• In what Variety makes out to be the great underdog story of the year, Superbad overcame its R rating to make about $31 million in its first weekend. With its name-brand comedy pedigree, summer-long media blitz, and total lack of demographic competition, it really did have it rough.
• In a brief blurb of a piece from the same trade’s weekly print edition, Pamela McClintock implies that with several strikes looming, it’s actually in the studios’ best interest to downplay their successes. If they stick to pumping the stat that six out of ten films lose money, they might be able to get away with the bargaining stance that they “can’t afford to make many concessions.”
• Somewhat lost in the last week’s shuffle over IFC downsizing their distribution business (wisely? desperately?) was the news that they’ve acquired Catherine Breillat’s Une vieille maîtresse (the title has been alternately translated The Last Mistress and An Old Mistress) for day-and-date release. The film, which stars Asia Argento and which I’ve heard is the most mainstream thing Breillat has done in a while, will play the New York Film Festival next month.

A massive fire broke out last night at Rome’s Cinecitta Studios, the mega-complex that has hosted hundreds of productions, from La Dolce Vita to The Life Aquatic. Ironically, the only set damaged beyond repair by the blaze was that in use by the HBO drama Rome. Above, you’ll find an English-language news report about the fire; click through the jump to watch the trailer for one of my favorite films shot in and around Cinecitta, Godard’s Contempt.
…Read more

I’m usually notoriously hard on spoiler Nazis. I know I’m in the minority on this–I recently found myself embroiled in a pseudo-hostile Twitter fight between John Brownlee and Joel Johnson because of it– but my theory is that if you care enough whatever is being spoiled, your investment should be able to withstand the revelation of a simple plot point.

Still, I think what Pete Vonder Haar is doing sounds intriguing. The FilmThreat writer has been intentionally avoiding reading set reports and watching trailers for new films, in order to preserve a sense of excitement for the film’s eventual release. Now, Vonder Haar is specifically attempting to avoid acquiring any pre-release information on the fourth Indiana Jones film, which is currently shooting in New Haven for a May 2008 release. “Call me a crazy insane crazy person,” Vonder Haar writes, “But I’d like to not know how the movie is going to end (or every major plot twist, or the big action sequences, or the climactic one-liner) before I actually go see it.”

In a great post at Movie Marketing Madness, Chris Thilk explains how Vonder Haar’s information abstinence stands in direct defiance of what the typical studio marketing campaign tries to achieve.

[S]ince ’surprise’ is in some people’s minds synonymous with ‘displeasure’ … the campaign creators, then, want the movie to feel familiar and safe so as not to scare anyone off. That’s why these casting announcements for the major flicks are broadcast far and wide, and it’s why studios on some level like Web sites that post spoilers. Those plot points reduce the odds of the movie being seen as an unknown quantity by the audience, upping the comfort factor as well as, hopefully, the subsequent desire to see the film.

So the studios are actually engineering a world in which the concept of spoilers–and the conflicting drives to either pursue or avoid them–becomes virtually meaningless. This makes Vonder Haar’s mission of interest on two levels: not only is it an effort on the part of a professional critic to recapture the enthusiasm of fandom, but it’s also a subtle form of protest.

So if you haven’t yet read the latest issue of Fast Company, you should. Alan Deutschman and Scott Kirsner cover the changing, bomb-shelled landscape of movie distribution. ("Hollywood’s New Wave" and "Maverick Mogul" only available in print right now)

Of course, for some of you the issue will be mostly review. They cover the usual names-Mark Cuban and Steven Soderbergh (2929 Entertainment and Landmark Theaters), Harvey Weinstein, Lloyd Braun (Yahoo!)-but they also give some back-story to what the studios are doing to keep up. Still, the coverage around film distribution and the digital age is heavily slanted toward the question, "How will Hollywood survive digital download?"

Who cares? Why is it that corporate brass monopolizes the discussion around the coming new age of film distribution? I really don’t care what happens to them, I care what happens to me. It’s no surprise to me that Chicken Little was released this year because the mood with these media execs seems to be "The sky is falling! And it’s raining every film ever made and they’re available for free! And Mark Cuban is the mad scientist controlling the weather!"

So silly. But as Steven Soderbergh and Mark Cuban are quick to point out, the Hollywood system is terrible at innovating and very skilled at reacting. So they’re reacting to what happened to the music industry and jumping on the the iTunes train to salvation. But what about me? Why doesn’t Anne Sweeney at Disney-ABC TV, Brian Roberts at Comcast, Kevin Tsujihara at Warner Bros and Blair Westlake at Microsoft sit back, take a deep breath and imagine what it is like to be a little fella like Paul-a father and film lover living in the gloriously snow covered Midwest?

Please, imagine me suddenly being able to get 100,000 films for $2.99 each downloaded onto my iBook over a wicked fast internet connection. Imagine me sitting in a cafe, sipping the House Blend, reading a one paragraph synopsis on a movie-a movie I will commit two hours of my life to. Now imagine me picking up my cell phone and calling one of my film club buddies and asking them if they’ve heard about any good films lately.

Bingo. The real winner in the coming age of Video Download is Verizon Wireless. That is, of course, unless there is a place called Spout to find out about what the people in the know are saying about the diamonds in the rough. Nonetheless, it’s exciting to see Fast Company covering some problems we’ve been working on for over a year now. Maybe it takes the whining of Hollywood brass to get the attention of a magazine like Fast Company, but it’s the rest of us who will determine the real future of film.