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Martin Scorsese Pulls Out Of Bob Marley Movie

post from Starpulse Entertainment News Blog - Movie News on 22 May 2008 07:30:00 PM. © Starpulse Entertainment News Blog - Movie News

Moviemaker Martin Scorsese has been forced to step down as the director of a new Bob Marley documentary due to scheduling conflicts. The Oscar winner, [...] Read more!

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So there was this legendary rock producer ...
[Phil Spector]

post from Defamer on 22 May 2008 07:22:14 PM. © Defamer

So there was this legendary rock producer? And he was a real weirdo who lived in a castle and was obsessed with guns and hating women? And this B-movie actress working at House of Blues went home with him? And her head was blown off? And the producer walked out with the gun in his hand and told his driver, "I think I just killed somebody?" Anyway, there was a trial, but the jury was hung, and so now there's going to be another. It's set for September. [Reuters]

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Americans Need Balls, Indies Need Buyers as
Chilly Cannes Winds Down [Cannes Film Festival]

post from Defamer on 22 May 2008 07:10:00 PM. © Defamer

Where are the big spenders this year at Cannes? After a 2007 buying spree that topped out with Universal snagging We Own the Night for a whopping $11.5 million, only one distributor has made any considerable investment in the current crop of selections — IFC Films, which made news Wednesday by acquiring the acclaimed Irish drama Hunger, its seventh buy in as many days. And even its other deals — an international mash-up including A Christmas Tale (France), Chaser (S. Korea) and the American indie The Pleasure of Being Robbed — are slated for minimal theatrical play as they funnel into IFC's day-and-date on-demand circuit.

Meanwhile, bigger American titles — particularly Che, Two Lovers and screenwriter Charlie Kaufman's mindfuck directorial debut Synecdoche, New York (pictured) — remain on the market after less-than-rapturous response from critics and industry alike. What gives?

In the case of Kaufman's film, which premieres today at the festival, an early buyers screening last weekend yielded little but scratched heads and closed wallets, though with a cast top-lined by Philip Seymour Hoffman, most observers presume a deal is imminent. The same goes for Steven Soderbergh's even more challenging Benicio Del Toro-starrer Che — a 268-minute Spanish-language epic you may have heard left more than a few people skeptical of its commercial viability.

But even the Joaquin Phoenix/Gwyneth Paltrow film Two Lovers, easily the most mainstream, best-reviewed and least-expensive (with its $12 million budget) of the three, has drawn few serious inquiries more than three days after its premiere. Buyers are increasingly content to wait for the right price (it's easier when the troubled likes of the Weinstein Company and ThinkFilm can't afford to drive up costs); they're also determined to outlast the sluggish theatrical marketplace by accruing fewer titles on their release calendars. (See Fox Searchlight and Focus Features, which expensively nabbed Choke and Hamlet 2, respectively, out of Sundance and haven't bought since.)

The skittishness is conspicuously rubbing off on sellers now as well — especially Europeans, as The Hollywood Reporter's Gregg Goldstein and Steven Zeitchik discovered Wednesday:

European sellers are not necessarily sympathetic to American fears over less easily marketable product. "The Americans are lazy, they're arrogant and too scared to do any deals," said one European sales exec. "I tell them: get some balls — your companies are all going down the toilet, maybe now's the time to get some films before it all collapses." ...

[T]he word is new strategies are needed to jump-start the market. Films will need be approaching completion before they are presented to buyers. "Buyers perceive that it's a buyers' market and they don't have to buy off footage; they can wait for the whole film," [William Morris Independent's] Cassian Elwes said.

That scenario likely applies to the $61 million Che, which even with Soderbergh at the helm likely faces months of cutting and revision before a distributor would take it on. Then there's the case of Tyson, the Mike Tyson documentary over which director James Toback was heard referring to his "prospective distributor" Sony Pictures Classics — even as the company was credited only with a "lowball," then "modest six-figure bid" and co-president Michael Barker was quoted elsewhere as saying, "I'm trying to find a year when we left without buying a film. ... If we ever did it was a long time ago. There are no gems in the market." Ouch! Oh well — there's always Toronto.

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Cannes, 5/22.

post from GreenCine Daily on 22 May 2008 06:56:00 PM. © GreenCine Daily

"It is easy to forget that the cinema is but light and shadow, and for such a simple admission, it takes someone like Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet to remind us of this vital fact," writes Daniel Kasman in...

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Shorts, 5/22.

post from GreenCine Daily on 22 May 2008 06:49:00 PM. © GreenCine Daily

"Between 1998 and 2006, Hollywood studio films had combined production in Texas of more than $530 million, averaging eight or nine films a year, according to Texas Film Commission figures," writes Joe O'Connell in a cover story for the...

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Stomach Flu Keeps Joaquin Phoenix From Cannes

post from Starpulse Entertainment News Blog - Movie News on 22 May 2008 06:45:06 PM. © Starpulse Entertainment News Blog - Movie News

Joaquin Phoenix was forced to cancel an appearance at the Cannes Film Festival after a nasty bout of stomach flu left him unable to board his flight to France. [...] Read more!

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Olsen Twins Set Up New Party Palace In The Wrong
Part Of Town [Too Close For Comfort]

post from Defamer on 22 May 2008 06:38:26 PM. © Defamer

We still can?t figure out why, but the tiny former child stars-turned-designers Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen remain terribly convinced that they are very important. So important, in fact, that they treat their various Manhattan apartments like Bel Air mansions and generally shit all over their neighbors. As one next-door resident put it, ?you?d think the President was living here.? Sure, if Dubya got decked out in shiny skirts and pounds of jewelry before partying til the wee hours and coming home soaked in vintage wine and memories night after night (which, by all means, he might). More on what kinds of trouble the little rascals are rousing in their downtown party casa after the jump.

Having abandoned their expansive penthouse on the West Side after presumably just getting kinda bored with it, the Olsens have since moved into a rental in the Village with three floors and unfortunately, some irritable neighbors neighbors: "They certainly keep late hours...I was jogging early one morning, and they were piling out of their gas guzzlers in their little club outfits." We suppose that might be annoying to some, though we'd probably just take notes on their outfits and mimic them at some point. And all this anti-Olsen attitude in their hood means they can't even stake their muscle men all over the street without one resident complaining: "The bodyguards in their SUVs are always getting in the way of our alternate-side parking routine," yammered one. Well where does he suggest they put their bodyguards? Inside the same apartment? That's just unsanitary.

TWIN PEEK [NY Post]

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Harrison Ford to go back to Ryan

This is another one for that rumour file, jeez it must be getting full. We may need a new file. It could be that Harrison Ford's return to Indiana Jones, could lead to him making a return to another of his characters....Visit Filmstalker for the full story. Restricted feeds to protect content.

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Fests and events, 5/22.

From Jennifer McMillan comes word that P Adams Sitney will be giving a talk at Light Industry in New York on May 27. Three short films (by Marie Menken, Ernie Gehr and Stan Brakhage) will be screened; his talk...

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http://daily.greencine.com/archives/006075.html

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Saramago Responds to Blindness

There have been less than stellar reviews making waves on the internet about Blindness (our[...]

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http://www.rowthree.com/2008/05/22/saramago-responds-to-blindness/

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