Here's Brad Pitt Softbank 500, another Japanese commercial directed by Spike Jonze.

Speaking of embattled auteurs, David Poland asks more questions about Sony pulling the plug on Moneyball and what it means. So does Jeffrey Wells. I've also heard that Soderbergh wanted to make a responsibly budgeted commercial movie with MLB approval, and that Sony was backing James Brooks' baseball movie over his.

Point is, Soderbergh is being penalized for not always making commercial movies, for being an indie at heart. Execs feel that they can't count on him. They fear that he might go off the reservation. You get so many times at bat with big-budget movies and when you fan too much, the financiers lose confidence. For Soderbergh's sake, I hope The Informant! is a hit.

Prolific to a fault, Soderbergh inspires in me equal admiration for sticking to his guns and having cojones, and anger that he squanders opportunities for all filmmakers trying to make smart movies for adults when he indulges himself and ignores the audience. That's fine when you're making little movies, not so good at the studio level. Solaris, The Good German and the foreign-financed $60 million Che are wiping out the wriggle room earned by Traffic, Erin Brockovich and the Ocean series.

Finally, Michael Mann, who has never been willing to go indie, is far guiltier than Soderbergh of recklessly spending studio money.

As I head off for an unplugged holiday weekend--to a pal's Idyllwild hideaway with no wifi (thanks Lili)--here are some weekend links.

We will see how Michael Mann's Public Enemies fares: usually, if the highbrow critics on Metacritic grant a movie a 71 ranking and the masses at Rotten Tomatoes vote with 58 %, that's a bad sign for playability, even if Johnny Depp gets folks on the first weekend. Time Out asserts that Mann is running on empty. And Michael Phillips shares my concerns with the film's HD approach.

Mann's movie is based on the well-known Bryan Burrough book, which covers bank robber John Dillinger and his various cohorts at length. The Daily Rumpus offers a must-read "Dead Sea Scrolls" for Dillinger aficionados. Patrick Goldstein fills in details on how the ever-finicky Mann spent some of his $80 million Public Enemies budget.

The Independent asks, What ever happened to the great American film director?" I explained the problem in one of my late lamented Variety columns, entitled Studios wary of big-budget auteurs. Meanwhile The Guardian bemoans the low quality Hollywood schlockbusters.

For your viewing pleasure, The Guardian has the trailer for Pedro Almodovar's Broken Embraces. Cinematical posts an amusing spoof of the New Moon trailer.

The California Attorney General is aiding the police investigation into Michael Jackson's death, reports the LAT, which confirms a Tuesday 10 AM Memorial service at the Staples Center for Jackson.

Apparently hundreds of hours of Michael Jackson rehearsal video could be edited into a music doc to be shown at a theatre near you. Here's a CNN clip of a rehearsal shot two days before his death. The man looks robust enough.

TMZ gets scoops like the death of Michael Jackson (which they announced six minutes before he was officially pronounced dead) by a potent mix of paying informants and old-fashioned shoe leather, reports Paid Content. And TMZ wouldn't be TMZ without Harvey Levin (right). The Washington Post is less critical of TMZ's methods.

Back in January The Atlantic predicted the demise of the NYT. Well, the company's top brass sent a memo announcing that they are still around after all. And Ad Age reports that the Grey Lady will survive until at least 2012.

The Gannett newspaper chain, the nation's largest in terms of circulation, is set to cut more than 1000 jobs. Spin is cutting jobs too. And Vibe Magazine is over. The NYT's David Carr, for one, will miss it.

Karl Malden is dead.The theater actor will probably best be remembered for reprising his stage role as Mitch in Elia Kazan's Streetcar Named Desire, for which he won the supporting actor Oscar. He also made his mark in Kazan's On the Waterfront. While Malden played his share of villains, he was known for his decency, finally. He represented something good in all of us. In 1962, John Frankenheimer starred him in both The Birdman of Alcatraz and All Fall Down. Walden stood up to Rosalind Russell in Gypsy and played Bradley to George C. Scott's Patton.

Later in life, he starred opposite Michael Douglas in the popular TV series The Streets of San Francisco. He served for a time as president of the Academy, and a pitchman for American Express: "Don't Leave home without it." We should all wish to generate such respect and affection, and live so long.

