Variance Films

STUFF YOU'LL LIKE: Famous People Hanging Out

2012-01-14T18:05:00.004-05:00

-via Retronaut, who curated from Awesome People Hanging Out Together.

Woody Allen and Michael Jackson:

Head over and check it out, it made us smile.

Yes, we saw the article about the new doc rules...

2012-01-09T09:10:00.001-05:00

...and I have a lot to say about the Academy and independent documentaries. I will, however, keep my mouth (mostly) shut until we see exactly what the new rules are. There's a lot broken about the way documentary films are nominated for Oscars, and while what I've seen so far tells me it's not going to be getting much better for those who can't afford giant ads in Variety, benefit of the doubt shall prevail here.

Let's be patient and see what shakes.

Who wants to help these guys open an arthouse in Zenica?

2012-01-04T23:34:00.003-05:00

I got copied on this mass email today, which I'd normally ignore, but am kind of glad I didn't, because it's awesome, heartwarming, and right in line with our mission.

I would think these guys could use some email advice, or even just some "great job" support from folks familiar with Kickstarter and the ilk, microcinema operation, and community organizations- or even just someone who runs a cinema club and has insights.

From: Ines Haskic
Date: January 4, 2012 6:27:29 PM EST
Cc: Dylan Marchetti

Hello,

First, thank you for your time and happy New Year. We are a group of enthusiasts from Zenica, and our wish is to open the art cinema. We want a place where we can watch good movies, listening to good music, monitoring exhibitions and other cultural events that are essential for young pepoles. We think that project like this is most importance for the region which suffered war, hatred and violence, that only education can prevent the current political manipulation.

In the prewar period, Zenica was one of the most urban centar of former Yugoslavia. Today's reality is much different. In small countries such as Bosnia and Herzegovina, all cultural contents are concentrated in the capital town Sarajevo. Young people from other, smaller cities losing their creativity. The ability that they express themselves is almost unthinkable. They leave Zenica and go to others cities where they will be more respected. Computerization made that young people living in present, irrelevant in how small-town they live. Availability of information contribute for more dissatisfaction because we know for better things. Perhaps, this is one of the most important advantage of the digital age. Some people with the right criticized this digital age because with their glass paper young people become alienated and lose their sense of community.

A man is a social being, he need a circle of like-minded with whom they will share their observations, concerns, love and beauty. This is actually what we want to achieve with this project. Today's rule is that every small communities don't deserve the attention and investment. Prejudices are all around us, but we have enough enthusiasm to win them. We live in a small town, but we have a modern, young, educated and informed people. These young people need a culture.

A few months ago we saw that opened art cinema "Kriterion" in Sarajevo. http://kriterion.ba/

This is the first art cinema in our country. We were thrilled with that idea, but also we were sad because we can't see all that movies. We believe that our city need art cinema because we have enough young people who enjoy in art. We have a theater, but contents are very poor, a few good performances during the year. Other cultural contents almost nonexistent. Music and other events in the bars are not inspiring for young people.

Zenica has one multiplex cinema and there is no possibility to see something else than blockbusters. Young people can't enough in art because we havn't real art in our city. Everything around us is so usual, empty, without emotion and without beauty.

We don't feel fulfilled.

We have an illusion that we will get something like "Kriterion" one day. We want to invest all our free time with lots of enthusiasm and passion. We are a group of people which have a different profesions. Organization, any works, investments, knowledge and skills wouldn't be problem for us. Folk "culture" seized the Balkans and we wish to change it. Our priority is to educate the young generation and we hope that they will build and defend this cinema long time in the future.

We have a lot of young people which have not had a chance to experience the beauty of art too. Our priority are this peoples too. We want to fight against prejudice and contempt. Every person deserves the outstretched hand. Quality program and perseverance can change everything. We are confident that we can change this situation.

The three old theaters in Zenica for years were empty and abandoned. This figure is the best proof that Zenica was very urban comunity in the pre-war period. These spaces are our great hope. We need help and support of the public. This is our first step. If you can help us with some advices ot would be great.

Thank you for your time!
Best Regards
Ines Haskic

My favorite films of the year.

2012-01-03T12:01:00.002-05:00

The idea of a top ten list is a lot less appealing for me this year than years past- mostly because of the glut of movies that have been released in the past four weeks that I've missed. Next year, I'm going to skip the top ten altogether, and steal Brian Moylan's great idea of simply ranking everything I see from favorite to least.

But this year, it's a top ten list, and as always Variance titles are off the table, as are films made by close friends or films that haven't been released for the general public in some fashion.

(For an example of why this isn't a list I'm submitting anywhere, here's a list of what I haven't seen that may well have been on this: A Separation, Pina, Melancholia (I know, I know), Certified Copy, Mysteries of Lisbon, Margaret, The Artist, Take Shelter, Dangerous Method, Tinker Tailor Solider Spy, Poetry, Ceausescu, Beginners, Le Havre, Moneyball. In other words, a chunk of the top end of most critics lists.)

In no order, here's the top movies I DID see this year:

DRIVE

Refn forcibly evolves the neon-drenched noir of 80s Los Angeles crime thrillers while simultaneously draining the Frenchness and the action-film tendencies from Luc Besson's recent visions of the American anti-hero. Then, he crams them both into a synth-dripping master class of tension versus payoff. Simultaneously the most violent and the most restrained movie of the year, DRIVE is something we haven't seen before, and that's become a bit of a rarity. In a just world, Brooks would get a Supporting Actor nod.

HUGO

An incredible odd bird of a Hollywood blockbuster. The first trailer looked so atrocious that if you'd told me that Scorsese was hiding a $150 million love letter to cinema and Méliès, I'd have laughed you out of the office. Destined to lose large amounts of money, but genetically made for people like me, HUGO is best in 3-D... basically the first film since AVATAR to justify the extra $2.

THE TREE OF LIFE

My wife cringes every time I ask if she wants to see it (she hasn't yet, and she has great taste in film) because it "looks SO pretentious." And she's right- this is a movie that walks that fine line between genius and total eye-rolling. I can't say it doesn't overstep at moments (the dinosaur, most egregiously), but I also can't say that the film would work without those moments of overstep. Even if audience hopes/expectations nudge it over the line from questionable to classic in places, the feeling this film leaves you with lingers for days, not hours. Nothing this beautiful has been shown on screen in a mighty long time.

MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE

John Hawkes terrifies me. But if his character in Winter's Bone was a pit bull on a fraying leash, then his terrifyingly quiet cult leader in MMMM is a German Shepard that's loose, directly and unexpectedly in front of you on the sidewalk with his head cocked slightly to one side, and standing still enough to make you wonder whether it's safe to take another step (even though deep inside you know that it most certainly isn't). His performance alone is worth the ticket, but the tightly scripted, beautifully shot, and masterfully edited fever dream of a film that contains it (not to mention Elizabeth Olsen's breakout performance, filled with restraint) is worth a second ticket later that same week.

HOW TO DIE IN OREGON

Although it went on to an HBO debut, the theatrical experience I had with OREGON was powerful. I saw this at the Sundance press and industry screening with a group of hard-nosed industry vets, who, after the credits finished rolling, mostly needed another few minutes to get it together from spending the last thirty minutes weeping openly- and I'm talking Ugly Cry weeping. Maybe it's manipulative, maybe it's that the premise can only play out one way, but it works from start to finish, with almost no lulls whatsoever.

WEEKEND

The massive Sundance buzz for Like Crazy drove me nuts, because it's not a particularly good movie. WEEKEND made only small ripples at SXSW, but it's everything you could want from indie romance. No melodrama, no amazingly high stakes, just two people in THAT moment, the one we all find ourselves in at some point, in all its messiness and with complete honesty. When you leave the theater, it sticks in your gut- and that's what makes a great romance, not cutesy british girls weeping at the airport customs office.

THE INTERRUPTERS

How this masterpiece got stiffed by the Academy is beyond me, but this is not only the best doc of 2011, it's possibly the best doc of the last few years. Yes, there are pacing issues, and yes, the multiple edits of the film confused folks (similar to Malick's THE NEW WORLD, I'm not sure if I'll ever be able to see the version I fell in love with again), but really, given the power of what's on screen, no matter what version they're showing now you should go.

HANNA

Maybe it's low expectations, but Wright manages to completely tweak the feel of the BOURNE / MISSION IMPOSSIBLE / invincible secret agent films without changing ANY of the formula, and it feels like a shot of adrenaline. The odd editing choices and the Chemical Brothers score work perfectly, and even though both occasionally threaten to make the whole thing come off as a $150 million film from 1998 (really, you half expect a full-head-of-hair-having-John Travolta to pop up as the scenery-chomping villain), Hanna winds up an absolute delight and a film destined to be shown every third night on TNT for the next ten years.

THE BLACK POWER MIXTAPE

I can't remember the last time a film had me this angry as I was walking out of the theater. Great archival filmmaking (admittedly I'm a sucker for this, as my undying devotion to SOUL POWER proves), this should be shown in classrooms for the rest of the century.

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN

The best argument for birth control I've ever seen. Perfectly edited, perfectly constructed, and perfectly cast (even John C. Reilly works, and he often doesn't), it's not hyperbole to say that this film pins you to seat and makes you clench in a way that DRAGON TATTOO could only dream about. Tilda Swinton remains far and away the most interesting actor working in film.

Honorable Mentions:
SUPER, for its amazing performance by Ellen Page and general sense of anarchy missing from a lot of films.

THE SKIN I LIVE IN, for its perverse weirdness and amazing score.

MIDNIGHT IN PARIS, for being a lovely summer distraction and giving Woody a deserved hit.

TERRI, for taking a massively overdone genre and turning it on its head using almost nothing except honesty and good casting.

ATTACK THE BLOCK, because nobody I've met can explain to me why DARKEST HOUR and SKYLINE get 2500 screen releases and this gem gets punted to 16 theaters? ALLOW IT. Borderline top-ten.

THE YELLOW SEA, for somehow managing to top THE CHASER in sheer balls-to-the-wall amazingness, and reigniting my hopes that Korea will begin simply sending us one amazing revenge thriller every month until Hollywood completely gives up making them.

NEWLYWEDS, for confirming that Ed Burns is 1970s Woody Allen in disguise. Delightfully done.

HAROLD AND KUMAR 3D CHRISTMAS, because I am weary of comedies that pull their punches and teach us lessons, and this one does not. Total profane hilarity, with no prisoners taken (and no, I haven't smoked pot in years).

PARIAH, for pulling back the blanket on a community that has LONG been in the shadows, and doing it so well. One of the best shot films of the year, and in a just world there'd be a Best Actress nom for the searing performance Adepero Oduye delivers.

SENNA, for making me care, an awful lot, about someone who excelled in something I do not care about in the slightest.

Most Overrated
BELLFLOWER, because while I really do admire the ingenuity on display, these guys need to talk to more girls before the next film comes around.

LIKE CRAZY, for proving that completely uninspired filmmaking can win Sundance with the right amount of gauzy pop and "guest stars". Ugh.

BRIDESMAIDS, which wasn't bad at all, but was forty-five minutes too long and is not an awards contender any more than HANGOVER was (no matter how much you guys want to make Nikki Finke eat her words).

DETECTIVE DEE, which is an incomprehensible mess of a film in the vein of 2004 Hong Kong stuff, and I suspect soured a lot of audiences on the great crop of Asian films in the process. It's fun if your turn your brain off, but I don't get the acclaim.

The Absolute Worst
TRANSFORMERS 3 was an overlong, ear-raping, eye-crossing disaster of a film. As much as I like explosions, I don't need 500 in a row, because I will get bored of them, as I was of this movie ten minutes in.

What about you?

Things we loved, and didn't, in 2011:

2012-01-02T12:18:00.003-05:00

Winners/Losers, if you want to call it that, sure.

WINNER: (TRUE) INDIE FILMS
While I'm not about to tally up the numbers, anecdotally, I can say the indie box office seems far up this year compared to last (and we're talking true indies- much as we love Woody and SPC (more on that in a second), that's not what I'm really referring to here). We found people more willing to get out to the theater than ever before, and plenty of theaters previously not known for indie fare willing to step up and embrace non-minimajor film. But there's a caveat...

LOSER: (TRUE) INDIE FILMS THAT CAME OUT IN NOV/DEC
Never have I seen such a glut of films in the last seven weeks of the year (admittedly we added to this, and frankly, I won't do it again, because I feel that had we not both of our films would've grossed double what they did). The casualties are flying left and right, and films are being pushed out before their time to make room for the next big Oscar contender. A note to the mini-majors/majors: not every awards film needs to be released in the six weeks between mid-November and January 1st. Some will do better from word of mouth (I've heard DANGEROUS METHOD is great, but there are about ten films on my "must-watch" list ahead of it.)

WINNER: WOODY ALLEN AND ANYONE WHO COUNTER-PROGRAMMED STUDIO FILMS
MIDNIGHT IN PARIS didn't gross $60 million because it's Woody's best film in years (it isn't- that honor goes to VICKY CHRISTINA), it grossed $60 million because grown-ups would also like to go to the movies during summer for something besides R-rated comedy. A great strategy by SPC saw the film expand rapidly from six theaters to a near-wide release in four weeks, with no fellow competition in the mall-plexes except the absolute dreck the studios were tossing out. There's a lesson here. Also see: the $170 million gross for THE HELP.

LOSER: PRETTY MUCH ANYONE WHO WENT TO SEE A STUDIO MOVIE THIS SUMMER
You know you're in trouble when even the Pixar movie, usually the savior, doesn't even look good. A look at this summer's top ten says a lot. The top five are all sequels (and none were really worth watching save POTTER 7.2, which was not among the stronger in the series), and the only mild bright spots are BRIDESMAIDS (which is gold by comparison, but in reality 45 minutes too long) and RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES, which is just oddly good. This is a world where PIRATES 4 grossed $241 million dollars just six months ago, and I'm willing to bet nobody reading this remembered that movie existed until just now.

DISHONORABLE MENTION: ANYONE CLAIMING THE DEATH OF MOVIE THEATERS BASED ON AN AWFUL SPRING
This seems to be the trend right now. Here's a great way to counter that argument: looking at the top 5 films of Jan-March 2011: (Rango- $123m, Just Go With It- $103m, Gnomeo and Juliet- $99m, Green Hornet- $98m, Battle:LA - $83m). All horrifically forgettable. If you put out bad movies, nobody will pay to see them. APES made a great $160m in summer, and I firmly believe it would've done $250m had it come out in March. Stagger it, folks.

WINNER: VOD DAY AND DATE
MARGIN CALL and MELANCHOLIA aren't the first success stories, but every time one of these does well, it opens doors to what I think a great model for indie films is. We've gone from doing no day/date films as of January last year to nearly 75% day/date films as of now. The first four films we have in 2012 are day/date. And not only is box office not affected, I suspect it's actually being boosted a little bit. More on this to come.

BIG WINNERS: MOVIEGOERS IN 2012
There is so much great film coming down the pipes, I think we're all in for a lovely ride for the first nine months of the year. If you're not excited, you should be.

Why you might see us in first class (or... everything goes better when you do a little homework).

2012-01-01T19:16:00.004-05:00

Fair warning- this entire post is unrelated to film, so if that's all you're interested in, move along. But if you can stomach it, stick around, because Variance Loves You, and this year we want to make your life better. Bear with us for a minute.

Over the holiday break, someone with a snarky streak saw a Twitpic I posted of my wife and I on an airplane, and sent a cheeky DM to us... "Must be nice that u can afford 1st class."

To which I say: HELL yes, it is nice. And I won't lie- I fly first class all the time. By my guess, about 2/3 of the time I fly, it's up front (the remainder, I'm usually chilling in the exit row). You know what else? I haven't paid a bag check fee in years. But I rarely check a bag, because I also get to board the plane before the first group is called, so I know there's always room for my carry-on in the bin (though when I do check a bag, I get to cut the line at check-in... as well as at security). My bags are usually the first off the plane, which helps me go get my rental car faster- but that's fast anyway because I don't have to speak to a single soul before I get in the rental car (of my choice). I get to cut the line at the hotel, where there's often an upgrade waiting, and generally free wi-fi or breakfast for me on top of that.

And here's the kicker: I've never paid a dime for any of it.

Between festivals, markets, and meetings in various locales, plus visits to family and friends from time-to-time, I do my share of travel. Not terribly much, but enough. And since the workload of my job is high, that means I can't just throw up an out of office and say "I'm gone for a week, back soon." I need to get stuff done. And making travel something that's easy and moderately pleasant, instead of a chore, makes that an awful lot easier.

And we want you to join us! So, over the next few weeks, we're going to share with you our travel tips. Some are obvious, some not so much, and perhaps the whole thing will come off a bit like the first ten minutes of UP IN THE AIR with a less attractive protagonist. But the one thing we can say for sure is that, as with most things, the difference between doing something and doing it better/correctly is often about ten minutes of homework before you click away to the next thing.

We missed you!

2011-11-28T00:21:00.002-05:00

With such a busy late summer/early fall, we thought it best to shutter the blog for a little while. We brought you films by John Sayles, a documentary about the most delightfully obscene man we've met in a while, kung-fu monks, inspirational basketball players from Senegal, and the highest-grossing Brazilian film of all time.

But as the slate lightens up (we have one more great film for you this year, then we're back in the labs until March next year), we've got a bit more time on our hands, so we'll be back around here more often. There's certainly no shortage of things to be said.

And we were on such a roll...

2011-08-15T00:41:00.003-04:00

...it's telling, unfortunately, when a blog stops updating. But happily, in this case, the reasons for our absence have all been positive- we've had weddings, honeymoons, and of course, some great new releases.

Right now, we've got two great films out there- GENERAL ORDERS No.9 and LITTLEROCK. And this Friday, we're releasing AMIGO to 12 great theaters across the country (see the list at www.amigomovie.com).

So bear with us while we get the work done... we'll be back here cursing in no time.

Am I missing something?

2011-07-12T16:43:00.003-04:00

It seems that there are two trains headed towards each other at very high speed, and folks seem to be pretty excited about getting on one of them or the other. To wit:

On train #1, we have "the cloud". We're told that we don't need to worry about little things like disk space, storage, or (in some cases) ownership. All we have to do is upload our documents, music, videos, photos, and applications to the invisible disk drive in the sky, and they will be waiting for us, whenever and wherever we want them.

On train #2, we have the coming end of the unlimited data/download plan. Here's a challenge for you- go find a cell phone/tablet plan that gives you unlimited wireless data. I'll wait. You can't on AT&T, T-Mobile, or Verizon. Sprint technically still has one- but the CEO says it depends on "usage remaining reasonable", and Sprint's network in major markets leaves something to be desired regardless.

For now, your home internet is safe. But what happens when the cable operators start seeing people "cable-cutting"- or canceling their cable service in exchange for Netflix, Hulu Plus, and whatever new streaming service lurks around the corner? As a gigantic portion of homes receive internet service from exactly one company- the same one that provides their cable TV- one would be foolhardy to assume that said company isn't going to replace their lost revenue.

Something's not quite adding up for me here. I think I'll keep my hard drive for now.

Movie theaters are clearly dead. Clearly.

2011-05-29T12:06:00.006-04:00

IT'S FUN SUNDAY MATH TIME WITH VARIANCE!

•The top ten films in the country grossed approx. $215 million from Friday to Sunday.

•The average ticket price in 2010 (counting 3-D) was $7.93. Let's assume it's now $8.50 so nobody argues.

•That means 25 million people went to the movies this weekend to see one of the top ten films.

•Knowing that there are 303 million people in the US, that means...

At a minimum, 8.3% of the people in the United States of America spent 2-3 hours at a movie theater Friday, Saturday, or Sunday. Oh, and if you add in the six million that went on Thursday, that goes up to 10.2% of the country, or 31 million people. Remember- that's just for the top ten movies. Doesn't count the arthouse films, doesn't count the foreign films, doesn't count the older studio films.

So, movie theaters are dying? No.

Here's a thought. Every single year, from roughly March to early May, there's an awful lot of hemming and hawing (and column inches) about the disastrous fall-off in business at movie theaters. The more aggressive prognosticators of the chattering class pipe up and say "they're dying!". And then, every Memorial Day, something opens huge and everyone stops and says "hmm, ok, the slump is over!"

I suspect the truth is far simpler: movie theaters aren't dying, but people are unwilling to go to them if there's nothing playing that they want to see.

What did studios feed audiences for the first four months of the year? The top grossers pre-Fast Five were a quartet of forgettable kids movies (Rango, Rio, Hop, Gnomeo and Juliet), an Adam Sandler-Jenn Aniston pair-up that I'd forgotten entirely about, and The Green Hornet. People didn't go see those films because they were excited about them, they went in spite of them- out of sheer cabin fever.

Compare that to the top films 2010- Alice In Wonderland, $400 million of Avatar's gross, How To Train Your Dragon, Shutter Island, Clash of the Titans. None of these are exactly classics, but they all made more money than anything that dropped in 2012. Hell, weeks 3-17 of Avatar made more than the top four pre-Fast Five 2011 films.

So here's my groundbreaking hypothesis- if studios put films out that people want to see on a consistent basis, people will go to the movie theater on a consistent basis. If studios give up from January 5th through May 1st, audiences will stay home until May 2nd. THOR is looking like it's going to top out around $170 million. What do you want to bet that could've been more like $250 million had it dropped in early April with no real competition?

Is attendance down? It is. The recession and 9% unemployment doesn't help matters, and neither do $15 tickets for 3-D movies nobody really wants to see in 3-D. And every time someone goes to the theater, watches a film that looks like it's projected with a goddamn flashlight, and writes an article about it, that doesn't exactly help the cause. But a weekend like this proves that people will go plunk down their $10 if there's something they feel is going to be worth it.

Our prescription remains the same: make better movies, don't release them all in a ten week timeframe, make sure theaters do a better job showing them, and audiences will continue to line up.

Our code of ethics.

2011-05-19T01:52:00.004-04:00

Sorry for the silence, the world has taken over for a bit.

We thought we'd share our code of ethics with you, because the link to it on our website seems to be perpetually broken (we're in the market for a solid web designer, btw).

VARIANCE FILMS CODE OF ETHICS

1. We believe in every film we release, or we won’t release it, regardless of what “release fee” we’re offered.

2. We will give honest, direct, and well thought-out advice every time. We will not promise to make you rich, and we will not tell you we can do things with your film that we know we can’t deliver.

3. We will never say we have done something we haven’t, that we can do something that we cannot, or that we don’t need to do something that we should.

4. We cannot guarantee success. But we can guarantee that we will chase it on your behalf, aggressively.

5. The money is never funny. Accounting will always be transparent, accurate to the penny, and honest. Every filmmaker is entitled to see every check we receive or issue on his or her behalf, every time.

6. We are accessible. When you work with us, you will never have to work to get your calls returned.

7. We work on the films we have before we chase after the films we want. Once you’re in the family, you’re in the family, and family comes first.

8. We do not play favorites. Every film we work on will receive all the attention it needs, or we will not take on the film.

9. Every film we work on receives the best vendors and partners we can find that come in within the budgetary parameters, and we will always negotiate the most favorable rate possible. We will never accept kick-backs or ”refunds” from any vendor in exchange for our business, and if we receive one, we will deliver the money directly to you.

10. Bad news or mistakes will always be communicated honestly, openly, and immediately. We do not make excuses, because while we do aspire to be, we are not perfect (nobody is). If we make a mistake, mess something up, forget something, we fess up- we do not blame others or cover it up.

Releasing a film is like being trusted with someone’s child. It is a responsibility that we take very seriously, and we encourage you to aggressively check our references and reputation within the industry (as you should with any vendor you hire to work on your film). We believe that if we do a bad job, people will find out- so we don’t do bad work.

Please don't send me your fake grindhouse movie.

2011-04-23T21:43:00.003-04:00

I agree 110% with this article Todd wrote at Twitch, in which he laments the rise in smart-ass filmmakers making terrible schlocky DV movies, throwing some "dirty film" Final Cut Pro plugin over the top of them, fake scratches and pops, and cutting a terrible "check out my 70s voiceover impersonation" trailer to match.

If you've made a movie like this, you can absolutely save yourself the $1.84 in postage. I've gotten at least 10 of these to watch, and the amount of time they last in my DVD player averages about 50 seconds. I'm sure there are people somewhere who still enjoy watching these, but be damned if I know any who would pay $1 to ( much less $10), and be damned if my company is going to put their name in front of one.

To quote:

They are almost universally unwatchable to all but those who made them. They're not funny. They're not clever. They're just plain bad movies and I want people to stop making them. Stop explaining away your shitty technique with "Hey, it's supposed to be that way!" Because all you're doing with that argument is proving you don't understand the original movement at all.

(snip)

You cannot make a Plan Nine From Outer Space on purpose. This is why I haven't bothered to cover the upcoming remake. I don't give a damn. You cannot replicate the goofiness of the original and there isn't enough there to make a truly good film. So why bother? You can't make The Room on purpose. You can't make Birdemic on purpose. You simply cannot. And the unifying factor among the people who have made these films is that they generally don't realize why people actually like them.

There's plenty more at Twitch, go over there and read the whole thing.

