In this morning’s roundup of movie news ‘n’ notes from around the web, “Twilight” bows and Twitter booms and vuvuzelas go to Middle Earth.
Steven Zeitchik offers a quick take from the red carpet – oops, sorry, the black carpet – at Thursday night’s premiere of “The Twilight Saga: Eclipse.” Fans screamed, Laker Ron Artest returned to the site of his team’s championship last week, and Rob Pattinson told Zeitchik that he couldn’t breathe in the car on the way to the Nokia Theatre. (Life is always tough for ambivalent teen idols.) Based on her tweets about the nightmare of epic proportions surrounding the post-premiere table to reclaim cellphones and cameras, I’m waiting for Anne Thompson’s account of the evening. (24 Frames)
Stuart Heritage, meanwhile, considers the demographics of the “Twlight” series. Or, to be more precise, he considers the one demographic that typically steers clear of the series: men. Males, he says, want their vampire movies with bats and blood and kinky sexuality – and “since ‘Twilight’ has jettisoned these tropes in favor of endless meaningful silences, unusually loud nose-breathing and Paramore music, maybe it’ll just have to resign itself to only appealing to half the population.” Or can we truly trust Taylor Lautner, the oft-shirtless werewolf guy who swears that “Eclipse” is the most testosterone-friendly film in the series? Heritage seems to have his doubts, as do I. (The Guardian)
The world of independent film is changing dramatically, with money tightening and new business strategies needed to take advantage of an emerging landscape of VOD and new technology and niche marketing. But should indie filmmakers really spend much time worrying about that? Producer Mike S. Ryan argues that they shouldn’t, that the “profitable indie industry” never really existed: “uncompromising, quality work that exists outside the mainstream has only ever been profitable for a few.” He thinks it’s time for filmmakers to stop worrying so much about marketing via Facebook pages and Constant Contact email lists, and go back to worrying about making good movies. Embrace the outer margins, he says. (Filmmaker Magazine)
Karina Longworth reports from the L.A. Film Festival panel entitled “The Power of the Tweet,” which director Eli Roth says means that people know within 15 minutes of a film’s opening if it’s no good. (“In the old days, you could fool an audience for a weekend.”) Roth also said that “Inglourious Basterds” was an example of a movie helped enormously by the service, while Adam Shankman discussed how his mildly racy shots of Miley Cyrus caused Disney to institute a no-Twitter policy on “The Last Song.” And Richard Kelly says he started tweeting in an attempt to have fun and not take things too seriously: “With my films, I do a lot of cerebral sci-fi, and it can make my brain hurt.” Hey, my brain hurt after seeing Kelly’s “Southland Tales,” too. (L.A. Weekly)
First saw this one on the Hot Blog: Gandalf Goes to the World Cup. “Lord of the Rings” may be old news by now, but the vuvuzela rendition of Howard Shore’s theme is pretty irresistible, in a brain-hurting kind of way. (YouTube)
