Two more boutique studios dark

To add to the recessionary media news, Warner Bros. yesterday decided to close down two of its specialty divisions, Picturehouse and Warner Independent Pictures. In the wake of the parent company's shuttering of New Line Cinema back in February, industry watchers were expecting the other two minis to be merged. Wrong -- they're both history.

Warner is doing what businesses do in lean times, cutting away the "fat" and concentrating on the core (which in their case means crap multiplex fodder like "10,000 B.C." and "Speed Racer"). But do me a favor here: click through to the links that list the films Picturehouse and WIP have been responsible for over the past few years. Without them, no "La Vie en Rose," "Good Night, and Good Luck," "The Painted Veil," "Pan's Labyrinth," "The Science of Sleep," "In the Valley of Elah," and "Duck Season" (photo above), some of those titles produced by the two companies, others simply distributed to US theaters, and all of them cutting against the grain of mainstream pap.

What it means is fewer jobs in Hollywood and New York for smart, committed movie people and -- more crucially -- fewer alternate visions reaching your eyeballs. Enjoy "Speed Racer," in other words, because that's all we'll be getting from Warner Bros. for the foreseeable future.