• “Thank God for the strike,” says Bob Rehak at Graphic Engine. “There is just too much new content out there, and with the scribes picketing, we now have a chance to recover — to catch up.” Meanwhile,
  Nikki Finke reports that Jason Bateman is just one star who is refusing to promote an upcoming film by crossing picket lines to tape interviews. We think Micheal Bluth would have accidentally driven the stair car through the picket line.
• At Re:Sources, Pamela Cohn conducts a “case study in indie distribution” with Ben Niles, director of the documentary Note By Note: The Making of Steinway L1037, and Jim Browne of Argot Pictures. Browne says that if you really want to book your self-produced film in theaters, you’ll have better luck if it’s a documentary: “Theaters aren’t willing to take a chance on narrative features that have no name actors in them. I see little indies all the time that are really strong, well-made movies, but they don’t have the cash to take out the kind of advertising you would need to drive audiences to the theater, or they don’t have any kind of recognizable talent.”
• Spout Maven Demndiary has posted reviews of Frownland, The Tracey Fragments, Grace is Gone and tons more from the Denver Film Festival.
• At Libertas, Dirty Harry says liberal polemics like Lions For Lambs are failing because blogs like his have pulled back the curtain and engendered mass distrust of the Hollywood system. Of course, they also spread negative buzz sight unseen from the moment the logline appears in Variety, but that’s just part of the process…
• On Day 10 of AFI Fest, Craig Kennedy calls In Search of a Midnight Kiss “the nicest surprise of the festival.”
• In the name of making a “dent on [his] December bills with money that I earned by expressing myself on this website,” Michael Tully is taking a Radioheadian approach to blogging.

Chris Albrecht at NewTeeVee has crafted an open letter to George Lucas, re: eventual distribution options for his in-the-works Star Wars TV series:

Mr. Lucas, take a cue from Radiohead, and tell the networks to take a hike.

Why bother with traditional TV? You own the one of the biggest brands in the, well, universe. The shows are already being produced without a network commitment. Avoid the hassle of negotiating terms with networks around the world (and dealing with their marketing and promotions).

But most of all, it would give you what you are famous for — control.

The reference to Radiohead seems a little bit off the mark, as Albrecht doesn’t seem to be suggesting that Lucas set up his own storefront and/or allow fans to set their own price. It’s also worth noting that Radiohead’s price-it-yourself experiment has not been an unqualified success: though 1.2 million copies were legitimately purchased last week, another 500,000 were downloaded illegally. But if Georgie were to follow one of Albrecht’s suggestions and broadcast his series via an ad supported video sharing network like Brightcove, piracy wouldn’t be an issue, and he’d be able to keep all ad revenue for himself.

It would be a very, very encouraging sign if someone like Lucas were to wake up to the fact that the internet is where his fan base lives, and subsequently take the initative to come to them. But even if Albrecht is right in that an online-self release would actually give Lucas *more* control over his content, I think the perception amongst traditional media producers is still that the internet is the wild west, and that releasing content in this world is equivalent to giving up control. Isn’t that why Video ID exists?

SXSW 2007, Paul interviews Stephen Kijak, director of a documentary about Scott Walker, a singer/songwriter any music-lover will be ashamed of not recognizing.

Watch the trailer: