In a surprise turn at the International Animated Film Society Awards (Annies), DreamWorks Animation's Kung Fu Panda won the top prizes. This comes as a shock to those of us who just assume that Pixar's Wall-E is the frontrunner for the animation Oscar. What does this mean? Has Pixar ruled the roost too long? Even though the Annies tend to be a good indicator of where the Oscars are going, I suspect Wall-E will still get the love from the entire Academy. I was actually predicting that Andrew Stanton could win the Oscar for original screenplay.

Full list of winners on the jump.

The Wrap wraps up the week's bad news for old media, with layoffs, cuts and slashes across the country. The LA Times got hit as well, with 300 more staff cuts, including 70 editorial, as of March 2. Consolidating into four sections, the paper is folding the California section into the first section. UPDATE: Local reaction.

The two Hollywood trades are favoring lucrative print ads over online--staving off the inevitable digital shift.

Meanwhile journalists continue their migration to the digital side.

After 12/ 1/2 years, Tom Ortenberg made his farewell rounds at Lionsgate Friday, with tears in his eyes. He opened the LA office back in 1996. On Monday, he starts his new gig running theatrical distrib for The Weinstein Co. and Dimension.

Truth is, the day Mandate's Joe Drake arrived at Lionsgate as co-chief operating officer in late 2007, theatrical films prexy Ortenberg was on his way out. There wasn't enough air in the room for both senior execs. Drake inherited a raft of disappointments at the boxoffice, including Frank Miller's The Spirit, which fell flat at Christmas. This did not sit well with the new boss, who was learning the ropes of distribution and marketing. He decided to roll up his sleeves and take charge himself. With Ortenberg's contract up, it was time to go their separate ways.

This happens all the time: a talented, experienced guy gets promoted into a job that--especially with a new hands-on boss coming in-- made him expendable. At Lionsgate, seasoned execs run distribution (Steve Rothenberg), marketing and publicity (Tim Palen and Sarah Greenberg), and acquisitions (Jason Constantine). So the not-so-obvious play for Ortenberg was to join the Weinstein Co. as president of theatrical distribution. It makes more sense if you remember that he has the unusual distinction of having a smooth and cordial relationship with the Weinsteins, having partnered with the brothers W. since the Disney/Miramax days on Kevin Smith's Dogma and Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, as well as the more recent TWC pics Sicko (also from Moore), Forbidden Kingdom and Rambo. Ortenberg knows who he's dealing with: two challenging and brilliant mavericks who need their next slate to hit. For the Weinsteins, 2009 is make-or-break time.

On paper, TWC offers a promising list of pics for Ortenberg to work with. First, there are two pricey epics I can't wait to see, Rob Marshall's musical Nine (November) and Quentin Tarantino's World War II actioner Inglourious Basterds (August). Also set during that war period is Mikael Hafstrom's long-delayed Shanghai, starring John Cusack (which was not shot in China, set for September); coming up is Wayne Kramer's Crossing Over, starring Harrison Ford (February) and John Hillcoat's adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's dystopian epic The Road, starring Viggo Mortensen, which the Weinsteins gave more time to breathe away from awards season, but have yet to date, as Hillcoat has not completed the 2929 movie, which TWC has invested in.

It also remains to be seen what will happen with John Madden's Killshot, based on the Elmore Leonard novel and starring Mickey Rourke, which has suffered repeated delays and opened for a test run in Phoenix last weekend. Ortenberg can handle such bread-and-butter summer horror as Rob Zombie's H2: Halloween 2 with his eyes closed.

The question is, how much P & A money will the Weinsteins have to play with? Ortenberg assures me there's plenty. "It's time to open a new chapter," says Ortenberg, who insists the parting was amicable. "I'm joining the Weinstein Co. at an opportune moment."

As for Lionsgate, it will be interesting to see if Drake (who chose smartly at Mandate, with such pics as Juno, Stranger than Fiction and Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist) alters the game plan going forward, away from low-cost niche genre pics that have fueled the rich Lionsgate library and toward the higher-budget faux-studio features that the likes of Overture, Summit and CBS Films are chasing. That can be a risky business.

The New Yorker critic David Denby and the New York Times' A.O. "Tony" Scott don't necessarily know how to call the Oscar race--leave that to professional Oscar watchers, please---but they do know how to talk about movies. I always love to hear them gab with Charlie Rose.

Denby also has other things on his mind, like the deterioration of the quality of our cultural discourse as "civilized" newspaper and magazine journalists go the way of the dinosaur. He talks about his new book Snark with the LAT. Of course he's right to be concerned about the loss of long-form journalism and many of these issues but the notion that print carries more "authority" than online isn't going to hold much longer.

First, the younger generation doesn't grant print more authority, because they don't read newspapers or magazines--not one person in my new film criticism class at USC reads Entertainment Weekly, for example. Online, the NYT and Washington Post and Variety may carry more authority than less trusted brands. And with Perez Hilton, what you see is what you get. In the online world order, each individual searches for as much "authority" as they wish for. 

While reports of the inevitable Slumdog Millionaire backlash may be overstated--the hugely popular movie is still charging forward to some major Oscar wins on February 22--here's a new Oscar slant: Slumdog and its main rival, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, split the vote and Milk takes the best picture win.

Possible? Milk was ahead in the Oscar race back in November before Slumdog took off. The biopic about assassinated San Francisco gay activist Harvey Milk boasts the earmarks of a powerful Academy contender: the politically correct, timely, emotional true story grabbed great reviews, New York Film Critics wins for picture and Sean Penn, LA Film Critics win for Penn, SAG win for Penn over Globe-winner Mickey Rourke, and eight Oscar nominations on January 22.

Lately, Milk is recovering momentum. And this Friday, a new ad campaign kicks in as the movie finally--after seven weeks inching along in no more than 300 locations to a $22 million gross--goes wide on 882 screens.

"The hope from the beginning," says producer Bruce Cohen, who with producing partner Dan Jinks produced the surprise 1999 best picture Oscar winner American Beauty, "was to start with the core demo and from there build out, eventually getting people who have never heard of Harvey Milk, and might not think that a gay subject was their cup of tea."

Having learned some lessons on the 2005 release of Oscar contender Brokeback Mountain, which was considered the front runner for the Best Picture Oscar but lost to Crash, Focus Features has taken the slow-and-steady-wins-the-race approach for Milk, a movie looking for Oscar love.

The distrib waited to break Milk wide until after the Oscar nominations. Because they were bumped by the presidential inauguration from Tuesday to Thursday this year, that left no time to plaster ads with Oscar noms. So Focus delayed the movie one week to lay that info on the consumer. Now Milk goes out backed by a substantial ad campaign--during the prime of Oscar season. Final ballots were mailed to 5800 Academy voters on Wednesday, and are due back February 17.

"It takes time," adds Jinks, "to reach less sophisticated audiences. Eight Oscar nominations helps enormously. Milk resonates in an emotional way that tops the other films out there."

There will be jobs, insists New York's Vulture. Even for newspaper journos who have been sacked.

Mad Magazine is down to four issues a year.

I won't soon forget the sight of Brad Pitt, wearing a snug vested tweed suit, standing patiently on Kathy Kennedy and Frank Marshall's chilly patio in the moonlight, listening to a Russian blonde list the things she didn't like about Benjamin Button. He wanted his Button nom, and he did the things you do to get it, and now the campaign is on for best actor. Which will go to Penn, I think. But look at this fab W Pitt cover shot at his request by Chuck Close.

Pitt attended Newsweek's annual Oscar roundtable with actors Mickey Rourke, Sally Hawkins, Robert Downey, Jr., Frank Langella and Anne Hathaway.

