You must give writer-director Troy Duffy credit. Whatever one thinks of his talents or disposition (and I was personally on the receiving end of some angry, harassing phone calls after my review of his debut film), the dude knows perhaps better than any filmmaker of the past 15 years how to milk a living (marginal, one presumes, but still) from one fleetingly hot spec script, and movie. After being on the receiving end of some undeniably cruddy and cruel behavior from originating funder/distributor-to-be Miramax, ‘The Boondock Saints’ came out in 2000 via super-indie releaser Indican, and grossed under $50,000 domestically. After pimping movie merchandise and various home video releases for…

One of the true gems of 2010, Blue Valentine, writer-director Derek Cianfrance’s heartbreaking debut effort, was mismarketed to within an inch of its life, and also suffered from “second-child syndrome,” which is to say the relative cold shoulder it got from the Weinstein Company’s PR team, which instead (and to considerable success and Oscar glory, it turns out) threw almost all of its weight behind The King’s Speech. A lot of the pre-release buzz on Blue Valentine, meanwhile, had to do with an appeal to the MPAA over a NC-17 rating (it was released rated R), which made the movie seem like some seamy, Joe Eszterhas-type sex flick. Nothing could be further…

Variety is reporting that “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” star Hugh Jackman is in talks to star in “Real Steal”, the Shawn Levy-directed project that is based on a short story by Richard Matheson, and was also the basis of an episode of the original run of “The Twilight Zone” that starred Lee Marvin. Jackman would play an ex-boxer who becomes a promoter when human boxing is outlawed in the future for being too violent and fighters are replaced by 2,000 lbs. robots. He struggles to succeed in Robot Boxing using substandard parts until he discovers a discarded robot that cannot lose. At the same time, he discovers he has a 13-year…