The News: HBO Sweet on Sugar

A shot from the Davenport, Iowa, set of Sugar (Photo: Quad City Times)

By S.T. VanAirsdale

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

--Barely a week after Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden's new feature Sugar was announced to be premiering in competition at Sundance, HBO Films said it had acquired the film for a 2008 release. Steven Zeitchik noted Wednesday that the company has yet to determine whether it will distribute Sugar on cable or open it theatrically through Picturehouse -- the Park City reaction will help with that -- but I remember P-house boss Bob Berney falling head over heels for the duo's Half Nelson at Sundance '06 before it went to ThinkFilm, so I'd say you can probably look for it at a theater near you.

--I know better than to look forward to Michael Haneke's remake of Funny Games, but that doesn't mean I can't take pleasure out of the most misanthropic trailer in the history of trailers. Circumventing the age-restriction software is also fun; today I'm Sven Nykvist, and I was born in 1950. Tomorrow I think I'll be Harvey Weinstein. Here -- you try! (H/T: CHUD)

--I wanted to be fascinated by Patrick Goldstein's think piece about the unquantifiable value of entertainment, but I wound up pretty depressed. Maybe that was the point: "[T]he real problem is that nobody knows the value of anything anymore. Whether we're reading horror stories about the mortgage meltdown, watching the dollar plummet or gagging on the prices at our neighborhood gas station, we're all stumbling around with a nagging feeling that the value of things has become unmoored."

--Scarlett Johansson, who unequivocally, absolutely has not undergone plastic surgery of any kind whatsoever so help her God seriously she means it, is going to sue the hell out of US Weekly for intimating otherwise.

Posted at December 6, 2007 7:45 AM