Bits and Pieces

There's finally some decent news arriving about the upcoming year (in some cases, years) in movies. I thought some of this was definitely worth passing along.

We've got our first good look at Chris Evans as Captain America. The film, which is expected to be the final lead in to The Avengers, is due out this summer. It's being directed by Joe Johnston means it could go anywhere. I won't be shocked if it's horrible. I won't be shocked if it's a solid, fun, but not great film. If it's great, I will be shocked. This is the best look we've gotten at the suit, which is important. If the suit looks ridiculous, the whole thing is a non-starter. The suit looks pretty good. The utilitarian focus was a good way to go with it, and not making it absolutely skin tight was a good idea as well.

I'm including this because I find it interesting in the negative sense. In other words, I really wish these people would stop making films or at least move on to making original material only. A remake of The Monster Squad is one of the worst remake ideas I've come across. Shockingly, it's coming from the same people who gave us remakes of Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street (why Jackie Earle Haley... why?), both of which were horrific only in the degree to which they were terrible films. If you're interested in what Brad Fuller, producer and one of the brain trusts behind Platinum Dunes, has to say about the Monster Squad remake and the possibility of Nightmare and Friday sequels, I submit it for your perusal.

In case you hadn't heard, let me be the first to tell you that Christopher Nolan and David Goyer (the majority of the creative team behind rebooting the Batman film franchise) wrote a script for a Superman reboot. They've hired Zack Snyder of 300, and Watchmen fame (and the upcoming Sucker Punch which looks mind bogglingly beautiful as a mash up of every possible piece of action geekery known to man) to direct, and the search for someone new to put on the blue and red jumpsuit began. Henry Cavill is that man, and you can get a look at Cavill to decide for yourself to decide if you think he could possibly fit the role.

Javier Bardem is in the midst of quite a streak. He's been nominated for a Best Actor Oscar for his work in Biutiful, he's officially been offered the role of Roland Deschain, the lead character of Stephen King's epic Dark Tower series. The project is one of the most ambitious ever undertaken. It's being proposed as three full length film with two television mini-series to be released between each film. It could be three to four years in filming, and could possibly become as successful The Lord of the Rings trilogy. And now, it seems he's been offered the role of the heavy in the upcoming James Bond film. Daniel Crai is still on board for the role of everyone's favorite Double O agent, and Sam Mendes whose previous work includes the awesome satire American Beauty, and the understated and under appreciated Road to Perdition is set to direct. Bardem had some very interesting things to say about the role, and the direction of the series. 

In somewhat related news, Stephen King's apocalyptic opus, The Stand is apparently getting a chance to come to theaters as well. Warner Brothers has secured the rights to a film based on the novel. I can say with confidence that the novel can't be adapted successfully into one feature length film. It would have to be at least three films, possibly two if the cuts to the material were most austere and unkind. It's going to be interesting to see how Warner Brothers goes about planning for this adaptation, and will be something to keep an eye on.

James Cameron has long been suggesting he would be making a big screen version of the manga Battle Angel. As technically inspiring and visually beautiful as Avatar was, it's narrative was uninspiring and kind of trite. I'd be on board to see a James Cameron version of Battle Angel because I think it would be much stronger from a narrative perspective, but with Cameron's flare for visual inspiration and technical achievement, it could become something really special. Here's what he's had to say about it recently. 

Andrew Bird directed WALL-E, one of my favorite animated films of all time. He's now directing a film version of the extremely influential John Carter of Mars, about an astronaut who finds himself on Mars, attempting to help a princess sustain her kingdom. In the sci-fi world, it's canon, like Lord of the Rings for fantasy. The combination of Andrew Bird and this seminal source material make it an extremely interesting prospect to me.

This is always a good time of year for movie news, if for no other reason than that Sundance has just wound down, and we'll probably be getting our first glimpses and reviews of what usually are some of the best films of each year.

Silent House has been getting mixed reviews in terms of the films over all quality, though every single review has praised it's technical prowess and even those who were less positive suggested it's got some good scares.

Lucky Mckee previously directed the superb indie horror thriller/character piece May (which you should see immediately if it has escaped you to this point). His new film premiered at Sundance to both fanfare and controversy. The Woman has been loved and hated in equal measure, with one awesomely self important audience member throwing an epic tantrum, and getting caught on tape while doing so.

Brendan Gleason is an actor I'd love to see more of. He's an excellent dramatic actor who also has near perfect comedic timing and the kind of dry delivery I tend to most appreciate. He's starring in a new film called The Guard, and reviews for it have been extremely positive.

A Tribe Called Quest is one of the groups that provided the soundtrack for my childhood, adolescence and young adulthood. They are one of the most influential bands in hip-hop history, and created some of the most engaging and inspiring music in the genre. To say I'm a fan is to put it mildly. Actor Michael Rappaport has directed a documentary called Beats, Rhymes & Life. It's getting mostly positive reviews. Even the least favorable reviews have at least said it's a really fun documentary. It's shot straight to the top of my list of must see films for 2011.

Morgan Spurlock makes entertaining documentaries, no matter what else you might be able to say about him, you can't deny that. He's taken a lot of heat from the documentary purists through the years, but his films are really fun, while still being somewhat informative and thought provoking. As long as you can tolerate his blatant self promotion and his obvious bias, you can enjoy his films. I'm really interested in his latest film, appropriately called The Greatest Movie Ever Sold, about product placement and the way advertising has effected our culture.

The Rite (Mikael Håfström, 2011)

In recent years, there's been a spate of new possession films. A few have been fun, entertaining films with some seriously chilling moments (The Last Exorcism, being an example), other have been well made enough, though lacking in any good scares (The Exorcism of Emily Rose, which at least took a new approach) and the rest of them have been downright terrible (Blackwater Valley Exorcism, The Possession of David O'Reilly, Exorcism: The Possession of Gail Bowers).

The Rite doesn't really fit any of those descriptions. It was relatively entertaining while I was watching it, so I can't say it was terrible. I wasn't sitting there counting the minutes until it was over, and clocking in just short of two hours. At the same time, the minute it was over, the flaws in the film were jumping to mind like a possessed virgin getting splashed with holy water. Granted, there are a few sequences in this film that actually work well. The problem is those sequences aren't connected by the kind of character development it would have taken to make the film work, and there are some narrative elements that just don't make any sense when you consider them.

The best thing this movie has going for it is Anthony Hopkins. The man can be a towering example of what is great and majestic about acting as an art form and a profession, which is nothing to thumb one's nose at. If we're going to be honest with each other though, he's made some horrible movies. He's made a few classics as well, which is why he is Sir Anthony Hopkins, and one of the most recognizable names in the world. In this film, he's unfortunately saddled with a character the script doesn't really tell the audience enough about for them to get a full sense of who he is or why he is who he is, which in a film dealing with possession and the fate of the immortal soul, is pretty important. Sir Anthony makes the best of things though, and there are definitely a few scenes where the brilliance he can summon are glimpsed. The effect of putting this caliber of actor in this role is that the small, quiet important moments outshine the scenes that should be the equivalent of gate crashing your consciousness. It's essentially emotionally backwards. There a moments in the film where I really wanted to love and respect this character, but they are immediately thrown under the proverbial narrative bus, because the film is hurrying along to it's next plot point so the audience doesn't consider the fact that some of what's being presented to them doesn't make sense in any world, even the world the film is trying to create. This film does give me hope that Anthony Hopkins has a few incredible performances left in him if he's given or takes scripts that are interesting and well written enough to allow him to be the more relaxed and extremely warm actor that he can be.

