Sunday, I was invited, along with a crowd of other local friends and bloggers, to a preview screening of the new art film "Yes" by Sally Potter. I'll review Yes, but what was interesting was the idea of Sony Pictures doing free screenings of movies for the "blogger" demographic. As I noted earlier, I'm also in this group called the "Silicon Valley 100" where they send us free stuff in the hopes we'll generate buzz and useful feedback. (The last few products they sent have not been exciting enough to inspire me to write about them, though.)

It makes some sense. Advance screenings to create buzz have been around for a while, and now that you can have an audience of writers whose influence goes beyond their circle of friends, they are a good target to place. Though I also went in part because it was a social event, seeing a movie with a group of folks including friends. It was arranged by Mark Pincus, who loved the movie when he saw it at Telluride and suggested the screening to Sony. Equally important was going out to a bar after the movie.

As for "Yes", I did find it quite good. It was, however the most "arthouse" style movie I have seen in years, so I doubt it will get great commercial success. Yes is done in verse, a la Shakespeare, but with modern phrasing and perhaps a touch too much rhyme. Though the Bard never had a Scottish dishwasher apply metre as he repeated the word "motherfucker." But it's also a good story, with good performances and good music. It has Bergmanesque stylings, and includes a lot of "inner thoughts" voice overs, which normally turns me right off, but at least in a few places, the voice-overs work. Notably when a dying woman gets to tell her story through her thoughts even though she can't speak them.

Of course, they have picked a terrible title for a movie if they want people to be able to find writing about it on the web. (Drupal doesn't have explicit tagging yet, and Mark went so far as to push people to use the pre-chosen tag "yes movie" if they wrote about the film.) However, the title makes artistic sense for the film so I can't fault it for that.