Eric Lavallée

Maintaining their longstanding policy of locking up as many possible Foreign Oscar nomination contenders as feasibly possible, Sony Pictures Classics are adding Where Do We Go Now?, Lebanon's official entry at the Oscars to their slate.

Life as a filmmaker might have became a hell of a lot easier for Denis Côté especially when the French-Canadian auteur broke into a more "user-friendly" cinema with his Locarno winning Curling (Best Director). With more "flexibility", his 6th film titled Vic et Flo ont vu un ours (English translation Vic and Flo Saw a Bear) is set to go into production for next summer (means we shouldn't be seeing the final product until 2013) and he'll get to employ some bigger name talent.

Breaking out around the time where NYFF is on its last legs, Montreal's Festival du nouveau cinéma (October 12 to 23) kicks in with about four times the size in volume, and obviously more of an eclectic range. This year is the festival's big 40 - and for the occasion they've commissioned some of the names who've been a part of the festival to each contribute a short film in the context of what is being called the "Cartes Blanches" series. Denis Côté, Deco Dawson, Sophie Deraspe, Rodrigue Jean, Zacharias Kunuk, Marie Losier, Catherine Martin, Bruce McDonald, Théodore Ushev and Denis Villeneuve will each submit a four minute short.

Jeff Nichols' muse Michael Shannon, Take Shelter player Ray McKinnon, Sarah Paulson (whose stock significantly rose with Martha Marcy May Marlene) and the busier than ever Sam Shepard have signed onto Mud - Nichols third feature film which began shooting today in his native Arkansas.

Critically panned in Cannes. Shut out from North American premieres in Toronto and Telluride, it appeared as if Paolo Sorrentino's This Must Be the Place wouldn't find a festival tent let alone a distrib home in the U.S. but an unlikely candidate in the Weinstein Co. have grabbed the rights.