UPDATE: In Contention collects some Malden obits.

The LATimes has posted a PDF of Michael Joseph Jackson's last will which is copied here:

LAST WILL 

OF 

MICHAEL JOSEPH JACKSON 

I, MICHAEL JOSEPH JACKSON, a resident of the State of California, declare this 

to be my last Will, and do hereby revoke all former wills and codicils made by me. 

I 

I declare that I am not married. My marriage to DEBORAH mAN ROWE 

JACKSON has been dissolved. I have three children now living, PRINCE MICHAEL 

JACKSON, JR., PARIS MICHAEL KATHERINEJACKSON and PRINCE MICHAEL 

JOSEPHJACKSON,IT. I have no other children,living or deceased. 

IT 

It is my intention by this Will to dispose of all property which I am entitled to 

dispose-of by wiil. I specificallyrefrain from exercising aU150wersof appointment that I 

maypossess at the time of ~y death. 

ill 

I give my entire estate to the Trustee or Trustees then acting under that certain 

Amendedand Restated Declarationof Trust executed on March 22, 2002 by me as Trustee 

and Trustor which is called the MICHAELJACKSONFAMILYTRUST, giving effect to 

any amendmentsthereto made prior to my death. All such assets shall be held, managedand 

,. 

distributed as a part of said Trust accordingto its terms and not as a separate testamentary 

trust. 

.. 

If for any reason this gift is not operativeor is invalid, or if the aforesaid Trust fails 

or has been revoked, I give my residuaryestatd'tothe Trustee or Trustees named to act in the 

MICHAELJACKSON FAMILY TRUST, as Amended and Restated on March 22,2002, 

and I direct said Trustee or Trustees to divide, administer,hold and distribute the trust estate 

pursuant to the provisio~s of said Trust, as hereinabovereferred to as such provisions now

.' 

exist to the same extent and in the same manner as though that certain Amended and 

Restated Declarationof Trust, were herein set forth in full, but without giving effect to any 

subsequentamendmentsafter the date of this Will. The Trustee, Trustees, or any successor 

Trusteenamed in such Trust Agreementshall serve withoutbond. 

IV 

I direct that all federal estate taxes and state inheritanceor successiontaxes payable A 

A film historian of the 60s and 70s sent me his best guesses at what ten best Oscar lists would have been between 1967 and 1979. What's fascinating, assuming he's making reasonably inside-ballpark calls here, is that adding five sometimes improves the choices, and often does not. But while my write-in academic knows a lot about the period he's writing about, we can't help but see these movies now as their standing has changed over time. As examples, Cool Hand Luke, The Battle of Algiers, 2001: A Space Odyssey and Close Encounters of the Third Kind all boast more stature now than they did when they came out. Bottom line though, the Academy had more quality films to choose from then than they do now. We will find out soon enough whether this change is for the best.

1967 original nominees In the Heat of the Night [winner] Bonnie and Clyde Doctor Dolittle The Graduate Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? plus Camelot Cool Hand Luke In Cold Blood The Dirty Dozen Two for the Road Notes: I think Warners would have worked and lobbied hard for its costly roadshow CAMELOT (which did receive five nominations, ultimately winning three Oscars). After all, CAMELOT was a personal Jack L. Warner production, and while Seven Arts had purchased the studio, J.L. still had his office on the lot; also, the film needed all the post-season help it could get. COOL HAND LUKE and IN COLD BLOOD were likely finalists in the Best Picture race, as they were among the top studio films of the year. THE DIRTY DOZEN was Metro's top non-roadshow grosser of the '60s, and was grudgingly respected as something new; besides, DOZEN producer Ken Hyman had just taken the production reins at Warners. Donen's TWO FOR THE ROAD was a well-respected picture, for which Fox would have pushed hard for year-end honors, particularly with ten possible spots. I would point out that Universal (able to muster relatively few Best Picture nominees for much of the '50s and almost all of the '60s), might theoretically have managed to push its relatively successful roadshow THOROUGHLY MODERN MILLIE (which got seven nominations, winning one Oscar) over WB's mostly stillborn CAMELOT. But Warners was far better at this kind of game than U.

