I saw a couple of stories after hours yesterday touting the unveiling of YouTube’s new full-length Movies and TV sections. I didn’t have time to explore the offerings, but it seemed like a positive development. So why is that, when I Google “You Tube Movies” upon getting to the computer this morning, the first result was a story headlined, “YouTube Adds Movies, TV; Fails Miserably”? In it, writer Mark Hachman complains that the current library of ad-supported full-length films in the official Movies section is lacking in comparison to the wide variety of movies, uploaded illegally in installments by users, that remain on the site despite YouTube’s ostensible efforts to remove them.

It’s true that a lot of the good stuff — Slacker, Alfred Hitchcock’s Blackmail, Bobcat Goldthwait’s Sleeping Dogs Lie, a number of selections from Elvira’s Movie Macabre — was on YouTube already and/or is already available in a more elegant presentation on Hulu. And anyone looking for anything super recent and/or blockbusteriffic is likely to be disappointed. But even in the limited Day One offerings, I found a number of worthwhile surprises. Some of them are embedded after the jump.

One quibble: if YouTube is serious about redirecting eyeballs away from stolen content and towards the legit stuff, they need to at least restructure their search results so that video from their partners is highlighted above everything submitted by the rabble. As it is, the only way to really find anything in the Movies section is to browse for it, which I’m sure you’re eager to do with all your unlimited patience and time.

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The 2009 Sundance Film Festival doesn’t kick off until Thursday, but there are already a few acquisitions and other news of note to report:

• Sony Pictures Classics has picked up both James Toback’s documentary Tyson (which Karina saw at Cannes) and Carlos Cuaron’s Rudo y Cursi. SPC co-president Michael Barker explained the reason for pre-buying: “It’s an advantage to have a company attached, to be able to answer questions, knowing what you’re going to do with it.” SPC also has Davis Guggenheim’s new doc, It Might Get Loud, at the festival.
• Though not U.S. distributor-related, congratulations must go out anyway to Cherien Dabis (who recently was interviewed on SpoutBlog’s Media Diet) for selling Canadian and international rights to her new Sundance-bound film Amreeka to Entertainment One.
• The documentary short you’ll be watching ahead of Thursday’s festival opener, Mary and Max, is actually a commercial for Sundance sponsor Honda. It will be one of the three shorts that have just gone up today on the automaker’s “Power of Dreams” website.

On the flight home from Cannes on Sunday, I sat next to a prominent female film critic who, like me, had major problems with James Toback’s much-praised Tyson. Particularly concerned about the section of the film where Mike Tyson tells “his side of the story” in regards to the rape that sent him to prison, she predicted that the film’s eventual distributor, Sony Classics, would likely have to tweak the Cannes cut in order to avoid a libel suit. But a story on the boxing site The Sweet Science indicates that might not be the only spot where Toback and Tyson fudge the truth.

The film virtually cuts straight from the death of Tyson’s former mentor Cus D’A,ato to his years working under the eye of Don King. Steve Lott, Tyson’s assistant manager from 1985 to 1988, sites numerous places where Tyson “lies” in Tyson, and accuses Toback of glossing over the years in which Lott worked with the boxer in order to better support the case that Tyson was “has demons, that he was a thug, that he was crazy.” Lott says the Tyson he knew was “neither an addict, nor a hoodlum, nor a manic depressive…[but] ‘the golden boy of corporate America’,” and that his life only started to spin out of control when Don King and Robin Givens stepped in. He also claims Tyson lies in the film about being forced to sign a contract when he was underage:

“I have the contract right here,’’ Lott said. “Mike Tyson was 18 when he signed that contract, not 16. He’s saying these lies for two reasons. The effect of Don King and all those years of him telling Mike it was the white guys who screwed him and the fact that Jimmy [Jacobs] is dead and can’t defend himself. I defy anyone to come out of the woodwork and say something bad that Jim did to Mike Tyson.’’

