The News: All-Positive Friday!

By S.T. VanAirsdale

As per tradition, some of today's more upbeat movie news of note from around New York:

That can't be legal, but enough about the hair: Robert De Niro and Al Pacino in Righteous Kill (Photo: Empire Online)

--Our news round-ups took a couple of days off for a number of reasons, most of them administrative and uninteresting. But it's actually a good thing; I think we could all use some good news right about now. Take Righteous Kill for starters, the Robert De Niro/Al Pacino collaboration currently shooting in New York and from which stills and even a teaser trailer have found their ways online. Neither makes the film look especially appetizing or even releasable, really, but as far as momentary, light-headed bursts of anticipation go, you won't do much better today. Though it's a close call, let's file under "positive."

--Congrats to Dan O'Connor and Neil Ortenberg, the publishing vets-cum-docmakers whose debut Obscene -- about legendary Grove Press founder Barney Rosset -- got snapped up this week by Arthouse Films. I checked the film out in Toronto and caught up with the filmmakers here.

--Diva is back in New York, and the raves are in. I especially like this piece by Filmbrain, as much a straight-ahead review as a fleeting personal journey through his experience of French cinema: "At 17 I believed that Beineix's Paris -- where a simple postman can have a platonic romance with an opera star, befriend a roller-skating thieving Vietnamese beauty, be chased by trench coat wearing assassins, and be rescued by a Gitanes-smoking, multiple Citroën Traction Avant owning cool guy -– truly existed. Today I consider Diva to be a perfect bit of romantic escapist fantasy."

--It's easy to be cynical about Sylvester Stallone inheriting the Death Wish "franchise" from the late Charles Bronson, but it's either that, Rocky VII or Rambo V. Is there really an alternative here? See you in the subway, Sly.

Posted at November 9, 2007 7:15 AM