In her blipster comedy I’m Through With White Girls, which cleaned up on the black film fest circuit last year before finally landing in NYC at a contentious BAM screening earlier this month, Jennifer Sharpe wears her black nerd credentials on her sleeve while maintaining a sure hand of a relatively conventional romantic comedy. Anthony Montgomery starts as a comic book-drawing, cigarette holder-using, fedora-sporting prolonged adolescent case who serial dates Caucasian woman and, after tying his relationship troubles to his ex’s lack of pigmentation instead of his own fear of commitment, takes up with a neurotic, light skinned black novelist (one who seems to be a charter member of the George Clinton hair club for women).

On the eve of her film’s DVD release, we caught up with Sharpe, a current IFP Market laureate for her script Native Honkeys (clearly she’s outdoing herself), about watching earnest dramas, whyThe Poisonwood Bible should be made into a movie and just how long someone can listen to The Roots for. …Read more

An addendum on this post noted that War, Inc, the satire co-written by and starring John Cusack which I loathed but which has become something of a surprise spring hit, was scheduled to come out on DVD tomorrow after just seven weeks in theaters. I wrote:

War Inc['s DVD release] is notable only because First Look’s ridiculously tight seven week window from theatrical premiere to DVD street date looks, in retrospect, like another in a line of smart moves designed to capitalize on the film’s surprise cult appeal. Of course, the film’s box office potency faded as its release expanded, and if it had done less well in its first weeks, this would look a lot like a dumping, but that’s fodder for another, far more bitter post…

Ah, but then the target moved: shortly after that post was published, I got an email from David Hudson informing me that the film’s DVD release has been bumped to October. …Read more

The most notable DVD release of the week* has to be the first season of Mad Men, which hits the street tomorrow just in time for newbies to get caught up on the AMC series before season two premieres in late July (it’s been available on iTunes for quite some time). I went on YouTube looking for clips from my favorite episodes and found the above fan vid, which focuses on Betty Draper (January Jones), the miserable model-turned-housewife of mysterious ad man Don Draper. I love it, if for no other reason than that it really draws out the way the show takes mid-century cinematic archetypes and weds them to real-seeming, endlessly multi-faceted characterizations.

This clip specifically highlights Mad Men’s Hitchcock allusions: the slate-gray, Madeline Elster-esque suit that Betty wears to therapy; Don’s spying, here symbolized by his employment of a home movie camera like something out of a cross between Peeping Tom and Rear Window; and my favorite, Betty’s fateful encounter with a flock of birds.

…Read more

Exciting news from David Redmon and Ashley Sabin, co-directors of a couple of our favorite recent docs, Kamp Katrina and Intimidad: they’re expanding the purview of their production company, Carnivalesque Films, in order to start distributing DVDs. Their first release will be their own film, the 2005 Sundance premiere Mardi Gras: Made in China, and it’ll be available, to quote David, “everywhere,” on July 29. In the coming months, Carnivalesque will distribute two festival favorites: Ry Russo-Young’s SXSW Special Jury prize winner Orphans, and The Holy Modal Rounders: Bound to Lose. The Mardi Gras trailer is embedded above; we’ll pass along more details on Carnivalesque’s upcoming releases as we get them.

• Earlier this week, Jonathan Marlow published a rant on GreenCine Daily, titled They didn’t build their sales model for you. Much of the piece is given over to a description of the dire state of distribution affairs for truly independent filmmakers. Marlow, who acquires films for GreenCine’s DVD-by-mail main site, essentially argues that filmmakers should put less weight on dreams of theatrical distribution and concentrate on the many new media options. I didn’t comment on this story earlier because, well, my reaction was pretty much the same as Agnes Varnum’s: “It reads to me as a good summary of where things have been for last couple of years in film sales, so my question is what’s the news? Do people really not know this information?”
• Tom Hall also weighs in on the Marlow piece, from a festival programmer’s perspective: “Let me begin by taking exception to Marlow’s straw man, one that I have seen being built over and over again on panels and in discussions among filmmakers and programmers over the past few years; Film festivals are not, in fact, an ersatz distribution system for films.”
• If you live in New York and/or read the blogs of people who do, chances are you’re aware of The Emily Gould Fiasco. Funnily enough, Juan and Victor Piñeiro, brothers as well as director and producer of Second Skin, have bared witness to several smaller-scale Emily Gould fiascos over the past decade and a half.
• Finally, Paul Scheer explains why, although no one will admit to wanting it, Beverly Hills Cop 4 will make back twice its budget in its first weekend: “I’m like an abused sequel wife, I keep going back to theaters time and time again to get mercilessly kicked in the cinematic balls for having faith that a sequel can actually be good as it’s predecessors.”