As much as I want to see the Steven Soderbergh/Brad Pitt version of Moneyball, reality needs to return to the movie business. Soderbergh himself occupies a strange nexus within Hollywood. He once told me that he didn't want to direct movies out of the back seat of a limousine. And he is willing to play studio ball or indie ball, as he sees fit. At the same time, like all gifted directors, he wants to push himself, and the art form. But he often loses interest in what movie audiences might want. (UPDATE: On Soderbergh's upcoming Warners' agro-business comedy The Informant!, starring Matt Damon, which is set to debut at September's Toronto Film Fest, the director was eager to be "audience friendly," says co-financeer Groundswell CEO Michael London.)

Sony chief Amy Pascal (who explains herself to the LAT's Patrick Goldstein) has every right to pull the plug on a movie that started to look too risky for a $57 million starter budget. Add marketing costs and the movie would have to score at least $100 million theatrically, and the DVD cushion isn't there anymore. (The NYT reports its Moneyball analysis here. And the WSJ reports on Paramount's efforts to outsource some home entertainment back office operations.)

That's the real reason that reality has set in. Soderbergh has also stated that the economics of the movie business are out of whack. He's right. A correction is long overdue. But I hate to see worthy movies going by the wayside. It would make sense for more filmmakers to step into the "specialty" side of the business and make these risky movies for a price.

Of course the Soderberghs and Michael Manns of the world want to express themselves as artists. And ride the studio gravy train. But the studios are not going to indulge their whims anymore at high budget levels. I'd hate for Public Enemies' mixed reception to give the studios an excuse to not make movies like this anymore. I also don't want Universal execs to abandon their willingness to try out-of-the-box movies that sometimes work (Wanted, Mamma Mia!) and sometimes don't (State of Play, Duplicity). The last thing we want is for them to make more movies like Land of the Lost!

Kim Masters examines Mann's movie m.o..

Because it's only going to get tougher for smart movies for adults to get made, moviemakers who land a chance at bat need to hit these films out of the park--and connect with audiences. Now is not the time for navel-gazing and experimentation at big-budget levels. That's the deal.

Roman Polanski once told Charlie Rose how devilishly hard it is to get everything to go right on a movie. So many little things can turn a promising project into something that never quite gels. Going in, Cheri, a French/British/German co-production adapted by Christopher Hampton (Dangerous Liaisons) from the Colette novel, directed by Stephen Frears (The Queen) and starring Michelle Pfeiffer in the starring role of an aging courtesan, must have looked so tempting.

But several factors doomed this enterprise. While the English-language movie aimed at global audiences has long been a cinema staple, moviegoers now demand too much authenticity. J.J. Abrams on Lost, Mel Gibson and Quentin Tarantino are right. Go for the real language and slap on the subtitles. At least it's real.

While top European craftspeople did beautiful work on this film--the sets and costumes are exquisite--and Alexandre Desplat's score is the Frenchiest thing in the movie, if you put too many people from different countries into one milieu, something starts to go wrong. (Think Tetro.) Here, American actresses Pfeiffer and Kathy Bates don't quite match up with a cast of Brits, including the title character, Rupert Friend. Even the MGM classic Gigi, while patently stylized and shot on a back lot, offered real Frenchmen Maurice Chevalier and Louis Jourdan and singer/dancer Leslie Caron to sell the audience. It worked. Would such a confection work today? Hard to say.

Cheri has already opened to tepid reviews overseas. It might have been better in hindsight for the filmmakers to orchestrate the opening so that Miramax would launch the film stateside first, where it might have had a friendlier initial reception. So far reviews are OK.

Cinematical talks to Frears.

I had heard about Lisa Cholodenko's new movie, The Kids Are All Right, which she cowrote with Stuart Blumberg. (Michael Fleming runs the official start of production announcement here.) It's a great story: Julianne Moore and Annette Bening are long-time partners; each mothered a kid with sperm from the same anonymous donor. Doctor Bening has a brainy achiever girl (Mia Wasikowska), while designer Moore's son is a jock (Josh Hutcherson). He wants to meet his father (Mark Ruffalo) and talks his 18-year-old sister into getting permission to approach him. The father doesn't mind. But complications ensue when he gets involved with his son's mother.

