• What may be Miramax's last great premiere took place last night at the AFI Festival, celebrating the debut of Everybody's Fine, the news dramedy starring Robert De Niro, and the company appears to be going out with something less than a roar. There were early hopes that the film might give Miramax — and De Niro — one last Oscar hurrah. HItfix reports however, that "the film a mess in so many ways that neither the legendary actor or the stars who play his children — Sam Rockwell, Drew Barrymore and Kate Beckinsale — can save it." [Hitfix]

• The natives are getting restless and the drumbeat grows ever louder for the NBC/Universal Comcast deal. In their quarterly earnings reports, Comcast reported their profits were up 22 percent, bringing to a crescendo pleas that they just go ahead and buy NBC already and end our long showbiz-wide nightmare of suspense. [Variety]

• At the other end of the spectrum, Time-Warner was the beneficiary of low expectations. Its profits fell 38 percent last quarter, which remarkably was above expectations and led the company to raise its earnings projections for the year. [Hollywood Reporter]

• There may be signs of life in that old DVD market yet. The Wrap reports that after the huge success of the Transformers 2 DVD release, analysts are optimistic about the upcoming crop of blockbuster home releases to fuel strong sales. [The Wrap]

• The American Film Market, where US independent filmmakers peddle their wares for international distributors, opened yesterday and Variety saw hopes that the expo may be coming out of the doldrums it has been in in recent years. In addition to a line-up of films made by and featuring some heavy-hitters, Variety says the worldwide success of a handful of indie films — including Slumdog Millionaire — has created a more favorable climate. [Variety]

• Gerard Butler will star in the directorial debut of actor Ralph Fiennes, a modern adaptation of Shakespeare's Coriolanus. [Hollywood Reporter]

Since losing their brand, life hasn't been right for the Brothers Weinstein. Could a name change though really bring back that magical English Patient era?

• Their company may be ailing, but Weinsteins are ready to make a play to get their name back. The Wrap reports that Harvey and Bob are preparing a pitch to Robert Iger to buy back their old Miramax brand now that Disney has all but shuttered the division. When they left Disney, The Wrap reports, Michael Eisner refused out of spite to let them take the name — which is a hybrid of the Weinsteins' parent's names - with them. But with Disney now under less vengeance driven management the Weinsteins hope is that the time be be ripe for an historic reunion . [The Wrap]

• George Clooney is reportedly "circling the lead" role in the long awaited new film by Sideways and Election director Alexander Payne, a family drama/comedy entitled The Descendents. [Variety]

• Suggesting that Oscar's new producers may be taking a step away from from the Hugh Jackman mold, Nikki Finke reports that the hosting job has been offered to and turned down by both Ben Stiller and Robert Downey Jr. Which means there is only one Tropic Thunder star left to host...Jack Black, your day of destiny has arrived. [Deadline]

• Hollywood is saved! In earnings season, Viacom reported "better-than-expected third-quarter profit gains thanks to improved theatrical film and TV advertising trends, as well as cost controls." Marvel however, ruined the party by reporting lower profits in Q3, as they had no theatrical releases last quarter. Thanks for nothing Marvel. [Hollywood Reporter]

• Sony Classics has picked up the US rights to Mother and Child a drama about three women and their children, which received gushing reviews when it debuted at the Toronto Film Festival in September. [Variety]

• Diversity is at last coming to late night TV. Fifteen years after Arsenio Hall went off the air, the next few weeks will see the debuts of talk shows built around George Lopez (TBS), Wanda Sykes (Fox) and Mo'Nique (BET). [The Wrap]

• The Atrios are in! The casting society of America handed out their annual awards at a banquet last night, giving top honors to Star Trek, Mad Men, Up and Milk. Kath and Kim's John Michael Higgins hosted the fete. [Hollywood Reporter]

