Random news about the Sundance film festival and the Indenpendent film spirit awards among other things

Random film news of the last few weeks.

First, after the poor box office showing of Clint Eastwood's Flags of our Fathers, Warner Brothers studios have decided to move up the United States release of Letters from Iowa Jima to December (it was previously scheduled to be released solely in February). This release date change is probably the result of the mixed reception which Flags received and its now limited Oscar potential. Given that Letters from Iowa Jima is supposedly the better film according to a few anonymous sources, it may have a better chance of receiving Oscar nominations and, as a result, it was moved up to a 2006 release.

In addition, the word is still out on whether Peter Jackson will direct The Hobbit film. Because of his dispute with New Line over the profits from Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, New Line Cinema refuses to give him the job. However, distributor MGM has vowed to do all it can to make Jackson direct the fantasy adaptation. So, New Line Cinema does not want him to do it while MGM does. Most likely, this deadlock will continue for a while.

On a side note, the independent film spirit awards were announced a few days ago.Among the nominees for best picture are Half Nelson(good film, with an interesting score by Broken Social Scene), Little Miss Sunshine (which my friend hated, but I liked), and Pan's Labyrinth (which surprisingly has a low enough budget to be considered an independent film). Robert Altman received a nomination for Best director for Prairie Home Companion (which makes me happy) and David Lynch received a special distinction for Inland Empire.

Here is a link to the nominees for this year's awared which are stated to air on February 24 (before the Academy awards, I think).


http://http://filmindependent.org/spiritawards/nominees/nominees.php

Furthermore, the lineup for the 2007 Sundance film festival has also been announced.Here is a PDF file of the films in competition.

http://www2.sundance.org/pdf/07_SFF_ANNOUNCESINDFILMWORLDCINEMA112906.pdf

On a lighter note, here is a link to a recounting of Uwe Boll's bizarre boxing matches against his critics. Uwe Boll is often known as the worst director in the world today and recently he challenged his critics to several boxing matches in order to somehow prove them wrong about his films (I know, I don't see the connection neither). In the end, he trounced all his critics (which is sad because I was hoping that, at least one critic would clock him for his cinematic sins).

http://wired.com/wired/archive/14.12/ragingboll.html?pg=2&topic=ragingboll&topic_set=">


Will update soon.