Every once in a while I am reminded that my taste is not the same as the mass audience. I can usually call a blockbuster like 300 or Star Trek--in other words, I ignore the tracking and opening weekend predictions to insist--THIS MOVIE IS SO GOOD IT WILL DO BUSINESS. Sometimes, thank God, word-of-mouth counts for something, so that a movie becomes A MUST-SEE.

But occasionally I really like something--often beloved by critics as well--that just doesn't catch moviegoers' fancy. Take, say, the two-part Tarantino/Rodriguez Grindhouse. Both movies were simply too arcane, too close to their pulpy cinephile roots. But what was arcane about Drag Me to Hell, which earned a whopping 83 on Metacritic? But opened to $16 million? And is getting creamed by the competition? What makes this Sam Raimi movie a tweener? Well, the fact that it's a horror/comedy hybrid, for one. (See Slither.) It looks like you can't have a fun scary gross-out E-ride rated PG-13: that way you lose both the family and the horror crowd. (And there's a Fright Night remake in the works.)

That's Dennis Cozzalio's theory (scroll down). He hosted a fun gathering at the Mission Tiki drive-in last Saturday night, complete with hearse and Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule T-shirt giveaways. Was this film freak gathering a bad sign for the movie? Well, most of the drive-in's business that night was over on the side showing Pixar's Up. Other folks have criticized Universal's marketing, which failed to distinguish Drag Me to Hell enough. Debuting it at SXSW was the right move, but the message that the movie was really fun somehow didn't come across.

It's easier to recognize a smart-house tweener that isn't going to do any business. Focus Features' Away We Go, which has all the indie cred bonafides in the world, from Dave Eggers and Sam Mendes to TV comedy stars John Krasinski and Maya Rudolph and movie actress Maggie Gyllenhaal, just doesn't cut it. Mainly the two rom-com leads are not interesting enough, forming a warm mushy bowl of boredom in the middle of the film. We know they love each other. So?

Secondly, the film is a road movie, always a risky narrative structure (see: My Blueberry Nights, also with a non-pro, Norah Jones, at its center). Third, beware of smart sophisticated filmmakers who are making fun of US for being one or more of the following: idiotic, alcoholic, leftie, bourgeois, self-involved, or lousy parents. The movie might as well be called BOOBS ARE US. One of my favorite New Yorker cartoons shows one couple saying to some pals, "Did you see Honky Tonk Freeway? It ruined our August." That ill-fated 1981 John Schlesinger comedy also looked down on ordinary American folks who weren't as cool as the filmmakers. IFC's David Hudson rounds up Away We Go's bad reviews; 56 on Metacritic isn't going to get this pic very far.

Paramount has acquired this Wired diamond heist story which is online, still not on stands. Variety comfirms that J.J. Abrams will produce.

Bob Berney is chasing financing for a planned new distrib outfit--still unnamed. He did try to retrieve his Picturehouse name, but it was impossible. Here at SXSW, he's tracking possible later acquisitions. Here's what Berney told John Pierson at the SXSW Q & A, reports Indiewire in its report on indie distribution:

“I definitely feel like my heart is in independent distribution,” Berney said, when asked to talk a bit about his intentions. In other conversations he’s said his new company would distribute on multiple platforms and on Saturday he only added that the company will be “very different than Picturehouse.” And concluding the thought, Berney said, “Hopefully in a few months we will be back.”

The Wrap profiles SnagFilm CEO Rick Allen, who threw out some provocative stuff on Monday's digital distribution panel (well-moderated by Scott Kirsner); the room was packed. Note to fest organizers: always ask Morgan Spurlock to be on your panel; he's money. The reason that folks like Cinetic Media's Matt Dentler can't reveal numbers on streaming revenue during this transitional period is that "the numbers are pathetic," Spurlock told the room. "When they're ready to crow about their numbers, they will. If you're looking to pay rent, not so much. Phone bill? You got a good chance."

