Terry Gilliam’s ‘The Imaginarium Of Doctor Parnassus’ To Debut In Munich Later This Month; Hits Germany December 3

Terry Gilliam’s “The Imaginarium Of Doctor Parnassus,” will open up the 27th Munich International Film Festival that runs June 26-July 4. The film features the last onscreen appearance of Heath Ledger and still has not been bought by any U.S. distributors. The film comes out in Germany, December 3. We believe this is the first hard and fast release date we’ve seen for ‘Parnassus’ so far. Does this mean the rest of the world could follow suit that late in the year? [THR]

Everybody’s merging and or combining forces. Financial consultants, Mary Dickinson and Charlene Fisher have spearheaded the new, DF Indie Studios which also features producers and actors like, Ted Hope, Ira Deutchman, Jennifer Fox, Glen Basner, Scott Free and Tilda Swinton. The idea is to release, 12 indie movies a year with a budget of up to $10 million. The film market is in the toilet, but DF Indie Studios figures by going lean and mean they can fill the void left by indie majors that have gone the way of the dodo bird. We’ll see. [IndieWire]

Speaking of mergers, times is getting tight for movie studios that could go the way of major record labels and merge into titantic signed entities like Universal Music Group. Reuters says Viacom Inc’s Paramount Pictures could merge with Sony Pictures, Universal Studios or another movie studio amid a wave of consolidation in the industry over the next few months, veteran investor Mario Gabelli said in the latest issue of Barron’s. Simply salient financial speculation? Nope, Gabelli is, The chief executive of Gamco Investors Inc, who owns shares of Viacom, said he expects dealmaking among movie studios as they seek to cut costs. Who knows though, this could be premature. We won’t pretend to be experts here, but mergers of these kinds tend to always leave art on the cutting room floor. Something to be worried about and bad for the business as a whole. [Reuters]

Move over Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic, there’s a new film aggregator in town and its called Movie Review Intelligence. Most critics agree this is helpful to the world of film criticism, which has been called a dying breed in the last 12 months. But as The New York Times‘ A.O. Scott notes, the influx of citizen critics (bloggers?) are inadvertently killing the vocation, “So the paradox is that the Web has invigorated criticism as an activity while undermining it as a profession.” [Anne Thompson]

The Seattle International Film Festival announced its winners. Audience awards went to “Black Dynamite” (best film), best actor Sam Rockwell (“Moon”), best actress Yolande Moreau (“Seraphine”), best director Kathryn Bigelow (“The Hurt Locker”) and best doc “The Cove.” [AnneThompson]