When the trailer for Werner Herzog's upcoming Nicolas Cage vehicle, "Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans," showed up on YouTube last Thursday, movie buffs were baffled.

Ostensibly a remake of Abel Ferrara's harrowing 1992 cop drama with Harvey Keitel in the lead role, the new version appears to spin the source material into the unlikely mold of a black comedy.

Cage, as a southern officer with a penchant for crack and promiscuity, widens his eyes and wearily drifts from one mystifying scene to another. Seeking the witness of a crime, he cuts off the oxygen supply of the missing character's grandmother as a means of gaining her cooperation.

Later, answering to a complaint about the incident, Cage defends himself with a faux southern accent almost too false to bear. "I think she might be suffering from a little dime-en-...

These days, most discussions about film and new media revolve around digital distribution. But this emphasis often misses the point.

The Internet brought more changes to the business of making movies than merely the prospects of watching them online. The advent of social networking, the rise of the blogosphere and the public's growing comfort with online interactivity all contributed to strategies for getting movies made, period, no matter where they got shown. 

Theories are quickly turning into practice.

The latest example came to my attention last week. IndieGoGo, a film-funding site that launched in January 2008, just passed $100,000 in member contributions. It operates under a unique concept: Filmmakers can directly interact with their fans, raise the profiles of their projects and ultimately turn to their future audiences to raise money.

The...