2012 in film: Pre-Theatrical VOD goes mainstream...

This will be the first in a series of essays detailing 'the year in film', spotlighting certain trends (mostly positive, I'm taking a break from complaining for a bit) of the nearly finished year.  Obviously I can't amass a best-of list until I see a few more alleged gems, mainly Les Miserables and Django Unchained, but I can start a retrospective of the movie year that was 2012.   

Normally when a film opens with $3,181 on three screens it's considered a pretty big flop.  Yet this past weekend saw the theatrical release of the surprisingly very good Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning, which marked the proverbial end of a seemingly successful run on pre-theatrical video on demand.  I say 'seemingly' because studios aren't yet releasing the proverbial grosses of films on this format, even ones that debut on VOD prior to theatrical release (Bachelorette made news as the top iTunes download on its opening week, but we have yet to know how much money that is).  It's release followed on the heels of Barry Levinson's The Bay, which is quite frankly the scariest American horror film I have seen since Frank Darabont's The Mist.  It opened in theaters and VOD on the same day and earned a whopping $30,000 during a two-week theatrical run.  Following the somewhat surprising VOD performance of Margin Call, which debuted day-and-date in theaters and VOD and rang up decent numbers on both formats (the $3.5 million picture earned $16 million worldwide in theaters), 2012 has seen an explosion of pre-theatrical and/or day-and-date theatrical/VOD content like never before. The sheer amount of content, relatively high-quality content, available on VOD amounts to a second film release schedule.

John Gosling previews the week's new releases (09-07-12).

A relatively quiet weekend with just two major releases, only one of which is out to a substantial number of screens.The Words was written and directed by Brian Klugman and Lee Sternthal and follows a young author (Rory) desperately trying to come up with a story. When his latest effort is rejected he happens across an old manuscript in a house in which he is staying with his partner. Finding himself blown away by how good the story is, he sets to work re-typing it, with a view to passing it off as his own. Thanks to 'his' new book, Rory finds himself the sensation of the publishing world and reaps all the rewards that come with it. But when a man connected with the original manuscript comes into his life, the author soon discovers the high price he will have to pay for stealing another's story. The Words marks the directorial debut of Klugman and Sternthal, who received advice on the script from the Sundance Writer's Lab. With funding in place they set to work on casting, with Bradley Cooper taking the lead role of Rory, Zoe Saldana as his wife Dora and Jeremy Irons as the stranger with the potential to expose Rory's deceit. Other members of the cast included J.K Simmons, Dennis Quaid and Oliva Wilde, the last two acting as a framing device for the picture - Wilde interviewing Quaid's character who has himself written a book relating to the events that unfold as the main body of the film. 

Review: Bachlerorette (2012) successfully mixes vulgar comedy and low-key pathos.

Bachlerorette

2012
87 minutes
rated R

by Scott Mendelson

There is going to come a point, hopefully in the very near future, where we'll see enough female-centric comedies that each one doesn't feel like some kind of major moment in cinema.  We're not quite there yet, so one could arguably discuss Leslye Headland's Bachlerorette in terms of what it does or does not represent in the ever-quickening trail to gender parity in big-screen comedy. For the record, the film is based on Headland's own play, so anyone accusing the film of being a rip-off of Bridesmaids and/or The Hangover should be smacked on the head right here and now.  If the film serves as any kind of benchmark, it will be as a big-screen that will test the ever-present double-standard in terms of how we respond to female characters.  The film's star trio (Kirsten Dunst, Lizzy Caplan, and Isla Fisher) are notable in that they are presented as every bit as vulgar, cruel, and socially-clueless as any number of male comedy trios over the last many years.  Will audiences hold them to a higher standard of sympathy and moral purity, or will audiences realize that they are no better or worse than any given Wolfpack?