John August

The Nines

10 Sundance shorts on iTunes

Indie, Sundance, The Nines, Video

Ten of the 80 short films featured this week at the Sundance Film Festival are available free on iTunes until January 25th. It’s a great way to see some work you’d almost certainly never catch.

Visit [itunes.com/Sundance](http://itunes.com/sundance) to check out trailers and download. (Link opens in iTunes store.)

I’m happy to see shorts featured this way, and hope it expands to features in coming years. I would have absolutely done it for The Nines. By offering movies for a limited window, Sundance and Apple can give exposure to films and filmmakers far beyond Park City, Utah.

It’s a smart implementation of the festival’s mission.

The Visitor

Los Angeles, Meta, Projects, The Nines, Video

On Wednesday morning, we came into the kitchen to find an orange slice on the stove and a tomato that seemed to have exploded. This was obviously troubling.

My initial thought was that one of us had sleepwalked, and acted out some rage issue against fruit. I realize this is a strange explanation to reach for first — maybe I’m the culprit! — but it may explain why I’m a screenwriter.

The much more reasonable instinct would be to assume we had some sort of visitor. A mouse, a rat, a squirrel. Or possibly a raccoon — our housesitter had mentioned seeing one over the holiday. We set a peanut butter-baited mousetrap on the counter, and sure enough, at 4:50 a.m. Thursday I heard it snap. There was no critter under the bar, however.

I know through friends that a raccoon has to be handled differently than a mere mouse or rat, so I was determined to figure out which kind of varmint we had. I set my MacBook’s built-in camera to shoot one frame of video per second, and left the lights dimmed in the kitchen. I also re-baited the trap, this time with hummus.

This morning, I came downstairs and saw with disappointment that the trap hadn’t popped. But scrubbing through the video, I got my answer.
rat

Fans of The Nines may recognize the kitchen, and the accuracy of Margaret’s “they live in the palm trees” line.

**UPDATE:** Conventional rat trap worked. It snapped four minutes after leaving the room. Cleanup was bloodless, but still more unsettling than I anticipated. Rat Guy comes Monday to figure out how it got in.

**FURTHER UPDATE:** [Here](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2009/the-rat-is-dead).

The Nines on Netflix

Projects, The Nines, Video

Several readers wrote in this morning to point out that The Nines is suddenly [now available](http://www.netflix.com/Movie/The_Nines/70066350) on Netflix’s “Watch Instantly” feature. If you have a Netflix account, that means free streaming in roughly two clicks.

I’m not sure how the Netflix streaming gets accounted for in terms of residuals, but I’m glad to see another legal way for people to watch it.

The Nines on Amazon VOD

Projects, The Nines, Videogames

The Nines is [now available](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0012F23TS/sr=8-1/qid=1231002131) through Amazon’s video-on-demand, with options for download or streaming within the browser window. It’s very straightforward, and I’m always happy for another outlet.

But it costs $14.99. That’s simply too much.

Amazon sells the physical DVD with all the special features for the same price, at considerably more cost to the retailer. They have used copies for as little as $2.04.

Obviously, the advantage of online viewing is that you can watch the movie immediately. For that purpose, iTunes has it priced at $9.99, which not only suits the title but feels like a more appropriate price. ([iTunes link](http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewMovie?id=274169170&s=143441))

I don’t get any advance notice when the movie will be showing up in different venues, so if you spot it somewhere else, let me know. I’m particularly curious what the options are outside the U.S.