Moral of the story: it barely worked when Tarantino and Rodriquez did it. And they made decent films and then put them under a Grindhouse banner, not shitty films with the word "grindhouse" stickered on the outside. As far as I'm concerned, that was the beginning and end of the meme.

Go make the best movie you can. Don't half-ass it and then try and pass it off as being bad on purpose. If you try to make a shitty movie, there's a very good chance you'll succeed- just not in the way you want.

And, on a more positive note...

2011-04-10T18:51:00.003-04:00

...let's give a shout out to the GOOD guys! Here's our upcoming playdates for our films... all good people, all doing it right.

AMERICAN: THE BILL HICKS STORY

NOW PLAYING:
New York - Cinema Village

4/15
Los Angeles - Laemmle's Sunset 5
Seattle - Grand Illusion
Portland - Hollywood Theater

4/22
Austin - Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar
Dallas - Texas Theatre
Houston - Alamo Drafthouse West Oaks (through 4/26)
Houston - Alamo Drafthouse Mason park (4/27 & 4/28 only)
Portland, ME - SPACE Gallery (4/27 only)

4/29
Chicago- Gene Siskel Film Center
Phoenix - Madcap Cinemas (4/30 only)
Nashville- Belcourt Theatre (5/2 through 5/5 only)

5/6
Detroit - Burton Theater
Duluth - Zinema 2

5/24
Glouchester, MA - Cape Ann Community Cinema (5/24-5/30)

6/3
Denver - Denver FilmCenter/Colfax
Tuscon - Loft Cinema
Albuquerque - Guild Cinema (6/8-6/11)

LEGEND OF THE FIST: THE RETURN OF CHEN ZHEN

4/22
New York - Village East Cinema
Los Angeles - Laemmle's Sunset 5
Honolulu - Pearlridge 16
Portland - Hollywood Theatre

4/29
Austin - Alamo Drafthouse Village
San Jose - Camera 12 Cinemas
San Francisco - Four Star Theatre
Seattle - Grand Illusion

5/6
San Diego - Gaslamp Stadium 16
Palm Springs/Desert Palm - Cinemas Palme D'Or

5/13
Dallas - Texas Theatre

5/27
Glouchester, MA - Cape Ann Community Cinema

BATTLE OF THE BRIDES

5/6
Orange County, CA - Regal Garden Grove 16
Orange County, CA - Edwards Westminster 10
Dallas, TX - AMC Firewheel
Houston, TX - AMC Loews Parks at Arlington

HOW TO LIVE FOREVER

5/13
New York, NY - Quad Cinema

5/20
Los Angeles, CA - Laemmle Monica 4

6/3
San Diego, CA - Landmark Ken Cinema
Philadelphia - Cinema 16:9

6/10
Palm Springs/Desert Palm - Cinemas Palme D'or

Theaters- it's time to step your game up.

2011-04-10T17:52:00.004-04:00

We talked a little, recently, about the Premium VOD battle that theaters and studios are waging against each other. We've also talked, a little less recently, on rules you should adopt when you go to the movies (it all basically boils down to "don't be an asshole", so you can skip the lengthier article). We've talked about windows shrinking, and event-izing your theatrical.

But we haven't talked much about theaters, and what they can do to help independent films. And as it turns out, there's plenty.

When we pick the theaters we book for our titles, we factor several things into it- gross potential, what films play best there, location, ease of parking, etc.. And we don't always get our first choice- sometimes the theater is booked on the date we need, sometimes the buyer just doesn't think the title is going to work.

One major thing we factor in is "how easy is this theater to work with". And surprisingly, the answer is quite often "not terribly". If you look at the list of theaters for each of our titles, you'll see the same ones popping up over and over again- and you can read things into that. You can also note that there are theaters you think we'd want to play that you DON'T ever see on the lists- you can read plenty into that as well, and likely be correct.

We're looking to event-ize our releases. We want to do special things in the theater to give the audience something to talk about. We're releasing a kung-fu movie? We want to have a kung fu demonstration in front of the audience. We're releasing a documentary about a comedian? We want to have a ten minute "live comedy set" before the show starts to get people in the mood. Jazz musical? We want a three piece combo playing at the front of the auditorium.

You'd be surprised how many theaters object to things like that. Either it's too much work for the managers, too much hassle to add ten minutes to the run time, too much trouble for insurance purposes. It's insanely irritating, because it makes us feel like we're working our ass off to get people to their theater (where they get half the box office and ALL of the concession sales) and they're like "yeah, screw it, just run some print ads".

We tend not to play these theaters more than once.

There are a few other things I'd like to see. And as I've mentioned before, I've got 11 years in the exhibition side of things- nine with a major chain, two running an underfunded indie arthouse, so I think everything I'm discussing below is reasonable, and I think that if theaters are so worried about thirty days less before VOD killing off their audience, they would want to do everything in their power to help people like me get butts in seats.

Here's what I want-

#1- ENFORCE A CODE OF CONDUCT.
Did you notice a few days ago, when Tim League, CEO of Alamo Drafthouse, wrote a six paragraph letter apologizing for a group of four people talking during a screening of RUBBER at one of his theaters? Let me say that again- ONE group of people disrupted ONE showtime in a chain of 50+ screens, and the CEO wrote a letter about it.

That's because, for lack of a better term, the Alamo guys actually give a shit what happens to its customers INSIDE the auditoriums.

When I worked at a major theater for a major chain, I noticed we were giving 10-15 free passes every weekend night due to people coming out and complaining about disruptive crowds. I proposed that, on Friday and Saturday nights, we station an usher inside our six large auditoriums to monitor the crowd non-stop, and deal with problems immediately. Due to breaks between shows, this would only necessitate five people- and two of those could jump behind the concession stand to help make lines move faster/make more money.

6 people at $7 an hour (yeah, I know, but it was 2002) x 5 hours each = $210 dollars.
Total value of free passes that wouldn't need to be given = $165 PLUS value of lost business due to bad experience = ????

Worst case, this would've cost $45 a night. I was told that this was "not in the budget and would never happen". That kind of thinking is what drives people away from theaters, and makes them think "yeah, it's worth it to stay home".

When you let people text, talk, make noise, and disrupt a show, everyone is unhappy, and that is what they remember.

#2- GET YOUR PROJECTION GAME TIGHT
I know that not every theater can install plush luxury stadium seats, a 60 foot screen, and a 25,000 watt sound system. But what you can do is make sure films look, and sound, good at your theater, and if/when they don't, fix it- immediately. Solely via customer complaints and visits from filmmakers/friends, here are things I've caught theaters (both chain and independent) doing on my films:

-Running action films in mono because "someone complained the trailers were too loud"
-Projecting a DVD with a "property of" burn-in instead of the Bluray they were sent because "the player was broken" (Bluray players cost approx. $130)
-Asking for 6 35mm trailers (which cost $40 each) and not running them, at all, because they "forgot".
-Not placing posters for our films, instead putting up studio posters for films opening NINE MONTHS after ours.
-Running a bluray in the wrong aspect ratio so people were squished for nearly two and a half weeks.

Look, I don't expect perfection every time (yeah I do, but I understand that's unrealistic). But I do expect that the following four things will happen every time a theater shows one of our films: it is in focus, in the right aspect, the picture is bright and undistorted, and the sound is loud and crisp. If you run a theater, and you don't have the equipment to pull those four things off, please let me know now and we will politely part ways until you get your shit together.

As a bonus- the chain theaters have installed these lovely digital projectors. I have to pay a $500-900 "Virtual Print Fee" each time I run a film on one of them. In turn, since even in an A/B test at a studio screening room, nobody can tell the difference between the Digital Cinema Package format (which costs $3k+ to encode, plus $180 for each run to make a HD and ship out) and a well-authored (not home burnt) Bluray disc (which costs maybe $500 to encode, plus $30-40 for each professionally burnt copy), please kindly let me play Bluray discs on your beautiful projectors instead of spending $6,000 encoding and making dupes of a DCP file that can't be used anywhere else. There's zero reason for not allowing this, and it will broaden the types of films you can show to your audience.

#3- IF YOU KNOW YOU'RE OPENING A FILM, PUT TICKETS ON SALE
This drives me batty. Chain theaters are particularly bad about this, but they do their schedules weekly, so I understand the logic to a degree. But... if you run a calendar house, particularly one with only one or two screens, and we've got a date locked, please don't make me beg you to get tickets up and on sale, or to get showtimes. We get awareness going early- not the Tuesday before we open- and we want to be able to tell people when it's showing, where it's showing, and how they can get tickets BEFORE THEY FORGET ABOUT IT. Help me.

Also- if you can't sell tickets online, while this admittedly can be a little costly, it's generally going to be worth it for you if you can get that going.

#4- IF YOU EVER DO Q&As, CONSIDER HOOKING A MIC OR TWO UP TO YOUR SOUND SYSTEM
It's embarrassing for me, and should be for you, to have filmmakers fly out to a market to do a Q&A at the theater, sell out the show, and then find out "yeah, we don't have any microphones". This is a $300 problem that is easily solved, and your audience will be grateful.

#5- INDIES...KNOW YOUR COMMUNITY
While Variance loves doing special events, we're sitting in an office in NYC. You, in turn, are in your community. Take the time to find some event partners. Find a great local bar that will give discounts for an after-party. Find a comic book store that will do ticket giveaways. Make your theater part of the active, vibrant scene that exists in EVERY-SINGLE-CITY, comprised entirely of people that want to actually go out and do cool stuff- not just a movie theater that sits there and plays weird movies.

We have to build audiences for every single one of our films, and we'll do everything we can to deliver them to your theaters. But you, as theaters, need to take on the same responsibility- build an audience for your theater, so we can combine forces and fill up the joint all weekend long.

There are wonderful theaters everywhere that do this- places like the Camera 12 in San Jose, the Hollywood and Cinema 21 in Portland, the Alamo Drafthouses everywhere, the Laemmle theater chain, so many more to name that I won't take the time- just look at where our films are playing, these are the good guys.

But there are more that aren't, and every time someone has a terrible experience at the theater it pushes them home to the couch. And not just to watch "premium VOD"- more often than not, I suspect, to find something for free on Netflix. Stakes are high, so let's all do our part.

I don't quite understand the Premium VOD fight.

2011-04-07T13:11:00.002-04:00

If you don't pay attention to the trades (and who can blame you, most have devolved into 60% TMZ content or hiding behind a horrifically expensive pay wall), you've probably missed the start of the theaters versus studios battle over premium VOD.

In a nutshell- the studios, who need to make up cash for the declining DVD revenue, have decided to go forward with a "premium VOD" plan, in which, sixty days after release, you can pay $30 to see some of the films at home via cable operators. The theaters, in turn, are violently opposed to films being available any shorter than the ninety day window that already exists, and so they're threatening various sanctions- from not playing trailers or hanging posters for any film going into premium VOD to reducing the total amount of studio trailer placement by half. Nobody has come out and said "we won't play your movies if you do this", but it's been subtly threatened by "anonymous sources".

The whole fight is weird.

First of, from the studio end of things- does anyone really believe that folks are willing to pay $30 to watch a film two months after it's out, and weeks before the DVD/VOD release for $3.99? I can maybe see kids movies working this way, but really, I'm having a difficult time seeing people paying $30 even for day-and-date on most titles.

Sure, you'd save money if you brought over six friends and purchased LIMITLESS the day it was released, but there's a psychological barrier of price, and many people won't view it that way. They're used to paying $3.99-$5.99 for VOD films, and even more are used to things being on Netflix "for free" (and that's how people view it- they may be paying $6-$20 per month for Netflix, but since it's not per film, it's though of as free). $30 for what, at 60 days, is an "old" movie? That seems odd.

And from the theater end, they seem to already be pulling their punches. If they were diametrically opposed to this and not flexible, they'd say "if you do this we will not play that film" (which is what they do now if you break the 90 day window).

I'm curious to see how this develops. I don't believe that, right now, there's much market for indie films at $30 per title, particularly since the model is pretty well established at $5-9 for day-and-date indie film on VOD, and it's very impossible to triple prices after something is available for a year. But really, I don't think there's much of a market for studio films two months after release for $30 a title. I don't think doing this hurts the theaters, nor do I think it's going to be much revenue for studios. Day and date Hollywood film is, perhaps, another story altogether, but since nobody's talking about that (yet), that's for another day.

Interesting times.

A stunningly incomplete city-by-city list of alternatives to seeing SUCKER PUNCH for irony.

2011-03-25T18:46:00.004-04:00

I’m all for irony- I use it often. But there are an inordinate amount of people chatting on Facebook and Twitter, at least in my universe, about going to see SUCKER PUNCH this weekend “to see just how bad it really is.”

I’m sorry, but that’s stupid.

A lot of people spend an awful lot of time bemoaning the state of indie film- and perhaps rightfully so to some degree, but not entirely, as there IS something you can do about it- vote with your dollars.

So if you and your friends were even entertaining the idea of seeing SUCKER PUNCH, or BATTLE: LOS ANGELES, or any of the studio dreck this weekend, we thought we’d take a minute and prepare an admittedly incomplete, but hopefully helpful, city-by-city list of alternate uses for your two hours and $10 if you feel like going to the movies this weekend.

Seriously, no excuses.

NEW YORK:
Bill Cunningham: NY broke the house record at Film Forum last week. Get tickets early and find out why at the FILM FORUM site.

My Perestroika and Nostaligia For The Light: The first a wonderful look at the lives of a group of Russians who were young, but aware, when the Soviet Union collapsed, the second a gorgeous meditation on the secrets of a remote providence in Chile, known for its stunning views of the stars, but holding much, much more. Both at IFC Center.

Irreversible: I never want to see this again, but if you tripped out on ENTER THE VOID, Noe’s earlier provocation in theaters is… an experience. At Landmark Sunshine on midnight Fri and Sat.

New Directors New Films is going on as we speak, and some of these fantastic films won’t be back in theaters for a while- and some ever. Here’s a few we suggest, tickets for all and a master schedule at the NDNF site.

Cairo 6,7,8- a particularly timely look (both given Eygpt’s state as well as SUCKER PUNCH’s empowerment through tiny underwear message) at three women in Cario, coverging to combat the harassment of women in their daily lives. Sat at 330pm

Pariah – Dee Rees’ insanely strong feature about a Alike, 17 year old Brooklyn lesbian looking for her first girlfriend, but fighting her middle-class family and the prejudices inherent in the African American community. Caught this at Sundance, as did Focus Features which paid a ton of money for it. Seriously, don’t miss it. Sat at 8pm

The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975- it’s rare for a documentary to make me angry these days, but this one did the trick. Fantastic footage from Swedish journalists who were allowed to film inside the Black Panther movement which was found in a basement is cut together magnificently and dramatically to teach us all a lesson about exactly what America doesn’t want people to know it often winds up being. Sat at 9pm

Incendies- this film should have won for best Foreign film at the Oscars. Sun at 8:30pm

LOS ANGELES:
Quentin Tarantino has been personally programming the New Beverly Cinema all month long, and if you’re in the mood for action, there’s so much good stuff here that if visions of Sucker Punch so much as cross your eyeballs once, you deserve to be punched. THUNDER ROAD. FIVE MINUTES TO LIVE (starring Johnny Cash!). THE AVENGING EAGLE and DUEL OF THE IRON FIST double feature! THE FIGHTING FIST OF SHANGHAI JOE! And, of course, KILL BILL: THE WHOLE BLOODY AFFAIR, never seen in the US, though you’ll have to try for standby on that one. All at the New Bev.

Star Trek 1-6- All this weekend, the Egyptian is showing new prints of the original Star Trek series, with filmmakers and cast (including the always hilarious George Takei) in attendance. Tickets at the Egyptian's site.

John Cassavetes Retrospective- Cinefamily is finishing up a month-long tribute to this master director with several films. You don’t want to miss any of them on a nice screen. You should check out all of the programming there at the Cinefamily website, because they are heroes of cinema and deserve your respect.

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives- probably the polar opposite of Sucker Punch, but that’s a good thing in this case. Showing at Laemmle’s Sunset 5.

ATLANTA:
A great theater you’ve never been too is showing Sylvain Chomet’s charming THE ILLUSIONIST. And tickets are only $5. http://cinefestfilmtheatre.com/

AUSTIN:
Korean revenge insanity film (which I love is now nearly a genre in its own) I SAW THE DEVIL is rocking the Alamo Ritz. Probably best to NOT eat dinner in the theater this time, though.

BOSTON:
The Brattle has that new print of ORLANDO that’s been going around, and you’ll want in on that. http://www.brattlefilm.org

CHICAGO:
COLD WEATHER is a brilliant film, and a big step forward for director Aaron Katz. If you’ve written it off as “mumblecore bullshit”, (or, if you’ve just written off mumblecore as “bullshit”), you’re wrong on both counts. At the Music Box (as is Big Lebowski at midnight, if you want something more traditional and/or you’re too high to think much).

DC:
BILL CUNNINGHAM NY is at the E-Street. Get in early, is my guess…

DENVER:
I’m not sure how to say this, so I’ll just say it. There’s a film I was previously unaware of called ABBA: The Movie, which, indeed, stars ABBA, was directed by Lasse Hallström, and is playing tonight at the Denver FilmCenter/Colfax. I would suggest bringing some drugs.

DETROIT:
First of all, you should go to the Burton Theatre more often. These guys are awesome, the food there is amazing, and the programming is tip-top. Plus, it’s in an old elementary school auditorium right in the middle of Cass Corridor. This week, they’re showing MONOGAMY, which I’ve not seen, but whatever, Oscilloscope has great taste and risking that this is their first dud is a better option than everything else showing in town.

MILWAUKEE:
Full disclosure because it’s our film and we’re a bit biased, but if you want ass-kicking, go see IP MAN 2: LEGEND OF THE GRANDMASTER at the Times Cinema!

MINNEAPOLIS-ST PAUL:
We’re also biased here- but if you want to see a REAL woman beating the shit out of guys, without the creepy pedophile messages, go see the Vietnamese action smash CLASH at the St. Anthony Main Theater. Don’t want ass-kicking? COLD WEATHER’s playing too.

PITTSBURGH:
Go check out Gregg Akari’s hallucinogenic KABOOM at the Harris Theater.

PHILLY:
Slim pickings in town, but thankfully it’s UNCLE BOONMEE time over at the Cinema 16:9.

PORTLAND:
Hometown director Matt McCormick’s wonderfully delicate SOME DAYS ARE BETTER THAN OTHERS finally gets a theatrical run, starting in Portland. Q&As with stars (Carrie Brownstein, Sleater-Kinney and Portlandia), and James Reeves (The Shins) sweeten the pot. At the Hollywood Theatre, which we’ll point out is under excellent new management and will now happily serve you beers. Schedule at: http://www.hollywoodtheatre.org/

SEATTLE:
Ambient Intimacy looks to be a very interesting multi-media look into the ways that intimate moments get out into public, thanks to the internet. There appears to also be live Chatroulette involved, so one could expect to see lots of cocks, we’d imagine. At Northwest Film Forum.

SAN FRANCISCO:
William S Burroughs: The Man Within is playing at the Roxie, and if you enjoy hallucinogenic visions, you may as well find out about the master. Tickets at http://www.roxie.com

And yes, there are more cities, and more choices in each one. But I’m going home now, so feel free to add more goodies in the comments. Point is- don’t waste your money encouraging the propagation of garbage. Vote with your dollars.

Oscar guesses: who will vs. who should.

2011-02-27T17:18:00.004-05:00

Here's (most) of my Oscar contest ballot, as well as who I think should win. I hope I'm proven wrong on a lot of these, but don't think I will be:

Best Picture:
Will win: KING'S SPEECH / Should win: SOCIAL NETWORK
Both are a bit overrated, but SOCIAL NETWORK accomplishes a lot of things that KING'S SPEECH doesn't.

Director:
Will win: Tom Hooper, KING'S SPEECH / Should win: David Fincher, SOCIAL NETWORK
I admit I'm basing my "will win" solely on the fact that the Academy actively seems to hate David Fincher, who is a prickly guy. But same as picture, SOCIAL accomplishes (via Fincher) a lot of things that KING'S SPEECH does not. And SPEECH feels like any number of people could have directed it, whereas I can't see anyone but Fincher turning out SOCIAL NETWORK.

Actor:
Will and should: Colin Firth, KING'S SPEECH
He probably should have won last year.

Actress:
Will: Annette Bening, KIDS ARE ALRIGHT / Should: Natalie Portman, BLACK SWAN
Annette was wonderful, but Portman was phenomenal.

Supporting Actor:
Will: Christian Bale, THE FIGHTER / Should: John Hawkes, WINTER'S BONE
Bale gave a magnificent performance, no doubt- very showy and actor-y, and the Academy loves that. But it's Oscar bait all the way, down to putting the real-life guy under the closing credits solely so you can see JUST HOW GOOD Bale is. That turns me off. Hawkes, meanwhile, is understated, and pulls a Day-Lewis making a quiet character insanely menacing. He should win.

Supporting Actress:
Will: Hailee Steinfeld, TRUE GRIT / Should (tie): Jacki Weaver ANIMAL KINGDOM & Melissa Leo THE FIGHTER
This one I'm up in the air about, Steinfeld is great and this is a category proven to reward the young. But her performance is very Coen-y, I'm not sure there's as much there as it seems. Meanwhile, Weaver, like Hawkes, drove a fantastic performance but I think the film is too small, and Leo may be the first person to actually lose an award based on the weird "For Your Consideration" ads she placed herself without the studio's support- which were, admittedly, weird.

Best Original Script:
Will: KING'S SPEECH / Should: THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT
Academy goes old here, no doubt in my mind.

Best Adapted Script:
Will and Should: SOCIAL NETWORK
I think Sorkin has love that Fincher does not, and that's enough to get the award in the right hands here.

Best Animated:
Will and Should: TOY STORY 3
This should've been awful, and wound up the best in the series. And of they ear.

Best Doc:
Will: INSIDE JOB / Should: (tie) EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP and WASTE LAND
There's nothing to INSIDE JOB for me- it's a standard doc, gets you angry, but ultimately a bit forgettable. Neither GIFT SHOP nor WASTE LAND are, though for different reasons. I suspect the "is it a doc" is enough to kill EXIT, although I think WASTE LAND really has momentum right now and I do think it's the best film of the five- it could sneak up and steal.

Best Foreign:
Will: INCENDIES / Should: DOGTOOTH
No more need be said. If DOGTOOTH wins I will eat my hat.

Best Score:
Will/Should: SOCIAL NETWORK
A huge part of the tonal success of SOCIAL NETWORK is the subdued, dark, and oddly sorrowful music of Reznor and Ross. It should win. INCEPTION's best moments come direct from THIN RED LINE's score (same guy), and KING'S SPEECH is so utterly forgettable musically that it may win for the sole virtue of being unobtrusive.

Editing;
Will/Should: SOCIAL NETWORK
Perfectly constructed, nothing was better this year editing-wise.

Cinematography:
Will: Deakins, TRUE GRIT / Should: Cronenweth, SOCIAL NETWORK
The Academy loves rewarding "look" films, and the dusty, though done before, look of TRUE GRIT and their Deakins love should carry this over the cool, crisp SOCIAL NETWORK look that is subtle and perfect, but not flashy.

I don't pretend to know enough about the other categories to make a guess, though I can see art direction going for King's Speech (even if a lot of the look was proven to previously exist as a gay porn set this week), and Costume going for True Grit or King's Speech.

Let's see if I'm right...

John Sayles and kung-fu, and why...

2011-02-10T11:28:00.004-05:00

If you haven't heard (and we've been a bit breathless about it on Twitter, for good reason), Variance is partnering with Anarchist's Convention, the production company of John Sayles and Maggie Renzi, to release John Sayles' AMIGO this August.

To say we're excited is an understatement. John Sayles is one of our absolute favorites (LONE STAR, MATEWAN, and SUNSHINE STATE in particular stand out), and the film plays perfectly to a lot of our strengths- the two audiences we have the most experience reaching are art house audiences seeking quality films, and Asian American audiences in theaters in their home communities, and this film hits them both.

I was doing an interview for a podcast yesterday, and was asked "what kinds of films do you prefer for your slate?", a question to which, in looking it over, I don't have an answer to.

We do music documentaries about fringe genres and figures.
We do low-budget black and white indie musicals.
We do documentaries about education.
We do films by name directors.
We do kung-fu movies.
We do Vietnamese romantic comedies.
We do wacky comedies.

And, we've got five more films in the pipes that we haven't announced yet.

What do they have in common? After a lot of looking, I'd say the following:

-They're good, entertaining, sometimes thought-provoking, and well-made films that belong in a theater.
-They're films that have at least one distinct audience that we can start the ball rolling with- the audience isn't "everyone".
-They have involved and intelligent filmmakers/producers attached that are willing to work to get them to succeed.
-They have producers that understand that "wait and see what happens" isn't the right plan, and a VOD/DVD plan has to be in place before we go.
-We enjoyed watching the film, and expect to enjoy working on it for the next 4-9 months.

