BrooklynsFinest Tagged Articles at Cinematical

1. Twiddle thumbs while waiting for bidding wars to break out -- So Senator Entertainment has already landed domestic distribution for Antoine Fuqua's cop drama, Brooklyn's Finest (they'll probably do right by it and sit it on a shelf right next to All the Boys Love Mandy Lane); now, it's just a matter of waiting for Fox Searchlight to snatch up their next sleeper in waiting, and for either Focus or Paramount Vantage to pick up the rights to something they can't quite turn a profit on *cough1* *cough2*. Modest comfort comes in the form of Searchlight already planning a late-summer release for 500 Days of Summer, and of Sony Pictures Classics reportedly calling dibs on Sam Rockwell's sci-fi drama, Moon. Keep those ears and eyes open, folks.

2. Monitor some seriously similar, sometimes simultaneous Twitter action -- For starters, there's our crew: Snider, then Davis, then Rocchi, and (lastly but not least-ly) new convert Weinberg. Then you have the Onion folks, your CHUD, the IFC one-two, the Spout reps, our HitFix homies, not to mention your /Film and your Film School Rejects and your First Showing (these fellas happen to be sharing accommodations, so expect much echo). Daily posts? Facebook status updates? Please. With a minute-by-minute play-by-play, who needs to go outdoors?

Sunday may be a day of rest, but not for the intrepid Cinematical crew, who cranked out reviews and posts between screenings and interviews. They weren't the only busy ones, of course!

Deals. Nothing closed, but Gregg Goldstein of Movie City News reported (very early) that David Mackenzie's sex comedy Spread, starring Ashton Kutcher and Anne Heche, excited distributors because of its commercial appeal. The Jim Carrey "gay prison love story" I Love You Phillip Morris premiered tonight and distribs are expected to be circling.

Cinematical Reviews, and An Interview. Erik Davis says Marc Webb's 500 Days of Summer, with Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon Levitt, is "an anti-fairytale" romantic comedy. (Did you watch the teaser trailer? Fox Searchlight will release it in July.) Erik was super impressed by the teen detective antics of the Derrick Comedy troupe in Mystery Team, which he calls "a silly, stupid, ridiculous comedy." Paul Solet's Grace inspired the inimitable Eric D. Snider to opine: "If you are the sort of person who might enjoy an effed-up gore-fest about a woman [Jordan Ladd] who delivers an undead baby, you can rest assured that Grace lives up to its potential." Scott Weinberg wrote about killer trees, Nazi zombies, and a cool celeb .

James Rocchi interviewed Antoine Fuqua, director of Brooklyn's Finest, a few hours before the film sold to Senator Entertainment. James was cool toward Doug Pray's doc Art & Copy ("essentially, an ad for advertising") but warmed up to Sophie Barthes' Cold Souls, with Paul Giamatti giving "what may be his best performance" as an actor who stores his soul. James also saw a "French-style ... transgendered revenge comedy," and lived to tell about it.

Blog Talk. My favorite quotes of the day, if you have a few more seconds, after the jump.

Cinematical spoke with Brooklyn's Finest director Antoine Fuqua on a sunny Saturday afternoon; within hours, Fuqua's gritty police drama would have sold to Senator Entertainment, the first distribution deal made at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival. Of course, as Fuqua talked with Cinematical about his exemplary cast, how exactly you make a cops-and-crooks film in the wake of The Wire and the challenges of shooting in New York, the film's sale was in the future. Fuqua also defended the film's controversial final shot, even as he noted he was willing to entertain discussions about changing it; "The whole point of the movie is that they don't have the proper help in the police force, and there's a huge piece in The New York Times about more police killing themselves than dying in the line of duty that just came out a few months ago ... and when you read that, it's so sad and heartbreaking, and you go "You gotta show that. ..."

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Packed with screenings and the beginnings of buzz on several titles, Saturday kept Sundance visitors hopping.

Deals. Antoine Fuqua's police drama Brooklyn's Finest , starring Richard Gere, Don Cheadle, and Ethan Hawke, was in play after its Friday night debut as a "work in progress," with several distributors making offers (per THR). Gregg Goldstein at Movie City News dubbed it "Friday Night Fever." Senator Distribution closed the deal for North American rights on Saturday night, according to indieWIRE, with a fourh quarter 2009 release planned. Lynn Shelton's 'two straight guys decide to make a gay porno" Humpday has motivated four buyers to actively engage in talks to acquire it, Mike Jones reported for Variety at his blog The Circuit.

Our Coverage. Humpday is a "quiet, unassuming festival film" says Erik Davis of Cinematical. He also describes it as "uncomfortable," "awkward," and "often laugh-out-loud funny," which means this sucker better get picked up by somebody and released in theaters pronto. Scott Weinberg loved Sam Rockwell in Moon and reported on two people fainting during horror flick Grace. And Eric D. Snider complained about getting ripped off ... by another blogger. You can catch up with all of our coverage via the convenient Sundance hub at Moviefone.

Elsewhere. Though Brooklyn's Finest has drawn mixed reviews, Moon and Humpday continue to generate great buzz across the Internets (especially the latter, with even Karina Longworth of Spout succumbing to its charms).

More blog talk after the jump.

When the writers' strike was looming, folks were rushing to get things done. This time around, with SAG, we've got some big-budget films trucking ahead, or scheduling re-shoots, without worry of the actors heading for the picket line. It almost feels like it's just some wild rumor. But it's not, and Variety reports that there is a pretty large "Waiverland" in case things go ahead.

SAG has set up 300 waiver deals with indie producers for post-June 30 production, should the strike go on. Now, Variety also points out that some of the big productions (like Terminator, which seemed surprisingly carefree about the possible strike), have scheduled in a hiatus just in case (hopefully long enough to cover it, should a strike begin), but others are going on the hope that there won't be one, like Angels and Demons and Prince of Persia. Risky business.

So, if you're wondering what some of the films are that got waivers, Variety shared the following: Edge of Darkness, W, My One and Only, Big Eyes, Labor Pains, Pandorum, Bad Lieutenant, Killing Pablo, and Brooklyn's Finest. Plus an earlier waiver list that included The Rebound, Law-Abiding Citizen, and Brothers in Arms.

We're in June now, so we'll know soon enough what will happen. Hopefully this can all be resolved without a big strike, but only time will tell.

Another week has flown by, and it's time for more casting bites, courtesy of Variety:

She might have gotten to play Joan of Arc on the small screen, and get saucy in a Stanley Kubrick film, but now Leelee Sobieski is probably going to make many-a-Johnny Depp admirer jealous. She's been cast as the last girlfriend of John Dillinger - aka Depp - in Michael Mann's Public Enemies. This should make her Polly Hamilton -- a woman who didn't know who he really was, and was with him when he was gunned down.

Meanwhile, actor Jesse Williams is getting to cleanse his big-screen girly fare of the upcoming The Sisterhood of Traveling Pants 2 with Antoine Fuqua's Brooklyn's Finest. He will play Eddie Quinlan, a character who is pretty high up on the cast list that boasts Ethan Hawke, Richard Gere, Don Cheadle, and Ellen Barkin. The movie focuses on three unconnected cops who take very different career paths and wind up at "the same deadly location."