Defamer's Stu Van Airsdale argues that given the current odds and despite its awesome Oscar nominations lead (13) and Paramount ad support, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button could whiff on Oscar night. The January 31 DGA awards will tell the tale: if Danny Boyle wins, David Fincher will likely lose the directing Oscar. My sense is that the DGA and Oscar voters could go either way. The Academy respects Fincher: it could be a career prize.

On a recent trip to the wine country, I bought four bottles at $9.99 apiece of the Gainey Vineyard's latest label: Recession Red. Little did I know that I too would be hit by the diving economy. Today I got slashed from the ranks of Variety staffers along with some 30 people, most of whom had been there a lot longer than I have. I feel for all of them. I have enjoyed working with these smart movie-loving writers and editors: it has been a great ride. I will miss them and wish them well.

What will continue is the Thompson on Hollywood blog. Variety and I are in talks about continuing to host the blog, but I am also fielding other interest. For the past few months I have been actively involved in a web start-up which is in stealth mode; details will be available soon. And I will continue teaching film criticism at USC and hosting Sneak Previews at UCLA Extension.

And then there's that book...

Stay tuned. The blog isn't going anywhere.

At the Santa Barbara Film Fest I saw Peter Jones' provocative doc Inventing L.A.: The Chandlers and Their Times, about L.A.'s grand newspaper family. In the context of the dire conditions facing that once-great paper today, the movie had resonance. At the Q & A afterward, former publisher Tom Johnson and the late Otis Chandler's son Harry sadly had to admit that the future of journalism is no longer in print but online.

Staking her claim on the entertainment side of that online future is Sharon Waxman, a 22-year veteran reporter who grabs onto stories like a terrier and shakes them to the ground. She left the Washington Post in 2003 to become Hollywood correspondent for the New York Times, and took a leave from that gig on July 1, 2008 to write her book on Middle East antiquities, Loot. During that time she contributed intermittently to her entertainment blog, Waxword. After she left the Times for good in January 2008, she raised $500,000 in seed money to start online showbiz news site The Wrap.com, which finally launched after several weeks delay on Monday.

Over the past six months, Waxman has raised an undisclosed sum from Seattle-based Maveron; and has been hiring staff in LA and NY (nine and counting). Former Variety.com and Hollywood.com exec Kevin Davis has been Waxman's interim COO. Tim Doyle is managing editor and ex-LAT staffer Maria Russo, deputy editor. Media's loss of journos has been Waxman's gain, as she doles out assignments to "contributors" who have what she calls "authoritative voices," such as Kim Masters (ex-Premiere and NPR), Devin Leonard (Fortune), Andrew Gumbel (The Independent), Nicole Laporte (ex-Variety), and Johanna Neuman (LAT). Ex-Defamer editor Mark Lisanti is also on board.

Waxman is spending money and paying competitive rates, but going in, she had no idea she was starting a business during a recession. Her business model: ads, sponsorships and syndication. She figures as newspapers decline they will need to buy her stories--she wants to compete not only in the trade space, but with the A.P.

The Wrap seeks to weigh in on big topics, engage its readership interactively, and bring in voices from the Hollywood community. "I want to be a leader in the conversation about how technology is transfiguring the the industry," says Waxman, "and for The Wrap to be informative and essential for the entertainment industry professional."

She promises to "ruffle feathers" as she goes, as part of an "honest conversation." We'll see if that's how her subjects see it.

The first banner headline of Waxman's front page (under various category headings) reads: Hollywood: Change or Bust. Her story posits that the rise of Internet could mean the end of Hollywood:

Those cracks are evidenced in the broad changes in consumer behavior set in motion by Google, Facebook, YouTube, Digg and a host of other new companies that for the most part did not even exist a decade ago. Some worry that Hollywood’s very survival is at stake. True or not, the changes have already ushered in a cast of new characters that dominate the decisions individuals make about how they spend their leisure time. Millennial-generation digital entrepreneurs like Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook and Kevin Rose of Digg are displacing once-omnipotent Hollywood players such as DreamWorks’ David Geffen, who has just retired, or Michael Eisner, the former Disney mogul who has remade himself and is now a minor figure in the world of new media.

Waxman also posts a Q & A with Sundance chief Geoff Gilmore at the end of the Sundance Film Fest, which she did not attend. Because she needed to get the site up and running, Waxman sent cub reporter Amy Kaufman to the fest. So she wrote up the Dowd vs. Anderson "blow by blow" without links to any prior reports (yes, including mine) and called producer's rep Dowd a "veteran publicist," a mistake made by earlier blogs on the incident. Waxman insists Kaufman did her own reporting.

For all her talk about the future of cooperative Internet journalism, Waxman doesn't seem to get online etiquette. Or the need to take the time to check facts: her team was in such a rush Thursday morning to post the Oscar nominations that their initial Oscar story boasted errors such as "Thirteen Oscar noms to 'Benjamin Buttons'; they had to email-blast a correction announcing that Sony Classics received five nominations. We all make mistakes and benefit from editing, those of us who get it. (Most bloggers don't.) But at this point, Waxman is building credibility for her site.

Aside from several feature stories and Kaufman's take on the weekend boxoffice, most of the other Wrap content is aggregated from other sources. Guest blogger Tom Benedek photographs the old CAA building, while Roberta Marie Munroe's post, filed before Sundance, is still up, and ex-LAT columnist Howard Rosenberg compares pjtv.com's Samuel J. Wurzelbacher to Joe the Plumber. Clearly, this is a soft launch (several clicks yield "page not found") with much more to come. I look forward to the "Oprah Watch."

The inexorable Slumdog Millionaire march to the Oscars continues with a best ensemble prize at Sunday night's SAG awards.

Lessons learned: Sean Penn reclaims momentum from Mickey Rourke's Golden Globe award. Winslet couldn't score twice again, so she settled for supporting actress for The Reader--and kept herself under more control this time. Respected older actress Meryl Streep grabbed a statuette instead, but I suspect it will be Winslet who will take the stage on Oscar night Feb.22 not only for The Reader, but for Revolutionary Road. (She has never won.) Heath Ledger will probably win the supporting actor Oscar. And with no Winslet to compete with, the supporting actress race is close between Penelope Cruz and Viola Davis."Somebody give her a movie!" cried Streep.

UPDATE: There was a hum of tension in the room when SAG leader Alan Rosenberg took the stage; subtle references were made during the ceremony: Sally Field cited the role of actors during tough times, while Tiny Fey joked that her daughter would later watch 30 Rock on the Internet and say,"What do you mean, you don't get residuals for this?" Here's the LAT on the ongoing internal struggles at SAG, whose members continue to work under the terms of an expired contract with the studios. Cynthia Littleton reports from the red carpet and backstage at Sunday's SAG event.

I knew we'd have a lively screenwriters panel at the Santa Barbara Film Festival this year because we had two actor-writers--Tom McCarthy (who also directed The Visitor) and Robert Knott (Appaloosa) as well as writer-director Andrew Stanton (Wall-E, nominated for 6 Oscars, including original screenplay), who is one of the most entertaining guys around, and young Dustin Lance Black (nommed for Milk).

Cal Arts grad Stanton has spent 18 years at Pixar, where he has written some of the best-reviewed movies of all time, including Wall-E, the Oscar-winning Finding Nemo (which he also directed) and Toy Story 1 and II, which he rewrote from scratch in three months, which he was only able to do because he knew the characters so well. Years ago when Stanton started writing Wall-E, he probably didn't have the chops to pull it off, he says now. The film carried the title Trash Planet for years, and even Steve Jobs wanted to keep it, but Stanton held his ground, because he knew "not a single girl would go," he said. ("What does Steve Jobs know about marketing?" quipped McCarthy.) Stanton originally wrote the doughy fat humans in Wall-E as gelatinous green creatures but soon realized the yuck factor was too great, so he made them into humans whose bones had gone soft (per real NASA research). When Hello, Dolly went into the movie, they had to use those images, so the Fred Willard video was live action too.