• Most brilliantly understated headline of the morning: "Paranormal Activity sequel a possibility. Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman reveals Tuesday." Yes, well there is always that chance that Viacom has decided they've made enough money this decade. [Hollywood Reporter]

• The unsinkable Jim Belushi juggernaut rolls on. The According to Jim vet has signed up with Diane English and Barry Levinson to create a courtroom TV drama based on famed defense attorney Mickey Sherman. [Variety]

The state of things was made clear today with the announcement that Miramax President Daniel Battsek would be stepping down. His decision came after news in recent weeks that Miramax headquarters would be moved from NYC to LA and that the company would scale back its annual release slate to three pictures, which is to say the functional equivalent of no pictures.

The shake-up ends the recent decades of dabbling all over the map for Disney and now leaves the independent film world decimated down to its core, with Fox Searchlight, Focus and Sony Classics the only major specialty units still moving at full steam following the departures or diminishments of New Line and , Paramount Vantage.

NOTE: A previous version of this mistakenly item listed Focus Features in the diminished list. We are delighted to learn that Focus is alive and well.

It wasn't much of a surprise when it was announced that Disney would be "restructuring" Miramax down to three films a year and cutting their staff by 70%.

When Disney studio chief Dick Cook was ousted last week, it was pretty common knowledge that an absent Cook, who was long a proponent of keeping the Miramax brand alive, certainly wasn't going to help things. Miramax hasn't been sufficiently profitable for a while, at least by Disney's standards. Sure, they've turned out some quality films over the last few years (No Country for Old Men, There Will Be Blood) but most people attribute those victories to New York's Worst Boss '07, producer Scott Rudin, and not Miramax head Daniel Battsek, the Brit who couldn't zero in on American tastes without the help of producers like Rudin: ears for quality and easy ins to studios. Miramax has also had far more than their fair share of failures lately, which the LAT report nicely reduces to their most recent three (Extract, Cheri, and The Boys Are Back). Are we forgetting Adventureland, Eagle vs. Shark, Blindness, etc? Because, well, we shouldn't.

These are mostly expensive films with fairly "bankable" stars being trotted out as "independent" fare, or as the LA Times enjoys calling it: "smaller, offbeat movies," which is a nice euphemism for anything that doesn't have a nailed-down demographic of conspicuous consumers (or, for that matter, teenagers). But big studio dramas used to do really well! Remember the 90s? Braveheart, Schindler's List, American Beauty, Gladiator: these films used to win box offices and Oscars. Not anymore. In their place are smaller affairs: The Reader, Crash, Revolutionary Road. Restrained pieces of moviemaking that aren't as epic as their history would suggest. Times change.

Picturehouse, Warner Independent, and now, Miramax: all of these were so-called "specialty division" studio-within-studios that failed. They were built up to lure stars with the promise of getting their art-house rocks off in exchange for a multi-picture deal involving a blockbuster. Why? Because, for studios, they weren't worth the cost of the money they were losing devoting resources to making or acquiring and marketing these mostly unprofitable movies. So: studio indies are coming to an end. Thank god.

Miramax got their name by making movies like Swingers and Pulp Fiction. They stumbled upon raw talent who could make an incredible movie on the cheap, and the profits were extraordinary. When you have the backing of a studio like Disney, or Warner Bros, that's never going to happen. As much as they probably enjoy the schadenfreude of Disney fucking up their baby, even The Weinstein Brothers, still hopped up on the memories of their last moneyed days with Disney, are now caught between pissing cash into the wind on highbrow stuff, or focusing on making more stuff like Halloween 2. Layoffs are impending for Miramax employees who once thought they had the safety of a studio that cared about "good" movies. Disney's commitment to "quality" extends as far as their bottom line, like so many other multinationals trying to turn a buck.

Independent film used to be a game of digging through the dark to find something incredible, and that might be what it's returning to. Hollywood's new producers are savvy to New Media marketing games; they know how to make good films while keeping the kitchen sink. We can try to avoid the symbolism of Miramax's doom as much as we want to, but in the end, it's simple: conglomerates are out of the art-house game, which means its full-on open season for underdog movies again. Let the new Weinsteins emerge.

