Eric Lavallée

While the top of the 2008 list does have some exceptional projects that have already gone under the lense, Quentin Tarantino's war epic is the only film in this section that hasn't had trouble monetizing on it's Black List "status". Just behind picks 1 to 15 we find The Descendants, Going the Distance, Nowhere Boy and Kevin Smith's Couple of Dicks (Cop Out).

All is well in the film universe. Harvey Weinstein and pretty much the whole film community was up and arms when the MPAA gave Derek Cianfrance's Blue Valentine an NC-17 rating. While the motives are indeed profits and award season chances, I think that Harvey went to bat for Derek and everyone involved with the film because getting slapped with anything higher than an R-rating made no sense.

I'm really late on this one - but it's worth the mention and showcasing all the same. The first batch of stills for Sean Durkin's Martha Marcy May Marlene were released not much time after the film was named among Sundance's U.S Dramatic Competition. Below we see the film's lead in Elizabeth Olsen, and supporting actors John Hawkes and Sarah Paulson. The film is not necessarily an expansion of Durkin's impressive short film Mary Last Seen, but it borrows from the same ideas and apart from setting, we'll soon see if both films share other common traits such as the characters and film's tone.

Magnet Releasing have made the first true pre-Sundance Film Festival pick-up grabbing the rights to Jason Eisener's directorial debut film which already looks to be one of the highlights in the Park City at Midnight section. Hobo With A Shotgun receives a Midnight section of Sundance on January 21 and will surely be found at SXSW before a theatrical release.

Dominic Murphy, the uber-talented filmmaker who blasted onto the scene with the Sundance/Berlin debut feature film White Lightnin', a pic I'm sure a very small percentage of our readers have seen, will next direct another relationship-themed film in Cassandra at the Wedding.