indieWIRE HOLIDAY | Happy New Year!

The indieWIRE team is celebrating the new year with a limited publication schedule this week. While we are posting a limited amount of news and information over the holidays, the next edition of indieWIRE: Daily will be published on Thursday, January 3rd. Happy Holidays! 
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iW THIS WEEK | Awards Watch Recap: "No Country" For NBR; "4 Months, 3 Weeks" And 2 European Film Awards

Looking at happenings on the Awards Watch front... the National Board of Review announced Joel and Ethan Coen's "No Country For Old Men"as best picture for their annual awards, with Tim Burton and the Affleck family also getting some love. indieWIRE reported from the European Film Awards, where Romanian film "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days" took home best picture and best director. Also announced this week were the Annie and Satellite nominations, with "Ratatouille' sweeping the former and indies doing quite well at the latter. On the blog front, "No Country For Old Men" continued its two week reign on top of the best picture rankings of the Gurus o' Gold, with "Sweeney Todd" shooting up in the rankings. The Gurus (including our own Eugene Hernandez) also took on the screenplay categories this week, with Diablo Cody and the Coens' atop their respective races. Here at indieWIRE, check out our latest Awards Season dispatch for some perspective, as well as my latest choices for award frontrunners and underdogs at The Lost Boy, and look out for our coverage of this weekend's Los Angeles Film Critics Awards voting, the upcoming New York Film Critics Circle awards, as well as next week's slew of other critic's awards and the nominations for the Golden Globe Awards [Peter Knegt]  
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iW THIS WEEK | New In Theatres: "Juno", "Atonement", "Grace is Gone"

Among this week's specialty releases coming to theatres, Reverse Shot's Michael Koresky reviewed Jason Reitman's "Juno," finding it a "square, predictable crowd-pleaser, timid on politics and reaffirming on family." His colleague Kristi Mitsuda was even less impressed with her review of Paul Schrader's "The Walker," suggesting that the "would-be political potboiler" "fails to coalesce." Koresky was more kind to "Billy The Kid," from director Jennifer Venditti, who indieWIRE's Brian Brooks also interviewed. indieWIRE was also on the scene for the roll out of two of the season's more anticipated films, Joe Wright's "Atonement" and James C. Strouse's "Grace is Gone." [Peter Knegt]  
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iW THIS WEEK | In The News: Sundance, Greece, "Heaven" Deal...

The big news this week came from the Sundance Film Festival, which announced is competition and non-competition lineups. 121 features are set for the '08 fest, weighted towards new faces. In Greece, Shangjun Cai's "The Red Awn" won the top prize at the Thessaloniki fest, Rania Richardson reported on the fest in a dispatch this week. Andrew Wagner's "Starting Out In The Evening" topped the iW BOT and Strand announced a deal for Fatih Akin's "The Edge of Heaven," Germany's entry for this year's Academy Awards. [Eugene Hernandez] 
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iW THIS WEEK | New in Theaters: "The Savages," "Diving Bell," Protagonist"

Among this week's specialty releases coming to theaters, Reverse Shot reviewed Julian Schnabel's "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" this week, with Chris Wisniewski saying that the filmmaker has "carved out a niche for himself crafting visually arresting, loosely conventional movies inspired by the lives of noteworthy artists and writers." Meanwhile, Michael Koresky concludes that the film, "makes for an engaging look at how we can lie to ourselves even as we search for an elusive truth." Other films opening in limited release this week include "The Savages" from Fox Searchlight and "Chronicle of an Escape" (Cronica de una fuga) via The Weinstein Company and IFC. 
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iW THIS WEEK | Awards Watch Re-Cap: Spirit Nods and Gotham Awards Officially Kick Off The Season

Looking at happenings on the Awards Watch front... Among this week's news, "I'm Not There," "Juno," "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" and "The Savages" led the 2008 Independent Spirit Award nominations, which will be handed out the day before the Academy Awards in February. "Juno" star Ellen Page was honored as best breakthrough performer at Tuesday night's Gotham Awards, where Sean Penn's "Into The Wild won best film. The British Independent Film Awards, were also handed out, with Anton Corbjin's Ian Curtis biopic, "Control," leading with five laurels. On the blog front, "Atonement" and "No Country For Old Men" remained the top two choices on the Gurus o' Gold, where the 15 pundits (including our own Eugene Hernandez) switched the ranks of the two, placing "No Country" on top of the best picture race for the first time. Here at indieWIRE, check out my latest choices for award frontrunners and underdogs at The Lost Boy, and look out for our coverage of Saturday night's European Film Awards, as well the upcoming critics' awards announcements, which kick off December 5th with the National Board of Review [Peter Knegt] 
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iW THIS WEEK | In The News: A Trio of Deals, and a Foreign Film Drought

A handful of acquisitions were announced this week, with Magnolia Pictures announcing a deal for U.S. rights to Richard Roxburgh's "Romulus, My Father" and sibling unit Truly Indie announced that it will handle the release of Terry Sanders doc, "Fighting For Life." Also, Jeff Nichols' "Shotgun Stories" has secured distribution via Upload Films and Liberation Entertainment. In his monthly world cinema column, Anthony Kaufman noted that while cinemas are overloaded with specialty releases this fall, "Foreign cinema lovers are facing a severe drought in U.S. movie theaters." And, at the weekly box office, the Coen Brothers "No Country For Old Men" made some $43,000 per screen from 28 screens in its opening weekend and has earned an estimated $1.8 million so far. It will add 120 screen this weekend. [Eugene Hernandez] 
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iW THIS WEEK | New in Theaters: "Margot at the Wedding," What Would Jesus Buy?" "Southland Tales," "Redacted"

