Posted Dec 30th 2006 7:00PM by Christopher Campbell
Filed under: Executive shifts, Disney, Paramount, United Artists, Critical Thought, Celebrities and Controversy, Box Office, The Weinstein Co., Tom Cruise, Weinstein Brothers, Peter Jackson, Obits, Cinematical Seven, Mark Cuban, Lists, Oscar Watch
2006 was the first full year of Cinematical, and it was a very busy year for its bloggers. A lot of big news, shocking news and ongoing news kept us busy as we followed the important stories and passed the significant bits onto you. There was good news, bad news,
unexpected news and
unbelievable news. There were
deaths,
births,
rebirths and
remakes. There was so much going on that it takes an amazing film geek to recall everything (
have you tested your memory yet?).
But what was the most important story for film in 2006? The
end of the box office slump? The Weinsteins' devilish
pact with Blockbuster? Peter Jackson's
possibilities of
directing The Hobbit? Uwe Boll
boxing his critics? Sorry, but none of those affected the consciousness of cinema as much as these other stories from the past 12 months:
- Disney Buys Pixar - When 2006 began, the future of Disney's relationship with Pixar was still uncertain. There had been hint of a new deal between the two companies in the last few days of 2005, but nothing was concrete. Three weeks went by, in which time the new year came in and Pixar's stock prices went up, and then finally the first installment of news came through on January 19: Disney would buy Pixar. Three days later, we were reminded that the deal was not yet done, that it was still awaiting approval from Steve Jobs and the rest of the animation studio's board. On January 23, however, it was in the bag: Disney bought Pixar for $7.4 billion. And John Lasseter was named head of Disney animation.
The story didn't end there. Throughout 2006, the effects of the acquisition continued to be felt. First, Toy Story 3 was killed. But then it was greenlit again. Disney closed its new computer animation studio, Circle 7. Then many months went by before Disney fired a whole lot of people working in its animation departments. Finally, just a few weeks ago, the company announced they'd be trying out the ol' hand-drawn stuff again. By year's end, it felt as though Pixar was the one who owned Disney.
Continue reading Cinematical Seven: The Most Important Things to Happen in Film in 2006
Posted Sep 8th 2006 12:31PM by James Rocchi
Filed under: Documentary, Horror, Independent, Theatrical Reviews, Festival Reports, Fandom, Mark Cuban, Toronto International Film Festival, Cinematical Indie
Any horror fan knows it: We love to watch. Perhaps through giddy fingers; maybe with a stomach-kick queasiness. But horror film is, at heart, deliberately looking at the worst possible things, and not looking away. Director
JT Petty knows it; his first film,
Soft for Digging, was a low-budget, high-ambition horror film made for less than $6,000; his next directorial gig was
Mimic: Sentinel. "I make my living making scary movies," he explains early on in
S&MAN, "but this is going to be about scary movies." Opening with a nod to a few classics --
Peeping Tom,
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,
Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer -- Petty introduces us to three different filmmakers working in what he calls 'underground horror" -- a shot-on-video world of cheap thrills and cheaper production budgets, sold on-line, at conventions or by mail. As Petty explains, "It's not snuff" -- the unholy grail of long-rumored real-life death caught on film for purposes of entertainment -- "but it's close."
In the uneven (but not uninteresting)
S&MAN, Petty introduces us to three separate film makers: Fred Vogel, who creates gonzo horror films under the
August Underground banner; Erik Rost, who creates stalker/snuff-themed films in the
S&MAN series; and
Bill Zebub, the creative force behind slasher flicks like
Kill the Scream Queen and
The Crucifier. Vogel looks like a well-groomed sports buff; Rost is a self-deprecating, self-promoting craftsman; Zebub looks like he was peeled off the bottom of a cab in his native New Jersey after a particularly rockin' Sammy Hagar show. And they make films about killing people. Zebub says it best, and bluntly: "I don't shoot movies to make art; I shoot movies so perverts will give me money."
