Screening Gotham: Like Sugar and Spike: Lee to Helm Brown Biopic

Some of today's movie news of note from around New York:

--It only took James Brown's death to get James Brown's biopic moving again: Variety's Michael Fleming notes that Spike Lee will take third crack at a script having been developed by Brian Grazer with the Godfather of Soul himself, who died Monday at 73. Certainly Brown's climactic Christmas-day dance/demise will wind up in the final draft; "He was the ultimate showman, all the way to the end," Grazer alluded to the trade.

--Eager to get back to the local grind, the Hollywood Reporter's tireless NYC correspondent Gregg Goldstein goes looking for someone, anyone to talk to at some local distribution headquarters. As usual, he gets an entire story out of it. Show-off. (Via The Carpetbagger)

--Technically, I know that I should be more interested in deposed disillusioned Factory Girl director George Hickenlooper's barstool confessions to Mickey Rapkin, but that wasn't the Sunday Times's most engaging bit of film coverage. Rather, witness the return of Caryn James, who actually gets paid to write things like, "In the P.R. tug of war, what we usually see is not humanity but the cardboard facade, more colorful and detailed than in the old black-and-white days but just as shallow." Pot, meet kettle.

--Today in Overblown Franchise Geneology: Less than two weeks after Liz Smith humbly claimed responsibility for the epochal testament that is Rocky Balboa, we now have Post-mate Cindy Adams blaming ICM exec VP Toni Roberts for first circulating the script among folks like Joe Roth. Expect a blind item in tomorrow's Page Six asking, "What punchy pugilist thought his latest film was green-lit after an assistant misread the upside-down NO on a returned screenplay as ON?"

Posted at December 27, 2006 10:33 AM