Slashdot Mirror
Joss Whedon Releases New Film On Demand
Rambo Tribble (1273454) writes "Popular director Joss Whedon has taken the film world by surprise by releasing his latest offering, 'In Your Eyes', available for download on the same day it premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival. The new release comes from Whedon's own "micro studio", Bellwether Pictures, and is featured on Vimeo as a $5 rental, (free trailer). Whedon mused, 'It's exciting for us because we get to explore yet another new form of distribution — and we get $5.' Mr. Whedon has a history of pushing the delivery envelope, as with Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, in 2008."
Joss Whedon is just such a fun filmmaker, even if he wasn't the director for this particular movie. Look at Buffy, The Avengers, even Cabin in the Woods, which was a thoroughly enjoyable re-imagining of the tired horror flick. And this one just so happens to be partially filmed in my town; I haven't seen the movie yet, but if you see a gas station with tanks right out of the 50's, that ain't no prop, it's for-real. (Though they stopped pumping gas five or six years ago due to the storage tank needing to be fixed up.) Really excited for this one.
Can anyone comment about the quality of this film? Is this Cinema quality? Direct-to-Video? SciFi channel? YouTube?
While watching SHIELD the other week, they transitioned seamlessly to a Captain America commercial -- and I wondered if I was still watching SHIELD until 5 seconds later, a actual car crash stunt happened, and I knew the budget for the 30-second commercial was higher than the entire episode of SHIELD that I had been watching.
I'll gladly pay $5 to watch a new movie in this "new model" of distribution.
Louis CK did pretty good with his pay what you want experiment and his own production. If could get a download that plays on any video player tha say day or even month after it came out of the movies I'd be all over it. The last time I went to the movies was to see The Road after spending nearly $50 between me and my son on tickets and popcorn I said fuck it this is enough and haven't been back. At $5 per movie Id' be buying prrtty much any good movies that comes out. Hell even for the price of the ticket $10+ tax each person I'd could buy 4 movies and enjoy them at home.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
There is no difference between a micro studio and a Giganto Studio. I have the exact same tools in my spare bedroom "micro studio" that they have at MGM. and if I really wanted to shoot with a $190,000 arriflex I can rent it, just like they do.
This is the wonderful thing. a single person with a spare bedroom is equal footing competition to a $100,000,000,000 studio.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
And he also has this weird fetish for 100-lb. waifs beating up hordes of 250-lb. guys that drives me crazy.
You say that like it's a bad thing.
The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
The movie was worth the five bucks to watch it on Vimeo, but their Flash-based player (no quick way to switch to an HTML5 version) resulted in such a choppy playback that the constant pauses and buffer attempts added another half hour to the whole thing.
Since it's a 95 minute movie we're talking about a quarter of the time being spent on just waiting for the fucking site to do its job again.
Before anyone asks: The 100MBit connection has never been a problem before and the necessary software was up to date as well.
Hope you'll have more luck. Except for the predictable end it's quite a nice movie.
Not so bad if that's your fetish. But it just drives me nuts. I prefer my heroines to be at least somewhat grounded in reality. Personally, I always thought the best sci-fi heroine was Ellen Ripley. She had real strength of heart. There was no need to write her as some kind of superman ninja who could alter the laws of physics to beat down everyone and everything around her.
Writing your heroine as a guy with tits isn't "empowering." It's just fucking lazy.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Subject pretty much sums it up.
I should add that, ironically, the last Alien movie was scripted by Joss Whedon. Anyone care to guess what they turned Ellen Ripley into in that installment?
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
The *EQUIPMENT* has come huge lengths. You do, however, lack the writers, acting talent, stage hands, etc., etc., etc. If you give me eggs and cheese, I give you cheesy eggs. A French chef gives you a souffle. Having the ingredients is only the first step.
I do not like renting, I prefer to own.
Just put it up on AppleTV so it conveniently becomes part of my iTunes lib.
Also I don't have patience for sloppy flash based players.
Bram Stolk http://stolk.org/tlctc/
Firefly was good. Angel and Buffy early seasons were good as well (although I do agree that Angel was at it's best with Tim Minear at the helm.)
Dollhouse was terrible. It was terrible for many reasons but the biggest was because it had so much potential to be more than it was. The TV show Marvel is pretty bad as well.
