Once you become a horror icon, it's pretty tough to find work outside the genre. Case in point: Longtime character actor Tobin Bell hit the jackpot when he appeared as the villain of the Saw series, and now he's just signed on to portray Satan himself in an indie flick called Highway 61. We're not entirely sure if this is a full-bore horror movie, or simply a dramatic piece with an occult twist -- but if you need someone to play The King of Darkness, you could do a lot worse than Tobin Bell. (Like many horror icons, Mr. Bell was a well-established and recognized character actor long before the horror genre suck him in.)

Written and directed by Luke & Jeremy Jackson, Highway 61 is about a floundering rock band that decides to sell its collective soul to you-know-who. According to Variety, Nick Thune is also on board as the band's lead singer. As far as Mr. Bell is concerned, here's what he's appeared in since the first Saw movie: Buried Alive, Decoys 2 and the upcoming Boogeyman 2. Someone please get this guy and Robert Englund in the same movie already. (Oh wait, they already were.) Here's hoping Highway 61 is a solid flick. It's not like Mr. Bell needs the money these days.

Four years ago, Osama made a splash at Cannes. It won several awards for first-time director Siddiq Barmak, then played at a number of US festivals, received a modest theatrical release, and picked up a Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film. The first movie to be made in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban, Osama was a powerful drama, telling the story of a 12-year-old girl who was forced to masquerade as a boy called Osama in order to get a job and provide for her family. Without resorting to the genre conventions of a thriller, Osama kept me on the edge of my seat, waiting to see if the far-too-young heroine could pull off the deception at the risk of her life.

Barmak started filming last month in his homeland for his second feature, titled Opium War. Korean company Cineclick Asia is handling sales, and a little snooping around on their site led me to their Cannes sales flyer (PDF), where the following plot details were revealed. Two American soldiers -- a white officer and a black soldier -- must fend for themselves in the Afghanistan desert after their helicopter crashes. The military men are at odds to begin with, as the wounded officer must hold a gun on the soldier to keep him from running away. Things change when they come across an opium field and partake of the pleasures of the poppies. Then they discover an Afghan family living inside a Russian armored personnel carrier, and who knows what happens from there. The quality of sophomore films are extremely tricky to predict, but Osama was so strong that I'm eager to see what Barmak makes of the intriguing premise; I'm hoping for another potent, emotionally-involving drama. Opium War is scheduled to be completed in the spring of 2008.

Within less than five minutes of The Signal, you already care about the main characters. They're adulterers, but they're obviously in love, which makes everything that follows a lot more engaging. It's a character-based (and very well-acted) science fiction horror flick that's got a solid sense of humor, an admirable air of dread and a 50-ton vat of ultra-gooey gore: Cool. Admirable enough for simply being a true treat of a genre flick, The Signal is also noteworthy for how it was made. Although it's not an anthology film, The Signal is the work of three different directors: David Bruckner for Act (or "Transmission") One, Jacob Gentry for part two and Dan Bush for the final third. Whether or not this unique approach is actually a good (or necessary) thing is up to you, but I can tell you this: The Signal is one viciously fun little genre flick.

As you know from reading Ryan Stewart's post below, the main face of Cinematical is changing. That doesn't mean the indie, foreign and short film coverage you've come to know and love here is going away -- a lot of it is just moving to it's own house (or really, it's own bedroom in the big house that now makes up Cinematical). Starting right ... about ... now! ... you will be able to get all your "classic" Cinematical -- reviews of indies, foreigns, obscure art house films and shorts, penetrating interviews with indie filmmakers, news on the world of indie film, and, of course, lots of film festival coverage, -- at CineIndie. I'll be hanging out with you there as managing editor of CineIndie, and you'll see some familiar faces posting there, and eventually some new ones as well.

Cinematical and CineIndie will work together to cover the major film fests with our usual extensive coverage -- tomorrow, in fact, we'll be starting our Sundance coverage at our spandy-new space. Jette Kernion will be keeping her eagle-eye out for breaking Sundance news and deals for us, and James Rocchi, Scott Weinberg, Kevin Kelly and I will be on the ground in Park City, bringing you a slew of reviews, interviews, and all that hot Sundance scene action. We'll be cutting a wide swath through the Sundance schedule, bringing you the scoop on docs and features, competition films and experimentals, shorts and animation, and lots of video interviews with indie filmmakers and actors. Make sure you check back often, as we'll be posting day and night from January 18-29 from the Sundance Film Festival.

We hope that you'll think this is a good change for Cinematical, as we do. Please join us over at CineIndie for tons of new indie film coverage, and keep on coming to Cinematical's front page for your mainstream fare.

Hi, and welcome to the grand opening of CineIndie, the brand-new indie film blog branch of the Cinematical family tree! You can kind of think of us as the cozy little refurbished arthouse theater down the road apiece from the big multiplex -- a place where you can come to get all the news you want on the world of indie film.

One of the reasons I'm thrilled about this change is that it will allow those of us who are really passionate about indie film to devote the majority of our energy to covering it for you. We'll be greatly expanding the breadth and depth of our coverage of all things indie, bringing you interviews with indie directors, reviews of indies, foreigns, docs and shorts, and more. We'll be covering news on indie film, and more articles targeted at filmmakers as well.

My Film Clips column will be here, and you'll probably see Jette Kernion's IndieSeen, Jeffrey Anderson's 400 Screens, 400 Blows, and Richard Von Busack's After Images there as well. We'll be able to cover even more independent films, and I'm especially looking forward to being able to give some more love to under-appreciated or under-covered fest films and all you truly independent filmmakers out there maxing out your credit cards in pursuit of your dreams.

