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.

Alright, our more diverse and international readers are going to have to help me out on this one, because I know nothing about either of the two subjects I'm going to share with you. However, as it is my sworn duty to present you will every interesting comic book film story I can find, I'm bringing them before you despite my own ignorance. If any of you out there in the audience have some solid opinions on these two books, share away and let the rest of us know.

Relatively new Korean production house Core Studio is developing a film based on the South Korean comic book Mina. All I know of Mina is the Variety description, which tells me it is a "highly stylized auctioneer about an assassin school girl," which really only says "hey, this is story from the East." Core is apparently willing to appoint a "foreign helmer," which is no surprise if they're hoping for a broader international release.

France's Wild Bunch is currently in pre-production on a film adaptation of the popular comic book Largo Winch. I've got nothing on this one, but you can dig the official Largo Winch website here. Fans, please share with the class so we know if we should be getting excited about either of these potentially awesome projects.

Cinematical: Proudly bringing you news about comics you've never heard of in languages you don't understand!

According to the Writers Guild of America, the best screenplay ever written is Casablanca. And that really is ever -- the introduction to their list of the best 101 (a PDF of the list is here) indicates that the balloting was open to films made in any language, in any country. (And yet only six of the 100 best screenplays of all time aren't American? And Children of Paradise isn't one of them? Yeah, I buy that.) Also near the top of the list are such usual suspects as Chinatown, Some Like it Hot, and All About Eve which, despite the hype, continues to stun me with its sharpness every time I see it.

The fun of lists like this, though, are the surprises -- and the getting angry when your favorites are neglected. Going through the top 101, I was pleasantly surprised to see that actual screenwriters respect screenplays I love, like those for The Wild Bunch (#99), Grand Illusion (#85 is way too low, but at least it's on there), Broadcast News (#51), and All the President's Men (#53), the last of which strikes me as very nearly perfect. But by the same token, I was pretty stunned that Forrest Gump (#89) made the list, along with Jaws (#63), the former simply because I think it's a cloying, awful movie, and the latter because, though it's one of my favorites, there are a couple of scenes that have always struck me as awkwardly written, and there a tendency in the screenplay to cheaply create a depth by hinting at conflicts and emotions that are never actually proved to exist. On the neglected pile I'd throw virtually all the wonderful foreign films that, as usual, have been ignored, from La Dolce vita and the previously-mentioned Children of Paradise to The Rules of the Game, and the spare-but-wonderful Le samouraï.

So, here's something to think about on a lazy, rainy weekend: screenplays. What pisses you off about the list? What favorites are missing? And what did the WGA get exactly right?

So everyone thinks that Brokeback Mountain is the first gay cowboy flick? You haven't been paying attention.

What about Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid? I mean, jeez, look at suggestive that title is. And it even has the word "butch" in it! Or how about The Wild Bunch, the Sam Peckinpah western, which features "...the tenuous bond between the film's star, William Holden, and the obvious femme fatale, Ernest Borgnine, as solid and deep as a tounge kiss from George Michael"?

That's just a couple of the observations from writers Tod Goldberg, Fred Topel, and Peter Paras. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go try to wash from my brain the image of Ernest Borgnine and William Holden doing it.

[via Lee Goldberg]