• 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 Nine due 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.

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,

…Read more

In the time it took me to go to the kitchen and microwave my lunch, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences just made it a lot easier to qualify for a Best Documentary Feature Oscar nomination. Wasn’t that easy?

The current, much-discussed rules require features to screen at least once in at 14 cities in at least 10 states; these new rules, which will govern films released between now and August 31, 2008 for consideration at the Oscars in 2009, simply state that features “must run for a minimum of seven days in both Los Angeles County and the Borough of Manhattan.” This alone should be much more do-able for the average documentary filmmaker––and it’ll eliminate the need for a off-the-beaten-path, self-financed qualifying run like the one for Billy the Kid––but the Academy has also decided to allow digital submissions of short listed films, eliminating the once-mandatory (and costly) production of celluloid prints for semi-finalists.

You can read the full press release here. In other documentary news, AJ Schnack has a rundown of the year so far in documentary box office, and for all of the complaints that No End in Sight either failed to break through Iraq fatigue or was prevented from doing so, it’s interesting to see that it’s in second place for the year, behind Sicko.