Category: Culture

This one’s for Jeff.

By last count, I had 528 DVDs — this includes TV shows and some wrestling, though. So maybe around 475 if you only count movies. A relatively small number of those are in a sell stack.

The last film I bought was The Life Aquatic, in the Criterion 2 disc edition. It looks like another great Criterion production.

The last film I watched was Serenity; it’s been an off-month for me.

Five films that I watch a lot or that mean a lot to me… let’s see. Brazil, which is the movie that taught me that there was life beyond the summer blockbuster; Days of Being Wild, which was my first Wong Kai Wai movie; Magnolia, which makes me cry; Ronin, the most underrated Hollywood action movie of the last 20 years; and Crash, which is probably my favorite Cronenberg movie.

I’m not going to tag anyone, but pick this up if you’d like.

So I’m not going to talk about the movie at all. You can’t see it for four months; why should I even plague you with an opinion on quality? I think you should see it, where “you” means “yes, you, reading this right now.” Further I will not say.

I will talk about the experience of the preview a little. Sean Maher (Simon) and Morena Baccarin (Inara) showed up at the theater to thank us for coming and sign autographs. Joss Whedon had a trailer before the movie in which he talked about how we needed to go out and be browncoats and push the movie. The interesting thing for me was that he speaks with a fannish accent — you may know the one. Not the gamer fannish accent, which is fairly light, but the SF fan accent. He talks the way people who go to a lot of SF cons talk, with those careful pauses and deliberate telegraphing of wryness.

Pretty good atmosphere for seeing a movie.

Huge news: Soderbergh is committing to simultaneous release across TV, DVD, and theaters. His next six movies will be released in theaters, on DVD, and on television (via Mark Cuban’s high def HDTV network) at the same time. The movies will be funded by Cuban, shown in Cuban’s Landmark Theaters chain, and the DVDs will be released through Cuban’s DVD label. So it’s all Cuban, all the time.

This is something Cuban’s wanted to do for a long time; he is betting heavily on digital distribution and he’s probably right. He built his corporate structure with exactly this kind of deal in mind; he owns a company at each level of the movie distribution chain, from production studio down to every consumer product distribution channel. He must be thrilled that he managed to get someone as prestigious as Soderbergh to buy into the concept. Chances are that Soderbergh will bring one of his star stable (Clooney, Roberts, or Damon) along for at least one of these six movies, which should do wonders for publicity.

It also means that Soderbergh won’t be making another blockbuster for a while. I wasn’t expecting Ocean’s 13 anyhow. According to the article, his next movie will be Bubble and will be a fairly experimental piece, at least in that there won’t be any professional actors. IMDB says Soderbergh’s also working on Che — Benicio del Toro, Javier Bardem, and Franka Potente? I’m so there. I can’t tell if Soderbergh is really directing it, though: some say it’s Terence Malick. The latest info says it’s Soderbergh. It’s gone back and forth a few times, I think.

He’s got The Good German coming up, as well, which has another fairly exciting cast. If I were speculating, I’d say that Che won’t be part of the six movie deal, but that The Good German might be. It’s all guesswork on my part, though.

So what are the implications beyond Soderbergh? Really depends on how this works out. I think those three markets are different enough not to cannibalize each other. I think that people who want to see movies in theaters will keep on doing so: The Big Sleep has been out on DVD for a while, but I still went to see it on the big screen. As long as directors keep directing with the big screen in mind, it won’t fade. Similarly, people who want to own the DVD are different from people who want to watch it once and move on with their lives, so HD TV and DVD don’t overlap too much.

On the other hand, the rental market starts looking different — not initially, but as HD TV and broadband penetrate the marketplace. Netflix has a lifespan; if I were an executive over there, I’d be figuring out how to get my brand name into the digital distribution space. Greencine is already thinking about it.

Hm. And you know, I wonder if we wouldn’t see more short term runs of movies, at least in the independent space. Your average art house theater schedules movies on a day to day basis, rather than on a week to week basis, because most people who want to see The Big Sleep in a theater will make it there in the first day or two it’s playing. I wouldn’t predict the end of week+ runs for independent films, but it wouldn’t surprise me if we saw fewer lengthy runs.

Cool experiment, in any case. I’m glad Cuban got Soderbergh to give it a try.

