Screening Gotham: Dance Dance Evolution

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

--Gia Kourlas reports in The Times on the 2006 Dance on Camera Festival, opening today at Lincoln Center: "In the very best of this year’s Dance on Camera offerings, there is a sense of looking back. Documentaries celebrate artists who have transformed the field; stage adaptations preserve treasured productions for the long haul; and stylistic experiments show the way directors radically changed the approach of filming dance." And hey, look: Gene Kelly!

--Also in The Times (and making his second Screening Gotham appearance in as many days of the new year), Matt Zoller Seitz contributes reviews of Ellen Bruno's Sky Burial, Sacrifice and Leper, opening tonight at Film Forum. I can't wait to see what he does tomorrow.

--The New Times circulates Nikki Finke's '07-is-fucked franchise forecast from LA Weekly to the Voice. Key random, unattributed statistic: "It's a given that with franchises and remakes, the awareness for under-25 males—the most coveted category of moviegoers—approaches 100 percent. But with original stories, that awareness level drops below 60 percent." However, she makes up for it by conflating "Writers Guild" and "gangsta," which had me wiping a flood of coffee spatter off my monitor. God bless this woman.

--Bob Dylan and Harvey Weinstein make a rare, joint film-news appearance without their lawyers present: Variety reports that The Weinstein Company picked up Todd Haynes' Dylan quasi-biopic I'm Not There for North American and UK distribution. Alas, per the contract's unusual "Page Six clause," the deal does not include absolution for Factory Girl or the exchange of any Sedgwick-family depositions. Thank God for that; it's a slow month, you know?

Posted at January 3, 2007 12:23 PM