The sad thing is that it has a really strong opening. The first twenty minutes to half hour had me. It's not shocking to reflect that ninety-five percent of the films character development takes place in that time. The problem is that it's all one character, and the other characters who become central to the narrative don't show up until the film is already in a hurry to slap you with it's next plot point. There's a surprise scene in the beginning of the film that gave me some real hope that we might be about to take the kind of bumpy, uncomfortable ride I hope to get from horror films, especially supernatural horror films. Unfortunately, my good will was wasted on what more or less devolves into non-sense. There are central plot elements that either aren't explained enough to make sense in the world the film is trying to immerse us in, or worse, they're just thrown in there to keep things moving because they somehow tangentially relate to the other events in the narrative.

When the super natural is central to a film's narrative, there is a relatively fine line to walk. The writer and the film makers have to be able to develop the "rules" or the reality of the world they're creating without over explaining and getting into the kind of horrid exposition that completely kills narrative pacing. At the same time, they can't be so lazy as to just say, "it's the super natural, so of course it doesn't make sense." A writer or film maker might be able to get away with that if they specifically choose to never even allude to something resembling "rules" or a reality for the narrative that is somehow different from the one in which the audience lives in on a daily basis. Find me that film, where the writer and film makers pull it off, and I bet you've found something that is in the least interesting in it's ambition. This film seems to be completely lacking in any ambition, except possibly to get Anthony Hopkins on screen trying to out Hannibal Lecter himself for twenty minutes.

The other thing that succeeds in making this film unsuccessful, and pretty unsatisfying when reconsidered, is the lead actor. I'm not familiar with Colin O'Donoghue from anything else. That's usually not a problem for me, but in this case I didn't even have familiarity to fall back on. A million things can go wrong in the production of a film, which is why we get so many really bad movies every year. This seems to have been either a horrible case of miscasting or a director who just wasn't able to get a good performance out of his lead. Don't get me wrong, he's not terrible. There was never a point at which I sat back and marveled at the horrendous nature of the performance I was watching. But an hour into the film, I didn't really care about his character very much at all, and I wasn't really interested in what he was doing, why he was doing it or anything. Again, this could be a failure in the writing (which, I find a distinct possibility) or any number of other things, but it doesn't change the final result. The film makers spent the first twenty minutes of the movie on developing this guys character, and twenty minutes after that, I just didn't care anymore.

The film begins with him explaining to a friend (we're led to assume it's his best friend) that he's decided to join the seminary to get away from the family business. His father is a mortician, and he's old enough to be helping out these days. I can't blame him for trying to get away. The only explanation given for choosing seminary as that escape route is "In my family, you're either a priest or a mortician, and that's it." He further explains to his friend that he'll at least be able to get a four year degree, and then he can always choose not to take the vows to become a priest. Fast forward four years, and our boy is done with his undergraduate degree, and writing a letter to the equivalent of college headmaster to explain that he's not taking his vows, he lacks faith etc. Our intrepid young hero is then told there's a new program at The Vatican which is supposed to be training a new generation of exorcists, and Mr. Head Priest has always thought he'd be perfect for it, not to mention that the seminary can legally call his four year scholarship a student loan if he doesn't take his vows. And off he goes to Rome.

I think there could be some really good material in those class rooms and that training. Exactly what does The Vatican do to train an exorcist? How do they handle questions of modern psychology in relation to possession etc.? A few of these ideas get grazed, but none of them really land on the bulls eye. There could also be an entire movie of some value in understanding how Anthony Hopkins character comes to be the "unorthodox" priest our young skeptic is sent to, basically in order to cure his skepticism. "Unorthodox" in Hopkins case seems to mean "has many cats living in the courtyard outside of his living quarters, because nothing else here seems all that unorthodox as it relates to either Church teachings on exorcism and possession or films dealing with exorcism and possession. Then Alice Braga gets introduced as a third character in the film, and really, that's all there is to her. They may as well have decided to forgo giving her character a name at all and called her either "third major character" or "pretty female character meant to slightly suggest sexual tension." Then there's all the possession, exorcism, faith versus doubt stuff. It's thin. It's really, really thin. And really, this is more a religiously toned drama than a horror film. Yes, there are some of the requisite scenes of demonic possession etc, but they're not very scary and the sense of threat to the characters isn't great enough to create the sense of ever present dread the subject matter should suggest.

When it's all said and done, I can't really recommend seeing this film in theaters. If I'd have found myself with an afternoon free, and nothing to do, I'd be looking at this as a harmless distraction that filled a few hours of time. I wouldn't have been bothered by seeing this on Netflix or some other variety of rental, because at that price, it would have been worth it. It's not worth full ticket price at a theater though. This is one of those that I'm kicking myself for because I know there are a number of good films out I could have devoted that time and money to. I still haven't seen 127 Hours or The King's Speech and I can basically rely on them being well made, even if they don't quite live up to the Oscar hype. The Rite is the kind of completely vanilla film that results from either a complete lack of ambition to make something of real quality or too many cooks spoiling the broth (as so many studio films suffer from). I can see the skeleton of a good film in there, but it would have to have been thirty to forty minutes longer in order to flesh out the characters and the reality of this presentation of the super natural and it probably would have had to have a different lead.

If for some reason you feel you have to see this in theaters or you've found that if I dislike something you are almost guaranteed to enjoy it (there are reviewers out there whom I feel that way about) you can find the showings near you on Fandango. If you completely disagree with my review or you just want to be swell you can pre-order The Rite [Blu-ray] or The Rite on DVD at my Amazon store. Maybe the book from which the movie is "suggested" (and yes, the credits actually said suggested) is more interesting, The Rite: The Making of a Modern Exorcist, and you can grab that from the Amazon Store as well.

If you're one of those crazy kids who doesn't like to have you're time wasted, but can still enjoy possession/exorcism films, snag a copy of any of the following:
The Last Exorcism [Blu-ray]
The Last Exorcism
The Exorcism of Emily Rose - Unrated (Special Edition),
The Exorcism of Emily Rose (+ BD Live) [Blu-ray].

There's also a film based on the same case that Emily Rose was, that takes an extremely different tact on the material, but is still very good: Requiem. And of course, there's the mother of all exorcism films, the one, the only, the classic: The Exorcist (Extended Director's Cut & Original Theatrical Edition) [Blu-ray], The Exorcist

Kevin Smith Does The Right Thing; Internet Loses It's Mind

Last night was the very first screening of Kevin Smith's Red State. If you read my original post about Smith's plans, you know that Smith had said he was going to auction off the rights to the films distribution. In that piece, I suggested Kevin Smith might very well be blazing a new path for the future of film distribution and as a result, financing. Last night, he auctioned the film off to himself, buying distribution rights from his producer for $20.

At the screening and then through a very long Twitter feed (collected here at /Film) he explained that he is going to "take it on the road," meaning he will be taking the film, from venue to venue, personally. One suggested venue is Radio City Music Hall. Going to see a film by a major film maker, with that film maker present, whether it's taking questions or signing autographs or just in this case, being Kevin Smith, the possibilities for ticket costs would be extremely attractive.

