According to The Hollywood Reporter, IFC Films is going to release two new star-driven movies in theaters and On Demand on the same day. The films will be released by First Take, the "day-and-date" division of IFC. Previous attempts at day-and-date films have been extremely controversial with theater owners, who often refuse to book the movies, claiming, perhaps rightfully so, "Why would anyone leave the house and come to our theater if they can get the movie in the comfort of their own home?" Currently, Todd Wagner and Mark Cuban's Landmark Theaters are one of the few chains who will book day-and-date films, and even have their own day-and-date program, Sneak Preview. I'll stop saying day-and-date, I promise. You can read genius Cinematical writer Patrick Walsh's report on Steven Soderbergh's adventures with the distribution practice here, and Ryan's interview with Cuban right here.

What are the two new films? The crime drama Savage Grace, directed by Tom Kalin (his first feature-length film since 1992's Leopold and Loeb story Swoon) stars Julianne Moore and Hugh Dancy. Grace tells the "true story of socialite Barbara Daly Baekeland's 1972 murder," and was a $5 million production. Finishing the Game, a Bruce Lee mockumentary, was directed by Justin Lin (the very cool Better Luck Tomorrow, Fast and the Furious 2: Tokyo Drift). Game features cameos by James Franco and...uh...MC Hammer (how'd they get Hammer to sign on? Offer him a hot meal?), and "imagines the recasting of Lee's final role in Game of Death before filming was completed." You can read Scott's generally positive Sundance review of Death here. Grace will premiere in theaters and on IFC next year; Death next month.

The Aura, the second feature from Argentine director Fabián Bielinsky, is so strange and lovely that his recent death at the young age of 47 seems even more tragic for all it has denied the world of cinema. Bielinsky's final work is a film that relishes distance and isolation, glorying in the experiences of a man who lives apart from the world around him. Like its main character, The Aura exists in a sort of suspended animation: It offers no backstory, and there is no future suggested by its ending. It simply exists, a work of such power and grace that its needs no external support.

The film centers on an unnamed taxidermist (the note-perfect Ricardo Darín) who, like the film, exists in a vacuum. We know he is epileptic because the movie opens with him on the ground, after a seizure. He rarely acknowledges his condition, but it dominates his life and is a source of both frustration and perverse joy. We know he has a wife because she leaves him, but we see her only once, fleetingly, though a pebbled glass window. And we have no idea why she left, or what their relationship was like. (At one point, the taxidermist makes a general attack on abusive husbands and, though at the time his words seem aimed at another, there's a such an odd, personal depth to his loathing that one wonders -- fleetingly, but the question is there -- if, perhaps, we've just been told exactly why his wife left.) Apart from his wife, the taxidermist seems to know a single other person: A big, loud colleague of whom he's clearly not very fond. They are forced into a certain camaraderie because of their shared profession, but it's an obvious effort for the taxidermist to even engage in basic social niceties. When his colleague asks how he's been, and what he brought to the museum at which they meet, the taxidermist answers him, and then falls silent. It's not until several seconds later that he remembers something is expected of him, and offers an awkward "And you?"

The combination of its Palme d'Or win and the fact that it was directed by Ken Loach was more than enough to have a lot of American film geeks eagerly looking forward to The Wind That Shakes the Barley. The problem, is that Loach's films tend to get limited distribution here at best, and for several months there was no news of any sort of deal. Thankfully, though, Variety reported today that IFC Entertainment has picked up the rights to the film, and plans to have it in theaters some time next year.

What's particularly cool about this deal is that IFC will be releasing the film through First Take (you may recognize the name from that I Am a Sex Addict/Mark Cuban kerfuffle earlier this year), their day-and-date arm tha makes films available both theatrically and via On-Demand, a cable service that is available primarily (only?) to Comcast subscribers. So, if Loach fans in, say, Omaha are lucky enough to have Comcast cable, they'll be able to see the movie on the same day as folks in New York. Which is pretty damn cool for those people in Omaha.

I just got word that IFC Films is about to launch a new distribution banner, aimed at releasing films in theaters and through On-Demand cable TV, simultaneously. The program will be called First Take, and to it IFC has already attached six films: CSA: The Confederate States of America, Caveh Zahedi's I Am a Sex Addict, New York Film Festival favorite Three Times, American Gun, Russian Dolls, and Sandra Oh-starrer and my early vote for Title of the Year, Sorry Haters. First Take hopes to release an additional 20 films this year. The basic idea is that by closing the window between theatrical and cable on these types of niche releases, films that would have only shown on the coasts can get a nationwide release.

What do we think about this? Is this a more or less viable plan than the cable/DVD/theatrical simultaneous release program that Mark Cuban and Steven Soderbergh are launching this week with Bubble?