The party, or "The Party" as it has come to be known by some, remains famous for it's over-the-top flamboyance, and since Talk was partially funded by Miramax money, Harvey and Bob Weinstein served as co-hosts for the event, leading the New York Observer to headline their coverage of the night's festivities, "Weinstein Brothers Revel in Vulgarity, Glory of Manhattan."

In her Daily Beast post eulogizing Isabell dated July 12th, Tina Brown reminisced about the illuminated-by-Japanese-lanterns soiree on the electricity-less Liberty Island to bring in the now-defunct magazine. She spoke wistfully about the plethora of stars she shipped in on an ark to genuflect at her altar, The Statue of Liberty, for the evening. Here's the money quote:

Guests, who included Madonna, George Plimpton, Demi Moore, Tom Brokaw, Kate Moss, Christopher Buckley, Helen Mirren, and Jerry Seinfeld, disgorged one after another from the Liberty Island ferry that Buckley immediately re-christened the "Star Barge." Like an A-list Noah's Ark, it motored slowly toward the tiny island where the Talk staff waited to greet the 800 guests in a warm August dusk.

Brown's piece must have triggered the memory of the New York Times' David Carr, as he dedicates his Monday "Media Equation" column to the Talk launch party, only his take on the event isn't so much a fond remembrance as it is a look back at what he now views as an event marking of the beginning of the end of an era of excess. Noting that the ten years that have passed since "The Party" have seen the death of many established titles as well as a dramatic drop in ad pages, Carr, who says he's "still ashamed to admit that I wasn't one of the lucky 1,000 people invited to the party," writes:

Too bad nobody saw the sharks circling in the harbor. Rather than the culmination of a century of press power, the Talk party was the end of an era, a literal fin de siècle. Flush with cash from the go-go '90s and engorged by spending from the dot-com era, mainstream media companies seemed poised on the brink of something extraordinary. But that brink ended up being a cliff. partied

Ten years ago, journalists, long the salarymen of the publishing economy, began gorging on big contracts and options from digital start-ups like shrimp at a free buffet. With coveted writers commanding $5 for every typed word into magazines that were stuffed to the brim with advertising, there was a fizziness, some would say recklessness, in the air. The industry was drunk on its own prerogatives, working a party that seemed as if it would never end.

Carr goes on to note that Tina Brown's Daily Beast launch party in 2008 was held at Pop Burger in the Meatpacking District, where assembled guests munched on miniature burgers and hot dogs until about 8:15 or so, when the food sadly ran out. Indeed, that's quite a remarkable contrast. But hey, there was an open bar, so it couldn't have been that bad, right?

Finally, all of this brings to mind the words of a certain eccentric American prophet who, speaking about partying in the year 1999, once said, "Life is just a party and parties weren't meant to last." And really, all things considered, is that such a terrible thing?

10 Years Ago, An Omen No One Saw [New York Times]
Farewell to the King of Parties [Daily Beast]

Yes, it's that time again: former Gawker Weekend editor and New York Observer reporter Leon Neyfakh has named his 2009 summer "status galleys," wherein he calls around the publishing industry to see what the hot new galleys to be seen with are. If you already know what a status galley is, skip the next three paragraphs down to the good stuff. And if you don't, Leon explains it best:

Basically the term refers to an advance reader's copy of a highly anticipated book that hasn't been published yet. If you have one it means you're special: either a proud member of the exclusive club known as the publishing industry, a distinguished literary critic, a friend of the author's, or in some cases even an intern at a cultural magazine.

He got a good example of when this can come in handy from media closure victim Tom Meaney, former New York Sun literary editor: if you're seen on the subway with a status galley by a pretty, literary lady who wants to read it, or who is reading it, romance could be in the air, as the exclusive club that is having a status galley makes a great conversational jumpoff-point. And if not romance, at least some highminded conversation! Same with parties in the New York Literati scene, except you're far less likely to impress so much as simply get nods of approval or awesome scowls of LitNerd jealousy.