Essentially, Smith could possibly make back the 4 million it cost to make the movie, just by "taking it on the road," and then as buzz for the film is sufficiently strong and demand has been increased even further, he could possibly sell it for national distribution to one of the major distributors. This is not something we've seen attempted in the age of modern film by a film maker who already has a real following, which Smith does.

The internet film press is in the process of having a psychotic break over all of this. The truth is that Kevin Smith has pulled a new media William Castle style marketing trick and the internet film press were both the engine for it, and the butt of the joke. If they were planning to give his well documented criticisms of their industry some credence, they couldn't have planned a better reaction. For a year or maybe a bit more Brad Mishka over at Bloody Disgusting has been lobbing rhetorical and insulting fire bombs at Smith. Though, this time, he seems to have gone schizophrenic having posted one relatively positive story about it, and then the following day after the rest of the internet film press threw a fit, he posted another scathing attack against Smith.

Devin Faraci has started his own site Bad Ass Digest, after leaving CHUD.com, Faraci wrote an equally scathing piece claiming that Smith is spitting in the face of independent cinema. Drew Mcweeney, veteran of Ain't It Cool News and who has found a real home at Hitflix, wrote a less than favorable piece on Smith's practical joke on his industry.

The list is much, much longer. It's a bit strange to see so much of the internet film press turning into a large gossip circle.

From the outside looking in, this is all sour grapes. These are people who have been making a living by covering the film industry. The film industry is not unlike politics in that the media which cover it and those covered have a symbiotic relationship. The industry needs the press to get the word out about their movies. The press needs the movie industry to cooperate to some degree for them to exist. They need each other, and especially where the internet media is concerned, this rocky relationship has often erupted in one way or another. It's not unusual for a film site to get hold of some piece of information that the film maker or the studio does not want public yet, and publish it, specifically because it is good for them. If they can get to the story first, they get the most site visits, and they are therefore getting paid more, etc... etc... etc. And, when somebody with a camera somewhere gets some video of a film shooting in progress or a clip from a film that has yet to be released and posts it on YouTube, these same internet journalists always whine when it gets removed, because it hurts that same visitorship. And, let's be very clear, the internet film community is absolutely, unflinchingly brutal when it comes to films, film makers, studios and practices they don't agree with or just plainly dislike. This is not generally a group of people who are very good at civilly and respectfully expressing their distaste. I can say I'm often in that same category when it comes to films I don't like, and studio practices I find outmoded or ineffective. I tend to be blatantly honest when I see a film I not only seriously dislike, but have no respect for (I submit my Clash of the Titans review as evidence). I don't tend to personally insult film makers though. I am, after all, just a guy writing on a website about things that I like. For the most part, it's not really worth being uncivil toward anyone about. They are, after all, just movies, no matter how passionate I may get. I may not feel that way about all things, I do feel that way about film. We should be sharing our enjoyment of this wonderful, enjoyable art form. Otherwise, none of us are any better than Armond White.

The other thing it's probably necessary to point out is that many of these websites (especially Bloody Disgusting and other horror sites) have more consistently complained about the studio model of film making and distribution. I can not count the number of times I've read pieces by different writers who are complaining about the fact that something they love is being watered down, dumbed down, and dulled because some studio executive thinks that they might get a few thousand asses in seats if they can appeal to the "widest possible audience." If I had a penny for every time I read the sentence, "What about the horror fans, we aren't enough?"I would be fascinatingly rich. These "journalists"will complain about how they know there's an audience for this or that, without it being watered down and mass appealed. Now, they're taking shots at Kevin Smith, specifically because he is turning to his fan base, catering to and relying on them.

If it would be good enough for you when you want it, why isn't it good enough for Smith and his fans?

Ultimately, if this works out for Smith it could provide a completely new way for an established film maker to distribute his films. Consider someone like David Fincher, who has consistently made challenging films over which he has had to fight with various studios to get the film he wanted to make released. Fincher may not always deliver a blockbuster, but his films always make money, and he has made some incredibly beloved and popular films. How many of these films does he have to deliver before they finally stop arguing with him? My love for Fincher and his films is no secret, but I'm going out on a limb and saying now that I believe Fincher has within him the ability to make one of the greatest American films of all time. The question is, will that movie, the movie he makes be the one that gets released? Will we ever get a chance to see it? If this little experiment works for Smith, the model might just be perfect for someone like David Fincher (though admittedly, Fincher is notoriously press shy).

I can understand feeling hurt by having been hoodwinked. But at the same time, here in the world of internet film journalism, which started as the folks on the outside looking in and applauding every possible practical joke played on the industry. If nothing else, Kevin Smith's practical joke has proven the internet film press are no longer on the outside looking in. They are now part of the established order. And it seems, they have forgotten that the degree to which they fight to protect that position is the exact degree to which those who aren't on the inside will fight to unseat them from their place in the ecosystem that exists between the press and film industries.

Buried (Rodrigo Cortes, 2010)

Buried is a technical marvel. Ryan Reynolds plays Paul Conroy, a truck driver who's taken a contract in Iraq. He wakes up buried in a coffin with a lighter and a cellphone. And then, if you can believe it, things get worse. 

This is an entire feature length film, clocking in at right around ninety minutes, during which every single shot takes place in the coffin. It's a testament to director Rodrigo Cortes talent and imagination that even under those constraints, the film is never, for even one second, boring. I don't think it would be giving too much of the plot away to say that during the course of the film, Conroy finds he has also been buried with two of the large, industrial variety glow sticks and a flashlight. The changes in lighting, due to the different light sources help the keep the image interesting, but even that doesn't do justice to the genius Cortes brings to the table. There is a fluidity to the camera work that is gives the film an extremely dynamic feel while always keeping the integrity of the narrative foremost. I can only describe it as a feat of engineering and architecture. This should be something that comes across very much like a student film, but instead it comes across like the kind of grand experiments Hitchcock executed with Rope, Rear Window and Lifeboat.

Another thing that has to be mentioned is the fact that Ryan Reynolds is the only actor who is actually in the film. He is absolutely convincing as Paul Conroy, a man trapped in a coffin, somewhere in Iraq, who is desperately, frantically trying to find someone on the other end of that cellphone who can help save him. The thing which has helped to make Ryan Reynolds popular has been his ability to play everyman in relatively lighthearted, sometimes juvenile comedies. Here, that same trait, talent, characteristic or however you'd refer to it, comes to have much fuller expression in a much more dramatic and meaningful performance. He does a great job with this character and gives a performance that will probably open doors to a variety of characters he wouldn't have otherwise had the opportunity to play. His terror, frustration, exhaustion and bewilderment are contagious as he attempts to get himself out of the situation he's woken up in. I have to say that I was honestly surprised by how well he carries this off. I haven't actively disliked Ryan Reynolds to this point, but I haven't really given him much credit for being a pretty talented young actor, and he is just that. If becoming a "movie star"doesn't get in the way, he might actually become a great actor.