Continue reading TIFF Review: S&MAN
Posted Jun 21st 2006 6:32PM by Martha Fischer
Filed under: Independent, Awards, Magnolia, Distribution, Newsstand, Mark Cuban, Cinematical Indie
Though they won't even announced the nominees for their competitive awards until October, the folks at IFP (a group, for the non-independent film freaks among, you dedicated to "serving the independent film community as a source for networking and support while promoting film as a vital and influential public art form")
have announced that they will honor Mark Cuban and Todd Wagner of 2929 Entertainment at their annual Gotham Awards this fall. According to IFP exec director Michelle Byrd, the pair are being recognized for their consistent willingness to think outside the box when it comes to film production and distribution. Though their day-and-date release strategy has received
significant opposition from theater owners, it's
starting to be
adopted by other distributors, and seems to have been embraced, at least to a degree, by the viewing public. Said Byrd of the pair, "They are visionaries who have introduced exciting and new distribution models, and who continue to showcase tremendous diversity in the films they produce, release and exhibit." So yeah, she thinks they're pretty cool.
Though the awards ceremony doesn't take place until late November, does anyone really think Cuban will have cooled off enough by then NOT to talk about the NBA refs? I'm saying he's got to at least slip in a David Stern reference.
Posted May 4th 2006 10:08PM by Erik Davis
Filed under: Casting, Deals, 20th Century Fox, DIY/Filmmaking, Newsstand, Mark Cuban
Odds and ends for Thursday:
- Even though IMDB lists Zach Braff as its director, Barry Sonnenfeld is in
final negotiations to helm Andrew Henry's Meadow
for 20th Century Fox. Pic, which is based on the popular children's book, follows a boy inventor who escapes
suburbia and travels to a meadow. There, he sets up some sort of community where he eventually teams up with other
outcasts on a mission to save their parents. Braff, along with his brother Adam, originally set up the pic and developed the story while Adam wrote
the script. Perhaps, since Zach is now off directing a Danish re-make, he has relinquished his director's
hat.
- Who knew Catherine Zeta-Jones was so into magic. Apparently,
the actress is in
talks to star opposite Guy Pearce in biopic about the one and
only Harry Houdini. Set in the mid-twenties, Death Defying
Acts will pick up Houdini's story while he's at the height of his career, touring the country and amazing the
public with his brilliant escape acts. That's right folks, David Blane has nothing on this guy. Zeta-Jones will play an
exotic psychic (I wonder if that means she tells your fortune while in her underwear?) who seduces Houdini into a
passionate affair.
- Well, it looks like HDNet Films is really starting to make some moves. Not long after Todd Wagner and Mark
Cuban's company decided to up its budget cap from under $2 million to under $5 million (assuming the right talent
was attached), comes word that Zoe Cassavetes' Broken
English has wrapped up its stars
and will become the latest HDNet venture to head into production. Onboard what appears to be a quirky romantic comedy
about a woman lost in her 30's and looking for love, will be Parker
Posey, Drea de Matteo, Gena Rowlands, Jeanne
Moreau, Justin Theroux and Josh Hamilton.
Posted Apr 22nd 2006 10:06PM by Martha Fischer
Filed under: Comedy, Drama, Independent, Magnolia, Distribution, Mark Cuban, Cinematical Indie
According to director
Alex Steyermark, day-and-date releasing (or something close to it) is
totally cool -- "just not for his film." Steyermark, whose
One Last Thing ... is being theatrically released by Mark Cuban's
Magnolia Pictures on May 5, is concerned that his film's television and DVD debuts (on May 19 and 23, respectively)
will come too soon for necessary interest in the project to build. Despite the fact that he knew from day one that a
day-and-date release was possible, Steyermark spent a lot of time last week
complaining to The Hollywood Reporter
about the situation, and (in a hilarious way, of course) described it as "day-and-date rape."
One Last Thing ... is Steyermark's second directorial effort (his first,
Prey for Rock and Roll, starred
Gina Gershon and
Lori
Petty), and tells the story of "a terminally ill teen who makes a provocative final wish." Starring
Will & Grace's
Michael Angarano as the kid and
Cynthia Nixon as his mom (Gershon and Ethan Hawke also appear, among
others), the film played at Toronto last fall where it received mixed reviews, but it has a great rating on the IMDb.
Steyermark's bellyaching aside, his film is expect to hit screens in about 25 different markets on May 5.