Why does Pixar have such a track record of excellence? Stanton chalks it up to the process they have of presenting everyone's work every so often and tearing it to shreds. Stanton thinks animation is starting to pull out of the ghetto and will make it to a best picture Oscar one day; progress is being made. Meanwhile he's writing his first adaptation, of Edgar Rice Burrough's John Carter of Mars, a favorite novel since childhood, and his first live-action movie, for Disney, not Pixar. Casting begins soon.

McCarthy spent a few months at Pixar working on Up, and testified that the experience was "brutal." The actor played the ambitious young newspaper reporter in The Wire, among many other roles (including a 30-second cameo date with Tina Fey in Baby Mama) and wrote and directed the BAFTA and Indie Spirit-award-winning The Station Agent. The Visitor is up for a Spirit for writing as well. And McCarthy is over the moon that Robert Jenkins nabbed an Oscar nom. He wrote the script for him, as a young Gene Hackman wasn't available. And he didn't worry that the character was passive and low-key. He thinks no one else could have played him so well, with such "emotional authenticity." Here's my April interview with McCarthy. These days he is acting up a storm while working on another script.

Oklahoma-born Robert Knott has acted in a ton of TV series and westerns (including The Hi-Lo Country), and worked with his old theater pal Ed Harris on Pollock as well as Appaloosa. It's a detailed, delicious character study about two gunslingers for hire (Harris and Viggo Mortensen) and a woman (Rene Zellweger) who comes into town and changes their buddy chemistry. Knott says when he's writing he gets on a boat and doesn't know where it's going to go, he just follows the characters. He started writing because the scripts he read were so bad. If he didn't get the part he'd throw the script in the trash. And if he did--well he knew he could do better. Knott hopes to make, with Harris, movies of two more Robert Parker novels.

Dustin Lance Black earned an Oscar nom for Milk, which scored 8 noms. Raised a Mormon in San Antonio, Texas, Black is also a writer-producer on HBO's Big Love, which is starting its third season. He came to UCLA, and was heavily influenced by the late San Francisco gay activist Harvey Milk, who was profiled in the Rob Epstein doc The Life and Times of Harvey Milk. Black did a lot of research, getting to know the real people close to Milk. And he used politics as the story's spine, which initally worried Van Sant. Black felt he needed a narrower focus, or the whole biopic would get unwieldy. He says there are still many gay kids like he used to be, as well as the real-life suicidal teen portrayed in the movie, who feel alienated, not accepted and lost in their lives. The filmmakers did want to bring the movie out before the Prop 8 vote but simply couldn't get it finished in time. Black is writing another film for Gus Van Sant, an adaptation of Tom Wolfe's Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, for which he's been doing a lot of research (!).

Here's coverage from Variety, AICN's Quint, In Contention,and Jeff Wells, who shot some video:

[Photo of writers from left-- Tom McCarthy, Andrew Stanton, Robert Knott, Dustin Lance Black-- by me; panel photo of McCarthy, left, and Stanton, foreground, by Norman Christophersen.]

At the close of Sundance, Arthouse Films grabbed worldwide rights to Surfwise director Doug Pray's ad world doc Art & Copy, which debuted in the fest's doc competition. The Bagger did a story about why this was an unlikely sale. And EW's Owen Gleiberman covers the film in a mid-fest round-up.

Arthouse plans a theatrical and DVD release this year.

Arthouse's David Koh worked with Pray on his DJ doc Scratch. Submarine repped the filmmakers in the sale.

Slumdog Millionaire racked up another big win Saturday night as it nabbed the Producers Guild's best producer award. It's going to be hard to stop its momentum for a best picture Oscar.

Here are the current rankings on Gurus 'O Gold. And a fascinating LAT story on how Slumdog was received in Mumbai.

Indiewire posted updates on the Sundance Awards show in progress.UPDATE: Here's Variety's report.

With most Sundance buyers back home, deals are continuing to close. Sony Pictures Classics acquired North American theatrical rights to sci-fi drama Moon in tandem with Sony Worldwide Acquisitions, which pre-bought the film and has been on a tear this fest, buying Black Dynamite (which will be shown to Screen Gems for possible theatrical release) and Brooklyn's Finest (which will be handled theatrically by Senator Entertainment).

Anchor Bay bought North American and Australian rights to producer-star Ashton Kutcher's Spread, a racy film about a gigolo.

What does this mean? Ancillaries rule and theatrical distribution is in trouble. More on this subject later--off to prep for annual Santa Barbara Film Fest screenwriters panel, which is usually quite cool. Will report on that later too.

In its second buy of the Sundance Fest, IFC is acquiring U.S. rights to Armando Iannucci's comedy In the Loop. The distrib also bought the Nazi horror pic Dead Snow.

William Morris was expected to close the deal today.

I had heard that In the Loop was really smart, and that James Gandolfini rocks it. I'm seeing it tonight. In a few minutes.

UPDATE: In the Loop is Iannuci's raucously funny indictment of what went on behind-the-scenes in Washington and London to lead to the war in Iraq. U.K. TV star Peter Capaldi dominates a gifted improvisational ensemble as a foul-mouthed Scottish communications officer; James Gandolfini plays a peace-loving U.S. General. Most of the characters are dimwits who behave badly; thus the fast-talking smart asshole becomes the hero of the piece. Steve Coogan delivers a memorable cameo. IFC is the proper home for this small-scale Altmanesque romp. The timing, like W., is slightly off.

The Oscar nominations are in and The Dark Knight did not make it to best picture. The Reader landed the slot instead, also scoring noms for Stephen Daldry for best director (over The Dark Knight's Chris Nolan), David Hare for adapted screenplay and Kate Winslet (instead of Revolutionary Road). The Dark Knight was in the running though, with eight noms, including a posthumous nom for Heath Ledger, who is the frontrunner for best supporting actor.

Harvey Weinstein is a happy man.

A late-entry in the Oscar race, The Reader was barely finished in time. But Weinstein knew he had a winner and several Oscar-watchers were telling me Golden Globes weekend that their Academy pals weren't saying they voted for The Dark Knight. They were hearing they liked The Reader, which finally landed five noms. (Penelope Cruz also landed a nom for supporting actress for TWC's Vicky Cristina Barcelona, but Woody Allen was shut out for original screenplay.)

Media prognosticators who reach a consensus on these things aren't always right--check out The Gurus 'O Gold. Everybody said The Dark Knight--including me--because it was hard to figure anything else for that slot. The Reader was one of several possibilities, including two other films produced by Scott Rudin, Doubt (five noms) and Revolutionary Road (three). Rudin took his name off The Reader when he kept wrangling with Weinstein.

The other news was actors' actors Melissa Leo and Richard Jenkins landing nods. Many Academy voters loved Sony Pictures Classics' Sundance pick-up Frozen River, which also landed an unexpected nom for Courtney Hunt for original screenplay. The nom for Jenkins' quiet performance in The Visitor meant that Clint Eastwood did not get a slot for Gran Torino, nor did Leonardo DiCaprio for Revolutionary Road, which landed three noms, for costume design, art direction and supporting actor Michael Shannon. Eastwood had to console himself with Changeling's three noms (Jolie, cinematography and art direction). Gran Torino was shut out.

Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are also happy today, as both won noms. Jolie won an Oscar in 2000 for Girl Interrupted, while Pitt hadn't been nominated since his supporting role in Twelve Monkeys in 1996.

The best actress category was open for some surprises. Button's Cate Blanchett did not make it, nor did critics' faves Sally Hawkins and Kristin Scott Thomas, who were overlooked mainly because not enough people saw art-house entries Happy-Go-Lucky and I've Loved You So Long. Oscar perennial Mike Leigh did land his sixth Oscar nom, for his Happy-Go-Lucky original screenplay. He has never won.

Animated film Wall-E, from Pixar, didn't make it to best picture but it did earn six noms, including original screenplay, tying with Beauty and the Beast (which had four music noms). Pixar's Ratatouille earned five last year and won best animated feature, as Wall-E is likely to do.

Here's the list of noms, led by David Fincher's The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, with 13. Someone asked me to make my Oscar pics before this morning, and I backed out. You have to get a feel for the whole list. Heading toward the Academy Awards night on February 22, Benjamin Button will be slugging it out with Slumdog Millionaire. But Milk also did very well, which is why I'm still picking Sean Penn to beat Mickey Rourke, partly because The Wrestler landed only two acting noms. Milk is going to have to win something.

UPDATE: Tom O'Neil explains why Bruce Springsteen didn't make the cut.

The noms list is on the jump:

Marc Malkin is reporting that Dakota Fanning is in talks to star as vampire Jane in the Twilight Sequel New Moon. She didn't audition for director Christ Weitz, he writes, but has been offered the role of a deadly Volturi opposite Rob Pattinson.

[Photos courtesy Eonline.com]

IFC Films acquired U.S. distribution rights to the tongue-in-cheek Nazi zombie comedy Dead Snow at the Sundance Film Festival Wednesday. The Norwegian horror pic about medical student co-eds on a ski holiday who meet up with evil Nazi zombies premiered in the international narrative feature section.

Produced by Tomas Evjen, Ankjetil Omberg and Terje Stromstad, the film is a follow up to writer-director Tommy Wirkola's 2007 feature film debut Kill Buljo: The Movie. IFC Films plans to release Dead Snow in 2009. IFC acquisition chief Arianna Bocco negotiated the deal with Adeline Fontan Tessaur and Eva Diederix at Elle Driver, who has sold several foreign territories, including Germany (Splendid), Benelux (Splendid), tke U,K, (Entertainment One) and Canada (Seville).

Here's the trailer:

Opinions fly at the Sundance Film Fest but so did fists Wednesday morning when critic John Anderson, who was covering the 8:30 screening of the agit-prop environmental doc Dirt! The Movie for Variety at the Holiday Cinemas, told producer's rep Jeff "The Dude" Dowd that the movie "was poor, too simplistic, too redundant," says Dowd, who accompanied him over to the nearby Yarrow. When they arrived, Anderson told him their conversation on the movie was "over." The debate that followed got so heated that Anderson punched Dowd twice, once on the lip. I've spoken to both guys, and to Variety chief critic Todd McCarthy, who immediately relieved Anderson of the assignment to review the film. The Yarrow management called the police, who took information from witnesses--Anderson had gone to another screening--but Dowd did not press assault charges.

Dowd is a big guy who is passionate about his opinions. Anderson is a film critic who wanted to be left to eat his breakfast in peace and lost his temper. Hitting is not OK. But Anderson says he was harassed. And Dowd doesn't disagree.

Anderson says he let Dowd "make his pitch" on the way over to the Yarrow. After his spiel, Anderson said, "So what?"

Dowd told him to listen to how the audience responded. "They're sheep," Anderson said. "You've got so much power," said Dowd. "Before you write this we should have more discussion."

"He was accusing me of not caring about the state of the world because I didn't like his film," Anderson says. When they arrived at the restaurant he said, "OK, this conversation is over." But Dowd wasn't letting up, says Anderson, who sat down with a friend at a table. Then Dowd pulled up a chair and "continues to make his sales pitch. He wouldn't go away, take no for an answer."

"I told you to get away from me," Anderson said. Dowd says he added, "'Throw this riff-raff out of here!'"

Anderson told Dowd to "fuck off and get out" and Dowd did leave, but returned ten minutes later with Jackie "The Joke Man" Martling (The Howard Stern Show) to speak on behalf of the film. Anderson had moved to a table for four and didn't recognize Martling, but wasn't having any of it anyway. Dowd "starts berating me," Anderson says. "He's a big intimidating guy hovering over the table. I got really pissed off."

Anderson said, "I told you to get away."

Martling said, "I just wanted to tell you..."

Anderson said, "Are you a friend of Jeff's? Can't you see I'm eating breakfast?" Dowd says Anderson got up and said, "I told you I would punch you." Anderson denies he threatened any punching.

Dowd kept talking and Anderson got up and walked four steps, says Dowd, clenched up and hit him in the shoulder, chest and chin, and then his lip. Anderson remembers pushing Dowd away and says he "popped his nose." What did his friends do, he asks, "to deserve him?"

Anderson seems not to have hit Dowd very hard. "I didn't want to hurt him," says Anderson. "This was nothing close to a fistfight." Dowd did not resist and there was no blood. Dowd is a big guy and he's fine. He wants to convene a panel with Anderson, journalists and the Dirt! filmmakers to talk about these issues. Dowd and Anderson have known each other for some 25 years, and Anderson interviewed him for his book, I Wake Up Screening.

Anyone who knows these two guys could see it coming. Dowd is a big genial fellow who feels strongly about the movies he's repping, who never gives up and gets into everyone's personal space. And Anderson is a tough critic who doesn't hesitate to speak his mind. He's a critic! Of course he should never hit anybody.

Anderson says he was "harassed" and the Yarrow should have thrown Dowd out of the restaurant. Dowd says "John is a great guy. He works out! Critics at Sundance are overwhelmed, they don't get much sleep. I wasn't yelling, I was trying to engage him. That's what democracy is about. It's not just old-school criticism when it's an issue-oriented film."

Finally, this blow-up could be just the thing to put Dowd's film on the map. "I'm not sure how good it is for publicity to harrass a film critic into liking his movie," says Anderson. "He's trying to make it a moral issue. It's business."

Here's Spoutblog, MCN and UPDATE: Mike Jones' commentary.

Steven Soderbergh has always been a supporter of innovation, experimentation and new media. Che goes out on VOD Wednesday while its special roadshow engagement continues, and Soderbergh's 2005 Bubble was the first day-and-date experiment for Marc Cuban and Todd Wagner's 2929 Entertainment and Magnolia Pictures. (Magnolia will release Sundance pickup Humpday on VOD BEFORE it hits theaters.) While Soderbergh knows how to keep costs down on his low-budget experiments (he shot this one in 16 days for $1.7 million), he also knows that if people don't know about a movie, they won't come.

So he adopted the old-fashioned build-buzz-at-Sundance approach and unveiled on Tuesday night, as a Special Sneak, The Girlfriend Experience, a 4K digital "work-in-progress" shot with his favorite Red camera. The reaction at the Eccles seemed reasonably warm (here's Karina Longworth at Spoutblog) and polite. The movie boasts a fragmented narrative (by Oceans 13 writers Brian Koppelman and David Levien) which Soderbergh used to try and pump up the flatness that often comes with limited camera set-ups, natural light (all but two shots) and non-pro actors. Porn star Sasha Grey is the only "pro" in the film. She seems comfortable with her lithe body as she plays a hooker who falls for a client. But she's pretty flat too. Soderbergh's manager Michael Sugar is in the film, and ex-Premiere critic Glenn Kenny (who tells all at his Somecamerunning blog) is one of the liveliest performers in the picture, playing a sex critic, basically. But the movie is sleekly shot and I look forward to seeing its final form.