I really enjoyed this movie, and spent a good deal of it being blown away by the kind of virtuosity it effortlessly displays. Though I think it's a very good movie, there are one or two beats in the script I found a touch on the ham handed side. There's a situation and conversation between Conroy and the company which has hired him to go to Iraq and drive a truck which just comes across a little too much. I don't think it's an implausible situation, at all, but I do think the timing and the nature of the conversation feel like they've been thrown in specifically to either make a point or to drive home even more forcefully that even as he's stuck in a coffin, in the middle of the desert, things are still getting worse for Paul.

If it weren't already taken, an alternate title for this film could very easily be "Do You Like Hitchcock?"(had the name not been used already). It definitely comes across as a film that is heavily influenced by the Master of Suspense, an homage to him, and an attempt to keep the kind of film making which he spent his career dedicated to alive and well and a part of the film going consciousness. Luckily for movie lovers, even as it is so heavily influenced by Hitchcock, it also never comes off as being a cheap imitation. It's definitely it's own film, with it's own style, but it's obvious the film makers know the Masters films through and through.

The other thing about Buried that is particularly striking is that for a film completely encapsulated in such confined quarters, it doesn't evoke a sense of claustrophobia, but instead the sensation of falling, which for the story, actually makes more sense. I didn't immediately zero in on that until a few hours after I'd seen it, but it begins feeling very claustrophobic and then because of it's pace, it's dynamic camera work and Ryan Reynolds performance, it moves quickly toward the kind of out of control feeling that can only be called free fall. 

The only other problem I have with Buried is related to the score. It's not a bad score, but it is pretty typical and somewhat clichéd. For a film as innovative and unique as this one, a score equally unique would add something extra to it. Luckily, it doesn't overpower the film and stays away from swelling string flourishes, and the editor was smart enough to keep the score toned down and in the background. Composer Victor Reyes may be extremely talented, and he may even have a long future ahead of him in scoring films, but those things aren't at all evident here.

If you're a Hitchcock fan, you should check this one out. If you're a Ryan Reynolds fan, you should check this film out. If you can appreciate technical mastery that doesn't involve pyrotechnics, then you should give this film a shot. The only people I don't think will appreciate this film at all are those who either don't like movies at all or only really like the direct to DVD Steven Siegal films. 

Rodrigo Cortes is a film maker who seems to have a bright future ahead of him, and with another success like this under his belt, we may get the opportunity to see him extend what seems to be a formidable imagination to it's fullest extent.

Grab copies of Buried, Rope, Rear Window, Lifeboat, and Do You Like Hitchcock? on Amazon, if you are so inclined. 

The Social Network (David Fincher, 2010)

There are many people in the film press, and who fancy themselves cinematic snobs who have taken their fare share of swipes at David Fincher. His detractors have basically suggested (repeatedly) that his directing is all style and no substance.

Strangely enough, The Social Network is the film that should put this argument to rest. A film about Facebook, of all things, has more substance and depth than the majority of films I saw in 2010, and probably more than the majority of films released in 2010. 

Fincher takes a story that in many ways is as old as either celebrity or wealth, and creates a spellbinding narrative. Considering the subject matter, Mark Zuckerberg and the creation of what is probably the most visited website on the planet, and which has truly brought the digital age into it's next era, it could have easily been a film specifically about a very dynamic visual style. But it's not. This isn't to say it's not beautifully shot, because it is, but that's not the central aspect of the film, by any means. It is to say that it's not attempting to simply impress you with it's visual style. It's attempting to impress you by being a damned good, possibly great film.

The central aspect of this film is character. Two characters specifically, Mark Zuckerberg and Eduardo Severin, who cofound Facebook. It's really about these two very different people, who begin as friends, and the journey that friendship takes during the founding and initial success of Facebook. That probably doesn't sound like a very compelling narrative, but it's absolutely spellbinding. I do want to say that the veracity of the story of the film has always been in question. It's based on a book called The Accidental Billionaires by Ben Mezrick. Mark Zuckerberg gave no cooperation to the author in writing the book and has suggested a good deal of it is exaggerated, and some of it is completely false. Because of the way the events are portrayed, at least in the film, it would be easy to see why Mr. Zuckerberg might not want the world to think this is how the founding of Facebook actually happened. The character portrayed in the film would probably say exactly the same thing, which is interesting, because the question the film essentially leaves you with is, "what do you think about this guy?" And Fincher does this in such a way that I don't really care whether or not it's a true story, because it's a great story, and as far as this film is concerned, that's really all I care about. I'm considering it fiction, and that still doesn't change that it's a great story, told with the utmost skill.

The film doesn't fully come down on either side of what kind of guy we should think Zuckerberg is. There are a number of decisions made and actions taken which could very easily make Zuckerberg seem like a cold hearted, mean spirited jerk. At the same time, when you take into account the fact that he did start the most successful website in the internet's short history, and you consider that he may possibly have at least believed, if not been extremely sure that it was going to be exactly that, then he may have just been making very shrewd, but very good business decisions. It doesn't portray Zuckerberg as an innocent, but it does leave room for the  fact that he may just have been intellectually gifted enough to have created this cultural and social phenomenon, but socially and emotionally immature enough to not fully understand the degree to which his actions were effecting other people. He seems very much like a truly gifted, but almost tragically arrogant and insecure kid who created something as large as his gifts possibly could, and did so with exactly the degree of maturity appropriate for someone barely twenty. The particular problem for this twenty year old with a lack of social skills is that he's often the smartest person in the room, and knows it.

The story isn't something I'm going to recount here. Many of us already know it, and if not it's easy enough to find out what it is. That's actually one of the reasons this was a somewhat risky film to make. For the audience the film would seem to be intended for, those with some interest in the evolution of the internet and it's advances that have most effected us culturally, there's nothing at all new here. But Fincher finds a way to tell the story which focuses so much more on the characters, and the emotional reality that it doesn't exactly seem new, but it completely sucks the audience in within the first few minutes.

This is a very talky film. There really isn't a whole lot of dazzling visual spectacle to distract from that either, and I have to say that as much as I was excited about Aaron Sorkin having written the script, I was a little worried that I was going to be sitting down for a two hour episode of The West Wing only set in Harvard and the offices of Facebook. That isn't at all what I got. There are a few flourishes of the kind of dialogue one would expect from an Aaron Sorkin script, but in the context, given who the characters are, it makes perfect sense and is never a distraction from the focus on character. There are two particular characters in the film, Mark Zuckerberg and Sean Parker, who ultimately seem like they really couldn't have been written by anyone but Sorkin. His gift for dialogue that snaps and snarls helps to make both of those characters extremely interesting to watch and compelling to listen to. There are a few scenes centering around Zuckerberg's impatience and Parker's huckster temptations that make the characters iconic, and also demonstrate why there is no one better to have written this script.

