So here's the deal.

According to Sharon Waxman in the New York Times, it goes like this: Bob and Harvey Weinstein get the rights to Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 - as Bob and Harvey Weinstein, not as Miramax. As punishment - albeit of an agreeable sort - for going ahead with the film when they were told not to, they won't be allowed any "monetary benefit" from all this and will instead hand over what they make - a predetermined amount, it looks like - to charity.

The good news, then, is that the film will probably appear in theaters this summer with Lion's Gate and Focus Features most likely handling distribution. The interesting news is that the Weinsteins are in the movie business in some form or other independent of both Disney and Miramax; for now, they're calling it the Fellowship Adventure Group. Movie City News points to more: A Reuters story and just look at what those Republican bastards have done: fahrenheit911movie.com. Now, that's low.

More Waxman: Who will replace Jack Valenti? Does anyone actually want to?

Also in the NYT: A few pretty interesting book reviews.

• Initially, Michael Wood doesn't seem terribly convinced that Craig Seligman's project in Sontag & Kael: Opposites Attract Me makes much sense. "[S]urely they inhabited different critical worlds? Yes, and it's hard to bring these worlds together." Seligman's early run-downs of the similarities in Susan Sontag and Pauline Kael's lives doesn't really get him anywhere. "But then something begins to happen in Seligman's book, and it has to do with art and trash and the concept of seriousness." It's an appealing exercise; and here's an excerpt.

• Jodi Kantor reviews The Importance of Being Famous: Behind the Scenes of the Celebrity-Industrial Complex by Maureen Orth, who "could be the Paul O'Neill of Conde Nast! No such luck."

• James Fallows on Paul Starr's The Creation of the Media: Political Origins of Modern Communications: "What Starr argues - and, in my view, powerfully demonstrates - is that every branch of the communications system reflects deliberate political choices made under particular historic circumstances." First chapter.

Instant Light: Tarkovsky Polaroids, edited by Giovanni Chiaramonte and the director's son, Andrei A. Tarkovsky, is due out next week in the UK. The Guardian presents a marvelous sampling.

Also in today's edition: It's Spike Lee vs Snoop Dogg in Dan Glaister's story on the controversy kicked up by Soul Plane; and John Patterson on the young, beautiful and famous who flare and fade out all too quickly.

Why isn't anyone re-releasing Three Kings, asked B Ruby Rich in our interview earlier this month. Andrew Gumbel might well raise the same question. In a solid consideration of the film in the Independent that begins with an encounter between director David O Russell and then-candidate George W Bush in 1999 - "Russell told him that he was making a film that was critical of his father's Gulf War legacy in Iraq. To which Bush shot back: 'Then I guess I'm going to have to go finish the job, aren't I?'" - Gumbel also notes: "The wonder of Three Kings is that it was not some low-level art-house labour of love, but a big-budget, big-studio action adventure with an all-star cast led by George Clooney, Mark Wahlberg and Ice Cube."

And finally for now, and via MCN: "The wait is over. The Director’s Cut of Donnie Darko premieres at the Seattle Film Festival on May 29, 2004 and passionate Donnie Darko fans will finally get to see the movie writer/director Richard Kelly intended to make all along." Rebecca Murray has a good long talk with Kelly and offers loads o' relevant links.

Posted by dwhudson at May 29, 2004 6:25 AM