The panel agreed that the split between DVD sales and digital downloads and streaming was 90 to 10%. But digital is growing and will get bigger, even as it steers more customers to buy DVDS online. "It's at an infantile stage," said Snagfilm CEO Rick Allen, who stunned the room with his reveal that Snagfilm's widget/players are embedded on 20,000 sites and are on 300 million web pages. "It's the way things go. The traditional business model is by definition broken."

At Monday's Q & A by IndieWire's Eugene Hernandez, UK-based IMDb founder Col Needham said that a "play button on every page" was his long-term goal. Click and ye shall stream, for free, the movie of your choice. That movie data site, owned by Amazon, is huge and growing by leaps and bounds, mostly into foreign countries, like Germany.

While Watchmen delivered a robust opening of about $55.7 million in North America, it came in lower than expectations--and much lower than Snyder's last film, the blockbuster 300--both domestically and overseas. Finally, Watchmen works best as the narratively complex, visually dazzling comics series from Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. Originally published in 1986, the graphic novel is flying off the shelves. I hope people do read the book, which instantly draws you in with its compelling, never confusing storytelling, deepening and peeling new layers as it goes. The movie, on the other hand, is hard to fathom, boasts too many characters, and doesn't add up to much. Set in the 80s, Zack Snyder's film deals with the Vietnam and Cold War, and the end of the world via nuclear attack, but supplies a new ending with strange shades of 9/11. Moore always did insist that his comics were unfilmable.

The Brits are unhappy with Barack Obama for the way he treated Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who may be the ultimate workaholic policy wonk but lacks a few volts in the charisma department. His countrymen are even complaining about Obama's gift to Brown of the AFI set of 25 DVDs.

Gold Derby reports that the Academy is delivering Heath Ledger's Oscar to Michelle Williams.

Ray Pride and Jamie Stuart celebrate the 10th anniversary of Stanley Kubrick's death. Here's a wonderful 2001 Kubrick special on Charlie Rose featuring Kubrick's wife and producer and Martin Scorsese:

Clearly, Warner Bros. is abandoning the idea of sending Superman into a movie with other superheroes, like a Superman/Batman movie or Justice League, because as Warner prexy Jeff Robinov admits in this long interview with The Wall Street Journal about his studio's future strategy, right now Warners doesn't know who Superman is. Wanted: a new model Superman.

Figuring out how the iconic DC comic character will proceed is front and center for the studio, which was not entirely happy with Bryan Singer's Superman Returns. Neither were many fans, who objected to the love triangle with a married Lois Lane, as well as her child, fathered by Superman. They also want a mightier and more formidable villain than Lex Luthor, played by Kevin Spacey. Director Bryan Singer, who is currently attached to what was to be a Superman Returns sequel, had promised fanns at Comic-Con to go "Wrath of Khan" on it. If Singer, who has been preoccupied with his upcoming World War II Tom Cruise movie, Valkyrie, can't find a "reboot" that meets Warners' expectations, they'll move on.

Clearly, the fans care deeply about this superhero. Comments flood in whenever we touch on the subject. There's life in the venerable comic book character yet, if Warners can crack this challenge.

With Comic-Con looming, movie sites are pushing to get scoops on new movies of interest to the fan community. A sequel to 300, which broke big at Comic-Con, is a big deal.

Thus at the Saturn awards last month, after Collider.com got Zack Snyder to talk about a planned 300 sequel, word spread through the fan sites and eventually Variety tracked the story down and got official confirmation of Frank Miller writing a 300 prequel for Snyder to direct.

Here's how Variety handled the online coverage:

Another "300" has been rumored from the start, but last week Snyder and the original producing team stoked a frenzy online when they talked about it at the Saturn Awards.

This happens a lot.

This doesn't mean that Variety purposely stole the story, as Collider suggested. Variety's Diane Garrett actually nailed down more info.

It's not always cut-and-dry--sometimes everyone is chasing the same news and a given reporter may not be aware of what has broken online. A reporter isn't always tracking down where something broke first, just the story itself. "Sometimes when a publicist sees a story break online," asserts one major online site editor, "they try to place the story in a legitimate news source and they don't necessarily let anyone know."