The performances in the film are all dead on. There is real subtlety to every one of the major characters, and lesser actors would have made much of this into an overblown soap opera. Jesse Eisenberg has played geeky in basically every single film he's been in. But I've never seen him play this particular kind of role. The Zuckerberg of this film has an axe to grind, and it's not very funny. There's a sharp edge to this character that none of the characters he's played before have gotten anywhere near. This isn't a different ballgame for Eisenberg, this is a completely different sport, and it may be that this is the best role he's had the chance to play so far, but it's definitely his best performance. There's a lot to his performance, and much of it is very small, but very, very savory. Andrew Garfield gives a heart rending performance as Severin. He's Zuckerberg's only friend, and to him, that friendship is the center of everything else. He doesn't portray the character as being naive to Zuckerberg's faults, at all. There are moments when you can literally see on his face that he recognizes that something questionable has just happened, and then you can see the kind of reserved forgiveness that happens between friends who understand and have lived with each others faults. After having seen Garfield at work here, I completely understand why he was cast as Peter Parker in the Spider-man reboot, and I might honestly be looking forward to that now. Armie Hammer plays twins, convincingly. The digital effects do a great job because you actually do believe there are two people existing in that space, but it's Hammer who really makes you believe they are two people. Twins on screen, portrayed by the same actor is in many ways the kind of thing which has been beaten to death, but here it's not played for laughs and it's not played for show, and Hammer does a really great job of not getting into that kind of side show aspect, but just presenting these two characters who are very similar in many ways, but also very different in others. 

Then there are the shockers in the film. Justin Timberlake. I've seen a few of his other roles, and he has always been at least passable, though never really more than above average. Maybe some of it is the character (though I'm sure some of it is the writing), but he is electric as the founder of Napster, Sean Parker, who becomes a part of the Facebook story halfway through the film. Granted, he's got a few of the most actor friendly scenes, but even when he's not ripping through Sorkin's superb dialogue, he still seems to be crackling with energy and the kind of charisma that can convince people of just about anything. I'm honestly shocked at just how well he carries this role off. I was working in record stores when Nsync hit, and for that I thought I would never forgive the likes of Justin Timberlake, but if he keeps choosing projects as good as this one, and turning in performances as good as this one, I just might. Let's just say that after seeing him in this, I'm willing to give him a chance. And Rooney Mara, who has the least amount of screen time in comparison to the rest of the people who are essential to the story, but makes quite an impact with that short time. She's the only person in the film who's entire life is not consumed by either the internet or the events surrounding Facebook, and she's also the character in the film who is most honest in her dealings with the others. She is absolutely real as Erica Albright, in every sense of the word. She brings reality to the character and her character is very real in her interactions. I'm not familiar with her other work, but she is someone I'll be looking forward to seeing in the future. She's been cast in Fincher's next film, as the titular Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and as a fan of the the original novel, it's going to be exciting to see her bring the character to life. 

The score for this film is oddly perfect. I say oddly perfect, instead of perfect, because it's not the kind of wispy, weepy orchestral score you'd expect from a character drama. Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails fame, paired again with frequent collaborator Atticus Ross, creates an ambiance with the kind of textured mix of electronic and traditional instruments which has been so much a part of Reznor's catalog. It has the kind of haunting, isolated quality that has made so much of Reznor's lesser known work brilliant, effective and heartbreaking. Zuckerberg is in many ways a very isolated and haunted character in the film, and as such, the score they have developed works perfectly. It also never overwhelms the film. I always find it distracting and somewhat annoying when the score for a film not only overwhelms the action onscreen, but also seems to be screaming at me to get across exactly how I should feel. Swelling strings tend to just piss me off. Here, it's percolating under the surface of the film, and never seems to be telling the audience how they should feel, but is an added expression of what the characters are feeling or thinking in that particular scene. It's Trent's first score, and because so much of his work has been very grand in scale, even as a loyal fan, I was worried that he might not be able to really nail the subtlety of creating a good score. That worry was completely unnecessary, and I'll be downloading the score from iTunes as soon as I'm done writing this review.

All in all, I understand exactly why this film is making so many of the "ten best" lists for last year. It really shouldn't work, at all. It doesn't just work, it manages to make it's characters intriguing and human and it's narrative spellbinding. David Fincher has done the nearly impossible both by creating such an entertaining and engrossing narrative out of a story many of us already know well, and by proving that his detractors have been dead wrong. My only complaint about this film is the number of people I know who have had no interest in it specifically because it is, "that Facebook movie." Even some of my more cinematically inclined friends have had no real interest in it, and that's extremely unfortunate, because this film is not really about Facebook. It's about a few very young, incredibly intelligent people who are essentially trying to navigate the kinds of relationships which force us to grow up. The only difference is that these relationships happen to be tied to the founding of Facebook and it's phenomenal success.

As of 1/14/11, Amazon was still offering The Social Network on Blu Ray for $16.99, and on DVD for $12.99.


Update: I just got free shipping on the Blu Ray, so you might too.

Update II: The Blu Ray arrived yesterday. The packaging and extras are equivalent with that of a Criterion Blu Ray release. There are two commentaries, one being David Fincher, the other being Aaron Sorkin and a number of cast members including Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield and Justin Timberland. I'm listening to the Fincher commentary right now, and so far it's as good as the previous commentaries he's done.

True Grit (The Coen Brothers, 2010)

Joel and Ethan Coen are truly original film makers, and I think I finally nailed down the elusive "Coen Brothers style." They are able to use character and story to elevate their films to the level of real cinematic art, and at the same time carry off the kind of low brow comedy most "artistic" directors run from as if it were plague ridden carrion. By never turning their noses up at either, they are able to deftly and effectively mix the two in a way the presents them as parts of the same whole, which is a real truth.

In True Grit they have a character who is an excellent representation of the same kind of duality. Mattie Ross is a fourteen year old girl, who hires a U.S. Marshall as a bounty hunter to track down and bring in or kill the man who killed her father. It should be mentioned that the girls father wasn't involved in any kind of criminal activity. He was actually trying to convince his killer not to go and kill someone else. Mattie Ross is no fool, as we quickly come to understand through a few business exchanges she conducts to arrange for her father's body to be shipped back to their home, and then with a livery owner who had sold him some horses shortly before he was killed. Both scenes have some very funny moments, and they impress the idea that Mattie Ross may be a young girl but she is no fool. Then she begins pestering the local law enforcement to find out what progress they've made with tracking her father's killer. When she's basically told there isn't and won't be any progress because U.S. Marshall's are the only one's who have any jurisdiction there, a few questions lead her to the idea that Rueben "Rooster" Cogburn is the meanest bastard of the bunch, and Mattie's mind is made up at that moment to contract old Rooster to find her father's killer. 


This film differs from the 1969 version in that it's not really about Rooster Cogburn. It's about Mattie Ross and her relationship to Cogburn, and the events that follow her hiring him for the job. Hailee Steinfeld is pretty amazing as Mattie Ross. She's got some television credits on her resume' but this is her first feature film, and she steals her share of scenes from older more experienced actors. This is a strong character. She's not the usual child character thrown in as a plot device. The film's title, True Grit, is as much referring to her character as to Cogburn or anyone else in the film. The character is childish in only one respect, her extremely black and white view of right and wrong, and her bullish nature when it comes to getting what she thinks is right. At first, these come across as very adult qualities, but as the film progresses, it becomes clear that she may not have been fully aware of the price for that particular kind of childishness. When Matt Damon shows up as a Texas Ranger who informs her the man who killed her father is wanted in Texas for killing a Senator in Texas, there's a considerable bounty on his head and that he intends to take him back to Texas (I think the film takes place in Arkansas, but I'm not completely positive, and the only thing that really matters is that it isn't Texas), Mattie dresses him down handily. As far as she's concerned, there is only one right in the situation, the man will be caught, tried, convicted and hanged for killing her father, not for killing some Texas Senator. Not everyone is a fan of Matt Damon, I know. He's given one or two very good performances, over all he's passable and always likable. Steinfeld overpowers him in this scene. Part of this is due to the story, because her character is supposed to be able to verbally overpower him, but Steinfeld makes it real. There's none of the mugging which is common with child actors, no score to tell you that's supposed to be the case, and the way the scene is actually shot, looking up at Damon and down and Steinfeld, it's not the visual representation either. It's all her. She imbues Mattie with that exact duality in this scene because it's obvious that the girl's sense of right and wrong, her sense of injustice, is over riding her sense of the humanity of other human beings, which in essence is what a sense of right and wrong and morality is really all about. At this point in the film (very early on), it hasn't tipped it's hand though, and Damon's Ranger Leboeuf (which he pronounces "Lebeef") is a bit foppish and definitely concerned with the image related to being a Texas Ranger in that day and age. There are some great lines in that scene, and it's very funny. 


