Oranges has television director Julian Farino attached to helm and now, three actors known for their work on the tele might be joining the dark comedy as well. Hugh Laurie might be taking on his first leading role in film - as the patriarch/adulterer in an American Beauty-esque role and might possibly star alongside either or both Mila Kunis and Leighton Meester. L.A Times reports that the trio of actors are attached to the 2008 Blacklist favorite (it was the runner-up to first place The Beaver, currently in post). If this goes into production anytime soon, this should be a hot title for buyers in Cannes.

Scripted by Delpy, 2 Days in New York centres again on French woman Marion (Delpy), who has broken up with Jack and now lives in New York with their children. Her Parisian family come to visit her, but the cultural differences between her eccentric father and new American boyfriend will turn out to be explosive. Meanwhile, her sister has had the "good" idea of bringing an ex-boyfriend from Paris and there is the pressure of an upcoming photography exhibition.

I never wanted to make a biopic about Tolstoy. The film I saw was about the tragic comedy about marriage, about the difficulty living with love and impossibility of living without love.

The Weinsteins' grabbed the best film in the U.S Dramatic field in Blue Valentine (if you ask IndieWIRE pollsters) and now they've grabbed U.S. theatrical, DVD and pay TV rights, as well as all rights in English language territories rights to a doc film that many were buzzing about in Park City. Probbing

There were a couple of little birdies at last year's TIFF that told me about a gorgeous little film from Mexico from helmer Pedro González-Rubio -- since the Toronto preem it has hit Rotterdam this year and will roll out at Berlin shortly. Back then it was going by the title of To the Sea, but we should get comfy with the title of Alamar -- as the Film Movement folks (who also got behind another small Mexican film in Lake Tahoe - a Top 20 film of mine from last year's theatrical releases) have picked up the rights to the film via France's MK2.

My big discovery of 2009 in terms of an emerging new talent haphazardly occurred during the post-award screening of the Un Certain Regard section's winning film -- Yorgos Lanthimos gave us every reason to worry about parental guidance with his sophomore film Dogtooth and has pretty much got himself a instant following from several cinephiles outside of his native Greece.

I hate that nagging feeling of having attended a film festival and having missed out on the buzz film -- as was the case with my trip to Sundance and my unattainable quest to see Catfish. The hype and build-up for Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman's documentary was established on day one of its world premiere, and its been odd to see the a bidding war breakout and media questioning the truthfulness of the doc whose punch line I can guess at but would rather not know until I see it for myself.

Selected as one of Filmmaker Magazine's 25 New Faces, Agnieszka Wojtowicz-Vosloo will get to see her directorial debut go the theatrical release route - what is of interest here is that she penned and directed a horror thriller (a rarity of sorts for a female filmmaker) that landed at the AFI last November --- a showcase that eventually panned out to the deal for After.Life.

The trades report that he'll be re-teaming with The New World's Christian Bale, Rachel McAdams who could use a film of this stature in her filmography, Javier Bardem and former Bond girl Olga Kurylenko. Nicolas Gonda, Sarah Green and Bill Pohlad are producing, which means Apparition would be the logical distributor to come onboard for the U.S.

The Fox Searchlight titled tanked at the B.O., but an important lesson was learnt - the "beat the system type" characters can be positioned for Oscar - I'm citing The Blind Side and Crazy Heart, another Searchlight film that was thrown into the hat late, and managed to grab a pair of acting noms as an example. Something tells me that today's deal for Betty Ann Waters - a David vs. Goliath biopic will ensure that the indie division remains relevant/profitable/award-proof in market.

NeoClassics Films has acquired the rights to a political thriller that if marketed right, could be the profitable title that this indie company is been waiting for. A Telluride and TIFF selection, L'Affaire Farewell has a gripping narrative that'll remind viewers that thriller elements don't need to be exaggerated into a Bourne domain - it's a thinking person's post-cold war storyline with an intriguing, not so splashy perf from filmmaker, sometimes actor Emir Kusturica.

Before signing up on Star Trek and the forthcoming Thor, Aussie actor Chris Hemsworth took on a low budget indie along with Sean Bean -- Ca$h, a film destined for greatness on the homevid front is going to receive a theatrical release via Roadside Attractions in late March.

With the 4.4 million dollar haul Black Book (Zwartboek) made back in 2006, Sony Pictures Classics are hoping that lightning strikes twice grabbing one more Dutch pic set during the war in Martin Koolhoven's Winter in Wartime.

Scripted by the "Coen-sisters", Jill and Karen Sprecher (sister and creative partner), The Convincer will feature a trio of vet indie actors in Billy Crudup, Greg Kinnear and Alan Arkin (who was also featured in Sprecher's 13 Convos...) in a story about a desperate insurance salesman who devises a plot to obtain a rare violin.

