The first day of the 35th Telluride Film Festival started off hot and dry at the annual patron's brunch up the mountain. Tributee Jean Simmons sat under a melon-colored hat and blue umbrella, charming eager listeners, still beautiful. She remembered her then-husband, director Richard Brooks, telling Burt Lancaster during the filming of Elmer Gantry, "More teeth!" "Burt worked out on a trapeze every morning," Simmons said.

The Brits sat at one table, chowing down on eggs and chanterelles: Miramax's Daniel Battsek, Happy-Go-Lucky director Mike Leigh, and Hunger director Steve McQueen. Like Cannes, IFC's Jonathan Sehring and Sony's Michael Barker and Tom Bernard (pictured with Fest co-director Gary Meyer and critics Scott Foundas and Todd McCarthy) seem to be most aggressively tracking possible pick-ups.

Tracy Chapman and sister Aneta were among the patrons who came "for fun, just to see movies, not working," said Chapman.

At the Sheridan Opera House that night, doc filmmaker Ken Burns, at Telluride for his 19th straight year, welcomed the crowd with: "Can we have a good film fest?"

"Yes, we can," they crowed.

After an impressive montage of commercials and music videos of Madonna, Michael Jackson, Iggy Pop and others, plus clips of Seven, The Game, Fight Club, Panic Room and Zodiac, Todd McCarthy did an in-depth career interview with Fincher. (More of that conversation later.)

Then the crowd watched 20 minutes of artfully edited fragments of the $150 million The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, adapted by Eric Roth from a 1922 short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Newborn Benjamin Button is named by a young black woman (Taraji P. Henson) in post-World War I New Orleans after his mother dies giving birth and his father, horrified by his wizened appearance, drops him on the doorstep of an old folks home.

Taking full advantage of his ILM background, Fincher takes Button (Brad Pitt) from a tiny baby with the body of an old arthritic man through younger and more robust incarnations as he ages. He serves as a merchant seaman and in one epic sequence, runs into the deadly aftermath of a WWII attack by a submarine on a warship. Button eventually catches up with love interests Cate Blanchett, who tries to seduce him by dancing for him, and Tilda Swinton, who feeds him caviar and vodka. The movie is gorgeously mounted in minute period detail, complete with swooping crane shots and intricate camera moves. Produced by Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall (pictured here at the Sheridan Opera House with Fincher), Button has a burnished sepia polish.

According to Paramount production exec Brad Weston, the movie has been cut by another five minutes down to "a little over two and half hours," he said. It's about to be locked. After years of stalled development the movie was greenlit by new Paramount chief Brad Grey after previous management teams had balked at its cost, revived because Grey was looking for a vehicle for Brad Pitt. Fincher, who has given Pitt some of his juiciest roles, had just the thing. The movie could go either way--toward Oscar season glory or inflated noble failure. That's the risk everyone takes with an all-in bet like this. Certainly there's never been anything like it.

IndieWire's Eugene Hernandez, Spout's Karina Longworth and I jammed into the tiny Back Lot to see Prodigal Sons, which San Francisco critic David Thomson had promoted so enticingly in the program. (Here's his Guardian write-up.) Faced with the prospect of returning to her 20th high school reunion in Helena, Montana, Kimberly Reed enlisted a cinematographer pal to help her document a complicated set of issues. She had been the popular high school football star Paul, and now she was transexual Kim, with her girlfriend Claire in tow. Clearly, she and her older brother Marc, who was adopted nine months before she was born, never got along. The movie unflinchingly shows the mentally unstable Marc trying not only to cope, after ten years estrangement, with his brother's sex change into a sister, but the news that his birth mother was the daughter of Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth. Oddly, Marc was interviewed for another doc "Searching for Orson," while this film was being made.

Reed tries to weave her story, her brother's story, and their dramatic family conflict into a coherent documentary, but in this case a more experienced filmmaker/outsider might have been better suited to shape this mother lode of material. "It was very turbulent to have that camera presence there," she admitted at the Q & A. "Our family was off and running with the drama we were often engaged in." UPDATE: Todd McCarthy's review.

Finally, Mark Urman has left ThinkFilm and found himself a new job at Senator Entertainment as distribution chief. The guy must be heaving a huge sigh of relief as he gets out from under the strain of dealing with the financially challenged David Bergstein empire. It remains to be seen what will happen to yet another indie distrib under fire. Urman built a good organization but was strapped by owner Bergstein's inability to pay his vendors in a timely manner.

Click here for Dave McNary's story

The full press release is after the jump.

Mike Jones and I winged from LAX to Montrose, Colorado on the packed Telluride Film Fest charter, which always yields good advance info. From there a shuttle bus through the glorious Rockies brought us to Telluride.

For one thing, producer-turned-director Marc Abrahams (Children of Men) was on the plane, along with stars Greg Kinnear and Lauren Graham, which meant that one of the to-be-announced sneaks at the fest is Flash of Genius, a straight-ahead well-acted four-hankie drama about a guy who invents the intermittent windshield wiper and refuses to back down in his fight against The Man, in this case, Detroit's big car companies. Universal is releasing.

Distrib veteran M.J. Peckos is debuting American Violet, directed by Walt Disney's great-nephew, Tim Disney and starring Alfre Woodard.

Irish film Kisses (left), which was well-reviewed out of Galway and Locarno, is bound for Toronto, where CAA hopes to find a North American buyer (Focus Features has foreign). Distribs like IFC and SPC have seen a rough version of the film; it will screen here without subtitles (due to thick brogues) but will boast titles in Toronto.

Indian actress-turned-director Nandita Das is giving Firaaq a "gentle tryout before Toronto," she says. She's selling it herself. Writer Salman Rushdie is here to offer support, even though he has nothing to do with the movie.

IFC has scooped up Telluride and Toronto title Flame & Citron.

Perusing the program, which was handed out to everyone on the plane, I wasn't the only one interested in a doc called Prodigal Sons, directed by Kimberly Reed, who grew up as Paul, the brother of Marc, who was adopted. After a tendentious youth--she was the good boy, while Marc was the black sheep-- and an estrangement of 10 years, they confront their relationship. And Marc reveals that he has discovered that he is the grandson of Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth. Yikes.

On the plane I sat next to LA Weekly critic Scott Foundas--who files for all 16 of New Times' alternative weeklies. He and Variety's Todd McCarthy are each doing a Q & A with director David Fincher, who will unspool almost 20 minutes of footage from The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, a Brad Pitt movie with a two hour 43 minute running time at last count and a high budget estimated at some $180 million. Hard to believe. The studio's says it's $150 million. Can't wait to see the footage. Paramount's new marketing co-prexy Megan Colligan arranged Fincher's debut here, after last year's similar screening of There Will be Blood footage went so well.