I have to confess that I am not someone who has had the kind of love and respect for Jeff Bridges that I've been reading so much about recently. I thought he was very good in The Fisher King, and of course, The Dude in The Big Lebowski is an iconicly awesome character that he brought to life with real  slacker charisma and charm, but for some reason, I just never really thought much of him. It's not that have actively disliked him, it's that I literally didn't think much of him. He's not someone who jumped to mind when I thought about great actors living and working today. His turn here as Cogburn has helped to change that. Because this character was originally portrayed by John Wayne, the comparisons are going to be inevitable. I don't really think it's fair to compare a living actor to a dead legend. Wayne is an icon of the magnitude that our entire culture is still characterized by in some parts of the world. I haven't seen the original film since I was ten or twelve years old, it's not so heavily etched into my mind to be unable to separate the two films and characters. Also, John Wayne's Rooster Cogburn was tailored specifically for him, and apparently this character is much more directly lifted from the original book. Bridges does a great job of portraying Cogburn as a man who is good at one thing only, tracking down and killing fugitives. It seems that when he's not doing that, he's a drunk and a bastard, though sometimes he's a drunk while he's chasing fugtives, which provides Bridges some great material to play. In watching Bridges play Cogburn, I realized that I've rarely thought of him because I'm usually too entertained or horrified (as in the opening of The Fisher King) to sit there thinking, "Wow, that Jeff Bridges is really great." I know a few people who have a violent distaste for Bridges, and that's too bad because they'll be missing a really great film and the kind of entry into the genre that helps to keep the Western alive. Much of that is due to Bridges. 


Barry Pepper and Josh Brolin have small roles in the film as well. Brolin plays Tom Chaney, the man responsible for the death of Mattie's father, and Pepper plays the leader of the gang Chaney's taken up with, "Lucky" Ned Pepper. Brolin's Chaney is a dim wit, without the kind of swagger most of his other roles have entailed, and he handles it deftly. His character is stupid, but also quick to anger, as Mattie Ross and Cogburn are, and that's generally a bad combination in film and in real life. He's also waste deep in self pity, which if he were slightly brighter might be a trait I'd dislike in him even more. But he comes across as literally too stupid to know better. In No Country for Old Men, Brolin's character definitely made some poor decisions, but I don't think I've ever seen Brolin play a character this utterly stupid before, and the sincerity he's able to express in that stupidity is impressive, even in the short time we see it. Barry Pepper, well, he's Barry Pepper, and he's characteristically great in his small role as well. There are a handful of actors I really wish were getting better roles more often, and he's one of them. It's possible that the reason I've never seen a bad Barry Pepper performance is that he's not getting enough work to have turned one out, but I doubt that. I always love this guy, no matter what I see him in, and I always completely buy him in whatever role he's playing. He's a relatively young actor, so hopefully at some point in the not too distant future, he'll get the kind of break out role which will afford him the ability to choose whatever projects he wants. 


Once again, the Coen Brothers turn to Roger Deakins as the Director of Cinematography. He's worked on a number of their previous films, and again, the results are gorgeous. Westerns are known for their wide open vistas, and there's some of that, but much of the film is also spent lingering on medium distance shots of Mattie and Cogburn, which gives the cinematography the same duality that the story has. On one side of the frame you have the gruff, roaring, unatmable Cogburn whose final idea of right and wrong comes down to who's standing and who's dead, and on the other side of the frame there's Mattie, whose obsession with seeing her own justice meeted out set the whole story in motion. It also serves to help establish both a sense of real isolation, as if they are out in the middle of a wilderness into which few people wander, and that in turn helps to create a considerable sense of realism in the film. And really, it's just beautiful. The colors are deep, rich, earthy and warm. I don't even have to look it up to know that this was shot on film. This is the kind of movie, with the kind of look that makes me hope that the film industry doesn't completely scrap film in favor of strictly digital photography for a very long time to come. Digital can look great and also be beautiful in it's own way, but this is something that I don't know I've seen recreated with digital photography yet. Most of the film takes place in the wilderness, and so far, film captures landscapes and natural settings more beautifully and more naturally than digital does. And it should be mentoined that Carter Burwell's score of authentically period music is gorgeous and understated, never placing itself before what the story and the visual presentation are. There are a few beautiful solo piano pieces which I intend to pick up. 


This is probably the most traditional, straightforward and mainstream variety of film the Coens have made. The source material seems to have lent itself to their style quite well though, because it's still very much a Coen Brothers film in it's tone and it's content. It just lacks some of the more surreal or exagerated aspects of their other films. I'd basically suggest this film to anyone. Coen Brothers fans aren't going to be disappointed because it has the strong characters and story we've come to expect from them, but it's not as absurd or bizarre as some of the films they've made which have turned mainstream audiences off. All in all, it's not the caliber of work that Fargo, The Big Lebowski, No Country for Old Men, Barton Fink, Miller's Crossing or O' Brother Where Art Thou are, but it's still one of the best movies I've seen this year. Probably the best things I can say about it is that I can recommend it to anyone and it's definitely the kind of film I'll be able to watch repeatedly. It'll be the kind of film which will become an old stand by. When I can't decide what else to watch, True Grit will never be a bad choice.  

Black Swan (Darren Aronofsky, 2010)

Darren Aronofsky's latest leaves me with one lingering question I can't seem to answer. Did I just see an independent arthouse movie wrapped in the trappings of a seventies exploitation grindhouse flick or did I just see a seventies exploitation grindhouse flick wrapped in the trappings of and independent arthouse movie? I honestly can't be one hundred percent sure. Either way, what I did see grabbed hold of me in the first ten minutes, then suddenly two hours had passed and I was smiling gleefully as the credits began to roll.

Black Swan is going to be the kind of movie that cinephiles in their late teens and early twenties are going to be suggesting to each other in twenty or thirty years. Though it seems to be doing good business right now, if the comments I heard from the audience as they were walking out are any indication (and sometimes they aren't), this is not going to be a film the general public is going to be giving standing ovations. Most of those comments seem to relate to the trailer having portrayed the film as something very different than what it is. Honestly, I haven't seen a trailer for this yet, so I can't comment on the veracity of that claim. When it was first anounced that Darren Aronofsky was going to be making a movie with Natalie Portman in the lead, I was basically on board to see it. As it hit the festival circuit and was given a limited release, the little I read about it did nothing to suggest I should plan on skipping it. I'm really glad I didn't. 


