• Funny how that NY Times story failed to mention this little bit of cross-branding: The Superficial points to this NSFW Sarah Jessica Parker blow-up doll, complete with dirty Sex And The City pun on the packaging.
• AMC’s Sci-Fi Scanner blog notes that, “for better or for worse”, Southland Tales comes out on DVD. I’m firmly of the opinion that, faults and all, it’s worth a look. See my review here.
• Chuck Tryon points to this story, in which he’s quoted, about an upcoming Luke Wilson film called Tenure, set in the wild world of academia. Tryon, a tenure track professor himself, notes the challenges the filmmakers will have in making his lifestyle cinematic: “[S]ince my ongoing pursuit of tenure typically involves me sitting in front of my laptop until 1 a.m., I don’t know how interesting that would be to watch.”
• At io9, Charlie Jane Anders assesses the problem with sci-fi prequels: “I love small, intimate portrayals of people’s lives. But that’s not what I look for from movies with “Star” in the title. (Well, maybe A Star Is Born.)”

• Anthony Kaufman investigates the “little mini-studio” of producer Paul Mezey, the man behind a host of notable recent indies, including Sugar and Momma’s Man. What’s Mezey’s secret? Location. Says the Pennsylvania-based producer, “I would have sunk long ago if I had to raise a family in New York.”
• Future of Classic points to Classic Cinema Online, a site which offers almost full-screen streams of public domain classics and foreign films. Like the 1936 version of Sweeney Todd, for starters.
• Lady Wakasa informs us that the Film Society of Lincoln Center will be screening a new print of one of Louise Brooks’ early films, Beggars of Life.
• This is where we start getting smutty: Tilda Swinton took her 29-year-old boyfriend to the BAFTAs whilst “68-year-old John Byrne, her partner of 18 years, stayed at home in the north of Scotland, looking after the couple’s ten-year-old twins Xavier and Honor.” Why can’t she have a reality show?
• Finally, “in honor of Valentine’s Day,” i09 has “started asking random people to tell us about their science fiction sex experiences.” I guess I’ve never had a “science fiction sex experience”, because I have no idea what that means.

I stumbled across this story via the FILMMAKER Mag blog: in a lengthy story for the Contra Costa Times, Mary F. Pols talks to a number of female filmmakers, from super-indie to mega-Hollywood, about working in a business that is still overwhelmingly run by dudes. There’s a lot of good stuff in the piece, but an anecdote from actress/director Julie Delpy particularly caught my eye.

Delpy’s second feature film as writer/director, 2 Days in Paris, opens in the U.S. next month. Festival buzz has generally been positive, but no one who’s seen the thing can overlook the similarities between it and the film that marks Delpy’s greatest triumph as an actress, Richard Linklater’s Before Sunset. Well, turns out, there’s a reason for that. After working for some of world cinema’s greatest directors and attending NYU film school, Delpy “had a drawer full of scripts that reflected her love of science fiction and other nongirlie topics”–none of which she could find financing for. Then, as Pols tells it,

[A] friend suggested she write a script that bore some similarity to Before Sunset, the successful 2004 film Delpy had starred in and co-written. She had shared an Oscar nomination for the screenplay, and her friend’s supposition was that financiers would feel “safe” with a project that seemed like Before Sunset.
The trick paid off. Delpy wrote 40 pages of a relationship farce set in Paris, which she then shopped around. She found financing for it in Germany. The result is 2 Days in Paris. [...]
“This is why my first film is a romantic comedy,” said Delpy, now 37, with evident exasperation. “It is only because it is the first time people will give me money to make a film. People will trust a woman to do something with a relationship more than they will to do something with a war story or science fiction.”

Delpy goes on explain that she’d “sell out to direct a big action movie” in a heartbeat. Her lifelong dream, she says, is to make a film like Blade Runner. “But you need money to make Blade Runner.”

Ignoring, for a moment, that Delpy probably shouldn’t be whining about how the big boys won’t give her money to make a summer tentpole before her first real feature is even released, I’d be fascinated to see what kinds of scripts are lying dormant in other filmmakers’ drawers. Does Harmony Korine have a high school comedy that no one wants to pay for? Does Sofia Coppola secretly want to remake Raging Bull? And considering how many relatively nameless, style-less directors are handed “big action movies” these days, does demonstrable competence in a specific genre actually hurt more than it helps?

I thought this list of “Things Computers Can Do in Movies” was pretty funny. Apparently, I’m not the only one–it’s number one in all categories on digg right now. (Digg is a user-powered content promotion site that allows people to virally push whatever they think is most interesting or entertaining on the web at the moment.)

The list of “computer tricks” in movies was published yesterday on the Programming Blog. Check out the comments, too. People left some funny examples and additions to the list.

What I find interesting about this phenomenon–that computers can do remarkable things in movies–is that filmmakers are still exaggerating the capabilities of computers today, even in non-science fiction, non-futuristic films. I was a kid in the 80s and I remember all the fascination generated around “what computers will someday be able to do.” Most people didn’t know the first thing about computers, so they were easy to fool. Their imaginations were pliable. But now that computers are such an everyday part of so many people’s lives, it seems like movie audiences would demand more accurate portrayals of technology and its capabilities. Computers in movies should be tools that allow us to relate to characters and situations, rather than tools that leave us saying “huh?” (This, of course, doesn’t apply to science fiction and futuristic films.)

Anyway, here are my favorites from the list. Check out the whole list for fun, if nothing else. Enjoy, and let us know which computer scenes in movies are your favorite.

Things Computers Can Do in Movies

2. You never have to use the space-bar when typing long sentences.

5. High-tech computers, such as those used by NASA, the CIA or some such governmental institution, will have easy to understand graphical interfaces.

6. Those that don’t have graphical interfaces will have incredibly powerful text-based command shells that can correctly understand and execute commands typed in plain English.

7. Note: Command line interfaces will give you access to any information you want by simply typing, “ACCESS THE SECRET FILES” on any nearby keyboard.

9. All computers are connected. You can access the information on the villain’s desktop computer even if it’s turned off.

11. All computer panels operate on thousands of volts and have explosive devices underneath their surface. Malfunctions are indicated by a bright flash of light, a puff of smoke, a shower of sparks and an explosion that causes you to jump backwards.

14. You may bypass “PERMISSION DENIED” message by using the “OVERRIDE” function. (See “Demolition Man”.)

15. Computers only take 2 seconds to boot up instead of the average minutes for desktop PCs and 30 minutes or more for larger systems that can run 24 hours, 365 days a year without a reset.

16. Complex calculations and loading of huge amounts of data will be accomplished in under three seconds. Movie modems usually appear to transmit data at the speed of two gigabytes per second.

24. Most computers, no matter how small, have reality-defying three-dimensional active animation, photo-realistic graphics capabilities.

25. Laptops always have amazing real-time video phone capabilities and performance similar to a CRAY Supercomputer.

26. Whenever a character looks at a monitor, the image is so bright that it projects itself onto their face. (See “Alien” or “2001″)

27. Searches on the internet will always return what you are looking for no matter how vague your keywords are. (See “Mission Impossible,” Tom Cruise searches with keywords like “file” and “computer” and 3 results are returned.)