McCarthy says there are 14 films to review here. Wow.

David Duchovny has entered rehab. for "sex addiction," he said. I guess his role as a womanizer in Showtime's Californication was type-casting, as was his cameo in Steven Soderbergh's Full Frontal as a well-endowed producer, which made fun of his real-life rep.

[Posted by Jeff Sneider]

Apparently Kevin Smith has seen "Star Trek" and predicts big things for star Chris Pine. Does this mean J.J. Abrams has seen "Zack and Miri Make a Porno?"

Untested AICN spy LBJeff reports that "The Office" star B.J. Novak has officially enlisted in the cast of Quentin Tarantino's "Inglorious Bastards." No word yet on whether Mindy Kaling's Kelly Kapoor will follow him to the production in Germany.

According to IESB, Michael Keaton will voice Barbie's squeeze Ken in "Toy Story 3." This news has been around a few days but that doesn't make it any less awesome.

JoBlo has the first still from the Jim Carrey-Ewan McGregor film "I Love You Philip Morris," and it's a doozy!

AICN has reader reviews of Stephen Daldry's "The Reader" and Frank Miller's "The Spirit." The former, starring Ralph Fiennes and Kate Winslet, seems to have Oscar hopes, while the latter has decidedly lesser aspirations, although it does look like a lot of Christmas Day fun despite the negative buzz out of Comic-Con.

For those of you who like your DVDs to come in 3-disc Special Editions, Joblo has the details on "Wall-E" and a "300" double-dip, both of which are due to hit shelves on Nov. 18.

And finally, if you missed Woody Allen's production diary for "Vicky Cristina Barcelona" in the NY Times, you should definitely give it a read. It's a little corny but for the most part it's hilarious.

I'm on my way to Telluride. Here's Mike Jones' Variety story. The line-up is diverse, eclectic and relatively arcane. The biggest names this year are directors David Fincher, Mike Leigh and Paul Schrader; they will show the director's cut of Zodiac (and some Benjamin Button footage), Happy-Go-Lucky and Adam Resurrected, respectively. Otherwise, the program is heavy on foreign titles, many from Cannes, and light on American fare. But Telluride has always prided itself on picking the best films out there and has never been about pulling big names. Filmmakers and stars love to go there, but several distribs have fallen out of the picture, as we all know. Stay tuned.

Full Telluride release after the jump.

The NYT's Michael Cieply takes the measure of the Toronto Fest lineup, from fall releases that need all the media help they can get--such as Iraq-themed The Lucky Ones and former WIP police pic Pride & Glory--to new pics for sale, like Darren Aronofsky's The Wrestler, starring Mickey Rourke as a broken fighter.

One film that is negotiating a final distribution deal is Steven Soderbergh's four-hour-plus, two-part Che, which debuted to mixed response at Cannes. While I still think Che's ideal home would be HBO, where smart audiences who would best appreciate the movie could settle down with its full running time on their own terms, I'm betting that the film will wind up in the hands of 2929 Entertainment moguls Mark Cuban and Todd Wagner, who backed Soderbergh's 2005 day-and-date experiment, Bubble. Why not take Che and give it the old Magnolia Ultra VOD treatment?

One way or the other, expect a Che distrib announcement soon.

Before Aaron Sorkin started writing his movie about the creation of Facebook for producer Scott Rudin, he decided he'd better get himself a Facebook page. So he got a researcher to do it. New York Magazine's Vulture got Rudin to confirm that Sorkin is in fact writing the script. UPDATE: Here's Variety and more details at 02138.

The Coen brothers have always been nothing if not idiosyncratic, and their trademark humor is not shared by everyone. It's always possible that their Oscar-winning No Country for Old Men was lightning in a bottle, a movie that caught the zeitgeist just the right way at just the right time.

Variety's Todd McCarthy is underwhelmed by their latest, the CIA caper comedy Burn After Reading, starring George Clooney, Brad Pitt, John Malkovich and Frances McDormand, which opened Venice Wednesday night, while Peter Bart clearly enjoyed the movie.

I will catch it in Toronto. Here's the latest trailer.

Meanwhile the Coens are casting their next, the low-budget 60s period A Serious Man, starring stage actor Michael Stuhlbarg (The Pillowman) and TV's Richard Kind (Spin City) as a college professor and his brother, which is set to shoot in the Coens' home state, Minnesota. Unlike their last Scandinavian-inflected pic, Fargo, this one is seriously Jewish. So's their next script assignment: adapting Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union.

[Venice photos courtesy Awards Daily]

No matter how bad Babylon A.D is (here's Variety's pan of the full-length European version), it's usually not a good idea for a director to go negative on his own movie, especially when the studio's actually spending marketing bucks to support it. Suppose the movie does some business? Then you are really high and dry, without being able to claim credit for a hit.

Kassovitz is not only protesting Fox's trimmed version, which opens August 29 stateside, shorter by ten minutes. (Here's Variety's report.) He insists that Fox, which co-financed the picture with Studio Canal, interfered with production throughout. This was a personal project for him, pursued for five years.

Fox never makes it easy for filmmakers; the studio is notoriously hands-on, particularly with mainstream action fare like this. What did Kassovitz expect from a big-budget sci-fi actioner starring Vin Diesel? While I have some sympathy for Kassovitz, unless you are James Cameron or Steven Spielberg, when a movie climbs over $100 million, you give away a lot of control. "They don't give a shit," Kassovitz told amctv.com.

Given the hundreds of movies unspooling in Toronto, key press in LA and NY are getting a head start on some of the screenings that will get piled up there. It's impossible to see everything.

Of the films I've seen, three masterful performances by women could take off in Toronto.

Rachel Weisz steals the show from romantic interest Adrien Brody and his fellow con-man, Mark Ruffalo, in Brothers Bloom, Rian Johnson's follow-up to his Sundance debut film, Brick. The caper comedy continues Johnson's high-style reinvention of past genres; I suspect it will play to a hip young audience. It's intricately plotted light fun, in the vein of Two for the Road, The List of Adrian Messenger, The Sting, House of Games (Ricky Jay narrates) or Topkapi (Maximillian Schell has a role in Bloom).

Johnson finished the script nine months after Brick's debut at the 2005 Sundance fest. Producer Ram Bergman raised money from Jim Stern's Endgame for the movie, which finally came in under $20 million. The filmmakers used four locations-- Montenegro, Serbia, Romania, and New Jersey-- to cover for ten key locales. And while the movie twists and turns, it doesn't go where you expect. Summit picked it up last December and will mount a commercial October release; it's not heading for awards contention.

Post her Constant Gardener Oscar win, Weisz was the first one in on Brothers Bloom, recognizing a juicy role in the reclusive, brainy heiress starving for love and experience who is drawn into the brothers Bloom's elaborate con game. "It was a tricky character," Johnson says. "She did a lot of work on the energy level to make it feel genuine. It could have been the sum of her quirks. She put life behind it. She was fearless."