That's not a lot to work from if you're trying to figure out "is this for Variance or not", but that's what these films have in common. There's really no genre/type of film we're either looking for or not (though I cringe every time someone tells me they've made a $2 million indie thriller with a b minus cast of 90s action stars).

So, um, bring it.

A new film we're quite excited about...

2011-01-23T18:31:00.004-05:00

Hey everyone,

Taking time out of a busy Sundance to share the good news. Variance announced today that we're going to be releasing the most magnificent documentary about the legendary comedian Bill Hicks, AMERICAN: THE BILL HICKS STORY, to theaters in the US starting April 8th, 2011. And we're going to do this one a little differently... for the first time in Variance's history, we're going to release the film simultaneously on VOD across the country on April 8th.

"Now Variance," you ask, "won't that kill any chance in theaters?" And our answer is- no, we don't think so. We're going to have some amazing in theater events and giveaways, things you won't get at home. And this is a comedy film- there's nothing like seeing this with a big audience. However, the reality is that Bill has a lot of fans all across the country- and even the film does well and plays 50 cities, that leaves thousands and thousands of people out of the loop. We want to spread the gospel of Hicks, so we've partnered up with the fine folks at Gravitas to ensure that ANYONE in the US that wants to see this film gets the chance.

And why would you want to see it?

Because Bill Hicks is funny as all hell. Here's a little taste to whet the appetite- but rest assured, we've got more in store for you.

Let's go to Sundance...

2011-01-20T01:27:00.002-05:00

...give me a shout if you're there and around, we'll be there for a bit.

Party like it's 1996.

2011-01-18T00:09:00.003-05:00

It's become a new indie film rite of passage to beat up on Harvey Weinstein, but there two facts that need to be addressed before you do:

#1- Many of us can directly trace our place in the indie film world to something Harvey did, be it a film release, style of marketing, or even a first job.

and

#2- You may chuckle when he buys a stake in Halston, but dude still has it.

To wit:

Look at THE KING'S SPEECH. Platformed before BLACK SWAN, he resisted the easy Christmas cash and didn't rush to expand, taking things nice and slow and keeping the screen count below 700 until just this last weekend. The results? BLACK SWAN may have burnt a great chunk of its buzz off, and KING'S SPEECH is just getting started, headed right into awards season.

KING'S SPEECH is going to gross $11 million for the 4-day holiday weekend on roughly 1,500 screens, and has grossed $44 million to date. BLACK SWAN, while performing admirably, grossed only $6 million over its first weekend on 1,500 screens, and $9 million the week after. It also expanded this weekend, from 1,600 to 2,400 screens, and will come in under KING'S SPEECH (in 1,500) at $10.3 million. And that's before the Golden Globe bump for Colin Firth.

KING'S SPEECH is headed, quickly, for $100 million if awards play like they ought to. Laugh at Harvey all you want, but when he gets his hands on the type of film that Miramax would've released in the 1990s, you can't stop him. And KING'S SPEECH has all the hallmarks of a 90's Miramax release, make no mistake- down to the not having a good poster until two weeks into the run.

Don't fuck with the king.

How to go to the movies (or, "don't be an asshole").

2011-01-15T21:43:00.005-05:00

As a frequent moviegoer, as well as someone who worked nine years in the exhibition business, I have come to the conclusion that approximately 75% of people do not, in fact, know how to go to the movies. This is not a unique situation to any specific geographic region- people don't know how to go to the movies in NYC, and people don't know to go to the movies in Florida.

So, I thought it might be helpful to write out a bit of a one-pager on how to go to the movies. Of course, YOU know how to go to the movies, but since 75% of people seem to not, perhaps you should feel free to share it with your friends and family.

Rule #1: Don't be an asshole.
Really, you could just stop reading here. It's simple- think about whether what you're about to do would irritate you if someone else did it. If you realize the answer is yes, and do it anyway, then you're being an asshole. This is actually a good rule for your entire life, but far be it from me to tell you how to order your coffee, get on the subway, or drive your SUV (but I do suggest not being an asshole).

Rule #2: You are not special, wait in the line.
Are you early? Is there a line to get seats? Maybe there's a line at the popcorn stand? Wait in it. Don't leap from the back of the line if someone opens a new register, don't linger by the side of the auditorium door waiting to jump in front of others when they open. No matter who you are, no matter what your station in life, you were there after the people waiting before you, and whatever it is they are waiting to do, you should be doing it after them (see rule #1).

Rule #3: If you don't like other people, go to the early show.
The first show of the day is unique, in that the audience is composed almost entirely of misanthropes, cynics, Republicans, and genuine bastards. Why are they all here at this same hour, in the same place? Because they've realized this is the only way they can be entertained outside the home without having to interact with anyone else. If you're going to growl and snap at everyone, just go early so you don't have to deal with them.

Rule #3b: Don't be creepy (and don't mess with the misanthropes).
There is something very unsettling about someone who walks into a theater that's got five people in it and proceeds to sitnext to one of them. Unless you're trying to steal my jacket, or it's a porno theater in the seventies, that makes no sense. Don't be creepy, sit by yourself.

This particularly goes for the early shows- the previously mentioned misanthropes and cynics were good enough to confine themselves to a single showtime, don't show up and pee in the pool.

Rule #3c: Know your audience.
Are you desperately excited to experience the latest masterpiece by your favorite art film director in complete and total rapture and silence? Perhaps the 1:30am show in Times Square isn't place for that, eh?

Rule #4: Be a big boy or girl and go before the movie starts.
Come on gang, you knew this when you were five and it was time to go on a car ride. It takes people out of the movie when you step on their toes or knock their seat, so if you can't hold it for ninety minutes, you should probably go to the doctor (note- this rule is waived for James Cameron and Peter Jackson films, or theaters that serve beer).

Rule #4b: If you do get up to go, you're going miss some of the movie.
Back in the day, theaters would pipe audio from the film into the bathrooms, so you didn't have to miss a bit of the action. But guess what- now, theaters have 24 movies showing and four bathrooms, so that's gone the way of dude putting jackets down so ladies didn't step in puddles and challenging people to duels and shit.

And don't come back in and ask "what'd I miss" (see rule #1 and rule #6). I'll tell you now- you missed about six minutes of the movie, and unless you're dating a critic, your bf/gf is probably going to screw up the explanation anyway. Just give it a minute, you'll catch up.

Rule #5: The showtime is printed on your ticket, odds are that's when the movie starts.
If it says 7:35 on the internet, the sign outside, your ticket stub, and the door you're walking into, don't show up at 7:50 thinking the universe saved the middle seat in the middle row just for you. It didn't, and right now we're trying to watch the movie, so walking the aisles and braying out "is that seat taken?" falls under rule #1. Walk in, find the best seat you can sit in without making people get up, and vow to be on time next time.

Now- do you see two empty seats on each side of a couple, and want to sit there? If the movie hasn't started or the trailers are playing, go for it (and do say "please", noting rule #1). But if the movie has started- sorry, not this time. Sit in the front, relax, and vow to be on time next time.

Rule #5b: Your jacket isn't a person.
If the theater's half empty, pile all your stuff on the seat next to you with full impunity. But if it starts filling up (not when there are no other seats left), don't wait for someone to ask you, put your jacket in your lap (see rule #1). That's good karma.

Rule #6: Sit down and shut up.
There is nothing you have to say that is so important it can't wait another hour. There is no reason you can't IMDb that guy from that show you like once the movie is over. Yes, Winona Ryder is looking older, no need to point it out. No matter how quiet you think you are whispering we can still hear you. Just. Be. Quiet.

Rule #7: Your cell phone screen is like shining a flashlight in my eyes.
You know how you use your iPhone as a flashlight when you're looking for that little plug right before bedtime? That's because it's a little flashlight, so don't turn it on in a movie theater (see rule #1), it's bright as shit (and yes, everyone behind you can see it).

Rule #8: Chewing ice is bad for your teeth.
Seriously, ask your dentist about it. Murders your enamel. It's annoying as shit, too, so please don't.

Rule #9: Take your garbage with you.
Q: If one half of a sold-out 300 seat theater leaves their 44 ounce large cokes behind in the armrest, and each cup holds 1/3 of the 44 ounces that it originally held, how much Coca-Cola is going to be dragged from row to row in a leaky plastic bag by the disinterested usher that has to clean it up?

A: 2,200 ounces. Or, 17 gallons. Or, now you know why the floor is sticky.

Rule #10: Don't spoil the movie for the people outside.
If you HAVE to discuss the ending wait three minutes so you don't have to do so right in front of the people waiting in the front of the line to see the next show (by nature, those are people who wanted to see the movie the most, hence their being early and at the front of the line).

See? Those ten rules, typed out over the last half-hour, could really have just been boiled down to rule #1- don't be an asshole.

The silence of the Sundance films.

2011-01-13T13:05:00.003-05:00

I'm going out to Sundance next week. It's partially against my better judgment... I'm not sure Sundance is the right place for Variance, nor a particularly good use of my time. To wit:

So far this year, knowing that Variance is selective about the films we take on and the pace at which we take them, we generally book the films we're going to work on about five to six months in advance.

So far this year, I have received six phone calls from potential SXSW films, even though they haven't been accepted yet.
So far this year, I have received two phone calls from Berlin films.
So far this year, I have not received a single phone call from someone with a Sundance film, nor responses to the three emails I've sent for films I've seen in the lineup and am curious about their status (I generally don't email films with sales agents pre-festival, as they have sales agents working on commission that want to sell the film).

What does this say? To me, admittedly reading perhaps too much into it, it tells me that Sundance is one of the last holdouts of the great magical hope that someone is going to swoop in and buy your film with a deal that makes sense. This does happen- but very, very rarely.

I am not suggesting (at least for most people) that you set up your distribution before Sundance and plan to go out right after to capitalize on the heat from the festival expsoure. God knows that would *NEVER work. But it wouldn't hurt to consider the option, lest you wind up another film that takes two or three years from your festival debut to finally pop into theaters. That's not a good thing.

SXSW remains my indie film version of Cannes. Sundance seems like a great place to see my friends and meet some good, new people, but I'm not positive how productive going there is going to be.

*That's sarcasm. See EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP.

Mangled marketing campaigns for Christmas.

2010-12-27T13:36:00.002-05:00

I'm consistently struck by how well-oiled the studio marketing machines are. Not that they're always terribly creative, but they have a knack for mass-selling, you must admit. I had a dinner with the folks who did the creative materials for PAUL BLART, MALL COP the night before opening. Their words- "look, we know the film is a piece of shit. Our job is to convince people to go see that piece of shit." And indeed they did.

Which is why it's always worth a look when something goes off the rails a little bit. We all make mistakes, but when something seems so blatantly odd it's worth a watch. I think there are two great recent examples, and one in the making, of marketing campaigns that have been completely mangled in every possible way, and wanted to share.

HOW DO YOU KNOW?
WHAT IT IS:This is a $120 million comedy (yikes). Most of that money went to pay the cast, which is admittedly top-notch. James Brooks, who can certainly make a comedy, directs. I'm sure the film was green-lit for a reason, that's not my place to question.

WHAT FOLKS DID: Once you know you've spent $120 million on something, why you don't bother marketing it until 20 days before it opens is beyond me. Or why you would cut a trailer that doesn't seem to give any indication of the plot, the relationship between characters, or the tone of the film. HOW DO YOU KNOW what this film is about? HOW DO YOU KNOW this film exists if the trailer shows up three weeks before the release?

MY GUESS: I haven't seen the film, but it's got to be one of two things- either it's so dour and awful that the studio wanted to cut its losses and just sort of toss it out there, or everyone accidentally went on vacation at one time and thought someone else was pulling the trigger on the marketing campaign ("oh no, we forgot about the Brooks film!").

127 HOURS
WHAT IT IS: A very good Danny Boyle film that's intense as all hell.

WHAT FOLKS DID: They opened the film in big cities, quite well, by letting people know how INTENSE it was. Stories fed to Nikki about people passing out repeatedly during screenings. Real-life stoppings of the show to get medical personnel into the theater. But oops- when it came time to expand, it turned out that over the Thanksgiving holiday, not everyone wanted to load up the family and go see a movie that would make people pass out in the theater. The film didn't expand terribly well, and Oscar chances were diminished a bit.

MY GUESS: This is actually a case of Fox Searchlight being too good at what they do. These guys know what they're doing, and they did all the right things to open the film. Problem is what a NYC/LA/top 10 market audience wants to see, and what a more suburban audience wants to see, doesn't exactly sync up, and they didn't leave themselves much room. But again, Fox Searchlight is smart, so now they're backtracking a bit with the "I kept my eyes open for 127 Hours" campaign, and a very amusing Funny or Die video in which James Franco's grandmother calls people who won't see the film "a bunch of pussies". Heh.

and, for my questionable strategy in the making (though they may prove themselves right)...

COUNTRY STRONG
WHAT IT IS: What seems to be a film tailor-made for a midwest/southern audience to load up the family on Christmas afternoon and shlep to the theater to see.

WHAT FOLKS DID: Got Gwyneth singing on the CMAs, and doing a great job of it, therefore getting a gob of national press for her and the film- and then everything went silent for two weeks, before undertaking what is the oddest platform release I've seen to date- two screens, one at the Arclight in Hollywood, one at a Carmike multiplex in Franklin, TN (15 miles south of Nashville). It opened fairly, but not spectacularly (losing to a few films, including the third week of NARNIA, in Franklin, and grossing about 1/4 as much as the 5th week of THE KING'S SPEECH at Arclight).

MY GUESS: It's probably a strategy to avoid having to fight for space on Christmas (specifically, avoiding TRUE GRIT) while satisfying Academy rules for music and Gwyneth. But I'm having a hard time seeing what competition this film would have. As far as straight, family-friendly drama films, if Southern Grandma is taking the family out for a movie and isn't looking for "retribution", and/or was turned off by the sex and poop jokes of the last FOCKERS movie (or maybe she just has taste), COUNTRY STRONG seems like the next logical choice in about 45% of the country. They may prove me wrong by opening to $25 million on 1/7, but I think they could've pulled a great gross last weekend, and hope they didn't leave it on the table.

Top ten list time!

2010-12-12T12:22:00.004-05:00

Because I have been absolutely swamped, I'm going to have to hold off on my annual-ish top ten films list until I see about 8 more films in the next few weeks (thank you holidays!), but music, now that we can do.

TOP TEN ALBUMS OF 2010 (which is a little challenging, as I've spent most of the year in a 1960s-1970s soul mode)
in no order:

Kanye West - My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy:
Kanye embraces his inner asshole, and it would put me off, if the songs weren't so out-of-control and stop-to-watch-the-car-accident briliant.

Robyn - Body Talk:
Not my kind of music. But too brilliant to ignore.

Corin Tucker Band - 1,000 Years:
It's as far from Sleater-Kinney as one can get, but still forceful and genius.

Das Racist - Sit Down, Man:
Some of the best rap music being recorded would be from the guys that made that irritating "Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell" song.

Deerhunter - Halcyon Digest:
There's no way around it, Bradford Cox is easily the most talent person working in music today. Continuing the accessibility of 2008's Microcastle/Weird Era Cont. without bowing to convention, this is the most listenable album of 2010 from start to finish.

How To Dress Well - Love Remains:
It's a bizarre lo-fi soul record, and the fact that it works perfectly is mind-blowing.

ceo - White Magic:
Tonally, it's spot on, and you don't get weary of hearing what's next.

Arcade Fire - The Suburbs:
Used to think these guys were the reincarnation of Big Star. Now I think they're the reincarnation of 1970s/80s Bruce Springsteen.

Joanna Newsom - Have One On Me:
This 3-disc set should be a mess and filled with filler and wankery. It's not.

Twin Shadow - Forget:
The 80s new wave synth inspiration trend is already exhausting, but these guys pull it off so well that you can't lump this in with the rest of the Brooklyn hipsters.

HONORABLE MENTION:
The Magnetic Fields - Realism:
We're not being biased just because we released a film about them. We're being biased because they're one of our favorite bands recording today, and Realism is their best album in a long time.

Big Boi - Sir Lucious Leftfoot... Son of Chico Dusty:
A little heavy on the old rap themes, but some of the songs (Shutterbug, Fo Yo Sorrows, Hustle Blood, Tangerine) are exciting moves forward, and proves that Outkast is a duo of equals, not just the Hey Ya, It's The Andre 3000 Show!

Girl Talk - All Day:
It's the same thing as the last two, but the last two are worth going back to whenever it's time to start the party, and I suspect this one is no different.

THE WEEZER 'WORST ALBUM OF THE YEAR AWARD'
Weezer - Hurley. We're renaming this for Weezer, because as long as they're going to put out an album a year, they're probably going to win this. I continue to be horrified by what comes out of Weezer's recording sessions.

Blurays I want for Christmas that don't exist.

2010-12-07T14:22:00.002-05:00

If you have a half-decent television, the picture that Bluray gives you is beyond comparison. It's as close to theatrical as we're going to get, particularly on classic films. They've been a bit slow, however, to get to the catalog titles, and a lot of this is due to the strange landscape of rights ownership (witness- the absence of nearly the entire Miramax library), but we're hoping people perk up and pay some attention to the increasing sales and give us what we want. Which is:

2046 and IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE - both of these are crying, loudly, for Criterion versions on Bluray. Chungking Express and Fallen Angeles are already out- and they are both revelatory (Chungking Express' Bluray picture was what spurred me to get a big screen TV and a bluray player). These are two of the most beautifully shot films in recent memory, and I look forward to both searing my retinas.

CITY OF LOST CHILDREN and AMELIE - Amelie appears to be a victim of the Miramax rights shuffle, which will hopefully be coming to a close now that a deal has been sealed. City of Lost Children has never had a good DVD version, we've been forced to make due with Sony's non- 16x9 and no 5.1 audio transfer. Now's the perfect time for someone to step in and fix this.

CITIZEN KANE - The DVD remaster was gorgeous, if a little crazed with removing ALL of the grain. Reportedly, this is being remastered by Warner for a 2011 release. Fingers are crossed.

A CORRECT VERSION OF THE FIRST TWO STAR WARS MOVIES- There's no reason that the original films can't be remastered and the sound spruced up without redoing the entire thing. I bought a DVD player almost 14 years ago so I could have Star Wars in 5.1 surround sound- only to find out this didn't exist (oops). Let's fix it.

THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS and RUSHMORE- Disney's deal with Criterion has expired, so Criterion versions of these two (plus Life Aquatic and, ahem, Armageddon and The Rock) are not likely forthcoming. But that's fine- let's get a bare bones Tenenbaums out there.

A decent remastering of HERO and HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS- Both of these are available on bluray, but both are flawed. HERO is missing the original Chinese soundtrack in lossless audio (which admittedly isn't a big deal for many), and HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS has one of the worst bluray transfers I've seen (which is a big deal, and even with a crappy TV you will be able to tell), which is unacceptable on a film that's so visually audacious. Neither are worth a purchase, which is why you see them on sale for $9.99. Vote with your wallet, and wait until they do the right thing here.

Notice what's not on here?

Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown. These aren't out on US bluray yet, but it doesn't matter- because it turns out for around $25 (including shipping) a piece, you can import region-free versions of both films on bluray from the Netherlands/Denmark that work just fine on your US bluray player, have subtitles that turn off, and have gorgeous sound and picture.

Note- there are several versions out there, not all have great picture. For ease:
Order Pulp Fiction from: dvdoo.dk
and
Order Jackie Brown from: freerecordshop.nl
and

VOILA.

Much is afoot, and we're still being quiet. But...

2010-11-15T16:01:00.002-05:00

we thought we'd share a few one liners that have been on our minds.

•We love that people are looking actively to break the rules. Windows are flexible, release patterns no longer all look the same, event-izing the theatrical has become a rule rather than an exception. Please keep it going.

•We like Ed Burns, but it's a little dangerous for you as a filmmaker to try and copy his model. When you get one of the leads in a Spielberg film, or can have your publicist book you on the Today Show without an issue, then you can go forth as Burns has.

•I'd like to see filmmakers backing each other up a little bit more. Had two emails saying "would love to help, but my film drops in six weeks and need to keep my head clear". Share the wealth, and so will we (we'll do it anyway). Same team! Which reminds me...

•...while it's not without a few minor flaws, TINY FURNITURE is a quite enjoyable film and when we've met Lena she's seemed quite fun. Go see it (assuming you've already seen GUY AND MADELINE, if not, either do that first or blow it up with a DOUBLE FEATURE).

•Don't forget that "indie film" isn't an all-encompassing term. If you consider 127 HOURS an indie film the same way you consider LOREN CASS an indie film, you're making a mistake. Both are independently done, but both are not "indie film" in any similar way. Though both are, in fact, quite good.

Onwards!

We've been busy...

2010-10-30T00:30:00.000-04:00

...and hopefully, you subscribe to our mailing list already, so we don't have to bore you with the gory details. You can subscribe on the front page of the Variance Films site, we're not spammy at all and we're doing good things. For example: we're giving away tickets to Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, inviting you to a great party tomorrow, and of course, talking about the films we're working on.

So we've been quiet, but that's because we've been quite busy cooking good things up for you.

STRANGE POWERS: STEPHIN MERRITT AND THE MAGNETIC FIELDS debuted on Wednesday at Film Forum, to a lovely sell-out crowd full of very attractive people. You will want to see this one in the theater, particularly if you're single, as it's a wonderful place to meet your soul-mate. Or not.

We also had a lovely event at Other Music (if you're a New Yorker who likes music, you know where it is). There's an exhibit of photographers and various artifacts from the band's history displayed (and buy-able), we suggest you go. We had a blast- Stephin guest DJed and played insane amounts of bubblegum pop. We bought CDs, too:

-a compilation of the complete recordings from British freakbeat/psychedelia band The Creation called "OUr N
-an absolutely phenomenal (I mean "holy shit this is good") compilation of "Golden State Funk: Impossibly Rare Funk From The Bay Area
-the original soundtrack to 1972's Black Girl
-the new album from the Corin Tucker band, which doesn't sound like you'd expect (but we quite like what it sounds like)

and

GUY AND MADELINE ON A PARK BENCH debuts next Friday... we hope you're ready for it. It's an amazing achievement, and I hope people take the time to come out. It's a crowded weekend and we don't have money, but the film is so damn GOOD that I can't imagine it's not going to find an audience. You should subscribe to our Facebook page (click on that F up top), as we're going to have some amazing free parties to celebrate the film, you'll want to attend- they will not be your average party.

So that's why we're so quiet around here. We'll be back in no time, but I am often saying there are a lot of people talking and not enough doing, and right now, we're doing. Come join the party- it's a good time.

Netflix streaming reaching critical mass...

2010-10-19T01:47:00.002-04:00

...with the recent addition of an Apple TV to my living room lineup, I now have four devices connected to my television that come with Netflix streaming access. My Apple TV, my Wii, my PS3, and my television itself all have it built in.

As of today, the PS3 takes the cake, as an update made available today (go to the "What's New" section in your opening menu) gives it a real upgrade, featuring 1080p video (on most "HD" titles- it looks substantially better than the old "HD", though nowhere near bluray quality) and Dolby Digital 5.1 sound (only on the newest titles, though I'm sure more will pop in ). And best of all, you no longer need that special disc to make it happen- it's right in your menu.

There's only two things lacking at this point- it's still very difficult to find something to watch if it's not in your queue and/or you don't know exactly what it is you want, and, video quality varies wildly from title to title. The HD titles look great, but the Starz Play titles, of which many new releases are, look absolutely terrible, often bordering on completely unwatchable.

The studios, at this point, are never going to allow Netflix to become to video what Apple iTunes is to music- someplace where you know you can find EVERYTHING whenever you want it- but it's impossible to argue that you can't find something worth watching. Films are hit or miss- either they are there or they aren't, and there's no way to find out except for looking- but TV seasons and kid's programming seems to be top notch, with full seasons of recent shows easy to find.

Netflix has really come into its own of late, and I'm very interested to see where it goes.

Technology- less impressive than ever.

2010-10-11T23:11:00.002-04:00

There's a headline on my RSS feed of the BBC news right now:

"How XXX recorded her debut album in her bathroom"

Well, er, my guess is she got a mic, hauled her laptop in there, and went to town.

In 1996 that would've impressed me- these days, I'd guess about 1/3 of the bands I listen to recorded and mixed their albums on a laptop in their apartment.

Moral of the story, dear filmmakers- the process story is a non-starter. Nobody cares if you shot your film on a Red, a Canon 5D, an iPhone, or a Instamatic, they care if your film is good. Don't get caught up in the hype.

YouTube takedowns?

2010-09-27T11:43:00.003-04:00

So, part of the joy of releasing martial arts films is the fan excitement that comes with them. Since we announced Ip Man 1 and 2 were going to be released to theaters, we've gotten some amazing notices from fans who are excited as all hell.

We have also, unfortunately, seen about a billion and a half unauthorized "clips" posted on YouTube and such.