[Photo of Steven Soderbergh by Jeffrey Wells]

While the Sundance media reports on the beleaguered independent theatrical market, which may never return to its former robust self--even with diminished production over the next few years--various Internet moguls are in Sundance networking and hawking their movie-centric wares.

While NetFlix's Reed Hastings insisted he was just watching movies, Col Needham, the Bristol-based film buff founder of Amazon-owned IMDb, the biggest movie website, is in Park City for the second time, hosting meetings at his suite at the spanking new Hotel Park City. With Without a Box, FilmFinders and Amazon Unbox, IMDb is moving steadily into building a bigger movie community and adding content. Here's its Road to Sundance Page.

Chris DeWolfe, one of the co-founders of MySpace, is in Sundance for the fourth year, holding court at the MySpace Cafe (which has free computers) and looking to push harder on the movie side into some of the same initiatives that worked so well for music. It's about giving people pages and marketing and fan opportunities. The studios are still taking advantage of MySpace for promoting their movies via official movie sites, and any sequel can take off from an established fanbase with a little updating.

Even though Facebook has made inroads with 46 million viewers (I now ignore my ugly MySpace page), according to comScore Media Metrix, MySpace is still huge, with 76 million unique users. Both are growing. "MySpace mirrors the census of the U.S.," says DeWolfe. "You can talk about early adopters when you're 2 million, but when you're 76 million, it's everyone. 40% of all moms are on MySpace. Kirk Douglas is blogging. People are getting more social online. Their engagement, the number of minutes they spend online, is up 40% this year over last year."

MySpace, like every other movie-oriented site, saw traffic surges related to The Dark Knight: it was the number one destination on the internet to find information about that movie, says DeWolfe, who is partnering with other film sites like Flixter, too.

E-commerce is DeWolfe's new focus: "We're working on selling ringtones, downloads, merchandise, tickets," he says. What about DVDs? "I'm not sure DVD sales are the future of our business. It's not a large profit center, although bands do sell merchandise, tickets, CDs, and DVDs. MySpace is the hub of their entire career. We're looking into the future of download sales. We're selling MP3 downloads. But they aren't large margins, as Steve Jobs will tell you."

Here's my flipcam interview with DeWolfe:

Quentin Tarantino is rushing production on his World War II epic Inglourious Basterds, which has been described as The Dirty Dozen meets Cross of Iron, not only because his mentor Harvey Weinstein could use a big hit sooner rather than later--and Tarantino is deeply loyal--but because the director is trying to finish it in time for Cannes in May.

A notorious dawdler, Tarantino takes years between projects, laboring on his scripts--a practice he defends in the name of quality over quantity. He finished this one at 165 pages on July 2 (here's New York Mag's description of the script and Cineobscure's script PDFs) and plans a Pulp Fiction-length film with five chapters:

Chapter One: Once Upon a Time in Nazi Occupied France Chapter Two: Inglourious Basterds Chapter Three: German Night in Paris (filmed in "French New Wave Black and White") Chapter Four: Operation Kino Chapter Five: Revenge of the Giant Face

Tarantino was up and running and shooting by October, after pacting with Weinstein Co. for domestic and Universal/Focus Features International for foreign.

Tarantino puts his all into shooting and editing. The ensemble cast is led by Brad Pitt and Michael Fassbender, star of Steve McQueen's Cannes breakout Hunger. Pitt leads a team of Jewish-American Nazi-hunters (The Basterds) who get caught in a No-Man's Land much like Sergio Leone's The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. (He wanted to use Ennio Morricone, but it didn't work out.)

While Tarantino went over-sked and budget on Death Proof, fussing and tinkering, this time he's on track and almost finished with the movie, which began production in Germany in October, and will soon get into the editing room to prep for his Inglourious Cannes preem. Can't wait.

[Photo: Getty Images]

Sony Pictures Classics has acquired North American and Latin American rights for $3 million to Lone Scherfig's An Education after a heated bidding war. The deal closed Monday night.

Fox Searchlight tried to grab the film with an early preemptive bid, but the offer in the $1 million-$2 million range was deemed too low by sellers CAA and Endgame Entertainment, which financed the $12-million 60s romance with BBC Films. Written by Nick Hornby from Lynn Barber's memoir, An Education stars Sundance "It Girl" Carey Mulligan as a 16-year-old schoolgirl who falls hard for a charming older man played by Peter Sarsgaard.

Fox Searchlight came back into the negotiation on a second round but was unable to close. Instead, on Monday night the company acquired Adam, starring Rose Byrne and Hugh Dancy. Also bidding on An Education were The Weinstein Co., Focus Features, Lionsgate and Overture. SPC, which closed recent deals out of Toronto with Endgame CEO Jim Stern on Easy Virtue and his documentary Every Little Step, will launch the film in the fall with an eye on an awards campaign.

Sundance buyers are also circling Shana Feste’s drama The Greatest, starring Pierce Brosnan and Susan Sarandon, Bobcat Goldthwait’s World’s Greatest Dad, starring Robin Williams, and producer-star Ashton Kutcher’s Spread. CAA had hoped to close a deal before fest’s end on September Issue, the popular documentary about Vogue’s Anna Wintour, which several distribs are interested in, including Senator Entertainment, which started off the fest with its acquisition of Antoine Fuqua’s Brooklyn’s Finest.

Late Monday night, word hit the Cinetic party at Zoom that soon after Adam's Sundance debut, Fox Searchlight had acquired worldwide rights to rookie writer-director Max Mayer's New York romance, starring Rose Byrne (Damages) and Hugh Dancy (Savage Grace) as a man with Asperger Syndrome in love with his neighbor. A release soon confirmed that the specialty unit will open the film later this year. "Adam has deeply satisfying and romantic storytelling," stated Searchlight prexy Peter Rice, "Pitch-perfect performances and the discovery of a new American filmmaker." 

There's so much going on that the Sundance Variety team splits things up. Yesterday I covered the jampacked 10 Directors to Watch panel and party at The Shop, which was shut down by fire marshalls when a nearby transformer blew. Mike Jones went to I Love You Phillip Morris, which is yet another man-on-man movie like Humpday. (By all reports it goes even farther.) Here's John Anderson's review. That and parents grieving the loss of a kid (three movies by my count) are recurring themes here.

Mike and I both enjoyed Sony Pictures Classics' elegant and yummy Tyson dinner (crab bisque soup de poisson, faux filets of beef cooked 26 hours with cherry sauce, potato gnocchis, chocolate tarte with a molten center) at the Bon Appetit Supper Club, where ex-heavyweight champion Mike Tyson admitted that the success of the doc Tyson is making him worry that he'll pursue bad living again, because he's "very weak." "I'm afraid of how much pussy and money I'm going to get," he said. "It's very detrimental to me."

"You're also healthy and strong," director James Toback told him. "So don't forget that."

Variety changed the format and venue for its annual 10 Directors to Watch party, moving to a panel, moderated this year by Sundance vet Mark Waters, followed by a party at The Shop.