Brit auteur Mike Leigh turns lighter with Happy-Go-Lucky, which stars Sally Hawkins as a wackily ebullient school teacher. She cares about people, and no matter how dark the world around her gets, it doesn't take her long to recover her footing and keep on looking at the bright side of life. She's hilarious, joyful, and probably, to some, a tad annoying. Leigh throws her into some trying situations, and asks why such a winning charmer doesn't find a mate. By film's end, there is some hope on that front. Hawkins won the best actress prize at Berlin, and could build some awards momentum if Miramax manages the film with a sure hand.

Kelly Reichardt's Wendy and Lucy debuted at Cannes, where it scored rave reviews from Variety and Cinematical. I can see why. While I found Reichardt's Old Joy tedious and pedantic, this small-scale intimate drama is sure-footed and precise, and entirely focused on Michelle Williams as a young woman, Wendy, stuck in an Oregon town en route to Alaska. She is vulnerable and alone and devastated when her car breaks down and she loses her dog, Lucy.

Again, given the right handling--tiny distrib Oscilloscope is releasing the pic December 7--Williams could get some attention for this moving role. (She's also part of Charlie Kaufman's sprawling ensemble in Synecdoche, New York, which will show in Toronto.) Williams just suffered a tough year, with the death of her child's father, Heath Ledger, who co-starred with her in Brokeback Mountain, for which they both earned Oscar noms. Williams' Wendy and Lucy performance is a sad, four-handkerchief tour-de-force. It's a long shot, but if enough actors see this movie, Williams and Ledger could both be nominated in the same year, again.

While the big studio pictures are steady as they go this year, it's been a lousy market for the indies, from the studio specialty divisions to the indies with no safety blanket, like David Bergstein's various companies, including ThinkFilm. The LAT covers the sordid history of Bergstein's financial troubles over the past year.

Fact is, as we head toward the Toronto Fest, ThinkFilm has started to pay some of its bills, including two PR firms, Nancy Willen PR and 42 West, and has picked up a few pictures, including the Viggo Mortensen picture Good, which is going to Toronto, as well as Five Dollars a Day, starring Christopher Walken and Sharon Stone. Both were financed in part by U.K.'s Aramid Capital Partners, which because of the currently dicey state of American indie distribution, gave an infusion to Bergstein because they wanted ThinkFilm to release their films.

The disturbing thing is Bergstein's cavalier approach to paying bills. Many vendors are still owed money, or have been forced to sue to get what is owed to them. But he is not alone. Other companies are known in the industry as late payers, renegotiating deals after the fact or trying to get out of financial commitments.

The Bob Yari Film Group, which was seduced by its early success with 2005 Oscar winner Crash and 2006's The Illusionist into launching its own distribution company, is navigating its own financial shoals. Yari Prods. and Alliance Film's Momentum Pictures are wrangling over monies paid for the U.K. distribution of Resurrecting the Champ. On Friday, Momentum filed a lawsuit in Los Angeles Federal Court claiming BYP owes it $1.3 million. The suit claims that BYP sold Momentum distribution rights to Resurrecting the Champ, starring Samuel L. Jackson, and Man on a Ledge, with John Travolta attached to star. Momentum says the deal allowed it to return Champ distribution rights to BYP if it failed to produce the Travolta pic, with BYP then responsible for repaying the minimum guarantee and other expenses. Man on a Ledge was never made and, according to the suit, BYP “has offered no legitimate excuse for its failure to honor its promises.” As for Champ, which has not been released in the U.K., the film earned $70K overseas.

Yari produced several films back in 2007 that have yet to be released, and has not opened any films during 2008. He's sending Rod Lurie's Nothing But the Truth, starring Kate Beckinsale as a reporter who outs a CIA agent, to Toronto, but has no plans to release it until 2009. (If the movie goes over well at the fest, a late-year platform is possible.)

The Lurie-produced What Doesn't Kill You, starring Ethan Hawke, is on the shelf, along with The Accidental Husband, The Maiden Heist and Assassination of a High School President, all set for 2009 release. Yari still plans to go forward with production this fall on Don Roos’s The Governess, starring Jennifer Lopez, and Killing Pablo, based on Mark Bowden’s book.

As the Democratic National Convention gets under way, Liberal gadfly Michael Moore's pre-election book, Mike's Election Guide, hits stores just in time for the height of the presidential campaign. The writer and doc filmmaker (Sicko) promotes himself--per usual--via email to his fans:

Friends,

This morning my new book officially goes on sale. It has a fancy title: "Mike's Election Guide." It's cheap ($11.19 on Amazon). It's got a cool quote on the back cover from Republican congressman Tom Davis: "The Republican brand is in the trash can ... If we were dog food, they would take us off the shelf."

And it's got 200+ pages of facts and ideas that you won't read anywhere else, like:

** Does John McCain think it's right to drop bombs on civilians in (his words) "heavily populated" cities?

** The only reason Social Security is running out of money is because people who make over $102,000 a year pay NO social security tax on what they make over $102,000 (if they did, we'd have enough money in Social Security for the next 75 years!).

** Bring back the draft -- but only draft the rich. If they have to serve, they won't be so eager to start ridiculous wars.

** Despite what you've heard, we actually pay more "taxes" than France or any European country -- and get none of the benefits they receive.

** Why we must arrest Misters Bush and Cheney as they slip out of the White House this coming January 20th for the crimes they have committed.

Viggo Mortensen followed up his three Lord of the Rings movies with two stellar performances, in David Cronenberg's A History of Violence and last year's Eastern Promises, for which Mortensen earned his first Oscar nom.

This put Mortensen in the Oscar Zone. And this fall Mortensen returns to the Toronto Film Fest with two pictures: the Ed Harris western Appaloosa (Groundswell, New Line/WB, 9/17) and the Holocaust drama Good (ThinkFilm, 12/08), which is the performance that Mortensen himself hopes is an Oscar-contender. Here's the trailer:

BTW, Twitch has a nice selection of Toronto trailers.

As usual, reactions of Toronto critics, press and audiences will tell the tale for the films hoping to push forward and go the distance for Oscar contention.

The Academy, with its elder voters, still harbors an affection for westerns. I hear good buzz on Appalooosa, but while actor-director Harris's Pollock did win an Oscar for Marcia Gay Harden (and Harris has been nommed as an actor four times), it's tough for a genre film to get serious Academy attention. In recent years, however, those barriers have become more breakable.

Also, WB is struggling to release and market all the pics it has piled up from New Line and Warner Independent. The studio is opening the Edward Norton-starrer Pride & Glory wide, and is sharing the release of WIP's Slumdog Millionaire, directed by Danny Boyle, with Fox Searchlight. So it will be unlikely that the studio will be able to mount and sustain serious Oscar races for many of these films.

