Have you been reading Cinematical Indie lately? If not, here's what you've been missing ...


INDIE FILM GRAB BAG

• Atom Egoyan will start shooting on his newest film, Adoration, this fall -- his first since 2005's Where the Truth Lies.
• Cinematical Indie Seven: Documentaries worth catching on DVD ...
• Deliver Us From Evil director Amy Berg (pictured) talks to Cinematical Indie about the $660 million payout by the Catholic Church to victims of clergy sexual abuse, and how she feels about Cardinal Roger Mahony's "apology" to the victims.

FEST NEWS

• Michael Moore's Traverse City Film Fest announces its lineup, which includes some retro films (Grease, Raiders of the Lost Ark). It's Michael Moore's fest, so it's a given that there are plenty of social-issue films, but there will also be other fest fare like Waitress, Paprika and The King of Kong.
• Heading to a slightly more exotic locale, news from the Thessaloniki Film Festival is that the fest will be honoring one of Monika's fave directors, John Sayles, with a "Golden Alexander." The fest will also screen the European premiere of Sayle's latest film, Honeydripper (Monika wrote earlier this month about Honeydripper being selected for Toronto ... busy year for Sayles.
• The Middle East International Film Festival, announced at Cannes earlier this year, has a Festival Director: film fest veteran Jon Fitzgerald, who helped launch Slamdance and has worked for AFI and, well, lots of other fests. The fest will be held in October in Abu Dhabi, and the main site of the fest is the truly stunning Emirates Palace. Seems like the organizers of the fest intend to make it a major business-oriented fest with lots of deal-making going on ... it will be interesting to see how Fitzgerald grows the fest, and if it eventually becomes a key fest for dealmakers -- kind of like the Toronto or Sundance of the Middle East. Interesting ...
• The AFI Dallas Film Fest has announced its call for entries for 2008, the second year of the fest, so get your films submitted.
• Cinematical Indie gears up for our coverage of the major fall film fests, Telluride, Toronto and Venice.

DEALS and DISTRIBUTION

• Just when we got all excited about the July 20 release of one of our fave flicks from Toronto last year, All the Boys Love Mandy Lane, things got curiouser and curiouser, culminating with the announcement that -- too bad, so sad -- we're going to have to wait until 2008 for the film's official release now. Wha --? Poor Mandy -- first, she didn't get a freaking poster until two weeks before her release date, then she got dumped by the Weinsteins' Dimension and acquired by Senator Entertainment. But never fear, the Brothers Weinstein have a positive spin on the bizarre dumping of the film, saying that Senator will give Mandy a wider release than they had planned for her, and Senator already owned her German rights anyhow ... and there's less competition in the film's new release slot (and, just maybe, the horror genre will recover from the dreadful opening of Captivity by then -- though Elisha Cuthbert's career may not). Ah, Mandy. The guys dying to see the film will just have to wait a while longer ... but I guess as long as a girl is trading up, it's all good.
• Speaking of the Weinstein boys, The Weinstein Company (TWC) also acquired Benny Chan's Invisible Target ... and Peter Martin ponders whether this one might head straight to DVD ...
• Here! Films picks up Tribeca player Fat Girls, while First Run (finally, it's about time someone did) acquires one of my own fave Sundance flicks, For the Bible Tells Me So.

INDIES ONLINE AND ON DVD

• Robert Bresson's first film, Les Anges du Péché, finally gets a DVD release, but you have to buy it from a French website.
• Willy Wiggins reinvents The Outlaw Son.
• Peter Martin writes up the latest indie DVD releases, including his top pick-of-the-week, Avenue Montaigne.

Though the film won't make its official debut until next month at the Toronto International Film Festival, Borat was actually screened for a paying audience for the first time at Michael Moore'sTraverse City Film Festival over the weekend -- I guess that's what you call a soft open? The film's director, Larry Charles, was even on hand for the screening, and took a bow after a sustained standing ovation, telling the crowd he wasn't allowed to answer questions about the film until he meets the press in Toronto. Man, I can't wait to see what critics at TIFF think of the film -- it's hard to tell right now if the manic buzz stems from actual quality, or just a desperate love for the outrageous Sacha Baron Cohen.

Most of the fest's program consisted of films that have already been released, from the new-ish like Scoop, Little Miss Sunshine, The Squid and the Whale (with Jeff Daniels in attendance) and Wordplay, to oldies like A Clockwork Orange (with Malcolm McDowell), Full Metal Jacket (with Matthew Modine), Amadeus, Spartacus and Three Kings and Flirting with Disaster (with director David O. Russell). Also on the program were This Film is Not Yet Rated, which isn't released until next month, and smaller, festival-friendly films like Pittsburgh and I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With. Wow -- most big-city, big-name festivals would kill for that lineup.

As Chris reported last week, Magnolia Pictures acquired Jesus Camp -- a documentary about "three Missouri kids who travel to ... [an] evangelical summer camp" -- for North American distribution, and immediately decided to pull the film from Michael Moore's Traverse City Film Festival. The people at Magnolia were concerned that the film would immediately get a Liberal! label from the association with Moore, and since they hope to market it to both liberals and more conservative Evangelical Pentecostals, the company's president thought it was best to keep their movie out of the festival.

The problem, however, is that Moore doesn't care what Magnolia wants. It turns out that their decision to pull the film was more of a request -- one that Moore denied. In fact, according to The Hollywood Reporter, Jesus Camp is screening twice in Traverse City: Once today, and once tomorrow. Take that, you Magnolia bastards!

That Michael Moore -- he never stops stickin' it to the man, even when the man is an independent distributor with a stable of films that, when political, lean decidedly to the liberal side of the spectrum.

For all of those (including us) who've been wondering where hell Michael Moore is, he has finally spoken. The controversial filmmaker wrote a letter to Anne Thompson of The Hollywood Reporter to fill everyone in on what he's up to. He's still working on Sicko, the documentary about American HMOs and pharmaceutical companies, or as he calls it, "a comedy about 45 million with no health care in the richest country on earth," and he's 75% finished with the shooting of it. Soon he will begin the editing process and claims it will be released, "sometime in 2007." His letter explains some of the reasons the production has taken so long, mainly the fact that its subject has taken him down new roads he didn't plan or know about (let's hear his critics say he hit a dead end when his theories were incorrect and he had to make stuff up; I know someone out there is thinking it).

Moore also used the opportunity (or maybe it was his main reason for the letter) to promote his second annual Traverse City Film Festival, held in Northern Michigan from July 31st to August 6th. The festival is a showcase of 60 films that Moore likes, including An Inconvenient Truth, Three Kings, Hotel Rwanda and Borat (each of these films mentioned will be presented by their respective directors). Also showing is the entire filmography of Stanley Kubrick, who Moore considers, "the greatest American director of all time," presented by executive producer Jan Harlan and actors Malcolm McDowell and Matthew Modine. Last but not least is a collection of Iranian films in order to, "get to know them first this time!" Regardless of what you think of Moore, if you live near Traverse City you should attend the fest, because he's showing some damn good movies.

Anyway, that might be the most we hear from him for awhile, as he says he'll be busy working, so comment away on what he's given us for now.