A week and a half ago, Anthony Hemingway’s Red Tails was released. On the surface, the film breathes Hollywood oxygen through-and-through. It’s a WWII era action film that uses its setting for broad family-friendly cheese-banter and CGI-heavy eye candy rather than an opportunity for a sober interrogation of history. Red Tails looks and feels like any Hollywood film geared toward as mass an audience as possible. But the studio that’s distributing it – 20th Century Fox – didn’t pay a dime to produce it. The reported $58 million cost to make Red Tails came solely out of the pocket of producer George Lucas, who had been attempting to get a film about the Tuskegee Airmen made since the early 1990s. He was continually met with resistance from a studio system that saw anything less than the biggest guaranteed appeal to the largest possible audience as a “risk,” including a heroic true story about African-American airmen. The ideology that closed the doors on George Lucas of all people reflects the same business mentality that inspired Jeffrey Katzenberg’s lengthy warning to other studios in a memo written during the same years that Lucas was first trying to get Red Tails financed.  In the memo, Katzenberg warned studios regarding their practice of exponentially centralizing all their resources in a few very expensive projects, resulting in high risk, little room for experimentation, and an increasing reliance on that coveted monolith known as the “mass audience” (which, to make things even more complicated, now includes [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

Midnight in Paris is still out there making money and finding new audiences, so it’s less than surprising that Sony Pictures Classics has already picked up Woody Allen‘s follow-up film, Nero Fiddled, which was produced last year. According to Cinema Blend, the movie is described by Allen as a broad comedy with several overlapping stories. It stars Jesse “Woody Allen” Eisenberg, Ellen Page, Alec Baldwin, Greta Gerwig, Penelope Cruz, Roberto Benigni and Judy Davis. Woody Allen is also playing a role, but he lamented earlier in the year about not being able to play the romantic lead anymore. Which is ridiculous. Who wouldn’t want to see a hunky 76-year-old man embroil himself in the heart and loins of a gorgeous counterpart? Exactly. As long as it takes place in Rome, it’ll be romantic. I’m pretty sure that’s even where we get the word. So if you were at all worried that you’d go a year without hearing from the workhorse of filmmaking, fear not! More Allen is on the way. Just try not to loudly pontificate about the meaning of his work while waiting in line at the cinema.  

French Canadian film Incendies has gotten a trailer to promote its release in US theaters. The film is directed by Denis Villeneuve and tells the story of a set of adult twins who are set out on a journey to the Middle East by their mother’s last will and testament to find their long-lost father and sibling. It has already made a splash with critics by touring the festival circuit, gotten itself a nomination for Best Foreign Language Film by the Academy Awards, and is now set to be released in select theaters on April 22nd by Sony Pictures Classics. For all of you Oscar buffs and year-end completists, this one is going to have to be on your must see lists. Check out the trailer below:

Morgan Spurlock is headed back to Sundance, but the frosty air of Utah might seem a bit warmer if his movie is already sold by the time it gets there. The Hollywood Reporter is Hollywood reporting that The Greatest Film Ever Sold has already gotten a lot of interest from Sony Pictures Classics – a natural fit for the think-piece documentary from the ginger mustachioed cultural gadfly. If you were tired of the story crisis currently going on in Hollywood, maybe your eyes will open wide to the prospect of Spurlock making a movie by asking corporations to sponsor his movie. While he’s making the movie. His asking them to sponsor the movie is part of the movie, so whether they do it or not, they become part of the movie, making the question moot and the person trying to create a logline jumping off the roof. Yes, it sounds fantastic, and since Spurlock saved Neil’s life once, we owe it to the man to check out his new film. Fingers crossed that he approached McDonald’s about the hot new sponsorship opportunity.

Sony is inches away from scooping up Terry Gilliam’s inventive flick, and they might even send it to theaters this year. Doesn’t it make you want to watch the trailer again?

The U. S. rights to Woody Allen’s latest film Whatever Works have been bought by Sony Pictures Classics. The comedy is set in New York City. It’s a return to Allen’s old haunt after years of making films over seas.

SPC grabs up a low-budget flick that was very well received by fans and critics alike.