Mortensen adores Good, which ThinkFilm plans to release by year's end. But the film is directed by Brazilian director Vicente Amorim, who is not in the Academy directors' club.

Mortensen's third fall pic, John Hillcoat's film version of Cormac McCarthy's post-apocalyptic novel The Road, wasn't ready for the film fests. The 2929 Entertainment pic is set for release November 26 by Dimension/MGM, which suggests that despite its literary pedigree (and the Oscar Best Picture win for No Country for Old Men, based on McCarthy's book), the film may not be on Harvey Weinstein's Oscar must-push list. That could always change.

Our man in Denver is Ted Johnson, who will be filing daily on the intersection between Washington and Hollywood at the Democratic National Convention. A few Hollywood stars are expected to show up to support the Obama/Biden ticket. Events get under way on Sunday.

I've been impressed with Obama's choice for running mate, Delaware Senator Joe Biden, head of the Foreign Relations committee, for quite a while: he's long been a regular on Charlie Rose. Here's a candid conversation from August 2007:

[Posted by Peter Debruge]

Hey kids, if you're in Los Angeles, don't miss Kevin Smith's new Crazy 4 Cult show tonight at Gallery 1988 (right next to Golden Apple on Melrose).

This is the second annual go-around for the mad-popular group show, in which dozens of top underground artists have their way with cult movies. This year's crop features tributes (Shepard Fairey takes another pass at They Live, with its subliminal "Obey" billboards), mashups (Jay and Silent Bob enter the Stand by Me universe in this painting) and very loose riffs on everything from Edward Scissorhands to The Big Lebowski to Snakes on a Plane. There's even a Fargo woodchipper homage! And who knew The Wizard of Oz was a cult movie? (Click either of the posters to see how many characters you can identify.)

In another city, a movie-themed show might seem low brow even to the low-brow art scene (that is, those pop surrealist painters who haven't caught on with the New York gallery world just yet), but here in Hollywood, a jamboree like this is playing to its target market, and Jensen Karp (who co-owns the gallery) has outdone himself, bringing in pieces from the likes of Brandon Bird, Mark Bodnar, Sas and Colin Christian, Luke Chueh, Joe Ledbetter, Kathie Olivas, Brandt Peters and Yoskay Yamamoto -- just to name a few faves.

Seriously, this is the place where art geek and film geek meet. I did the walkthrough this afternoon as Kevin, Scott Mosier, Jonah Hill and Pete Wentz cherry-picked the paintings they couldn't live without. As curator, Smith gets first dibs (tip to future Crazy 4 Cult participants: include Jay and Silent Bob in your submission, and it's sure to sell even before the show opens). He passed over Scott Campbell's cult-movie tree (since the Clerks duo isn't in there), but I couldn't resist.

Rest assured, there's plenty of genius stuff left -- this is Gallery 1988's densest group show yet, with even more creative work than you've seen in their superhero-, videogame- and toy-themed round-ups in the past. The festivities begin at 7. It's sure to be a madhouse, so show up early if you hope to buy, or saunter back sometime before Sept. 12 for a more relaxed gander. Check out all the artwork here.

Clearly, Warner Bros. is abandoning the idea of sending Superman into a movie with other superheroes, like a Superman/Batman movie or Justice League, because as Warner prexy Jeff Robinov admits in this long interview with The Wall Street Journal about his studio's future strategy, right now Warners doesn't know who Superman is. Wanted: a new model Superman.

Figuring out how the iconic DC comic character will proceed is front and center for the studio, which was not entirely happy with Bryan Singer's Superman Returns. Neither were many fans, who objected to the love triangle with a married Lois Lane, as well as her child, fathered by Superman. They also want a mightier and more formidable villain than Lex Luthor, played by Kevin Spacey. Director Bryan Singer, who is currently attached to what was to be a Superman Returns sequel, had promised fanns at Comic-Con to go "Wrath of Khan" on it. If Singer, who has been preoccupied with his upcoming World War II Tom Cruise movie, Valkyrie, can't find a "reboot" that meets Warners' expectations, they'll move on.

Clearly, the fans care deeply about this superhero. Comments flood in whenever we touch on the subject. There's life in the venerable comic book character yet, if Warners can crack this challenge.

Finally my fave film in Sundance is opening. I know you've seen a lot of Hurricane Katrina docs. Trouble the Water, which won the documentary grand jury prize, is rough around the edges. It's not a question of how well it was executed technically, or the quality of the writing and direction. What distinguishes this is the unexpected, lightning in a bottle aspect of this seemingly unremarkable 9th Ward marginal woman, Kimberly Roberts, who had no idea she was capable of being a hero until Katrina revealed to her and the folks around her who she really was. I get choked up thinking about it.

Here's the story I did in Sundance, and a video interview with filmmakers Carl Deal and Tia Lessin:

Here's the NYT review and Richard Corliss in Time.

And the trailer:

It's taken six years to turn Sue Monk Kidd's 2002 bestseller The Secret Life of Bees into a movie. Producers Lauren Shuler Donner and Joe Pichirallo, who followed the project from Fox Searchlight to Focus Features (where David Gordon Green was attached) to Will Smith's Overbrook production company and back to Fox Searchlight again, doggedly kept the project alive when it seemed like nobody wanted to do it.

Of course The Secret Life of Bees breaks all the conventions of what's deemed commercial these days: it's period (60s South Carolina) and it's about smart, cultured African-American women (not a low-brow urban comedy), although the lead is a white teenager (Dakota Fanning). The film could easily turn into yet another well-intentioned, inspirational heart-tugger (like Denzel Washington's The Great Debaters or Akeelah and the Bee) that earns rave reviews but still fails to build into a crossover hit.

So why did Fox Searchlight finally step up? First, because the book was a huge bestseller, there's a core femme demo to count on. Second, the women at the Fox specialty division loved the project and were willing to roll up their sleeves and push it. When marketing chief Nancy Utley throws her weight behind a pic, it usually gets made.

Gina Prince-Blythewood (Love and Basketball) adapted the book and directed the movie, which stars Fanning as 14-year-old girl who seeks more info about the mystery of her mother's death. She leaves her father (Paul Bettany) and turns up with her babysitter (Jennifer Hudson) at the home of a family of three sisters with a honey business: Queen Latifah. Sophie Okonedo (Hotel Rwanda) and singer Alicia Keys, who delivers a song for the closing credits. It's 1964, during the Civil Rights movement.

