Eric Lavallée

The good news for the future of Nax Faxon and Jim Rash's screenplay is that Shawn Levy has vacated the project (at least the director's chair) in favor for another installment of Night at the Museum. I guess the better news is, Mandate Pictures have now set Tom Bezucha (The Family Stone) to direct one of the top vote-getter scripts from the 2007 Most Liked list of un-produced screenplays.

Now that James Marsh's career year (a 13-month span of accolades, festival kudos and trophy-ware including yesterday's Oscar) is over and done with, the helmer can focus on getting crafting what would be an original project. Returning to the format that brought him all that glory, Marsh will follow up the recently completed Nineteen Eighty with the temporarily titled Dream Diaries.

So how does Yojiro Takita's Departures (Okuribito) beat out heavy favorites Israel's Waltz With Bashir and France's The Class? Smart pick ups and adequate marketing plans just don't cut it when it comes to promoting titles for Oscar campaigns and Sony Pictures Classics seemed to have botched, undersold both titles the moment the final five titles were announced.

If by some bad stroke of luck he loses out to Sean Penn at the Oscars the day after, this win at the Spirit Awards will be remembered as one more rendition of “Mickey's night”. He, Darren (who we interviewed late last year) and The Wrestler have been on cloud nine since Venice, and the trio of awards collected are probably the last night in a string of 'nights' since the Academy has snubbed the pic. Among the Ballast, my coup-de-coeur of the year in term of indie films was shut out, while other people's coup-de-coeurs in The Visitor and Frozen River walked away with what is a sweet-looking trophy.

Lush wardrobe colors, a Penelope Cruz being carried around by multiple older men, and a wall littered with former “flames”. You can't get much out of 35 seconds, and I'm not about to make some sort of analysis here before just appreciating the images and score, but for what it is worth, Pedro Almodóvar's Broken Embraces is looking to do exactly what Todd Haynes' did with his homage to Douglas Sirk – bring the 50's to the forefront. To be released in Spain well before Cannes, I'm looking forward to catching this one on the Croisette.