The film follows Portman's Nina Sayers, just given the chance to play the lead role of The Swan Queen in her ballet companies performance of Swan Lake. It slowly becomes a film about the obsession for perfection, and in that, a question of whether or not a rival dancer is trying to steal Nina's place in the production or is Nina just cracking under the pressure. That's the really simple explanation, because I don't want to give too much of this away up front. This film will definitely play better when you know less about what you're actually seeing. That short synopsis might make this sound like a very straight forward story about revenge, competition, anger and so on, but it's really not. It's mostly a story about the lengths human beings go to in order to try and reach creative perfection. With one possible exception, each of the characters in this film are pushing the boundaries of what most of us would consider "normal" and sometimes even "healthy" in both the phsyical and psychological senses. 


I'm not a ballet aficianado by any stretch of the imagination. I probably learned more about ballet watching this film than my entire collected understanding represented when I walked into the theater. What the film definitely suggests is that ballet is a labor of love and an extremely competitive, cut throat world. The sheer physicality and physique necessary to perform with even just enough prowess to create the illusion necessary for a film is daunting. The physical condition of the actors, and every dancer in the film (the actors actually do the majority of their own dance work), is impressive. This film had to have been a labor of love for the actors, just as dancing is for real dancers. The chances are it's going to pay off as well because I'd be willing to agree with the predictions that Natalie Portman is a shoe in for a best actress nod at the Oscars. She may not actually win, but it will be an act of fraud if she isn't nominated. Her performance is the reason the film engulfs the viewer so deeply and so quickly. She's phenomenal in a role that in some ways is similar to others she's played before, but in others, something completely and utterly different for her. It's impressive in it's own right. This is the first film I can think of which is completely dependent on Portman for it to be able to stand up, and it doesn't just stand up, it pirouettes, jumps,  and runs like a psych patient who just escaped "the quiet room." 


Vincent Cassel turns in another great performance as well. This film now puts Cassel in the rare category of actors whose films I will go to see because he's in it. Not only have every single one of his performances been great, but I have yet to see him in anything I really just felt was a waste of my time. Eastern Promises was a superb film, Brotherhood of the Wolf was an absolute blast to watch, the Oceans films were at least fun and The Crimon Rivers was a well done straight forward thriller. He just never turns in a bad performance and he seems to have great instincts for the projects he chooses. 


And Barbara Hershey puts in another knock out performance as Nina's truly bizarre mother. There are echoes of Carrie in the relationship, but Hershey nevers takes the role over the top in the way Piper Laurie did in Carrie. Her more quietly weird smothering is almost more unsettling because it's obvious she cares very deeply for her daughter, and at the same time, it's disturbing to see the way that is expressed. It could have become more caricature than character, but Hershey gives another in a career full of great performances. 


Then there's Mila Kunis. Most of us probably know her from That 70's Show. At some point I saw the American Psycho sequel she starred in, American Psycho II: All American Girl. The script had originally been written as it's own complete, stand alone film, with absolutely no connection to American Psycho, and you could tell. It was as bad, painfully bad. But, when I saw her in Moving Mcallister, her performance stood out as the best amongst the cast in an otherwise decent but forgettable road trip romance. I was wary of her inclusion with the rest of this cast. But she does a damn good job with the role she's given. She has a fair amount of screen time, but not really an abundance of dialog. She has a few key scenes with Portman that she nails perfectly and with even that little amount to really do, there's a very strong sense of who the character is and what she's really all about. It's good to see Kunis can step into a project very different from what she's been known for and still be able to carry herself in a way that she should be proud of. 


The visual style for the film is interesting. Early on in the film, it has a very recognizable hand held documentary style, but as it progresses, it changes, becoming more and more claustrophobic. Even the ballet scenes start to become more and more intimate and personal, pulling in on Portman's expressions and eschewing the spectacle and beauty of the ballet itself in favor of continuing to ratchet up the emotional connection to her character and the tension involved in the story. It works extremely well and comes across as an amalgamation of the visual styles Aronofsky and his long time cinematographer Mathew Libatique have used up to this point. It lacks the editing tricks used in Requiem for a Dream, but it retains some of the freneticism of Pi, the intimacy of The Wrestler and even the grandeur of The Fountain once or twice. The visual style is completely connected to the emotional and psychological state of the lead character, Nina, and it works perfectly. As her emotional and psychological state shifts throughout the film, the camera portrays that shift without ever becoming a hack's trick to impress the audience at the expense of the overall film. 


As I alluded to at the beginning, it's hard to classify exactly what this film is. It is an arthouse independent film in some ways, because it is a deeply personal, but still very unusual story whose financing and production were completed outside of the Hollywood studio system. At the same time, it's a weird little character examination/psychological thriller. And still at times in the film, it plays more like those really rare examples of actually well done and great grindhouse films of the seventies. It manages to put all of that together and never seem as if it doesn't actually know what it's trying to be. The credit for that has to go to Aronofsky, because in the hands of a lesser film maker, this could have been either a really rote, cliche'd film or it absolutely would have been a complete mess which was all over the place and boderline incoherent. He also manages to avoid the kind of exposition trap that makes so many movies, dull, slow and for me, annoying. There is constantly information being given to the audience through nothing but what they are seeing on the screen. Other directors would have a character going back and then somehow explaining what the audience has just seen. He never does that in this film. There is an abundance of information given to the audience just through the visual image they are presented with, and it helps to give the film a sense of breakneck pacing when in almost any other directors hands, it would have become a collection of talking heads that slowed it down and dulled the overall impact.

There are many good films out there which deal with the nature of the creative obsession with perfection. Few of them are as boldly entertaining as this one and with the possible exception of Synecdode, New York by Charlie Kaufmann, none have been as boldly weird, bizarre and unusual. 


The only real problem with Black Swan is that I'm not completely sure what audience is going to embrace it. Horror fans are probably not going to really go for a film about a ballerina who may or may not be losing her grip on reality. The arthouse audience will possibly be turned off by it's more lurid elements and the people who think they're going to get another film with as straight ahead a visual style as The Fountain or Requiem for a Dream are going to be disappointed by it's much more subtle visual technique. All in all, it was a great movie, that even at 17 million dollars and without big, expensive, sensational special effects, I really think should be seen on a big screen not only because the story and performances are great, but the visual style is so much a part of the actual storytelling, instead of a trick pony thrown in to get the audiences attention.  

Kevin Smith and the Future of Film

Kevin Smith, whether you like him or not, is running full speed into the future in a way no other film maker, no other studio, no one else involved in the film industry is. Personally, I have no real opinion on the man himself. There are a few of his films I absolutely love, a few I'm ambivalent about, and a few I feel are a complete waste of time. What is most interesting about Kevin Smith right now is that he may be mapping out the future of independent film making and a way for writers, directors, and creative people of every variety to be able to create the things they want to and bring it to the audience directly.

Most people don't know about it, unfortunately, and I don't think it's conspiracy theory to say you don't know about it because the majority of the media have to be frightened of what he is doing. He's making them obsolete in the way the "internet optimists" have been predicting for years.

