Making good on the promise of their Sundance winning short Gowanus, Brooklyn, Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden captured the ennui and moral complexity of a young, damaged idealist caught in the pervasive malaise of the Bush years with the compelling and self assured feature debut Half Nelson, a film whose stature continues to grow with each passing year. As this decade has worn on, it has proven more and more difficult for young directors, even those fresh out of Sundance with award winning and broadly distributed indie “hits”, to make second and third feature films. Those that do in many cases end up having to compromise their most cherished projects for participation in studio financed ventures that are often subject to the increasingly asinine narrative codes, the tired sub genres, of the specialty film marketplace (Sin Nombre, anyone?). So it was with much excitement but a bit of trepidation that I first encountered Sugar, Fleck and Boden’s follow up to their Oscar nominated little indie that could. I’m happy to report that with this delicate and persuasive drama about a young immigrant whose talent may not take him all the places he’s dreamed, Fleck and Boden have only confirmed their own remarkable gifts.

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• Anthony Kaufman investigates the “little mini-studio” of producer Paul Mezey, the man behind a host of notable recent indies, including Sugar and Momma’s Man. What’s Mezey’s secret? Location. Says the Pennsylvania-based producer, “I would have sunk long ago if I had to raise a family in New York.”
• Future of Classic points to Classic Cinema Online, a site which offers almost full-screen streams of public domain classics and foreign films. Like the 1936 version of Sweeney Todd, for starters.
• Lady Wakasa informs us that the Film Society of Lincoln Center will be screening a new print of one of Louise Brooks’ early films, Beggars of Life.
• This is where we start getting smutty: Tilda Swinton took her 29-year-old boyfriend to the BAFTAs whilst “68-year-old John Byrne, her partner of 18 years, stayed at home in the north of Scotland, looking after the couple’s ten-year-old twins Xavier and Honor.” Why can’t she have a reality show?
• Finally, “in honor of Valentine’s Day,” i09 has “started asking random people to tell us about their science fiction sex experiences.” I guess I’ve never had a “science fiction sex experience”, because I have no idea what that means.

• 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.