Among the books Neyfakh names as this summer's status galleys: Michael Chabon's Manhood for Amateurs, Jonathan Lethem's Chronic City, Philip Roth's The Humbling (which This Recording blogger, n+1ian, and occasional Observer book critic Molly Young actually held a copy of), Lorrie Moore's A Gate at the Stairs, Thomas Pynchon's Inherent Vice (which, sadly, comes out in three weeks), Richard Powers' Generosity: An Enhancement, Mary Karr's memoir Lit, and mystery editor Otto Penzler's anthology of vampire stories.

One of them is also The Unnamed, by Joshua Ferris, which is the leadoff book for our Status Galley Book Club. It's scheduled for release on January 18, 2010.

Industry Hype: Ferris' debut novel, 2007's Then We Came To The End was a critical hit, a National Book Award finalist, and a topic of much discussion on this site! It was translated into 24 languages, which I guess, also, means something. Will his sophomore effort be ATLiens-good or Forever-good? The "people" want to know, but are somewhat reluctant, as this is his second novel, after all. His New Yorker stories between books have been solid, though. Industry Hype: B+.

Movie Potential: Very real! Again: lots of people in lots of different languages are reading the book, and they don't just live in New York. Also, it's already been optioned. Scott Rudin and Miramax picked up the rights to the unfinished manuscript of the book back in March. Woah! They must've felt like they missed the boat after HBO picked up the rights to Then We Came To The End; he's currently adapting it for them. Movie Potential: A.

Status Symbol: Well, as Leon indicated in his article, "Reagan Arthur Books handed out more than a thousand copies during Book Expo in May." Where did I find it? Sitting quietly, not making much fuss, on a book table in Williamsburg. I asked the street merchant where he acquired the book, and he told me in no uncertain terms that sold it to him. Yes, but, I asked him, did they work in publishing? He didn't think so. Not good. Status Symbol: D+, if only because it still doesn't come out for another six months.

First Sentence: "It was the cruelest winter." C-, because, aren't they all cruel?

The F.U.C.K.E.R. (Fully Unqualified Consciously Knifing-worthy Early Review): You can highlight the following text if you want to know some of the essential plot points of the book. We won't give too much away - never the ending! - but you will get a lot of it. Ready? A successful lawyer has a condition that makes him unable to control his legs, which send him on long walks away from his home or outside of the city. He has no control over when these episodes happen, and they get progressively worse: the walks get longer and thus, more dangerous. After unsuccessfully seeking out every kind of treatment and diagnosis available, he loses his job, his sanity, and becomes distanced from his family. Soon, he decides to embrace his condition, and sets out alone to deal with it. Ferris pulls none of the narrative trickery he did with his last book, which was written almost entirely in a Greek Chorus-esque first-person-plural. Though the light, charming touch Ferris applied to what was often compared to a literary, highbrow version of The Office still affects the book's language, the tone is far, far darker, and the undertones far more masculine. Ferris' characters, while not entirely unpredictable, aren't heavy-handed in persona either; essentially, if you found yourself weepy at the end of his last book, this one's not going to be any different. The book also takes a slightly philosophical bend at times, points of which got a little convoluted in their own dogma, however interesting they were. Finally, the second half off the book veers wildly from the first, which is going to be seriously divisive for book critics at large. But I thought it was really, really great. F.U.C.K.E.R. Grade: A-.

Final Status Galley Grade: Joshua Ferris is probably going to become really famous with people who don't care about "hot" authors between this book, the HBO adaptation of Then We Came To The End, and the project of this coming together (the two leads are juicy roles). The book is great! But it gets downgraded for its mainstream appeal (makes it less cool to the publishing crowd), availability (having it doesn't denote much exclusivity), and the lack of a proven track record beyond his debut novel to please the New York Publishing Elite. Which, in this club, is all that really matters.

