FilmBuff

Home Media Magazine recently posted the results of a study of the all-time top-selling titles on cable VOD. [READ MORE]

We'd like to congratulate Wheedle's Groove on being the second runner up for the Best Documentary Golden Space Needle Audience Award at the Seattle International Film Festival.  While the film certainly resonates universally, there's no doubt that Seattle audiences respond in a special way, given that Wheedle's Groove uncovers an period of the city's history that has received little attention until now. [READ MORE]

In what has become a seasonal tradition of both minor tweaks and major surprises to their famed devices, Apple has once again unleashed headline-making updates to their iPhone. One that every filmmaker should tuck in their back pocket is the news of transforming Apple's iMovie application into a mobile experience, where anyone can capture and edit footage on the fly. [READ MORE]

Earlier this week, Criterion released on Blu-Ray the second volume of "By Brakhage: An Anthology". [READ MORE]  

On Sunday, the jury at this year's Cannes Film Festival handed out the awards after 12 days of premieres in the South of France. Looking at the complete list of winners (which you can see here), it's apparent that the jury (led by filmmaker Tim Burton) was a bit divided on the merits of the competition films. No one film earned more than one prize, typically the sign of an indecisive jury. The winner of the Palme d'Or was Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives. Javier Bardem tied for Best Actor (with Elio Germano) for his performance in Biutiful, and Juliette Binoche won Best Actress for her turn in Certified Copy. The beloved French actor Mathieu Amalric won Best Director for his film Tournee.

In this weekend's New York Times, there was an article about impossibly long film titles, something that does appear to be in style at the moment. This is evident in the marquee of your local multiplex, when titles such as How to Train Your Dragon, Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push' by Sapphire, or Shrek 4 Forever After the Final Chapter in 3D (something like that). It gets even more complicated when you add a filmmaker's name to the beginning (like Tyler Perry) or wind up adding words like "3D." To make room for the creative titles, we're forced to abbreviate. One place where these abbreviations is particularly noteworthy, is on VOD menus. [READ MORE]

At today's Google I/O event, the company announced Google TV, a new platform that will work to integrate the web experience into your television. With technology for TVs and set-top boxes at a place where this is theoretically possible, more and more companies are joining the charge to make it as common and simple as your microwave oven. Of course, few of these companies are as established as Google. [READ MORE]

I spent this past weekend in Baltimore, where I attended the Maryland Film Festival and participated in its Filmmakers Taking Charge Conference.  Hosted by CinemaTech's Scott Kirsner, the conference featured several interesting panels, each of them essentially riffs on the same theme of a challenging but promising indie film landscape.  [READ MORE]

Following in the footsteps of American festivals including Sundance, Slamdance, SXSW and Tribeca, this year's Cannes International Film Festival will allow two films to be seen by French audiences on the same date as their premiers, regardless of the audiences' proximity to the Croisette.  While the rest of Jean Luc Godard's catalogue lives on my Netflix queue (along with other films I should have seen in film school), his most recent feature "Socialism" will premier in Cannes and will be available simultaneously on French VOD portal Filmo TV and on www.filmotv.fr.  Filmo TV will then be presenting 50 years of Godard's work through its VOD service.  Perhaps this will inspire a resurgence of jump cuts! [READ MORE]