The Year Of Festivaling Dangerously
August 3, 2020
August 3, 2020
July 23, 2020
July 14, 2020
I started writing this two weeks ago. I was interrupted and never finished… for all the reasons I started writing it. I am not afraid to shoot off my mouth. I have strong opinions. And even if you disagree with my analysis, I have educated, researched opinions. But all the thoughts cascading through my mind […]
June 24, 2020
I love Jon Stewart. He is earnest and smart and funny and on the same side of politics as me. But he’s not a very good director. Not everyone has that skill set. And it shows in the most basic ways. How he frames a single, a two-shot, a joke. How he likes his films […]
June 15, 2020
What’s playing at the Roxy? Nothing’s playing at the gawd-damned Roxy. A video stream sharing revenue with an indie exhib that can’t pay the rent That he rationalizes because they can see the film all the way in Biloxi. That’s what’s f-ing playing at the Roxy. What’s in the frickin’ trades? I’ll tell you what’s […]
June 8, 2020
This movie should have been called, “The Non-Graduate.” That’s what it is… a 2020 take on another era’s Ben Braddock. There is no Mrs. Robinson, because the faux stability of the suburban household is long gone. The closest we get to that character is the ex of our hero’s mother’s romantic interest… who our hero […]
May 29, 2020
The horror of 100,000 American dead (and counting) from the Novel Coronavirus and the grotesquerie of watching a man murdered before our eyes by a white policeman applying the pressure of body weight and a knee to the neck of an already under control black man will certainly bring us a wave of documentaries to […]
May 25, 2020
It’s almost June 1. And frankly, the festivals (Venice/Telluride/Toronto… and New York) are running out of time. What are they going to be in only three months? We all have the same desire. For the festivals to go on, safely, with people sitting in theaters, watching movies. But circumstances are circumstances. The situation is not […]
May 14, 2020
I never thought it would happen to me. I wandered through Quibi’s programming selections the week it launched. A few minutes here, a few minutes there. A laugh or two. Pun titles all over, like Gayme Show and Dishmantled and Barkitecture. But nothing I felt compelled to stick with. After jumping on the app a […]
May 12, 2020
The single most significant public event in the possible Oscar season to come happened today. Disney and Lin-Manuel Miranda moved Hamilton into 2020. No, I am not saying that Hamilton is a lock to win Best Picture. It is possible that it won’t be nominated. It is possible that it will be nominated and lose. […]
May 11, 2020
Paul Schrader is a brilliant man. But… myopic. Festivals have a narrow value beyond the experience to be had at the festivals. And every one of the major festivals has a different purpose that extends beyond those events. Cannes is many festivals. There are two major competitions, a few other platforms, and then a major […]
May 5, 2020
“Theatrical is over.” Yeah, yeah, yeah. I have been listening to this bullshit for decades. And if you read David Puttnam‘s “Movies & Money” (from 1997!), you will see that this line of gloom & doom and hipster pronouncements about The Future started coming up a century ago. This morning, Indiewire published a piece by […]
May 1, 2020
Some of the greatness during this period has been coincidental to the previously scheduled releases of shows. And so has the absolute crap. It became a project during all this mess, driven by the insane amount of media coverage, to watch the worst of Netflix… which is also, apparently, the most popular of Netflix. No, […]
May 1, 2020
Television is so much a part of this experience of being locked down… so I’ll skip to those adventures before getting back to movies. Let’s start by paying tribute to FX. Devs. Better Things. And Mrs. America. This is some of the finest television of the decade. For me, it’s Devs over Mr Robot. For […]
April 29, 2020
In light of the theoretical showdown between Universal Studios and the exhibition business and the many opinions thrown around, a simple guide to how the current exhibition/distribution relationship works, in the broadest terms, is called for. Movie theaters are brick & mortar outlets for a small percentage of the content produced by major studios. Via […]
April 23, 2020
It’s April 23, 2020. New York seems to be over the COVID-19 hump. The, uh, president is encouraging “reopening” America while simultaneously hedging so that he won’t be blamed for encouraging this when people start dying in states that reopen too recklessly. The threat of a rekindling of the pandemic in America looms heavily over […]
April 21, 2020
I’ve been in lockdown pretty much since March 9, when I returned from the great and glorious True/False Doc Fest. Thirty-seven days. It’s not really that much, but it feels like forever at times. But when I am on the couch/chair/bed watching something great, time stops and the world is my oyster. There has been […]
April 9, 2020
As we head toward the premiere of Trolls World Tour tomorrow, a wholly different experiment than the rest of the adjustments that have been made to the VOD window in the last month, let’s get some idea of where we are. The number of titles that have been released in the change-of-plan direct-to-paid-streaming or window-shrinking […]
March 26, 2020
Today, we are two-and-half months from the first death from COVID-19 in Wuhan. And things are beginning to start up again in Wuhan and across China. The first death in America from this virus was on February 29, in Washington state. California: March 4. New York: March 14. The arc will vary, but two-and-half months […]
March 19, 2020
You know how you were 12 and the entire world was going to notice that zit on your nose and never see you as anything but a troll forever and ever? That is the spirit that the authors of most of the coverage of Hollywood’s COVID-19 problem are embracing. I mean… yes, the entire world […]
The Year Of Festivaling Dangerously
| August 3, 2020
Movie Content Scoreboard, as of July 2020
| July 23, 2020
| July 14, 2020
| June 15, 2020
DP/30 Audio: Bombshell, Jay Roach
| December 13, 2019
DP/30 Audio: The Last Black Man in San Francisco, Jonathan Majors
| December 4, 2019
DP/30 Audio: The Mustang, Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre
| December 4, 2019