Four Eyed Monsters - Episode 9 - Shock

It’s been almost two years since the last “official”, non-news oriented episode of the Four Eyed Monsters video podcast. Today, IFC releases a new Four Eyed Monsters DVD, which contains the film, the previous 8 video podcast episodes, and five new episodes that finally pick up the Arin & Susan saga where episode 8’s cliffhanger left off. It’s worth the wait: episode 9 gets right into the nitty gritty of What Happened After Susan Kissed That Guy in Park City. Watch it above, and keep an eye on IFC’s Four Eyed Monsters page, where they’ll be releasing the remaining new episodes online next week.

Filmmaker and former Marine JD Johannes is selling a compilation DVD called Outside the Wire on his website. The DVD contains three short documentaries that Johannes shot himself whilst embedded with troops in Iraq (a trailer is embedded above). On a blog on the site, Johannes positions his “pro-victory, pro-troop” films in opposition to docs like Body of War and The Ground Truth. “Actually going to Iraq, living down in the dirt with the grunts and making documentaries about what is happening on the ground appears to be a rather novel concept, but I think the best way to understand Iraq is to see it from 5′10″ off the ground,” he writes.

Fair enough. But wait––there’s a gimmick! Johannes is trying to sell 2,900 copies of his DVD in six weeks, in order to match the domestic box office gross of Brian DePalma’s fall flop Redacted.

I haven’t seen Johannes’ movies, and I’m certainly not opposed to as many views of the war as possible getting out into the market place. In fact, I’ve argued previously that the reason why films like Lions For Lambs and Stop-Loss are so disappointing creatively and commercially is due to a homogeneity of perspective––the anti-war choir really doesn’t need to be pandered to anymore.

But what is a little illogical to me is that Johannes has chosen Redacted as the target to beat. …Read more

• Was George Clooney’s decision to go “fi-core” over the WGA’s decision to deny him a writing credit on Leatherheads akin to using “a chainsaw to operate on a papercut”? David Poland thinks so. “The guy who took out an ad in the trades telling SAG to move faster seems like just the kind of guy who belongs leading the way inside the WGA, trying to improve the arbitration process, rather than walking away in a huff.”
• “It’s as if the PR people said, “so, Mr. Don R. Lewis didn’t like our comedic gem? Let’s see how he likes THIS!” Cut cut…snip snip.” Don Lewis tells us what it feels like to be blurbed on the DVD cover for a film he negatively reviewed.
• “The New Beverly has scored probably its greatest coup yet in terms of presenting filmmakers and the movies they love to eager audiences,” writes Dennis Cozzalio. He’s talking about Dante’s Inferno, a two-week program of films made and selected by Joe Dante. Dennis has a special fondness for the one Dante film that will be shown in a non-midnight slot, Hollywood Boulevard.
• I wish I was at Full Frame, the doc fest that’s taking place this weekend in Durham, NC, but alas, The Cinetrix’s dispatches for GreenCine Daily will have to suffice. So far she’s been “blown away” by Forbidden Lie$, which was the best film I saw last month at True/False.

• Wow, that was sudden: last night’s Gen Art screening of Cook County will be the Clearview Chelsea West’s last show as a commercial movie theater. The School of Visual Arts has bought the site, and after several months of renovation, the theater will be reopened as “a new repertory/special event venue,” with tie-ins planned with the Museum of the Moving Image.
• Speed Racer will close the Tribeca Film Festival. Oh wait — you already knew that.
• Alvin and the Chipmunks has “become the fastest selling DVD of the year.” I imagine this one will go down smoother without comment.