Academy to clamp down on 'Oscar parties?'

The Hollywood Reporter has the exclusive:

In response to an Oscar season featuring a significant uptick in campaign parties and schmooze-fests, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences is preparing to impose new restrictions on lavish festivities.

A proposal for revised regulations, which sources tell The Hollywood Reporter is currently being drafted by an AMPAS committee, still must be approved by the Academy's board of governors, which next meets Aug. 2. But the plan will almost certainly include new restrictions on the number and kind of events that can be thrown, and insiders expect new regulations to be adopted.

"There will be a tightening of the rules, no question," an Academy insider tells THR.

Harvey Weinstein will try to work his Oscar magic on Meryl Streep!

How will he be doing this, you ask? Well, Deadline has the story from the Cannes Film Festival:

Another day on the Croisette brings another major distribution deal. After an all night auction, The Weinstein Company emerged with U.S. distribution rights to The Iron Lady, the Pathe pic that stars Meryl Streep as Margaret Thatcher. I'm told the deal was worth near $7 million and that Weinstein Company made it with Ron Burkle and his Yucaipa banner. I'm also told that Alliance will distribute in Canada. I'd heard last night that the likes of Summit, Relativity Media and Fox Searchlight chased it. There were at least two bids on the table at $6 million.

Numerous bidders were in on the action after Pathe showed five minutes of footage here. Harvey Weinstein will definitely open the film during Oscar season, relying on another British politics tale after The King's Speech won Best Picture honors last year. Weinstein, his lieutenant David Glasser and Burkle worked into the night to make the deal. It is the same partnership structure they employed when that made the Sundance acquisitions My Idiot Brother and The Details. For TWC, it has already been a busy fest. They acquired world rights to Paul Thomas Anderson's next film before the fest started, made a quick acquisition of the black and white silent film The Artist, and the bought the Chinese film Dragon, both official festival selectiions.

Streep reuinites with her Mamma Mia! director Phyllida Lloyd in the Abi Morgan-scripted film that also stars Harry Lloyd, Richard E. Grant and Jim Broadbent.

-Joey's Two Cents: Studios trying to double down on what worked for them last year can often be a failing endeavor, but if anyone can reverse that trend, it's Harvey Weinstein...thoughts?

Paul Thomas Anderson's next film will be distributed by The Weinstein Company!

Via Deadline:

The Weinstein Company has won a quiet but fevered bidding battle for worldwide distribution rights to the untitled next film by Paul Thomas Anderson. The film begins production June 13, with Philip Seymour Hoffman and Joaquin Phoenix so far set to star. Megan Ellison is financing. It is Anderson's first trip behind the camera since There Will Be Blood.

Hoffman and Phoenix are locked. As for the actresses, I'm told that Anderson is eyeing such actresses as Madisen Beaty (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button) for a role, with Amy Adams, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo's Lena Endre and Laura Dern also mentioned as actresses Anderson is interested in. The auction was held at CAA headquarters late last week, with Fox Searchlight was also squarely in the mix.

This is the project that Anderson has worked on for a long time, once under the title The Master. He has greatly overhauled the script and now, Hoffman stars as a man who returns after witnessing the horrors of WWII and tries to rediscover who he is in post-war America. He creates a belief system, something that catches on with other lost souls. The film is fully financed by Ellison's Annapurna banner. At a time when the implosion of the indie film marketplace made pricey auteur films so hard to finance, Ellison has emerged as a something of a godsend to the small group of auteurs she is working with. She's enabled Anderson to make the movie at or near the $35 million budget the film was going to cost back when Universal stepped away. The deal gives TWC a big title to bring to the Cannes Film Festival this week.

-Joey's Two Cents: Harvey seems to amassing a new stable of auteurs for The Weinstein Company, much like how Mirimax used to be...thoughts?

How does Harvey Weinstein defend his PG-13 cut of The King's Speech?

From The Hollywood Reporter:

Harvey Weinstein is sounding off on the decision to release a PG-13 theatrical version of The Weinstein Co.'s four-time Oscar winner The King's Speech.

The decision had to do with inspiring children who were struggling as King George VI had with stuttering -- and not making more money, Weinstein says in a column for The Daily Beast.

