Now that Borat has proved that it is worthy of all the hype, many question why it only opened on 800-plus screens. Was Fox cleverly building the word of mouth? Were they scared it could have possibly been a Snakes on a Plane? Variety explores the studio’s thinking. Here’s a little taste: Some close to the comic thesp point to the pic’s amazing $31,607 per-playdate average as a sign the film had enough appeal for a wider release. But some distrib execs point to the still-low awareness of “Borat” — in the latest tracking, which reflects polling from over the […]
I posted below the incredibly sad news about Adrienne Shelly’s death and never mentioned that it was initially thought a suicide as a friend had told me that there was an ongoing police investigation. Now, CNN and other news organizations are reporting that a construction worker who apparently was heard arguing with Shelly has been charged in her death.
There were many amazing moments at the Sundance Institute’s 25 Anniversary Gala in New York this evening — including a great piece of performance art by Miranda July — but the evening’s most unexpected surprise may have occurred during the pre-dinner cocktail party. The wait staff serving hors’ d’oeurves were all actors who were giving back to Sundance as they produced expressions of shock, amazement, and slight embarassment among the attendees. Parker Posey, Kathy Bates, and yes, Paul Newman were all game, circulating through the crowds in white shirts and black aprons, handing out the finger food to those who […]
Via GreenCine comes this interview with David Gordon Green appearing in The Believer. Here, Green talks about his adolescent video renting habits: “The first movie I rented—and I was a little overwhelmed, so I ended up regretting my choice—but it was an Al Pacino movie called Author! Author! I was debating between that, Ladyhawke, and I Spit on Your Grave, but that last one, I was afraid my sisters would tell my mom I’d rented that. And it was not going to be the kind of appropriate thing to have around the house. But I was glad to see the […]
Um, our Alexa ratings could use a boost at the moment… so here’s the the just-released Scale, the second installment in Mike Figgis’s Kate Moss meditation, The Dreams of Miss X. It’s part of a four-part series he’s been doing for the lingerie house Agent Provocateur. (You have to watch it on their site and give them an email address before you’re allowed to view it. The clip does get cool in a Jean Cocteau kind of way as it goes on, though.) From the site: “The four dreams of Miss X” was shot in night vision and explores the […]
The Criterion Collection has started a blog titled “On Five.” (It’s subtitled, “Unofficial Information about the Criterion Collection from the People who are Officially in Charge.” Click over there on Tuesdays and Fridays for posts on new releases, HD vs. Blu-Ray, and more.
On October 18 I posted a few quick comments on the Google/YouTube deal. Specifically, I concluded my posting by wondering if any of the artists whose work has been streamed on YouTube will see any cash from the “copyright infringement” settlements that are part of the deal. Here’s what I wrote: The question then becomes, what mechanism or accounting system exists to reward individual copyright holders from the revenue “shared” with Universal by YouTube? Do artists signed to Universal see (or do their balance statements reflect) this income? And what about all the other artists whose video is being shared […]
Via Ann Thompson, this very funny clip.
Until some ballsy distributor decides to wage a “fair use” battle against studio copyright holders, it may be that the Sophie Fiennes doc The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema, in which the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek discourses about film, politics, desire and theory, will be little seen in the U.S. So, I’m going to point you towards YouTube, which has several clips from the film, which was hit in Toronto this year, streaming through its servers. Here is Zizek talking about Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation and Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds.
I posted last night about the news that actress and director Adrienne Shelly died on Wednesday in New York. I didn’t know Shelly, but I certainly knew her work and, as I wrote, thought she was a true original. Below are links to a couple of other writers who remembered her on their blogs today. From Anthony Kaufman: …I followed Shelly’s second directorial effort “I’ll Take You There” on the festival circuit, reporting on its Telluride premiere, then publishing an inteview I did with her as the film was playing at the Los Angeles Film Festival in 2000; she talked […]