Searchlight will be targeting two under-served audiences: African-Americans and women. One reason movies aimed at women are so risky is that they depend so much on execution. Searchlight is fanning the flames in Toronto, where The Secret Life of Bees will debut on September 5 in advance of its October 17 opening on 1200 or so screens. Here's the new trailer:

2929 Entertainment's specialty distrib Magnolia Pictures has been growing and surviving--under the leadership of Eamonn Bowles and owners Mark Cuban and Todd Wagner, who also own HDNet and the indie Landmark Theatre chain. Magnolia released 27 pics in the last year--and plans to keep up that pace. Many of them don't go out that wide, or are booked on Landmark screens, while Flawless, starring Demi Moore, and some others have succeeded beyond expectations as "Ultra-VOD" releases. Here's my pre-Toronto column on the state of indie distribution.

Bowles is having a busy year: he's releasing two movies that 2929 had hoped to sell to another distrib, but will release themselves: Art Linson and Barry Levinson's Hollywood comedy What Just Happened?, with a big-name cast led by Robert DeNiro, which will not pursue the VOD model, and James Gray's well-reviewed Cannes entry, the triangle romance Two Lovers, starring Joaquin Phoenix and Gwenyth Paltrow, which has not yet been dated. Wonder if they'll take the VOD route on that one?

UPDATE: Over at The Circuit, festival vet Christian Gaines addresses the state of film festivals, one vital part of the puzzle for filmmakers wanting to get their works seen. Here's Part Two.

Mike Jones announces Peace Arch's pick-up of Toronto Midnight Madness pic JCVD, starring Jean-Claude Van Damme, at The Circuit.

I think I'll wait for James Cameron's Avatar.

The Holy Grail for VFX is creating animated human beings who are believable in a live-action context. Many movies like Superman Returns, Spider-Man 2 and Lemony Snicket have done it for split seconds or minutes between live action shots. But the humans are usually silent.

Remember the creepy "performance capture" humans in Polar Express that were just a little too real? The clip below uses a different process to turn video into animated form. Look at the eyes; and the face has a strange mirror-reflection look to it. It's creepy.

[Hat Tip: Gawker]

Several distribs might have wanted to kick the tires on Danny Boyle's Toronto and Telluride Fest entry Slumdog Millionaire, but Fox Searchlight, always a loyal Boyle supporter (Sunshine, 28 Days and its sequel), moved swiftly to pact with Warner Bros. to co-distribute after the studio shut down its specialty arm Warner Independent.

Boyle directs The Full Monty writer Simon Beaufoy's tale of a Mumbai street ragamuffin (Dev Patel) who wins on India's Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?

Check out these photos from a Star Wars wedding. As a Comic-Con vet I thought I'd seen everything.

They've already taken down the European trailer for Ron Howard's film version of the Peter Morgan play Frost/Nixon, starring Frank Langella as beleaguered president Richard Nixon and The Queen star Michael Sheen as British talk show host David Frost. UPDATE: So here's the official Yahoo trailer.

It was smart of Howard to import the Broadway leads for the Imagine/Working Title/Universal movie, which has Oscar hopes on its sleeve. But making the transition from stage to screen with a talky reality-based drama like this is always tricky. Reactions?

With his latest attention-grabbing letter posted to his huge email list, Michael Moore makes a modest proposal to Caroline Kennedy, who heads Barack Obama's vice-presidential search committee: choose herself.

Dear Caroline,

We've never met, so I hope you don't find this letter too presumptuous or inappropriate. As its contents involve the public's business, I am sending this to you via the public on the Internet. I knew your brother John. He was a great guy, and I know he would've had a ball during this thrilling and historic election year. We all miss him dearly.

Barack Obama selected you to head up his search for a vice presidential candidate. It appears we may be just days (hours?) away from learning who that choice will be.

The media is reporting that Senator Obama has narrowed his alternatives to three men: Joe Biden, Evan Bayh and Tim Kaine. They're all decent fellows, but they are far from the core of what the Obama campaign has been about: Change. Real change. Out with the old. And don't invade countries that pose no threat to us.

Senators Biden and Bayh voted for that invasion and that war, the war Barack ran against, the war Barack reminded us was the big difference between him and Senator Clinton because she voted for the war and he spoke out against it while running for Senate (a brave and bold thing to do back in 2002).

For Obama to place either of these senators on the ticket would be a huge blow to the millions that chose him in the primaries over Hillary. He will undercut one of the strongest advantages he has over the Hundred-Year War senator, Mr. McCain. By anointing a VP who did what McCain did in throwing us into this war, Mr. Obama will lose the moral high ground in the debates.

As for Governor Kaine of Virginia, his big problem is, well, Obama's big problem -- who is he? The toughest thing Barack has had to overcome -- and it will continue to be his biggest obstacle -- is that too many of the voters simply don't know him well enough to vote for him. The fact that Obama is new to the scene is both one of his most attractive qualities AND his biggest drawback. Too many Americans, who on the surface seem to like Barack Obama, just don't feel comfortable voting for someone who hasn't been on the national scene very long. It's a comfort level thing, and it may be just what keeps Obama from winning in November ("I'd rather vote for the devil I know than the devil I don't know").

What Obama needs is a vice presidential candidate who is NOT a professional politician, but someone who is well-known and beloved by people across the political spectrum; someone who, like Obama, spoke out against the war; someone who has a good and generous heart, who will be cheered by the rest of the world; someone whom we've known and loved and admired all our lives and who has dedicated her life to public service and to the greater good for all.

That person, Caroline, is you.

I cannot think of a more winning ticket than one that reads: "OBAMA-KENNEDY."

Clearly, Tom Cruise is not the mega-star he was when MGM chairman and CEO Harry Sloan gave him and then-partner Paula Wagner a piece of United Artists. Now he has the flop Lions for Lambs behind him and Bryan Singer's tarnished Valkyrie looming ahead--the film that looks like more of an expensive art house play than a commercial one. And having lost his partner Wagner last week, Cruise now runs UA alone (with ongoing help from hard-charging MGM prexy Mary Parent).

According to the LAT's Rachel Abramowitz's assessment of Cruise's career crossroads, the star walked away from Edwin A. Salt because of its Mission Impossible feel to do The Tourist instead. And he bailed on The 28th Amendment when he and Warners couldn't agree on which part he should play.

The details on the 28th Amendment scenario reveal a good deal about what Cruise is looking for in roles. Cruise played a doctor in Eyes Wide Shut, a U.S. Senator in Lions for Lambs, and a Nazi German World War II hero in Valkyrie (a role that I hear is quite moving). Cruise also earned raves in a cameo role in Tropic Thunder as a fat balding venal producer.

According to both Warners and director Phil Noyce, Cruise wanted to play the role of the president in 28th Amendment, a maverick third party independent candidate who gets elected to the highest office in the land only to discover that a cabal runs the country and he has no power. During a coup d'etat attempt, the president finds an ally in a burned out special forces operative who helps him to overcome the shadow government and set things right.