"Did we do it for the extra shekels? A nice thought, but that was never in the cards," Weinstein says. "We absorbed additional production, delivery and marketing costs to bring The King's Speech PG-13 to moviegoers."

He says later in the column: "Maybe I'm a traditionalist, but I wanted everyone to have the opportunity to see the film on the big screen. We didn't cut the movie. We altered the cursing in two scenes, and I believe the strength of the story withstands these changes without compromising its heart and soul."

Has Miral run into a bit of trouble regarding its U.N. screening?

Apparently, according to The Hollywood Reporter:

The American Jewish Committee has called upon the president of the U.N.General Assembly to reconsider his decision to sponsor a screening of Julian Schnabel’s new movie Miral at the U.N. on Monday night.

In a letter sent to General Assembly president Joseph Deiss on Friday, AJC executive director David Harris accused the movie, about a young Palestinian woman growing up in Jerusalem, of portraying Israel “in a highly negative light,” calling it “blatantly one-sided.”But the film-makers quickly rejected that interpretation of the film in statements issued by the Weinstein Co., which is releasing the film on Friday.

“As a Jewish American, I can categorically state that I would not be releasing a film that was flagrantly biased towards Israel or Judaism,”Harvey Weinstein said.

Schnabel, who shot the film in Jerusalem, said, “I love the State of Israel. I believe in it, and my film is about preserving it, not hurting it.

Understanding is part of the Jewish way and Jewish people are supposed to be good listeners. But if we don’t listen to the other side, we can never have peace.”

Screenwriter Rula Jebreal, who adapted her own autobiographical novel, said that, “Miral is a story about human beings -- Palestinian, Israeli, Muslim, Jewish and Christian -- and it explores how we all react differently to the violence around us, whether physical, emotional, political or otherwise. It is a film about love, education, understanding, and peace. That seems like a good thing to show at the United Nations.”

The Weinsteins win another ratings battle against the MPAA!

The Hollywood Reporter has the story:

In a major victory for filmmaker Julian Schnabel and producer Jon Kilik, the ratings appeals board has overturned the R-rating for Miral, about a 17-year-old Palestinian girl caught up in the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Miral will now go out with a PG-13 rating. The Weinstein Co., which also was victorious in getting the NC-17 rating for Blue Valentine overturned, opens the film in select theaters on March 25.

Schnabel has always said he made the movie with hope of sparking a dialogue among young people about Israeli/Palestinian relations, and that an R-rating would have precluded that very audience from seeing the film.

At a hearing in Los Angeles on Thursday morning, Schnabel and Kilik argued their case before the Classification and Ratings Administration's appeals board after all watching the movie together.

Miral had been rated R for "some violent content, including a sexual assault." In overturning the R-rating, the appeals board said Miral is now rated PG-13 for "thematic appeal, and some violent content inlcuding a sexual assault."

Harvey Weinstein will indeed release a PG-13 cut of The King's Speech...

...for better or worse. Here's the story from the A.V. Club:

Despite director Tom Hooper’s strenuous objections, The Weinstein Company is moving forward with a proposed PG-13 edit of The King’s Speech, having just received an okay from the MPAA to release it to theaters as soon as it pulls the original, R-rated version. (Normally a film has to be absent from theaters for 90 days before a re-release is granted; in this case, The King’s Speech was granted a waiver.) As we reported earlier, the Weinsteins’ decision to censor the film was based primarily on helping the Best Picture frontrunner broaden its box-office take by attracting more families—something that Harvey Weinstein apparently felt was more crucial at this point than continuing to make a stand on principle, like he did at the time of the film’s first date with the MPAA. Back then, the only thing that came between The King’s Speech and a PG-13 was a key scene where Colin Firth’s character lets loose with a string of cathartic profanities—and while there’s nothing official yet on what “unique way” (in Weinstein’s words) they’ve found to work around it, we’re assuming that scene is now pretty much gone, perhaps momentarily replaced by an insert of a couple of friendly chaps playing snooker.

-Joey's Two Cents: It is what it is, and yes, I've avoided the porn set story in regard to The King's Speech on purpose...mainly because it's a waste of time. Thoughts?