Look, I know it was just last week that I was bitching and moaning and speculating with fear that Variety was resigned to giving up trade news for a bigger piece of the celebrity news pie. I guess I stand by that, although days like today get me wondering if Variety continues to be a relevant paper by any standard.

After all, I have been browsing the rag's Global Independents Report 2005 online since well before a bleary-eyed dawn, and I have condensed the two-dozen-or-so stories into a few universal truths I think we may have heard before anyway:

1. The independent film market is unpredictable. Except—as Anthony Kaufman hypothesizes with the help of old standbys James Schamus, Bingham Ray and others—it is even worse than that: Indie films are now threatened with an obsolescence of cool that also claimed the likes of "Spandex, Goth and Grunge." And not even Sundance can save it! Goddamn it! That is it—I am going to sell cars.

2. Digital technology is changing the industry. Steven Soderbergh's shot his buzz-packing Bubble on high-definition video, and the Mark Cuban/Todd Wagner 2929 Entertainment vessel is overhauling distribution strategies based on developing technology. Entirely digital post-production is the wave of the future—if you have your picture pre-sold. The rest of us have Final Cut Pro, which miraculously drops fewer and fewer frames with each revised version. Yay Mac!

3. New York cinema is a club. Variety's list of insiders who "have had an exceptional past 12 months in indie film" reads more like a Rolodex than a roll call. Although nobody can argue against the inclusion of folks like ThinkFilm's Mark Urman and Jeff Sackman—who have single-handedly infused the nonfiction market with signs of life (and profitability) that would have been unthinkable five years ago (because again, refer to #1)—it just seems too easy to plunk mini-majors like Focus, Sony Classics and Picturehouse alongside high-powered lawyers and agents. I mean, come on, Variety: There is life outside the Weinstein brothers! (Although I guess you would not know it from reading The Reeler, either—let me work on that.)

Everything else you wanted to know about the "independents" is there in graphic detail—from production slates to cumulative box office figures to easy-to-digest studio-head quotes you have been spotting on indieWIRE for years. Happy reading!