He's going directly to the audience, in a way that no one else has even attempted to. It's terrible to say it, but the truth is there is going to be a section of the media that is going to shoot holes in his latest project Red State, less because of the film than because they dislike Smith himself. It is the unfortunate nature of the way film as a business and the media related to film is going. 

Kevin Smith has managed to find an audience. He has his audience, and they will go and see his film. They will give him the benefit of the doubt, even after Cop Out. His twitter feed is huge, over one million. And Kevin Smith has figured out exactly what the film studios and the film media are terrified of. He doesn't need them. A number of different websites, some of which I enjoy and follow were quite up in arms when Kevin Smith made the suggestion that he might finance Red State through fan contributions. It was interesting in a bizarre way to see the number of writers who were losing their minds over the idea that a film maker might turn to his fan base, the people for whom the film is meant, are going to consume it and who are asking for it in order to finance it. To me, I don't find it either offensive or strange. It's another way for a film maker to find financing and that gives them the kind of freedom to create that they haven't had in the studio system. At this point, on some of those sites, with some of those writers, it doesn't even matter that Smith never ended up using fan contributions, he found independent financing. And by all accounts, he's gone and created something that is completely different from anything he's done before. 

It really began with An Evening with Kevin Smith where he proved that not only could he be entertaining, but that he had a big enough audience, dedicated specifically to what he's doing to be profitable. Clerks, Mallrats and Chasing Amy had brought him a cult following, and enough critical acclaim to continue to make movies. Dogma is also well loved among his fans, and has a wider cult following of it's own. An Evening with Kevin Smith reall proved that following would follow him beyond the movie theater. 

Sure, Kevin Smith has had his fair share of press, good and bad. When Clerks and Chasing Amy were released, he was consistently praised for one to watch among the new generation of film makers. Dogma  created a good deal of controversy, which didn't hurt the movies box office, and which helped to keep his name in the loop of film news publications and websites. For a number of years his films weren't as successful, and he's made a few movies which have been almost universally panned. Clerks 2 brought some of the old magic back. Fans were happy to see their favorite characters again, and the critical community was at least not brutal toward the film, overall it was recieved as a film which was entertaining, but not much more. Then came the Kevin Smith vs. Southwest Airlines debacle, and Smith became the butt of a joke the size of the entire internet. And unfortunately Cop Out was released this summer, and therefore hasn't been completely forgotten yet. I didn't see it, because the only thing about it that was at all interesting to me about it was that Kevin Smith was directing Bruce Willis. Tracey Morgan is pretty funny on 30 Rock, but on the whole, I'm not really a fan. Cop Out was universally trashed. There doesn't seem to be a human being whose seen the film and liked it. 

But what most people, even people interested in film and who follow film news don't know is that Kevin Smith has an entire podcasting network, putting out seven shows a week, with a podcasting theater in L.A. in which they record with a live audience. That podcasting network also reaches a large audience, with four of the seven different shows having reached number one on iTunes at some point. The Internet media have been covering Red State to some degree, but for Smith he doesn't have to do any promotion at this point. He's made a horror film of some kind for four million dollars. He can more or less guarantee that eight to twelve million people will come to see his movie, regardless of whether or not he does any promotion other than those podcasts and his Twitter feed. The film has been accepted to Sundance and whether or not the film makes it to theaters has yet to be decided, but even if it's released directly to DVD, Blu Ray and digital download, it's going to be profitable. 

That is a position of power film makers aren't supposed to be able to occupy. They are supposed to need the studios to get their films financed, distributed, and probably most importantly, for marketing. Smith has found a way to circumvent that entire system. There's an argument to be that Smith, his crew, producers and financiers might be better off from a financial standpoint by not even attempting to secure distribution from a major studio, and going directly to DVD, Blu Ray and digital download. If they can't see it in theaters, his audience is going to purchase the film in one form or another, and without having to recoup the money studios spend on marketing for the home theater audience, and not having to pay the studios for distribution and marketing contracts, all of the profit would be going directly to the film makers and their direct financiers.

Considering that Red State has been accepted to Sundance already and will be showing with Smith's intent to sell the film for distribution rights, it's interesting to consider whether or not it's even in any of the studios interests to pick it up. If they pick it up, and the film succeeds, sure they make a profit in the short term. But they've also proven that Kevin Smith's audience is going to come out and pay the money to see the movie, even when it's not a typical "Kevin Smith" movie. Smith is in pre-production on his next film, Hit Somebody, which he's describing as an ode to youth, wrapped in a hockey movie. If Red State is successful enough, why would Smith even bother going back to trying to sell the film's distribution rights? He could very well just go about trying to distribute the film directly to the home entertainment audience, essentially taking his audience and those ticket sales with him. 

The other long term question for the studios in a case like this is, "How do we continue to market films to an audience, without creating the kind of audience for the film maker that has latched on to Kevin Smith?" Because really, Smith might just be the first to have figured this out in the film world. In the music industry, Trent Reznor, Radiohead, and a number of very big musical acts are starting to figure out how little they need a major record label to promote and distribute their music in the digital age. Smith is just porting those ideas into the film industry. The film going audience is changing as well. We're probably more savy and sophisticated in our understanding of the film business than any that has come before. We have the ability to follow a film from script form, when it's being shopped around to different studios, all the way through to it's arrival in theaters. We know more about that process than any generation before us. And given the choice between seeing a film in the theater, knowing that there's been a number of creative compromises because the studio believes they can only make their money back (again an inflated price specifically because of marketing) or seeing the film on DVD, Blu Ray or digital download as the film makers intended it, without the added price hike for the studio's marketing and corporate structure, we're going to choose to put the money directly in the film makers pocket when we can. 


What if someone like Christopher Nolan were to start accepting a model like this? Right now, Nolan can do basically anything he wants, even at a major studio. He's got two of the most successful films of the decade under his belt, but if at some point in the future he were to decide he didn't want to have to deal with the studio system and wanted more of the actual profit for himself and his creative team, it's possible that he could make something like this work as well. Now, Nolan isn't a public person in the way Smith is. But, Nolan knows how to find create interesting marketing strategies, and could probably use new media in a way most of the studios haven't even begun to think of. It's not in the realm of the impossible for Nolan to be the kind of film maker to create shorts for internet distribution, giving backstory or some other kind of interesting bits and pieces related to whatever current project he has. And he's a talented enough film maker to get just about any he might want to come along with him. So the studios could possibly start losing all kinds of other talent to these smaller, more personal outfits which are the result of the studios creating stars, and audiences for those stars that are going to follow them to whatever project they may be working on next.

Say what you want about Kevin Smith, but he's becoming a renaissance man of the digital age by getting his hands into everything he can, and spreading his audience across as many platforms as he can. By doing so, he's creating a new model for which other film makers and artists in other mediums to follow which could make the kind of megacorporate monoliths which have dominated the creative world for the last century. Even if it doesn't end up working out on that grand a scale, what Smith is doing is exciting from the standpoint of being able to afford film makers who may not have otherwise been able to make the films they want an avenue to do so. The technology, from the availabiltiy of relatively affordable camera equipment to editing software to marketing and distribution are changing the landscape of the film industry in an exciting way, and it's good to see someone trying to take advantage of these opportunities and creating innovations we've been being told would come for decades.