Cabin in the Woods was clever marketing. It's great to make the type of movie that if someone doesn't like it, you can just say that they didn't get it. I liked it but not the end (and yes, I understood the point of the ending and all the wonderful metaphors involved.)
Most likely it's because he shopped it around and couldn't find a distributor. That's usually not a good sign.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
To be fair, Joss was not happy with the final product either, feeling it greatly differed from his script.
The TV show Marvel is pretty bad as well.
...oh god, so boring, so cliche, so stilted, so awful I can hardly believe he's involved...
This. Possibly an indie distributor would have picked it up, but Whedon's demands for the marketing or whatever were too much to deal with.
way to watch my favorite character die.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Or, he has enough money so he can experiment with different distribution models.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I know '100' pound women who can kick the ass of 250 pound men. Closer to 120, then 100 but still.
SO lets see:
Buffy: Super human powers is the entire premise
Dollhouse: Brain altered to the mindset and abilities of killing machine.
Firefly: Altered brain.
Serenity. Blech.
So in context those are all plausible, plus they are all psychopaths.
None of those character are masculine, as all.
Maybe equating violence and being fat to masculinity is the issue?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
This. Louis CK did this the right way. Pay $5 and get sent a link to a clean video file that you can download up to five times and watch on any device that supports it (or transcode to any other format you want). I'd like to watch this movie, but the old xbmc box connected to my TV probably won't do a good job playing back an HD Vimeo stream (as some others have already reported).
Typically an artist wants to get as many eyeballs on their creation as possible, no? You are suggesting Whedon would deliberately sabotage his audience numbers (and potential revenue) just to do some parlor trick? If that were the case, why would he even bother with Tribeca? Furthermore... Vimeo??
Firefly was good, Serenity was good, Avengers was good. Doctor Horrible wasn't just good, it was wonderful. Dollhouse, as you said had great potential that was wasted.
Cabin in the woods wasn't just marketing. I had heard the name, but knew nothing about it when I watched it. It was awesome. I loved how it twisted all the horror tropes and built something funny and yet still horrifying out of it. It isn't to everybody's taste, and that's okay. But I really don't think it is particularly pretentious or marketing based.
When it come to a fist fight, or feat of strength, there are few female actors that can be convincing. "Mother Russia" in Kick Ass 2? Totally convincing, but also the exception.
Now the whole "butt-kicking waif" thing works just fine if you make her a robot. That Terminator TV show, or the whole Ghost in the Shell franchise? I'm fine with that.
But I'm just not buying your typical Hollywood female lead in an action role featuring fisticuffs or throwing heavy stuff about. The thing about good fantasy stories is you explain the stuff that doesn't match reality. Not doing so is, in fact, just fucking lazy.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
The rest of the movie may not have been very good, but it did give us the basketball scene where Sigourney Weaver actually made that shot.
Dear Mr. Whedon,
Please justify the $5 cost to rent your film. I can rent your latest superhero blockbuster over the weekend for $2 from Redbox. I can own Louis CK's latest show forever for $5. Why is your content so much more expensive?
Thanks,
a fan
"Here Lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit"
As of right now (12:23pm PST, 4/21/2014) the parent post is showing +2.... Flamebait.
I've been here a while but never seen a negative word attached to a positive score (it's always been +3 Informative, or +4 Insightful, or +2 Funny, or whatever). I don't think that my personal 'score adjusters' would give anything enough points to boost a -1 or 0 up to a +2.
I'm assuming it got mod'd up with a couple different modifiers (one insightful, one interesting, etc), then mod'd down with only Flamebait (and so Flamebait is the most common modifier), but I'm curious (1) if anyone else is seeing this and (2) does anyone have a better explanation about the score/modifier?
The entire "freemium" video game revenue model is predicated on the fact that so-called "whales" would pay $5 to download a car.
Were the metaphors in question, not enough(read none) multi-megaton nuclear weapons were not emplaced to target the eldritch horrors as a last ditch defense in case the entire elaborate system of sacrifices came crashing down? Cause that was all I really got from the ending.
This is false advertisement. You cannot purchase this as there is no place to download this ...
If names are that important, perhaps you'd care to spell Louis C.K.'s properly.
no longer working for cnet
Yeah, I know Whedon always creates some thin excuse in an attempt to give this ridiculousness the veneer of plausibility. But even his excuses are pretty weak. I doubt there is anything you can "do to the brain" of someone who's 5'1" and 100 lbs. to give them the punching and kicking strength of Ivan Drago mixed with Superman. It's just takes me out of the story.