The noms are in folks (see full list below) and apart from the love that The Blind Side has received (the backlash has officially began around 9 eastern this morning), there are very little surprises -- which only means status quo on films and people that officially received the cold shoulder months ago.

A tight pshychological thriller whose only problem, if you can call it that, may be that it is too clever by half. Highly recommended.

The most promising item from Sundance's NEXT section in terms of commercial prospects has been picked up for distribution by the Phase 4 Films folks with a perfectly fitted Summer release in the works. Katie Aselton's The Freebie, a no budget indie film that shot in eleven days has Dax Shepard in the co-lead.

Mr. Bjarnfredarson, the darkly comic culmination of Iceland's most popular TV series, The Night Shift, The Day Shift and The Prison Shift opened on December 26th and became the biggest opening ever for a local film. It has so far sold over 60.000 tickets. After holding behemoth Avatar at bay for two weeks (probably the only film in the world to do so), it's still going strong and has the potential to pass the current box office champion, Baltasar Kormakur's Jar City (84.000+).

This February we are keeping tabs on So Yong Kim, Tom McCarthy and Dito Montiel who are all filming their third films which happen to all be set in the state of New York. Outside of the U.S, I'm with Cancer sets up shop in Vancouver, Declan Donnellan and Nick Ormerod will lense the adaptation of Guy De Maupassant's classic novel's Bel Ami which will film in Budapest, and finally Ana Katz will film Los Marziano in her native Argentina.

Have you ever wondered what are the films that inspire the next generation of filmmakers? As part of our monthly IONCINEPHILE profile (read here), we ask the filmmaker the incredibly arduous task of identifying their top ten list of all time favorite films. This month we profiled Zeina Durra who saw her debut feature The Imperialists are still Alive! receive its world premiere at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. She gave us her top ten as of January 2010.

The Freebie, like many films in the low-fi, no budget section works with a premise and milks it for all it's worth. It relates to a couple giving each other a free "pass", in this case the opportunity to break away from monotony of a long term relationship for one night only - a propositional concept not unlike what we saw with Humpday.

A love story that explores the beginning of the beginning and the beginning of the end of a relationship (with seamless transitions that reflect on the past and the present), Derek Cianfrance's debut might have taken more than a decade to make, but it was worth the wait.

So I grabbed a midnight showing to the second official screening to Habib Azar's Armless, and I've got to say that the NEXT section is what it is - small films that are a little rough around the edges but manage to deliver the goods. Here we have an original story idea, that takes on a disturbing subject matter with a generous dose of comedic strokes -- think Downloading Nancy with taboo comedy - I'm thinking daytime soaps certainly influenced Azar's approach.

I'm dubbing Casino Jack & The United States of Money as a marathon-telethon, Jack Abramoff's track record of greed and raising money (greed is something that we also saw in the Enron doc) spans back a couple of presidents and is so extensive that Gibney takes 120 minutes to reveal the blueprint.

Responsible for putting Farmiga on the map, Granik's ode to Missouri's backwood might just do the same for Jennifer Lawrence - I've identified the actress as someone to watch out for after seeing her in her breakout role from Guillermo Arriaga's The Burning Plain.

While I think Wells' The Company Men will have no problems in getting picked up (it isn't a complete downer and it will draw comparisons to Jason Reitman's film), I'm somewhat surprised that a commentary on corporate downsizing didn't provide more of an emotional whiplash.

I also made popcorn up at the Directors and Screenwriters Labs. This was probably the best job any aspiring filmmaker could have - it was like auditing the most progressive and exclusive grad school. I was able to sit in on every advisor meeting, I was right there observing the development of some incredible filmmakers.

Today must have been a fairly special day for David Michod -- the filmmaker saw two of his works receive their world preem debuts. First Hesher was shown midday (he receives a co-screenwriter cred) and he directed my most anticipated film in Animal Kingdom - a crime drama that only confirms what I discovered with in his shorts films: we've got a major talent on our hands from Down Under.

I've yet to know if this is two films (what's the deal with the IMAX rumor?)...which would only be an added bonus, but from what I do know, this is an ambitious, all encompassing project with major talents working side by side Malick in Alexandre Desplat (score) and Emmanuel Lubezki (cinematography).

A downright delicious, dark film that is equal parts comedy and drama, this throws a molotov cocktail to your standard film that deals with sorrow and grief -- at first I was thinking that Spencer Susser's Hesher was set to describe the bully rapport between victimizer and victim, but it plunges its set of characters on this uneasy course of mayhem and destabilization....

I remember sitting in Danny's apartment five years ago hearing him tell this true tale and his desire to make it into a Jewish-type "Goodfellas" and an ecstasy-esque "Blow" but I was immediately struck with the image of a naïve Hassid lost in the bright lights of a nightclub, plus me being Jewish and coming-of-age during the nineties in New York City, I instantly felt a personal connection.