Directors Adam Elliot (Max and Mary), Emily Abt (Toe to Toe), Cherien Dabis (Amreeka), Shana Feste (The Greatest), Bohdan Slama (The Country Teacher), Antonio Campos (Afterschool) and Marc Webb (500 Days of Summer) shared the lows and highs of launching their careers. Feste wrote scripts for other directors before realizing she could direct too. Abt put her crew in lacrosse uniforms and even put herself on the field to get one shot when her players were sent home. Dabis used her own experiences of discrimination as an Arab to inform Amreeka. Sundance "It Girl" Carey Mulligan and 500 Days of Summer star Joseph Gordon-Levitt, the young cast of Mystery Team, and Josh Harris and Ondi Timoner of We Live in Public joined industry players and execs such as IMDb's Col Needham for the lively party--until everyone got thrown out. Here's some video of Feste and Webb:

Mike, Dade Hayes and I all covered the Monday morning IFC breakfast announcing day-and-date VOD and SXSW fest launch for five films appearing at the fest this spring. Steven Soderbergh (whose The Girlfriend Experience is a fest Sneak Peak tomorrow) also discussed IFC's innovative release of Che, which hits VOD Wednesday. Here's the story.

Magnolia Pictures won a heated bidding war for worldwide rights to Lynn Shelton's bromantic comedy, Humpday, featuring Mark Duplass and Josh Leonard as two straight pals who dare each other to have sex together in a porn film. Six companies vied for the fest hit, which had audiences rolling with laughter. The film is in the Sundance competition. In yet another case of a filmmaker banking on a new distribution model, Magnolia is launching the film on VOD in advance of its release in 15 cities, as it did with the Demi Moore-starrer Flawless. Here's the story.

Submarine negotiated the six-figure deal.

Along with an enthusiastic Saturday night crowd at the Eccles, I enjoyed Fox Searchlight's anti-rom-com 500 Days of Summer, directed by music video veteran Marc Webb, who lucked out by casting two rising stars with great chemistry, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel. It's in the same genre as Juno or Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist, and falls right inside Searchlight's marketing sweet spot: young adults of both sexes. It opens this July.

Bids are flying on films for sale, following Senator's surprise multi-million buy of Antoine Fuqua's cop movie Brooklyn's Finest. The weekend's hot pick-up titles: Lone Scherfig's An Education, written by Nick Hornby, starring this fest's breakout star Carey Mulligan (The Greatest) and Peter Sarsgaard, and the much smaller New York-set Mexican-American competition entry Don't Let Me Drown, from director Cruz Angeles, which some folks compare favorably to such popular Mexican flicks as La Misma Luna (bought here in 2007 by Fox Searchlight) and this year's Rudo y Cursi (Sony Pictures Classics) and Sin Nombre (Focus Features).

Fox Searchlight already made a modest bid on An Education, but so far the two sides haven't come to terms on money. Other movies in play include Lynn Shelton's sex comedy Humpday, Shana Feste's controlled tearjerker The Greatest, producer-star Ashton Kutcher's commercial gigolo movie Spread, and the unique Push: Based on a Novel by Sapphire, which elicited this John Anderson rave:

An urban nightmare with a surfeit of soul, "Push: Based on a Novel by Sapphire" is like a diamond -- clear, bright, but oh so hard. To simply call it harrowing or unsparing doesn't quite cut it; "Push" is also courageous and uncompromising, a shaken cocktail of debasement and elation, despair and hope. Everyone involved deserves major credit for creating a movie so dangerous, problematic and ultimately elevating. Marketing will be a problem, because the shorthand description is so unpalatable. But this is, for all its scorched-earth emotion, a film to be loved.

Rookie writer-director Shana Feste's The Greatest played great and will sell, not to Fox Searchlight, but to another distrib willing to nurture it. Going in, Feste had to wrangle actors such as Susan Sarandon and Pierce Brosnan and decided not to pretend to be anything but a neophyte. She was intimidated and admitted it, she told me, instead of hiding her sensitivity and playing it tough. The actors helped her out. The movie displays unusual control and finesse for one so young, and the audience at the Eccles was in tears. Besides Mulligan, who handled an American accent well but admitted it was "tricky," the other discovery is Brit Aaron Johnson, who's playing John Lennon in Nowhere Boy. (Another movie about the loss of a child, Boy Interrupted, while well-received here, has been described as so intense--it's shot by the filmmaker parents of a bi-polar kid who killed himself--that I can't bring myself to see it.)

Debates are flying on the theatrical possibilities for two popular music docs: Spike Lee's film version of the Broadway musical Passing Strange and Tom DeCillo's doc on The Doors, When You're Strange. Also playing well is Sony Pictures Classics' Toronto pick-up, Davis Guggenheim's It Might Get Loud, featuring guitar greats Jack White, Edge and Jimmy Page.

The Anna Wintour doc The September Issue is also generating theatrical interest. The thriller The Cove, about trying to shoot video of illegal dolphin fishing, got a standing ovation today. The use of digital video to reveal wrongdoing is also the subject of Burma VJ, which was acquired by HBO but is an unlikely theatrical candidate. Its images of protest in the streets of Rangoon against the military dictatorship that has the country completely locked down are bone-chilling and inspiring. Unfortunately, the brief uprising that video guerillas recorded and leaked out of the country to air all over the world via CNN and BBC was short-lived. Yet again, the government shut down its people by killing and brutalizing them--and shot one Japanese cameraman in cold blood.

Mark Duplass is revealed in Sundance hit Humpday (which should land one of four possible buyers at any minuteUPDATE was acquired by Magnolia) as more than the digital writer-director with his brother Jay of Puffy Chair and Baghead but a gifted improvisational actor. He and Humpday co-star Josh Leonard (who starred in The Blair Witch Project) collaborated closely Mike-Leigh-style with writer-director Lynn Shelton. The results are hilarious--but also cut close to the bone. It took skill to pull this off. Here's my review.

Here's Duplass's debate with vet indie filmmaker Jeff Lipsky about digital vs. film. This encapsulates the generational divide pretty well.

Here's my short flipcam interview with Duplass:

[Photo courtesy EW.com]

It is not a surprise that new distrib on the block Senator bought Brooklyn's Finest. Mike Jones is reporting "under $5 million" upfront plus a substantial 8-figure prints and ads commitment. For ex-ThinkFilm exec Mark Urman to buy this film, right at the start of the fest, tells the indie community loud and clear: we're in the market.

All day the negotiations were about cuts and trims and losing the disastrous ending. So Antoine Fuqua realized, after the screening elicited hisses and not so great reviews, that he'd better let everyone know this is a work in progress, and he's ready to tweak.

He wasn't before. He is now.

There's a good movie in there. And it's marketable. Urman is planning a November awards campaign. Ethan Hawke could score. He's excellent in this.

Next to sell will likely be my current fest fave so far, Humpday. Marketing the sexually transgressive subject matter is a delicate issue in the post-Zack and Miri universe. Negotiations were ongoing on Saturday night.

Three good screenings today. The Burma VJ doc is great. HBO has it. The Greatest played great and will sell, not to Fox Searchlight, but to someone willing to nurture it. And Searchlight debuted Marc Webb's charming anti-rom-com 500 Days of Summer, starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zoey Deschanel, which scored with auds here and will open commercially in July. If anyone can make this work, it's Searchlight. More tomorrow.

Humpday was the best of the three movies I screened today at the Eccles. The third feature from Seattle photographer/filmmaker Lynn Shelton is deceptively entertaining.

Filmed on the Mike Leigh model of gifted actors improvising off a well-rehearsed and prepared series of scenes, the relationship comedy played well with a crowd of squirming, giggling adults. Happily married Ben (Mark Duplass) feels compelled to break out of the confines of his life when his old college chum Andrew (Joshua Leonard) turns up out of nowhere and lures him to a free-wheeling party where they dare each other to make a porn film starring themselves. How is Ben's straight-laced wife Anna (Alycia Delmore) going to react? No matter how implausible, every move that these characters make is understandable. They want to be so much more interesting and transgressive and not trapped by convention than they are.

