Jason Reitman will be off to New York once again shortly to start production on “Labor Day,” after spending months out that way filming this fall’s “Young Adult.” And it looks like both he and Paramount are happy with the relationship so far. The press release, in part: Paramount Pictures and Indian Paintbrush jointly announced […]

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Before I ducked out of town for the day yesterday, I hit up Paramount Pictures’ panel for Steven Spielberg’s “The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn.” The Beard was on hand to discuss the film (and pick up this year’s Inkpot Award), and a surprise appearance by Peter Jackson got the crowd buttered […]

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Usually, the news that someone is about to write, direct, produce and star in some film of no clear description for Paramount wouldn’t seem particularly worthy of notice until the parties involved release a few more details. But when the “someone” in question is 74 year-old Warren Beatty, the one-time Hollywood monarch whose name hasn’t […]

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There’s some fuzzy Oscar reasoning in this Guardian piece on Paramount’s two-pronged stab at the Best Picture race, but the essential point it makes is an interesting one: with “True Grit” having been produced in-house and “The Fighter” something of an adopted son for the studio, does Paramount have a favorite child in this race? […]

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As the year (and decade) slowly winds down, I thought it would be a pretty good time to revive our long-slumbering Lists feature here at In Contention.  And what better way to do so and salute the year at hand than to lay out the most significant movie-related moments of 2009? The American Film Institute […]

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The team behind “Up in the Air” have done a very sly job of making the film alternately ubiquitous and invisible this season, as paradoxical as that sounds. For us bloggers, the film seems to have been around for ages — indeed, it’s nearly three months since its Telluride premiere, an eternity in awards-campaign terms. […]

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• Michael Cieply writes up “Crazy Heart” from the angle that Paramount has “embarrassed” itself for passing on the film once upon a time, but apparently that early cut was “unwatchable,” so, you know, cut some slack. [New York Times] • Clint Eastwood — set to grace one of five GQ covers next month — […]

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The swank, spare-no-expense shin-dig last night at the historic Griffith Observatory was officially a DVD release party for one of the summer’s biggest critical and fiscal hits.  But with nearly the entire Hollywood Foreign Press Association’s membership on hand, the general vibe of awards season in the air and the obvious implications of a fall […]

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Variety’s Pamela McClintock was written a detailed piece examining the financial ins and outs of the recent postponing of “Shutter Island,” coming to the conclusion — as did Kris following the announcement — that the move is purely a practical one on the part of Paramount chief Brad Grey. Quite simply, she explains, the film […]

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This is a stunning development.  It seems Paramount has decided to move the release date of Martin Scrosese’s “Shutter Island” from October 2009, a mere two months away, to February 2010.  The move reflects a similar last minute decision to move “The Soloist” out of last year’s fall slate to the Spring 2009 frame.  Nikki […]

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Good work Paramount, not screening G.I. Joe got everyone to talk about it (some twice) and you don’t even have to deal with the reviews. Twittered by Brad Brevet of Rope of Silicon.

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• Steve Appleford taps into Spinal Tap, 25 years later. [Los Angeles Times] • Dennis Lim, meanwhile, revisits the “last gasp of an old-fashioned modernism” that is “Last Year at Marienbad.” [Los Angeles Times] • A few of the cinema’s most inspiring, moving and emotional dad moments. [Empire] • John Hiscock talks “Year One” with […]

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This Reuters item, via Forbes, could be the biggest case of leaping before looking in film journo world this week.  And it’s only Monday! Viacom Inc’s Paramount Pictures could merge with Sony Pictures, Universal Studios or another movie studio amid a wave of consolidation in the industry over the next few months, veteran investor Mario […]

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Oh, I kid the good folks over on Melrose.  But tell me these two layouts weren’t switched at birth:

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• Jeffrey Wells hangs with the “Revolutionary Road” crew in the Big Apple. [Hollywood Elsewhere] • Ditto Glenn Kenny, who moderated the post-screening Q&A. [Some Came Running] • David Poland waxes on about how much he thinks “Revolutionary Road” fails, and judging by his charts, clearly hasn’t seen “Australia” yet. [Movie City News] • Steve […]

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• David Chen junkets Danny Boyle on the director’s inspirations. [/Film] • David Poland is being pissy about when Paramount wants to screen their Oscar contender this year. [The Hot Blog] • Lou Lumenick rounds up the infinitely boring denials and foreplay coming from the “Australia” camp.  Can we just get to the movie already […]

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• Kim Voynar sets up Film Essent at MCN. [Movie City News] • Tom O’Neil collects some more guesses from Oscar prognosticators. [Gold Derby] • And he reports that “Slumdog Millionaire”‘s Dev Patel will be campaigned as a supporting actor. [Gold Derby] • John Campea explores the reasons why “The Dark Knight” will land a […]

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Every Oscar season is about managing expectations. Studios, of course, want to keep the murmurs to a minimum whether they have the goods or not because the peril of peaking too early is just as bad as the sting of negative word-of-mouth. Similarly, being “the one to beat” sets a film up to rise to […]

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