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Barcelona and Beijing: Trade Roughage, 08/17/07

Under discussion:
TMNT (2007)
Lost in Beijing (2007)

Under discussion:

TMNT (2007)

Lost in Beijing (2007)

A strange, 800-word “how I spent my summer vacation” piece from Todd McCarthy in Variety. The critic apparently stayed in a hotel in Barcelona adjacent to the set of the film Woody Allen’s currently shooting there. He spotted Allen and Harvey Weinstein from the other side of the barricades; he tried to get on the set, but the production assistant he spoke to was unyielding. Very bloggy, but in a depressing way — if this is the closest Variety’s film critic can get to Woody Allen, what chance do the rest of us have?
Speaking of Harvey, at a party for The Nanny Diaries in New York, he explained the decision to bump the film’s release date up two weeks to August 24: “There is nothing for females right now.”
Jamie Foxx will star in The Soloist, a musical biopic about “a homeless musician with schizophrenia who dreams of playing at Walt Disney Concert Hall.”
With a major Communist conference coming up this fall and the Beijing Olympics on tap for next year, writes Clifford Coonan, “Anything controversial is being delayed in favor of patriotic propaganda movies.” This includes Lost in Beijing, one of the most talked about films from the Berlin and Tribeca film festivals, which is currently on its third release date. With it’s realistic depiction of modern sexuality, the film has already rankled censors–the distributor even pushed it back once to “make room” for TMNT– and now it’s unclear whether or not the internationally-acclaimed drama will hit local theaters at all.