Day: January 23, 2006

I should have posted this yesterday, but Munich screenwriter Tony Kushner has countered the criticisms of the film’s political opponents with this very intelligent response, which appeared in the 1.22 L.A. Times. And Steven Spielberg has finally let go with some anger at these criticisms through an interview he gave to a writer for the German magazine Der Spiegel. Now, if just one of them had addressed the why’s and wherefore’s of that sex scene intercut with Munich massacre footage…

New York Times reporter Sharon Waxman got in touch with the Little Miss Sunshine principals — producer Jon Turtletaub and Cinetic Media’s John Sloss — and wrote this comprehensive piece about the five-year effort to finance the film and the 10-hour effort to sell it last Friday night and early Saturday morning. The victor was Fox Searchlight. The selling price was $10.5 million “plus 10 percent of all gross revenues on the film, a hefty figure that set tongues wagging.” Sunshine will hit theatres sometime this summer.

Hollywood Elsewhere’s Sundance coverage slowed to a near-total halt on Sunday, 1.22. This has been a pleasant but (so far) unexceptional festival…everyone is in agreement about this. Not so hot…nothing really igniting….shoulder-shrugging. And with Sunday’s wake-up downshifting and not seeing this or that allegedly mezzo-mezzo movie seemed like a permissible way to play it. No…inspired! Woke up late and kinda groggy after crashing at 3 am…wrote a column, missed Stewart Copeland’s Police doc, Everyone Stares…saw Freida Lee Mock’s straightforward but pleasingly passionate Tony Kushner doc, Wrestling with Angels; went to a Women in Film gathering at the River Horse; decided to blow off seeing Neil Burger’s The Illusionist and Michel Gondry’s The Science of Sleep…later, shine it, grab a salad…get back on the horse tomorrow (i.e., today).