• Are today’s bloggy cultural critics a thorn in Whit Stillman’s side, either because or in spite of the fact that “we’re all just stealing Nick’s lines from Metropolitan“? Maybe the next time Stillman emerges in search of his shadow, we’ll find out. In the meantime, Matt Dentler says Cinetic is working on distributing Metropolitan online “in the near future.” Although, of course, Last Days of Disco remains all but unavailable…
• Related, sort of: Peter DeBruge writes of the “bootleg director’s cut” of 54, which restores Ryan Phillippe’s character to his original conception as an “overtly bisexual bartender, one of those erotic beings (like Terrence Stamp in Pasolini’s Teorema)…he woos club owner Mike Myers, makes it with record exec Sela Ward, kisses out-of-reach soap star Neve Campbell, gets frisky with best friend Breckin Meyer and then bangs his friend’s wife Salma Hayek in a bathroom stall.” You’ll allegedly be able to sample the excitement for yourself next weekend at the Sunshine in NYC, where Mark Christopher’s recut will screen at midnight.
• “Zacharek’s first assumption is that Godard’s films went downhill after 1967. I’ll be blunt here: Zacharek musters absolutely no defense or evidence for this position.” Another review of a review of Everything is Cinema; this time it’s Only the Cinema on the first of the NYT reviews. Via The House Next Door.

• There’s apparently a new Batman movie out? And it had the best weekend opening ever? Hmmm. The things a girl misses when she goes on vacation! Meanwhile, Meryl Streep continued to prove her insane drawing power at the summer box office, as Mamma Mia! withstood the Dark Knight onslaught to scrape up a totally respectable $27.6 million.
• Cinetic Media is developing a “multimillion-dollar film-finishing fund”, with the help of an injection of cash from Aver Media.
• Time Warner Cable has struck a deal to carry Fearnet, the horror movies on-demand service of Sony Pictures TV, Lionsgate and Comcast.
• Fergie’s inexplicable career progress continues unabated.

• While I gather my final thoughts on the Moving Image Institute, check out the most recent dispatches from my fellow attendees, Doug Cummings and Kevin Lee.
• I had to leave the Sarasota Film Festival long before the awards were announced, but I was happy to learn that both Josh Safdie’s The Pleasure of Being Robbed and Barry Jenkins’ Medicine For Melancholy went home with prizes. Alison has further details at Indie Eye.
• In his round-up of the various stories on Matt Dentler leaving SXSW for Cinetic, David Hudson pays tribute to Dentler’s years at the festival. “As I’ve said here in the past, any history of American independent cinema in the 00s is going to have to include a passage on the impact of Matt’s smarts, instincts and sheer guts as a programmer.” David also links to Scott Kirsner, who has some reservations about the digital division of Cinetic that will becomes Dentler’s new home, at least in terms of its potential attractiveness to filmmakers.

As IndieWire blogger Eugene Hernandez just said in a post yesterday, Little Miss Sunshine seems to have hit on a formula that was first proven wildly successful by Napoleon Dynamite. That formula, as Hernandez’s industry friend put it, is this:

Quirky comedy + funny dance number at end + premiere at Sundance + Cinetic = big sell to Fox Searchlight.

I completely resist the idea that formulas work in the film industry (or in any creative field, for that matter), but Hernandez’s friend seems to be right about Napoleon and Sunshine. Sigh.

At least this formula is a bit more involved than the one several Slamdance films apparently tried last year: goofy protagonist + outcast friends = hilarious + endearing hit. (See Paul’s post for more on this.)

So what’s with the formulas? When Napoleon first came out, it was the freshness of the film’s approach that made it work. It embodied the Anti-Formula. Obviously, trying to repeat freshness defeats the purpose. (How many times can you successfully repurpose a baby greens salad?) Anyway, I’m planning to see Sunshine tomorrow–I’m curious to see if it hits some version of a true “Napoleon Formula”–the anti-formula that isn’t stale.