Celluloid Heroes

This place is poor.

Bubble, the first movie of Steven Soderbergh’s six picture deal with Mark Cuban’s HDNet, is a two-pronged experiment in both distribution and technique. On the business side, it’s the first film to have a deliberately orchestrated simultaneous release in theaters, on cable television and on DVD. Soderbergh and others believe that the DVD “window,” the period of time between a film’s theatrical release and its home video release, is inexorably shrinking to nothing. Others, especially some in the movie theater industry, think that this window is rather vital to their business model and that Soderbergh is full of it. This led more than a few theater chains to boycott this film because of its simultaneous DVD release.

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Unlike some Robin Hoods, I can speak with an English accent.

Following not so hard on the heels of Spaceballs, Robin Hood: Men in Tights marks the second entry in the latter stage of Mel Brooks’ directing career. While not lacking in its share of entertainment value, it definitely lacks the subversive zing found in most of the earlier Brooks films like Blazing Saddles or even History of the World, Part I.

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Don’t you know slapstick is dead?

You might call Silent Movie Mel Brooks’ version of Adaptation, since it’s kind of a movie about itself, a silent movie about Mel Brooks making a silent movie. Of course, there aren’t any real parallels between the two films but how often do you get to compare Mel Brooks to Charlie Kaufman and Spike Jonze?

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