Now- we're realistic people, and we understand that normally, great Asian films don't ever come over here, so nobody generally cares. So we're not just pulling everything that gets posted down. But since we're getting some spikes in traffic from YouTube, I figure that a good portion of that is from people whose clips we did pull, checking to see just what is happening. So here we are:

WHAT WE'RE NOT PULLING
-If you've posted a 2-3 minute clip of the movie, that's fine by us (with two notes below).
-Fan-made ANYTHING- if you like the films enough to take the time to cut your own trailer, or dub in a great song (or even a not-so-great one, too each their own), then that's awesome and we're not only going to let it slide, we're going to Tweet and flag the best ones.

WHAT WE ARE PULLING
-If you've posted a ten minute clip of the movie, that's a bit over the top.
-If you've posted the finale of the film, or an entire fight scene- that's a bit spoiler-ific, let's save that for the theaters.
-If you've posted the entire film in multiple parts- duh.
-If you've posted the entire film in multiple parts and listed "Studio: Variance Films" in the description, then you're a moron.

If we did pull your clip- please note that's all we're doing. We're not suing anyone who posted the whole film (that's moronic and draconian and not something we're ever going to take part in), we're not asking for anyone's account to be cancelled. We're chalking it up to people assuming the films were never going to get released, and posting it because they want to show it to other people. HOWEVER- if we did pull clips from your account, please don't repost them- we don't know what we pulled from who, and if we find it again and flag it, YouTube may cancel your account on its own accord for repeated violations (and in certain cases block your IP address from getting a new one). We're not asking them to do this, but that's their policy. Easily avoided, though.

Anyway- hope this puts your mind at ease. We are not waiting outside your house in a black sedan, nor will we be filing any sort of silly lawsuits. We do hope you come see the film in theaters, though...

17 albums that will stick with you...

2010-09-18T23:07:00.001-04:00

Sitting in front of the computer waiting for a trailer to render for a musical we're releasing next month. So, let's talk about music...

Saw someone on Facebook post their "17 albums that have stuck with them forever". What are yours?

Mine:
1. Funkentelechy Vs. The Placebo Syndrome - PARLIAMENT
2. OK Computer - RADIOHEAD
3. Live at the Harlem Square Club 1967 - SAM COOKE
4. Person Pitch- PANDA BEAR
5. In The Aeroplane Over The Sea- NEUTRAL MILK HOTEL
6. 69 Love Songs - THE MAGNETIC FIELDS
7. Pet Sounds - THE BEACH BOYS
8. Kid A - RADIOHEAD
9. Velvet Underground and Nico - VELVET UNDERGROUND
10. Innervisions - STEVIE WONDER
11. The White Album - THE BEATLES
12. Pinkerton - WEEZER
13. Exile in Guyville - LIZ PHAIR
14. Dig Me Out- SLEATER-KINNEY
15. Doggystyle - SNOOP DOGG
16. Life Is Full Of Possibilities - DNTEL
17. Out Like a Lamb - DOLEFUL LIONS

Let's talk about marketing.

2010-09-17T12:43:00.001-04:00

Good news, for those of you inclined to want to see me curse on the internet (I'll try to keep it PG, but I find that the word "fuck", used sparing and artfully, is like a beautiful bon mot of punctuation you can use without pausing a sentence)... I'm doing a panel for IFP Filmmaker's Conference this Monday at noon EST, and it will be streaming via Ustream (which theoretically will be below)

If that doesn't work, visit the official page here.

It's myself, the all wise Tom Quinn of Magnolia, and Cory McAbee, the director of the excellent THE AMERICAN ASTRONAUT and STINGRAY SAM, which I'm dying to see. Liz from Crowdstarter will moderate the proceedings. It should be a good time, from what I can tell, everyone involved shares a digust for bullshit panels that don't accomplish anything.

Afterwards, I'll be around on Twitter at @variancefilms if you want to ask questions or heckle me.

Rental car stereos and the flaw in the plan

2010-09-13T01:49:00.003-04:00

I was out of town last week, which is not an unusual thing to do. For my driving amusement, the rental car place was out of anything interesting, so I picked up a Ford Focus for the week. A car that basically defines average in every sense of the word, it was clearly a rental car fleet model- no cruise control, buzzy noise in the front, and the base model stereo.

I am a fan of loud music while driving. I raised the ire of a previous girlfriend when, during an ill-fated and brief move out of NYC (which lasted only about six months- I came right back, she did not, no more need be said), the first thing I did upon purchasing an absolutely ridiculous automobile was install $1,500 worth of speakers and amps so music could be blasted to my liking.

Anyway- the point is that I have been rather addicted to the new Arcade Fire album, which has brought me back to the world of more mainstream music after a long stretch of abandoning it in favor of old Sam Cooke and Animal Collective albums, and so I loaded it up on the iPod (in lossless format- which most bands sell on their websites, and I strongly suggest you transition to immediately so you don't have to replace your entire collection in about 3 years) and hit play. And what came out of the speakers stunned me.

It was an absolute mess.

Even at a reasonable volume, it bordered on completely unlistenable. The nuance and the layered and expertly mixed sounds that caused me to fall in love with the album on my headphones in the first place were totally absent, replaced only by what can best be described as a muddy, dull tone that made the album sound like it was mastered outside in the rain. All dynamic range (the difference between loud and soft sounds) was completely flattened, so you could barely hear the vocals. The stabbing guitars and drum hits were blunted into weak burbles of sound.

If I'd been unfamiliar with the band, and someone had played this for me, I have to say the album wouldn't have registered for me, at least not nearly to the degree it did on an iPod with a basic $50 pair of headphones.

The reason we're talking about this on the Variance Films blog, aside from the fact that I'm the boss and could post nothing but nudie pictures and rap lyrics from 1995 if I got bored, is that this makes me wonder what happens when someone sees a film for the first time in a less than optimal circumstance. I'm not suggesting that everyone simply must run out and install a bluray system with $250 gold-plated cables and such. DVD on a moderately sized television looks pretty good, with a cheap surround system it's even better, and bluray on all but the cheapest flat screen is quite phenomenal.

But I bring this up because last night, I tried to watch a recent film on Netflix streaming. I am glad that this exists, and the HD films look pretty decent. But this was not available in HD, this was regular def, and it was a film known for its cinematography and visual compositions. It looked like a Youtube video from two years ago.

I stopped watching and put the bluray of the film at the top of my queue. There were other films that intrigued me, and I moved on to them. But I have to wonder- if I hadn't seen the film before, and this was how it was presented to me, would I have gotten out of it anything near to what audiences did when they sat in theaters 20 years ago? Not even close. Was it fine for a rewatch? Not really, but it could've worked had I been less anal about things. There's a lesson here.

Technology constantly evolves, and it will get better, probably quickly. But for filmmakers planning their ancillary rights, just saying "we'll put it on Netflix streaming" isn't something that's going to engender a connection to your work.

Look at what the filmmakers for UNTIL THE LIGHT TAKES US have done. Knowing that the film has found an audience, they didn't just stream the film and call it a day, nor did they just release a bare bones DVD. They're releasing a collector's edition bluray and DVD with enough WELL-THOUGHT OUT extras to make it seriously worth someone's while to purchase a copy. Not laden with EPKs and boring behind-the-scenes puff pieces, they've expanded the film with what they've added. Interviews chopped for the film are shown separately in extended form, bands and scenes that didn't make the cut are presented for the audience to enjoy, and there's even essentially an extra film edited together from scenes not put in the film. If I'd seen the film once in theaters, this would be enough to spur me to not just stream it when I wanted to re-watch, but to plunk down my $25 for a Bluray knowing full well that I was getting something that someone had put effort into.

So, the second moral of the story- put the effort into what you're doing. Plan for it while you're shooting and editing. Don't just rely on people saying "oh, I'd see that again" and buying a copy, because they won't- they'll stream it and be done, and you won't make anything off of it. There's absolutely nothing wrong with making your film available on Netflix, quite the opposite, I think it's mandatory, but go the extra mile and for your DVD/home entertainment release, do something special so the people inclined to purchase won't able to skip it, and when they do the equivalent of hearing it over the speakers of a bruised and battered Ford Focus, they'll be intrigued enough to get a real copy to put on their shelves.

The UNTIL THE LIGHT TAKES US Bluray comes out 10/19. You can pre-order now on Amazon.

Revisiting Avatar:

2010-08-31T21:20:00.002-04:00

Why did the rerelease not make any money? Because Americans had their AVATAR walk of shame moment when they rushed out to buy the DVD/Bluray, put it in when they got home, and went "ooooooh... damn." Knowing now exactly what it was they had rushed to sleep with back in December, when they bumped into again at the bar, they weren't about to make the same mistake twice.

AVATAR is very good 3-D wrapped up in a not very good movie that is long, preachy, indescribably odd, and packed with enough voiceover that you can watch it with the picture off and know everything that's happening and more. And besides, we're FINALLY getting to the point where there's something to watch at the movies, even in the middle of nowhere.

THE AMERICAN is on 2,700 screens this week. I suggest your partake. Vote with your $$!

X, Y, or Z people versus XYZ people, and why you want the latter.

2010-08-27T00:35:00.006-04:00

I am not sure how I came upon this article, but it sums up quite neatly the problem with a lot of film distribution companies today, especially those that do a lot of consulting for DIY/DIWO releases. Read and heed- it's buyer beware out there.

The whole article is solid reading (and short), but choice excerpts are below (with some snips to cut out irrelevancy to our discussion here). Stick with me for a bit if you will, there's a point at the end here.

Recently I interviewed a candidate for a position as a user experience director. His resume was impressive. He had 15 years experience in the industry, worked on a range of large projects [snip]. I was excited to see his work so I asked him to present something he was proud of. He thought for a while and fumbled around to find a file. Then he shared a strategy presentation for a financial company—that read like a Mad Lib.

The personas made me think of an Olive Garden commercial. The big insights were generic and could have been applied to any project. The rest of his portfolio showcased a few interesting features and design patterns, one or two small innovations. His work was “best practice” as far as usability, but for experience design it was predictable and safe.

They go on to describe exactly what's wrong with traditional distribution, and quite well...

In an assembly line process, ~~agencies~~(ed: film distributors) divide specialties by silos. They define roles for departments and a project moves from one group to another. Each department puts its two cents in and the project moves on to the next step in the recipe. Heavily controlled processes can’t afford debate and collaboration across disciplines. It encourages safe design choices and reduces opportunities to be daring. It can result in the design of similar solutions and patterns over and over again.

This is the way it works, most of the time. X does the acquisitions, then Y does the budget, then Z the release plan, then A the film booking, B the national PR, C the local PR, D the advertising, E the marketing, so on. If you're lucky, F does social media engagement and G does grassroots, though that's still not the case most places. But if not done perfectly, this quickly turns into a rote, creaky, machine, and the widgets (in this case, your films) are churned through it rapidly and without a lot of consideration.

This is a wonderful model for building 700,000 copies of a car. This not a particularly good model for something that is by nature completely unique. Not that it can't work that way, at least most of the time- it's just you need a large team of the best people, a great eye for films, a ton of money, a great release model and a strong sense of what kind of films you want to do.

Now, here's where it gets complex. Because the X then Y then Z model doesn't work unless you do it JUST right, a lot of the indie distributors that did it that way are gone. And all of these X, Y, and Z people are suddenly out of work. So what do you do? Why, you start a DIY consulting company! There's money to be made, no?

Well, not so fast, turbo...

At THINKFilm, my job was a bit unique. On the smaller films (and yes, the traditional service deals I rail against so often as money grabs, with good reason and first-hand experience), I would do X, Y, and Z. I'd budget, plan the release, book the theaters, place the ads, handle the PR, manage billing and vendors, and do collections. I'd be able to use the X guy, Y guy, Z guy as resources, and they were great people who helped a lot- but in the end it was my job on those titles. It was maddening at times (and it's likely I will never forgive Mark Urman for making me release NOISE and THE TRACEY FRAGMENTS on the SAME DAY), but I made it work.

I became, by nature, an XYZ person.

Where this went wrong for a lot of these companies that popped up last year (many already gone) is that you had an X person suddenly attempting to do the XYZ job. But they never dealt with the work that Y or Z did, so balls were inevitably dropped. There have been lawsuits, hurt feelings, ruined films, and generally a bad job done by a lot of these places. It's given what XYZ people (and I'm certainly not so arrogant to suggest I'm the only one out there- folks like Richard Abramowitz and MJ Peckos come to mind instantly as solid XYZ people who know exactly what they're doing, just doing it differently than we do, and that's ok) like myself do a very bad name.

The moral of the story is this- as a filmmaker, you have a great big responsibility to do your homework. You need to get a full plan from someone, specific to your film, before you hand anything over- rights, money, or even just association with your good name. Don't settle for a "broad strokes" document with a sample budget that says "hey man we'll totally release your film to theaters blah blah"- you will regret it.

I'm thinking about this because I had yet another horrific conversation with a filmmaker today whose film is coming out (at least theoretically) in a few weeks, and they're desperately trying to replace their DIWO consultant (someone I've never heard of) because they're incompetent. And much as I hate to say it (and it's a decent film we're talking here), there's absolutely nothing we can do for them- it's too late (it doesn't take four weeks for us to do this correctly, it takes four MONTHS, and we're booked solid for the next six).

Don't get caught like this. Pretend you're picking a college for your kid. You're not going to start two months before the first day, and you're not going to choose something because there's a brochure that says pretty buzzwords repeatedly. This is hard work, this is all-consuming work (as all of you waiting for me to screen your film likely already know), and this isn't a joke. Don't treat it like one, I beg you, because those last-minute phone calls, film festival ~~group therapy sessions~~ panel horror stories, and missed opportunities make us very sad, and we don't like being sad.

One of the more extraordinary things I've read of late.

2010-08-26T15:19:00.003-04:00

For those who don't know Satoshi Kon passed away earlier this week. He's an anime director, with films like PAPRIKA, MILLENIUM ACTRESS, and TOKYO GODFATHERS to his name. I'm not an anime fan by any means, but unlike most of the genre, his films were always strangely watchable to me. You may not get what he's doing, but you can tell you're watching a master at work.

He died young, of pancreatic cancer, which came on unexpectedly and suddenly. He left this letter behind, and I find it be some of the most compelling reading I've done in quite a while. He refers to himself in the third person a bit, and there are some Japanese mores you may not be familiar with (but are handily explained here). But like his films, you don't need to know anything about anime, or him- you can read this and tell this is a genius at work, trying to get out the last bits and settle up before he dies.

Read this- you won't regret it. It's incredible.

Scott Pilgrim and geek love versus box office

2010-08-26T12:09:00.005-04:00

There's far more talk about SCOTT PILGRIM and its performance at the box office than the grosses would indicate there ought to be.

I went to see PILGRIM this week. Very late night on a weeknight, 1030 on a Tuesday, in Union Square. Smaller theater, but quite full for that time of night.

I see why the film is doing what it's doing.

First off, the film is ok- but it didn't live up to my expectations. It started strong, but in the end felt like it was about thirty minutes too long, and the fights, while cleverly done, got a bit repetitive for me. Michael Cera, who I've always liked (even in recent movies like YOUTH IN REVOLT that people seem to hate), annoyed me in this, and that's a first.

But that's not why it's struggling.

There are three big problems with the film and the way it was released, and adding them up, I can see why it's a $20 million film.

#1: It's a film for 16-23 year olds filled with nostalgia that nobody under 28 feels. I know it sucks to say, but we're getting old, gang- 16 year olds today didn't grow up on Nintendo and Game Boy, they grew up on Playstation 2 and XBOX 360. Their first cell phone was probably an iPhone. They don't remember a time without iPods. Most have never paid for music in their lives. So 8-bit NES aesthetics, shopping at a record store- these are things that don't work for that crowd, because it's not what they do. To some degree, it feels like a film made for 20 year olds by a 40 year old. But some teenage relatives of mine who saw it and are pretty savvy about movies in general told me they thought it was a little false for them.

#2: It had one of the laziest marketing campaigns I've ever seen from a major studio. I don't know if it's because the reaction at Comicon was so good that Universal just assumed everyone would automatically show up, but neither the trailer, materials, web stuff, or poster gave any clue what the movie really was. Marketing that a little better would've gone a long way. But they didn't, and as a result it wasn't on anyone's radar except the geek/internet crowd (which I am not insulting by saying that, because I am certainly a member of this crowd on a personal basis). This is Universal dropping the ball- more effort in targeting the film a little wider would have gotten that younger audience in, and I think they'd have really enjoyed the film. Seriously- what does anyone get out of this poster?

#3: The internet/geek crowd isn't as big as the studios want it to be. For indie films- it's totally fine. For studio films- it's fine, if you spend an appropriate amount. SCOTT PILGRIM should've been greenlit at $20 million, not $85. When you get into a situation where a geek-oriented film has a combined production/P&A budget in the nine figures, it's going to be very hard to make money off of it, as has been proven time and time again. The geek audience is good for an ok opening and usually a $25-30 million gross (witness: SNAKES ON A PLANE).

THE WATCHMEN, which everyone deemed a massive failure, is actually the best case scenario for a film that is marketed solely to this crowd. $55 million opening, with a big IMAX push, and a $100 million gross. Bad for WATCHMEN since they spent $130 million on the film (plus marketing), but really, at half that budget, would've gone on to a nice profit. (DVDs don't seem to be selling, the proliferation of $9.99 Collector's Edition Blurays and DVDs at stores is not a good omen). But in this case, WB cut the best trailers possible for the film, and expanded the audience a little bit outside the core, which is not easy for a dark, R-Rated, comic-book oriented film that the mainstream has never heard of.

PILGRIM should've gone this route- better trailers and materials, a little more outreach, and coupled with half the budget and a better release date (Rouge is probably best suited for this, not Universal, but that's semantics), could have certainly doubled this gross. Why this film didn't come out in October, when kids are in school and bored and can come back to class on Monday to talk about the movie they just saw, is beyond me.

I don't think PILGRIM is a great film, or even very good, but it definitely has an audience and I think that several dropped balls added up to that audience being uninterested, or worse, generally unaware, of the film. Which is always a loser.

Lessons about Facebook.

2010-08-11T09:58:00.002-04:00

To expand on a tweet from the must read Sheri Candler (whom I disagree violently with about the future of theaters, but agree with on almost everything else):

Facebook announced last week that they are no longer supporting the "boxes" on people's profiles- instead, relegating third-party content to tabs. As anyone who uses Facebook knows, most Facebook surfers stick to the main profile page- when was the last time you clicked on someone's tab?

What this means for you- if you've had someone create a special widget, you've pretty much wasted your money.

If there's a lesson we've learned about viral marketing and Facebook, it's this- their business model seems to be to change the rules every ten minutes. So, investing significant money and time into developing for it is usually going to turn out to be a waste. You have to use it for what it's intended for- engaging your audience DIRECTLY. You can't rely on a spend to create great placement- you have to work for it, and earn it.

This is not the first time social marketers, which all filmmakers either are or should be, are going to learn this lesson. You can pay for an ad, or buy a keyword- but people are trained to filter out the noise on the internet. You have to give people something they are going to engage with, and want to read/reply/respond to- or you may as well light your money on fire in the middle of the table.

On California...

2010-08-08T17:00:00.003-04:00

I'm heading to Los Angeles this week, and very happy that if all goes well, by the time my plane touches down the rights of individuals to marry in the state of California will be fully restored. Note that I didn't say "gays will finally have the right to marry"- because that's not the right way describe it. Gays have ALWAYS had the right to marry, courtesy of our Constitution- but that right has been illegally, and unconstitutionally, taken from them.

I don't live in California, and never have, but the state has a soft spot in my heart. It's beautiful, gorgeous, laid back, and I've enjoyed my time in all the three big cities (LA, San Fran, San Diego) I've been to out there. I'll likely be getting married there next June, and nothing would make me happier than waiting in line for my license alongside couples gay and straight.

The fight for equality isn't over by a long shot, but regardless of the Supreme Court's conservative makeup, it makes me happy to hear the incredibly well thought-out arguments being presented on our side's behalf. Witness attorney David Boies, who successfully argued the case in California, on Meet The Press today:

"In a court of law you've got to come in and you've got to support those opinions, you've got to stand up under oath and cross-examination," Boies said. "And what we saw at trial is that it's very easy for the people who want to deprive gay and lesbian citizens of the right to vote [sic] to make all sorts of statements and campaign literature, or in debates where they can't be cross-examined.

"But when they come into court and they have to support those opinions and they have to defend those opinions under oath and cross-examination, those opinions just melt away. And that's what happened here. There simply wasn't any evidence, there weren't any of those studies. There weren't any empirical studies. That's just made up. That's junk science. It's easy to say that on television. But a witness stand is a lonely place to lie. And when you come into court you can't do that.

"That's what we proved: We put fear and prejudice on trial, and fear and prejudice lost,"

That sounds like the REAL America- the one I like to think we live in. Those who are on the other side will soon find themselves in the same position many of those that stood in the doorway of schools in Little Rock shouting down African-American students find themselves in today- filled with regret, embarrassment, a realization that when the chips were down, they were on the wrong side of history- and asking for forgiveness.

And I'm willing to bet that, in the spirit of everything that's truly good about America- they'll receive it. So why wait?

Commenting is fixed!

2010-08-07T17:15:00.001-04:00

Who knew it was broken.

No, Mark Lipsky, Movie Theaters Aren't Going Away

2010-08-07T15:43:00.014-04:00

Mark Lipsky seems like a nice enough guy, and I very much liked the film he put out via Gigantic Releasing (the excellent MUST READ AFTER MY DEATH). I hadn’t read his blog before, but a posting he did for The Wrap called “Yes, Virginia, Movie Theaters Are Going Away” caught my attention.

At least, the title did.

My initial thought was to make a post refuting his arguments for this point-by-point, but the truth is he really doesn’t make any. There’s a few paragraphs about how multiplexes are ugly now compared to the theaters of the 1920s (yes, this is seriously his lead argument), and a reference to an unnamed “technology” that will transform moviegoing. Then some complaining about how it takes $60 plus gas to haul the family to the mall, commercials, and how nobody will miss it.

Bullshit.

And more than just being bullshit, the argument that movie theaters are going away demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of the entire industry dynamic, what audiences want, what the Facebook/Twitter revolution actually is, and why the vast majority of filmmakers make films. In other words, pretty much everything.

Unlike Lipsky, I’ll be specific- the fundamental misunderstanding is that Lipsky and his ilk seem to think that movie theaters exist solely as a content delivery system, while completely ignoring the social aspect of it. This is dead wrong, and a raises an eyebrow to hear it from someone who appears to be running a consulting firm.

Even more oddly, the people making this argument seem to be simultaneously touting the social aspects of the internet- ignoring the idea that no matter how big a part Facebook, Twitter, Netflix, or Hulu plays in our lives, the vast majority of people in this country have no desire to become a nation of shut-ins.

As a marketing guy, Lipsky probably thinks in audience groups, which is fair. So let’s look at some people for whom movie theaters are an invaluable part of life that will not be replaced by the internet, VOD, etc:

ANYONE FROM THE AGE OF 12-17
Because teenagers want to make out.

Remember all those unsupervised house parties you went to when you were 13? Or how your parents would drop you off at the girl you had a crush on’s house, and her parents would leave you two alone in the living room for four hours on Friday night? Of course you don’t, because that didn’t happen. An informal survey of my (non-industry) friends resulted in 12 out of 20 making out for the first time in a movie theater, 16 out of 20 holding hands for the first time in a movie theater, and 19 out of 20 going to the movies at least twice a month before they had cars.

You have to get your head out of the NYC mindset, and go to a mall in Dallas on a Friday night. 75% of people there are under 18, and the places are still jam-packed. Are these kids there to shop? Nope- after all, if it’s a question of availability and content delivery, everything they can get there is way cheaper on Amazon.

No, these kids are there to do exactly what kids have done since the 1940's- learn about socialization, see each other, and learn how to do the whole boyfriend-girlfriend thing. Movie theaters are an integral part of this experience, and that's not going to go away.

ANYONE WHO WANTS TO GO ON A SECOND DATE
ANYONE WHO HAS KIDS
ANYONE WHO WANTS TO LEAVE THE HOUSE
Because “come over to my house and watch this VOD movie I’m going to stream while we sit on our couch” still sounds like a code word for “let’s have sex”.

Dinner and a movie then a bar/coffeeshop after is a classic date, and for a reason. I would never have busted out the “come over to my house” stuff until a few dates in (perhaps I’m an old-fashioned guy), because everyone knows exactly what that means. And if you want to get to that date, you need someplace to go on the second date. I’m engaged, so I’m off the hook on this element, but I still love holding hands with my lady in the dark while we watch a movie.

And if you have kids? Are you going to watch an R-rated movie with them in the living room (“Mommy, why is Adrian Brody on top of that monster?”)? Maybe, but sometimes you want to hire a sitter and leave.

Finally, this isn’t Surrogates. Sometimes people just want to leave the house, and sometimes people don’t want to invite a ton of folks over. Maybe meet some friends, maybe meet a friend, maybe a romantic interest, maybe your co-workers. Movie theaters are also an integral part of this experience, particularly on special occasions (dressing up for Sex and the City, wearing robes for Harry Potter, etc), but also in the normal day-to-day.

ANYONE WHO LOVES A BIG SCREEN AND LOUD SOUND or
ANYONE WHO LOVES EXPERIENCING FILMS WITH OTHERS
For studio blockbusters and indie films respectively.

