FilmDrunk learns us that Michel Gondry directed an episode of HBO hipster musical sitcom Flight of the Conchords last night. Behold a dance number from the episode.
The Sundance Film Festival had it’s first major deal go down Saturday night as young distributor Senator Entertainment (in a co-venture with Sony Pictures Worldwide) picked up North American rights to Antoine Fuqua’s admittedly unfinished Brooklyn’s Finest for a price tag of less than $5 million (with a marketing commitment of $10 million).
Other acquisitions made just before and since the festival began include the following:
Another doc, Brothers at War, was bought by Samuel Goldwyn Films for a U.S. theatrical release.
Danish documentary Burma VJwent to HBO for a theatrical run at NYC’s Film Forum and cable broadcast.
E1 Films Canada picked up Canadian rights to Sophie Barthes’ Cold Souls.
Sony Classics finally confirmed that it had indeed bought North American rights to Carlos Cuaron’s Rudo y Cursi.
All these pickups have been added to SpoutBlog’s Sundance Deals chart, which will continue to be updated throughout the festival. So remember to keep checking back and bookmark the post if you haven’t yet.
UPDATE: This documentary was billed at Sundance 2009 as Thriller in Manila, but is now set to release under the more jazzy sounding title, Thrilla in Manila.
Take an epic sporting event, cut together the highlights and interviews with the athlete (or athletes) and coach (or coaches), and you have an instant crowd-pleaser, because the crowd already been pleased once and knows it will be again. I expected Thriller in Manila to be that documentary until the build up of “the greatest fight of all time” between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier unexpectedly wheezes, as a 63 year old, nearly incoherent Frazier walks into his decrepit Badlands of Philadelphia gym. With one shot of the little, cluttered room he lives in upstairs, the tone shifts to the unapologetic telling of Joe Frazier’s side of the story. Director John Dower has an easy target (Ali can’t speak for himself anymore), but to his credit he lets the camera remain on the mixed emotions of people closest to the fight and thereby raises issues–and the film–above its genre.
Through talking heads with the gray hairs who were there, archival footage and the relentless narration of Paterson Joseph, we go back to the late sixties when Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali are friendly competitors. Joe Frazier personally lobbies President Nixon to get Ali back in the ring after Ali’s famous refusal to go to Vietnam for his religious convictions (a member of the all-black Nation of Islam). Back in the ring, Ali and Frazier go on to have three fights in a vicious rivalry that’s the stuff of sports legend and Greek tragedy. It all culminates in 1975 when Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos hosts the “Thrilla in Manila,” the third and final bout between Frazier and Ali.
Before getting to that supposed “disappointing” debut of Australia, let me first congratulate Milk for cracking the top 10 while opening on only 34 screens. The film’s five-day Thanksgiving Weekend total gross is $1.9 million, meaning its per-screen average was an unbelievable (and apparently record-breaking) $51,833. Meanwhile, fellow limited-release powerhouse Slumdog Millionaire was kept at bay at 11th place, though its per-screen average continues to amaze at more than $36,000.
Now for Australia: the film placed fifth for the holiday stretch, taking in less than half as much as box office winner Four Christmases ($46.7 mill.). However, its $14.8 million three-day take is a million more than that of the wide opening for Baz Luhrman’s previous film, Moulin Rouge. Also, its older audience, which had other, more familial commitments last week, will likely show greater interest as the film is out longer, especially if there’s good word of mouth. Most importantly, though, Australia at least didn’t perform as badly as Transporter 3.
Cheers couple Kelsey Grammer and Bebe Neuwirth will be reunited for MGM’s Fame remake. They’ll play employees of the performing arts high school alongside fellow TV vets Charles S. Dutton and Megan Mullaly, as well as original Fame student Debbie Allen.
Steve Buscemi and Kelly Macdonald are to star in Martin Scorsese’s new HBO project, Boardwalk Empire, which will depict the origins of Atlantic City.
After reading Anne Thompson’s post on the dismal reception given to the youth-baiting rethink of At The Movies starring Ben Lyons and Ben Mankiewicz, I decided I had better watch The Two Bens’ first episode online to see what all the griping is about. It actually starts off rather well: Mankiewicz is totally qualified for this job, although it’s a bit of a wonder he was even hired, what with his TCM-honed, “I am going to explain this very slowly because my viewers may be aged” manner of speaking. But then he tosses it to Lyons, who says something completely incoherent about Burn After Reading being “almost like an exercise in drama,” and then they cut back Mankiewicz, who struggles to croak out, “Yeah, that’s an interesting point,” whilst swallowing his own testicles. At that point, I stopped.
Interestingly, another thing that I wasn’t able to force myself to watch all the way through this week also had to do with the sorry contemporary incarnation of the former gold standard for televised movie reviews.
What’s going on with Steven Soderbergh’s Che? Heard anything recently? I haven’t seen any hard news published in any half-way reputable outlet since Cannes (aside from this report from IndianTelevision.com that Che will soon premiere on––wait for it––Indian television, but the film’s international release has never been in doubt). But that hasn’t put an end to the speculation.
