I have seen the future of movies on the Web, and it isn’t “Quantum Project.”
The widespread assumption is that eventually TV sets and computers will merge and Internet connections will be so fast that people will be downloading movies instead of renting them. But we’re not nearly there yet, so the Internet premiere of a new $3 million, 32-minute Steven Dorff film is being noted as some sort of milestone.
“Quantum Project,” touted as the first major motion picture to premiere on the Internet, debuted on SightSound.com earlier this month and is downloadable for $3.95 for the standard version, $5.95 for a high-resolution version. Although the company won’t reveal how many times “Quantum Project” has been downloaded-or how much money it has collected-SightSound.com marketing director Jennifer Pesci labeled the movie a success, saying it was downloaded in 45 different countries over the first week.
You can’t ignore the novelty value of watching a movie on your personal computer, though if you have a DVD drive, slipping in a movie disc is much easier and offers a sharper picture. The standard version of “Quantum Project” occupies 85 MB and thus would take five or six hours to download through a standard 56K modem; figure to double that for the 166 MB high-res version.
A high-speed Internet connection helps, but even then you probably must jump through several hoops. Want to watch on your Apple computer? Forget it. “Quantum Project” runs only on Microsoft Windows because, Pesci said, “right now Macintosh does not support the playback of encrypted movies.”
Plus, your Internet browser must be Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0, and you must play the movie on Windows Media Player 6.4. Even when we got all the right specs lined up here at Technology Central–a.k.a. the Tribune Tower–the system crashed several times before the movie would play.
Is the effort worth it? Aside from curiosity’s sake, heck no.
The movie, developed especially for the site, is something you’d skip on USA Network. Dorff plays a quantum physicist whose study of molecular-particle behavior becomes confused with his love life; he still wants to bond with his ex-girlfriend, played by Fay Masterson.
This exercise in high-tech pretentiousness includes lots of trippy fast edits and digital effects that look bright and colorful. Yet even the high-resolution version was jerky, as if half of the film frames had been removed, so the dialogue didn’t match the mouth movements.
And oh, what dialogue. “An electron spooked me yesterday,” Dorff says while cuddling with Masterson, soon adding: “Did you know electrons have lovers?”
Then there’s John Cleese in the thankless role of Dorff’s scientist dad, who declares with a straight face, “I was the OB/GYN at the birth of the Internet.”
The beauty of posting a film on the Web is that it can remain there indefinitely at almost no cost; forget about striking film prints, booking theaters, producing videocassettes. But the technology still has a ways to go, and, meanwhile, these companies might want to consider downloading some better writers.
“Wonder” of wonders: The movie business is so fixated on opening-weekend box-office figures that any film that doesn’t score immediately is generally given up for dead. So filmmaker Curtis Hanson is counting his blessings; Paramount is taking the unusual step of resurrecting his “Wonder Boys,” which was released early this year to enthusiastic reviews and public indifference.
“I’m really happy because they really liked the movie at the studio, we delivered the movie they hoped we would make, and they didn’t feel like they represented it to the public as well as they might have,” Hanson said on the phone from Los Angeles. “It’s a really rare thing for a movie to get a second chance.”
Hanson said the second release of “Wonder Boys” will come in October, a time when the studios traditionally unveil films they consider worthy of Oscar consideration. The decision prompted Paramount to delay the home-video and airlines releases of the film.
So what went wrong the first time? Hanson blamed the ads and posters, which simply featured a big head shot of Michael Douglas while offering no inkling of the movie’s flavor or story.
“You literally had to read the copy block to know that anybody but Michael was in the movie,” Hanson said.
The movie is a wistful, subtly loopy comedy that centers on a college professor (Douglas) who can’t finish his second novel, but it also has a colorful array of supporting characters, including Frances McDormand as his colleague and lover, Tobey Maguire as an oddball writing phenom, Robert Downey Jr. as the professor’s flamboyant agent and Katie Holmes as a smart student with a crush on the professor.
Hanson–whose previous movie, “L.A. Confidential,” also took a long time to catch on–would love for “Wonder Boys” to follow a path similar to that of another rereleased film that bombed the first time out: “Bonnie and Clyde.” On the flip side, a more recent Warren Beatty film, “Bulworth,” couldn’t work such magic when it was rereleased following a disappointing first run.
Post Meridian? The Water Tower, Biograph, Broadway and four other Meridian theaters are still open, though some readers have wondered otherwise given that the ads listing their movies haven’t run in the Tribune since May 18. Meridian offered no explanation for dropping out. Tribune officials would not comment on dealings with Meridian.
The Meridian theaters, relatively old facilities acquired from Loews Cineplex, haven’t exactly been doing bang-up business. The Biograph in particular has been getting clobbered by General Cinema’s City North 14, which opened just a few miles away.
Last weekend, “Road Trip” opened to $5,918 at the Biograph and $17,925 at the City North; “Screwed” collected $516 at the Biograph, $3,059 at the City North, and “U-571” did almost four times as well at the City North as the Biograph.
Nevertheless, Meridian vice president Patrick Burns insisted that the City North has not hurt the Biograph, claiming instead that it has enabled the Biograph to book stronger films; the movie-zoning rules allow the Biograph to play the same movies as the City North but not Webster Place, which has lost good movies to the City North.
Meanwhile, the single-screen Broadway is struggling as always (just $456 last weekend for “Love and Basketball”), and the upstairs Water Tower theaters closed a few weeks ago after their lease expired, leaving just the three inferior downstairs auditoriums. Less than a mile away, by Grand Avenue and Columbus Drive, construction continues on two stadium-seating megaplexes that will add another 35 screens to downtown.
Bet they’ll never love Reggie Miller in New York: The Utah Jazz had just been bounced from the NBA playoffs once again, so what were basketball fans in Salt Lake City to do over the weekend? Believe it or not, a whole bunch of them went to see “Michael Jordan to the Max,” which opened last weekend at a local multiplex called–what else?–Jordan Commons.
The big-screen deification of MJ, which climaxes with his sinking his career-finale jump shot to break the Jazz’s hearts and championship hopes, collected $17,000 in its opening weekend in Salt Lake City, above the film’s nationwide per-screen average of about $12,000 for the weekend.
Still, Bulls fans remain the most desperate to relive Jordan’s triumphs: The Navy Pier IMAX theater took in about $60,000 over the weekend. Overall, the film has grossed about $2.2 million over 17 days–a goodly amount, though still less than half of what Will Perdue was paid this past season.
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E-mail: mcaro@tribune.com, Arts & Entertainment, Chicago Tribune, 435 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago, IL 60611.
