Dailies is a round-up of essential film writing, news bits, and other highlights from our colleagues across the Internet — and, occasionally, our own writers. If you’d like to submit a piece for consideration, get in touch with us in the comments below or on Twitter at @TheFilmStage.
At The Dissolve, Scott Tobias explores the hidden world of VOD profits:
Since we launched The Dissolve last July, one of the most persistent challenges we’ve faced is how to deal with Video On Demand—what to cover, when to cover, and how to cover it. This has meant sorting through the thicket of semi-major indies and marginalia, and a catch-as-catch-can assortment of VOD release strategies that include day-and-date (movies released simultaneously in theaters and VOD), day-before-date (VOD before theatrical), and VOD only. Every week, I feel like I’m part detective, part curator: Just finding out what’s coming out on VOD, much less who’s representing it, can be a hassle, even before dealing with the issue of what actually merits coverage.
On the flipside, Variety reports the successful France VOD release of Abel Ferrara‘s Welcome to New York might be a game-changer there.
Watch a video essay on the filmography of Spike Jonze:
At Bent, Kyle Turner looks at the roles of mothers in Xavier Dolan‘s films:
The pet preoccupation of young Quebecois filmmaker Xavier Dolan is not, at first glance, particularly interesting. Mothers. Alright, someone says, he has mommy issues. But the issue runs far deeper than writing it off so dismissively. For Dolan, as a queer filmmaker, uses his experience, position, and talent to explore mothers with atypical approaches. The divide between a mother and their queer child is also nothing particularly new, but, for at least I Killed My Mother and Laurence Anyways, his maternal characters transcend the roles given to them to become much more.
Radius-TWC has acquired the U.S. rights to David Robert Mitchell’s Cannes hit It Follows, aiming for an early 2015 release, THR reports.