Posted Apr 6th 2006 5:32PM by James Rocchi
Filed under: Mark Cuban, Tales of the City, Columns
After over fifteen years in the making -- and making Malick look rushed -- Caveh Zahedi's I Am a Sex Addict opened in
Zahedi's own Bay Area this week, at the Balboa. The notable, quotable Neva Chonin has the best piece, from The Chronicle. The first weekend's screenings also include an extensive series of
in-person appearances by Zahedi and his fellow filmmakers from in front and behind the camera; The Balboa's Website has more information. And,
fascinatingly, the release of I Am a Sex Addict also had the nice side-effect of inducing a media-mogul
slapfight that's based around ownership of the film's future rights; we have the story, if that
look behind the curtain appeals to you in any way, shape or form.
Also this week, the weeklies have some nice film-related stuff, including a discussion of Jim Jones and the new documentary Jonestown:
The Life and Death of Peoples Temple in the Bay Guardian. The
ever-ready Cheryl Eddy has a review.
Plus,
Adam and Steve opens at
The Castro, with writer-director-actor Craig Chester and actor Chris Kattan in
attendance Friday night; man, can you go to a movie in this city
without the director present this weekend?
And, sure, you can; I was just exaggerating for effect.
San Francisco had 25 days of rain in March.
Twenty-five days of rain.
Posted Apr 4th 2006 5:04PM by Martha Fischer
Filed under: Independent, IFC, Distribution, Exhibition, Newsstand, Politics, Mark Cuban, Cinematical Indie
Despite the fact that over 70 million homes receive his
HDNet channel,
Mark Cuban is still not making any money on his HD dream.
Part of the problem (I'm not going to get into how many/few homes have HD TVs and receivers) is that some major cable
companies -- including Comcast -- still refuse to carry either HDNet or its sister channel, HDNet Movies. In fact, a
couple of years ago, Comcast, Cox, and Time Warner collectively created an HD channel of their own called
INHD, which they conceived as "
a Cuban-killer." (He's still here. As is HDNet.)
Because
of Cuban's feud with Comcast, as Karina
mentioned in
her column, there were
rumblings that
his Landmark Theaters, the biggest independent chain in the country, might refuse to show films that were part of
distributor IFC Films'
day/date release
deal with Comcast. No official, public statements were made, however, so things continued as normal, and Caveh
Zahedi's
I
Am a Sex Addict (part of the day/date deal) was scheduled to open at a Landmark theater in Berkeley on Friday,
April 7. Then, yesterday, Zahedi heard from IFC that the film had been pulled by the theater because of Cuban's beef
with Comcast. Not surprisingly, Zahedi was
upset,
and (quite reasonably, it would seem) blamed Cuban for the affair. According to Cuban's comment on the above post
(scroll down the page a little, and you'll find it), however, IFC knew the film would not be screened at any Landmark
theaters and schedule it anyway. Hmm.
No matter who's to blame, the fact is that a little indie film is
caught up in something much, much bigger than it is. Can you even imagine how frustrating this must be for the
filmmakers who, after IFC's deal with Comcast, were thrilled at the prospect of (relatively) wide distribution for the
babies, only to run into this roadblock? Man alive, what a nightmare.
Posted Mar 23rd 2006 6:00PM by Martha Fischer
Filed under: Documentary, Independent, Music & Musicals, Magnolia, Box Office, Distribution, Newsstand, Mark Cuban, Cinematical Indie
Despite the
insistence of theater
owners that the multi-platform "super release" of
Bubble
was a complete disaster, 2929 is trying again with another niche film. Magnolia Pictures (a company that is under the
2929 umbrella) will release
Herbie Hancock: Possibilities in theaters (just NY and LA) on April 14 and have it
out on DVD four days later; the movie will air on Mark Cuban's HDNet TV channel on April 23. The film is a documentary
that both explores Hancock's past and offers a detailed look at the recording of his most recent album on which folks
like Sting, Annie Lennox, and Christina Aguilera appear.
