A sale for Darren Aronofsky’s already-lauded, “The Wrestler,” is imminent says Anne Thompson. The trick for Wild Bunch is “finding a distrib that can ramp up a release before year’s end so that Rourke can qualify for Oscar consideration. A late December limited opening would be likely,” says the Variety scribe and her posit makes clear as day sense given all the buzz and premature Oscar talk. [Variety]
We never got a chance to dig deeply into this great looking New York Times article, but it’s thesis is: the new conundrum at the Toronto Film Festival is not being noticed, it’s actually being seen. That’s cause there’s so much fucking A-list competition. [NYT]
TIFF Festival Watch: A lot of people aren’t loving Ed Harris’ “Appaloosa” including Jeffrey Wells and In Contention. [Hollywood Elsewhere/In Contention]
Talk of Steven Soderbergh’s epic “Che” biopic being bought by Magnolia Pictures continues. You know at this point it’s pretty much a done deal and they’re just working out the particulars with a fine tooth comb, but Magnolia says to say the deal is done is “premature.” In other words, not signed, sealed and delivered….yet. [NYPost]
Tobey Maguire and director Sam Raimi are apparently back for “Spider-Man 4 & 5”. Evidently both episodes will be shot back to back and it seems that Kirsten Dunst may or may not be back for the 4th and 5th edition. We don’t blame her and are kind of shocked Maguire and Raimi are still interested in this territory. Aren’t there other films you want to make, other stories to tell and new characters to become? Doesn’t this shit get old? Maybe they just drove up a dumptruck full of cash to their houses and gave them an offer they couldn’t refuse. Sony is dying to have this cash-cow franchise back up on its feets. We don’t see the fuss in this series. Its decent popcorn fare, but at this point it’s becoming like dinner theater. [Deadline Hollywood]
Tom Cruise’s United Artists has picked up the rights the serial-killer novel “The Monster of Florence,” with Mr. Scientology tentatively attached as the star. The book is the real-life story of an Italian journalist investigating a series of unsolved killings. Cruise is all over the map these days in the project he’s choosing, seemingly attaching himself to anything with a vague waft of success nearby. [Variety]
There’s an ironic cult following around the film, “Buckaroo Banzai,” mainly cause it’s so bad, but maybe cause it’s genius. We can’t pretend to say we understand it, but then again, we haven’t seen it since we were children. Anyhow, a sequel almost happened says co-creator/writer Earl Mac Rauch and he give the details. [MTV]
Playlist Thought: We’ve come to realize we pretty much detest when someone says, “XYZ is going to win an Oscar!” when they actually haven’t seen the film yet. That’s utter nonsense, and yes, that thinking sort of invalidates a lot of sites like the Gold Derby (written by a toolbag) and the very fine site Awards Daily (they do much more than just simple premature Oscar predictions though), but oh well. Nothing personal, it’s just that you can’t really truly weigh in until you’ve seen the film. You can say people are raving, but getting into it much more than that is sort of foolish.
Another Playlist Thought: If you used “could be this year’s ‘Juno’,” to describe the potential success via the great buzz on Danny Boyle’s “Slumdog Millionaire,” consider yourself an uncreative twit that might want to reconsidering his/her writing gig.
