It was about 15 months ago when I sat down at a Toronto Film Festival screening and enjoyed the hell out of David Ayer's Harsh Times. It's a stark, dark and (yes) harsh piece of 70's-style hard-boiled character study, and one that features two fantastic performances: one from Freddy Rodriguez and the other from the mega-chameleon known as Christian Bale. It's the story of a frantic Gulf War veteran who desperately wants to earn a career in law enforcement -- despite the fact that the guy's maybe three whiskers short of Postal Mode. Anyway, it's a damn good flick, so I kept my eye out to see when the thing would hit the cinemas already.

(Harsh Times was obviously a labor of love for Ayer, who, after penning the screenplays for The Fast and the Furious, Dark Blue and Training Day (among others), decided it was time to re-finance his house and use the money to direct his first feature. And so he did.)

The New York Times just published a rather excellent article that details what went on after the upstart Bauer Martinez boys offered Mr. Ayer $4 million for his movie. Needless to say, bitterness and animosity bubble just beneath the surface: Ayer hasn't received his full paycheck, Martinez claims to have dropped $15 million on advertising, although that money most likely came from MGM. Oh yeah, apparently MGM will be doing the distributing for Bauer Martinez ... which is weird because Bauer Martinez was supposed to be, well, a distribution company.

Long story short: Harsh Times will (finally) hit about 800 screens come November 10th, although most of you movie fans will have to be content with catching it on DVD some time early next year. Bale's performance is pretty much a force of nature, but I doubt a flick this "low profile" will be yielding any Oscar nominations. And that's a shame, because Bale's long overdue for some award-time affection. Isn't he?

According to the trade papers, MGM is schedule to announce an ambitious new slate of distribution deals later today. Though the studio stopped doing production of its own when it was acquired by Sony last year, this afternoon it will reveal deals with independent studios that will have it distributing about 20 films over the next year. The bulk of that number will come from The Weinstein Company and Bauer Martinez, which are together expected to contribute up to 15 pictures. Titles from that duo could included such TWC films as Clerks 2, Lucky Number Slevin, and Young Hannibal: Behind the Mask, as well as Bauer properties The Darwin Awards and Christian Bale starrer Harsh Times. Other, smaller productions houses will also be part of the deal: Lakeshore Entertainment is already on board, and talks are on-going with Sidney Kimmel Entertainment, among others.

The smaller companies will have the option of utilizing MGM's growing marketing department for movie promotion, while TWC and other bigger studios will continue to promote their own properties. Another aspect of this deal is MGM's contract with Showtime, under which the company is responsible for up to 30 slots over the course of the year; the films that are part of this deal could fill some of those slots.

About a year after subsuming most of its activities into the Sony corporate beast, MGM is close to setting up deals with the Weinstein Company and other indie studios and acquisition houses to independently distribute films. Over at Variety, Nicole Laporte is reporting that studios are interested in pacting with the House That Louis B. Meyer built in order to have total control over marketing in both the theatrical and DVD realms. MGM, meanwhile, is looking for content to shore up their library, primarily in terms of meeting new CEO Harry Sloane's mandate to aggressively pursue new digital outlets. Negotiations with the studios seem to be pretty far along, with Weinstein apparently committed to sending at least five films down the MGM pipeline this year. But the first distribution adventure for MGM looks like it's going to be Harsh Times, the Iraq-veteran drama starring Christian Bale that new player Bauer Martinez picked up at Toronto and plays to release this spring.