What did you do on Saturday night? The Weinstein Co. was busy, closing three deals at the American Film Market (AFM), according to ScreenDaily.com. They picked up US distribution rights to films represented by French company Wild Bunch.

• Dorothy Mills stars Carice Van Houten, who gave an incredible performance in Paul Verhoeven's Black Book and has since been rumored as a Bond Girl and signed for biopic Smoke and Ochre, Bryan Singer's Valkyrie, Body of Lies with Leonardo DiCaprio and Russell Crowe, and Repossesion Mambo with Jude Law. (Whew!) Dorothy Mills was directed by Agnès Merlet (Artemisia) and is described as a mystery thriller. Van Houten plays a grieving psychiatrist assigned to help a teenage girl accused of strangling a baby.
  

• Dante 01 represents the solo directing debut of Marc Caro, who previously made Delicatessen and The City of Lost Children with Jean-Pierre Jeunet. The film is set in a "space prison," where dangerous criminals become unwilling participants in medical experiments. The prisoners begin resisting; the arrival of a mysterious convict brings everything to a head. It's due for release in France on January 2, 2008.
  

• Martyrs is a horror flick from writer/director Pascal Laugier. It starts in the 1970s with the discovery of Lucie, a young girl who'd gone missing the year before and has no memory of what happened. Hospitalized, she suffers from nightmares of torture, but slowly recuperates with the help of another young patient. Fifteen years pass and she turns up at a house in a forest with shotgun in hand. (Cineuropa has the details.)
  

No word yet on whether the Weinsteins plan theatrical releases, though Dorothy Mills is the most likely to get one. AFM continues through November 7 in lovely, seaside Santa Monica, California.

After disappointing comic book fans everywhere with Catwoman, the mono-monikered director Pitof should have gone back to his day job. He is a terrific special effects man, particularly for his work with Jean-Pierre Jeunet on such films as Delicatessen and Alien: Resurrection. But for all his recognition for the effects work, he's going to be best known for guiding Halle Berry through one of the lamest movies of the 2000s (it 'won' four Razzies including Worst Picture, Worst Director and Worst Actress). While he hasn't given up his day job yet (he's back with Jeunet for The Life of Pi and he's working on the next Astérix and Obélix movie), he's also not giving up on directing. His follow-up to Catwoman has just been announced as an independent crime thriller called Only in New York, starring Jim Caviezel.

Caviezel has some problems of his own coming on to this project, as he does with any project these days. Many of us will forever associate the actor with his role as Jesus in The Passion of the Christ, despite the fact that he hasn't physically resembled that role in anything since. I don't know if Hollywood also sees the difficulty with such a connection, but in looking at his IMDb listing I noticed that since The Passion he doesn't seem to be getting as much work as he had been before. Of course, it could be that Caviezel is the one keeping low, staying away from the city he calls "a cesspool piece of crap." Or it could be that producers want to avoid the kind of accidental humor that showed up in Deja Vu. Either way, I could only think of the possible religious elements when reading the description of Only in New York, which the Hollywood Reporter says is about, "a recently paroled street hustler looking for a new life and seeking redemption."

As if Pitof's and Caviezel's involvements weren't enough trouble for the production, Only in New York will be marked by an ironic and bogus title. It seems the film can't be shot only in New York, because it begins filming in Toronto in June. The whole production would probably be better off aborting this project and getting to work on self-parodic shorts for YouTube. Anyone interested in seeing Catwoman vs. Jesus?

• The Call Of Cthulhu - The H.P. Lovecraft Preservation Society, a group of dauntless fans that created the brilliant, Cthulhu-themed musical, A Shoggoth On The Roof, have created the ultimate fan film, an incredible tribute to the writer whose work seeded modern horror favorites like Re-Animator and From Beyond. Shot like a 1920's era silent film, the 47-minute feature is technically amazing, shot (in black-and-white), lit and performed like an authentic film of the period would have been (although it would have horrified people of the time right into Arkham Sanitarium.) Considered Lovecraft's most famous story, the story of a man who inherits a collection of documents detailing the ghastly Cthulhu Cult, it is very faithfully adapted, not to mention super-efficient. The title cards are in the viewer's choice of an astonishing 24 different languages, and the lush, symphonic score can be played in hi-fi and the kitschy-fun, lo-fi "Mythoscope". A skillful build and an extremely satisfying payoff (think creature design King Kong '33 style) add up to one of the smartest horror films of recent memory.

Some of us have been waiting an eternity for Delicatessen to appear on DVD in this country. The delay seemed baffling. The other culty film directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro, City of Lost Children, has been available on DVD since 1999. I hoped that the success of Jeunet's more recent film, Amelie, would lead to interest in his 1991 film. But no. Miramax sat on this release (Miramax sit on a release? Perish the thought!) and about the time rumors surfaced that Jeunet was helping Miramax prepare a U.S. DVD, the Weinstein/Disney split occurred and the release seemed to be in limbo.

At last, Buena Vista has announced that the DVD will be released on May 2, although no information on extras is yet available. I saw Delicatessen in theaters when it was originally released in this country and loved every inch of its dark post-apocalyptic humor. I can't wait to buy the DVD and inflict it on other people.

[via Twitch]