I can rattle off a list of my best movie theater experiences. When I saw The Royal Tenenbaums and an audience member caused the entire crowd to applaud by uncontrollably laughing and saying through tears “he called him Coltrane!” three minutes after the joke was made. The entire audience standing up and cheering when the opening credit roll for The Phantom Menance began (and let’s be honest- the first time you saw the film, the audience cheering made you think it was great- you didn’t hate it until the second time. Hearing “what the fuck?” about forty times during opening weekend of The Orphan at the Magic Johnson 9 in Harlem. The opening city shot of The Dark Knight in IMAX making the audience actually gasp. The vicious debate in the lobby of the theater after Todd Solondz’s Happiness.

Now- what I won’t disagree with is that indie films, distribs, and theaters have to step up our game a bit. For smaller films, event-izing the theatrical via appearances, promotions, giveaways, weird contests, etc is incredibly important. But for most films, I don’t see much impact on ticket sales from VOD if the rollout is planned correctly. Doesn’t that tell you something?

For studio films- I’m going to see Inception again this weekend. And I’m going to do it at the Ziegfeld (I’ve seen it once in IMAX, I thought the film was cut a bit fast for the format and the screen was so big I missed a few things). If it was on VOD for $9.99? I’d still go to the theater. If it was on VOD for $39.99? Are you kidding?

And for theaters- there are theaters that don’t do a great job. Eventually, for the majority of these, someone will open a place down the block that does, and slaughter them. If I had access to a few million dollars, the first thing I'd do is open an Alamo Drafthouse in the middle on NYC and another in Brooklyn, and spent the next 20 years raking in money. Let’s not knock multiplexes altogether, either- there are a great many that do an amazing job at sight and sound, and getting you in fast without lines. A theater like the Arclight on one end, the Alamo Drafthouse on the other, provides an experience of its own. Ever been to The Highball in Austin? Connect that to the movie theater lobby, and you've got your night set for you. This will continue to evolve until THAT is the new business model.

Finally, as for pricing- I’ve bitched a little about this new trend of theaters charging $18 “premium prices” for pseudo-IMAX on their biggest screen. But guess what? People are willing to pay it. I did a bit of informal study on TOY STORY 3, a film that doesn’t really demand the loudest sound and biggest screen, and found the Cinemark xD screens in the suburbs of places like Dallas, SLC, Colorado Springs, were still selling out weeks into the run, while the other, cheaper, 3-D screens had available tickets. This right here negates both the “it’s too expensive” argument and the “people just want to see the movie on their TV” argument. These tickets are $3-7 extra, and people are snapping them up in cities and suburbs alike. People clearly want this, and I don’t care where you live, 99.9% of you are not going to install a wall-to-wall projector and 7.1 surround in your living room, and 100% of you are not going to put in a 60 foot screen and 50,000 watts to duplicate the experience at home.

WHERE LIPSKY MIGHT (MIGHT) BE RIGHT
There is one bit of truth to his argument that I can see- children’s films. If studios are going to stream a movie like Despicable Me to your plasma screen in 3-D, and you have the equipment, it probably does make sense to pay $39.99 for it as opposed to dragging five kids to the mall and keeping them quiet. I get that. But as discussed before, I have a hard time seeing exhibitors allow it. And frankly, with 3-D ticket prices, studios have just finally hit on a solution for the “kid’s ticket” problem- the issue that while children’s films are just as expensive to make and market (perhaps more so, as you have to convince kids AND parents), the child tickets are usually cheaper. They’re not going to risk poisoning this well (or pissing off theater chains).

Look:

If you want two quick, concrete examples proving nearly everything Lipsky says (well, suggests in the title at least) wrong, look at the Alamo Rolling Roadshow and the Arcade Fire streaming concert

If you’re unfamiliar, these guys set up a screen outside in a big open space and invite people to see a film they’ve already seen that is widely available on DVD, internet, TV, etc. It’s a pain to get to sometimes, it’s a pain to park, the sound is a little ginchy and the whims of the weather are in full effect. If Lipsky is right, this is a complete failure, no?

No.

The Arcade Fire played a concert in Madison Square Garden the other night, which they streamed via the internet. Unlike streams of old, for the most part, the video quality was great, at least DVD-quality. The sound was perfectly mixed stereo, not compressed too much. It was well shot and directed by a pro director. I watched it, and loved it. But guess what- I’d still rather have seen it at MSG, despite the inconveniences (high ticket price, difficult to get tix, uncomfortable seats with questionable sightlines). If they add more shows, I’ll buy a $55 ticket and go, and the sold-out tour across the country proves others agree.

IN THE END
People like people. The popularity of Facebook doesn’t shown that people are fine getting 100% of their interactions from texts and the internet, it shows that people like interacting SO MUCH that they use these tools to do so when they can’t in person. I’m not arguing that people get together solely at movie theatres (please don’t talk during the film, please?), but I am saying that it’s an important part of the social dynamic in this country and no technology is going to change it. This vision of film and movie theaters as solely a content delivery system is misguided, and, frankly, dead wrong. It has been, and always will be, about people. I would not advocate placing your bets otherwise.

And if I’m wrong? Then I’ll get a loan, open up a nice, modest, and well-run movie theater, with a great programming, a big screen, good sound, good food, comfy seats, and a great audience experience, and charge an exorbitant ticket price, which a group of people (which would include myself) would gladly pay.

I’ll see (a lot of) you at the movies.

Five trends I hope go away.

2010-06-30T10:50:00.001-04:00

While we've been a bit quiet around here lately, we have not stopped devouring countless film industry blog posts across a wide spectrum. There's lots we agree with, and we're not going to pick fights or call names (because frankly, we're too busy over the next few weeks to do Blog Wars)- however, we'd like to plant a few flags in the sand.

1. FORGET THEATRICAL, IT'S TOO HARD AND EXPENSIVE / JUST FOUR-WALL NEW YORK CITY AND MOVE ON

It is hard to self-release your film. Whether you hire someone like us, or do it yourself- it's more work than you can imagine, and will consume a good deal of your time. But you know what else is hard? Making a film. Even harder? Making a good film. And if you've made a good film, and it doesn't get snapped up, what do you do? Do you just put it to the side so you can get on with your next one?

There's also been increasing noise about four-walling your film in NYC as your entire theatrical. After all, you'll get your New York Times review! And that will set you up for success, yes? Well, I point you to a film called BE WITH ME. This is a brilliant film from Singapore, an omnibus of three stories about heartbreak and loss. We played it at the ImaginAsian Theatre in NYC in 2006. It's one of the best films I've ever seen. It had a very competent distributor, good press, and an absolute rave in the New York Times.

It made $1,365 in NYC- its sole theatrical run. Have you seen this film on DVD? Have you even heard of it? I'm willing to bet you haven't (though you can rectify this right now).

You've got to think broader than that.

Four-walling in NYC can cost $10,000 just to get your screen. Then you have to do press- factor another $5k in for that if you're doing a quick one-off. Then you'll still need a trailer and poster (you don't HAVE to make these, but if you don't, let's be honest- you're not even really trying). Oh, and you should do some marketing and a little advertising as well. Voila- you've spent $25,000 opening your film on one screen. We've released films in 30 markets for that amount.

Four-walling in NYC gets you a few reviews- and that's it. And make no mistake- anyone can four-wall a film in almost any theater if they have enough money. I'm dying for someone to test the theory by filming someone's ass for 90 minutes, a la IDIOCRACY, and four walling it. I'll bet you it gets screens. Which brings me too...

2. WITH SELF-RELEASING/SERVICE DEALS, EVEN MIDDLING FILMS GET THEATRICAL RELEASES

There are a lot of films jockeying for space out there- and that space is limited. There are a handful of theaters in NYC and LA, and less in most markets, that are willing to play independent films from independent distributors digitally. Increasingly, these screens are becoming clogged up by bad films. There's a few reasons for this. First, as mentioned, anyone can four-wall, and theaters are hard-pressed to turn down a sure $10,000 rental in these economic times. Fine, that's understandable, if you've made a meh movie and you have money, you may as well, I can't begrudge you trying to make it work theatrically (but won't help you do it).

But that brings me to the other reason for this, and this is the one that makes me furious- there are other people/companies out there that claim to do what Variance does, and some that actually do in some fashion. A few of them are good people/companies that we're happy to compete with- they take on good titles, do what they say they will with them, and while we may lose a film to them from time to time, or differ in our styles on how we do releasing, we can definitely have a beer after a screening and laugh about it all, knowing we do our best.

But some of these newcomers don't have the same level of scruples. They'll take any film that shows up with money for P&A and a fee. They'll promise theater owners that they'll do a ton of "grassroots marketing", which translates to them putting up a facebook page and sending a tweet or two. They'll tell filmmakers that they're certain they can launch their film theatrically, all so they can get their fee. It's dishonest, disingenuous, and poisons the well for companies like us that only take on films we think are going to legitimately work. It's tempting to name names, frankly, but that's sour grapes and we shall do no such thing.

All we'll say is this- when you're shopping for a distributor, buyer beware, and if you give your film to someone without checking tons of their references, then you, sir, are a sucker.

3. DO A QUICK SECRET QUALIFYING RUN FOR YOUR DOCUMENTARY AND MOVE ON

The Academy Award qualifying rules for documentary films are atrocious, arbitrary, outdated, and insulting. Step back and see if this passes the giggle test- there are a litany of films willing to pay out over $20,000 for secret NYC and LA runs of their films with the goal being that nobody knows they're playing, just so they can meet the Academy rules, and then go back and spend more money to release them for real later on. The qualifying year for docs ends in August. You have to play the film in NYC and LA in a certain digital format- HD or Bluray won't suffice- that can cost over $10,000 for one week of projector rental. There's a mandatory 60 day VOD window.

Seriously- does that make a LICK of sense to you?

I can understand some basic rules designed to make sure TV programs don't win Oscars. But I can't, for the life of me, figure out why AMPAS, which is supposed to be fostering talent, is instituting rules that make it cost-prohibitive for self-released films to get nominated for the Academy Awards. These should be changed immediately to "a one week run in NYC or LA in a high-definition format anytime during the calendar year, and may the best man win".

4. YOU CAN RELY ON YOUR AUDIENCE TO DRIVE YOUR FILM

If you, as a filmmaker, develop your own audience, this is a wonderful thing.

If you, as a filmmaker, depend on your own audience to be what drives your film, you are in for a rude awakening and a $1,500 Friday followed by a $300 Saturday.

There is no excuse to not market your film.

5. ________ IS GOING TO BE THE SAVIOR

It's all hands on deck, gang, and much as we'd like to say it, there's no real answer, nor is today's answer going to be tomorrows. Take a look through your brain and think of all the things that were supposed to save cinema. None have.

VOD is an amazing tool for getting smaller films out to a national audience.
BUT first you have to make enough noise about your film that it has a national audience, because nobody is marketing it for you.

The Internet/streaming video is a great way to get films out for free to the world.
BUT first you have to figure out what to tell your investors when they ask when they'll be getting money back.

Bluray is an exciting format that lets films look better than ever before, and is inspiring collectors.
BUT first you need to figure out how you're going to distribute it in a cost-effective manner.

Theatrical is the best way to excite audiences about your film.
BUT just putting your film into a theater or two isn't enough. You've got to give people a reason to go see it.

In the end- it's not checkers, it's chess. All pieces have to move together as part of a strategy. Hybrid distribution is about making the best individual plan for a film and setting the pieces in motion in a complimentary way- not chopping up the rights and passing out a little bit to a bunch of people and telling them to go do their thing.

And now we're done ranting, and present to you a music video as a palate cleanser.

Great weekend for THE LOTTERY!

2010-06-14T01:14:00.003-04:00

It's easy to forget to post these things to the blog. I am often told I should not have the keys to the company blog, because I tend to post things that have nothing to do to the company (as well as, ahem, start multi-part blogs that I forget to finish). So all will be delighted that this is an Official Variance Films Post™.

THE LOTTERY opened to great results in NYC this weekend- nearly $17,000 in tickets sold. That's a record for Variance, edging out NURSERY UNIVERSITY (another NYC education doc at the same theater almost a year ago). Hard work by the filmmakers, leveraging their audience did the trick here, and it paid off (as it usually does).

It was a tough week to open a film, too- three great indie films (JOAN RIVERS: A PIECE OF WORK, WINTER'S BONE, and COCO CHANEL AND IGOR STRAVINSKY) came out, and we kept pace with all of them (and after Sunday actuals came in, we wound up beating COCO CHANEL's average). Docs are dead, eh?

Via Indiewire:

Variance Films released the charter school documentary “The Lottery” this weekend as well, and found excellent results. On a single screen (Big Cinemas Manhattan in midtown NYC), the film grossed an estimated $17,200.

“We’re quite delighted with the gross, given that the film was co-released by Variance and the filmmakers with a release budget that likely wouldn’t pay for an opening day ad for our (esteemed) competition this weekend,” Variance’s Dylan Marchetti told indieWIRE this afternoon.

We're bring the film to more cities now- opening Los Angeles at the lovely Laemmle's Music Hall 3 this Friday, followed by the Avalon Theatre in DC on the 25th and Starz Film Center in Denver (programmed by Keith, one of our favorite people) July 9th. We're planning to add additional theaters, and the film will be available nationwide on VOD come September- you'll be able to order it on TWC. In the meantime- go to the movies!

Your patience is greatly appreciated.

2010-06-13T00:48:00.005-04:00

Ted Hope did (sent? made? what's the proper word here?) a great tweet a few weeks back:

@TedHope: Swamped. Sorry. Soon.

We'd like to humbly copy him.

We do want to see your film. We hope that you send it to us, and we watch everything we get.

That said, we get an average of 3 to 5 screeners per week. And we watch them all, almost always in the order we receive them. As a company- not just one of us. We don't open unsolicited screeners, not to be mean, but because we before we get a DVD or Bluray (can't wait til that's the norm, they look so good) in the mail, we want to talk to you first- we find out what your goals are, as much as we can about the film to make sure it has potential, and give you the basics on what we do and how we do it, so that we don't waste your time.

When we find a film we think has good potential under our model, we call you up, get some information, and tell you we'd like to write up a proposal. And that proposal isn't a 2 page "here's the budget we'll put yer film in awesome theaters so trust us" proposal. Our proposals average 26 pages, and are the equivalent of what many of the recent crop of "marketing consultants" receive thousands of dollars to provide.

Those folks that ask you to pay them $5,000 for a "marketing plan"? We send that to you up front. If we want your film, we're going to pitch for it, and we believe any other company that claims they can do a fraction of what we do should do the same- for no charge. If we're going to ask you to trust us to release your film (and not only that, but to put up the money for the release and give us a release fee for the four+ months of work we're going to do on it in the process), we think it's our obligation to tell you what we plan to do with it. So we do watch everything we're sent, because if we don't think it has potential to work for both of us, we'll tell you not to send it- we don't want to waste your time, nor do we want to waste ours, to be blunt.

The reason I mention this is that, as hard as we work, we can't write a 26 page researched and plotted marketing and release plan for you overnight. We don't have a boilerplate, and never will - every film is completely different, and therefore these proposals are always written from scratch, save for the two page company bio at the end.

This takes time. And our first priority, no matter how much we may want your film, is always going to be to do that work on the films we have. No exceptions. If we do a bad job on a film, no matter how small, the word is going to get around fast. This is the reason it takes us a few weeks, sometimes longer, to watch screeners we're sent. Including yours. Please don't take it as a sign of disrespect. We will get to your film, and we will watch it all the way through. And, if we do end up releasing your film, we will give it the same priority that we give the ones we're currently releasing, and the shoe is then on the other foot.

There's a reason we don't advertise. Our business is almost entirely driven by one of two things- either we've seen your film at a festival or read things online that interested us and we've chased it, or you're calling us based on word of mouth. We don't send blanket emails to festival participants- as discussed before, out of about 35 films we saw at SXSW this year, we're really going after about 5 for release. We have a limited number of slots, and when they're filled up (which, I should note, they almost completely are for the rest of 2009), that's it- we're not going to hire people we don't know well so we can release more movies and make more money and hire more people. We're going to keep doing what works- hand-opening each film individually, like it deserves.

In the meantime- let's just say it'll take us a few weeks to watch your screener and get back to you, and we hope you can forgive us?

Why per-screen average isn't everything (though we'll still take it).

2010-06-12T14:38:00.004-04:00

When you open a film, the week of you usually have an idea of what's going to happen. And when you lucky, and get a critical mass of good press, good word-of-mouth, and most importantly, a great film, the weekend becomes exciting.

Went for drinks with friends last night, but spent most of my time hitting refresh on Rentrak (the subscription box office tracking software). Rentrak is fantastic- at any given time, you can check, hourly, what about 70% of the theaters in the country is grossing on movies- 99% by the end of the night. The most important movie of all is, of course, yours. As you watch the numbers go up, it becomes a bit of a high stakes video game where you have no control over the results but you desperately want to win.

For THE LOTTERY, we're opening on a single screen in NYC in a one-week engagement. We can't extend at the theater we're at now (it's a single screen with a hard booking the week after ours), so our goal is two-fold- a) gross enough to garner additional bookings across the country, and b) gross enough to get a moveover to another NYC theater (which, considering how underscreened NYC is, is not the easiest thing to do in the world).

Because we're only opening in one screen, we're not competing with anyone on total gross, we're competing on a per-screen average basis. Winter's Bone opened in four different theaters, and Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work opened 7 theaters. But most of those engagements were multiple prints in a single theater- which counts as one screen when you list "per screen average". So while Joan River outgrossed us, for example, at Chelsea 9, it actually was playing on two screens there- double the seats and showtimes. And three screens at IFC Center- so on, so forth. We have one theater, with limited seating.

So far, we're only about $1,400 behind the top two openers in per-screen average. Can we catch up? I think we can get close (though frankly speaking, both of the other big openers look great too, and both Joan Rivers and Winter's Bone are going to get $12 out of my wallet this weekend- does that make me a traitor?). Do we win anything if we do?

No.

Playing just for a great per-screen average is a dangerous game, and can't be your focus. There are a great litany of films, some I've released, that have a great opening weekend and then drop by 70-80%. This is disastrous. Even worse, you often see films that have a huge Friday, then instead of gaining the usual 30-40% on Saturday, drop 50%, with a practically empty theater on Sunday.

Even if this gets you a good per-screen average, you're not going to fool anyone with this. The truth is, it's easy to sell out your Friday night show- your friends and family are going to show up, the cast and crew will be there, that alone should be 150 people in your hometown (usually NYC or LA). Bookers are very very smart people, and are looking out for this. When they see that Saturday drop, they know when you call and say "hold me over", you're going to drop 90% for week 2. And therefore, you don't get held over.

I get asked a lot- "how much do we have to make to get a second weekend". The answer is that there's no hard number. If you make $12,000 and it looks like $8,000 Friday, $3,000 Saturday, $1,000 Sunday, you're far less likely to get held over than a film that does $1,500 Friday, $3,000 Saturday, and $2,500 Sunday. Because that shows that you have a real audience- people are organically seeing what you've done and have chosen to go see your movie, as opposed to a fake audience- people who you have talked into going to the theater on Friday, but are people you know anyway.

When we plan a release, we always say "sure, bring your friends and family to one"- a gross of any sort does help- but you shouldn't spend more than 5 minutes writing that email and setting that up. You have to focus on building your REAL audience, or all you're doing is showing your film to your family. This is theatrical, not a high school film project- you have to do it right.

I think THE LOTTERY has done it right, and look forward to reporting grosses this weekend.

The Lottery- Opens in NYC tonight!

2010-06-11T18:32:00.000-04:00

We're quite excited, because the film is quite good. Hope to see you there!

Hollywood Reporter: "Does movie marking matter?"

2010-06-11T18:31:00.001-04:00

Yep.

Things to be thankful for- IMDb

2010-06-06T00:09:00.001-04:00

My first job was usher/projectionist at the AMC Merritt Square 6 South theaters. Most of my fellow staff were video game nerds, but there were a few of us movie geeks there. One night, on a busy Saturday, one of those movie geeks and I were talking, and trying to remember the name of the Rutger Hauer film where he fights giant mutant rats in the London sewers. It was driving us nuts, and we needed an answer.

Nowadays, you can just go to IMDb on your smartphone, problem solved. Easy!

BUT in 1996, you had to make sure the boss wasn't looking, sneak out, get in the car, drive over to Blockbuster, and rampage through the sci-fi aisle until you found the box- hoping the whole time that none of the films had wrapped or burnt, since the only two projectionists in the building had dipped out to a video store.

You kids have it so easy.

(The name of the film, incidentally, is Split Second, and no, it's not any good).

Marmaduke

2010-06-04T01:13:00.000-04:00

Is it possible that the entire conversation for the marketing of the MARMADUKE movie went like this?

"How are we gonna market this movie?"

"Let's spend $500,000 and get that Ke$ha song for the ads."

"Done, and done."

An addendum to the previous post...

2010-05-27T17:12:00.000-04:00

One other thing to note is that the companies that I called out for emailing far too frequently (FTD, Anthropologie) have an option, when you click "unsubscribe", to "mail less frequently". Which irritates me even more. They know exactly what they're doing, which makes it a bit worse.

Cluelessness about web marketing.

2010-05-27T14:40:00.000-04:00

I wanted to send flowers to someone who doesn't live in NYC. Not knowing local florists, I looked up reviews and picked a local florist that had recommendations (and a side note, to my fellow grown-ass men and women out there- if you send someone flowers that come unarranged in a FedEx box with a 1-800- Flowers logo on the side, then you really didn't send flowers).

That's when the fun started.

Since then, I've gotten three emails a day from these people. Two a day each from FTD.com, and one from the local florist. Three- per day. Who could be so stupid about marketing to think this is a good idea?

This is why Variance recently transitioned to a managed email list instead of hand sending our updates to our contact list. And why we decided to not just place our contacts on the list, but rather, set it up so that our contacts are invited to opt in. We don't see the point in sending emails to people that don't want them, and think it's probably counterproductive to do so.

(On that note- you can opt in on the bottom of our front page, and we hope you do so.)

We also have a strict privacy and email list policy, that we mention in our opt-in email.

1. We never trade, sell, lease, or advertise other things to or with your email address. It's for Variance news alone.

2. We never send more than two emails per month, usually just one.

3. You have to choose to get our emails, and you can choose not to with a single click at any time, no account or signup or forms required. One click gets you out.

Internet marketing has come of age, and it's the main way of letting people know about things. Some of it is advertising, some of it is content (the latter always best), and a lot of it is junk. Junk is counterproductive. If you're a website owner, it's a fine line between making money off of ads and alienating your audience. Doing the latter is bad news for a major news site, for a film site, it's a disaster.

A thank you email and an occasional notice of a big sale is fine. Automatically subscribing someone to three emails a day without asking irritates me and makes me want to give my money to someone else (calling out FTD and Anthopologie here).

A short (:05-:10) ad before a web video, or a series of short ads on long content (ala Hulu), is totally reasonable. A :30 or :60 ad before a :30 web video is not, and having that exact same :30 or :60 second ad playing over and over before every single clip on a site makes me never want to watch video there again (calling out IFC here).

A banner ad or two is fine. The "flash takeover" that blocks the content on a website is not. That weird service that brings up a slow window for every single word the cursor hovers over is unforgivable, and makes me swear off a particular site (calling out CHUD here).

Why I don't think day-and-date VOD studio films will happen.

2010-05-24T20:03:00.001-04:00

Perhaps you've read about the FCC allowing PPV providers to turn off certain inputs on your cable box, so you can pay $39 and get studio films delivered via VOD on opening weekend.

I am 95% sure this will never happen.

Why? Because the theaters will absolutely never allow it unless they're cut in on the proceeds at such an insane level to make the whole thing worthwhile.

I remember working at AMC and not having GODZILLA booked until two days prior to opening, because Sony wanted 90% of the first weekend gross (knowing the film was a bomb in advance). I remember Regal not playing RUSH HOUR 2 the first week for similar reasons. In all cases, the studios blinked, because a movie without theaters is useless.

If Paramount was to say "we'll make Iron Man 3 available for home PPV viewing for $40 on opening weekend and we don't care what you say" to movie theaters, they will officially have made the first $200 million direct to video movie.

Opening week!

2010-05-19T12:22:00.000-04:00

There's never anything more intense or exciting than the week leading up to opening a film.

For a lot of the big guys, it's a bit rote. The publicists do their thing for reviews and press, the ad department bickers over fonts and where to put the tagline and what review quotes to use, the booker confirms the theater. You maybe have a premiere, and if you have a big one that takes up most of your time for a few days (a lot of your time, actually- one of the biggest headaches of my career was throwing a full on media day and red carpet premiere at the Arclight for a THINKFilm, wrangling three major movie stars and associated publicists and entourages and hangers-on and such). The film opens, grosses are reported, and you hope they're good.

But that, my friends, is not how we roll.