While this film and its release schedule seems
likely to affect only a tiny group of people (who, admittedly, will be incredibly happy), the small audience isn't a
problem for 2929. According to Magnolia's VP of home entertainment Randy Wells, despite
Bubble's
"failure" at the box office, the total take from the theatrical and DVD sales, combined with PPV income, was
about $5 million. Though that number is small compared to the profits pulled in by major studio releases, it's a huge
success when one considers that the movie only cost about $1.5 million to make. Additionally, Wells maintains that
releasing films on DVD and PPV or cable while they're still in theaters dramatically reduces advertising costs because
the various releases can "draft" off of one another's hype.
Posted Mar 13th 2006 9:08PM by Karina Longworth
Filed under: Independent, SXSW, Magnolia, Distribution, Exhibition, Home Entertainment, Movie Marketing, Mark Cuban, Cinematical Indie
A Landmark Business, moderated by
indieWIRE's Eugene Hernandez, brought together representatives from all aspects of
Mark Cuban and Todd Wagner's vertically integrated filmmaking factory, now called Wagner/Cuban Companies: Ted Mundorff,
film buyer for Landmark Theaters; Tom Quinn, acquisition exec for Magnolia Pictures; Eammon Bowles, President of
Magnolia; Elizabeth Glass, buyer for HD Net and HDNet Movies; Bill Banowsky, head of the new distribution initiative,
Truly Indie; and Wagner himself, who easily stole the show by spouting his party's platform. Wagner's rhetoric was
probably pre-packaged but undeniably convincing nonetheless.
Wagner/Cuban's various distribution
revolutions were the order of the day. In all the hype surrounding the conglomerate's groundbreaking day/date strategy,
their equally ballsy
Truly
Indie program has been somewhat overlooked. Banowsky described it as a "producer empowered distribution
alternative." The concept came from the exhibition sector: Landmark shows a couple hundred films on its 300
screens a year, but half of its profits come from about 20 titles. In fact, the bottom 50-70 films, as Banowsky
explained it, actually lose money for the chain. So the various sectors of the company got together and came up with
Truly Indie, which essentially allows producers to pay a single fee to rent space at a Landmark Theater, and
simultaneously hire Truly Indie to market and promote their film. It's sort of a second (last?) chance, for filmmakers
who, say, come off the festival circuit without a viable theatrical option. Truly Indie will allow such
filmmakers to buy themselves a brief theatrical run, and still have the opportunity to cash in on the DVD rights.
Wagner elaborates on the mission:
"We should be listening to the voice of independent cinema. I'd go to
fests like this one [and hear filmmakers say], "I'm shut out of the system!" So what we're trying to do is
open up the system. If you believe in your product, you should have a chance to release it."
The
conversation soon, predictably, turned to day/date, and the company men are, rightfully, defensive. Here's where the
Wagner quips really start to heat up. Some excerpts after the jump.
Continue reading SXSW: A Landmark Business Panel
Posted Mar 9th 2006 11:06PM by Karina Longworth
Filed under: Independent, Deals, Disney, IFC, Magnolia, Distribution, Exhibition, Home Entertainment, Movie Marketing, Mark Cuban, Cinematical Indie
The most shocking moment of Sunday night's Oscar ceremony came early in the evening, long before Three 6 Mafia
or
Crash scored their twin victories for mediocrity. An hour or so after losing
the night's first award to George Clooney,
Jake Gyllenhaal trotted out on
stage to ostensibly announce one of the night's many disposable montages. "They're called epics," he
near-monotoned. "Extravaganzas. Spectacles." With that last one, Jake's voice took an unexpected up-turn. He
went on to list a few (oddly amalgamated for mass cross-generational appeal) examples of the genre in question –
"
West Side Story. Star Wars. Ben-Hur." – before delivering the kicker: "You can't
properly watch these on a television set, and good luck trying to enjoy them on a portable DVD." Gyllenhaal
punctuated that embarrassingly over-scripted slice of Academy propaganda with a desperate, self-referential giggle
– a composure break that lasted long enough for an insert shot of Heath Ledger and Michelle Williams,
Gyllenhaal's
Brokeback Mountain co-stars, just two members of what sounded like a large chunk of the audience
laughing along with him. It was rather amazing, a pure, bumbling moment of transparency that neatly struck down
whatever was left of Sid Gannis' sad house of cards. The new takeaway for the evening: If Hollywood can't take its own
last-ditch propaganda seriously, how can we?