Of course, it’s possible that there’s a touch of sour grapes to Lott’s protests. The obvious (and admitted by Tyson) goal of Tyson––and the main reason why I find it so reprehensible––is to rehab Tyson’s image to the point where, as the Sweet Science story puts it, he can become “a product America will once again buy.” Lott apparently tried to do this himself two years ago:

Lott said he met with [licensing agent Harlan] Werner two years ago to discuss his ideas of how to help his old friend. He suggested he first get rid of the face tattoo he began to wear late in his boxing career and then do a series of exhibitions for the troops in Iraq followed by similar fund raising appearances in the U.S. for various fire and police departments.

In perhaps the only interesting stylistic element of the film, Toback uses overlapping voiceover and split screens to draw attention to where Tyson repeats and/or contradicts himself om various topics. Maybe this becomes a question of documentary ethics: is a filmmaker even responsible for “lies” told by his subject, if he draws attention to the fact that said subject is the world’s most unreliable narrator?

photo by Karina Longworth

France loves James Toback, and James Toback loves France right back. The New York auteur, whose work is more often than not unfairly maligned stateside, has already seen Fingers, his first (and best) film, remade by French director Jacques Audiard. The original is one of two Toback films screening at Cannes this year; the other, his documentary on long-time friend Mike Tyson, premiered to more than one standing ovation last night.

If France loves James Toback, Cannes, apparently, wants to take Mike Tyson behind the middle school and get him pregnant. Applause for Toback at last night’s screening was sufficient and polite (and, after the screening, it drove the filmmaker off the stage in tears); reaction to Tyson’s entrance verged on hysterical. So it’s fitting that Toback’s Tyson is a film that requires its audience to learn to love its subject, and even feeds on that love. I’m conflicted about the film’s ultimate value, but maybe Cannes got the Mike Tyson documentary it deserves.

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• Above: a detail of the special edition Julian Schnabel-designed Diving Bell poster that we’re giving away. The deadline to enter our giveaway was supposed to be earlier this week, but whilst at Sundance we got too busy to promote it. So, we’re extending the deadline to Wednesday, February 6. Full details on how to enter here.
• David Pescovitz at BoingBoing links to The Mindscape of Alan Moore, a documentary about the creator of Watchmen and V for Vendetta, which you can watch online.
• Amelie Gilette at The Onion A.V. Club “always thought that Jamie Foxx’s natural career progression would be Booty Call, Ray, Oscar win, release of the R&B album Unpredictable, release of the R&B album Hot Tub, Academy Award (These Are The Words I’m Sayin’ To You), followed by the launch of Academy Award Winner: The Fragrance (musky ego with notes of ugh).” She was wrong.
• “In 1993 Justin Timberlake joined the Mickey Mouse Club. In 1993 I officially joined the Mrs Doubtfire Fan Club. While membership is small, we all still share a love of vaccuming to Aerosmith’s ‘Dude Looks Like a Lady.’” Paul Scheer breaks down what sets him apart from the superstar with whom he shares a birthday.
• “It’s all in there,” James Toback tells Michael Musto of his upcoming Mike Tyson documentary. “The ear biting, the rape charge, which was indeed a setup, and the solitary confinement. Mike’s survived, but he’s not sure into what future. He talks about being 40 as if it were 105 because a lot of people around him are drugged out or dead. Where does he go now?”

• Variety has a run-down on the ten films it thinks fans are most excited about sneaking at Comic-con. At the top of the list are Indy 4 and Star Trek 11; Cloverfield (or Monstrous or whatever it’s called this week) is conspicuously absent. In related news, Paramount has bought Iron Man an Audi, and Patrick Wilson, Jackie Earle Haley, Matthew Goode, Billy Crudup, Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Malin Akerman have been cast in Watchmen.
• Showtime has acquired broadcast rights to Nicholas Jarecki’s documentary The Outsider, which offers an inside look (ha ha) at director James Toback. The film, which opened at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2005 and had a brief theatrical run last year, will make its cable debut in August.
• Variety has a story on Sony’s massive 2nd quarter profits; The Hollywood Reporter’s got one on Disney’s.