The News: All-Positive Friday!

Into Great Silence: Is this the future of independent cinema? (Photo: Zeitgeist Films)

By S.T. VanAirsdale

As per tradition, some of today's more upbeat movie news of note from around New York:

--Andrew O'Hehir's latest column at Salon asks the impossible-to-answer question: What next for independent film distribution? Everyone's got an opinion, self-interested or otherwise, but the sense that -- hey! -- it's not all bad (or even on the big screen) is more than a little refreshing. Especially for films like Into Great Silence: "Monk movies! I'm tellin' you, they're hot, hot, hot! Harvey and Quentin are getting one cranked up right now!"

--David Carr points us to David Edelstein's other Top 10 list, the one with even less hype and drama than his modest original in New York Magazine. If we must, must, must succumb to these silly things, it's hard to outdo the simplicity of: "Good year. Enough commentary. Time for list-making."

--As noted here before, there's no real NYC angle to our worship of Ronald Bergan, a motherfucker whose sourness is so heavy and dank as to almost be a meteorological phenomenon. He's definitely on his game for Christmas, eviscerating It's a Wonderful Life's capitalist sympathies, but none of that matters when it comes to today's touching Jane Fonda hagiography at GreenCine Daily: "Many have seen her embracing of capitalism (her fitness empire is worth millions of dollars, and her marriage to media mogul Ted Turner, from whom she separated) as a sign of hypocrisy and/or betrayal. Nevertheless, her melding of a political consciousness with an acting career has been hugely influential." Oh, Ronald! As George Bailey was advised: "Why don't you kiss her instead of talking her to death? Youth is wasted on the wrong people."

--Four words: Lou Lumenick on video!

Posted at December 21, 2007 9:32 AM