The studio, however, wanted Cruise to play the operative, which the star deemed too close to Mission Impossible. "He'd totally score," says one Warners exec. "It's a fantastic heroic character." But Cruise was more interested in the president. The studio didn't want Cruise to play the commander-in-chief because he carried too much baggage. "It was so front and center, a lightning rod kind of part," says the exec. "Don't set yourself up to be kicked in the nuts."

"I truly thought Tom would be great in the role of an outsider elected to the highest office," says Noyce. "The studio was always more than happy with Cruise for the original role, but wanted to explore further possibilities for the president, including Denzel. For them, it was about finding the right balance between the two leads, in a very high budget political thriller."

WB approached Washington to play the president. But he balked, at a time when Obama is running for that office. Meanwhile, Angelina Jolie signed on to Edwin A. Salt at Sony for a proposed February shoot. With 28th Amendment stalled at WB, Noyce went over to Salt. "A study of the American psyche at the end of the Bush era, 28th Amendment is the kind of movie that might not have found a studio backer at any time since the Nixon White House," says Noyce, who'd happily rejoin the project if he could put it together again, with Cruise, or someone else.

Cruise is also considering taking on a DC comic book character in Sleeper, possibly with director Sam Raimi. He's an operative with alien powers who is impervious to pain.

I had lunch last week with a former Paramount marketing honcho who always found Cruise to be pleasant and professional, even when the studio would have preferred that he back off a tad during the War of the Worlds PR debacle. Cruise first changed PR direction during The Last Samurai, parting ways with PMK press agent Pat Kingsley, because she told him that he should not openly espouse his Scientology beliefs. He insisted on doing just the opposite.

Cruise finally paid dearly for that heartfelt decision. Viacom head Sumner Redstone tossed him off the lot after a disappointing return on the last Mission Impossible installment. And now after Lions for Lambs, the biggest flop of his career, Cruise can't get Warners to let him play the president. Wow.

Abba fans rejoice: Universal will release a special sing-along edition of its smash musical Mamma Mia! in select theaters, starting Friday, August 29, for a limited run. Who would have guessed that since July this ebullient romantic musical would earn more than $320 million worldwide? It's the fastest musical to reach $100 million in the U.S. and is so far the highest grosser in 2008 in the U.K., Austria, Greece, Hungary, Norway and Sweden.

Mamma Mia!: The Sing-Along Edition will plaster on-screen the lyrics to every musical number, from “Dancing Queen” to “Take a Chance on Me.” For local listings visit mammamiamovie.com.

At a time when movie soundtracks are on the wane, the Mamma Mia! soundtrack is the No. 1 album on Billboard’s Top 200 album chart and also the No. 1 album overall in Canada, Australia, Switzerland, Finland and Hungary.

I've enjoyed Hollywood Bowl singalongs, from The Sound of Music to Sergeant Pepper with Cheap Trick. But count me out on this one. As a non-Abba fan, despite the considerable charms of Meryl Streep and Colin Firth, sitting through Mamma Mia! was like nails on a blackboard.

Mike Jones has the final Toronto International Film Festival line-up at The Circuit. And IndieWire also breaks it down.

Full List courtesy IndieWire, on the jump:

Check out this LA Times photo gallery on celebrity noses. They're getting noticeably smaller.

[Photomontage courtesy LA Times]

Shooting started Monday in Denver on Mayor, George Hickenlooper's documentary feature and pilot. "It's a real-life Spin City focusing on the day-to-day life of a mayor running a major American city under the incredible pressure of having a star-studded political convention descend upon his domain," Hixkenlooper states. "In this case the Mayor is Denver's John Hickenlooper (yes, a close relative) who Time Magazine named in 2006 as one of the five most important and progressive mayors in the nation. We just came from an inside meeting with the Governor, Senator, Congressmen. A lot of interesting information about how Colorado, which is hosting the convention, may ironically turn out to be this year's big swing state, like Florida was in 2000 and Ohio in 2004."

Thus Hickenlooper (Hearts of Darkness, Factory Girl), who is returning to his doc roots, is getting unusual access to the mayor as he deals with the challenge of keeping Denver in order as it hosts the Democratic National Convention. How will John Hickenlooper hold it all together under the spotlight? Monday night the director is filming Barack Obama at the Colorado Governor's mansion, where he will first meet Mayor Hickenlooper.

R.J. Cutler (The War Room) produces with Donald Zuckerman (Mayor of the Sunset Strip).

Other doc filmmakers are descending on Denver.

Hickenlooper is also prepping Bagman, a feature about Jack Abramoff and Michael Scanlon, the two infamous Washington lobbyist scallywags who brought down Majority Leader Tom DeLay in the biggest scandal to hit the Capital since Watergate. Hickenlooper is hoping for a January start date. Matt Dillon is attached as Abramoff. "It's about American democracy for sale," Hickenlooper says. "Plays like 'GoodFellas' in Washington. The script also explores an aspect of Abramoff that no one really knows about -- that he was connected to (not responsible for) a murder. And this is a man who had no problems getting into the Oval Office to see George W. Bush or Karl Rove! Incredible!"

Prolific filmmaker Alex Gibney, who won an Oscar for Taxi to the Dark Side, is also working on a doc about imprisoned lobbyist Abramoff.

The name Manny Farber may not be recognizable to most people. An influential film critic and painter, he is best known among his fellow film critics, many of whom consider him to have been one of the all-time greats. Thus it's not surprising that many have rushed to praise him as they learned the news of his death. Naturally, Greencine is collecting the links. This is a chance to read our best critics as they honor one of their own-- at a time when their vocation is under siege.

Here's J. Hoberman in The Village Voice. Here's Ray Pride.

The debate continues to rage about what Warner Bros. should do with Superman. The last movie, Bryan Singer's Superman Returns, paid homage to the Richard Donner Superman movies without completely updating the franchise the way Christopher Nolan did with Batman Begins.

Fans have been clamoring all over the web--and on this blog--for a complete reboot. And within the halls of Warner Bros. the same debate rages on. They too believe that the last movie didn't break the mold and wound up in some kind of middle limbo. Today I was told that it is a priority at the studio to find the right direction and if Bryan Singer is willing to do that, fine, but if he gets in the way, he may not stay on the project. There are no writers working on a Superman script now. The studio wants to figure it out. "It might be better to start from scratch," one exec admitted.

Here's the latest in a series of alternate subtitles to accompany Hitler's climactic tirade in Downfall; this one suggests that Bruno Ganz is the head of Universal Studios, reacting to the news of what was destroyed in the recent Universal backlot fire. (ICM's are customer satisfaction checks that are done at Universal City Tours.) Part of what makes this funny is the absurdity of comparing affable studio chief Ron Meyer to Hitler.