As CineIndie's managing editor, I'd like to invite you to help us create the kind of site you want to come back to every day. So sit down, have a nice latte, and open up with us about what you really want to read here. For the next two weeks we'll be nose-to-the-grindstone at the Sundance Film Festival, so be sure to check back often -- we often post at 3am from fests, so there's likely to be something fresh no matter when you pop by.

To be honest, I think when most people heard that Mischa Barton had left The OC, everyone was waiting for her career to take the inevitable nosedive. I'm guessing being lumped in with the Paris Hilton and Brandon Davis party crowd probably didn't help much in the respectability department either. There had been rumors that Mischa's character had been killed off due to her bad-mouthing of the show and general naughty behavior. Well, it's all water under the bridge now since the teen soap has gotten the axe, and Barton has managed to set up several film roles for 2007.

Variety reports that Barton is set to star in the indie drama Don't Fade Away for first-time director Luke Kasdan (nephew of famed writer-director Lawrence Kasdan). Kasdan's drama stars Ryan Kwanten and Barton as a Manhattan couple that are forced to deal with a father's illness. Rounding out the cast is the unlikely combination of Ja Rule and Beau Bridges. Since I never consistently watched The OC and I've tried to remain blissfully ignorant when it comes to the "Kiddie Table" of Hollywood gossip, I'll have to wait to see if Barton can transform herself into a leading lady ... or whether High School drama and hair tossing are the sum total of her talents.

[via Movie Web]

Zach Braff's next film Open Hearts may be currently on hold, but he plans to shoot in New Jersey again once everything comes together. On a conference call yesterday, he told Cinematical that he remains involved in New Jersey, where he currently serves on the board of the South Orange Performing Arts Center.

He plans to lens Open Hearts in Northern New Jersey, and enjoys working in the area where he can utilize actors and crews from New York. Braff was born and raised in Jersey, and filmed his directorial debut Garden State there three years ago.

While I wouldn't say Braff's filmmaking sensibilities are diametrically opposed to Kevin Smith's, they do target similar young audiences, but when you watch Garden State you'll come away with a much different view of Jersey than you get from Smith's films. At least no one was getting it on with a donkey in the version I saw.

It's great when a director can work outside of the Hollywood environment and manage to capture the essence of where they come from. Richard Linklater did a great job of it with Slacker, and Braff seems to have done equally as well with Garden State. Although it's hard for me to know for sure since I spent several years in college living in Austin, and have never been to New Jersey, but it feels more real than the Jersey you get from The Sopranos or Clerks II.

If you try your hand at writing, you'll hear the phrase, "write what you know" many times. Whoever coined this phrase probably had no idea how much it applied to directing as well.

Our sister site DV Guru has an excellent interview up with one of the hottest up-and-coming DIY filmmakers out there, Sujewa Ekanayake, whose latest film, Date Number One, has been doing quite well. Ekanayake shot the film entirely on digital video using an XL1S camera and also a VX2000. The entire project cost him about $10K and took about 2.5 years from start-to-finish; Ekanayake financed the film himself from his paychecks and investments from a few friends and family. He's also distributing the film himself -- the film has so far shown in Seattle, NYC and Washington DC (where Ekanayake is based).

The interview is a fascinating look at the making of a truly DIY, digital film, with Ekanayake speaking frankly about his experiences: The pros, the cons, and why he wouldn't do it any other way. You can check out more about Date Number One at Ekanayake's official website, and be sure to check out his fab blog, DIY Filmmaker, as well. Sadly, I missed the screening of the film in Seattle, but hopefully I can get my hands on a screener and then I'll tell you all about the film.

What really interested me about the DV Guru interview with Ekanayake is the whole DIY and self-distribution aspect of what he's doing. With Google buying YouTube and services like iKlipz, and official film websites, and MySpace pages for films, and filmmaking blogs, and all that other cool stuff the internet is making available, I'm quite curious to see how the world of film distribution will change over the next decade.

The plummeting price of digital cameras and editing software, combined with the death spiral of network news, has resulted in a booming documentary offering over the past couple of Sundances. The public loves the genre, and like a William Gibson novel, it seems like everyone is now recording everything. If there's a conflict, obscure sport, or flamboyant personality you can be sure someone, somewhere, is making it into a documentary, and the result is a crop of boring-to-serviceable documentaries that are occasionally more suited for cable distribution than theatrical.

I thought for sure Clear Cut: The Story of Philomath, Oregon would fall into the television news documentary category, but was pleasantly surprised that the films excellent pacing and structure made it truly a film--not a Frontline episode.

Clear Cut, tells the story of a timber town in transition: as the blue collar jobs leave, the liberal information workers move in. They bring with them some unwelcome values including what locals perceive as a pro-environment, pro-gay, and ...

People have been talking about Wordplay, Patrick Creadon's doc about Will Shortz, the editor of the infamous New York Times crossword puzzle. Though our own James found it torture to sit through – in no small part because, as he puts it, the film apparently "has all the gravitas of lint" – audiences are responding well (overheard in a line: "It's good. It's Word Wars, but it's not. It's good."), and buyers are interested. According to indieWIRE, reps from four distributors (Picturehouse, Warner Independent, Fox Searchlight and Roadside Attractions) put in face time with the filmmakers yesterday over bacon, eggs, and – what else? – the Sunday puzzle. The ink was reserved for the crossword, however – Cinetic has yet to close a deal on the picture.