I hear the script is very sexy. We'll see how much winds up in the indie movie, which started shooting in L.A. Tuesday. Cholodenko (High Art, Laurel Canyon) has great chops, but hasn't broken into the mainstream. One market niche the filmmakers can count on: the under-served lesbian audience will turn out in droves.

Oliver Parker's teen girls run amuck comedy St. Trinian's, an indie hit in the UK, is opening stateside August 28. Much as I admire the always brave and forthright Colin Firth, the wackily playful Russell Brand and Rupert Everett in drag, this could go either way:

I always loved the original, starring Alistair Sim in drag, The Belles of St. Trinian's:

This The Informant! trailer plays like Steven Soderbergh's tongue-in-cheek comedic bumbling Get Smart/Inspector Clouseau version of The Insider, basically. I want to see it.

David Hudson is departing his daily obsessive IFC blog. This leaves a hole, especially at film fests, when he'd aggregate all the best reviews on any given film. (He used to write the GreenCine daily blog). But he's planning something and it makes sense that the brainy Berlin-based blogger and cinephile wouldn't want to do that forever. All best to him. I feel the online cinelandscape shifting. So does IndieWire's Eugene Hernandez.

KTLA reports on TMZ news that Jackson is not the biological parent of his children, nor is ex-wife Debbie Rowe. And Us Weekly suggests that LA dermatologist Arnold Klein, who employed Rowe as a nurse, donated the sperm for Prince Michael 1 and Paris Michael? Is this credible? UPDATE: Rowe's attorney insists she is their biological mother.

UPDATE: The Daily Beast quotes an unnamed Jackson insider with a thesis: Jackson was trying to provoke a brief hospital visit to get out of starting his tour.

The Wall Street Journal digs into the issues surrounding Michael Jackson's will, which appears to have been made in 2002, and leaves out father Joseph Jackson. The late singer's three children are in their grandmother Katherine Jackson's custody until a July hearing. For now, Jackson's mother also has limited control of his assets, reports the LAT. Jackson's estate executors have been named. He is believed to owe $500 million, but his assets should cover that, leaving his estate with some $200 million. Also, his songs are selling like hotcakes. The funeral is still up in the air.

Time examines in grisly detail why Jackson has had two autopsies.

MTV reports on the drug sweep at Jackson's house.

UPDATE: People Magazine posts a video photo montage of Jackson's changing face. Watching a VH1 special the other night, I was reminded of the joy he brought to performing. Watch his face show not only changes from plastic surgery but increasing sadness.

In many ways watching Sacha Baron Cohen promote his new movie Bruno, from his GQ layout and MTV Awards Eminem stunt to the series of global premiere stunts, from London to L.A. to Sydney, is more fun than the movie itself. While his performance art gives us a bit of distance, in the movie Larry Charles and Baron Cohen push audiences way past their comfort zones. No matter how sophisticated or tough you think you are--straight, gay, male, female, young, old--it doesn't matter. Something in the movie will make you squirm. (Here's Todd McCarthy.)

Me? [SPOILER ALERT] I had less trouble with simulated gay sex between Bruno and his diminutive boyfriend, complete with various accessories and black squares covering penetration, than I did with a sequence at a real swingers party that ends with a giant nipple-ringed dominatrix whipping Baron Cohen as Bruno (he flees, naked, into the night). That, Charles told me, was real. And the MPAA granted this movie an R-rating--thanks to various snips and black squares over private parts (shades of Eyes Wide Shut). One Universal exec admitted that those squares had to be made bigger to get the R-rating and definitely made the images more, not less, disturbing.

If ever a movie has earned an NC-17 rating, this is it. Now that I've seen Bruno, which is politically incorrect, button-pushing, brilliant, diabolical, provocative, challenging and often very funny, I understand the reactions I've been getting: not, "you have to see this," "it's hilarious" or "it's going to be huge."

People tend to talk in subdued, muted terms about how the movie made them feel: uncomfortable. And that sort of word-of-mouth--despite whatever opening Universal manages to muster with its superb global marketing and awareness--will tamp down Bruno's potential box office. Of course, even if we Puritan Americans resist Bruno's crude charms, the rest of the world may embrace them. (Not so sure.)

