Thompson On Hollywood

Madonna, Burns Turn to Alternative Distribution

You know something's wrong in Hollywood when movies with stars can't get a theater opening. Edward Burns took his latest relationship pic Purple Violets exclusively to iTunes, and Madonna is threatening to do something similar with her badly reviewed Berlin flick Filth & Wisdom. That would be an interesting test of the power of the Internet, if Madonna used her marketing machine to sell her film online.

This weekend, Ebert & Roeper critics Tony Scott and Richard Roeper did a segment about movies with marquee names that have gone direct to DVD. Scott recommended the Michele Pfeiffer/Paul Rudd romance I Could Never Be Your Woman, while Roeper thought Jennifer Lopez was strong in Gregory Nava's The Border. And here's a review of a 2001 unreleased Alan Rudolph movie finally hitting video stores.

Nowadays a minimal theatrical release is just a short-cut to the video store. With the current indie-finance glut, there are more movies seeking alternative distribution than ever, judging by how few got picked up at Sundance. Here's my column on alternative distribution on the Internet.

Many small-scale success stories are out there, as filmmakers and online distributors such as B-Side, IFC, Withoutabox, Cinequest, iTunes, Amazon and Netflix experiment with economic models. It's only a matter of time before we have more breakouts to show the way. Check out the online break-through flicks Head Trauma, Blood Car and Four Eyed Monsters (pictured) as well as the hockey doc In the Crease.

iPhone: Jobs at Apple Crossroads

New York Magazine takes a close look at Steve Jobs as he makes his next moves, including the Apple TV, iTunes, Video iPod, movie downloads and the much lusted-after iPhone:

The cliché of Jobs as rock star is, of course, hoary to the point of enfeeblement. From the start of his career—which is to say, for his entire adult life—he has radiated a mesmeric presence, his “reality-distortion field.” But as Jobs makes clear today, Apple’s reality is no longer in need of much distortion. On the back of the first two businesses he names, the Mac and the iPod-iTunes tandem, Apple racked up $21.6 billion in sales in the last twelve months, and $2.8 billion in profits. Its stock price has doubled in the past year; last month, AAPL was named to the S&P 100, making it a bona fide blue chip. With what Jobs dubs a “hobby,” Apple TV, the company has invaded the sanctum sanctorum of living-room entertainment. Then there’s that third, impending business, which revolves around a gorgeous sliver of palmtop gee-whizzery that you may have heard about: the iPhone.

Ten years ago, when Jobs retook the reins at Apple, the suggestion that the company would be where it is today would have seemed a fantasy—or a joke. Apple was bleeding cash, bleeding talent, bleeding credibility. Its laptops were literally bursting into flames. Its war with Microsoft had devolved into a self-lacerating pathology. Today the Mac is, albeit slowly, gaining ground on Windows. And the iPod, which in less than six years has sold north of 100 million units, has Microsoft choking on its dust.

Mossberg notes this astonishing achievement and inquires of Jobs how many copies of iTunes software are in circulation. At least 300 million, Jobs answers, prompting Mossberg to follow up: “Does the scale of this surprise you?”

Nodding sagely, Jobs responds, “The scale of a lot of things we’re doing surprises me.”

Apple Talks to Studios About Downloads

The ground is continuing to shift under the studios as they try to adapt to a Steve Jobs world, both with movie downloads and iPod TVs. The studios are still dragging their feet.