The Collider protest led to several other sites joining a boycott of the Hollywood trade papers. Here are reports in Folio and MTV News, which spoke to Variety editor Peter Bart. He announced Variety.com's plan to create a blog of blogs:

“I think we’ll grow together. I really do and I think to some degree we want it. I would like to have us develop a blog of blogs, where we get a highlight reel of the best blogs that deal with the entertainment media. I think that will happen before long, and I think that would ameliorate some of these concerns.”

The fight for numbers now is so fierce that the site that breaks a story wants to get credit for it---via links and traffic. That is what is at stake. By the way, a host of mainstream outlets, online and print, rewrite Variety stories without always giving us credit, either. This is the way of the world.

Rocknrolla, Guy Ritchie's latest foray into the tough-guy Brit underground, could go either way. Gerard Butler is back in post-300 muscle-mode, and Tom Wilkinson can do no wrong. Then there's this logic: since both Ritchie and producer Joel Silver badly need a hit right now, maybe they'll deliver the goods on this one.

Frank Miller of Dark Knight, Sin City and 300 fame is blogging about his directorial debut The Spirit. And there's a possibility he will direct a Buck Rogers movie, reports IGN.

David Cohen here, while Anne Thompson is away for the week. Had lunch recently with tech legend Ray Feeney to talk about what's going on with visual effects, digital production and 3-D. Ray has been saying for a while now that the industry is undergoing it's biggest transformation since the advent of sound. Bigger than color, certainly.

But the question is, what is the industry being transformed into? Ray's argument is that an all-digital pipeline -- everything from cameras to post to digital projectors to mobile video -- isn't just a different way of making movies, it's a new medium. But when every new medium is introduced, people start by doing what they already know how to do. In early movies, they tried filming stage plays. ("The Cocoanuts," anyone?) In early television, they did soaps (borrowed from radio), long-form dramas (like the movies) and variety shows (like vaudeville) until "I Love Lucy" pointed the way to the mega-hit sitcom. That's where we are now with digital moviemaking: using the new tools to make the same kind of thing. We're still waiting for the "I Love Lucy" of the digital age.

Ray says:

I joke with the people on our group who are working with this stuff that when I started in the industry in the ’70s, it was a time when Technicolor was shutting down three-strip stuff and there was a lot of nostalgic looking back on that era, like, 'Wow, as a technologist it must have been really incredible to be around when they were just getting the color in motion pictures and all that.' So when we came along, we were the young puppies and those were the good-old days we would talk to the old guard about.

I tell the people working on our projects that these are the good old days. This (digital) stuff, nobody knows how this should be done. There are no standards and people are trying anything.

Whatever's coming, though, I think one thing's almost certain: It'll be disorienting to Baby Boomers like me whose tastes were formed in the analog age. Videogames are going to have more influence on storytelling and film grammar. Visual effects will be used in more stylized ways, as in "Sin City" and "300."

Personally, I'm looking forward to it. I think. Even if the only thing that would get me to buy a PS3 is the Blu-Ray player.

John Woo's bid to deliver his own epic period adventure on a Kurosawa-scale is the $75-million Red Cliff, his first Asia-shot film since 1992's Hardboiled. Set in the Three Kingdoms period of Chinese history, the epic was filmed over four months in mainland China.

This trailer took my breath away. My only regret: that Chow Yun-Fat, fresh from working on a Jerry Bruckheimer-scale Pirates of the Caribbean sequel, couldn't work things out with his former director. (Woo and producer Terence Chang weren't willing to meet his sky high perk demands.) Tony Leung, Takeshi Kaneshiro and Zhang Gengyi star in this pan-Asian production which has backers from Korea, Japan, China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Woo filmed two two-hour films to be released separately in Asia in July and December 2008, with a two and a half hour cut going out in the rest of the world. (I wonder what will show in Cannes?) Summit is selling international rights at Berlin.

The Orphanage handled the VFX.

Check out Woo's trademark white dove.