On June 14, Jeff Wells did a post based on a conversation a friend of his had with some other guy who’s “familiar with the comings and goings of” Wild Bunch, the sales agency who funded Che and have been looking for a buyer for it since Berlin. The gist, as Wells passes it along through the various degrees of distance, is that Wild Bunch has given up trying to sell the current cut to a U.S. distributor, and Soderbergh’s too busy shooting his next movie to worry about refining his cut, and everyone’s just sort of shrugging their shoulders and cutting their losses.
I didn’t come across this story until today, when I finally decided to do some digging on a rumor I heard about the film last month when I was in Las Vegas. …Read more
Nannette Burstein’s American Teen has become ubiquitous since its Sundance premiere, both on the festival circuit and, thanks to a poster carefully calibrated to target Gen X nostalgia, online. Its title suggests a wishful universality, but in fact, when looked at alongside two less-lauded films about American teens against which it screened here in Silver Spring, its document of five white high school seniors in a semi-rural suburb of Indiana seems as niche as it gets.
World premiering here on Friday before beginning a run on HBO Monday night, Hard Times at Douglas High is a fly-on-the-wall work of activism documenting a year in the life of an all-black Baltimore high school, as teachers, students and administrators struggle to comply with No Child Left Behind. Made by the directors of the seminal reality series An American Family, it makes visible the reverberations of blind bureaucracy on living and breathing institutions, making the home and personal lives of its students a spectre, but not a direct concern. Taking the inverse tactic,Going on 13’s intimate portrait of four girls passing through puberty (or, “puberey”, as one subject refers to it early on) over the course of four years in a barely middle-class Northern California community touches on the institutions that contain their lives only incidentally. Seen together in a single weekend, each of the three seem to say less about age than the variables of fate as played out through place and race.
Fitting for May Day, Variety has the latest on the AMPTP and SAG negotiations, and things don’t look good. The majors are quite upset with the demands of the union, delivering the message that “Unless SAG backs off its demands on DVD and new media soon, it can forget about a deal even if thesps go on strike.”
SAG might want to take note of Apple’s latest announcement, then, and rethink its DVD demands, because the news that iTunes will now sell films day-and-date means the tangible home video format could soon be a relatively minor ancillary.
On the subject of actors backing down (and out), Javier Bardem has exited Rob Marshall’s musical adaptation Ninedue to exhaustion. He’ll take a year off from acting while Marshall will have the difficulty of finding another actor suitable to fill the shoes of Marcello Mastroianni.
Squashing some of the debate over whether or not the documentary should be allowed Oscar contention based on its sneaky theatrical “release”, Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired will be getting an official run from THINKfilm beginning July 11. Of course, that’s a month after HBO debuts the film on cable.
When I was a kid, there were plenty of movies I saw for the first time on HBO. But in the 21st century, I don’t know anyone who watches cable movie channels for their airing of non-first-run feature films. Well, that’s not completely correct; I know a lot of people who really love Turner Classic Movies (myself included), but that’s different. So, what’s the point of Viacom’s new unnamed pay TV channel, which has been all over the news today?
At a time when it seems premium networks like HBO and Showtime are only worth the additional costs because they feature really great original series and movies, those motion pictures that have already played in theaters and have already been available on DVD and other similar ancillaries just don’t seem too appealing. Even HBO’s worth is questionable these days, now that shows like The Sopranos and The Wire are over.
On Friday, we learned that HBO had quietly opened the Sundance hit doc Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired in one theater on 181st Street in Manhattan, so that the film could qualify for an Oscar nomination before it runs on the cable channel in June. The doc wasn’t screened for the press, because the release is obligatory and presumably TV critics will have at it soon enough. But the New York Times, who have a mandate to review every film that open in any theatrical venue in Manhattan, put Manohla Dargis on an A train up to 181st street and ran her review in today’s paper. The circumstances of the film’s virtual non-release were deemed remarkable enough for inclusion in the review’s second paragraph, where Dargis backhands the doc with praise and notes that the token, Academy-baiting theatrical release could be an exercise in futility. “Its one-week theatrical run will make it eligible for Academy Award consideration, though given that organization’s often pitiful record when it comes to nonfiction film, it seems unlikely that a movie this subtly intelligent would make its short list.”
AJ Schnack argues that a film which so stealthily end-runs an actual theatrical audience doesn’t deserve the slot on the short list that it’s so baldy fishing for. …Read more
This is interesting: a Defamer tipster points out out a tiny ad in what looks like the print edition of the Village Voice, listing screenings beginning today in way, WAY uptown Manhattan of Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired. The much-discussed Sundance doc was picked up at that festival, as we noted on our deal chart, for domestic release and Oscar qualifying by HBO. Other than this little ad, there’s been no publicity and no reviews of the film in advance of this New York release; I consulted Moviefone’s AIM movie listings bot, and was told that “Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired has not opened yet. It will open on 12-31-10.”
