ed-burns posts

Ed Burns' film, Purple Violets, has become the first full-length feature movie ever to premiere via digital distribution on iTunes. As we reported before, he was unable to find a good theatrical offer, and instead chose to make history by bringing it straight to iTunes. Variety wasn't thrilled with it, and our sister site Cinematical thought it was OK, but neither of them saw it on the iPhone's small screen, did they?

Of course, you can find out for yourself-- Purple Violets is available right now in iTunes for $12.99. At that price, I might (ironically?) wait for rental, but then again, huddling around an iPhone and sharing earbuds in a nice Italian restaurant would make a pretty cheap date.

411Mania's got an interview up with actor and filmmaker Ed Burns, whose latest movie, Purple Violets, is going to be distributed exclusively through iTunes for four weeks. Apparently he says he had a couple of "half-assed theatrical offers" for it, but none of them panned out, so when iTunes promised to promote his movie (maybe we'll start seeing it at keynotes rather than The Office?), he decided to go for it.

And lest you think the movie's stuck on the super small screen because it isn't any good, our friends at Cinematical rather liked it, calling it his best film since The Brothers McMullen. Still, even Burns admits that it's definitely a change. Movies are made for the big screen, and always will be-- just like the interviewer at 411, I have a real problem with someone seeing The Godfather, Jurassic Park, or even Star Wars on an iPod screen for the very first time.

But this is the future, I suppose-- movie theaters aren't going anywhere, I'm sure, but the way we watch our movies is definitely diversifying. Burns likens it to digital media-- when it first came out, LP lovers said they would never listen to anything so cold and stiff, and yet iTunes now sells more songs digitally than anyone else who is selling analog recordings. Movies aren't necessary shrinking-- they're just, like everything else, changing.

[via DF]