Sparking curiosity

Thanks to both the images and the music, the trailer does what a great trailer should -- it leaves us wanting more, having tempted us with a tale that is both magical and steeped in an air of ineffable sorrow. It feels like just the kind of spooky fairy tale that M. Night Shyamalan could've made, if he were ever able to get out of his own head and embrace someone else's vision. But I'm eager to see the Fincher version. In the middle of summer, when you're surrounded by movies with dumb gags and cheap thrills, it's a pleasure to look forward to the work of someone who won't subject us to even an ounce of bathos or sentimentality.

Indie biz needs more discipline

Film Department chief Mark Gill, who has spent most of his adult life in the indie film business -- first during the glory days at Miramax, then at the late, unlamented Warner Independent Pictures -- knows better than anyone how bad things are today in that world. Wall Street money is drying up. Indie films have been tanking at the box office. Studio specialty divisions are getting the ax or fleeing the scene (as Gill described one of the cost-cutting moves, "New Line's staff was cut by 90% and the survivors were sent to hell . . . I mean . . . Burbank.")

So when Gill gave a keynote speech Saturday at the L.A. Film Festival Financing Conference, it was sort of like hearing Al Gore preach about global warming -- who could possibly have a better vantage point (no pun intended!) from which to deliver the really unhappy tidings. For the most part, it was a good, unsentimental, bracingly candid speech. One of my favorite parts was where Gill laid out the grim odds facing indie filmmakers:

"Of the 5,000 films submitted to Sundance each year -- generally with budgets under $10 million -- maybe 100 of them got a U.S. theatrical release three years ago. And it used to be that 20 of those would make money. Now maybe five do. That's one-tenth of 1%. Put another way, if you decide to make a movie budgeted under $10 million on your own tomorrow, you have a 99.9% chance of failure."

We've known that the indie business was full of peril for years. But is there a way out of the current doldrums? That's where I think Gill's speech falls short. He ends up returning to the ancient wisdom of Sam Goldwyn, who once offered the pronouncement: "Make fewer better." Gill rightly says that in the current tent-pole environment, where advertising costs are skyrocketing and instant buzz can derail a new release before it has found its legs, big studios have a big edge with their marketing muscle. So indie filmmakers have to make better films to survive. Using Netflix as a salient example, Gill reminds us that quality is a potent weapon: The most popular picture among Netflix's 6 million subscribers is a relatively obscure 34-year-old film, Francis Ford Coppola's "The Conversation."