Sorry, I know I’ve been a bit Larry Kingish in my quick, semi-insubstantial bulletins lately, but it’s been very busy at work. I’ll have something for you guys soon.

In the meantime, I just found out about LeapFish, a site that appraises the value of your domain name.

According to them, artfulwriter.com is worth…

…drumroll….

$26,796.00!!!!

Awesome! I am totally selling this place and buying a Buick LaCrosse!

As a point of comparison, yahoo.com appraises at $1,523,846,985.

I have some work to do…

A reader alluded to it in the comments of an earlier post, but today we can officially announce that The Nines was chosen to play the Venice Film Festival as part of Critics’ Week.

(At least, I assume we can announce it. We were sworn to double-super secrecy, which is presumably now over, since it was in Variety this morning.)

Critics’ Week runs the first week of September; our exact slot should be announced today or tomorrow. Coincidentally — but fortuitously — our U.S. premiere is August 31st, so it will be a busy couple of weeks of promotion.¹

We’re the only U.S. feature in Critics’ Week this year, which traditionally aims for a wide spectrum of international releases. The other films in our category hail from Mexico, France, Kazakhstan, Russia, Italy, Belgium, and Taiwan.²

How psyched am I to be going to Venice? Ohsovery. I didn’t travel to Cannes when The Nines screened there, but that was really just European market screenings for distributors. This is the international debut. I can’t wait to have awkward conversations about the meaning of the film in broken English while jetlagged. And mildly drunk on Italian wines chosen for their melodic names.

Briefly, since I know these will be the first questions raised in the comments section:

• The trailer is done, and should be up within the week.
• The trailer competition is happening, but had to be back-burnered while other stuff got finished.
• No, I don’t know when we’ll be playing in Omaha. Or if we’ll be playing in Omaha.
• Ditto for Argentina.
• I’ve seen the international one-sheet, but the U.S. poster is still in discussions.
• We’re rated R. Presumably for language.
• The official website is getting rebuilt on more-robust servers.
• The movie is unchanged from what premiered at Sundance.
• The movie will be on 35mm in some theatres, digital in others. I’ve seen both projected. They’re different, but equally valid. I’ve considered doing a post about this process, but it would be Geek Factor 8.
• I have no idea when the DVD would come out, but they’re already working on the special features.

1. We’ll be launching in New York and Los Angeles, and maybe one other city. How quickly we expand to other cities depends on how well we perform in our first two weeks. ↩
2. You can see the Italian film listing for The Nines (’I Nove’) at the SNCCI website. If any ambitious readers feel like translating, have at it. I just like the adjective “lynchiano” — “Lynch-ian.”) ↩

Clifford Green, one of the founding admins of WriterAction, has also resigned. What’s interesting about his resignation is the fact that he specifically chalks it up to not being able to work with Alex Sokoloff anymore.

And boy…do I ever understand that feeling.

I don’t doubt that my little cyberscreed precipitated his and Brian’s actions, although I also don’t doubt that this was a long time coming, and Clifford’s specific beefs probably don’t mirror mine. I don’t take any credit for his choices. I probably just served as an enzyme here.

Nonetheless, something’s happening behind the curtain at WA.

I can’t tell if all I’ve done is start a process where the well-intentioned admins up and quit in disgust with the institutional paranoia and reflexive defensiveness (that would be bad), or if these recent defections might open the admins’ minds to the notion that they step down and let other people be given a turn at the helm (that would be good).

Time will tell.

In the meanwhile…man, Lord Acton nailed it, didn’t he…?