Movie Minesweeper - The Did You Miss Me While I Was Away Edition

Let's try and do this on a source-by-source basis. We'll kick off with Variety:

- Eastern Promises has won the best film gong at Toronto, with Juno in first runner up position, followed by Phil Donahue and Ellen Spiro's Iraw war doc Body of War. Guy Maddin's My Winnipeg won best Canadian feature.

- Elizabeth Allen is attached to direct both My Mother's Boyfriend and Ramona. The latter is being adapted by Laurie Craig from Beverly Cleary's series of kid's books.

- The 2007 Beirut film festival has been cancelled, under the looming cloud of politically motivated violence.

- The Weinsteins have acquired the rights to Joy Division, a documentary about... er... Joy Division. A nice companion piece to Control, which they snapped up after Cannes.

- The Valkyrie shoot has been allowed into Benderblock after all.

- This year's special people at the Fantastic Film Fest in Lund will be Neil Gaiman, Alain Robbe-Grillet and Roy Andersson.

- Spyglass Films have purchased remake rights to Narco/The Secret Adventures of Gustave Klopp, a comedy adventure about a narcoleptic who falls asleep at inopportune times and dreams he has super powers. Can I smell a Jim Carrey vehicle brewing?

- As well as co-writing and co-directing This Side of the Truth, Ricky Gervais is also set to star. I'm betting it will be renamed. Nothing But the Truth, I reckon. It's a comedy fantasy about a world in which nobody has ever lied, at least until Gervais' character comes along, of course...

- Peter Bogdanovich's 4-hour documentary Runnin' Down a Dream: Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers is to premiere on the Sundance Channel, unedited and uninterrupted. I'll take this over Shine A Light any day of the week.

- Working Title have signed Susanne Bier to direct Lost For Words, a romantic comedy-drama about romance between movie stars. The title comes because the female lead, a Chinese actress, has translator. I suspect a few twists on familiar Cyrano business.

- Brad Miska's BloodyDisgusting website has been purchased by The Collective - as a promotional tool, of course, but also, they say, a way to identify new talent in the horror genre.

- The UK release of Ben Affleck's Gone Baby Gone has been suspended because, apparently, distributors BVI are being sensitive to the 'depth of feeling' surrounding the case of Madeleine McCann. The investigation in Portugal is apparently racing ahead right now and the 'sensitivities' surrounding the case may be about to alter radically, so I wouldn't be surprised to see the film make it's date, though at this stage, not it's London Film Fest engagement.

- The biggest deal at this year's Toronto fest appears to have been for Bill, starring Jessica Alba, Aaron Eckhart and Elizabeth Banks. No doubt a sensible investment.

- Nic Balthazar's Ben X has been selected as the official Belgian entry for the foreign language Oscar. In Spain, meanwhile, the running is down to three potentials: The Orphanage, Luz de Domingo and 13 Roses.

- Robby Mueller is to be honoured at this year'sNetherlands Film Festival.

- Hamish McColl is scripting a Paddington Bear movie. If they don't get Peter Hewitt to direct I'll be a little disappointed.

- A new wave of Raw Feed films have been greenlit: Otis, starring Daniel Stern and film ick fave Illeana Douglas, is already shooting with Supermarket and Rest Stop 2. The rapid turnaround production model echoes TV... or, for that matter, Hitchcock's Psycho.

- ThinkFilm are to release Stuart Townsend's Battle in Seattle. Yes, I'm going to say it again: I bet they fudge the eventual DVD and give it a bad transfer. It wouldn't be the first time. Or second. Or third...

- Dan Clowes is rewriting John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein's $The 40,000 Man script for Terry Zwigoff to direct.

And now we'll have a rifle through The Hollywood Reporter:

- Kyle Gallner is to star in The Haunting in Connecticut, alongside a trio of film ick faves: Martin Donovan, Elias Koteas and Virgina Madsen.

- Paramount Vantage are closing a deal to distribute The Duchess in the US, Canada, Australia and Latin America; meanwhile, in the same piece, it is revealed that Argento's Mother of Tears seems set to go direct to DVD in the States, courtesy of the Weinsteins and that In Bloom has been picked up by Magnolia.

- Cillian Murphy has been cast as Stan Lauryssens in Andrew Niccol's Dali & I. Dali, in case it passed you by, is to be played by Al Pacino. I don't much like the film's subtitle, The Surreal Story.

And that's enough for a moment... back soon...