Gawker Status Galley Book Club grade: B-.

Do you have a status galley you'd like to review, or send us to review? Shoot us an email here.

Further reading: Ladies and Germs, Your Summer '09 Status Galleys! [New York Observer]

Patrick Goldstein notes today that the studio has retracted its innovative if controversial "hybrid blurb" from print-ad circulation effective immediately, meaning New York Post critic Lou Lumenick will at last have his own personal, decontextualized praise attributed to him alongside his peers. The bad news: Lumenick's Post colleague and former blurbmate Cindy Adams lost her berth to that monolith of critical integrity Roger Friedman. Hopefully they corrected his spelling.

• Miramax pulls fudged blurb from 'Doubt' ad [The Big Picture]

NY Post critic Lou Lumenick complained Thursday that Miramax had blended a portion of his Doubt review with that of his colleague Cindy Adams, resulting in yesterday's ad blurb in the NY Times: "This is what movies used to be and should be. Doubt is heart-stopping. A feast of great acting.'' Naturally Lumenick was a little disappointed with this unprecedented awards-season license, but we love the audacity and hope to see more — and more creative — instances of its usage in the months and years to come.

In that spirit, we've formulated a few of our own multi-party blurbs for some of last year's reviews and commentaries on Defamer. Feel free to borrow at will, Hollywood, or just compose your own with the handy links provided:

· The Dark Knight: "So ambitious and epic and so expensive-looking. The Departed with bat-gadgets. I want overturned big rigs!"

· Revolutionary Road: "Screenwriter Justin Haythe digests Richard Yates's piercing dialogue into compact, Oscar-clip-compatible bursts. A quasi-pedigreed patina reveling in excruciating emotional turmoil. $40 million of DreamWorks' money!"

· Milk: "Well-made prestige Oscar bait. Sean Penn deserves credit for appearing likable on screen! I'm a gay man, and you're not."

· Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull: "It was engaging-ish. This is no ordinary quartz skull that looks like an alien head! What about the cactus-LaBeouf-cockballtorture sequence? I mean, my friend liked it."

Must! Credit! Defamer!

• Reviewing the Movie Ads: Doubts About 'Doubt' [NYP]

We mean it! Take back his Nobel Prize! And boycott Blindness, while you're at it; that's the least you could do for a guy with grievances (after the jump) like NFB boss Marc Maurer's:

“The National Federation of the Blind condemns and deplores this film, which will do substantial harm to the blind of America and the world. Blind people in this film are portrayed as incompetent, filthy, vicious, and depraved. They are unable to do even the simplest things like dressing, bathing, and finding the bathroom. The truth is that blind people regularly do all of the same things that sighted people do. Blind people are a cross-section of society, and as such we represent the broad range of human capacities and characteristics. We are not helpless children or immoral, degenerate monsters; we are teachers, lawyers, mechanics, plumbers, computer programmers, and social workers. ...

Portraying the blind on movie screens across America as little better than animals will reinforce the unfounded fears, misconceptions, and stereotypes in the general public about blindness. It will exacerbate the unemployment rate among the blind, which is already higher than 70 percent because of public misconceptions about the capabilities of blind people. It will reinforce false public notions that blind children are ineducable, that blind adults are unemployable, and that all blind people are socially undesirable.

What are they talking about? Haven't Al Pacino, Jamie Foxx and Patty Duke all won Oscars playing blind characters? People love these guys! Still, director Fernando Meirelles was unavailable for comment this morning, but Miramax — which has had problems with the film since before it was seemingly the 87th choice to open this year's Cannes Film Festival — has since issued a statement insisting that he "worked diligently to preserve the intent and resonance of the acclaimed book." The NFB is moving ahead anyway with protests in at least 21 states and "dozens of participants" wherever possible, setting up an awkward showdown between authorities urging protesters to observe the police perimeter around theaters and seeing-eye dogs slyly trained not to stop before leading their masters to the box office. If you think it's ugly now, just wait.