Among this week's specialty releases coming to theaters, indieWIRE ran into a bit of controversy with a not so flattering Review of "Southland Tales" from Reverse Shot editor (and Magnolia Pictures exec Jeff Reichert. Read the review and check out the long list of comments at the end. The film's director Richard Kelly, meanwhile called the film "a strange cousin to 'Donnie Darko' in a way" in a Profile during an appearance as part of indieWIRE's series of filmmaker Q & A sessions at Apple Store Soho. Also profiled (and reivewed) this week was "Margot at the Wedding" director Noah Baumbach who said of his work, "...I just feel I write better and direct better than I did." "What Would Jesus Buy?" director Rob Vanalkemade said of his early desire to be a filmmaker, "clearly this business was not run solely by the qualified, and I shouldn't rule out giving it a try" in his interview this week. And, rounding out this week's reviews, "The Life of Reilly" seemed to win over Nick Pinkerton from Reverse Shot, while "Redacted" played a bit tough for Dennis Harvey. [Brian Brooks] 
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iW THIS WEEK | Awards Watch Re-Cap: Spielberg Gets a Globe; Spirits Go Green; "Todd" Sneaks a Peek

Looking at happenings on the Awards Watch front... Among this week's news, Steven Spielberg was announced as the recipient of the Golden Globes' Cecil B. DeMille Award, while the Spirit Awards announced plans to go green. On the blog front, Tim Burton showed 17 minutes of the still unfinished "Sweeney Todd", allowing attendee Tom O'Neill to proclaim it the Oscar frontrunner. O'Neill's fellow Los Angeles Times' blogger Pete Hammond discussed the state of the indie and Oscar, while Sasha Stone of AwardsDaily considered the dipping chances of "There Will Be Blood." Newsweek's Oscar blog suggested "No Country For Old Men" and "Atonement" were best picture nod shoo-ins, while the latest Gurus o' Gold agreed, adding personal favorites from the 15 pundits (including our own Eugene Hernandez), which ranged from "Zodiac" for best picture to David Cross for best supporting actor in "I'm Not There." Here at indieWIRE, check out my latest choices for award frontrunners and underdogs at The Lost Boy, and look out for our upcoming coverage of the Gotham Awards, which will be screening nominees at MoMA November 16 - 19, and announcing their winners November 27. [Peter Knegt] 
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iW THIS WEEK | In The News: AFI Fest, AFM, A Change in Denver, and Strike!

The big news in the business this week was the start of a Writers Guild of America strike (now heading into its 5th day) against the Hollywood studios and TV networks. indieWIRE detailed the action ahead of Monday's walkout. Meanwhile, in L.A., we reported on AFI Fest, which continues through Sunday. A trio of filmmmakers (Alex Cox, Alex Holdridge and Matt Ogen) balanced culture and commerce, as we reported earlier this week and also from AFI Fest, Werner Herzog offered some candid remarks on documentaries. Also this week, "Joe Strummer" topped the indie/specialty box office, Denver Film Festival co-founder Ron Henderson announced his coming retirement, Arthouse Films acquired Neil Ortenberg & Daniel O'Connor's "Obscene" and MoMA's Raj Roy joined the selection committee for the annual New Directors/New Films series, run by MoMA and the Film Society of Lincoln Center. [Eugene Hernandez] 
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iW THIS WEEK | Awards Watch Re-Cap: "No Country"; European Film Awards; WGA Strike and Oscar

Looking at happenings on the Awards Watch front... Among this week's news, the European Film Award nominations were announced, with "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days," among the films leading the pack; Movie City News' Gurus o' Gold (including our own Eugene Hernandez) had their third offering of Oscar prediction charts, with "Atonement" edging "No Country for Old Men" for the big prize. Tom O'Neill and Jeff Wells discussed the accuracy issues in bonafide Oscar contender (and box-office champion) "American Gangster," Entertainment Weekly spoke with "Juno" writer and Oscar's likely first former-stripper screenwriting nominee, Diablo Cody, while Nikki Finke asked how the WGA strike will affect the Oscars. And here at indieWIRE, we introduced this season's Awards Watch coverage with an article highlighted by discussion of "No Country For Old Men" and supplemented by a first round of predictions on both myself and Eugene's blogs. [Peter Knegt] 
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iW THIS WEEK | New in Theaters: "Pencil," "No Country" and"War/Dance"

Among this week's specialty release openers are Oscar nominee Michele Ohayon's ("Colors Straight Up") "Steal a Pencil for Me." Earlier this week, she told indieWIRE that love letters between a couple in a Holocaust concentration camp "blew me away" and inspired her to tell a unique love story. The Coen Brothers' anticipated "No Country for Old Men" opens as well and Michael Koresky called it the Coen's "most fleet, vital film since 'The Big Lebowski,'" in his review in iW. And Sean Fine and Andrea Nix Fine's "War/Dance," which won the couple a directing prize at Sundance hits screens in limited release. They called their project "an opportunity to shed light on a horrific situation in their interview with indieWIRE. [Brian Brooks] 
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