Right now, we're knee deep in getting guest speakers confirmed for opening weekend Q&As, getting organizations to partner with us to blast their members, wrangling multiple email, Facebook, Twitter, and blog posting accounts to get the word out. Kristen, our intrepid head of local marketing and PR, spends most of the day on the phone meeting good people doing good things and syncing up our goals. We want people to buy tickets to our films, but we also want to help out organizations with good causes.

Did we reach a critical mass? Impossible to say until this weekend. We hope you help prove us right... AFTER THE CUP: SONS OF SAKHNIN UNITED opens this Friday in New York City at Cinema Village, and we hope you're there!

If you're reading this, then you're our friend, and so you're invited to come to the Friday 7pm show, enjoy the Q&A, and then join us at Nevada Smith's afterwards for drinks.

Doing it wrong- the "Premium Experience"

2010-05-04T12:22:00.001-04:00

Regal Cinemas has been running ads for something at their E-Walk theater in Times Square called RPX: the "Regal Premium Experience". What is it? The press release is here, but I'll save you the trouble:

They are charging $5.50 extra to watch the film on the biggest screen in the complex. That's it.

There are claims of an "awesome 9.1 sound system" (no films to date have been mixed in 9.1 sound, so that's moot) and "premium high-back chairs", but the focus is "the ultimate in digital projection on a huge screen". The "ultimate in digital projection"? It's two standard digital projectors projecting on top of each other- something that is required anyway on a huge screen, as regular digital projectors don't yet throw enough light to get 50+ foot screens lit terribly well. This isn't an "ultimate experience", this is what you should get automatically when you buy a ticket to a film. This whole thing begs the question- what do you have installed in your other auditoriums?

When I go see Hollywood movies at AMC Empire or Regal E-Walk, and I want to be sure I get a seat in front of the biggest screen, I call and ask what the showtimes are for house 6 (the big screen at AMC Empire) or house 2 (the big screen at E-Walk)- because, as discussed previously, sometimes multiplex theaters put a new blockbuster in a mix of small and tiny theaters, and nobody wants to watch the opening weekend of Iron Man in a 110 seat theater. Regardless- when I go to ANY movie at a modern theater, big screen or smaller one, I expect the 35mm projection to be crisp and bright, and the sound to be good and loud. Now, the difference is I can look online and see "RPX" and know what shows are in the big house without calling- but in turn, I have to pay an extra $5.50 for the privilege of seeing a film projected correctly on the big screen, something I got for regular price last week, and frankly I resent it.

Look, here's a little inside baseball for you- the two big screens at the AMC Empire 25 across the street were 58 feet and 56 feet. The 56 foot screen at the AMC was converted to be an IMAX screen last year. The new size? 58 feet. The big screen at E-Walk was 60 feet. The new size after being converted to RPX? 60 feet. That's right- it's the same screen, with minor updates to the sound system and the installation of digital projection (not necessarily a plus, in my opinion, and that of others). There is simply no change that anyone is going to notice if they're not told about it.

This is IMAX's fault. Remember that kerfluffle over "LieMAX" last year? When people noticed that all these new IMAX theaters popping up in their local megaplexes weren't actually IMAX theaters, but were just slightly altered big auditoriums with digital projection? This "premium experience" thing is a direct response to that (and it's not just Regal- AMC has ETX, Cinemark has XD- same thing). Two summers ago, there was a MASSIVE difference between going to see The Dark Knight at your local megaplex and in real IMAX. When those shot-on-real-IMAX-film cityscapes popped, I heard two separate audiences gasp. That's the way to go with this. But, with the sole exception of Transformers 2, no other film has shot scenes specifically for IMAX since. What has happened instead is that the powers that be believe we have proven, as an audience, that we are willing to pay more for what we are led to believe is the "best" presentation of a film. And it seems they're right, so pay for it we will.

Making going to the movies better- PART 1

2010-05-02T00:13:00.000-04:00

I'm in love with going to the movies (hence our "we only do theatrical" business model). I'll wax ecstatic about it another time, but in the end, for me (and many of you) there is nothing like experiencing the emotional journey that a good film will take you on in a dark room with 250 strangers. Comedies are funnier, dramas hit you deeper, thrillers take your breath away better, and horror jolts you more. The phone isn't ringing, nobody rings the buzzer, there's no pausing things to get up and check email. You buy the ticket, and for the next two hours you take the ride.

But there are parts of going to the movies I'm not in love with. I hate unorganized lines before the show. I hate when I pay $5.50 and the Diet Coke is nearly flat. I hate when the film looks and sounds like shit. I want to stab anyone and everyone who texts during a movie right in the fucking eyeball. I hate getting there 45 minutes early and having to stare at the same 30 slide advertisements in an endless circle. Every single theater deals with those parts differently, some better than others. Anyone who goes to the movies often has their favorite theater and the one they dread. And this has implications for independent film far more than it does for the big guys- more on that in a second.

The film itself is always going to be the draw- nobody goes to see a film they're not interested in because the theater is awesome. But while the theater isn't the draw, it IS a factor. I'll go pretty far out of my way to a catch a screening at a theater I like as opposed to one I don't. But for smaller releases, if a film is only playing on a screen I hate, no matter how much I want to see it there's always going to be a question hanging overhead- is the film I want to see worth the bad experience I'm probably going to have at the theater?

And this is where things come in to play for indie film. For most of our releases, we're not playing five or six screens in each market. We're often playing just one. If you, the audience member, are dying to see the film we're releasing, you'll come regardless of where we book it. But if you're on the fence and taking a chance on our film, and we're showing in just one indie theater that you've had problems with, will you go, or will you go to your favorite chain theater to see another film you're interested in?

Every theater manager/owner knows what the strengths and weaknesses of his/her theater are, and sometimes there's nothing they can do about it. If the seats are old and cramped and uncomfortable, rest assured those seats aren't the way they are because nobody has noticed, it's because it costs $40,000 to close for a week, rip them out and buy/install new ones. That screen isn't tiny because anyone wants it to be, it's tiny because that's what fits the space. The sound doesn't suck because nobody cares, the sound sucks because it's going to cost $60,000 to redo the sound system.

Unless they're flush with cash, these are factors the often they can't do much terribly much about most of the time. There are an awful lot of indie theaters that live week-by-week, so in one sense we as an audience are lucky they're even there and and open to begin with. But in the end, this isn't charity- and being the scrappy underdog doesn't automatically help out when people are figuring out where to spend their $25 on Friday night.

So putting those "we can't fix it yet" things aside, what about the things theaters CAN do something about? The experience the audience has when they go to the theater- from the time they buy tickets, to when they're waiting in line, to what happens at the concession stand, to what is on screen before your show starts, to what kind of tone you set with signage, policies, and crowd control before and during the film, to the time they hit the restroom and leave- that's something that can be controlled. And if a theater does a bad job at it, their audiences aren't going to be reliable- and we all lose out.

Which brings me to my point- with all of the challenges facing DIWO/DIY releasing and indie film, part of how this broken system gets fixed falls on the indie theater owners to help draw audiences to our films. The big guys have IMAX, 6000 print releases, 3-D, $40 million P&A budgets, and so forth- and as good as things are getting technically with the new batch of indie films, I don't think AFTER THE CUP is going to be showing on 2,000 IMAX 3-D screens anytime soon. We don't have a lot of money, but we do have each other to rely on.

The good news is- just like indie filmmakers can make great films without interference and like indie distributors can go outside the box in releasing them, indie theaters have an awesome opportunity on their hands to break all of the rules and do great unexpected things. And this is a way we all win.

We're going to talk about this over the coming two weeks a little bit here, and we're going to split it into a few parts:

PART TWO: THE AUDIENCE EXPERIENCE/BEFORE THE SHOW
PART THREE: THE FILM EXPERIENCE /DURING THE SHOW
PART FOUR: AUDIENCE CULTIVATION/WHEN THERE IS NO SHOW

and who knows, maybe we'll come up with a fifth part at some point. Maybe we'll get busy and not do all four. We're horridly unreliable blog-wise.

Look, I recently broke down, and in a fit of Mastercard-inspired madness, upgraded my 15 year old entertainment setup. For less than $2,200, I now have a 50" THX-certified plasma, Bluray, and a 7.1 THX Dolby DTS Super Surround Death Can't Turn It Past 1/20th Of The Way Up In My Apartment Sound System. I have Netflix streaming, I have cable day-and-date VOD, I have a stack of Kubrick and Criterion Blurays, and I have all the Diet Coke and great coffee I could want in my Park Slope apartment. But I would still rather go to the movies any day. All I need is a compelling reason to put on my shoes and take the twenty minute subway ride. The good film is the first part, the smart marketing is the next part, and finding a way to make the theatrical experience a part of the equation is the third part. Let's dig into it.

We go to the megaplex, too.

2010-05-01T12:19:00.000-04:00

While our real-life love is the independent film world, sometimes the heat of summer gets to us and our brains get overheated, like an iPhone left in the sun. We have to shut off for two hours. We have to consume 44 ounces of Diet Coke. We have to get in line with 4,000,000 other people and watch blockbuster films.

But we admit we haven't been paying much attention. So, here's what we are excited to see this summer. It's not a long list. Do you have recommendations?

AT THE MEGAPLEX:

INCEPTION
Chris Nolan has been one of our favorites since we saw MEMENTO three times in ten days at the Angelika. People complain that his films are cold and antiseptic, but frankly, I kind of want some style with my IMAX, and he seems to be the only one providing it (DARK KNIGHT wasn't a perfect film, but as far as spectacle goes, an IMAX screening of that elicited actual gasps from the audience, something I can't say for AVATAR). So yeah, we're there for this one.

THE EXPENDABLES
Stallone's last RAMBO was a guilty pleasure, to the point where the end (spoiler-ish alert) is Stallone standing on a giant truck gun and exploding people's bodies for twenty minutes. This film starts Stallone, Jet Li, Jason Statham, Mickey Rourke, Dolph Lundgren, Eric Roberts, and features Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger (who clearly has checked out of governing, to everyone's benefit), which means pretty much everyone I want to see kick ass kicks ass here. We're in.

SPLICE
This has been kicking around for years, which is not a good sign, but we're intrigued enough by goopy body horror to buy a ticket or two.

SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD
This hyper-comic action fantasy with Michael Cera wouldn't raise our eyebrows if wasn't from the guys that did SHAUN OF THE DEAD. It's quite likely this is a mess (and even more likely it'll bomb, thanks to an unfortunate release date next to EXPENDABLES), but it's also likely to be awesome.

These are the only four we can think of... are we missing anything good?

How to solve this "too much conversation" problem

2010-04-27T09:44:00.000-04:00

I wrote these two giant blog posts about how to solve this whole kerfluffle about "there's a panel industry!" and "there's too much talk about marketing and not enough about films!" and "the focus is on the wrong thing!" and blah blah blah.

Then I realized I could sum it up in three points. So here's MY manifesto for the indie film industry:

1. If you are tired of reading blog posts and hearing about panel discussions about the state of indie films, don't visit blogs or attend panels that focus on the state of indie film.

2. If you think the talk about new ways to market indie films, new platforms to debut them on, or what to do about the problems facing the film industry is detracting from your making a film, don't visit blogs or attend panels that focus on the state of indie film, and go make your movie.

3. If you decide, at any point, that you want to rejoin the conversation, then welcome back- visit some blogs or attend some panels that focus on the state of indie film, you'll be welcomed back with open arms.

Easy, no?

There is nothing that happens before 7am on Sunday that interests me in the slightest.

2010-04-19T11:41:00.001-04:00

General film acquisitions guy tip- if, without talking to us first, you send us a screener of your film that arrives on Friday afternoon, and you then call my cell phone at 6:45am that Sunday to find out if I've watched it yet, that does not set the tone we like to have set going into a 4-month working relationship.

That said, should said producer be reading, I do apologize for responding with a "what the fuck?". But really- 6:45am on a Sunday? What the fuck?

On a more serious note, we do watch what you send us, and we watch the entire film the first go-round. You only get one chance for a first impression with critics, film buyers, and most critically, your audience. They won't go back for a second viewing to see if it "opens up" unless they love it the first time, so we need to get that same impression or we can't tell you what we recommend for your film.

This does mean it can take us a little while to watch your film. Usually a week, sometimes longer depending on festival traffic, workload on upcoming releases, etc. Definitely feel free to call and check on us (though again, please aim for after 9:30am) , but have no fear- we WILL watch your film, and we WILL call or email you back. Promise.

"The Panel Industry" vs. things you should know.

2010-04-11T12:59:00.000-04:00

There's a mild (and when I say mild, I mean mild, as in I think there's about ten people that actually care mild) kerfluffle afluff on the interwebs right now, courtesy of a few polemics posted by Michael Tully and Vadim Rizov. Their logic seems to be that "all these panels and discussions and DIY Days and things like The Conversation are ridiculous and useless and distracting from the films".

I agree, and I don't.

First off, Michael Tully's main point seems to be "nobody cares how you financed, made, or marketed your film." He's right about that. Nobody out there in the moviegoing public needs to know the process story about how you got where you are- unless it's supremely interesting, and I mean like Werner Herzog interesting. If you robbed a bank to get the money for your film, that's something people want to know. If you crowdsourced the money to make it- that's great- but when I release your film I can't get the press to care about that, and I shouldn't. The film will always speak for itself in the end- nobody but your parents will buy a $12 ticket to reward your hard work, people will buy a ticket because they want to see the film.

Rizov's main points seem to be "the professionalization of the indie film industry is ridiculous and will fail" and "nobody knows what they're doing so what's the point in talking about it". For the first, I don't see this professionalization happening so much. If people start trying to make a formula out of independent film and DIY and such, then sure, of course that's going to fail completely, because every film is completely different. When you bring your film to Variance, and it's something we want to work with you to release, it takes me a week to type up a proposal of what we would do and how we would do it. Why? Because I don't have a boilerplate, and neither should anyone else. Frankly speaking, that's what fucked over the indie film companies that are looking into the sky and shrugging their shoulders as to why nothing really works.

But to his second point- totally wrong. Actually, some of us do know what we're doing, have evidence and numbers to back us up, and are trying to offer our help.

But what I disagree with completely is the point both Rizov and Tully are making, that somehow these panels are taking the focus off talking about films. I don't see the public coming to DIY Days, or The Conversation (though I should note I was neither invited to, nor attended, either one), or the panel I did here at Full Frame on Friday. What I see are filmmakers who have questions about what they do with the films they've made, are making, or are planning to make. And this "panel industry" is for them, not the multiplex film fan.

I don't release a film and put a disclaimer in front of it saying "HEY EVERYONE THIS FILM WAS DIWO RELEASED BY THE DIRECTOR AND VARIANCE AND THE BUDGET WAS THIS AND WE DID THIS ON TWITTER" etc etc, because nobody in the audience cares. But when I do a panel at a smaller film festival like Full Frame, it's attended by only about 45 people but for the three hours afterwards I have producers and filmmakers walking up to me with pointed questions, that tells me someone is getting use out of this.

Yes, I am available on Twitter, yes, I am available on Facebook, yes, I am available via email for these same questions. But so are about a billion other industry people, all with their own little niche and most with smart things to say (seriously- how many blogs does Ted Hope have by himself?). I don't have time to read all of these, and I'm not even making films. Hell, I'm so busy I don't have time to post on my own blog half the time. When is a filmmaker supposed to be able to soak this all in at a reasonable pace, and still actually make their film?

Hey, I know! They can go to a film festival, which is A) an event that collects and presents films and B) an event that collects and makes available film professionals and amateurs, mixes them, and lets them network, ask questions, and gather information. And at that film festival, they can go to a discussion and hear first-hand from other people who have done what they're trying to do.

Look, I'm all for keeping this behind-the-scenes stuff FAR out of the public eye, but at the same time I'm also 100% convinced that for the majority of filmmakers out there, whether they have a great film or not things are not going to "work themselves out" magically. They need to arm themselves with any information they can about what they do with their film when it's done. Not everyone can get screwed on their first film and learn a lesson for the second- because there may not be a second.

Full Frame, anyone?

2010-04-06T23:23:00.001-04:00

I'm headed off to the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival in Raleigh on Thursday morning. I'll be speaking on a panel on Friday at 10am about the "State of the Doc"- who wants to come watch? You know you do!

Film presentation, or why how you see movies is often up to a 25 year old making $50k a year.

2010-03-25T23:27:00.001-04:00

There's a really interesting article about Jim Cameron's post production process on AVATAR over at THR. Notably, how he finished the film in three different aspect ratios (actually four by my count, 1.85 flat, 2.35 scope, 1.44 film IMAX and 2.1 digital IMAX), and then had FOX reps call virtually every theater playing to find out which format would result in the biggest image.

(Technical note you can skip- each standard theater has "masking", black curtains that either in and out from the sides or down from the top, so that all films fill the screen and there are no blank spots on the side. If the theater has "side masking", where the curtains come from each side if the film is in 1.85 flat, then 2.35 scope will have the biggest image. If the theater has "top masking", then curtains will come down from the top if the film is in 2.35 scope, and then 1.85 flat would have the biggest image. What was so unique about what Fox did on this is they had managers from every theater go in the auditoriums AVATAR was to play in and find out which kind of masking they had, then sent the version of the film that would wind up with the biggest image).

Anyway, this made me think back quite a ways to my days as a theater manager at the AMC Empire 25. Being more interested in film operations than popcorn sales, after a few months on the job I asked the managing director if I could take over the performance schedule. He was all too happy to agree, and after a few weeks I found out why.

As the flagship theater for the AMC chain, and consistently one of the highest-grossing theaters in the country, not much was left to chance there. Every Monday, the bookings would come in via an email, which is where most theaters stop, do the performance schedule, and that's that. Because of the high-profile nature of the Empire, things went differently. Immediately after getting the bookings, our film buyer would call me on the phone and we'd go over house placement. This was a very delicate dance in which we'd figure out how many seats each film would get. Each studio, obviously, wanted the most seats, particularly during weeks where we'd open two or three big films.

This isn't as easy as it sounds- you can't just put the new film in the biggest theaters. Studios will complain if you cut their seat count too much, studios will complain if you don't open their films on the biggest screens- often the same studio complaining about both. With 25 screens, you think it'd be easy, but look at the capacity-

570 seats- 1 screen
440 seats- 1 screen
370 seats- 2 screens
301 seats- 2 screens
256 seats- 2 screens
154 seats- 1 screen
140 seats- 4 screens
125 seats- 2 screens
117 seats- 3 screens
95 seats- 4 screens
73 seats- 2 screen
50 seats- 1 screen

Now, factor in that this theater splits films with the E-Walk 13 across the street. That means that even for mediocre films, we'd open 2-3 prints of each. For blockbuster titles, we'd usually open 5, sometimes 6. The record, which I'm proud to have helped negotiate, is 10 prints (of Matrix 2, which I correctly assumed would suck and do all of its business the first week).

So if you're opening two films with 5 prints each, plus holding one from last week that did good business, it becomes a bit of a dance splitting up those bigger screens. And for an additional fun factor, two of the bigger houses at the time were digital cinema houses- which meant whatever we opened in DLP would have to stay in a big theater for at least 2-4 weeks, regardless of how it did, since we couldn't move it to a smaller house if it opened poorly on a Friday. This is a trick studios certainly had caught on to, and is true these days of 3-D films.

Now, add in other factors- in a theater of 25 auditoriums, even the flagship, each house has it's quirks. Some auditoriums, for whatever reason, have better sound than others. For example, at the time, all 25 theaters had SDDS digital sound. Which was fine for the blockbusters- but independent films and films from smaller distributors only come with Dolby Digital tracks, not SDDS. We had three Dolby Digital "moveable carts", but these carts could only be plugged in to about 1/3 of the auditoriums. Nobody wants to see a film in crummy analog sound, so this adds another dimension to the dance. Also, at any given time, with 25 auditoriums, something is always broken. Some auditoriums will have lens issues where flat doesn't focus right, some theaters have air conditioning issues where you want to keep them half empty or it'll heat up to 90 degrees and you'll have to give free passes to everyone, some auditoriums have a blown surround sound speaker that won't get fixed for a month, so you don't want to play an action film in there.

Add in the business factor- you don't want crowds bunching up at the ticket or food lines, so start times have to be well staggered so the busiest movies are spread out. And at this particular theater, there are five different floors with 5-7 theaters each and only small escalators leading down- so you have to make sure the END times are staggered as well.

I took a bit of pride in this- and making the schedule would basically take all day Monday, and then I'd spend another 3-4 hours on it at home early Tuesday (you have to have it done by Tuesday so you can get showtimes to the ad agencies, tickets can go onsale, etc). I knew the quirks of each house because I was also the 'presentation manager', and spent a lot of my day sticking my head in each theater looking for problems (a position I was given, and then later informed "didn't exist" after a change of management). There were a lot of tricks to making the studios happy and the schedule work, and we used them all. But these tricks can really impact how you see a film in a theater, including-

-To get the seat count right, we'd open a big film in a 560, 440, 301, 140, and 95 seat theater. This makes the seat count match what was promised the studio, but also means that 95 people who pick the 8:35 showing of a big blockbuster movie are going to see the film on a miniscule screen.

-"Flipping" prints so the bigger film at the time got the bigger house- for example, if you had Finding Nemo and Texas Chainsaw, putting Texas in the small house for the first three shows and the big house for the last two, and vice versa with Nemo. This would occasionally backfire, making Texas Chainsaw sell out at 1pm and Nemo selling out at midnight.

I had a favorite thing I used to do with independent films on slow weeks, particular those that were visually striking (Billabong Odyssey, a surf film, comes to mind). They wouldn't do any business, so they'd have to go in the 73 seat theater, but during the week when all shows were slow, I'd flip it to the 570 seat theater, which would give the 30 people coming to see the film a bit of a kick.

Moral of the story is- what James Cameron did with AVATAR, and was smart, was take control of the presentation away from the theater manager and put it in his hands. I spent a lot of time making that schedule, but it's something others would do in an hour or two. He ensured that people going to see AVATAR would see the film as large as possible, and that would make life better for the audience. The same way those 30 people going to see the surf film on Tuesday night got a real thrill, because I'd put Love Actually in a smaller theater and given them the 60-foot screen.

There's a bit of an art to it, and I hope that theater managers out there realize how much impact they can have on how people see films. Everyone has been to a theater where the presentation has been ruined in some form or another (my story is how pissed off I was when I waited two years to see HERO on the big screen, skipping the imported DVDs my friends had all purchased, called the theater to see what showtime was in the biggest theater, got there an hour early to get the best seats, only to see the show start up with a flickering, dim bulb that should've been replaced months ago), and that impacts how people experience the film, for better or worse.

I've never forgotten those lessons as a distributor, so, my theater owner friends, if I ask annoying questions when I book my film with you, pelase trust it's for the best.

What we have here...

2010-03-25T02:10:00.000-04:00

...is an eighteen minute short film from Ramin Bahrani (GOODBYE SOLO), scored by Sigur Ros, about a discarded plastic bag struggling with immortality. The bag is voiced by Werner Herzog.

There is very little more important than you watching this right now.

The Lunchtime YouTube Distraction of the Day

2010-03-22T13:19:00.000-04:00

Monday requires a lunchtime distraction, no? This is the best thing we've seen in some time. It's a very special anti-drug Saturday morning cartoon All-Star extravaganza, wherein various unrelated cartoon characters team up to help get little Johnny to stop smoking weed.

Featuring: The Smurfs, Alvin and the Chipmunks, Animated ALF, Garfield, Winnie the Pooh, Muppet Babies, and more. It's bizarre and amazing and horribly done.

SXSW and logistics.

2010-03-22T10:34:00.000-04:00

And now, it's time to armchair quarterback as to what we'd do differently if we ran SXSW.

1. The Venue Question
There's a dilemma here. One of the things that makes SXSW so great is that a majority of screenings take place at the Alamo Drafthouses- easily two of the best theaters in the country. But the downside is that the Alamo screening rooms don't have a huge capacity, and some are downright tiny. This led to a lot of frustration, particularly given the 25% increase in badge sales this year, as lines grew exponentially. Whereas last year, showing up 40 minutes early would almost always get you in, this year, the first five days the rule of thumb was at least an hour early, and at the Ritz, 60-90 minutes was better, if you wanted to be sure to get in. This creates scheduling problems. Most people we talked to about it consistently came up with one of the following ideas:

More G-Techs. I wasn't a big fan of the G-Tech theater, I found the seats uncomfortable and theater to be a bit impersonal. But- as the second largest theater behind the Paramount, we could get in consistently. For the first half of the festival, it makes sense to have another 2 or 3 of those.
Press and Industry Screenings. I'm torn on this, as it breaks up the party a bit, but throwing press and industry screenings for the higher-profile titles in the mornings, ala Cannes or Berlin, would free up space for film fans (there were a lot of those with badges, many at their first film festival). But, it removes the "discovery" factor for some of the films. That's good on one hand, because there won't be a half-attended first screening and then a packed second, but on the other hand, it takes a little of the energy out of thing.

2. The Shuttle Question
Perhaps I'm being a little selfish, given that we stayed directly across from the South Lamar, but the shuttles weren't up to par this year. 30 minutes between shuttles that seat about 22 and no standees allowed didn't work. Maybe double up the number of busses next year and space them out a bit better to make it a regular every 10 minutes type of thing. Surely there's a film company out there with a big release to promote that can sponsor an extra shuttle or two?

