The News: All-Positive Friday!

By S.T. VanAirsdale

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

--I know I've missed out on a ton of Earth-shattering news since retreating last week to my low-light, 1,000-calorie-a-day sensory deprivation chamber just outside Bismarck, N.D. We appear to be entering another golden era of Harvey revelations alone, what with the Weinstein Company throwing $285 million at a few dozen Asian films over the next six years (a Seven Samurai remake? How cosmopolitan!) and Wednesday's disclosure that Clint Eastwood is redoing the score for Jim Strouse's forthcoming John Cusack weepie Grace is Gone. Wait, hold it. Let's say that again: Clint Eastwood is redoing the score for Grace is Gone. What rippling, pulsating nerve these men have; the film won the Dramatic Audience Award this year at Sundance (we chatted with Strouse here), but a Mystic River-esque flow of treacly piano tinkling should be ready in time to legitimize Grace for its NY Film Festival debut in October. Now if only Harvey could get Tim Orr or Jim Denault to reshoot that flat, ugly upstate milieu, a whole jagged road of Oscar humps could smooth out on the horizon. (H/T: Lou Lumenick)

--The Adrienne Shelly Foundation joined the Sundance Institute on Thursday to announce the winner of its inaugural women filmmakers grant: Maryam Keshavarz, a Sundance writing and directing lab alum for her project Circumstance. Keshavarz, who previously directed the feature doc The Color of Love and the dramatic short The Day I Died, will receive $5,000.

--In other women-in-film news, this item doesn't need much embellishment from me: Sign up now for the Wonder Women Short Film Competition, sponsored by the Village arts institution Pen and Brush.

--You know, now that I think about it, Harvey could always hire the hapless Passaic, N.J., video clerks of Michel Gondry's latest, Be Kind Rewind, to reimagine Grace is Gone in a 20-minute video burst like the ones seen in this intriguing new trailer (H/T: Thompson on Hollywood):

Posted at August 10, 2007 5:42 AM