Continue reading Why day/date isn't ready to save the day: Laws and Sausages
Posted Feb 28th 2006 11:59AM by Martha Fischer
Filed under: Independent, Deals, IFC, Distribution, Home Entertainment, Politics, Mark Cuban, Cinematical Indie
Comcast and IFC Entertainment will today
announce their deal (first
outlined by Karina a month
ago) to simultaneously release independent films in theaters and on television, via video-on-demand. Kicking off on
March 24 with
American
Gun, the agreement will have films in theaters across the nation (in IFC's theaters as well as in Mark Cuban's
Landmark Theaters; negotiations are on-going with other chains) while they are being offered to Comcast subscribers in
22 major markets for $5.99/viewing. Despite the fact that the agreement lacks a DVD element, Comcast's reach is
dramatically greater than that of the HD Channel on which
Bubble
aired, and there's a good chance that Comcast/IFC's films will be seen by a much larger audience than
Soderbergh's film.
Because VOD is very hard to pirate, and
because Comcast could theoretically pick and choose the markets in which these films are offered, it's hoped that the
Comcast/IFC approach will be less threatening to supporters of traditional distribution than the
Bubble
experiment. IFC actually quietly test the system with a day-date release for
C.S.A.:
The Confederate States of America this month, and the film, despite being available via VOD to Cablevision
subscribers, has done record business in IFC theaters - this, too, should suggest to studios and theater owners that
the approach is not necessarily a death knell for exhibition. Among the two dozen or so films IFC and Comcast will
release are
I
Am a Sex Addict,
Three
Times (by Taiwanese master
Hou Hsiao-hsien, whose work is
virtually impossible to see in the US), and
The
Russian Dolls, which stars
Amelie's
Audrey Tautou).
Look, the fact is that fans of independent
film want to see these movies - to some degree, this is going to work. Day-and-date releasing is not going away, and
it's time for theater owners and studios to stop whining and, instead, figure out how they can get involved, and use
the approach to their advantage. Times change. Deal with it.
Posted Feb 7th 2006 11:29AM by Martha Fischer
Filed under: Action, Drama, Foreign Language, Independent, Thrillers, Deals, Magnolia, Distribution, Newsstand, Mark Cuban, Remakes and Sequels, Cinematical Indie
Magnolia Pictures, the distribution company owned by
2929's Mark Cuban and Todd Wagner, has acquired the rights to a trio of Danish crime films collectively known as
The
Pusher Trilogy. All three films -
Pusher,
With Blood on My Hands, and
The Angel of Death - were directed by
Nicolas Winding Refn, and feature overlapping stories: secondary
characters from one film move into the foreground in the others.
While the chance to see these films is more
than enough to make the acquisition newsworthy, Magnolia - the distributor behind
Bubble's
simultaneous, multi-media release - plans to experiment with an unconventional release schedule for
The Pusher
Trilogy, as well. When the series hits American theaters this summer, different regions will see it in different
ways, depending on "the audiences in each market." Among the options being considered are back-to-back
screenings of all three films, simultaneous screenings in different theaters, and sequential screenings on three
different days. After pissing off theater owners with their approach to
Bubble, a Magnolia rep hastened to add
that the
Pusher "release pattern also will depend on each theater's preferred release strategy."
Whew.
Regardless of if you agree with what Cuban and Wagner are doing, it's hard not to respect them for
constantly searching for new ways to approach film distribution. Plus, they're giving us the opportunity to see
interesting work from abroad, which is something that shouldn't be lost in the inevitable controversy over the release
of the films.
