Eric Lavallée

Putting his film festival curator work and further political ambitions aside, Nanni Moretti is getting into the religion business with his latest project, which is actually set to begin production next month. Reading the brief synopsis, Habemus Papam (which translates as "We Have a Pope!") could easily play as a comedy, but from what I gather, this is being billed as a drama that would see Moretti play a shrink called in by the Vatican to resolve the problem - the issue at hand, and this is where Moretti's genius commentary stands out, is that the Pope coming in decides he doesn’t want the job as soon as he’s elected. That part will be played by the French actor Michel Piccoli, who most recently starred in Theo Angelopoulos' The Dust of Time.

Saving one more Euro fare from drowning into obscurity, Film Movement have announced the pick-up of Philippe Lioret's Welcome - a trilingual drama in French, English and Arabic that paints a portrait of two men wrestling with their own issues of lost love and alienation, while exploring larger contemporary dilemmas like illegal immigration and covert border crossings. Film Movement is planning a Spring-ish release.

I usually begin these type of "Sundance Institute" updates by stating that these are the future names to watch out for on the indie film scene or in future editions of the festival, but the truth of the matter is, this year's batch of twelve are names we already mention on this site. Filmmakers such as Craig Zobel and Cherien Dabis are returning with their latest screenplays-in-progress and folks such as Lance Weiler, Sean Durkin (producer of Afterschool) and Edwin (multiple fest winner Blind Pig Who Wants to Fly) are making this an 2010 group to watch out for.

As was the case with Terrence Malick's Tree of Life, looks like River Road Ent. weren't planning on letting this biopic go to market and have passed it forward to Apparition. This could mean one of two things: that Bill Pohlad didn't feel confident about the final product or, the more likely scenario is that with Kristen Stewart on board, that a segment of the Twilight series fanbase might add some B.O dollars to the theatrical release of The Runaways.

While A Serious Man appears to be making no blips on any critic group's radar (a real shame that it's not even claiming any of these "ensemble acting" prizes either), Up in the Air and Precious aren't fairing that well either, as The Hurt Locker assault this weekend (tops on a couple of critic groups on both coasts) has indeed placed the film from 'dark horse' status to Oscar 'front-runner'. It's the dream scenario for Summit Ent. who tried their best in promoting the picture this summer, but ultimately failed to reach the larger segment of the population who might not read newspapers but are willing to see the next Vin Diesel film.