With all the Sundance jazz, Nicole Laporte’s Variety story about the limbo-tracking (i.e., slow-boat demise) of Joe Roth‘s Revo- lution Studios went in one ear & out the other. Partly because it felt like ho-hum news. Anyone with a casual interest in the savoring of good movies wrote off Revolution a long time ago. Formed by Roth in 2000, it became quickly known as a toney outfit that got lucky now and then but seemed to mostly churn out synthetic crap. I really liked Rent, The Missing, Punch Drunk Love and Black Hawk Down, and I even grooved on Hollywood Homicide (seriously…it’s not a bad film). But Mona Lisa Smile, Gigli, Tomcats, Christmas with the Kranks, XXX, Little Black Book, Maid in Manhattan, America’s Sweethearts, Daddy Day Care, XXX: State of the Union..forget it, man. Way too much suffering. Revolution will be around for another couple of years (some 13 films are in the theatrical pipeline) but “the company has ceased developing films,” says LaPorte, which basically means it’s over.

I ran into Marshall Fine, author of a new John Cassavetes bio called “Accidental Genius“, at the Picturehouse party at Zoom the other day.
I told him I was 90% sure I had received a copy, and planned to write about his book soon…but here’s an admiring New York Times review by Phillip Lopate in the meantime.

“It is generally understood that Sundance juries, which are composed of independent filmmakers, actors and actresses, producers, journalists and others associated with low-budget moviemaking, are sympathetic to films that have little chance in the marketplace,” writes John Clark in a close-of-Sundance piece in today’s New York Times. “After all, many of the jury members were once struggling (and in some cases still are). As a result, they will sometimes give the top prize not to the best film in competition but to the best film that needs help the most.”