Indie filmmaker Bigfoot has an inside track to theater

Thanks to Richard Gere and the financial crisis, the Sundance Film Festival is returning to its indie roots this year. 

Rentrak Corporation (RENT) released its review of the performance of different films on Sunday. It also announced worldwide figures for top-grossing films for the weekend, along with similar figures for the US market. Rentrak is a global media measurement company that covers the Entertainment, Television, and Video industries. It uses theatrical measurement services to come up with the estimated revenues for each film, and then makes a list of top ranking films.

Video Insider is delivered first thing every morning exclusively to BI Intelligence subscribers.

Veteran independent cinemas are losing customers to major chains booking more specialty films and new high-end theaters offering a mix of movies along with premium services.The day before Laemmle Theatres closed its Sunset 5 last month, patrons and filmmakers showed up at the West Hollywood movie house to share their memories of one of L.A.'s most popular art house cinemas.

Amazon’s “Transparent” recently became the first online streaming TV show to receive a Golden Globe award for the best series in television category. The comedy series bagged two Golden Globes to vindicate CEO Jeff Bezos’ tendency to diversify and explore new options. After Amazon’s Golden Globe success, few expected the world’s largest online retailer not to capitalize on its newly discovered entertainment acumen.

A Calgary man who has spent a decade tracing the movements of an elusive ape-like beast — widely considered a myth — believes he has DNA evidence suggesting Bigfoot is alive and romping through Canadian forests. Todd Standing said a strand of hair he plucked from a tree in southeastern British Columbia has unusual DNA sequences that must be linked to the legendary sasquatch.

Casey Neistat, one of our favorite independent filmmakers, had a very busy day on Sunday, Nov. 3. Not only was the 32-year-old signed up to run in the ING New York City Marathon, he also had tickets to the first-ever YouTube Video Music Awards.

The movie business has a serious problem. Even though 2013’s U.S. box office revenues are on par so far with 2012 – about $8.66 billion so far this year compared to about $8.65 billion at this time last year – the long-term outlook is gloomy. Whether it’s video-over-the-Internet that’s headed for the television or simply the world available on a tablet, the decades-old tradition of “going to the movies,” is under fire from all fronts.