Film-fesitvals | SpoutBlog

Coverage of what is truly interesting in the film world

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By Karina Longworth posted 1 year ago

What started as a fight over 4 cents has become a debate over $100 million. The AMPTP says their residuals offer would net writers $130 million over three years; the WGA says the studios’ math is wrong, and by their calculations, the deal is worth only $32 million. Yesterday, in response to a WGA counterproposal that would peg online residuals to the number of streams, Variety reports “the studios and nets offered conceptual questions about structure and measurement of streaming usage — in other words, they didn’t reject the proposal out of hand.” The Hollywood Reporter’s optismism over these new developments is barely contained in the headline, “It’s a holiday miracle: Sides ‘actually talk.’”
Scott Kirsner reports from the just-concluded International Film Festival Summit for Variety. My favorite takeaway is this dry observation: “Sessions on selling sponsorship and working with the media were packed with attendees. Less full was a session led by two independent filmmakers, who advised fest organizers to drop their entry fees, supply free travel and housing and make sure that filmmakers could gain entry to the best parties.”
Lionsgate vice chairman Michael Burns gave a speech yesterday indicating that the company is interested in maintaining a financial standing that would allow them to acquire a content library, should such an opportunity present itself; this was apparently code for, “We wanna buy MGM, y’all!“

By Karina Longworth posted 2 years ago

The French Commission for Film Classification is looking to extend its jurisdiction to festival films — meaning that it wants to have power to place age restrictions on screenings at Cannes and elsewhere. Apparently, the French censors are super-lenient when it comes to sex, but fairly strict on violence: the only film they’ve limited to audiences 18 and up of late is Saw III. So even if the censors do get their way, all those preteen film festival goers should still be able to get their softcore kicks at Cannes.
John Anderson reviews Stardust: “Sprinkled with tongue-in-cheek humor, fairly adult jokes and some well-known faces acting very silly, this adventure story should have particular appeal to fans of “The Princess Bride,” but in any event will never be mistaken for a strictly-for-kids movie.”
Simon Cowell is producing a feature remake of Fame. “We want it to be the musical version of Rocky– an underdog story, a feel-good film.” Then can we just skip ahead to the sixth sequel, where the champion has brain damage but tries to compete again anyway?