wired

Last night a filmmaker I respect (there’s a reason not to divulge his name) told me he was deeply impressed with Julia Reichert and Steven Bognar’s A Lion in the House, which people are referring to as the “kids dying of cancer” movie. It runs 230 minutes. I asked film journo Harlan Jacobsonif he was planning on seeing it or if he’d heard anything to support the filmmaker’s opinion, and he said, “Well, I figure I’m going to live another 30 years or so…”

That entertainment attorney who told me Saturday afternoon that Mia Goldman’s Open Window, a drama about violation with Robin Tunney, Joel Edgerton and Cybil Shepard, is being bid on by serious people…I’ve since determined that guy was probably talking out of his ass. That or he was smoking something.

Today’s (i.e., Saturday’s) news #1: Cinematical’s Karina Longworth is reporting that “Paramount” (big Paramount? Paramount Classics?) has closed a deal for $10 to $12 million to distribute Little Miss Sunshine, the dark family comedy that got standing ovations after the Eccles screening last night and after the Library screening early this morning. Maybe…but I was told by two knowledgable industry guys sources just before a Racquet Club screening of Sherry Baby late this morning that Fox Searchlight is the buyer, and that the figure is $10 million. It’ll all come out in the wash. And yes, a lot of people are comparing Little Miss Sunshine to Happy Texas (i.e., saying it’s a “mountain air” movie that won’t play that well with paying audiences, etc.), but just as many people are saying no, that’s wrong, this movie has the stuff that charms, etc. Nobody’s calling it a great film, but a sizable portion are agreeing with me that it pays off and will feel the way the Hollywood Reporter‘s Gregg Goldstein feels: “I was blown away..it lived up to all the hype.”

Yesterday’s news #1: Got into town around 5 pm Friday afternoon, dumped my stuff, got my press pass and went straight over to the Eccles to see Little Miss Sunshine. [My reaction is in the lead column story.] I was told before and after by three people that Dito Montiel’s A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints, which screened Friday afternoon, is a Problem Movie. (One guy told me that “30 or 40 people walked out” by the first hour.) I myself saw Paul Cuigan’s Lucky Number Slevin at the 9:30 pm sscreennig at the Eccles, and found it tedious, trite, boring. It’s one of those crime-milieu fims in which way too many guys get shot or brutally beaten on within the first 10 minutes. I gave it a mental thumbs-down almost immediately…left after an hour. Got back to the condo and after two hours on the phone realized the QWest DSL was impossible to hook up for lack of an active phone line. Went over to the Park City Marriott to file the lead story, finished at 4 ayem.

In my story about Nick Cassevetes’ Alpha Dog [see below], I failed to give credit to Lewis Beale for having been the first to write about the legal troubles that are threatening to impede New Line Cinema’s plans to release Alpha Dopg in February. Beale’s story (“Based and Bested by a true Story’) ran in the New York Times on 10.19; here’s a link to a syndication of the story that ran in the Arizona Republic.

Here’s an okay q & a with Sundance Film festival founder Robert Redford by Time‘s Desa Philadelphia.

Nicole Holofcener’s Friends with Money, the Sundance Film festival’s debut flick, had two showings last night at the Eccles — at 6:45 and 9:30 pm. It’s now 10:10 am Friday and and I haven’t found one quickie review anywhere yet. C’mon, press contingent! …it’s a bit early in the festival to be dragging ass. (That means you, Indiewire.) Yesterday I asked a friend to e-mail me a fast ten-word review of Friends with Money — he responded with one. The film costars Jennifer Aniston, Catherine Keener, Joan Cusack, Frances McDormand, Jason Isaacs (who’s fantastic in Nine Lives, which will soon be out on DVD) and Scott Caan.

This is only about four months late, but when the 50th anni- versary of James Dean’s death was being written about early last September, I was searching all over for this fairly high- quality (i.e., by the CG standards of the late ’90s) computer simulation of how the smash-up between Dean’s Porsche (a.k.a. “Little Bastard”) and Donald Turnupseed’s black and white Chevy probably went down. I couldn’t find it, and then all of sudden it turned up yesterday on my external hard drive so here it is. (It’s a Quicktime file.)

Here’s a pretty good London Times piece by Denis Seguin about Kirby Dick‘s This Film Is Not Yet Rated, a documentary strongly critical of the MPAA’s CARA ratings board. Excerpt: “It wasn√¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢√É‚Äû√ɬ¥t censorship that really annoyed Dick. What got him going was the anonymity of it all. So, armed with a budget of $1 million, Dick hired a private investigator named Becky Altringer to help him track down and expose the MPAA’s examiners. For months, Dick and his crew sat outside the MPAA’s offices in Encino, California. They followed employees to lunch and even sifted through their rubbish.” Dick’s doc will debut at Park City’s Eccles theatre on Wednsday, 1.25, at 9:30 pm, followed by a Thursday 1.26 screening at 11:30 am at the Park City Library.

Pete Hammond has sent in some additional views on the Syriana switcheroo: “When I interviewed Gaghan for his WGA nomination screening the weekend before last I asked him if Syriana was basically an original and he admitted that only about a paragraph of the actual book is in the movie, but after spending so much time with Bob Baer in preparing the film he felt the inspiration he got from him is throughout the film. But an adaptation of a book? Never. On the cover of Bob Baer’s “See No Evil,” the book tie-in for Syriana, the copy on the cover says, “The True Story that SUGGESTED the new motion picture Syriana. It shows the Academy writers branch is actually pretty sharp. They just should have told somebody sooner so the situation wasn’t confused. Had Gaghan ever received his ballot (it was lost and just replaced now) he probably would have voted for himself in the adaptation category without knowing it would be a wasted vote.”

It’s too late for me to double-check this, but In Contention‘s Kris Tapley is reporting that the Academy has suddenly and rather surprisingly waited until today — Wednesday, 1.18 — to announce a significant decision that was made about 20 days ago, which is that the screenplay for Stephen Gaghan’s Syriana has been classified by the Academy as an original screen- play, and NOT — as many have understood all along — an adapted screenplay based on Robert Baer’s “See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA’s War on Terrorism.” The AMPAS decision, says Tapley, “was not revealed in any way [over] the last 30 days [and] Gaghan himself was not even made privy to the [new] classification until today.” (Variety‘s Timothy Gray reported the decision was made around 12.29.05) With the Academy voting deadline only two days off, the chances of Gaghan’s Syriana script being Oscar-nominated will be diminished if this news doesn’t reach enough of the the Academy voting body in time. As Tapley points out, “Any nomination the film receives in the adapted category from Academy members will not be considered,” even if every member of the 6,000- member organization supports it in this category — each vote will nonetheless be discounted. So tell your friends and neighbors.

It’s always a problem getting to Sundance events in the early morning, but IFC Films is having a breakfast and panel discussion at the Premiere & Film Music Lounge, 277 Main Street, on Monday, 1.23, from 9 to 11 ayem. The subject is “collapsing windows, vertical integration and the new day-and-date model”…gotta try.