Clearly, these collaborators--much like the team behind The Blair Witch Project, which also starred Leonard--knew what they were doing. But the breakout performance is Mark Duplass, of the writer-director Duplass brothers behind Puffy Chair and Baghead. "We shot the whole film," said Shelton at the Q & A, "in order to get excited about the idea that we wouldn't know what happens next. For it to look right we had to show up and shoot. We didn't know what happened until we got there. There was no written dialogue, a clear outline, a strong narrative drive."

The actors developed detailed back stories for their characters over a few months, so that they had a clear scaffolding to work with. "I can't write dialogue as awesome as what these actors say out of their mouths," Shelton said. She had worked as a still photographer on the Seattle set of True Adolescents, starring Duplass. "I fell in love with him as an actor," she said. "Luckily he said yes when I asked him to play the part of one of two guys trying to have sex together." She shortly introduced him to Joshua Leonard. Delmore was a local Seattle actress. And Shelton cast herself as a bisexual who invites Andrew into her bed with her girlfriend.

Inspired by a straight friend's reaction to seeing gay porn at Seattle's Hump Day, Shelton started thinking about straight men and gay sex and the rigidity and fluidity of their identities.

Onstage, Duplass insisted he didn't mind kissing Leonard, who responded, "it was way worse than I thought it would be."

Added Shelton: "It's the most awkward kiss ever recorded on film."

Buyers are circling. The danger with a movie like this is for a distrib to get too excited about its potential, as the Weinsteins did with Kevin Smith's Zack and Miri Make a Porno (a title that should have been ditched). They behaved like the movie was more commercial than it was and failed to build support on a smaller scale. This movie needs that kind of nurturing. Here's the trailer.

Emily Abt's Toe to Toe is an earnest, schematic, and sincere attempt to show the dynamics of an interracial friendship between two teenage girl lacrosse players near Washington D.C.. One is rich, lonely, promiscuous and white, the other poor, hard-working, and black; both are trying to overcome obstacles. Abt brings authenticity and compassion to this straight-forward story. It's very Sundance, in the well-intentioned sense.

Arriving at Sundance weighted with expectations, Brooklyn's Finest is a creative noble failure, one of those damn-the-torpedoes passion projects that flounders on its own ambition. Ex-Warners exec Basil Iwanyk developed the script by Michael C. Martin and brought in director Antoine Fuqua (Training Day), but when Warner Bros. passed, the filmmakers raised financing through Avi Lerner's Millenium Films. Fuqua made the movie on location in Brooklyn for something under $20 million with a strong cast: Don Cheadle, Richard Gere, Wesley Snipes, Ellen Barkin and Ethan Hawke, who is stellar.

The movie, shot by Patrick Murghuia, is stunning to look at. Fuqua takes full advantage of Brooklyn and his actors, weaving three stories of three very different cops all heading for disaster. It's an unrelievedly grim portrait of the world, without a ray of hope. The movie played to a mixed response, with both hisses and applause after the finale. (There is some discussion of serious trimming of the 125-minute movie, including the ending, which was not the one originally intended by the writer.) Every buyer was there, from Fox Searchlight (which won't deal with its SAG waiver issue until it has a film it wants to buy), Overture and Summit to Roadside, Senator and Miramax.

Spike Lee, feeling chipper about his first screening of his film version of the Broadway show Passing Strange (IFC is circling), turned up at the Brooklyn's Finest screening in a white fur hat to "represent Brooklyn," he said, and support "my man Wesley Snipes." His Jungle Fever star, who has suffered career turmoil, is fine in Brooklyn's Finest, and was pleased that Lee turned up. It's Snipes' second Sundance, he said; he came back in 1997 to support Mike Figgis's One Night Stand. At the after-party when a flack pressed Snipes to pose for a picture holding Robert Redford's new Sundance brand pink drink, Snipes asked if he could taste it first. That's Sundance in a nutshell.

At the Q & A, Fuqua said, "It's Greek Tragedy, opera. More police die from killing themselves than die in the line of duty. I thought I would explore that." Meanwhile the director is prepping two possible next projects: a biopic of New York mobster and FBI informant Gregory Scarpa, and Escobar, about the Columbian cocaine trafficker.

CAA and WMA are selling Brooklyn's Finest; I suspect buyers will check out more films before circling back. Sales will probably heat up at the end of the weekend.

My flight from LAX to Salt Lake City was delayed. Every seat was taken, many of them by industry folks heading to Park City for the Fest which launched Thursday night. I enjoyed a pleasant sunset drive up the mountain with Robin Schorr, who recently left River Road to put together a new development company with funding from a private investor. She told me to see Big Fan, from writer-turned-director Robert Siegel (The Wrestler). The voice behind Ratatouille, Patton Oswalt, breaks out in this one, I hear.

I missed the opening press conference and the opening night movie, Mary and Max, an Australian claymation feature that Variety's Justin Chang did not like:

Maudlin sentiment, miserablist humor and scatological sight gags are affectionately but awkwardly molded together in the Australian claymation feature "Mary and Max." A glum tale of friendship between two very unlikely pen pals, writer-director-designer Adam Elliot's follow-up to his Oscar-winning 2003 short "Harvie Krumpet" has its share of deadpan amusements, but its combo of mordant whimsy and tearjerker moments winds up curdling in an unappetizing fashion. A strong voice cast headed by Toni Collette and Philip Seymour Hoffman could buoy the toon's otherwise uncertain prospects beyond Oz.

At a civilized dinner at Black Dog with a bunch of film critics, we talked, naturally, about newspapers and mags slashing salaries and/or jobs. The New Times chain is down to two critics: Scott Foundas in LA and Jim Hoberman in New York will service the entire chain, with freelancers, now including ex-LA Weekly film critic Ella Taylor. Andy Klein was let go from L.A. CityBeat. Time Out New York lost its lead film critic, Melissa Anderson. The gloomy drumroll drones on.

And we talked hot fest titles:

I had been tipped on Burma VJ, which HBO scooped up before the fest. John Anderson has seen it and raved.

He also liked We Live in Public, the doc about New York dotcom millionaire Josh Harris in the early 90s that bears some resemblance to The Truman Show. A bunch of CAA agents raved about this. And Jeff Wells also liked it.

UPDATE: Word is, The Greatest is a four-hankie breakout for writer-director Shana Feste and Brit actress Carey Mulligan, who stars in another hot fest title, Lone Scherfig's An Education. Producer Lynette Howell (Half Nelson) has high hopes.

Here's the Variety special Sundance section with list of Hot Titles. Ken Turan runs down all the films he's seen in advance of the fest. The NYT is running a Sundance page. And check out the revamped IndieWire, which is running a constant feed of Sundance stories along with its own reporting.

Here's the We Live in Public trailer:

The Watchmen Duel of the Titans between Fox and Warners has been resolved.

Winners: Warners. They get to open the movie as planned on March 6. Fox is also a winner. It gets a back-end gross share of the movie. And gets rewarded for chasing after a legal opportunity. And the audience wins: they get to see the movie sooner rather than later.

Loser: Producer Larry Gordon, who lost face when the judge blamed him for not nailing down the rights; plus, he may have to give up some of his share of the gross, to make up for what Warner has to pay to Fox.

Here's SAG's official response to the "issue" about studio distribs being able to pick up indie films shot under a SAG waiver:

Joe Leydon noticed something funny about Bertrand Tavernier's new movie In the Electric Mist, which is premiering at the upcoming Berlin Film Festival. Stateside, the pic is going straight to DVD. It's a sign of the times when movies with that sort of pedigree can't get a theatrical release.

