A 'Horrible' Hit feed

by Eric Kohn

The end result of genre television hero Joss Whedon's intriguing episodic short film Dr. Horrible's Sing-A-Long Blog suggests a brighter future for mainstream entertainers than previous attempts at digital programming have suggested. Whedon, one of the few pop culture forces to make a comic book mentality accessible to large television audiences, manages to pull of the same feat with Dr. Horrible, a forty-minute satire of superhero and music tropes (at once!) that streamed for free in three acts over the weekend before becoming available for $1.99 an act on iTunes.

All the Whedon fans devoted to his work since Buffy: the Vampire Slayer and Firefly will surely pay up to make Dr. Horrible a part of their Whedon libraries, but the movie is only available through July 30. As Scott Kirsner points out at CinemaTech, this arrangement allow for an exclusive DVD deal from which Whedon will gain immense profits, but limits the lightning potential for this indisputably cult-friendly product. No matter: Dr. Horrible has such sleek performances, sharp writing and ubiquitous confidence in its material that it only devolves into camp when the creators decide that's where it should go. It has lasting potential wherever it ends up.
Joss Whedon presents a supervillain musical.

Theatrical Thoughts

By Jamie Stuart

Over the past couple of years, I've often wondered what the state of movies will look like by the time I've completed my first feature. Around 2005, it occurred to me that I might never shoot a feature on celluloid; most likely, I would start off on a small picture that utilized Mini-DV or 720p, and by the time that project played out, higher HD formats would be more readily accepted for future endeavors. Over the past year or so, however, I've started to consider that my first picture might not even receive a theatrical release, and go out through the internet or home video instead.

A Short 'Triumph'

by Jamie Stuart

I recently watched my 2001 short film Triumph of the Will, Part II for the first time in a couple of years. TOTW2, as I often refer to it, has the distinction of being the first film that I ever shot and edited digitally. In fact, the digital shooting of it is inherent to the short's aesthetic: Half of it is 16mm, the rest is Mini-DV. It was interesting to experience how far I've come since then, on a technical level.

TOTW2 was initially developed in early 1997. After spending the previous year trying to get no-budget features off the ground, a friend suggested we go back to our roots and just do a simple 16mm MOS short. I thought it might be interesting to try and dramatize something completely mundane like cooking a hamburger. The original title was Saturday.

Having recently bought the laser disk of Slaughterhouse-Five, Bach's Arioso was stuck in my head and I wanted to set the images to it. However, I didn't know the name of the music. If I recall correctly, Slaughterhouse-Five didn't actually list the individual pieces used in the film -- it simply credited the performance to Glenn Gould. I went over to the Virgin Mega Store in Times Square and started shuffling through the Bach CD's, not knowing what I was looking for. The clerk asked me to try humming the melody. I did. He didn't recognize it, but suggested I try The Goldberg Variations. I went with the Charles Rosen over the Gould, probably because it was cheaper.
Profile of Go Ahead, Make My Movie
'Purple' Venue
© Stream Magazine
© 2008 WonderlandStream.com