When Bruno struts a rakish short-shorts Hasidic outfit in Israel and an outraged Jew chases him down the street, you watch with a mix of amusement and horror. For one thing, Baron Cohen demanded a reaction, and got it. He was fearless. He was in danger of starting a riot and had to run for his life (a shopkeeper had to harbor him until he could sneak into one of many getaway cars used during the shoot). The LAT's John Horn quotes Universal's Bruno production notes on how much danger the filmmakers courted while making Bruno. What will the adrenaline junkie do next to top this?

The Academy has invited 134 new members, many of them long overdue, from actor Hugh Jackman--who wasn't a member when he hosted the Oscars on February 22--and producer Paula Wagner to directors Danny Boyle and Henry Selick, execs Daniel Battsek and Joe Drake, and writers John August and Howard A. Rodman.

The full release is on the jump.

The New Yorker's Malcolm Gladwell uses his economic analytical chops on Wired editor Chris Anderson's Free: The Future of a Radical Price (Hyperion; $26.99) and gives us reason for hope. For one thing, YouTube makes no money. And iTunes does.

The NYT's David Carr wants Gladwell to give "a pat-down" to Buzzmachine blogger Jeff Jarvis' What Would Google Do?, which is a persuasively well-argued must-read. I concur.

UPDATE: Thanks to Mark, who supplied Anderson's response.

It's not surprising that new Paramount production head Adam Goodman took advantage of his DreamWorks insider status and nabbed a high-profile project, License to Steal, from the super-hot screenwriter-producing team Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci. This buy of an overtly commercial Salon feature about globe-trotting Repo men chasing luxury planes and boats was pursued by several top directors and producers. It signals that an inside-Hollywood pro is back in charge, and the once-quiet studio is back in buying mode. When Paramount put into turnaround projects such as John Carter of Mars and Twilight , that sent another signal: the studio didn't recognize potential franchises.

When I interviewed Kurtzman and Orci on Star Trek's opening day (below), I knew they were sitting on three likely summer hits: they wrote Star Trek and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and executive-produced The Proposal. Now they've turned into bonafide summer smashes. Star Trek has grossed $246 million domestic and $368 worldwide. The Proposal is chugging along at $69 million domestically, while Transformers came pretty close to breaking The Dark Knight's $203 million five day record, despite execrable reviews (audiences liked it more than critics). Michael Bay talks to Michael Fleming about his opening night rituals.

Next for Orci and Kurtzman: Cowboys and Aliens and the Star Trek sequel, which is keeping them up at night. And Paramount wants another Transformers, Brad Grey tells Ben Fritz. Sooner rather than later. (Bay told me he wanted to take a breather with something else. We'll see.)

The changing Oscar rules are still a hot topic these days. At an Academy screening of Cheri last weekend (more on that anon), some members wanted to be consulted, while others feel that the Board of Governors did its job. One member who sees everything and votes with the foreign branch doesn't care at all. Just who are the folks who vote for these crucial decisions? The Academy's official governors list is on the jump.

Variety editor-in-chief Tim Gray weighs in. So does the LAT's Patrick Goldstein, twice, the NYT's David Carr, Time's Richard Corliss, and In Contention's Kris Tapley. UPDATE: Here's The Envelope's Tom O'Neil.

A friend sent me this list of ten films from 1999:

All About My Mother

Being John Malkovich

Boys Don't Cry

Election

Eyes Wide Shut

Fight Club

Magnolia

The Matrix

The Talented Mr. Ripley

Topsy Turvy

Here are the five best picture candidates that year:

American Beauty

The Cider House Rules

The Green Mile

The Insider

The Sixth Sense

That year, the Academy voted for mainstream soft lobs down the middle over higher brow fare. Some of the movies on the long 1999 list (Fight Club, Eyes Wide Shut) were tainted by failure at the time (and look better in hindsight), while others came from directors who hadn't yet earned admission into the Academy insiders club. Boys Don't Cry earned a deserved Best Actress win for Hilary Swank. Others landed nominations in other categories.