“I would like to invite you for a tiny glimpse behind the curtain, a glimpse into the dark world of my imagination: into the nature of my fears, into the nature of Antichrist.”

Welcome to the world of Danish filmmaker Lars von Trier. This has got to be one of the strangest press releases to hit my inbox in many a long day. But then again, anything to do with von Trier tends to be strange.

LARS VON TRIER SHOOTS ANTICHRIST IN EDEN The thriller ANTICHRIST by Lars von Trier is now ready to start shooting in Germany after the announcement of Willem Dafoe (Spiderman and The Aviator) and Charlotte Gainsbourg (21 Grams and I’m not there) as leads.

Dafoe and Gainsbourg play a couple in this scary story that retreats to an isolated cabin in the woods following the death of their child.

Lars von Trier wrote the psychological thriller and says:

“I would like to invite you for a tiny glimpse behind the curtain, a glimpse into the dark world of my imagination: into the nature of my fears, into the nature of Antichrist.”

After a long exhausting training camp in the Czech Republic the supporting cast; The Deer (played by Fiona), the Fox (Bonifac) and the Crow (Blue and No-Name) are now ready to join Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg at the location ‘Eden’ in the forests near Cologne.

The early word on The Curious Case of Benjamin Button: again, David Fincher has handed in a movie to Paramount that is quite long. That hurt his last pic for Paramount, Zodiac. This film is polished to a fine sheen, I understand. The word from one viewer: "shiny."

UPDATE: According to the studio, as of their last research screening last week, the movie ran two hours and 43 minutes. Fincher is still cutting to find "the length he is happy with," said one spokesman. "The final print is due in October."

Slashfilm has the Olympic TV spot that aired Sunday.

Leo DiCaprio looks hot here in Sam Mendes' Revolutionary Road, which is a serious marital drama set in the 50s based on Richard Yates' novel. DiCaprio reunites with Kate Winslet more than a decade after they starred in Titanic, still Hollywood's number one blockbuster of all time. There's no early word on this because Mendes is still in the editing room.

Now is the time that the various Oscar campaigners are lining up behind certain studios and movies. They're watching early screenings and screeners to see which movies they want to back. Many producers of would-be foreign film entries hope that press agent Fredell Pogodin will agree to take on their films, because that's a sign they might actually be in contention.

42 West Oscar maven Cynthia Swartz (who worked on both Crash and No Country for Old Men) is already plotting strategy on Scott Rudin's Doubt and Revolutionary Road, which also will get a push from Paramount's new marketing co-chief, Megan Colligan, who's no slouch when it comes to Oscars (Babe, Inconvenient Truth, There Will Be Blood, etc).

Nora reports that everyone in China is not only avidly following the Olympics--which in China means following the Chinese Olympic athletes--but collecting the official mascots of the Olympic games. The five mascots, one for each color of the Olympic circles, are called Beijing Huan Ying Ni, which means, Beijing Welcomes You. Nora brought back from her five-week trip to China (where she taught rural school kids English) at least one of each mascot:

Beibei, a blue fish representing Oceania: a watch and a McDonald's happy meal toy.

Jingjing, a black panda representing Asia: a t-shirt.

Huanhuan, a red torch representing the Americas: a t-shirt and visor.

Yingying, an orange antelope representing Africa: a McDonald's collectible.

Nini, a green swallow representing Europe: an official Olympic mug and key chain.

Joan Hyler, the veteran manager and former WMA talent agent, has been listed in critical condition at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center after a bring struck by a car on the Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu late Friday night. Her friends and family have started a web page to keep track of her progress. The first posting has elicited more than 70 messages of support:

Posted 2 days ago
Dear Friends and Family,
Thank you so very much for all of your support and love. (This post is being written by Jessica Roberts, and Nancy and Louis Berlin, her sister and brother-in-law).
Joan had just parked her car Friday evening, August 16th, on Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu, when she was struck by a passing vehicle, and sustained severe and multiple injuries. LA Sheriff officers were first on the scene, and she was taken to Pepperdine, and transferred by air to UCLA Westwood, where she is undergoing treatment.
Because she had a piece of paper in her hand with the address of the house she was going to, the officers were able to let friends and associates there know what happened, and they were able to go to UCLA and maintain a vigil overnight, and through the day Saturday.
We do not have any further details on what happened, who was involved, why, or even where her car is, and which police agency has her purse, keys etc. It's the weekend in California, and everything is closed. Police said that a preliminary report on what happened would be available in 2 weeks.
Nancy and Louis flew in this morning, and met Larry, who also flew in in the AM.
From late Friday through mid-afternoon Saturday, doctors worked constantly to assess the injuries. It is still too early to know the extent of the damage or the severity of the injuries but Joan is responding to commands to wiggle her fingers, etc., which is encouraging.

I've known Joan for years, since her William Morris days, where as a pioneer woman agent, she inevitably hit the glass ceiling and turned manager. She has always been an island of warmth and sanity in a tough, stressful business. She kept an overview, and enjoyed analyzing shifts and trends. I helped her teach a class last year: she was having a blast sharing her experience and insight about this crazy industry with her students, who adored her.

Here's Sunday night's status report:

[Posted by Jeff Sneider]

According to MTV, Johnny Depp is looking to find a director for "Rex Mundi" now that "Fight Club" scribe Jim Uhls has finished adapting Arvid Nelson's graphic novels. I don't know much about this project but any movie that keeps Depp out of a pirate costume is more than welcome in my book.

Quick, somebody call the cops! Rainn Wilson has kidnapped his "Office" co-star Jenna Fischer to promote his upcoming comedy "The Rocker." The ransom is pretty high so do your part to Free Jenna Now and, as the site says, "see a great movie to save a good person." Can't you see John Krasinski taking a cue from Mel Gibson and screaming "Gimme back my TV girlfriend!" while Wilson cackles like a maniac?

JoBlo has the lowdown on "The Dark Knight" DVDs, which will hit stores either Dec. 2 or Dec. 9. Specs are still unavailable at the moment but they have images of the packaging including a Batman mask Collector's Edition DVD that looks like the perfect gift for the holidays.

Meanwhile, SlashFilm has a very cool fan-made poster for the next "Batman" movie. Gotta love the passion of "The Dark Knight" fans. There's no title suggested but there is a gigantic question mark, signaling a hoped-for return of The Riddler, while Bruce Wayne's old flame Vicky Vale gets a byline on a fake newspaper article about Harvey Dent. 2011 can't come soon enough.

JoBlo's Mike Sampson interviews "Tropic Thunder" star Jay Baruchel, who reveals that his Seth Rogen buddy comedy, "Jay and Seth Vs. the Apocalypse" is going forward. I'm not big on dying but seriously, I can't wait for the Apocalypse now!