Defamer’s Stu VanAirsdale posits that this secret release is happening as a way of meeting Oscar nomination qualifications––and he’s probably right––but even token qualifying releases are usually given *some* kind of publicity budget. Maybe we shouldn’t be surprised: Anne Thompson essentially predicted an in-name-only theatrical release for Wanted when the HBO deal was made at Sundance. As she put it on her blog,
Two new updates to our Sundance deal chart: Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired has landed US distribution via HBO, who may or may not release the film theatrically; and ESPN has acquired the soccer doc Kicking It. Interesting that it’s day four of the festival and, with the exception of Ballast’s deal for international representation, a) the only films with announced deals are documentaries, and b) no one seems to be talking about how much money they’re putting on the table. Check out our full Sundance 2008 acquisitions chart here.
In a piece that reads like AMPTP damage control, Variety quotes a number of sources who burst the bubble on the interim side deals the WGA has been brokering with independent producers. A former TV exec sniffs that the UA deal “isn’t generating much in terms of employment” asmidst predictions that instead of brokering deals to produce new content, studios would rather go to Sundance and buy up anything half-way releasable that’s available.
The Online Film Critics Society broke from convention by awarding their Best Documentary prize to Seth Gordon’s The King of Kong, which was one of the best reviewed non-fiction films of 2007 but has failed to drum up much end-of-year awards attention. Other than that, the OFCS bestowed awards on the usual suspects: No Country For Old Men, Daniel Day-Lewis, Julie Christie and Diablo Cody.
HBO may back out of their day-to-day participation in Picturehouse, the indie arm that currently operates as a joint venture between the cable giant and Time Warner’s New Line. One issue is that films produced with HBO funds and distributed by Picturehouse are not performing as well as films that Picturehouse has acquired at festivals. Another, is that HBO is denying their partners the first chance to distribute Sugar, Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck’s anticipated follow-up to Half Nelson, so that they can premiere the film for other buyers at Sundance.
I’ve come across three interesting stories on film scoring today. Here’s a round-up:
Tomorrow Unlimited has an interview with Carlos Dengler (otherwise known as Carlos D, otherwise known as the bassist for Interpol) about his fledgling side career as a film scorer. Dengler composed music for a segment of HBO’s strange content/marketing hybrid Voyeur, which you can watch by going here. For more on the Voyeur muddle, check out this post on Screens by Virginia Heffernan, who tries to sort out a definition of this “blurry thing surrounded by a lot of talk about how many-splendored it is.” Semi-related: see artist Doug Aitken’s video for Interpol’s “NYC”, which contains its own city-surveillance themes, above.
On his blog, New Yorker music critic Alex Ross pokes at the details of a meeting between expressionist composer Arnold Schoenberg, and 1930s MGM mogul Irving Thallberg. Thallberg had allegedly heard a broadcast of Verklärte Nacht and initiated a meeting with Schoenberg to discuss the latter scoring the former’s production of The Good Earth. Thallberg complimented Schoenberg on his “lovely music”, which rankled Schoenberg, who prided himself as the master of atonality. But has the story has been misreported? Ross investigates. [Via GreenCine Daily]
Techno star/tea mogul Moby has set up a website to allow student, indie and other non-profit filmmakers free access to his music for scoring purposes. “The music is free as long as it’s being used in a non-commercial or non-profit film, video, or short,” Moby writes on the site’s splash page. “If you want to use it in a commercial film or short then you can apply for an easy license, with any money that’s generated being given to the humane society.” [Via Cinema Minima via Twitter]
Entourage’s recent slide in quality has been well documented, but after seeing the fake trailer for Vincent Chase’s passion project, Medellin, I’m starting to wonder if maybe this season has been *intentionally*, unbelievably over-the-top and divorced from even the show’s previous brand of no-unhappy-endings reality. Maybe HBO is trying to do camp?
I know, I know — Susan Sontag is rolling in her grave– but no one could possibly take this trailer seriously, right? At this point, it’s obvious that they’re mocking Vince, that he’s the brainless celebrity whose ego is so bloated that he walks right into career suicide, thinking he’s making a genius move…right? If so, then the trailer–and the fake website, fake interview (”Me in a fat suit just wasn’t gonna cut it”), and fake quote from a fake blurb-whore–is brilliant, a spot-on indictment of the contemporary star system. But post rim-job shark-jumping, can we really give anything Entourage that much credit?
We’ve had a bit of trouble getting this episode to go through the iTunes feed, so we hope this re-post will fix the problem. The original post, with episode description and embedded player, is here.
filmcouch-114
The Sundance Film Festival had it’s first major deal go down Saturday night as young distributor Senator Entertainment (in a co-venture with Sony Pictures Worldwide) picked up North American rights to Antoine Fuqua’s admittedly unfinished Brooklyn’s Finest for a price tag of less than $5 million (with a marketing commitment of $10 million).
What’s going on with Steven Soderbergh’s 
On Friday, 
Two new updates to our Sundance deal chart: Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired has landed US distribution via HBO, who may or may not release the film theatrically; and ESPN has acquired the soccer doc Kicking It. Interesting that it’s day four of the festival and, with the exception of Ballast’s deal for international representation, a) the only films with announced deals are documentaries, and b) no one seems to be talking about how much money they’re putting on the table. Check out our full Sundance 2008 acquisitions chart 
In a piece that reads like AMPTP damage control, Variety quotes a number of sources who 
