But just because he's a genius doesn't mean he hasn't made bad choices. KAFKA was a bad choice. That movie was crap. Putting Julia Roberts in all of his movies is also a bad choice. Deciding to edit SOLARIS by himself will probably prove to be a REALLY bad choice. And I'm guessing that shooting FULL FRONTAL on DV is another bad choice.

DV looks like shit. This has been established. All that I'm trying to say is that Soderbergh knows this, and is willing to settle for a shitty image in order to create a certain working environment and open up other creative avenues. I'm sure that you all have seen the ads for the XL1s which have been in just about every single magazine for the past year and a half, but just in case, here's what Soderbergh himself has to say on the subject:

"To use any other camera to shoot FULL FRONTAL would have been an unthinkable compromise. The XL1s continually expanded my ideas of how to stage and shoot scenes."

On the subject of emotional impact, I don't think that Soderbergh is trying to use the DV image to create an emotional response. Instead, he's gaining emotion by getting things like better performances out of actors who don't have to deal with the intrusions normally associated with the set of a 35mm production.

As for the whole Super 35/DV thing, yes, Super 35 can look damn good. But it very seldom does. Soderbergh's last movie was shot in Super 35, and it looked like shit. I wasn't trying to compare Super 35's lack of quality with DV's greater lack of quality. I was trying to compare how filmmakers will sacrifice a quality image in order to get something else out of their movie.

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Mike, I'm sure that someone out there thinks Freddy Got Fingered was a masterpiece of filmmaking. Don't laugh, I guarantee you there IS someone out there, somewhere who thinks that.

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I wouldn't say a masterpiece, but on a really big screen with (LOUD) digital surround sound it actually comes off (IMHO) as a good movie. (I've seen quite a few worse.) On DVD I see it for what it really is, Tom Green using big studio money to do a feature-length episode of his TV show with a plot (sorta) on a bigger screen. So in a manner of speaking, Tom Green is somewhat of a genius because he directed a movie that only works as a movie on a really big screen. On DVD, with sound at more moderate volume levels it just comes off as a video. I imagine Monty Python's Meaning of Life is the same way although cannot offer opinion there having only seen it on VHS.

"Mensa was founded in England in 1946 by Roland Berrill, a barrister, and Dr Lance Ware, a scientist and lawyer. They had the idea of forming a society for bright people, the only qualification for membership of which was a high IQ. The original aims were, as they are today, to create a society that is non-political and free from all racial or religious distinctions. The society welcomes people from every walk of life whose IQ is in the top 2% of the population, with the objective of enjoying each other's company and participating in a wide range of social and cultural activities."

It looks like you're right, Joe. Here are some Soderbergh quotes from the new issue of RES:

"[The movie is] playing with issues of aesthetics and why we view one type of aesthetic as more real than another aesthetic when they are both fabrications."

The article then talks about how Soderbergh wanted to make the film look like it was "processed in gasoline... starting by scanning the DV to Kodak's 5298, and pushing it 2 stops. 'Normally you would then go out to an intermediate stock, but I wanted to go out to a camera negative stock and we pushed that 2 stops. Then we made an Ektachrome dupe of that negative; Then we made an Ektachrome dupe of the Ektachrome dupe. And then we made a print on Vision Premier stock, which is very contrasty.... The level of deconstruction of the image reduced a lot of the aliasing you get when you shoot video.... What's interesting to me about it is that every time you leave the video and cut back to 35mm film, it's just so arresting that you sort of fall in love with film again.' "

From what I read on the forums Miramax is sensing bad vibes with Full Frontal and wants to dump it opposite Signs.

OTOH Miramax should have expanded Tadpole to NYC suburbs this week. Tadpole is doing well in its NYC exclusive -- it would be a natural fit for the Clairidge and Princeton Garden.

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Also, Miramax has its head up its ass once again. The stack ad in this week's Village Voice lists the Manhattan and Brooklyn theaters but does not say "And at Select Additional Theaters". The stack ad in today's Newark Star-Ledger says "And at Theatres Everywhere!" That's grounds for a lawsuit. Miramax also omits the AMC Hamilton and Princeton Garden from the Star-Ledger ad.

Oh wait.... but since it's playing at theaters like Ian's and mine, it's not crap, it's ART! And yes, every movie we show is better than every movie you mainstream guys show!

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Nobody I talked to has appreciated the look of the DV footage. As if blowing DV up to film wasn't bad enough, he watered it down even more in post-processing to make it look even worse! I feel like ridiculing Sodaburger for this piece of crap "movie". It is boring as all hell and I hope people refer to this in the future.... "Hey man, don't use that video camera... don't pull a Sodaburger!"