My first experiment with spirit gum this year. People identified me as Teenwolf, Teenwolf 2, and Werewolf Groucho Marx. Personally, I was going for Paul Naschy, but I'll take what I can get.

Growl:

Rawr!

Mugshot:

I'm a moderate fan of the Saw movies. They're somewhat gratuitous, but clever. The twist at the end of the first one really pulled it into the 4 star territory. The twists in the sequels haven't matched, but they still manage to surprise in some ways.

When I went to see Saw III and IV, I was somewhat confused by certain story points. Unlike other horror series that merely remake the previous entry or give you expository recaps, Saw behaves more like an episodic television show. Each film centers on specific characters, and the plot bends back on itself, jumping around in time to visit events from the previous films a different point of view.

For this year's Saw V, I didn't want to go in unarmed. Instead, I studied up first. I watched Saw I on Friday, Saw II and III on Saturday, then Saw IV on Sunday before heading to the theater for V.

I treated it like a research project. Who's alive and dead at the end of each film? What was each person's vice that deemed them worthy of Jigsaw's tests?

Was it worth it? I think so. I wasn't confused at all during part V. Instead, I followed along, not distracted by thoughts of "who's that guy again?" and "wasn't that guy already killed?"

I might as well share my research with any other OCD horror fans out there. The following database is full of spoilers for parts I-IV, but I did not update it with info from V.

Read the SAW Database (I-IV)

I'm somewhat ashamed to admit there are holes in my movie knowledge. For some of my favorite directors (like Peter Jackson, Robert Rodriguez, or Tim Burton), I've seen their entire filmographies. For others, there are gaps.

So here's a list of movies-to-see-so-I-can-call-myself-a-true-fan.

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BRIAN DE PALMA
Uneven, but always stylish. Some of his early films are hard to track down. Redacted, from last year, didn't even come to my town.

# Redacted (2007)
# The Black Dahlia (2006)
# Wise Guys (1986)
# Home Movies (1980)
# Sisters (1973)
# Get to Know Your Rabbit (1972)
# Hi, Mom! (1970)
# Dionysus (1970)
# The Wedding Party (1969)
# Greetings (1968)
# Murder à la Mod (1968)

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STUART GORDON
Gordon is interested in pushing buttons. There's always something too disturbing about his work to be appealing to mainstream audiences, but that's part of why I like it.

# Stuck (2007)
# Edmond (2005)
# Daughter of Darkness (1990) (TV)
# Dolls (1987)

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Ridley Scott
I'm currently halfway through the director's cut of Legend, so I'll put that in the "watched" column.

# Body of Lies (2008) (hopefully to be remedied soon)
# American Gangster (2007)
# A Good Year (2006)
# All the Invisible Children (2005) (segment "Jonathan")
# Kingdom of Heaven (2005)
# White Squall (1996)
# 1492: Conquest of Paradise (1992) (tried to watch it once, fell asleep)
# Someone to Watch Over Me (1987)
# Alien: The Director's Cut (1979/2003) (the original cut is one of my favorites, I'm almost afraid to watch the director's cut)
# The Duellists (1977)

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STEVEN SPIELBERG
Has been at the top of my list since seeing Close Encounters as a kid (darn, I just remembered I haven't seen the latest version that's out on DVD). As for the others, in my defense, Always is overlooked by many and reportedly so-so. The bad press and lawsuits with Amistad turned me off from seeing it.

# Amistad (1997)
# Always (1989)

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STEVEN SODERBERGH
I first realized how good Soderbergh when I saw the one-two punch of Out of Sight and The Limey. I love his daring editing techniques.

# Bubble (2005)
# Full Frontal (2002)
# Schizopolis (1996)
# Gray's Anatomy (1996)
# Kafka (1991)

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PAUL VERHOEVEN
Always pushes the edge of good taste and somehow makes it work. Basically, I've seen none of his Dutch work, but I should be able to catch up on video.

# Black Book (2006)
# ... and all his early Dutch films

How do you market a remake to fans of the original and new, younger audiences? By letting Pamela Voorhees tell the story of what happened to her son.

I have to say, the trailer does a good job of summing up the franchise for the uninitiated and fans alike.

Friday The 13th in HD

I'm looking forward to this, partly because there have always been gaps in the F13 continuity. This is a good opportunity to remedy that.

Up until now, iTunes has made it difficult for independent filmmakers to sell their work through their service. They want to deal with big studios or distributors, not a million little guys who require a million little checks once a month. The alternative has been to give away iPod friendly files in podcast feeds, but you don't make any money that way.

There are a couple distributors who are dipping into the indie well for content to sell. One such is ShortsInternational at britshorts.com, which handles a lot of high end award winning shorts.

A recent episode of This Week in Media alerted me to TuneCore.com , which will take your hard copy submissions and run them by the "editorial staff" at iTunes. Users pay iTunes, iTunes pays TuneCore, and TuneCore pays you. Not a perfect solution, but it's a start. This is similar to the way CD Baby works with indie musicians, although I doubt there's a gatekeeper that judges the content of songs.

While iTunes is the holy grail for filmmakers -- as it's already being used by a huge chunk of the population -- there are some alternatives. MeDeploy.com is a competing service, an "iTunes for indie film producers." There's also Amazon Video On Demand (formerly Amazon Unbox), which works with CreateSpace.com (formerly CustomFlix). These services sound great, but are they really that different than video-on-demand sites I've submitted to in the past, like Dave.tv and Vuze.com?

Most likely not, but Amazon does have something going for it -- a name that people trust. And that is a huge deal when it comes time to promote. If I send out an email blast saying "buy my film," I think people will be more likely to pay if they already have an Amazon or iTunes account. Asking someone to pay AND download a program they've never heard of is a hard sell.

Edit 10/06/08

See the comments for a clarification on MeDeploy.

I was also contacted by Indieflix, which I've considered using for DVD sales in the past. Indieflix now distributes films through iTunes, the first of which should be up late October early November.

Edit 10/08/08

Since posting this article, I've heard feedback that Shorts International is notorious for not paying royalties to filmmakers. That's reason enough to be wary of them, along with their exclusive contracts that restrict you from selling to other online distributors.