And the festival shuttle ending four days before the end of the festival is absolutely no good. That's a problem that's easy to fix.

3. The Badge Question
We picked up early, and it took about 10 minutes, but hear people had problem with getting theirs the next day. I've never been to a film festival where it's taken longer than 15 minutes to get a badge. The photo is a bit useless, nobody is checking it. But if you must have it, make it easier (and required) to upload it ahead of time. If you can spend $500 on a badge, you can figure out to upload a picture. I know there was an option, but neither of us could find it online, and somehow mine was on file from when I uploaded last year and Kristen's was taken on site.

More importantly- badges are good tools to see who you're talking to, often in crowded parties with dim light. With that in mind, the names should be bigger, the company listing should be WAY bigger, and there should be a place for a Twitter username or URL. A lot of people just wrote theirs in, but given the interactive bent of the festival, there's no reason not to have this.

4. The Exodus Question
The festival runs through the 20th. We stayed through the 20th. But most people that were solely there for film stayed until the 16th and left, right when music started. And once music started, a few irritating things happened. The shuttle not running was a big issue- with cabs virtually unavailable downtown during music, we found ourselves walking out of our way to take a city bus that ran every 30 minutes to get to the South Lamar for screenings. We don't want to have to rent a car for SXSW (there's nowhere to park it anyway), so the shuttle needs to run until the end.

Also, we found it a bit irritating that the convention center essentially shut itself for film badges on the 16th. The lounges were shuttered, and you weren't even allowed on the top floor without a Gold or Music badge. This makes taking meetings problematic, as "meet me in the filmmaker's lounge" devolved into "find me at this one table I hope I get downstairs amidst 20,000 musicians". There should be at least a room available for filmmakers (most of whom stayed for the entire festival) to take meetings. Definitely get that music needs space, but I'm sure it doesn't need ALL of it.

That said- all in all, there was a heroic task ahead of the SXSW team, and Janet and gang did one hell of a job. Countless people told me the same thing- "I'm actually working harder here than I do at Sundance, but I'm ten times more relaxed for some reason". That's a testament to how well it went, and we'll be back nice and early next year, ready for more. Onwards!

SXSW and indie film.

2010-03-22T10:04:00.000-04:00

We're back in Brooklyn, digging through the pile of mail on our desk and looking out the window at the 50 degrees and rainy weather (and cursing missing out on the 72 degree weekend). And we're just getting started on the follow-up from SXSW. This is definitely the year that the film festival came into its own, and most of the credit for this has to go to Janet Pierson and her team. The programming was top-notch, with very few "what is this doing here?" moments out of the films we saw. But with great power comes great responsibility, and I think there's a very worthy question here- what next, both for these films and the festival?

To start, let's take a look back at last year's SXSW, and the painful question that has to be asked- of the films that played so well last year... where did they go? From scanning the lineup, as far as I can tell, very few films that didn't head in to last year's festival with distribution came out with it. Some have only recently announced (BEST WORST MOVIE just announced their self-release, and WINNEBAGO MAN just announced their pickup by KINO), some had token releases (the excellent 43565 was done on a very small scale, IFC picked up a handful and did their thing, BEESWAX went through Cinema Guild), but most seem to have sort of evaporated into the ether.

Many of the films that disappeared did so for a good reason- they weren't theatrical. Hopefully, the filmmakers are chasing down their target markets and selling some DVDs. But, and I can't name names, there are more than a few films from last year that haven't seen the light of day yet that really should.

Where does that leave this year's films? Well, my hope is that people move a little bit faster. Both on the distribution end and the decision-making end. Don't make any mistake- our best guess is we saw a total of 48-50 films this year, and we really see the theatrical upside in about 7 or 8 of them tops, and some of those will be bought by traditional distributors. But regardless of what we think, there's a lesson in there for anyone who had a film play this year. Enjoy your moment, and if the offers haven't started coming in by now, it may be time to get to work on the next stage of things.

Variance is in the news!

2010-03-12T11:01:00.000-05:00

Did you notice- we announced our acquisitions of theatrical rights for GUY AND MADELINE ON A PARK BENCH and AFTER THE CUP: SONS OF SAKHNIN UNITED yesterday? Here's some links to stories that were run (though I'll be damned if we can read half of them due to pay walls):

Variety

indieWIRE

Screen Daily

We're horrifically excited about these titles. The official press release is after the jump below, but these are two very very good films and I really can't stress how excited we are to be able to bring these to the planet. Release dates are TBD, but AFTER THE CUP is likely going to be late May.

And now, we bring you the press release (which continues after the jump)

Variance Films Lands Consensus Best Undistributed Film

of last year, “Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench”

Also acquires provocative soccer documentary

“After The Cup: Sons of Sakhnin United”

New York, March 10, 2009 – Variance Films has acquired all North American theatrical rights for the acclaimed indie musical sensation GUY AND MADELINE ON A PARK BENCH and the thought-provoking soccer documentary AFTER THE CUP: SONS OF SAKHNIN UNITED, it was announced today by President Dylan Marchetti.

Both films continue a strong run for Variance that includes the recent box office successes UNTIL THE LIGHT TAKES US, which is in its thirteenth week of theatrical release, and PASSPORT TO LOVE, which is now currently available nationwide via VOD after a 10-city theatrical run in 2009.

Fresh off of sold-out festival screenings at Tribeca, AFI, the Viennale, and Torino (where it won the Special Jury Prize), GUY AND MADELINE ON A PARK BENCH was ranked #3 on the indieWIRE annual critics’ poll of best undistributed films and was named “The Best Undistributed Film of 2009” by writers from Film Comment, Variety, Time Out New York, and New York Daily News. Variance, in conjunction with the filmmakers, will release the film in late summer in theaters across the country. Mangusta Productions, a New York based production company that is committed to establishing a sustainable environment for independent filmmakers, will provide the P&A for the theatrical release. DVD, VOD, and international rights remain available.

A full-fledged musical written and directed by Damien Chazelle, GUY AND MADELINE ON A PARK BENCH tells the story of two separated lovers, a young jazz trumpeter and an introverted woman, who slowly wind their way back into each other’s lives through a series of romances and near-romances punctuated by song. Recasting the MGM musical tradition in a gritty, near-documentary style, the film stars Jason Palmer, and features all original music recorded by the Bratislava Symphony Orchestra.

“I cannot express how delightful it is to see a film like GUY AND MADELINE,” said Marchetti. “One minute it’s Godard and Cassavetes at the peak of their powers, the next it’s tap dancing and jazz from the best of the 1940’s musicals- but then, Damien blends them together so artfully that he makes you forget the influences and realize what a singular, innovative talent is on display here.”

“I’m thrilled to be working with Dylan Marchetti and his team at Variance,” said writer/director Damien Chazelle in a statement. “They’ve shown such enthusiasm for the film, and their ideas for getting it out to the world have gotten me very excited.”

From acclaimed documentary director Christopher Browne (“A League of Ordinary Gentlemen”), AFTER THE CUP: SONS OF SAKHNIN UNITED is a documentary that tells the story of the soccer franchise Bnei Sakhnin, the first team from an Arab town to win the Israeli Cup and represent Israel in European competition. Fielding Arab, Jewish and foreign-born players, owned by an Arab, and coached by a Jew, Bnei Sakhnin’s success begins to represent a symbol of co-existence, a potential bridge between Arabs and Jews in Israel. But as Bnei Sakhnin begins its next season, they know it may well be their first, and last, in the limelight as the serious consequences they face if they fail to live up to expectations tear at the very fiber of their belief system and team unity.

“I was riveted by AFTER THE CUP from the jump,” said Marchetti, “This film gives us a rousing underdog sports story and a powerful morality tale, and combines them expertly to provide audiences with everything that they could want in a documentary.”

“I’m very excited to be working with Dylan and his team at Variance,” said director Browne. “The way they tailor their releases to reach each film’s audience as creatively, efficiently, and affordably as possible make them invaluable partners for filmmakers who, more then ever, need tools to leverage the critical recognition that attends a theatrical release into viability for the film across subsequent distribution channels. My experience working with Dylan so far confirms my suspicion that he is one of the architects of an emerging Do-It-With-Others model that will allow movies like AFTER THE CUP to continue to be made by helping them become a financially responsible proposition.”

Variance will release AFTER THE CUP: SONS OF SAKHNIN UNITED on May 21^st in New York and May 28^th in Los Angeles to take advantage of the World Cup frenzy in June, followed by a theatrical expansion and a national VOD rollout later in the summer.

GUY AND MADELINE ON A PARK BENCH is written and directed by Damien Chazelle, stars Jason Palmer, Desiree Garcia, and Sandha Khin, features music by Justin Hurwitz and choreography by Kelly Kaleta, and was produced by Jasmine McGlade, Mihai Dinulescu, and W.A.W. Parker.

AFTER THE CUP: SONS OF SAKHNIN UNITED was directed by Christopher Browne, co-directed by Alexander H. Browne, and produced by Roger Bennet, Alexander H. Browne, and Michael Cohen.

TO DOWNLOAD PHOTOS: http://www.variancefilms.com/presspage

ABOUT VARIANCE FILMS

Variance Films is a Brooklyn-based theatrical distribution company whose mission is to bring quality films to audience via a theatrical release, while allowing filmmakers to retain all rights to their work. Founded in 2008 by former THINKFilm executive Dylan Marchetti, Variance distributes films using innovative release strategies that focus on collaborative, filmmaker-centric grassroots marketing tactics to drive audiences to theaters. Variance’s releases include UNTIL THE LIGHT TAKES US, the documentary about Norwegian black metal, the comedy WHITE ON RICE, the Vietnamese romantic drama PASSPORT TO LOVE, and has consulted on distribution and marketing strategies for films such as CHILDREN OF INVENTION and Arthouse Films’ HERB & DOROTHY, among others. For more information, please visit www.variancefilms.com.

# # #

Off to SXSW

2010-03-11T01:07:00.000-05:00

Berlin, we love you even if you're snowy and cold. Cannes at the start of summer is just lovely. AFM, you may not be much but you give me an excuse to see my LA people.

But SXSW, we love you the most. Why?

-Everyone's cool.
-The food is great.
-$5 milkshakes at the Drafthouse followed by a martini.
-Everyone's hung over, so it's ok.
-One of the best film lineups of any fest. I'll take 99% of these films over freezing at Sundance any day.

Dave Boyle talks DIY/DIWO (and Variance)!

2010-03-09T22:58:00.000-05:00

Our friend Dave Boyle, the writer/director of WHITE ON RICE (which releases theatrically in NYC this Friday in a special joint release with CHILDREN OF INVENTION- do you have tickets yet?), is a guest blogger this week on HAMMER TO NAIL, in which he has a must-read two part series on what it really means to "self-distribute" your film.

Through a mutual friend, Nguyen Tran, Dave brought us on to help with the booking, strategy, and planning of the theatrical release. What's that mean? Dave will tell you.

PART ONE

PART TWO

I can't stress enough how great of a read this is. Dave goes into very great detail about the process of getting your film out into the world, and what a company like us brings to the table. We loved working with him, and we loved reading this article. It brings back memories of going back and forth on Final Cut Pro giving trailer notes because we didn't have money for an editing house (and the trailer turned out pretty fantastic, I'd say), pacing the floor waiting for an opening date for a little indie film from the biggest theater in San Francisco (thanks AMC!), and more.

This method of release (DIY/DIWO) isn't for everyone. If you're absolutely sick of your film and want nothing more to do with it- well, then this isn't the thing for you. You can hire us to run the show completely- but you miss out on an important piece of the puzzle if you do so. A filmmaker as dedicated as Dave is deserves to be given $50 million for his next film, and I hope you studio bigwigs out there read his article and pay attention.

This blog has moved

2010-03-09T19:06:00.000-05:00

Not quite. Blogger's bloggered but this is tricky.

Our top ten-ish of the year...

2009-12-15T00:05:00.000-05:00

Just because I distribute films doesn't mean I don't also watch (and judge) them! So I thought it'd be nice to put out my top ten of the year. Rules are as follows: has to have been distributed (so none of my fest favorites), and I can't have worked on them in any fashion. Easy enough, yes?

(And, so you know, I haven't seen AVATAR, LOVELY BONES, SINGLE MAN, CRAZY HEART, INVICTUS, 35 SHOTS OF RUM, GOMORRAH, BEACHES OF AGNES, PONYO, AN EDUCATION, BRIGHT STAR, THE MAID, LA DANSE, THE MESSENGER, ME AND ORSON WELLES, WHITE RIBBON, DISTRICT 9, THE LAST STATION, REVANCHE, THE COVE, FOOD INC., or SUMMER HOURS. What, I've been busy!)

So, in no particular order, starting with the studio films and then the indies:

UP
Pixar's hot streak continues. The first ten minutes of UP may be the strongest filmmaking of the year.

INGLORIOUS BASTERDS
Did you doubt Tarantino? Why? Did you not expect this much fun? Because I did, and were not disappointed.

FANTASTIC MR. FOX
What I consider a return to form for Wes Anderson, after back-to-back disappointments (DARJEELING LIMITED has aged well, but if you start to think it's a great film, go rewatch the first twenty minutes of THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS and tell me it's even in the same ballpark). Everything that is wrong about WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE is right with this one. And, unlike the Tim Burton stop motion stuff, you can not only tell that Wes Anderson is involved, you can tell it's a Wes Anderson FILM. Top notch soundtrack to boot- if you haven't downloaded "Let Her Dance" by the Bobby Fuller Four yet, why wait?

ANTICHRIST
Yes, it's intentionally (and maybe over-the-top) shocking, and yes, it's been a bit insanely overhyped (still wearing your Chaos Reigns t-shirt, anyone?), but it's also beautiful and demands a repeat viewing to take in everything. I loved this, and I don't know what that says about me. Fun fact- since it's on Video On Demand, you can have the additional awkwardness of watching this in the back room while your family watches football this Christmas. Good luck with that.

A SERIOUS MAN
One review said it best- this is the kind of movie you only get to make when you win an Oscar. And I'm quite glad they did, because it's the Coens' best film since FARGO without question.

HURT LOCKER
Say it with me, again- Kathryn Bigelow is not only the best "female action director", she's probably the best action director working today. If you need proof, watch this film after watching THE KINGDOM- no comparison, and in a lovely world this would probably win best picture.

IN THE LOOP
Who knew British people cursing at each other could be so much fun. Oh wait- everyone.

BEESWAX
I admit that we chased this film for some time, and kind of wished we'd won it- the release wasn't done terribly well. But anyone who wants to see why "mumblecore" isn't a real word, but is, instead, a code word for "films where people talk and characters are important" meaning "films like they made in the seventies", needs to take a look. I swear, they'd have called Coppola mumblecore.

IN A DREAM
Another one we chased, and probably the most beautiful documentary to be released all year. I don't know why this didn't catch on- it says so much about art, love, family, and life, and the drama that is captured on screen rivals anything scripted.

GOODBYE SOLO
Two performance don't make a film, do they? Why yes, it seems they do.

HONORABLE MENTION
DRAG ME TO HELL*
The asterisk is because this film, apparently, is only watchable with 1,000 rabid Raimi fans at South by Southwest, because a subsequent viewing with a smaller crowd didn't really do it.

MEDICINE FOR MELANCHOLY
Such wonderful photography and acting is almost done in by third act derailment... but not quite.

STAR TREK
I'm not a fan of Star Trek. But occasional lapses in logic aside (Kirk manages to find Spock on that ice planet that quickly? Really?), this was fun, well shot, well cast, and just general eye candy all around.

JULIA
Tilda Swinton proves there is no actress more daring working in cinema, period.

BROTHERS BLOOM
Midway through, you can tell that Rian Johnson (whose BRICK remains one of the best films of the decade) has overdosed on Wes Anderson quirk and has probably been given a few million dollars too many to spend. But it's still a fun, lighthearted romp, and I don't usually use those words to mean something positive- in this case, I do.

OVERRATED
THE HANGOVER
I found this racist, boring, homophobic, and generally lazy comedy to be completely void of any laughs that A) weren't in the trailer or B) didn't involve Mike Tyson. This is being talked about for a best picture nomination? Is this going to be a CRASH/BRAVEHEART year? Give me a break.

FUNNY PEOPLE
I wouldn't say this was overrated, except people seemed to like it. There's a decent movie in here, but the unfortunate part is someone thought to scotch tape a shitty one to the back of it. You could literally leave off the last three reels of this movie and fix the whole thing.

PUBLIC ENEMIES
I am a huge Michael Mann fan. I even loved MIAMI VICE. This one just sort of feels like him phoning it in, like he (and Depp) are simply too hemmed in by the actual historical facts to have any fun with it. I'd have much rather seen a non-Dillinger Michael Mann gangster film any day.

PRECIOUS
The book made me cry openly on an airplane, which I am not prone to doing. The movie- kind of left me empty. There is a fantastic film in here, and the performances are great all around. But it really feels like it was edited by a kid on iMovie. There is absolutely no reason for that last scene in the social worker's office to have a single cut in it. Mo'nique is so good you could have focused the camera and walked out of the room. Why chop that up?

UP IN THE AIR
This, similar to JUNO, has been wildly overhyped and is going to let people down- have you put that JUNO dvd on lately? It's good. It's watchable. Clooney is amazing (though I think he looks completely high for the first half of the film) as always, as is Vera. But there's just no "it" to it- I've seen this story a million times, and there's just not anything about this that sets it apart from the others. Maybe I'm also a little irritated that several of my travel tips were revealed on screen to millions of people who are now going to try and get in my frequent flyer line. Best picture contender? Not by a long shot.

BIGGEST DISAPPOINTMENT
WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE
I actually did enjoy this, I should note. It's a fine film, well done, well put together. And I didn't expect a fun filled wild rumpus from the trailer- I expected a wistful film about the loss of childhood. I got a film of manic depressive monsters. Beautifully shot, well acted, but just a little too lifeless. This isn't a bad movie at all, it's just not great, and feels like it could have been.

WHAT WE'RE MOST EXCITED ABOUT IN 2010
CATALOG TITLES ON BLU-RAY
I poo-poohed Blu-ray for quite some time. Then, I saw Criterion's CHUNGKING EXPRESS Blu-ray on a decent television. Holy shit, am I sold or what. Everything DVD promised, Blu-ray delivers- namely, the best way possible to see classic films, short of being invited to see the first screening of a new print of a restoration. Kubrick, Wong Kar-Wei, Bergman, Kurosawa- rediscovery of all of these guys clearly awaits this year, and I couldn't be happier.

WHAT WE'RE LEAST EXCITED ABOUT IN 2010
3-D
I went to see UP in 3-D. It was well done, and I didn't get a headache. Then I saw UP in digital projection in 2-D, and it was like a whole new film. The colors popped off the screen. 3-D, as far as I can tell, serves to dim the image, make you focus on the "hmm, that's popping out" element as opposed to the "hey, this movie is well done" element, and generally irritate me. I'm giving it exactly one more try- AVATAR. But if that doesn't work for me, I'm out for good. We can do better.

UNTIL THE LIGHT TAKES US comes out this Friday... why should you care?

2009-12-03T17:32:00.000-05:00

This Friday, Variance is releasing UNTIL THE LIGHT TAKES US, a documentary film, in New York City and several other markets.

The film starts Friday at Cinema Village at 22 East 12th Street in New York City, between 5th and University. Showtimes are daily at 3:20, 7:00, and 9:15, and tickets are available at http://www.cinemavillage.com (and you should get them soon, the Friday shows are close to selling out).

But wait- you don't like metal, you say, and you don't know anything about black metal. So, why should you come? The simple answer is that this isn't a film about music at all- this is a film about much, much more.

The most excellent blog Gordon and the Whale has the following to say, which we think sums it up quite well:

"It’s a film that will stick with you in the most unshakeable of ways, black metal fan or not. It's not a standard rock doc... you’re not going to find tricked out concert footage here, glory shots of rock stars wailing away. It’s a much quieter documentary, much sadder, and much more effective. It’s a film about what could have been and what never was, a film about what happens when dreams and people die, a film about dark endings and the people left behind to make sense of it all.”

This is a film about a group of people reacting against what they felt was a Western influence on Norwegian culture.

This is a film about what happens when the media decides to sensationalize something, and how reality is quite often composed of what people are told as opposed to what actually happened.

This is a film about what happens when things go too far, and music is overshadowed by paranoia, murder, arson, and ego.

This is a film about how a movement is changed once the public's idea of it is co-opted by artists from around the world.

PRAISE FOR UNTIL THE LIGHT TAKES US:

New York Magazine has made the film an Editor's Pick, and says “You don’t need to be a Norwegian black metal fan to appreciate this exhaustive, loving documentary.”

Ain't It Cool News says: “My favorite kind of documentary... it’s incredibly effective, and there’s real control in the way they parcel out information at just the right moment for maximum effect. A genuine reaction to a world grown ugly.”

LA Weekly says "“Richly compelling and artfully shot...through smartly constructed reveals and blunt interviews, Aites and Ewell investigate the entanglement of art, terrorism, and the media that tried to define both," and has made the film a Critic's Pick.

Variety says "Morbidly fascinating... it’s wonderful how real blood and violence can still be so arresting in the era of Saw.”

The Providence Journal says "Compelling…does a powerful job. Gives you the chills."

PLAYDATES:

The film opens this Friday, 12/4 at Cinema Village in NYC, as well as in Providence, RI at the Cable Car Cinema and in Grand Rapids at Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts. Additional dates:

12/11: Los Angeles (Laemmle’s Sunset 5), Houston, TX (Alamo Drafthouse West Oaks)

1/8: Chicago, IL (Gene Siskel Film Center)

1/15: Seattle, WA (The Grand Illusion Cinema)

1/22: Milwaukee, WI (Times Cinema)

1/29: Denver, CO (Starz Film Center)

We hope you'll come out and give this one a shot- leave your expectations at the door, and if you can keep your mind open, you'll find a film that can potentially blow it.

Variance sees THE LIGHT!

2009-08-25T14:44:00.000-04:00

Yes, yes, we know- there's nothing lamer than reposting a press release. But it's a good press release! Behold:

Variance Films is proud to announce the acquisition of US theatrical rights for UNTIL THE LIGHT TAKES US, the acclaimed documentary from directors Aaron Aites and Audrey Ewell. The film will open November 20 in NYC at Cinema Village and in Austin at the Alamo Drafthouse, and December 11th in Los Angeles at Laemmle’s Sunset 5, with more dates to be added throughout December and January.

An official selection at international film festivals including AFI, Raindance, Athens, Gothenburg, and many others, UNTIL THE LIGHT TAKES US is the first documentary to go behind the scenes of black metal. Originating in Norway, black metal is a scene that is equal parts music genre, terrorist movement, and postmodern art scene. Rising to worldwide notoriety after a series of church burnings in Norway in the early nineties, the media was quick to assign the “Satanist” label to both the genre and founders—but the truth, as revealed in exclusive and chilling interviews with the leaders of the scene (one in jail for murder and arson), is far more complex.

“I’ll be honest- my personal musical tastes run far more towards Radiohead than black metal,” said Dylan Marchetti, President of Variance Films, “so that fact that I found this documentary fascinating and completely engrossing from the first frame is a credit to the directors—they’ve created a film so truly unique that you don’t have to be familiar with the music, or even enjoy it, to appreciate the film. This is not a typical music documentary—it goes so much deeper than that.”

“We couldn't be happier to have partnered with Variance Films on the theatrical release of Until The Light Takes Us,” directors Aaron Aites and Audrey Ewell said. “They're not scared by the fact that it's as much a social critique as it is a rock doc, and will see that it's presented properly. We were approached by a lot of companies who, due to the flashy subject matter, wanted this to be an exploitation release, and we had to pass. But Dylan and his team truly understand and respect the film, and we are pleased to be working with Variance in bringing this film to a much larger audience.”

The deal was negotiated between Marchetti on behalf of Variance Films and the filmmakers.

Variance goes on a BLIND DATE

2009-06-19T14:53:00.000-04:00

Variance Films is proud to announce the acquisition of US theatrical rights for BLIND DATE, the second remake in the Theo van Gogh Trilogy (following INTERVIEW), directed by Stanley Tucci and starring Patricia Clarkson and Tucci.

An official selection at the Sundance Film Festival, the Sao Paulo Film Festival and the Film by the Sea, BLIND DATE is a funny, touching, and wholeheartedly fresh film about a couple desperately trying to reconcile after the tragic loss of their young daughter. From producers Bruce Weiss of New York based Ironworks Productions and Dutch producer Gijs van de Westelaken of Column Films, Cinemavault handles the worldwide sales rights to the trilogy. E1 has acquired US DVD & VOD rights while the Sundance Channel has acquired exclusive cable rights.

“The first time I saw the film, I fell head over heels for it,” said Dylan Marchetti, President of Variance Films. “One of the joys of running a smaller company is you can wait and work on the films that you’re truly in love with… and this is absolutely one of those cases. We can’t wait to get this one out there.”