Posted Feb 4th 2006 1:01PM by Martha Fischer
Filed under: Drama, Independent, Box Office, Distribution, Newsstand, Movie Marketing, Politics, Mark Cuban, Cinematical Indie
After months and months of buildup to its multi-platform release,
Steven Soderbergh's
Bubble opened in 32 theaters. And, on
that all-important, buzz-filled first weekend, it made just $70,664. Ouch. Though of course
Mark Cuban, whose 2929 Entertainment is
behind the DVD/HD/theater release technique, tried to convince anyone who would listen that the low returns were of
little consequence, theater owners clearly felt otherwise. In fact, they were so sure that the $70,664 spelled disaster
for the entire simultaneous release concept that they actually released a public statement, crowing over the movie's
failure. Yeah, that's classy. John Fithian, president of the National Association of Theater Owners, just wanted to
make sure everyone knew that "the movie has performed very poorly," even with all of the free publicity
granted it by the press. In other words, "Suck it, Cuban!"
Posted Jan 10th 2006 11:08AM by Kim Voynar
Filed under: Deals, Tech Stuff, Mark Cuban
Just a day after Sony's Howard Stringer bragged at CES about bagging Landmark as
the first customer for Sony's high res 4K projector, Landmark announced (also at CES) the indie chain is ditching the
Sony 4K projector in favor of Barco's 2K projectors. Apparently nobody told Stringer. Cinematech reports that in an
email to them in December, Landmark's Mark Cuban said Landmark had installed a couple of Sony's projectors and was
"battle testing" them. Guess that didn't work out so well. Landmark's announcement leaves Sony in a bit
of a lurch, with zero - count 'em, zero - customers for it's projector, which has been plauged with technical and
delivery issues.
Posted Dec 30th 2005 12:38PM by Karina Longworth
Filed under: Independent, Casting, Deals, New Releases, Executive shifts, Disney, Magnolia, Paramount, Box Office, Fandom, Distribution, The Weinstein Co., Hayden Christensen, Tom Cruise, Angelina Jolie, George Lucas, Brad Pitt, Steven Spielberg, Weinstein Brothers, Home Entertainment, Movie Marketing, Cinematical Seven, Mark Cuban, Comic/Superhero/Geek, Remakes and Sequels, Lists, Cinematical Indie
2005 didn't really kick into gear until March 11, the day that Jason Calacanis chained me to a
workstation and Cinematical was born. I chewed through the handcuffs in good time, but for some reason kept coming back
to blog – by that point, I had enslaved a good portion of the 13 or so lunatics that you've come to know and love,
and they needed somebody to pace around headquarters worrying about the moral implications of paying the rent by making
fun of Sharon Waxman and exploiting celebrity divorce. So here I sit, nine months later, typing away from my
AOL-financed glass house, and it seems like as good a time as any to reflect on the year that was. And by
"reflect", I basically mean "splooge all over our blogfolio othe way only a loving mother could."
And with that image fresh in your minds, I bring you, in two parts, the Top Seven Cinematical Stories of the Year. Put
on your protective gear ...
7. 90s pretty boys in mid-life crisis - 2005 started off
with the Celebrity Divorce Heard 'Round the World: Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston,
the breathless headlines
announced, had decided to become "Just
Friends". Aniston immediately started playing
the victim card, all but confirming that she had
been abandoned for Angelina Jolie, Pitt's costar in Fox's summer tentpole (heh ...pole.)
Mr. and Mrs. Smith. Not to be
outdone by his
Interview with a Vampire costar, Tom Cruise immediately held a casting call for a
young
brunette, and by early summer,
we had ourselves a TomKat.
Emboldened, apparently, by the powers of made-up publicity love (c'mon - even
Oprah's not
convinced), Cruise
began shooting
Mission: Impossible: 3 (the unnecessary action sequel being the Hollywood version of the Ferrari, as far
as salves for middle-age go), and
evangelizing Scientology on
any talk show that would have him. This
probably wasn't smart. By
mid-December, Cruise had wisely
dropped his sister in favor
of a real publicist, and had moved on to
rubbing cooking oil on
9/11 firefighters in the name of Scientology. Meanwhile, Pitt was making the only slightly less crazy move of
adopting Angelina Jolie's kids. Pitt and Jolie have, to this day,
not confirmed their
relationship, but we're pretty sure that's only because of the
voodoo curse.
6. Star Wars finally dies - To quote
Anthony Lane, "Break me a
fucking give." Sorry, boys, but I can't even bear to relive it. Our full directory of
Star Wars stories
is
here.
Continue reading Top Stories of 2005 - Part One
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