world of Soderbergh, Cuban, Landmark, and what 2929 Entertainment and Magnolia Pictures are all doing to try to increase the profile of indie films. I'm thinking, though, that instead of their multiplatform release plan, which clearly hasn't worked as was hoped, they might have done better to try my vending machine idea. Hell, I bet Cuban could afford it!

Bursting a Bubble?

It looks like the folks who thought it was a very bad idea for Steven Soderbergh and 2929 Entertainment to release their new low-budget indie film Bubble simultaneously on cable, DVD (that will actually be out Tuesday), and theatrically may be smugly enjoying a bit of I-told-you-so today. Released admittedly very conservatively on only 32 screens, Bubble's weekend take was around 70 grand, for a per-screen average of $2,208. That would put it on the lower end of per-screen averages for the weekend's top ten; The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, now in its 8th weekend, had a per-screen of around $2,076.

By contrast, a couple of other platform release indie movies this weekend totally popped Bubble (cute, huh? — I could write for Hollywood Reporter with quips like that!). Michael Winterbottom's Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story owned Soderbergh on a mere three screens with a per-screen of $20,295, while Lars von Trier's Manderlay racked up a $7,558 average on only two screens. Considering that Soderbergh is an Oscar winner, and that Bubble has gotten wider mass-media coverage mainly due to its risky release strategy, this performance could be considered a big disappointment. The devoted art-house crowd had two other movies it preferred to see, and the mass audience who flocked to Soderbergh films like Ocean's [Insert Number] and Erin Brockovich stayed home. Maybe they were just a little creeped out by that baby-head trailer.

It also seems a vindication of the idea that, while audiences seem to bitch more and more about the unpleasantness and expense of theater-going, that window between theatrical and DVD releases still matters in giving a release legitimacy. I don't have any figures on Bubble's HDNet viewership or DVD pre-orders yet. But it would seem the lesson of this weekend is that theaters still matter, but if audiences can see your movie by staying home, they will.

Heard something awesomely gross today

So there was this dead homeless guy found in a park in Austin some years ago. Anyway, it became clear, from the fact that his head was in a state commonly referred to as "bashed in," that foul play was involved. Due to the advanced state of the body's decomposition, identification was difficult. For instance, the flesh from the victim's hands had separated from his body, and the only way the medical examiners could get fingerprints from him was for one of their guys to slip the victim's hand-skin over his own hand as if it were a glove, and do the prints that way!

That's the kind of cool stuff you learn when you're a film and TV freelancer, without, like, actually having to see (and smell) it face to face the way the actual detectives and coroners did. Today I worked on a shoot for the Discovery Health Channel's forensics show Skeleton Stories, where I listened to some swell interviews with Austin D.A.'s who recounted tales of grisly local crimes I never knew a thing about. These folks really are passionate about justice. If I ever get my head bashed in by a lunatic, I hope they're on the case!

I have an inkling the work situation here in Austin will be better for 2006. A good start already, and my listing in this year's Texas Film Commission directory is bigger, new and improved, tastes great and is less filling. Nice to feel optimistic. From interviewing music celebrities, to hanging out in pools on South Padre surrounded by nubile and incoherent spring breakers, and listening to stomach churning stories of death and depravity, I wouldn't want to work in any other business. Now if only it were just a bit more regular...

HD-Suicide?

Check this article over at Dark Horizons and marvel at the idiocy. Yeah, that's how to get a new format off the ground: screw over the early adopters!

Sundance neither the be-all or end-all

Sundance is going on right now, and truth to tell, I wouldn't mind being there. I'm sure there are some awesome movies being premiered. And a handful of filmmakers will go home with the brass ring — their picture bought for distribution and a development deal for another — well in hand. But there's a lesson about putting all your eggs into one basket to be learned here, too. An L.A. Times article gives hopeful auteurs a reality smack today, pointing out that precious few Grand Jury Prize winners have actually gone on to have, you know, a filmmaking career:

For all its acclaim, the Grand Jury Prize was not intended to reward filmmakers whose movies are likely to make millions of dollars, said Geoffrey Gilmore, the festival's director. Rather, the awards are designed to call attention to works with bold, creative ambition — and the directors behind such indie movies are likely to find a rough road in an industry driven by the bottom line.

"The jurors are looking for films that are taking risks," Gilmore said. "It's not surprising that these films don't always do so well in the marketplace."

Of course, you could say the same for the Cannes Palme d'Or, one recent winner of which — Gus Van Sant's Elephant — only took in $1.2 million theatrically in the US. It's the age-old battle between art and commerce being duked out again. The problem is that too many artists shun too fanatically the commercial realities of the vocation they have chosen to pursue. Movies are neither just an art form nor just a business; they are both. The people who want to succeed don't "sell out," they just learn how to draw a balance between the two. They are also the people who are sufficiently self-confident to refuse to take no for an answer.

Every buyer balked at a theatrical release for Livingston's "Paris Is Burning," a documentary about drag queens. "After it won the Grand Jury Prize, nobody was interested still. It meant nothing," Livingston said. "I talked to many distribution types and was told it would never make any money." Livingston distributed the film herself, and when it generated standing-room-only screenings in New York, Miramax decided to buy the film. "Paris Is Burning" turned into a documentary hit, grossing more than $3.7 million.

Now that's how you rise above the pack. Too many indie filmmakers seem to have this idea that simply by screening at a festival, the brilliance of their filmmaking genius will be undeniable to all, and all they have to do from that point on is hold court in the hotel bar while distributors line up to genuflect, contracts in hand. Weeeeell, reality is more like this: you have to sell yourself. This involves doing tasteless things many serious artistes can't abide. Schmoozing. Networking. Pimping. It means taking exactly the same kind of risks to sell your film as it took to make it in the first place. It means being bold and maybe earning the ire and jealousy of other filmmakers whose criticisms of you, if they were at all honest, will in fact be rooted in envy that they didn't think of what you did to succeed first.

Of course, sometimes you may put out that effort and your film still won't make it. But at least you'll know you gave it the best try you could, rather than always wondering what might have happened had you only tried. Whether it's Sundance or any other festival out there, the festival itself will not do your heavy lifting for you. Only you can do that.