Fantastic Fest ended last night with a party in a cave to celebrate the closing night film, City of Ember, directed by Gil Kenan and starring Bill Murray. But I took the above photo the night before, and given the ubiquity of both karaoke and Nacho Vigalondos throughout the week, it seems like a pretty fitting final image of Fantastic Fest 2008. We’ll have a few most FF2008 posts trickling out across the weekend, before we shift bears to focus on the New York Film Festival on Monday (I’m ransacking my closet for something to wear to the opening night party as we speak. Wish me luck.) In the meantime, you can find much, much more photo documentation on our Flickr page.

The one face that has been prevalent all over Fantastic Fest for the past week, even more so than Alamo Drafthouse founder Tim League, has been Spanish director Nacho Vigalondo. His movie Timecrimes premiered to U.S. audiences here last year, and was snapped up by Magnolia; there’s now an Americanized version in the works. He’s been at pretty much every single screening, every event, and in every condition: tired, wired, drunk, sober, sleepy, awake.

He doesn’t have a feature film at the festival this year, but he did come with about 90 minutes worth of his short films, and those played as a single screening full of Nacho’s wacky blend of British and Spanish humor. Check out the full interview with him below, where you can also watch several of his shorts.

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• Paula Wagner, Tom Cruise’s long-time producing partner, is leaving her post at the top of United Artists. Though Wagner will hold on to a share of UA––which has barely made use of their $500 million credit line, due to some friction with parent studio MGM over which movies to greenlight––apparently “it’s possible that the studio will once again go into hibernation and that the UA coin will go to MGM.”
• Totally coincidentally, the release date on UA’s next big production, the bad buzz-plagued Tom Cruise-in-an-eye patch vehicle Valkyrie, has been moved to Dec. 26 from Feb. 13, allegedly to capitalize on holiday audiences.
• In news that has to do with Cruise but is totally unrelated to Paula Wagner, he might star in The Tourist, a remake of a 2005 French film called Anthony Zimmer, with an adaptation by Julian Fellowes.
• Magnolia is funneling a few of genre-arm Magnet’s recent acquisitions into a theatrical release label called the Six Shooter Film Series. The Series will start with the Tribeca-lauded Swedish vampire flick Let the Right One In, and will also showcase Sundance picks Special and Timecrimes.

Twitch has linked to a Spanish-language interview with Nacho Vigalondos, in which the Timecrimes director says David Cronenberg is in the running to direct the English-language remake of his time travel film–-that is, since Mario Bava is not available. Vigalondos also says Timothy J. Sexton, one of the writers of Children of Men, is writing the English language adaptation, and that if he were to have his dream cast, it would involve Joan Allen, Adam Brody, and either Bruce Willis or Kurt Russell. After the jump, you’ll find Babelfish’s translation of the relevant portion of the interview. Linguistics are funny! See also Kevin’s review of Timecrimes and interview with Nacho from Sundance.

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This morning, I called in to CNET’s new podcast, The 404, to talk about Sundance hits (Baghead, Timecrimes) and misses (The Wackness, Downloading Nancy), why the SAG Awards can’t replace The Oscars, and why Alec Baldwin’s looks have declined as his career has resurged (hint: age is only half of it). You can listen here.

After writing and directing the Oscar-nominated short 7:35 in the Morning in 2003, Nacho Vigalondo decided to make a feature film using one of his favorite sci-fi tropes, time travel. The film features a seemly normal man who is forced to take desperate measures to undo his own time travel mishaps. In this interview, Vigalondo talks about sci-fi influences, not giving a shit about what the future looks like, and the forthcoming United Artists’ remake of the film.

 

 Nacho Vigalondo Interview [7:22m]: Play Now | Download

Nacho Vigalondo Interview

Also on SpoutBlog:

Sundance 2008: Timecrimes -My complete review of the film.

UPDATE: There is now an interview with director Nacho Vigalondo posted.

The Spanish thriller Timecrimes is in many ways a throwback to both classic whodunit mysteries and time-travel science fiction. Writer/director/co-star Nacho Vigalondo is certainly channeling Philip K. Dick with his singular plot line that quickly grows in complexity when the moral and logical conundrums of archetypal time-travel dilemmas come into play. The question is whether Timecrimes finds a unique voice within this well-explored genre.

The set-up is quite simple, Hector and Clara are settling in to their new country home. Surveying the surrounding forest with binoculars, Hector sees what appears to be a naked woman in the trees. He discreetly slips away to investigate while Clara is off on an errand. As Hector attempts to revive the woman, he is suddenly stabbed in the arm by a mysterious man whose head is covered in bandages. Terrified, Hector runs through the woods until he finds a strange laboratory, where he attempts to seek refuge.

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We’ve made several updates to our Sundance 2008 Deal chart over the past 24 hours. The most significant news is that the Weinsteins have acquired the doc Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired for theatrical distribution in every territory *except* for the U.S. and Canada. I saw the film this morning and will have more to say about it later today, but suffice it to say for now that the film casts a very, um, “European” eye on Polanski’s child rape scandal, poking quite a bit of fun at American attitudes towards sex and media and, especially, our justice system.

Also of note: United Artists has bought the remake rights to Timecrimes, a Spanish sci-fi film premiering here before hitting theaters under the auspices of Magnolia, as well as the excuse for a raging karaoke party in Park City last night (anything you may have heard about your blogger’s Fred Schneider impression has been grossly exaggerated.) Finally, Celluloid Dreams has signed a deal to rep Lance Hammer’s Ballast for international sale. I hope to see Ballast later today–it wasn’t on my original schedule, but after a colleague described it as “The Dardennes on the Mississippi Delta,” I’m intrigued.

Check out the full list of Sundance 2008 deals here.