Some of the coolest artwork around revolving around..what else? The movies. You can buy it.

The Shakespearian comedy is out on DVD (actually August 26) Pop over to the Gold Cap Film's site and check out this funny, sweet, and entertaining comedy.

- Wowee! New York's MOMA is running a retro of Chris Smith's films ("American Job", "American Movie") on the occasion of the release of his new film "The Pool." (indiewire)

- If you are seriously mulling over becoming a trully indie DIY filmmaker/distributor, read Sujewa Ekanayake's post here

So, the good news, at least for some people who are worried about there being too many movies or too many good movies - making indie movies & getting them distributed has always been hard, and probably will always be so; meaning, only the deeply committed people - such people are usually few in number in most areas of life - will achieve a significant amount of success in the endeavor. Paper is cheap, but the world is not overrun with great literary masterpieces or even a ton of entertaining/creative books.

- It's probably been going on for awhile now but young Hollywood execs like blowing off steam by playing...X-Box.

It was dark and drizzling when screenwriter Justin Marks did what many in Hollywood have fantasized during their bleakest career moments: He attacked his agent with a chain saw.

Finally, a shot from Alpha Omega winery in Napa, CA where we had a nice cooling of the jets.

Here's what Stacy Parks of Filmspecific has to say about Prom Queen, a successful webisode:

Take Vuguru for example, Michael Eisner's year and a half-old
production company set up expressly to produce web content.
They have a big hit on their hands with PROM QUEEN, a 90 second daily
soap averaging over 200,000 viewers a day. The show was recently
picked up for a traditional DVD distribution deal by a major
company willing to experiment with this new medium. They are
packaging 2 seasons worth of shows together, adding in a ton of
never-seen-before footage, cast interviews, vlogs, and other
extras - and introducing it to the market to see if customers
are willing to actually buy a DVD of something, that they can
essentially see for free on the web.

But that's why all this 'extra' material is critical to the
equation....

In any case, PROM QUEEN is broadcast on a few different web
outlets including it's own PromQueen.tv, You Tube, and My
Space among others -- but to date, My Space has been the
biggest outlet, and with the thousands upon thousands of
registered My Space friends PROM QUEEN has, advertisers are
chomping at the bit to get in on this -- and thus is born
a very big revenue stream for PROM QUEEN.

Interesting, eh?  After the first 2 shows, Techcrunch said:

There was a three second pre-roll ad for the upcoming Hairspray movie, a short ad for Verizon Vcast and then a fifteen second post-roll ad for Hairspray again.

After the first season, Washington Post said:

Each episode? Just 90 seconds. ("When we were watching online content, we noticed that we started looking for something else after 90 seconds," explained show co-creator Chris Hampel.) The full season, in fact, is just two hours. Air date? Seven days a week, since on the Internet there are no programming schedules. Commercials? Let's just say the characters drink a lot of prominently placed POM Wonderful and Fiji Water for a reason.

The Post reported that the budget for the show was between $100k-$150k but I'm not sure if that's per episode or for a whole season.  I'm guessing it's for the season.  It's a whole lot of money if it's coming out of your piggy bank, but it's oh, so cheap compared to the overwhelming majority of production budgets.  And it's being reported as profitable.  Of course, you do have the Eisner brand behind it which engenders a whole lot of confidence with the advertisers...

The best-known role of the Masher, besides his turn in the feature film Hammerlock, is his interpretation of the Villian in Cape Fear, played so well by the greats Robert Mitchum and Robert De Niro. Well-done, ES!

Unless you live in LA, you don't know how tempting the following Craigslist Ad is. Imagine never sweating the rush hour 405 to the 110 for that all-important audition again! Arrive at Teddys in style without worrying about the valet and his infernal fee  tip.

Jeff Wells has a great interview with the team behind the indie hit In Search of a Midnight Kiss.

- Eric Kohn runs down Hamlet 2's possiblities for being a hit.

- V Social is the latest site to add Masher to its line-up!

State of the Nation or just more Hollywood Drivel? It could go either way I suppose. God, if you're out there, please don't let this be a HIT.

Thanks David Lowery for a very cool cover of the Beatles with video.

- Philip Roth's work, as have often been remarked, does not always translate well to the screen. Molly Young in her review over at n+1  nails an essential point about Roth's novel The Dying Animal on which the movie is based

"I notice that the men on either side of me, both alone in the theater, are crying. They wouldn't get weepy over the book. The Dying Animal, like many of [Philip] Roth's novels, is brutal. The title change suggests the nature of the adjustments involved in bringing Roth to the screen: mainly, softening the pornographic into the erotic."

