WILL BIG BIZ ALLOW IT?

Steven Soderbergh plans eventually to cut the studios out altogether. This, he says, is what digital technology can unleash. "You'll see named film-makers self-distributing their own films. That's where this is going to go. If I can go to the bank and get money to make the movie, and in two to four years' time the digital changeover has happened in the US and all the theatres are digitally projecting, I'll just go right to the theatres and make a deal with them. I'm certainly going to pursue that."

This would be the best situation for all filmmakers especially the "Garage Kubricks" around the world(and I count myself as one of them) who dream of running their own movie industries like sole proprierterships. But will it ever happen? We have control over the cameras and post production through affordable software but what about distribution? In the 70's Coppola dreamt of the same future and put his money into Zoetrope to do so. But he still couldn't control distribution and that was the big mistake. He said that they all thought if they could own the equipment to make the films and get the stars in front of them, they would be home free. But since the studios had such an iron clad control over DISTRIBUTION, there could be no real revolution. Things MAY be different now with the wild west of the internet allowing for direct sales and download. But that is fraught with business peril as well. I'll be watching the day and date release of Soderbergh's BUBBLE very carefully and hope that someone will make a slightly more commercially viable project in this manner to really test the waters-

WHAT THE HELL IS A KINETOFILM????????

You know it when you see it. KINETic, it makes you feel that rush of adrenalin that reminds you that you are alive. It is not passive, not a doormat. This movie will not go quietly. It aims to fire your synapses in ways that only cinema can. It speaks to you in the plastic language of cinema. Effortless. It makes you feel the prescence of the filmmaker within the film. The KINETOFILM should inspire you to go out and shoot a film NOW! Yeah, but does it MEAN anything? If you need to ask that question you've come to the wrong place. A KINETOFILM is defined by what it is, not what it says. I choose to divide the cinema into KINETOFILMS and everything else. What movies excite YOU about filmmaking and make you want to go out and shoot your own film? Post your thoughts here.

TO REMAKE OR NOT TO REMAKE

Since the very successful release of Gore Verbinski's remake of THE RING, both Sam Raimi and Tom Cruise have announced that they are also in the Asian cult horror film remake biz. Raimi will produce a remake of Shimizu's JU-ON(THE GRUDGE) while Cruise has the rights to the Pang Brothers' THE EYE. There are also threats being made to remake Argento's SUSPIRIA and in the coming months we will have remakes of TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE and DAWN OF THE DEAD heading our way.

I'm not writing this info in order to slam on the idea of remakes as bad cinema. What I find amusing is that money has been spent in order to purchase the rights to these stories in order to remake them. The problem lies in the fact that many of these cult films are worthless as literature and especially in the case of Argento, only interesting in the style that the filmmaker has used to spin the tale. Who really cares about the story beats in DAWN OF THE DEAD without the particular satirical sensibility and editing style that belongs to George Romero? I hear ,by the way, that this remake, written by James Gunn of Scooby Doo fame, has only a tentative relation to the original. Then why call it DAWN OF THE DEAD? Does this title actually hold a mnemonic value to the multiplexers who buy tickets to 2 Fast 2 Furious? If an actual remake wasn't really produced, why not just call it something else and make it in the tradition of Romero's picture. This was the case with THE ITALIAN JOB as well, which I actually enjoyed. The original film was not a success in America in the 60's and it's cult value is really only in England and Europe. Since most of the plot was jettisoned, what was the value in keeping the title?

In Hollywood, it seems that a remake is only second to a sequel in making a picture with a strong audience awareness. Adapting a famous tv show like SWAT, or EMERGENCY is supposed to be a safer bet than to shoot a new movie about a Swat team. In the old days of Hollywood, they just LIFTED any story they wanted and made a picture LIKE another picture only different. And this seems to be the key to what the POP audience lives for, they want a new kind of familiar.