CHUD's Devin Faraci reports that Paul Greengrass will NOT be directing "The Trial of the Chicago 7," which Steven Spielberg had previously been attached to along with stars Will Smith and Sacha Baron Cohen. Sorry but there's no funny quip here because this is sad news.

Rope of Silicon debuted a new poster for Rian Johnson's "The Brothers Bloom" yesterday but despite an incredible cast, I'm not feeling the good vibrations I should be. For one, the movie is called "The Brothers Bloom," yet Adrien Brody's name is above the title beside Rachel Weisz, not Mark Ruffalo. What's the deal with that? Second, there's the "conning soon," which makes me think of "Confidence," the mediocre movie that also starred Weisz. And lastly, what's with the smaller pictures of Ruffalo holding packets of cash and Brody holding a gun against generic sky backgrounds? I'm still looking forward to the film but maybe I'm just disappointed because the posters for Johnson's "Brick" were so cool.

Latino Review's El Guapo reports that Lionsgate wants to cut "The Punisher: War Zone" from a graphic R-rating down to a PG-13, which doesn't make much sense considering the name of the movie is "The Punisher." What's he gonna do, punish people offscreen? I didn't see the Thomas Jane incarnation and I never planned on seeing this one either, but as a fan of "Hooligans" I was rooting for director Lexi Alexander before she got fired from the project. Lionsgate is in the process of rebranding itself and moving away from the genre films its foundation was built upon. It's a noble goal and all, but if they go through with this decision you can add it to the list of the company's missteps which have drawn the ire of horror fanboys lately.

And finally, WOW! If you're an Ernest Borgnine fan, you need to see this. No explanation necessary. Just click the link to Hollywood-Elsewhere and thank me in the comments section below.

Cinemascopian posts the animated short that has evolved into $9.99, the stop-motion feature that will have its world premiere in Toronto next month. It looks like the first two theatrical animated features produced in Israel are premiering in Toronto at the same time (Waltz With Bashir and $9.99).

Here's the Waltz with Bashir trailer. It's a cool movie that will have influence, I think, on future animation style--especially its use of videogame-style immersive POV.

This Rocky Balboa vs. Apollo Creed movie trailer treatment pits Barack Obama against John McCain, with some help from ally Hillary Clinton. Guess who comes out ahead?

[Posted by Steven Gaydos]
This week's boxoffice reporting in Variety, Hollywood Reporter and L.A. Times talked about nearly every film in the top 10, EXCEPT the one that had hung in the top five for weeks, after opening to $31 million. It's on track to bust through $100 million and will outperform Don't Mess with the Zohan at a lower cost of any hit comedy this summer outside of Pineapple Express. So it had a bigger opening weekend gross than Pineapple and Thunder (if projections hold) at half the cost of Thunder and still, it's like the crazy uncle in the attic - no one wants to acknowledge its presence in the marketplace, let alone its success.

All this hate and just because of a little brother skin on the ol' drum skins!??!

There's been a lot of talk about insensitivity and discrimination. Thunder has gotten heat for maligning minorities and the developmentally disabled. But far more insidious is the root cause of this news blackout on Step Brothers.

I blame this on anti-brother descrimination.

As the youngest of four brothers, and someone who has experienced the heartbreak and pain of stupidity, selfishness, immaturity, greed and infantile acting-out behavior on the part of grown men, I am looking for others to join my cause and meet me on the picket line.

I will be out there as soon as I finish watching this John Stamos STV pic I've been looking forward to.

[Posted by David S. Cohen]
In a front page story in this Sunday’s Weekly Variety, Marc Graser explores Warner Bros.’ plans to get its classic DC characters onto the bigscreen. Or rather, its plans to make plans.

Batman is soaring, but the future of Superman on film is uncertain. The Justice League movie has been pushed back and it’s hard to imagine this Batman team being too enthusiastic about seeing their gritty, realistic take on the character alongside Superman and Wonder Woman. Greg Berlanti’s Green Lantern script has been well-received at the studio, but not yet greenlit.

Meanwhile, rival Marvel has launched its own studio, had a smash with Iron Man and a successful reboot of The Incredible Hulk, and announced four more pictures, introducing film versions of at least two more of their star characters, Thor and Captain America.

This begs the question: Why has Marvel been able to move so decisively to put its properties on film while Warner Bros seems to be stuck in a perpetual ponder? The answers are sometimes paradoxical.

Summit Entertainment co-chairman and CEO Rob Friedman knows how to play the distribution game. So when he saw Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince move off the November 21 date to next summer, he jumped on the chance to move his vampire romantic thriller Twilight onto that date.

Here's the story.

Twilight fans will be thrilled to be able to see the pic three weeks earlier. Buzz has been building for months and reached a crescendo at July's Comic-Con, when young girls screamed for Brit star Robert Pattinson, and in August, when the fourth Stephenie Meyer novel Breaking Dawn hit bookstores and broke sales records. The comparison between Meyer and J. K. Rowling and her passionate followers has often been made.

UPDATE: I don't buy the theory that Warners wanted to move Harry Potter because Twilight would impact it. Believe me, a major studio like WB isn't worrying about a low-budget movie without stars from an upstart distrib like Summit--even if they should be. It was about filling out their summer sked, which was thin because of the Writer's Strike.

Rachel McAdams talks to Lynn Hirschberg in this weekend's New York Times Magazine. This chameleon actress never looks the same. She next stars in Neil Burger's The Lucky Ones opposite Tim Robbins and Michael Pena which will be released September 26 by Lionsgate, Roadside Attractions and QED productions. Here's the trailer.

[Posted by David S. Cohen]
Entertainment Weekly is making no secret of their unhappiness with corporate cousin Warner Bros. for letting them put Harry Potter on the Fall Preview cover and then moving the film to July '09.

"EW and Warner Bros. share a parent company, but they clearly do not share, you know, important friggin’ information," blogs Jeff Giles.

But that works both ways.

Earlier this summer, when I set out to write my preview article on The Dark Knight, Warner publicists put one condition on the interviews: No one would talk about the death of Heath Ledger. Since that angle didn't interest me, I readily agreed. There seemed to be jitters in Burbank that the story would seem ghoulish and scare people away.

Then the EW cover story on The Dark Knight came out all about, you guessed it, Heath Ledger's death. So I call the Warner publicists to complain that they were just trying to feed their corporate cousin an exclusive. But they were as unhappy about that cover story as EW is about Warner moving Harry Potter, and in fact said basically the same thing Giles said: Warner is Warner, EW is EW, EW does what it does like any other media outlet. They insisted that they hadn't signed off on or collaborated with EW on the Heath-Ledger-is-dead TDK cover story, and that EW had assembled the story from snippets of interviews conducted under other pretenses.

The bright side, I guess, is that this proves EW has some editorial independence.