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WEEKEND ROUNDUP
Here’s a roundup of some stuff that caught my eye in the blogosphere this weekend.
There’s a lively discussion going on over at Indiewire regarding the Tribeca Film Festival’s “embargo” rule that attempts to prohibit press from writing about pre-screened films until after their Tribeca premiere. Of course, in the world of mainstream journalism, embargos happen all the time; what irks a pretty passionate group of responding posters is the TFF’s attempt to be strict with this rule when it comes to the online journalists who can often positively motivate a fan base leading up to a film’s fest premiere.
Speaking of Tribeca, Twitch has rounded up a bunch of links related to the fest’s various films.
Over at the Spout Blog, Karina Longworth has a very clever post that riffs off of a NY Times review of MTV’s The Hills in which the critic referred to the show as “Antonionesque.” Along with a clip from Red Desert, she comes up with five ways in which that analogy is true.
There has been much writing this week about film critic Nathan Lee’s firing at the Village Voice for economic reasons. The conversation over at The Reeler has wound through waves of attack and even hurt feelings to conclude (for the moment) with a long post by Kent Jones on the cultural authority of Pauline Kael. There’s more at The House Next Door, particularly a series of post that discuss, in various degrees of either dismay or “who cares”-ness, the financial viability of being a film critic.
The liveliest talk-back thread around, however, belongs to Deadline Hollywood Daily and Nikki Finke’s take on the weekend box office. Yep, her trade analysis is up to 700 replies as I write this, and if she approves more comments I’m sure that number will soar even higher. Causing all the ruckus is a link from the Drudge Report, which picked up on her headline that Kimberly Peirce’s Stop Loss was “DOA” at the box office, and filling up the comments section are conservative and largely pro-war posters attacking “liberal Hollywood” for its perceived biases. The signal-to-noise ratio is pretty low on the thread, but it is worth skimming through for a taste of opinion from outside our little glass-coned film blogosphere.
Speaking of blog invective, French director Erick Zoncka has a cranky rant on U.S. and Mexican crews and how he didn’t get what he wanted when making his latest film, Julia. It can be found at the English-language side of the Dissidenz site.
The Workbook Project has a new podcast — an interview with Dan Goldman: “Dan Goldman is a critical acclaimed comic book artist and illustrator. His most recent project Shooting War went from being a free online comic to sparking a bidding war. Various major publishing and production interests battled it out for the publishing and film rights. Goldman is a strong believer in the concept of crowdsourcing and micropatrons and a number of his new ventures are embracing the concept of audience as collaborator.
Agnes Varnum announces the summer season of POV.
You can obviously take it with a grain of salt given that he owns a cable TV network, but Mark Cuban has a sharp post arguing that digital TV is better than internet TV. I’m not sure I agree it’s an all or nothing thing. Cuban bases his argument on the inherent technical speed bumps in reliable internet delivery — he calls the internet a “best efforts” medium — and argues that anyone interested in delivering television will necessarily wind up on the more-secure, always-on closed-network side of the equation. That’s fine for delivering sports and live content, but independent filmmakers — and fans — can probably endure those speed bumps or the time-delay in order to receive their favorite specialized content.