Despite a perceived slight from the British Academy Award (BAFTA) nominations, which after all are from the Brits, who can be a snobby club, The Dark Knight is still looking strong for multiple Oscar noms, including best picture. Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire and David Fincher's The Curious Case of Benjamin Button boasted the most noms with 11 apiece. Here's the list.

Heading into the worst seller's market in years at the Sundance Film Fest, at least one AMPTP studio specialty arm, Fox Searchlight, may not be allowed by its parent company to acquire films shot under a SAG waiver while the Guild lacked a contract for the past seven months. (Who's the boss? Peter Chernin.) The other company that may have an issue is Disney/Miramax. (Boss: Robert Iger.) Both are deeply involved in union issues.

Sundance hot title I Love You Phillip Morris, starring Jim Carrey and Ewan McGregor as prison lovers, was completed under the old SAG agreement, but hot sale title Brooklyn’s Finest was not. This issue has never been raised before. Usually a new contract will supersede the waiver, but there’s no contract in sight, and certain studios are in no mood to be helpful to SAG. (Universal and Sony are not concerned about this issue.) If Fox Searchlight refuses to buy SAG waiver films, that could take the biggest potential deals off the table—and cede the field to the likes of Summit and Overture, which are hungry to buy.

UPDATE: But something tells me this isn't going to happen. At the airport, one Fox Searchlight exec sounded fairly unsure of what they were going to do. My sense is that they threw this into the air to see how the other studios would respond. If they want to buy something, I think they'll figure out a way to buy it. "SAG Contract a non issue- there is not one person who is going to not buy a film because of it- it is NONSENSE," writes one indie producer.

Here's Patrick Goldstein taking on Nikki Finke and defending his brethren, including the NYT's Michael Cieply.

While I have confidence in Larry Mark and Bill Condon's ability to give us an entertaining and classy Oscar show, my instincts tell me that not announcing the Oscar presenters--which is something you do to build interest and awareness to get people to watch the show--is buying more time. They can play with schedules, cajole and coax, try to stick in bigger names, and not commit, until late in the day. That's my hunch. A little scary though.

Don't believe everything you hear about Twilight and its sequels. Things are heating up already on the third installment, Eclipse. They haven't even started the second one yet, New Moon. When you've got a robust franchise, filmmakers are eager to get on board. Word is, the Spanish director of The Orphanage, Juan Antonio Bayona, and 3:10 to Yuma helmer James Mangold are both circling the project, but Summit insists that no meetings are scheduled as yet. Both would be strong choices.

As to the last two unfilled roles in New Moon, vampires Jane and Aro, no offers have yet gone out, despite what you may have read. And the role of Leah Clearwater isn't being filled, because according to writer Melissa Rosenberg, she isn't in the script!

Shortlisted for the documentary Oscar, Trouble the Water was one of last year's Sundance breakouts. It was a good year all around for its scrappy real-life heroine, Kim Rivers, who surprised herself and many people around her as she videotaped Hurricane Katrina and helped to save lives. At the fest, she gave birth to her first child, and then watched the film go on to many kudos, including Time Magazine’s Top Ten Performances of 2008.

Rivers debuted her music in Trouble the Water, and is releasing an album in April to coincide with its HBO release.

Here's the movie's trailer:

RottenTomatoes has posted winners of its Golden Tomato Awards for 2008 for the best and worst-reviewed movies on the critics aggregation site.

No surprise on the winner of the best-reviewed wide release-- Wall-E: 96%. More than any other company, Pixar has won this honor five times.

Man on Wire grabbed best-reviewed limited release: 100%. Only one other film has earned this score: Pixar's Toy Story 2.

Worst-reviewed film is One Missed Call at 0%, the lowest-ever Tomatoes score.

At this stage, Man on Wire is the film to beat for the best feature documentary Oscar. And Wall-E will likely score best animated feature, plus some nominations for writing, sound editing, sound and score, the same ones earned by last year's animated winner, Ratatouille. Will Andrew Stanton add director to the list? That is the burning question.

I hope this Deep Vote guy isn't typical of the average Academy voter! Check out this disturbing story at The Envelope.

Rumors have been surrounding various studio subsidiaries and Focus Features is no exception. Here's the breaking story of Focus Features' merger with Universal's International Production Group..

At a time when many studio specialty divisions are under fire, downsizing or shuttering, Universal Picture’s domestic specialty arm Focus Features and its International Production group are combining forces to create a global company, Focus Features. (General Electric-owned Universal recently sold Focus’s low-budget genre label Rogue Pictures to Relativity Media for some $150 million.)

Focus Features CEO James Schamus and Universal Pictures’ International Production prexy Christian Grass announced the merger just as their acquisition teams head to the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. “This global company gives filmmakers one-stop shopping with a more global focus,” said Schamus, who admitted that in today’s rough economy, there is strength in numbers. Combined 2008 grosses for the two companies topped $350 million worldwide. “There will be no layoffs,” he said. “All hands are on deck in Los Angeles, New York, Tokyo, Berlin and London. We’re all pulling together, with two substantial and healthy P & Ls.”

Focus Features will continue to run its domestic production and distribution arm, while Grass’s production group will join Focus’s robust foreign sales and distribution company, Focus Features International. Since October 2007, Grass has been producing Universal films outside the U.S., he and Schamus have worked together on several projects, including Cary Joji’s Fukunaga’s Spanish-language thriller “Sin Nombre,” which will launch in the dramatic competition at Sundance, the only film from a studio. Carlos Cuaron’s Mexican hit “Rudo y Cursi,” the first project from cha cha cha, a company backed by Mexican filmmakers Guillermo del Toro, Alfonso Cuaron and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, is also debuting at Sundance. “Christian and I have so many touchpoints in terms of filmmaker relationships,” said Schamus. “We can flow a huge amount of resources into the international filmmaking culture and bring cross-border success.”

“We were already working closely together,” said Grass, “so we felt we might as well be partners. International production has become this truly global business. It’s about identifying opportunity where it exists. We need to understand local markets and bring an international perspective to a worldwide business.”

Schamus and Grass offer filmmakers around the world a chance to set up, finance, produce, sell or distribute their films either locally or in multiple markets, depending on the commercial appeal of each project. Schamus cited Focus’s comedy thriller “In Bruges,” starring Golden Globe-winner Colin Farrell, as an example of a modest Anglo/Irish production that grossed $7.7 million domestically and another 23 million worldwide. And while Ang Lee’s $15 million “Lust, Caution” was a disappointment stateside, it was a huge hit in Asian markets, with a global gross of $65 million. “Burn After Reading” ($144 million) and “Atonement” ($128 million) were also global hits for Focus. In current release, “Milk” is a strong awards-season contender.

The new team will tailor overseas distribution to each film, which can either go out through various Universal Pictures International (UPI) territories or independently license distribution rights through FFI.

Under the new Focus structure, Schamus continues as CEO of Focus while Grass becomes Co-CEO of Focus Features International. Current Focus prexy Andrew Karpen is now FFI president. Alison Thompson will stay on as International Sales and Distribution prexy, and production chief John Lyons will continue to report to Schamus. Senior v-p Clare Wise, who targets production and acquisitions in all territories outside of North America and the United Kingdom, will continue to report to Grass.

Schamus, who founded Focus with his former Good Machine partner David Linde in 2002, has always shared a global-centric approach with Linde, who is now Universal co-chairman. “By partnering with Christian, I don’t have to explain myself anymore,” Schamus said. “It’s an opportunity for local filmmakers to get on the world stage and gives Focus a chance to find new filmmaking talent and give them a worldwide platform.”