• NFB Condemns and Deplores the Movie Blindness [NFB]
• Blind activists plan protest of movie 'Blindness' [AP]

"He thinks he's going to . . . make John Travolta look like that was an amateur night in Dixie," says Weinstein in the 11-year-old recording, referring to Travolta's comeback in Tarantino's Pulp Fiction.

Responds Tarantino: "He's still dealing with, subconsciously, the fact that he's not going to get paid for doing the thing that he's created after 20 years . . . He's built his reputation on roles like [Jackie Brown's]Louis . . . 'How can you not pay me?' "

At another point, Weinstein warns Tarantino he might get a "weird midnight phone call" from the star. Tarantino rages: "Tell Bob not to call me yelling and screaming . . . I don't know if I'm going to be nice [if] the guy calls up yelling and screaming at me like a maniac, calling me a [bleep]er!"

Better that than a terrifying, apostrophe-free email, we think, though we certainly wouldn't welcome a late-night tirade from the erstwhile Travis Bickle. Still, we can't help but think this all could have been avoided if De Niro had tempted Tarantino into a pay raise by appealing to his well-known foot fetish. Sure, it may be an ignominious thing for an Oscar-winning actor to doff his shoes and socks and wiggle his little piggies for gross points, but can it really be worse than Analyze That?

[Photo Credit: AP]

• COPING WITH DE NIRO FLIP-OUT [NY Post]

Ms. Smith is curly-haired and petite and wore a festive black-and-white print dress to lunch; Ms. McCullah Lutz, in a form-fitting turquoise dress, suggested a blonde Valkyrie. Ms. McCullah Lutz seemed more serious, Ms. Smith more bubbly. But they said the key to their personalities is in their dogs: Ms. McCullah Lutz owns a Maltese; Ms. Smith, pit bulls. ...

Their M.O. consists of writing beside Ms. McCullah Lutz’s pool (both live in neighborhoods on the funkier east side of Hollywood) and presenting a united front to those studio executives who would tamper with their work. But sometimes, they conceded, the questions can lead somewhere. When Disney asked for additional motivation for the comedian Larry Miller’s overprotective, pregnancy-obsessed father in 10 Things, they made him a gynecologist. Other times, they said, studio participation can be perplexing. ...

Ms. McCullah Lutz, referring to Ella Enchanted: “Miramax is the only studio that’s ever told us to add” a flatulence joke.

Ms. Smith: “Which I was very excited about.”

Keep in mind, of course, that this was Miramax circa 2004 — an extraordinary stroke of luck for the forthcoming pilot, in which a lumbering studio mogul named Marty Feinstein summons the women to his office on the Disney lot for a hi-larious exchange "clearing the air about clearing the air." Indeed, we smell Emmy.

• Women (Real and Fictional) Defying Expectations

We've reported on The Weinstein Company's troubles. Whether the film producer's magic gut has left him, or he simply faces more competition for buzzy film projects, Harvey Weinstein's track record of releases has been disappointing since leaving Disney's Miramax, where he shepherded modern classics such as Shakespeare in Love. (The once-bullish film producer doesn't even have the confidence to finance Quentin Tarantino's next project.) The Weinstein Company's own backers, led by Goldman Sachs, are rumored to be reconsidering their support. And the independent mini-conglomerate's forays into media sectors other than movie-making have been mixed at best. (Fashion TV show Project Runway is a money-spinner but social network A Small World has tiny traffic.)

None of that matters, if one was to believe the spin: the Weinsteins' 70% stake in a home video distributor called Genius Products was worth more than $400m, "an asset that could be sold one day if they are strapped for cash," Fortune relayed a year ago. Even in November, Weinstein's CFO told the magazine that Genius had performed "beyond our wildest hopes."

