• The lineup boasted a wealth of warmed-over Hollywood pics (1408, Planet Terror), but the top prize at the Locarno Film Festival went this weekend to Masahiro Kobayashi’s controversial drama, The Rebirth. The Hollywood Reporter’s Eric J. Lyman called the film “cerebral and weighty … one of the most talked about films of the festival, but it was not without its detractors, who were turned off by the film’s deliberately repetitive construction.”
• Millennium Films, the company that’s currently working on bringing the Rambo series back from the dead, will next concentrate on resurrecting the Conan series.  They’re planning “multiple pictures”, the first of which will go into production next spring.
• Sean P. Combs Esq. has signed on to exec produce that Biggie Smalls biopic.
• Ever hear of Movie Gallery? Yeah, that’s part of the problem. The long-shot competitor to Netflix and Blockbuster says it still hopes to launch DVD-by-mail and video-on-demand services within the next six months, despite admitting “substantial doubt as to our ability to continue” operating.

***Apparently resigned to the idea that Evan Almighty can never recoup its costs and is basically the biggest tax write-off ever, Universal has scrapped plans to release the picture in Japan. The studio declined to state a specific reason, but Variety speculates that Steve Carell’s lack of international star power might be part of the problem. Oh, and the fact that Americans didn’t want to see it either.

***Consumer home video spending is down almost five percent, and studios are blaming themselves for releasing so much crap during the first half of the year.

***Sony, which bought online video portal Grouper last year, has changed the site’s name to Crackle as part of an effort to re-brand the property as a vehicle for Sony-produced content, as well as a launching pad for new video stars. Contests in place at launch tempt user participation by offering pitch meetings with Sony execs as a grand prize–as if kids who are getting millions of page views on YouTube would give it all up for a conference call.