I can suspend my disbelief for some stuff, but when something is ostensibly set in the real world, I expect to it be somewhat believable. It's like the scene in Die Hard 3, when Bruce Willis and Samuel Jackson fall off a bridge and drop about 50-ft. onto a solid metal barge deck--without injury. That was the moment I realized that the Die Hard franchise had finally gone too far. It crossed the line from EXTREMELY unlikely to flat-out fucking impossible.
It also doesn't help that the beautiful ass-kicking waif is a recurring Whedon character in almost everything he does, leading to the disturbing conclusion that this is some sort of weird fetish thing for him. Or maybe he's just too lazy to write real strong females, and falls back on the easy out of just taking the standard bimbo and giving her superpowers.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
I wouldn't be surprised if Whedon would do exactly that. It's not like he needs money at this point, so why not try something new? Especially since after Doctor Horrible, he specifically said that is exactly what he was going to do next time? After being totally screwed by Fox on several occasions, it's not surprising that he would want the thing wherein he exerts basically complete control over the creation and distribution of stuff, and I don't really blame him.
That said, he really does need to work on his marketing strategy a bit. I'm a giant Whedon fanboy, and I hadn't heard a peep about this project until today. Why is that?
If it is true that you can only get it via Vimeo, though, that'd be pretty dumb. I do recall the available options for Doctor Horrible were kinda dumb at first, too, leading me to torrent it until I could buy it reasonably. If it is really just Vimeo (can't check at work), it does seem likely that I would do something similar this time as well (give him 5 dollars, then go find a torrent.)
He's only Louis when he's being introduced or billed in credits.
His friends call him "Louie," he calls himself "Louie" -- or so I'm lead to believe from all of his interviews and radio appearances.
It'd be no different than saying Bob De Niro or Sam Jackson.
What's next, complaining he didn't say call him Louis Szekely? Cit him some slack.
why not? rage against the machine i believe it was put up a CD and told people pay as much or as little as you want, and they actually made more then they expected. Its not gonna work for an unknown but joss is fairly well known even to non geeks now due to his appearances on big bang theory
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Like, say, what kind of movie it is. I had to google to find out anything about the movie itself, rather than just its distribution strategy - apparently it's a "supernatural romance" about two people, not currently in a relationship with each other, who realize that they can communicate psychically with each other over any distance.
That, coupled with the Whedon name, does seem interesting enough to give it a shot. It is pretty lame of him to only release it via a streaming-only site, but you know what? I'm sure there'll be a way around that. I have no problem tossing him 5 bucks anyway, and then immediately turning around and figuring out a way to get the results onto my hard drive one way or another. I can't imagine Whedon would mind, either; he's a pretty cool guy. :p
You're right about this..(e.g. River in Firefly) but on top of that, his shows have a very Orange-County/SoCal vibe to them..everything is very polished and Hollywood-esque. It would be much more realistic to have characters who look more rugged, look the part and not like they all live in LA and have daily skin treatments. All of the characters in Whedon's shows emphasize this Southern California plasticy concept of beauty, which is somewhat repulsive to my (and I'm sure others') tastes.
Buffy and Summer Glau both had superpowers in their Whedonverses. Cordelia is a waif with no superpowers. She couldn't fight her way out of a Nordstrom's.
What am I missing here? Something from comics or? What superpowers does Summer Glau have? I understand she was very graceful and has heavy martial training, but superpowers?
I would pay to watch that. A 100lb girl can still kick you in the groin, or gouge out your eyes or rip off your ear. With sufficient training, they will break your nose with their elbow, or crush your throat with a kick.
Sure, if she tried to beat your chest or legs or arms, not a whole lot is going to happen. But with Martial arts training, you are also taught all the sensitive weak spots (not nerve clusters) that you can hit to inflict real pain.
Also, the thinking is probably along the line of theaters which charge at least $5 to see something immediately instead of waiting for rental. This is competing with theaters not with rentals -- and he must go up against the stigma of direct to rental movies (which are usually crap.)
Movies make their money back BEFORE getting to rental. They spend about 1/3 marketing the things so that they make it back with the theaters or if it's a failure, they can make it back during rentals. Not all, but it seems like most do.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
ah yes you are right it was radiohead. I knew it started with an R!
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same