Graphic novelist Frank Miller is on a roll. On some level, all those Batman movies were inspired by his Dark Knight comics. After the back-to-back successes of Sin City and 300, Sin City 2 is well on its way. And now, Warners has acquired Ronin, to be shot 300-style, reports Variety:

After turning the Frank Miller graphic novel "300" into a hit, Warner Bros. has optioned the rights to Miller's "Ronin" to adapt into a live-action feature. Sylvain White ("Stomp the Yard") will direct.

In the story, a ronin, or disgraced samurai warrior, bears the shame of allowing his master to be assassinated by a shape-shifting demon in 13th century Japan. When the master's sword is unearthed in mid-21st century New York, the ronin and the demon are brought to life and battle gangs of mutants and thugs to try to take possession of the mythical sword.

The graphic novel was published by DC Comics.

As I suggested a few weeks ago, the global blockbuster 300 will have a huge impact on the movie business, because for better or for worse, both aesthetically and economically, it provides a useful new paradigm for how to succeed at the movies. That's why it will be widely imitated: it was made for $64 million, shot (on film, btw) on Montreal soundstages, with actors with no cut of the back-end gross. (Here's Businessweek's take.)

I was sad to see the last episode of HBO's Rome, not only because I was parting with my beloved Mark Antony, Lucius Verenus and Titus Pullo, but because it could be the last movie made with big expensive sets on the Cinecitta backlot. Those sets have been torn down, because Rome was too expensive to be renewed. HBO could have shot Rome the way that 300 was made, on sets with green screen, and in future, that will be the way to go. Gangs of New York is another example of a movie that will not be made with that kind of love and labor in the future. Even Martin Scorsese understood that VFX master Rob Legato had to help him get that rat into the frame in just the right way in the last shot of The Departed. At least it was a real rat.

On the slick new New Yorker website, David Denby reviews Shooter and 300. He tackles text and subtext in both films, and winds up with this conclusion:

Made in a time of frustration, when Americans are fighting a war that they can neither win nor abandon, “300” and “Shooter” feel like the products of a culture slowly and painfully going mad.

[New Yorker illustration by Frank Stockton]

After I saw 300, I knew that Zack Snyder's movie version of the Frank Miller graphic novel would change the face of movies—from its mix of live action and CG to its simple, over-the-top cartoony style—but I didn't realize that it would piss off and threaten so many people.

Michael Blowhard does a terrific job of laying out the reasons why this film is both fabulous and dismaying.

(Photo: Albert L. Ortega/WireImage)

Who knew that comic book creator Frank Miller would have such an impact on pop culture? It took a while--many folks have long credited Miller with reinventing Batman with his Dark Knight comics. But his brushes with Hollywood had left him feeling bitter--until he came roaring back after Robert Rodriguez talked him into co-directing a slavish adaptation of his Sin City, which became a rousing success in 2005. (A sequel is in the works.) And when Zack Snyder got an early gander at what Rodriguez was doing, he decided to adopt a similar approach for 300--with stunning results all round. (For two POVs on 300's disconnects with critics, see Variety's Peter Bart and Ben Fritz.) UPDATE: Here's one response to their respective 300 takes.

I talked to a giddily happy Miller for my first Variety column on the impact of the R-rated blockbuster on the future of filmmaking. I'm betting that it will wind up as one of the highest-grossing R-rated movies of all time. The Passion of the Christ tops the list of R-rated domestic grossers at $370.8 million, followed by The Matrix Reloaded at $281 million. 300 has already passed the $100-million mark and won't fall too much this weekend (it could do more than $40 million), so it's a cinch to head toward stratospheric numbers. It's now a must-see, and thanks to the subplot with the formidable Lena Headey, could also cross over to women, despite its macho violence. And repeat business will also be a factor. Here's New York Magazine's Q & A with Miller:

Is this really the right historical moment to be releasing a movie about an army of civilized Europeans taking on invading hordes of Middle Eastern barbarians? I can’t really think that way, because I wouldn’t get any work done. I think it’s the same story it was in 480 B.C., when heroes were tested for what they are. A hero wasn’t necessarily the best-looking guy in town, or the one who got the woman or got all of Harry Potter’s schoolmates to cheer him. It was the person who did the absolute right thing, even if it meant he would die, forgotten, in disgrace.