I knew the whole red-band fad would come to this: Fox Searchlight is promoting the latest trailer for its Sundance-pickup Choke as “the raunchiest red-band trailer EVER.” Well, I don’t know if I agree with the statement — maybe if Fox hadn’t censored the sex scenes with “Big Screen Only” banners — but something about this latest spot makes me more interested in the film. Could it be the nudity? Or the swearing? Or maybe it’s simply the greater exposure to the coarseness we’ve come to expect from Sam Rockwell. And here he appears more depraved than usual.

On the film’s adults-only website (also available to kids who know how to pick the age-restriction locks), there are also four new promotional videos featuring strippers reading passages from Chuck Palahniuk’s novel, on which the movie is based. They’re pretty funny if you’re still into the dumb stripper stereotype (I prefer the smart MENSA strippers/porn stars like Asia Carrera, of course). Also on the site, you can kinda learn how to do the Heimlich Maneuver.

Choke won a Special Jury Prize for its ensemble cast (including my current celebrity crush, Kelly Macdonald) at Sundance this past January. It opens in theaters nationwide September 26.

Wow. About three and a half hours ago, I posted this story about how there hadn’t been any deals in two days. Then I went to a screening. By the time I came back, three features had landed multi-million dollar deals. The hugest of these is the $10 million Focus paid for the Steve Coogan comedy Hamlet 2. That’s Little Miss Sunshine money. That’s insane. Also off the maket: Mark Pellington’s Henry Poole is Here, which went to Overture for $3.5 mil, and Choke, which sold to Searchlight for $5 million. All of the above have been added to our comprehensive Sundance deal chart.

A note about the chart itself: yesterday I removed the $$$ column, as up until that point there had been minimal information released about how much distributors had actually paid. But all of today’s deals have had dollar values clearly attached–– I guess nobody spends $10 million on ANYTHING without making sure that someone knows about it–so from here on, I’ll append dollar values if applicable in the Rights column.

• David Poland on the DGA’s snubbing of Atonement: “It’s not shocking that Joe Wright hasn’t been nominated for either of his two Oscar-chasing films. He is not a local and the films are not breathtakingly visual.” Not breathtakingly visual, huh? We imagine the Dunkirk Long-Shot Circle Jerk Club would disagree.
• Yesterday, we learned that hacky, studio-beholden critics occasionally outlive their usefulness. Today, we bring you The Best Worst Blurbs of 2007, through which Gelf Magazine attacks the marketing campaigns that twist the words of (mostly) reputable critics into blatantly misleading, top-of-the-poster one-liners. Via The Consumerist.
• Filmdrunk thinks “it’s retarded that after Fight Club becomes a phenomenon, [Chuck] Palahniuk’s next movie adaptation still gets a first-time director (not that I think he’ll do a bad job) and a budget in the single digits.” Said adaptation, Choke, premieres at Sundance next week.
• “For this one, it was kind of a hard choice between Ron or Keith, but on the basis that Keith would probably just lie down in Central park until the world stopped spinning, I figured Ron would be the better choice to rip Lady Liberty’s head clean off.” Scaramouch explains why Ron Wood beat out his bandbate Keith Richards, to make #2 on YesButNoButYes’ list of Ten Things We Hope The Cloverfield Monster really is.