HOT TOPIC: Men Write 70 Percent Of Reviews Published In America's Top 100 Dailies... Shocked? Read more...
FEATURED: OCTAVIA SPENCER and VIOLA DAVIS win AWFJ 2011 EDA Awards for their performances in The Help. Read more...
At her daily Thompson on Hollywood blog, Anne Thompson does more than just break news; she provides an insider’s clear-eyed analysis of a business that defines American culture at home and abroad.Born and raised in New York, Thompson has been a contributor to the New York Times, Washington Post, The Observer, and Wired. She has served as film columnist at Variety, and deputy editor of Variety.com, where she launched Thompson on Hollywood in March 2007. Thompson was the Deputy Film Editor at The Hollywood Reporter, the West Coast Editor of Premiere, a Senior Writer at Entertainment Weekly, and West Coast Editor for Film Comment. She wrote the film industry column Risky Business for L.A. Weekly and the Los Angeles Times syndicate.A graduate of the Department of Cinema Studies at New York University, she hosts the fall semester of “Sneak Previews” for UCLA Extension, and teaches film criticism at USC.
Since when is winning an Oscar a bad thing? In his disparaging NYT review ofIn a Better World, A.O. Scott uses its recent foreign Oscar win as a warning sign. Read more>>
It’s devilishly hard to get everything to go right on a movie. Many little things can turn a promising project into something that never quite gels. Read the rest of this entry »
I watched the six episodes two at a time, three nights running. (I had admired Fox’s 80s doc Beirut: The Last Home Movie.) I was fascinated. Fox took five years of her own life and turned it into the narrative through-line for a survey of women and their life choices in different cultures. Read more>>
Well, I’ve seen Roland Emmerich’s latest pixel-fest 10,000 B.C., and it’s no Quest for Fire. Would that it had been silent! Read more>>
Finally, the long-in-the-works “American Teen” deal went down late Tuesday night, marking the fourth movie to sell at Sundance in the last two days. Paramount Vantage acquired all world rights (excluding the U.K.) for $1 million to Nanette Burstein’s Indiana high school cinema verite doc. After the A & E Indie Films documentary screened Friday night, Fox Searchlight made a bid which later expired; Sony Pictures Classics also pursued a deal but pulled out Tuesday afternoon, leaving the pic to Vantage, which is promising a significant P & A commitment. Sellers were Cinetic and CAA.
Sheila Nevins’ HBO documentary unit has acquired North American rights to Marina Zenovich’s Polanski: Wanted and Desired, the hot buzz title of the 2008 Sundance Film Festival. Read more>>
My class ate up Juno like it was strawberry ice cream. Read more
Gone Baby Gone is a tough piece of gritty entertainment. What Miramax will be able to wring out of the boxoffice is anyone’s guess. Read more
Lars and the Real Girl is one of those movies that walks a tightrope between laughs and genuine emotion. Read more
When Stacey Snider left Universal to run DreamWorks’ movie division a year ago, she transitioned seamlessly without losing valuable momentum, leading the Paramount division to box office gold, reports Anne Thompson on Variety.com. read more .