What makes so many people uncomfortable is the unknown. How will it work? Were these monumental changes made for the right reasons (commerce, or art)? And will the changes achieve the desired goals? I totally approve of moving the honorary Oscars to a separate awards show, where everyone will get more time. And I will have to deal, I admit, with no longer being an Oscar expert. Ten movies vying for best picture levels the Oscar prognosticator playing field: now everybody knows nothing.

Universal is counting on one thing to open Michael Mann's Public Enemies: Johnny Depp. According to The Ulmer Scale, he's the second most popular movie star in the world, after Will Smith. That's based on his hugely successful roles as broadly comedic, over-the-top Captain Jack Sparrow in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. But while Sweeney Todd wouldn't have done as well without him, Depp can only move the needle so far.

Being a movie star means giving the audience what they want, most of the time. Even that doesn't seem to be working this summer, as movies starring Will Ferrell, Eddie Murphy and Christian Bale have stumbled at the b.o. While this may give the studios more leverage in reducing movie star salaries going forward, it doesn't solve the problem that Universal is facing right now--and studio co-chairman Marc Shmuger is circling in this revealing LAT story about the waning power of stardom. Do audiences want Depp as a fairly realistic, non-fantasy version of Depression-era bank robber John Dillinger?

Advance tracking for Public Enemies, which opens July 1, indicates that Depp has some star allure. But early reviews reveal that the movie is not populist fare. (Here's Variety and Time.) It's Mann's take on a familiar saga: outlaws on the lam, running out of time, relentlessly pursued by the Feds. Mann populates the movie with compelling actors, from Depp to Christian Bale as FBI-man Melvin Purvis, Billy Crudup as J. Edgar Hoover, Stephen Lang as a Texas Ranger and incomparable Oscar-winning French actress Marion Cotillard as Dillinger's beloved gun moll. She warms up the movie, thankfully, as the one person he cares about. While fitfully engaging, the movie is often flat as a pancake, no matter how hard Elliot Goldenthal's jazz-inflected score works to pump things up. Only in the last half hour, as Dillinger fights for his life as the Feds turn his one-time allies against him, does the movie tighten into a taut and riveting drama.

Mann has always been a modern filmmaker working at the forward edge of technology and style. His biggest misstep here is the same as the Wachowskis with Speed Racer. His pursuit of what interests him formally may leave audiences behind. He wanted to immerse us in the period, he told me, by shooting the picture in high-definition video. The Sony F23 allowed him to manipulate color in the camera, cinematographer Dante Spinotti told ICG Magazine. "You can't come back," he said. "In other words, we were not recording in a safe, comfortable way." Mann confessed to playing with a digital intermediate quite a bit, and was color-correcting up to the last minute before last week's LAFF premiere.

HD is clear, harsh, honest. It works fine in a contemporary setting like Collateral or Miami Vice. (Somehow, David Fincher, who attended the Public Enemies premiere last week, made period HD work in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Zodiac.) But when moviegoers watch a period film, no matter how authentically recreated, they aren't expecting it to look like this. There's something jarring about the way Public Enemies shoves us into the past. While Steven Soderbergh alienated folks by shooting The Good German using old-studio techniques, the way Mann shot Public Enemies calls attention to its modernity. (UPDATE: SpoutBlog's Karina Longworth also addresses the film's production values.)

Here are takeouts in the NYT and The Guardian. Depp does Letterman, and Universal provides a featurette:

Film Independent chief Dawn Hudson and new LAFF director Rebecca Yeldham were heaving sighs of relief at the sunny awards brunch at the Hammer Museum Sunday. While official figures are not in, sales of festival passes were down at this year's LAFF, but day-to-day ticket sales were brisk, with many sell-outs, Hudson said. While the various jury and audience award winners are listed on the jump, the real winners of the 10-day fest were the movies that picked up attention and possible distribution.

Winner of a jury acting prize for Shayne Topp, Suzi Yoonessi’s Dear Lemon Lima picked up the most buzz at the fest. Submarine's Josh Braun is repping the mother-daughter flick set in Alaska. (Photo right of cast and director at LAFF awards brunch.) The epistolary film is narrated by 13-year-old Vanessa (part-Yup'ik actress Savanah Wiltfong), who tweets her disappointment that Philip won an acting prize:

although I won snowstorm survivor, philip won the lead in my life story. I tried to reach for the stars, but all I got was melted ice cream.