- Lauren Wissot has a great all-too-short interview with actor Malcolm McDowell.

- Finally, an ice-cream mobile that rolls in style

Steve Boone of Media Vandalism and Spout writes the best review of TT I have read so far

The Village Voice’s Robert Willonsky is dead right that Tropic Thunder amounts to little more than Stiller “nibbling gently at the soft, manicured hands that feed him.” Stiller’s old satirical TV show and The Cable Guy may mark him as a pioneer of some sort, but his industry sanction, hookups and increasing budgets insure that the nibbling will only get softer. The real insurgency has been going on for years, on YouTube and other outlets, by filmmakers who understand Ho’wood’s follies just as intimately but have nothing to lose by rendering them in merciless detail. The only insider who would have dared is another shaggy Nolte lookalike, long dead: Hal Ashby.

A library could be written on the rightness or wrongness of biting the hand that feeds you, of burning the bridges you worked so hard to cross. The numbers are against it but dammit, it sure is nice when some ballsy rascal comes along not only biting said hand, but effin near dehands them.

(via Lisanti quarterly)

HIT has been writing and teasing the web serial "Masher" for months now. Well..it looks like it is here. I know, I know but the site is up and the first three episodes will be catapulted into the webosphere in the next 24 hours. Here are pics of the principle players.

Pineapple Express is not very funny, despite the buried one-liners that are fired into the audience like cheap tees at a regional hockey game. The set-up was nice and simple but it just went nowhere. Seth Rogin, James Franco, and Danny McBride are passable in their roles but the film lacked the energy and the all-important pacing that comedies, especially stoner comedies, require.

I dunno.

If I go back and watch Cheech and Chong movies, maybe I will feel that they too are missing something, or, fall way short of funny. Part of the appeal of these types of films should be a sense of going in an unexpected direction, surprise, like the mind tends to do when high as a barrel full of monkeys. Harold and Kumar do a better job at this. I knew where this film was going right from the get-go (and so did the audience I watched it with in a Long Beach multiplex) and by the third act I was looking at my watch.

DG Green phoned in the direction, maybe at the behest of Apatow Inc., but still: Give the audience a bit of credit, high or not, and surprise them. I can’t give Green and Rogin a pass just because they say they are paying homage to a certain kind of buddy-action-stoner-whatever comedy from the past.

I wonder how much folks realize how interesting the journey of Neil PatricK Harris has been in Hollywood. Going from child sit-com actor to a successful out-and-about grown-up actor can not have been easy; and to speak in a culturally intelligent manner deserves some respect.

In an interview in Out.com, he says his job is "jester, not advocate." He speaks of being a gay actor then and now, stealing scenes, and being cast as a leading man.

Smart fellow.

Funny Stuff. Go here to enjoy more.

How does it come to this? One day you're sittng in the cat-bird's seat, enjoying a BBQ on your new slate patio with your beautiful wife and two healthy kids. You see the evening sunlight filter through her sundress, revealing her still-firm legs, as she gives the steaks a turn. You take a big long drink of single malt and look toward heaven with a smile.

So absurdly happy.

How could it come to this? Homeless, clutching a can of cheap beer, penniless. Was it one too many times into the honey jar? One-over-the-nine at your local watering hole? Was it the addiction to young bear pornography? Or was it something deeper, darker..unnamable?

All is not lost, however, not yet ,for you are still alive. You have heard of a group of bears who meet regularly together to smoke cigarettes and drink coffee and speak of new beginnings. Yes, Mr. Bear, stand up and make your way over there and raise both paws high into the air and say "My name is Fred and I am a..!"

Then help yourself to all the cookies you can eat.

 Very good news indeed! Twitch's Todd Brown hears big good news from Jason Gray: Tran Anh Hung (Cyclo, The Scent of Green Papaya and A Vertical Ray of the Sun) is set to direct a Japanese-language adaptation of Haruki Murakami's Norwegian Wood.

- Dang, I should have caught Man on Wire at the Los Angeles Film Festival when I had the chance. Off to the theater once again.

- Newsweek's David Ansen's article The End of the Documentary Market is debated at Indiewire. I know Sujewa Ekanayake might have a thing or two to say about about this.

- Finally, The Hollywood Temp offers up a list of free air-con in LA. Ahhhh..