Bubble Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Have you been secretly sneak previewing films before they open in theaters? I'm not talking about illegally downloading a big Hollywood flick like X-Men Origins: Wolverine or buying cheap pirate DVDs on the street. Indie distributors IFC Films and Magnolia Pictures have been pioneers in making their releases available via video on demand (VOD) systems, as reported by Anne Thompson at Variety last summer. IFC releases some titles direct to VOD, bypassing theaters entirely, while others are released to theaters and VOD at the same time.

Magnolia first experimented with the so-called "day-and-date" model in 2005, with Steven Soderbergh's Bubble, and has since made a few titles available several weeks in advance of a theatrical release as "sneak previews." (That's how I was able to see James Gray's Two Lovers two weeks before it opened locally.) Soderbergh's latest film, The Girlfriend Experience, will be available via VOD on April 30 before hitting theaters in New York and Los Angeles on May 22. James Rocchi caught the "work in progress" secret screening at Sundance and described it as "an intimate and yet honest movie about honesty and intimacy." Set in the days leading up to the 2008 Presidential election, porn star Sasha Grey plays a high-end Manhattan call girl meeting the challenges of her boyfriend (Chris Santos), her clients, and her work. You can check out the fabulous, alluring poster in the gallery below.

Have you sneak previewed films via VOD? Is it worth the expense so you can see a film in advance of its theatrical release? Or is it just more convenient? Would you consider doing so on a title-by-title basis? Would you pay to see this Girlfriend early?

The beige square on the Sundance schedule for today -- "Sneak Preview," 6:15 at the Eccles -- was, over the past few days, filled in with a thousand brushstrokes of rumor and intimation and heard-it-from-a-friend-who-heard-it-from-a-friend whisperings. The first murmuring I heard to make that "Sneak Preview" a must-see was that the presentation was going to be an evening with Steven Soderbergh, a night of clips and conversation -- until that proposition, exciting as it was, was supplanted by another rumor: That the Eccles Sneak was going to be Soderbergh showing The Girlfriend Experience, his new run-and-gun, shot-with-the-4K-Red-digital-camera, adult-actress-in-the-lead-role, largely-improvised drama about the life of a New York escort. The rumors, for once, were true.

Soderbergh introduced the film with, as he put it, "a few caveats" as a "work in progress" projecting a 1080p reduction of the 4K file. In 1989, Soderbergh gave Sundance, and then us, sex, lies and videotape; in 2009, he offers sex, truth, and digital video. Much fuss was made when Soderbergh announced this film, and even more was made when he cast adult actress (the polite euphemism for 'porn star,' and that itself a polite euphemism for 'someone who has sex on-camera for money') Sasha Grey in the lead role as a Manhattan call girl who offers not just rushed release but the more refined "girlfriend experience" -- a suite of services including, as we see in the opener, fine red wine and Marc Jacobs black dresses, soft kisses and small talk, and many more things, an experience that goes far beyond sex. And yet still includes it.

If you're a movie buff, you probably spend most of January catching up with all the awards movies released in December, especially since most of them initially open in big cities, and then expand across the country. But movie critics see all the December movies in December, leaving only January movies in January. And it doesn't take long to notice that January has become a dumping ground for terrible movies that no one wants and no one wants to see (witness: Bride Wars, Paul Blart Mall Cop, Not Easily Broken, Hotel for Dogs, The Unborn, etc.). But fortunately, that's not a hard and fast rule; every so often a true gem comes along in January, perhaps misjudged by the powers that be, or just overlooked.

1. Cloverfield
Released January 18, 2008
In last year's surprise hit, a group of twentysomethings race across Manhattan, dodging a giant city-stomping monster, to rescue Odette Yustman. Because... wouldn't you? It feels like a low-budget monster movie, but also features top-of-the-line effects and citywide destruction. Its characters may struggle for interesting things to say on camera, but the film nonetheless reveals hidden depths. It's vaguely similar to The Blair Witch Project and Diary of the Dead, but has its own ideas. (It was recently chosen by the editors of the prestigious French film magazine Cahiers du Cinema as one of the year's ten best films.)

When we encounter prostitutes in the movies, they're almost invariably destitute, sick, absurdly dressed, and roaming the red light district in search of a client or a fix. That may well be accurate for a majority of women in the profession, but the rarely-glimpsed high-priced call girl is just as much of a curiosity. After he finishes The Informant with Matt Damon, Steven Soderbergh will direct The Girlfriend Experience -- a look at the life of a prostitute who commands a fee of $10,000 a night and earns over $1,000,000 a year. The filmmaker dropped a hint about this project over a year ago, but now plans for the movie are coming together, and we have a lot more details.