Well, the Weinsteins are certainly behaving as if they're indeed strapped for cash, squeezing every last dollar from cable networks and marketers such as L'Oreal for rights to roles in Project Runway; but it's not clear whether there's any asset that can be sold for cash in an emergency.

The news hasn't really percolated out of the specialist home video press, but Genius Products' share price has declined by 93% in the last 12 months. Genius' DVD business has suffered as online distribution of movies and cable pay-per-view has taken off. A board member and the company's chief financial officer left recently, after the company admitted that it would not meet its aggressive earnings estimates. Last year, company executives forecast $1bn in revenues for 2008.

The public float of the company is worth just $12.85m, which would put the value of the Weinsteins' shareholding at $30m if my math is right. And that won't be enough to shore up the troubled film producers if The Weinstein Company's debt financing is as precarious as Hollywood's rumor mill suggests.

The souring of the Genius investment is uncomfortable in many ways. Not least, the deal was brought to Weinstein by his own backers. Steve Bannon, a buccaneering banker who took over the company in 2004, used to work at investment bank Goldman Sachs and it was his old firm that put him together with the movie maker that they were themselves supporting. Larger-than-life Weinstein, who had long wanted to wheel and deal like a media mogul rather than a penny-pinching movie hustler, thought he was up for a big payday. Everybody was happy. And now they're not.

The Weinsteins' finances aren't nearly as solid as you might think; investors have already told the irascible producer they backed him to make movies rather than pursue multi-media ambitions; and Harvey Weinstein needs to keep his backers happy if he's to maintain the debt finance upon which the mini-studio's slate depends. Hollywood rumor has Goldman Sachs and other investors pulling The Weinstein Co.'s loans if he can't reach the profitability he'd promised this year.

After he sold Miramax to Disney, Harvey Weinstein hated reporting to the entertainment group's CEO Michael Eisner, and chafed under the restrictions of a conglomerate. But the irony is that he's resented the media moguls not so much for their lack of focus as the fact that he wasn't one himself. Even while at Disney, Weinstein backed Tina Brown's Talk magazine and its associated book publishing venture; now nominally independent, he's ranging even more widely, even emulating Disney's Broadway efforts (the cartoons-to-theme-parks combine turned The Lion King into a hit musical).

But Harvey Weinstein offloaded Miramax too early to make much money from the transaction; in terms of personal net worth, the Weinstein brothers are also-rans in the media establishment. 55-year-old Harvey may aspire to the globe-spanning synergistic mix of businesses of Sumner Redstone's Viacom or Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. But he simply don't have independent financial resources. And, if Weinstein continues to play mogul with other people's money, expect that backing to evaporate too.

When he noticed who the passenger was that was exiting the car, [redacted] said that he became nervous and turned his head and eyes to the ground as Weinstein approached the entrance to the building. Suddenly he noticed that weinstein's steps had ceased. he looked up to find Weinstein standing there just staring at him.

"Who the fuck are you?"

"I work for you. I'm an intern."

"Oh yeah. Well what's your name?"

"My name is [redacted] sir."

"Really? Well guess what [redacted]? from now on I'm going to call you Fuckface."

And with that, weinstein turned and walked into the building. But throughout the course of [redacted]'s remaining time interning at Miramax, Weinstein was true to his word.

"For the rest of the time that I was there, Harvey called me Fuckface. I would pass him in the hall and he'd say 'what's going on Fuckface?' Once I was in the elevator and he stepped on with other people and he introduced me to everyone with him as Fuckface."

[Cajun Boy In The City]

But isn't this the same festival that opened in 2006 with The Da Vinci Code? Just how bad is "bad"?

