Screening Gotham: Auteur Jury Duty Edition

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

--The Times found a whole story's worth of material in the fact that Steven Soderbergh reported for jury duty in the city this week. Actual lede: "You would think that the writer and director of a film called Sex, Lies and Videotape would be the perfect choice for the jury in a sex trial." Right. Just as appropriately, Bubble made him ideal for the short list, and his excellent Out of Sight made him a prime candidate for dismissal. Fine work.

--Pan's Labyrinth may have gotten hosed in the Oscars' foreign-language category, but Guillermo Del Toro will always be a winner in the hearts of crazy fuckers wielding pancake batter.

--Also in The Times: Michael Cieply reports on the "color line" tripping up American films with black stars in foreign markets. Read on for all kinds of exquisite candor, from former Sony exec Teddy Zee ("The studio was deathly afraid that an action movie with two African-American movie stars [Bad Boys] would never travel the world") to Reginald Hudlin (“I always call international the new South") to James Ulmer ("The international marketplace is still fairly racist").

--Tired of the stalkerazzi infestation in the West Village, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Peter Sarsgaard and child are relocating to the otherwise Siberian recesses of Brooklyn. They'll never find her there.

Posted at February 28, 2007 9:34 AM