Winner of the dramatic audience award, surprisingly, was Cyrus Nowrasteh's intense Iranian drama The Stoning of Soraya M., starring Shohreh Aghdashloo, which is in current release. The doc audience award went to Jeffrey Levy-Hinte's music movie Soul Power, which Sony Pictures Classics is releasing July 10.

The narrative jury prize winner was Ben Chace and Sam Fleischner (pictured) for Jamaica-set Wah Do Dem (What They Do). They worked nine months on the film, about a white kid who runs afoul of some Jamaicans, and hope to capitalize on their win to get a distribution partner and a music compilation album, they said.

Building on momentum from Sundance, Ondi Timoner's We Live in Public continues to build a following. IFC will open the film at the IFC Center in New York in August followed by LA and five other cities in September. Timoner is hiring 42 West to push the film for awards consideration and an Internet event as well.

Other docs played well, from Sundance hit No Impact Man, which pits passionate environmentalist Colin Beavan against his journalist/consumer wife Michele, to blogger/filmmaker A.J. Schnack's behind-the-scenes Denver expose, The Convention. Oscilloscope picked up No Impact Man just before LAFF, while The Convention seeks a distrib.

The reviews Kathryn Bigelow has nabbed for The Hurt Locker (91 on Metacritic) are noteworthy. That doesn't mean that the movie will score at the boxoffice for Summit, but it's off to the second-strongest start for an indie this year. The movie has a shot at one of ten slots in the wide open Oscar best picture race. Even the NYT's tough-minded Manohla Dargis, who has long shared with me a sense of dismay at the thin ranks of gifted women directors, was moved to step out of the reviewer's box to praise Bigelow here.

Aside from critics' raves, The Hurt Locker boasts other advantages in the Oscar race. Bigelow is respected in the industry for making movies that are irrelevant to her gender; this movie is as intellectually rigorous and stylishly crafted as any Michael Mann film. (If anything, it's more engaging and viscerally exciting than, say, Public Enemies.) Also, the film industry, well aware of the failure of every Iraq War film to date, has been waiting for the exception that would break through and reach audiences. With America on the verge of withdrawing from Iraq, the timing may be right for this one. Finally, Bigelow gets points not only for figuring out a way to approach the subject that works, but for a high degree of difficulty.

It's shaping up to be an unusually good year for women directors. New Zealand writer-director Jane Campion, the only woman to ever win the Cannes Palme d'Or, is one of three women to be nominated for the best director Oscar, along with Sofia Coppola and Lena Wertmuller. (She won best screenplay for The Piano.) Bright Star, her tragic period romance about John Keats and Fanny Brawne, played well at Cannes but didn't take home a prize. New indie distributor Bob Berney plans to promote Bright Star on the fall fest circuit before a September opening. The impeccably mounted costume drama is quite Academy friendly.

The third Oscar possibility is Mira Nair, whose hits The Namesake, Monsoon Wedding and Mississippi Masala have earned her an Oscar shot with her latest film, Amelia, a biopic about flier Amelia Earhart starring Oscar-winner Hilary Swank in the title role. It doesn't hurt that Fox Searchlight (Slumdog Millionaire, Juno) is shepherding this period adventure, which will also open in October after hitting the fest circuit.

Here's the Amelia trailer:

Here's my Toronto chat with Bigelow:

I know that we're all reading a lot about Michael Jackson--we're hungry to know more, and the media is anxious to capitalize on that need--but veteran music critic Robert Hilburn's piece in the LAT was the most personal, contextual and well-observed I've read so far. It's yet another reminder of why newspapers like the LAT should hold on to their best writers.

On the lurid side, here's a London tabloid's take on what Michael Jackson's eventual toxicology report may look like.

Spike Lee recalls shooting a video with Jackson.

Here's Michael's appearance on The Simpsons:

Netflix promised anyone who improved their recommendation algorithm by 10% their $1-million Netflix Prize. One team claims 10.5% If no one tops them, the money could be theirs.