Eric Lavallée

Similar to the Golden Globes because it is a foreign group of film journalists who conduct the voting (though I'm sure they have no mandate to prefer films loaded in stars), this year's the 15th Lumiere Awards has a pair of films in the top tier that recently that duked it out for the Louis Delluc award. Philippe Lioret's Welcome (which just got picked up by Film Movement this week) and Jacques Audiard's A Prophet (a SPC release next February) received five and four noms respectively.

The Cinema Guild are closing out the year by leaving nothing of pertinence behind, especially if it played at the New York FIlm Festival. After grabbing critically well-received NYFF finds in Maren Ade's Everyone Else and docu film Sweetgrass, the company have done a pirouette around Jacques Rivette’s Venice FIlm Festival offering Around a Small Mountain or as some audiences might know it as 36 Vues du Pic Saint-Loup.

The 90's were David Mamet's decade, the 00's not so much. If you're like me, the only noteworthy item in the last ten was the grossly under-appreciated 2004 film Spartan. Mamet will begin the new decade by wearing the scribe and producer's hat but leaving helming duties to Michael Worth, an unknown television actor whose turned to directing and is also producing a project that is based on a little known out of print book called Come Back To Sorrento by Dawn Powell.

In a period where the studio-based portion independent film industry are on suicide watch, it'll be fun to relive a time when Harvey Weinstein and everyone competing against him could do no wrong. Ever since we got word that there was a screenplay based on Peter Biskind's incendiary book was making the rounds (Jeffrey Wells) and there was activity on the production that a crew were in Cannes filming, but now we got word that Down and Dirty Pictures (a 10 million dollar production) has got a great cast in place (Hugh Dancy, Matthew Perry, Andy Serkis, Sally Hawkins, Elias Koteas, Bobby Cannavale, Toby Jones and Michael Rispoli) with Scren Daily reporting that Vincent D'Onofrio is poised to take on the "role" of Weinstein.

Patrons of the film festival circuit will receive a double dose of David Michod next January. Sundance plays host to a pair of his projects -- one which he penned and Spencer Susser directed (Hesher) and the another, which he both wrote and directed. Perhaps the title with the most buzz in the World Dramatic Competition, Animal Kingdom receives its world premiere in the miniscule Park City Egyptian theater - tickets will be scarce.