HDNet Tagged Articles at Cinematical

By the time the U.S. stops fighting in Iraq, there will be so many films about the war and its aftermath that you will be able to watch one a day for the rest of your life. At some point we will even stop posting the announcements of directors who will be making a film about Iraq and instead write about the directors who won't be. But for now, here's more details on one of those who is planning one. As Monika reported earlier this month, Brian De Palma is set to write and direct an Iraq-based film titled Redacted. Now it turns out that it will be an HD feature for Mark Cuban's and Todd Wagner's HDNet Films.

I'll admit that I've never cared for De Palma's films, and I'm just about done with the subject matter, but the format of the film intrigues me. Variety reports that Redacted will be a montage of stories, and in addition to being about different soldiers, it will also be about different forms of media coverage. I also expect it will have an immediate feel to it, as it will be shot and released fairly quickly in the HDNet day-and-date distribution model. This will be great for De Palma, whose films tend not to age well.

There is a plan to open Redacted wider and more commercially than previous HDNet releases, but considering many theater owners still aren't into the idea of day-and-date, the plan probably won't include a lot of areas of the country. And though I don't understand why, De Palma has a large following, and there is going to be a lot of people disappointed that they won't get to see the director's latest on a big screen.

Here at Cinematical, when it comes to film festivals, we just aren't so much about the parties. We get invites to a lot of festival social happenings, but honestly, after 12 hours or so of screenings (counting the time it takes to get from one venue to another) in a given day, plus the time it takes to write a coherent review, most nights we do well to drool over a pizza slice or Thai takeout while hunched over our keyboards. Besides, parties require actually dressing up and looking presentable, and we here at Cinematical are a bunch of lazy slobs who like to work in our pajamas. Nonetheless, we did manage to suck it up and engage our introverted selves in a little of the Toronto Film Festival nightlife. We co-hosted a little TIFF bowling party with our friends from Movie City News, hung out at Mark Cuban's HDNet bash and the Netflix party for John Waters' This Filthy World, and even spent an night carousing until the wee hours at a pub with the Rotten Tomatoes gang. Here are some pics from our wild social life at TIFF. When you see for yourselves what dorky film geeks we really are, you'll understand why we usually stay locked in our hotel rooms with our laptops.

Hey, we can't all be party animals like Sammy (above), the tiara-wearing black sheep from the Black Sheep red carpet.

Odds and ends for Thursday:

• Even though IMDB lists Zach Braff as its director, Barry Sonnenfeld is in final negotiations to helm Andrew Henry's Meadow for 20th Century Fox. Pic, which is based on the popular children's book, follows a boy inventor who escapes suburbia and travels to a meadow. There, he sets up some sort of community where he eventually teams up with other outcasts on a mission to save their parents. Braff, along with his brother Adam, originally set up the pic and developed the story while Adam wrote the script. Perhaps, since Zach is now off directing a Danish re-make, he has relinquished his director's hat.

• Who knew Catherine Zeta-Jones was so into magic. Apparently, the actress is in talks to star opposite Guy Pearce in biopic about the one and only Harry Houdini. Set in the mid-twenties, Death Defying Acts will pick up Houdini's story while he's at the height of his career, touring the country and amazing the public with his brilliant escape acts. That's right folks, David Blane has nothing on this guy. Zeta-Jones will play an exotic psychic (I wonder if that means she tells your fortune while in her underwear?) who seduces Houdini into a passionate affair.

• Well, it looks like HDNet Films is really starting to make some moves. Not long after Todd Wagner and Mark Cuban's company decided to up its budget cap from under $2 million to under $5 million (assuming the right talent was attached), comes word that Zoe Cassavetes' Broken English has wrapped up its stars and will become the latest HDNet venture to head into production. Onboard what appears to be a quirky romantic comedy about a woman lost in her 30's and looking for love, will be Parker Posey, Drea de Matteo, Gena Rowlands, Jeanne Moreau, Justin Theroux and Josh Hamilton.

Despite the fact that over 70 million homes receive his HDNet channel, Mark Cuban is still not making any money on his HD dream. Part of the problem (I'm not going to get into how many/few homes have HD TVs and receivers) is that some major cable companies -- including Comcast -- still refuse to carry either HDNet or its sister channel, HDNet Movies. In fact, a couple of years ago, Comcast, Cox, and Time Warner collectively created an HD channel of their own called INHD, which they conceived as "a Cuban-killer." (He's still here. As is HDNet.)

Because of Cuban's feud with Comcast, as Karina mentioned in her column, there were rumblings that his Landmark Theaters, the biggest independent chain in the country, might refuse to show films that were part of distributor IFC Films' day/date release deal with Comcast. No official, public statements were made, however, so things continued as normal, and Caveh Zahedi's I Am a Sex Addict (part of the day/date deal) was scheduled to open at a Landmark theater in Berkeley on Friday, April 7. Then, yesterday, Zahedi heard from IFC that the film had been pulled by the theater because of Cuban's beef with Comcast. Not surprisingly, Zahedi was upset, and (quite reasonably, it would seem) blamed Cuban for the affair. According to Cuban's comment on the above post (scroll down the page a little, and you'll find it), however, IFC knew the film would not be screened at any Landmark theaters and schedule it anyway. Hmm.

No matter who's to blame, the fact is that a little indie film is caught up in something much, much bigger than it is. Can you even imagine how frustrating this must be for the filmmakers who, after IFC's deal with Comcast, were thrilled at the prospect of (relatively) wide distribution for the babies, only to run into this roadblock? Man alive, what a nightmare.