The movie, written by Ocean's Thirteen scribes Brian Koppelman and David Levien along with Soderbergh, will be shot over 14 days this fall, in the same improvisational style Soderbergh used for Bubble. It will also follow Bubble's controversial pattern of a simultaneous theatrical and DVD release. According to the Variety story, Soderbergh is considering casting an adult film actress, instead of a Hollywood star, in the lead role. The title refers to encounters where men pay not only for sex, but also for the woman to act like the perfect girlfriend in the experience.

Dear Lord, Soderbergh is prolific: if his two (already-completed) Che Guevara movies hit their 2008 release dates (they're premiering at Cannes), and The Informant and The Girlfriend Experience stay on track for 2009, he will have directed 13 movies in a 10-year span. The man loves to work. This new project is particularly intriguing since it looks like it might give us a well-researched look into a world that I, at least, know virtually nothing about. And it might also confound the usual arguments for why prostitution is a Bad Thing...

Steven Soderbergh is one of the busiest directors in the game. He's also one of the hardest to pin down, mixing the big-budget Hollywood films with independents better than almost anybody. This summer he'll bring us Ocean's Thirteen, which the prescence of Al Pacino has moved to my "must-see" list. ("I think we're going out strong," says Soderbergh about the end of the Oceans series. Fingers crossed!) He's also preparing to start shooting back-to-back movies about Che Guevara, with Benicio del Toro starring as the famed revolutionary. And he's talking about the second film in the controversial series he started with Bubble.

You might remember Soderbergh caused quite a stir with theater owners early last year when he unveiled his ultra low-budget Bubble as a simultaneous cinema, DVD and pay TV release. Soderbergh cites Bubble as one of his best filmmaking experiences, and he disagrees with those who consider it a commercial failure. "It's hard to judge how it went because we were never able to expand beyond the Landmark Theatre chain, which is only 50 screens," he says. "We weren't able to open as wide as we wanted because other theatre chains weren't interested in playing the film. The good news is we sold a lot of DVDs." He claims they broke even on the project. "Considering what an odd movie it is, is great. And we've got five more to go. To my mind, it's all just one giant film being made in six segments."

The next segment will also be a day-and-date release across all formats, and will be about "super high-end call girls" in New York, who make upwards of $2000 an hour. (I'm in the wrong business!) Soderbergh is using non-actors for this new project as well. As for alienating theater owners, Soderbergh says "Lord of the Rings went out day-and-date in the US all over the street. It's happening now; it's just underground." There's more with Soderbergh, including lots of interesting talk about digital projection and what it means for the future of cinema here.

Despite the insistence of theater owners that the multi-platform "super release" of Bubble was a complete disaster, 2929 is trying again with another niche film. Magnolia Pictures (a company that is under the 2929 umbrella) will release Herbie Hancock: Possibilities in theaters (just NY and LA) on April 14 and have it out on DVD four days later; the movie will air on Mark Cuban's HDNet TV channel on April 23. The film is a documentary that both explores Hancock's past and offers a detailed look at the recording of his most recent album on which folks like Sting, Annie Lennox, and Christina Aguilera appear.

While this film and its release schedule seems likely to affect only a tiny group of people (who, admittedly, will be incredibly happy), the small audience isn't a problem for 2929. According to Magnolia's VP of home entertainment Randy Wells, despite Bubble's "failure" at the box office, the total take from the theatrical and DVD sales, combined with PPV income, was about $5 million. Though that number is small compared to the profits pulled in by major studio releases, it's a huge success when one considers that the movie only cost about $1.5 million to make. Additionally, Wells maintains that releasing films on DVD and PPV or cable while they're still in theaters dramatically reduces advertising costs because the various releases can "draft" off of one another's hype.

Comcast and IFC Entertainment will today announce their deal (first outlined by Karina a month ago) to simultaneously release independent films in theaters and on television, via video-on-demand. Kicking off on March 24 with American Gun, the agreement will have films in theaters across the nation (in IFC's theaters as well as in Mark Cuban's Landmark Theaters; negotiations are on-going with other chains) while they are being offered to Comcast subscribers in 22 major markets for $5.99/viewing. Despite the fact that the agreement lacks a DVD element, Comcast's reach is dramatically greater than that of the HD Channel on which Bubble aired, and there's a good chance that Comcast/IFC's films will be seen by a much larger audience than Soderbergh's film.