When Phantom Menace was released, I took the day off work and drove up to the AMC 1000 Van Ness in San Francisco. If you ask me, it’s got the best screens in the city, although maybe the new AMC multiplex in Daly City beats it these days. But that multiplex was built over hospital parking, and is thus morally flawed, so I vote for the 1000 Van Ness. Besides, the Daly City multiplex wasn’t done when Phantom Menace came out.

As far as San Francisco movie theaters in general? Yes, of course the Castro is better. But they don’t show blockbusters. The Coronet was awesome… for sentimental reasons: yeah, it was the canonical destination for blockbuster openers. However, the 1000 Van Ness had better screens. My favorite rep house in San Francisco is probably the Roxie, while I’m digressing. But man — the Four Star, the Bridge, Red Vic, even the Embarcadero didn’t suck. I saw a lot of Cronenberg movies at the Embarcadero. I do miss San Francisco’s movie options, as much as I love the Brattle.

Where was I? Oh yeah; Star Wars.

So I drove up and got to the theater by noon, with tickets in hand for a 7:30 show. Surprisingly, the theater was not packed. I’d anticipated camping out in line with my pal Jamie — no such need. In fact, there were still tickets available for the 1:30 show. Jamie and I looked at each other.

“Hey. We could see the 1:30, and then we could see the 7:30! We could see it twice in one day! It’s gonna be awesome! This is great! We are so lucky!”

In retrospect? Yeah, the lack of people lining up should have been a sign. I don’t really recall what I was thinking. I might have said something about how everyone was over at the aforementioned Coronet. The local newspapers had been doing stories on the line over there, which was huge. So, sure, that’s why nobody was around at the 1000 Van Ness for the most important movie event ever. (We didn’t know about that thing with the hobbits yet.)

So we went to see the 1:30 movie. So exciting! The Lucasfilm logo at the beginning! The incredibly cool first ten minutes or so!

And then it was as if we’d eaten the top layer of our popcorn and found stale Milk Duds underneath. The hell?

Afterwards we kind of slouched out into the lobby and looked at our 7:30 tickets. And looked at the tickets we were holding for the other five or six people who were seeing the 7:30 showing with us. And sat down on the floor, and talked about — I don’t remember. Gaming, probably. When everyone else showed up, we didn’t trash the movie — figured it was better to let people make up their own minds, plus hey, maybe it’d get better with a second showing. Which it didn’t really.

So that’s why I saw Phantom Menace twice on opening day despite hating it both times. It turned me off blockbuster openings for a while. The thing with the hobbit did a lot to fix that, as did both Spider-Man movies. (The first of which I saw at the Metreon, since I’m keeping track.)

Despite all that, despite the tale of woe, despite the painful contrast of Natalie Portman in the Star Wars movies and Natalie Portman in Closer… I’m still sitting here with four tickets to the midnight showing of Revenge of the Sith at Boston Common. (First come first served but one’s earmarked for my brother unless he doesn’t want it and one’s earmarked for the guy who got me a Serenity ticket ditto.)

Eternal optimist am I. Sigh. You know what was really good? Sean Stewart’s Star Wars novel. It had a lot of Count Dooku in it, y’know?

It hasn’t been posted on their calendar yet, but the Spring 2005 Brattle schedule is out. Highlights include:

• Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory and The Pink Panther, both with new 35 mm prints.
• Ong Bak one more time, if you missed it at the Kendall.
• A classic Westerns series, including Rio Bravo (Howard Hawks, John Wayne), The Searchers (more John Wayne), Shane (mmm, Alan Ladd), High Plains Drifter (Clint Eastwood directing and starring), Sergio Leone’s Once Upon A Time In The West, and The Quick & The Dead.
• The Asian Cinevisions Film Festival, which includes Joint Security Area this time around — it’s Park Chan-Wook’s first feature movie, which was followed by Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance and Oldboy. Neither of which I liked, but so many people I respect adore his work that I’m gonna keep delving into it until I figure it out. (Which means seeing Old Boy at the Kendall this weekend, I think.)
• A Hal Hartley mini-fest, just for Jeff. It includes Girl From Monday, his latest movie. Hartley’s latest, not Jeff’s.
• A Harold Lloyd festival, running a full week and showing 13 different Lloyd movies.
• All three James Dean movies.

That’ll keep me pretty busy.

Damn it. No more Boston Legal this year. Sure, I can understand the decision, but I’m very sad about it.