• At Portfolio, Fred Schruers profiles Austin Chick’s dot com crash period piece August, which the filmmaker and his stars will cheekily promote by ringing the bell at the NY Stock Exchange on Friday. “The film will need all the promotion it can get. In this summer of tent-pole behemoths…even an art-house film that won plaudits at the Sundance Film Festival faces a challenge.” Yup. So imagine how hard it’s going to be for virtually plaudit-less August!
• Focus Features sent Variety a ComicCon Survival Kit, complete with a copy of Douglas Wolk’s Reading Comics. Mike Jones recommends leaving it at home. “If the geeks see you reading this there, you’ll get the worst eye-roll ever. Their equivalent of a beat-down.”
• There’s a New York in the Movies blogathon happening at 12 Grand in Checking (blog named after a throwaway line on 30 Rock? Very good sign.) and a Self Involvement Blogathon at Culture Snob. I’m going to try to work up something tonight that fits both.
• In the meantime, watch a video that has no application to either: above, The Mind of Danny Tanner, a wrangling of sound and image from Full House into the poetic style of Bergman and the soundtrack of Donnie Darko. Via Mark Lisanti.

August, Austin Chick’s summer 2001 tech bust period piece and one of the easiest objects of derision at the most recent Sundance film festival, has become the latest B-list actor-fueled title to land distribution long after the emptying of Park City. Co-producer and star Josh Hartnett––who says “fucking” in the trailer, so you know he’s working hard––plays the cocky douchbag behind a dot com startup called LandShark, with an inflated public value but no discernible product to peddle. He gets to spout of a lot of awesomely empty futurism, like “LandShark is not a vehicle––LandShark is the road itself!” and “What the net is supposed to do … is increase freedom!” It takes place in New York in August 2001 and the tagline, at least at the point when this trailer and this poster were put together, is “August. Comes before the fall.” Get it? September 11 and the crumbling of nerd babylon: two tragedies we must never forget.

Anyway. First Look bought it. The Hollywood Reporter says they’re going to release in July, but First Look hasn’t been the most reliable distributor of late, so Web 1.0 nostalgists may have to wait. In the meantime, check out the ridiculous Sundance Channel segment about the film above. My favorite part is when Chick comments that he and his actors are dressed casually for their premiere. Industry veteran Hartnett responds, “It’s Sundance, you can get away with it here.” Co-star Adam Scott agrees: “That’s the way it is at the ‘dance.”