Because VOD is very hard to pirate, and because Comcast could theoretically pick and choose the markets in which these films are offered, it's hoped that the Comcast/IFC approach will be less threatening to supporters of traditional distribution than the Bubble experiment. IFC actually quietly test the system with a day-date release for C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America this month, and the film, despite being available via VOD to Cablevision subscribers, has done record business in IFC theaters - this, too, should suggest to studios and theater owners that the approach is not necessarily a death knell for exhibition. Among the two dozen or so films IFC and Comcast will release are I Am a Sex Addict, Three Times (by Taiwanese master Hou Hsiao-hsien, whose work is virtually impossible to see in the US), and The Russian Dolls, which stars Amelie's Audrey Tautou).

Look, the fact is that fans of independent film want to see these movies - to some degree, this is going to work. Day-and-date releasing is not going away, and it's time for theater owners and studios to stop whining and, instead, figure out how they can get involved, and use the approach to their advantage. Times change. Deal with it.

When Steven Soderbergh released Bubble simultaneously (more or less) in theaters, on TV, and on DVD, I opted to rent the DVD. This was due more to laziness than anything, but it did give me a chance to listen to the audio commentary where Soderbergh and fellow director Mark Romanek discuss the philosphy behind the movie, which was shot using non-professional actors who ad-libbed much of their dialogue. Soderbergh also used only available light for scenes and worked without monitors. I immediately grew affectionate toward the movie itself, the concept behind it, and the way it was released. I would go on, but Karina pretty much echoed my sentiments with her review.

Josh Oakhurst has transcribed much of the commentary on his blog, and you can read it here. It's not as funny as Soderbergh's commentary for Schizopolis where he interviews himself and insists the last half of the movie is an homage to the inside of his mouth, but for a movie as unique as Bubble it's nice to get some real insight into the mind behind it all.

[via HD for Indies]

After months and months of buildup to its multi-platform release, Steven Soderbergh's Bubble opened in 32 theaters. And, on that all-important, buzz-filled first weekend, it made just $70,664. Ouch. Though of course Mark Cuban, whose 2929 Entertainment is behind the DVD/HD/theater release technique, tried to convince anyone who would listen that the low returns were of little consequence, theater owners clearly felt otherwise. In fact, they were so sure that the $70,664 spelled disaster for the entire simultaneous release concept that they actually released a public statement, crowing over the movie's failure. Yeah, that's classy. John Fithian, president of the National Association of Theater Owners, just wanted to make sure everyone knew that "the movie has performed very poorly," even with all of the free publicity granted it by the press. In other words, "Suck it, Cuban!"

There's a strange mix of movies in this week's roundup: three big studio flicks and one movie from a couple of big names opening on a small scale, trying to cause a lot of trouble. The quick version: Annapolis is bad, but Big Momma's House 2 is much, much worse; Nanny McPhee is at the very least alright, while Bubble is weird and possibly fascinating. For details and links, read on.

• Annapolis: Man, James Franco is really having a tough month - first Tristan & Isolde opened to resounding disinterest, and now Annapolis is being roundly panned. Virtually every review compares the film unfavorably to An Officer and a Gentleman, and the criticism rarely stops there. The New York Times' Stephen Holden calls it "a trailer tricked out with protracted boxing sequences and an undernourished romantic subplot," and others are equally unkind, calling the movie things like "forgettable," "cobbled together," and "all clichés."

• Big Momma's House 2: In what I'm sure comes as a absolute shock to everyone who's had the pleasure of seeing a preview for Big Momma's House 2, it's not very funny. In fact, included on the New York Post's list of things that are "more amusing" than this movie are not only Fletch (you don't say), but also open heart surgery. Yeah. It's really, really bad.

• Nanny McPhee: Reviews for this one are mixed. Though most critics think it's solidly OK, a few - including our man Mick LaSalle - find it really rather wonderful. Pretty much everyone, whether they like the movie or not, praises Emma Thompson's calm in the title role, which they all describe as "the anti-Mary Poppins." (Is that a good thing? What the hell is wrong with Mary Poppins?)

• Bubble: It may not be opening wide, but Bubble is nevertheless a huge deal this week because of its multi-media release schedule. Is it worth sitting through, either in the theater, on TV, or on DVD? Well, there's some disagreement over that. Though a handful of critics find it ponderously dull (writing at CNN, Paul Clinton describes it as the equivalent of "a movie about the phone book"), many others - including Roger Ebert and our own Karina - think that it's oddly thrilling. The great thing is that, if you're sort of interested, there's no need to risk $10 to see how it is. Instead, just flip over the HDNet tonight and see what you think.