Look at it this way: Festival organizers knew what they wanted two years ago, announcing Da Vinci's selection in January of 2006 — nearly four months before it screened. Moreover, Sony knew what it had: A shabby, critic-proof, mass-market lark. Cannes' previous two openers were different — Lemming (2005) and Bad Education (2004) were announced April 19 and Feb. 21 of their respective years. Wong Kar-wai's 2007 opener My Blueberry Nights was locked in by April 19 of last year. We're pushing May Day, and the odds-on favorite for 2008 — which most observers were already surprised to see left off the competition slate last week — has yet to receive the festival's official blessing.

Director Fernando Mereilles was being either skeptical or falsely modest a few months back when he told one of us in a interview: "I'd love to take it to Cannes. I don't know if I'm going to get a slot, but I'd love to. It's a very dark story. But that's our goal. It's sold all over the world — there will be some support." Hey, man, you don't need to convince us. Also, we know there have been at least a few Miramax test screenings, and if the studio knows it has a misfire on its hands, the last thing it wants is to sacrifice it publicly four months before Oscar season.

If it were up to us, we'd just insist that Cannes get Indiana Jones 4 out of the way on opening night and let the rest of the fest speak for itself. But if it's not Blindness, what else should we be looking for? Four hours of Che? We'd take anything at this point.

UPDATE: Surely in swift response to our well-placed suspicions, the Cannes Film Festival just officially announced Blindness as its opening-night selection. Confirming other speculation in its same dispatch, the fest also named the Barry Levinson/Robert De Niro pairing What Just Happened? as its closing-night film.

• 'Blindness' Tipped to open Cannes [Variety]

The Miriam Collection, named after the brothers' mother, launched in late January with the release of one of the last great epics not previously available on DVD, Anthony Mann's El Cid.

Weinstein clearly relishes being able to play kingmaker and give deserving films the true DVD VIP treatment, a la the fabled Criterion Collection.

The Fall of the Roman Empire, for example, is fully loaded," Harvey Weinstein said. "It looks and sounds astonishing, and the bonus materials fully explore the sheer magnitude and grandeur of making a film of this scale in a time long before the advent of CGI."

• Weinsteins start upscale DVD label [Yahoo]
• Meet The New Harvey [Fortune]

The Times article claims that Grindhouse and Breaking and Entering, both of which had marquee, which is to say expensive, filmmakers at the helm, tanked; Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11.5 and Sicko have been endlessly delayed; and Factory Girl and Shut Up and Sing, while both buzzed-about, failed to live up to the hype, with only $3 million of tickets sold between the two of them. Ouch! What happened to the Weinstein magic touch?

There's some clues and distractions both in Nikki Finke's column from the other day, in which she spoke to Weinstein about the Grindhouse failure:

Weinstein pointed to several reasons why Grindhouse did so poorly in theaters over Easter weekend. "Our research showed the length kept people away. It was the single biggest deterrent. It was 3 hours and 12 minutes long. We originally intended to get it all in in 2 hours, 30 minutes. That would have been a better time. But the movies ran longer, the [fake] trailers ran longer, everything ran longer," Harvey told me. Weinstein also criticized his own marketing plan. "We didn't educate the South or Midwest. In the West and the East, the movie played well. It played well in strong urban settings. But we missed the boat on the Midwest and the South."

Apparently it's not enough, any longer, for Weinstein to capture the Angelika crowd; too many of his films have been too successful, and he's too much of an Important Player to be content with catering to a discerning, but ultimately small, crowd.

Sure, you're always going to have your sleeper films like The Queen that build up their audiences and box-office take over the course of several months as critical acclaim rolls in and word of mouth builds. But no one expected The Queen to be a such a winner. So Harvey Weinstein might be learning that the audience for that particular brand of literate-lite films isn't as large as he'd like it to be. —Doree
Films From The Weinsteins Falter, But the Brothers Stay Focused [NYT]
What Went So Wrong With Grindhouse? [Deadline Hollywood]

Miramax, Rudin Option Rights To Novel [Variety]
An Interview With Marisha Pessl [Bookslut]
It's Like Nothing, Really [NYT]