My friend Nick Gonda worked as a producer on both of Terrence Malick's most recent movies (The Tree of Life and To the Wonder), and he's lent his support to a new independent production. Co-produced by writer/director Anna Axster and musician/composer Ryan Bingham (Crazy Heart), A Country Called Home has up-and-comer Imogen Poots attached to star. They plan to start shooting in Texas early next year. I'm glad to see more production coming into the state.

In addition to producing movies, Nick Gonda is CEO of entertainment startup Tugg, a company that does on-demand movies in theaters. Kind of like Kickstarter, you set a day, time, and the movie, along with a ticket price, and once your screening hits a threshold of tickets sold, the screening happens. I've used the service more than once (and will again very soon), and had a great experience with it.

Ever since I saw it at SXSW this year, I’ve had trouble comparing Andrew Bujalski’s Computer Chess to other things that I’ve seen. I’ve read and heard others compare it to Kubrick, Cronenberg, and Carruth. While I agree that it shares spiritual DNA with some of the flavors, themes, and cerebral complexity of those directors’s work (most notably 2001, ExistenZ, Videodrome, and Primer), Computer Chess is its own sort of sentient cinematic intelligence.

I the interest of full disclosure, I’m friends with two of the actors in the movie, Wiley Wiggins and Daniel Metz. I also helped organize a screening of the movie during this year’s Apple Worldwide Developer’s Conference (WWDC), too. I didn’t do the latter because of the former, but rather, because Computer Chess struck me as the movie most perfectly made for the hardest core nerds among us.

Indie Kickstarter from Malick Producer

Review: COMPUTER CHESS