The deal was negotiated between Marchetti on behalf of Variance Films and Caroline Stern and Nick Stiliadis on behalf of Cinemavault. Variance plans to release the film theatrically in late summer/early fall 2009.

Piracy: this is not helpful.

2009-03-05T16:53:00.000-05:00

I read the below news item about the exciting new technology someone has come up with to thwart piracy ONE AND FOR ALL

The latest anti-piracy technology can do away with the need to provide night-vision goggles to theater employees so that they can search for persons using camcorders or cell phones while a movie is playing. The technology involves automatically placing an audio "watermark" on the film when a camera is detected in a theater. When the film is played back, the system discloses the seat that was being used while the camcording was in progress. The website TorrentFreak noted, however, that in order to have a suspect arrested, the theater must create a database including information about who is sitting in each seat. In a related development, the MPAA has released a study titled "Film Piracy, Organized Crime, and Terrorism," claiming that mobsters and terrorists support their activities by bootlegging films

So basically, piracy can be solved (or, more accurate, piracy can continue as is, it can simply be punished) if theaters will simply completely change the way that people go to the movies? This reminds me of the super-advanced CD copying prevention software that was cracked by using a magic marker.

Piracy is a big problem, for sure. But I have to say, a look through the torrent sites shows a lot more screener DVD rips than it does camcorder copies. And punitive measures remind me a lot of what the music industry tried, and failed, to do a few years ago- and we all saw how it worked out for them.

I don't have an answer for the piracy issue, but clearly, neither do these guys.

New Yorker Films

2009-02-24T10:28:00.000-05:00

According to a small statement on their website, New Yorker Film is out of business effective yesterday. There's not much to say other than to point out what an incredible loss this is for fans of foreign and independent film. These guys, over the past 44 years, have essentially defined what it means to be an independent distributor- taking on films nobody else would, or could, and not worrying about the fact that the audience for them was small, just releasing them right. They were an inspiration in the creation of Variance, and Dan Talbot's Lincoln Plaza Cinemas remains the definition of how an independent theater should be run.

We're still hoping someone swoops in and makes this better- the indie film scene will be a lot better off for it.

About the Oscars...

2009-02-21T14:17:00.000-05:00

Much discussion of late on how one can "fix" the Oscars. I'm not sure the conversation is going in the right direction. I don't think it matters much that DARK KNIGHT isn't a Best Picture nominee- people may tune out a bit if they don't care about the movies, but if the path to big ratings was nominating populist films, wouldn't the People's Choice Awards get massive ratings?

No, the problem with the Oscars is that even for me, someone who's buried in the industry 24-7, the ceremony is absolutely excruciating.

So, Variance is proud to offer it's six step plan for fixing the Oscars:

1. ENOUGH WITH THE TRIBUTES: There is nothing more boring than sitting through twenty different tributes, lifetime achievement awards, and bizarre clip reels. The lifetime awards should be awarded, sure, but with a one minute speech, no different than the presenters.

2. LOSE ANY AND ALL MUSICAL NUMBERS: Perform the nominated songs, sure. But lose anything else. There's nothing more eye-rolling than watching a host try and sing and dance his way through the intro (Billy Crystal, we're talking to you), and really, musical numbers are more than welcome at the Tony Awards.

3. INTERPRETIVE DANCE IS HEREBY BANNED: The most humiliating thing I've seen on TV is that bizarre performance a few years back of the song from CRASH.

4. BUILD SOME SUSPENSE: The big awards are the supporting/lead actor and actress, director, and film categories. Those should be the last six. Give the technical awards first, and fast.

5. NO BANTER: The banter is awful. Every time. Lose it! Announce the nominees and let's move forward.

6. SERVE BOOZE: It is far more entertaining to watch drunk celebrities than sober ones. Serve alcohol throughout the event. Let's all stop pretending Hollywood isn't a wonderful, debaucherous place where the booze flows like water.

Easy enough, in our opinion. And worst case scenario, we're all in favor of Defamer's Oscar Gun idea, where the statuettes are shot out of a cannon at the winners. Get 'em!

We're off!

2009-02-07T11:31:00.000-05:00

Variance is off to the 2009 European Film Market and Berlin Film Festival. It may be a little quiet for a bit, but we'll try to blog about all the good stuff whenever we stumble upon it.

Truth in advertising, exemplified:

2009-02-05T11:01:00.000-05:00

Lest you have any doubts what the film BURNING PASSION is about, the poster very succinctly sums it up...

Why they seem to be advertising the film exclusively in laundromats is beyond me, but if you're interested, it screens online on Valentine's Day. Miiiight be wise to run this one past the significant other before canceling those dinner reservations, though.

(Via AdFreak via Movie Marketing Madness)

Talk about a tricky sell...

2009-02-04T17:51:00.000-05:00

There's an interesting article (and an interesting exercise in spin) in the LA Times today about the upcoming mid-February release of CONFESSIONS OF A SHOPAHOLIC.

In a nutshell- there's a comedy coming out about an impulsive shopper in the midst of the worst recession since the Great Depression, logic seems to say this is just about the worst possible time to release it, and it's up to the folks involved to explain why this isn't the case.

But uberproducer Jerry Bruckheimer, who I would not want to disagree with (nor, given his track record, bet against in most cases), thinks otherwise, and some agree:

"The timing for this movie couldn't be better," producer Jerry Bruckheimer said. "This is the journey of a young girl who has a problem and she turns her life around. It's a tale the whole world can learn a lesson from," added Bruckheimer, who had the project in development for eight years before it was made.

Maybe- but I have to say, I have the feeling that the world has started learning their lessons already, and these lessons are more likely to come in the form of a pink slip or eviction notice than a bubbly Valentine's Day comedy.

"If people wanted movies to reflect real life, then Iraq war movies would have done a lot better than they did," says Paul Dergarabedian, who heads the box-office tracking firm Media by Numbers, referring to recent pictures torn from the headlines such as "Stop-Loss," "In the Valley of Elah" and "Redacted."

That's an interesting argument, but a disingenuous one. I think we all agree that a DRAMA about the recession would go over about as well as the Iraq films, which did all tank rather badly. But a more accurate comparison would've been how a COMEDY about the Iraq war would have performed. Would that equal cricket sounds in the theater on Friday night, or would it be pure genius? We don't know, because nobody had the balls to try it. I have a feeling it's the crickets.

In the end, the poster, featuring Isla Fisher and a bunch of ritzy shopping bags with the tagline "all she wanted was a little credit", doesn't seem to be contributing to the "she learns her lesson!" argument. Raise your hand if you've bought anything trivial or unnecessary in the last few months? Anyone? Didn't think so. Now- do you want to go see someone ELSE get to do so, then magically turn their life around?

Putting aside the (very interesting) argument that we might not be in such a mess if people who had secure jobs/money kept spending like they normally would, I'm having a hard time seeing a lot of filmgoers paying to see someone else make the mistakes some of us have been making, and then turning around and laughing about it over a cosmo with the gang after the film. I'd venture to guess that a whole lot of people with credit card debt didn't get it from a Marc Jacobs spending spree, they got it at the grocery store trying to keep food on the table. Add to that the internet snark machine, which has only begun chewing on the film (I fully expect the Nikki Finkes and Defamers of the world to have a field day on this one), and Disney's got its work cut out for it.

So I'm very curious to see how this one plays out. My instinct says that if you or someone you know is out of work, has lost their home, is struggling to pay bills, or is being affected in some way by this horrid economy (read: everyone), you probably don't want to go laugh at the foibles of someone who shops incessantly. But never underestimate the audience of a comedy, not in these times. If PAUL BLART can hit $100 million, the door is certainly open. We shall see.

What may be the most disheartening thing here is what sticking to the release date says about Disney's view of the economy. For all their defense of the film, I'd be willing to bet that if anyone over there saw this getting better by summer, or fall, the release date would very quickly follow suit. For better or worse, we're in this for the long haul, and it seems Disney agrees.

Wong Kar-wei fun at Walter Reade Thursday...

2009-02-04T12:18:00.000-05:00

The Film Society of Lincoln Center is showing the sublime 1990 film DAYS OF BEING WILD this Thursday at 7:30pm. If you're around and in town (and can stomach the $25 ticket- I know you're throwing a party afterwards, but really guys, it's a recession, haven't you heard?), I strongly recommend you head over. There's an open bar after as well, and after such a film experience, I can't imagine that the combination of a cold winter + free drinks + erotically charged heartbreak on screen won't result in more than a few people discreetly leaving together.

I'm assuming they've struck a new 35mm print for this, although reportedly they have one flying around the city that's been used a few time but is in fair shape. One of my greatest disappointments of programming the ImaginAsian was getting two 35mm prints of FALLEN ANGELS and HAPPY TOGETHER, only to find both damaged to such a degree that they were borderline unwatchable, and FALLEN ANGELS' sound to actually be a Mandarin dub, for some odd reason.

But, as if an answer to prayers, there are new DVDs coming from Kino of both FALLEN ANGELS and HAPPY TOGETHER. Both are from the quite excellent new HD masters, with new 5.1 sound mixes supervised by Wong Kar-wei himself to boot. I'll preorder the hell out of these- the previous DVDs were good, but needed improvement. Until Kino starts releasing Blu-Ray (plans were made, but delayed), this is the best these films are going to look, unless (hopefully) Kino can get its hands on some new 35mm prints- no small feat.

On a final WKW note, I recently had the pleasure of watching Criterion's CHUNKING EXPRESS on Blu-Ray, and it was an absolute revelation. I don't think I've ever seen a film look as beautiful on a television set. I'm not a big Blu-Ray supporter, I think we'll be hooking our TVs up to the internet long before Blu-Ray can reach a market saturation point, but I have to tell you- this very nearly won me over. If you know someone with an amazing home theater setup, I strongly encourage you to "give them" the CHUNKING EXPRESS Blu-Ray for Valentine's Day, on the condition that they let you come over and watch it whenever you want. That's my plan.

Buzz done right

2009-02-02T19:34:00.000-05:00

Good- turns out "Push", one of the more beloved films to come out of Sundance (the Harlem-set Lee Daniels/Mo'Nique film, not the Dakota Fanning sci-fi fest due out next week), capitalized on the buzz surrounding the film and sold big- $5.5 million for some reports. Better still, it's going to go out via Lionsgate, Oprah, and Tyler Perry- that's a trifecta I'd not want to be up against.

The strategy behind the sale is as important as the sale- they screened the film in Harlem a few days before the festival premiere, and enlisted the support of Perry and Oprah long before the festival. They didn't just depend on a good screening to create the buzz, they built it themselves.

One thing I would add- had the film not sold immediately, and huge, what should the filmmakers have done? My vote- not sat on it. I can't encourage this enough- if your film has some buzz behind it, USE IT- don't sit around waiting for a giant deal, release it yourself. As Magnolia demonstrated with LET THE RIGHT ONE IN- a good film will attract an audience, even without a huge spend behind it. Don't let your film collect dust and lose momentum, get out there and make it happen.

Proof that CGI ruined kiddie films forever...

2009-01-30T16:28:00.000-05:00

Look no further than the good people at CHUD, who have dug deep into the bowels of the internets to come up with this:

Big budget marketing and the hole in the soul...

2009-01-28T19:58:00.000-05:00

There's an interesting article in last week's New Yorker about Tim Palen, the inarguable genius behind the marketing department at Lionsgate, one of the most efficient big-studio operations out there, hands down. Even if THE SPIRIT was awful, and released at the worst possible time, you can't argue that the ads got your attention, and the Che-inspired RAMBO poster was, in my opinion, the single greatest piece of key art for a film in the last ten years. It goes into rather candid detail about the process behind selling films to a mass audience.

Now granted- Variance works in the independent sphere, so what we do is very different than what Tim has to. But there's one section that raises an interesting question about truth in advertising, that I wanted to share. It's referring to the creation of a trailer for the upcoming Renee Zellweger film NEW IN TOWN (previously titled "Chilled in Miami"):

He had been working to make a compelling trailer, using David Schneiderman, at Seismic Productions, who cut trailers for “The Devil Wears Prada” and “Sex and the City.” Paul Brooks wanted the trailer to be primarily comedic, but Palen felt that it needed an emotional through-line, “the stuff that tugs on the ovary.” Schneiderman says that Palen’s reaction to his first pass “was the worst: ‘Where’s the Mary Tyler Moore?’ He said, ‘This girl goes to this little town in Minnesota and she’s a cold person, and they warm her up, right? More warmth, more style, more “Devil Wears Prada.” ’ And I said, ‘I don’t know where that is in the movie.’ And he said, ‘Create it.’ ”

Palen often uses a jokey shorthand to convey the sort of campaign he wants; his internal name for “Chilled in Miami” was “The Devil Wears Patagonia.” He referred to “Good Luck Chuck,” a critically lambasted R-rated comedy starring Jessica Alba, as “There’s Something About Jessica,” and cut the TV spots to emphasize Alba’s tumbles and mishaps. “We cheated it and got the film open, which was kind of a feat,” he says. “America likes cheese.” (When I e-mailed Palen to tell him that I’d watched the film, he replied, “Can you get workman’s comp?”)

I understand, when undertaking a wide release, the need to open the film big. For giganto-budget movies, it's all about the first week gross, and then it's downhill from there. If you know your film is a bomb, the best you can do is try and get as many people in the first weekend as you can- after that, you can't hide bad reviews and word-of-mouth, and that's the end for you.

Which makes me thankful that, for the most part, independent film does not work that way. It's not all about the first week's gross (although it admittedly factors in more than it should). And, because I'm not a production house, I have the luxury on not working on films that aren't any good, a luxury that a studio marketing head doesn't have. Which means on a Variance film, I can be honest about what we have, because what we have is worthy. I don't have a slate of 15 films that I have to market, some that work and some that don't.

Filmgoers are loyal to a film, not to a studio or brand. Nobody, except perhaps you, Dear Reader, cares if the film is from Variance, Lionsgate, or whomever, and so you won't hold a bad film or a devious campaign against a studio when the next one rolls around. But- does that mean you should be able to get away with murder when selling a film, if there are no serious consequences besides a few nasty blog postings? What's to stop someone with a documentary about genocide from positioning the film as a romantic comedy and an action film to attract more attention, if all that matters is the first weekend?

Simply put- have you even been led to believe a film is about one thing, only to go and find it's something completely different? I can think of countless films that have two sets of ads- one for the boys, and one for the girls. The "boy's" ad always sells the film as a raucous comedy or action film, where the "girl's" ad always focuses on the romance (forgive the sexism- I'm merely reporting on it, not condoning it).

I think that (thankfully) as far as mainstream movies go, we will have less of this to look forward to as we progress. Facebook, Twitter, whatever- nowadays, when you see a bad movie, you don't wait until you have dinner with your friends to tell them. You post it to your Facebook, or send a Twitter. Even if a studio doesn't screen a film for critics, they'll all review it online by Friday night. It's kind of a welcome change- as this continues, the "cheat" opening weekend is going to turn into the "cheat" opening night. Bad films will make less, and less bad films will get made.

At least we would hope. That said, I have nothing but respect for Mr. Palen- I maintain the Rambo campaign is the finest piece of mainstream film marketing done in ages.

Variety layoffs take out one of the good guys...

2009-01-27T12:06:00.000-05:00

Everyone's laying off people as fast as they can these days, but it's always sad to see one of the good guys go down. Variety has announced they're laying off 30 people, and one of them is blogger Anne Thompson. She's one of the greats- her columns and postings are consistently some of the smartest things on the Variety site.

I'm incredibly sad to hear this.

The piracy question...

2009-01-26T15:25:00.000-05:00

Variance Films treads more than a few lines, but none so interesting as when we go from meeting with filmmakers in coffee shops in Brooklyn to attending conferences set up by NATO (National Association of Theater Owners, in what must surely be the most bizarre double-acronym in this history of acronyms) in Las Vegas and Orlando.

At these conferences, the main topic of conversation is piracy. Studios and exhibitors alike have seen what has happened to the music industry, and everyone is worked up into quite a tizzy trying not to be the next record company (in the case of the studios) or the next Tower Records (in the case of the theaters).

In essence, when faced with the possibility of piracy, the record companies and the RIAA fell over themselves to do pretty much everything incorrectly. An entire generation of young Americans doesn't pay for music? Let's sue 400 people- not enough to make any sort of meaningful difference, but enough to enrage pretty much everyone. It's harder to get new music heard by the masses legally? Let's jack up the licensing fees for internet radio so what used to be essentially free costs upward of $1,000 per month. Everyone has an iPod? Let's put DRM on all of our tracks so nobody has any choice but to go to iTunes, not find our songs, and hope they don't spend 4 minutes on the internet downloading them for free.

To some degree, the studios understand this. But- what happens next? Nobody's got the answer, but I think it's worth a discussion. Before that happens, I think there are some indisputable points that have to be taken into account:

•Nearly every mainstream movie is available in pirated form almost immediately after the release, and often before.
Check out this spreadsheet put together by Waxy.org: it details the release date and avaibility on the internet of both camcorded and DVD-quality pirate copies of a film. The longest delay seems to be a matter of weeks.

•As compression tools get better and broadband connections get faster, it will become as easy to download movies as it is music.
Right now, a DVD-quality rip is around a 1 gig download. If one uses a torrent client, that only takes a few hours. But compared to a simple MP3 download, there's a bit of a learning curve that has kept things a little bit under control. Now, when a film can be downloaded in about 15 minutes without any sort of difficulty, don't you think this will become far more widespread of an issue?

•Some people are fine sitting in front of their computers, but most want to watch movies on their televisions in the living room.
I have a gorgeous 24" iMac front and center in my office, with a massive screen. And I have a very old television. But, like most people, my living room is set up around that television, not my computer. Whether it be TVs with the ability to stream video built-in (which have already been announced), a far wider selection in your cable company's PPV/On Demand section, or a box that hooks up to your internet connection and your TV ala Netflix's Roku box, there will need to be some sort of bridge, and people have already figured that out and set the wheels turning- it's a matter of time before this is the main content delivery system.

•The experience of going to the theater is often about more than just the movie, and will have to be for theaters to survive.
This is the tricky one. Does making a film available via On-Demand or the internet at the same time as a theatrical release make sense? It's hard to say, because the only people who have done it are the ones that own all the outlets (like Mark Cuban with Magnolia and Landmark Theaters, or IFC with their film distribution company, NYC theater. and Rainbow media ownership)- right now it's a closed system. Theater owners are terrified that this will kill attendance. I'm not so sure- I think it has to be taken into account that on Friday night, teenagers still want a place to make out, adults still want to get out of the house, and people who love films want to see them on a big screen with a great sound system and with a big audience.

But just like music, if it's all about the movies, eventually people will be able to get them (illegally) without any trouble, and those that simply want to see a film without spending time or money are going to have an easy way to do so. Theaters are using tricks like IMAX and 3-D as bait, which is great for mainstream blockbusters, but what about the smaller art houses and those films? What is going to convince people to leave the house to see them? The first step, which as a former theater operator I can attest to, is making attending your theater as hassle-free and enjoyable as possible. If you have a tiny screen, crappy sound, uncomfortable seats, and exorbitant prices for food that's not fresh, you're in a bit of trouble already, but it's not insurmountable.

Look at the recent resurgence of vinyl sales as an example- you can download the new Animal Collective album if you want. But you can't download a massive 180-gram, awesome sounding and well packaged vinyl release. And musicians and labels alike are finding that people are willing to pay for something special if you make it available to them. How can that translate to theaters and film distributors without going for a luxury model (which can work well for some, but there has to be another alternative, particularly in this economy)?

•No content provider, whether Netflix, Hulu, or otherwise, can be truly successful without a large, relatively complete, and consistent line-up of quality films.
The recent flap about movies disappearing from Netflix streaming, iTunes, and Hulu due to complaints from cable channels and rights holders raises a red flag. For a content provider to be successful, they have to have a massive library of content, similar to iTunes for music or Netflix's DVD mail service, or smaller libraries aggregated in some standard form. If people have to search through multiple services that require different subscriptions or technological requirements, it's not going to work quite right. Even if Netflix and Amazon on demand never get along, there's got to be some sort of system to find out where a particular film is, easily- people are loyal to films, not to distribution companies.

The success of iTunes for music raises a good point here. You know, without asking, that 99% of the music you want to hear is available for illegal download if you sink 5 minutes into looking for it and grabbing it. But you also know that for .99 a song (soon to change, alas, but still), and you can have it, legally, in less than 30 seconds most times. The latter is easier, and you know you're going to get what you want at good quality and without risk. Can we do that for film as well?

•The "digital revolution" is not all negative- handled smartly, there is a way for filmmakers, particularly independent ones, to expand their audience.
Similar to what Radiohead ("here's our album, pay what you will") and Nine Inch Nails ("here's our album, it's free, remix it, buy a special edition, and come see us in concert"), there is most certainly a way for filmmakers to forgo the traditional distribution system and sell your film directly to its audience. Right now, that basically manifests itself in doing a massive festival tour, self-distributing to a handful of theaters, and releasing a DVD or download on your website, which is fairly expensive and complicated. But that won't last long. Some films, that don't ever make it to theaters, can benefit from this option as is. But what about films that deserve to be shown in a lot of theaters? Is there a way to leverage both?

In a nutshell, we think there is. We're confident that Variance Films has the theatrical part of things covered- our entire M.O. is to work with filmmakers to get their films into the right theaters without spending millions of dollars on marketing, and we think that model is great (or we'd change it). But, the question is begged, then what? We don't do DVD (we recommend people for you, but we don't take an interest), and then you often wind up back at the original problem- you have to sign away your rights and depend on something else to do the work and (hopefully) pay you. But regardless of how you get your film out there, as it stands, piracy is something that isn't going to go away. We can learn from the past, or we can ignore it, but either way it's going to take some creative thinking.

So- what's to be done?

Films I loved in 2008

2009-01-25T21:26:00.000-05:00

I think it's perfectly safe to say that while there was plenty of great film to be had, compared to 2007, what wound up in theaters in 2008 was pretty disappointing. With potentially one exception, I liked what I expected to this year and disliked what I thought I would- there were no amazing surprises (though this year's Sundance crop gives hope).

Last year, we had the one-two punch of THERE WILL BE BLOOD and NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN (I'm partial to the former) at the end of the year. We had a tiny film from IFC called DAY NIGHT DAY NIGHT that, shot for $20,000 on the streets of NYC, contained more tension and kinetic energy than any film I can remember seeing in the last few years.

Even the films that should have been minor- mutilplex seat-fillers like SUPERBAD and MICHAEL CLAYTON, documentaries that didn't do well such as IN THE SHADOW OF THE MOON and WAR/DANCE, even what should have been a treacly romance (ONCE)- time and time again I found myself stumbling out of a theater shaking my head asking how many good movies could come out at once.

In 2008, they were still there, just a bit fewer and farther between. I've also noticed that there doesn't seem to be the consensus that everyone had last year. We passed around a top ten at THINKFilm when I was there, and 6 of 8 had THERE WILL BE BLOOD in the top spot (plus another at #2). This year it's way more fun- people are arguing about the merits of SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE (see the Indiepix blog for an interesting counterpoint to the hype, one that I disagree with but at least is honestly written) and whether BEN BUTTON is FORREST GUMP 2.

So here are my five favorites of last year (keeping in mind I have a great many left to see):

SYNECDOCHE, NY- A lot of people are "sick" of Charlie Kaufman. I'm not one of them. This movie was brilliant, and while at times not easy to watch, I've gone back for three viewings and the film has continued to open up each time. Things add up, things make sense, the film doesn't lose its way. Probably my favorite of 2008.

SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE- I understand the complaints, and agree with a few. The lead character is wooden, and is faking his Indian accent (he's British), it's overly optimistic, it's focused on the power of luck to overcome, which is not the message we need, blahblahblah. My question- so what? The film is a return to form for Boyle- it's a blast of compressed energy we haven't seen since TRAINSPOTTING, and if you leave the theater without a smile on your face I have concerns about your soul. Maybe it's not best picture material, but it's certainly the most fun I had at a movie theater this year.

WALTZ WITH BASHIR- This seems to be floundering amongst the Oscar films, and I hope it finds its audience (if anyone can do it, it's Sony Classics). It's not only one of the best put-together films I've seen this year stylistically, similar to MILK, it's particularly timely given recent events. It's the best score I've heard in some time, as well.

LET THE RIGHT ONE IN- Magnolia did not drop the ball on this one, but it was the internet guys that carried it. This is the kind of film that previously would have gone unseen until someone raved about the DVD. Instead, it's sitting at $1.5 million. If you ever doubted the power of the internet movie sites to make or break a film, doubt no more.

VICKY CRISTINA BARCELONA- New York misses Woody Allen, but if he has to go to Spain to make a movie this good (easily amongst his best 5, and I'm counting everything), we'll make do with one of his shows at the Carlyle for now. But Woody- hurry back.

What becomes of a broken blog?

2009-01-25T21:17:00.000-05:00

We've had nothing but technical difficulties with the blog since we started it (which is odd, as it's the least complicated part of the site by far). So, we've scrapped it, picked a new platform and code, and are starting anew. So welcome... back?