I agree wholeheartedly with your comment, shayup. In fact, the problem is that in some respects there is no "movie" business anymore. Feature-length shows, walking & talking like movies of old, are being cranked out willy-nilly with no regard for their use or exposure. This one gets shown at the awful TriBeCa film festival and a number of other fests, and these showings really consume the intended audience for the film. (Not numerically, but in terms of those highly motivated fans/buffs who want to see it.) Festivals once upon a time were designed to prime the pump, acting as part of the publicity campaign to generate interest, but now for many smaller films they turn out to be the primary (often only) theatrical venue. The token theatrical release (I live in NYC and we have several outlets, notably the cable-owned IFC theater or the downtown Sunshine cinema) is just a gimmick to say that a movie was released.
I saw the excellent director's commentary (recorded back in 2007) by William Friedkin for the DVD release of his movie Bug, and he explains in thorough detail how he hand-released and cared for The Exorcist in 1973, personally supervising every U.S. theater for the first six months of its run. That is a case history of how it used to be done, and how it still could be done if the "industry" had any common sense, or just did their homework. For decades now the video tail has been wagging the dog. Even such a carefully marketed smash like Avatar proves the point - a huge hit worldwide at the end of 2009 and rush, rush, rush, the Blu-Ray push is already here in late April 2010.
"Three quarters of what is said here can be completely discounted as the raving of imbeciles" - Donald Wolfit in Blood of the Vampire (1958)
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