In late 2005, Jon Avnet (who, it should be noted, is a very successful producer who hasn’t directed a film you might have seen since Fried Green Tomatoes) directed Al Pacino in a “real-time thriller” called 88 Minutes. A trailer for that film seems to have shown up on the web around this time last summer. According to IMDb, 88 Minutes was released on DVD in Brazil this past February and in a handful of other countries theatrically over the course of the spring; the pic’s US release date has been bumped several times, and is now listed as sometime in 2008.

Perhaps now we know why. In an interview with Pitchfork, indie rock guitar virtuoso Marnie Stern admitted to having recently downloaded “40 or 50 movies” while touring with Hella drummer Zach Hill. “But,” she says, “Every movie is a pile of garbage!” Stern elaborates on one recent download:

Another movie I saw last night was Al Pacino in 88 Minutes, I don’t even know if it went to the goddamn theatres. He looks unbelievably terrible. Like, in the Rolling Stones category. Dyed hair, he’s over-tanned, he’s really is not looking good at all. And in the movie he’s having sex with 25 year-olds.

So what do we learn from this little anecdote, beyond the fact that Al Pacino is no longer a credible love match for Alicia Witt or Leelee Sobieski? That studios might as well release dust-collecting duds, because the piracy chain is now so massive that an up-and-coming American rock star is easily able to illegally gain access to a film before any American film critic, and then ultimately tell the Wall Street Journal of hipster websites all about how ridiculous it is? Yeah, I guess that’s all kind of a big deal, but mostly, I’m just really hoping Marnie Stern starts a film blog. In the meantime, you can watch the video for her song “Every Single Line Means Something” above.