Congrats to the family of No Country for Old Men for earning another impressive list of accolades, this time from the 14th Annual Screen Actors Guild. Javier Bardem won the supporting-actor prize and the cast was awarded best ensemble! Go for the gold at the Oscars, No Country!

As expected, No Country for Old Men made a big sweep at the 80th Annual Academy Awards, gathering no less than eight nominations, including Best Motion Picture of the Year, Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role and Best Achievement in Directing. The winners will be announced on Sunday, February 24th.

Congratulations and good luck!

Tuesday morning marked a break in the purchasing logjam with two significant feature buys.

Fox Searchlight has acquired world rights, less several international territories, to Choke, adapted from the novel by Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club). Deal is valued at $5 million. Sam Rockwell and Anjelica Huston star in the pic, which was directed by Clark Gregg.

Overture Films has also purchased U.S. rights for about $3.5 million on Henry Poole is Here, a drama directed by Mark Pellington and starring Luke Wilson and Radha Mitchell.

Also expected to sell today is Hamlet 2, after an all-night bidding war at the CAA condo.

Source: Variety

From Variety:

Most of the early-going focuses upon Kate, and no matter how ordinary her activities — building a friendship with an office mate (Darlene Hunt), attending an embarrassing office party or politely fending off the opportunistic advances of one of the cops (the effective Tom Bastounes, also one of the producers) who has questioned her about what she saw the night of the shooting — they remain at least tolerably engaging thanks to Macdonald. Retaining her Scottish accent to delightful effect, she’s one of those rare, quicksilver actresses whose natural qualities invest everything she does with warmth, integrity, innate goodness and automatic interest, in addition to being able to look a bit dumpy one moment and radiantly beautiful the next.

Macdonald alone provides the film with a raison d’etre, but another one is the way the picture is composed visually.

From The Hollywood Reporter:

The lead players are splendid, especially Macdonald as the kind-hearted lass whose goodness attracts relentless evil.

SHE leapt to fame as Ewan McGregor’s one-night stand in Trainspotting in 1996, but feared that would be as far as she would get as she had no prior acting experience.

For a while it looked as if Kelly Macdonald might be right, for following Trainspotting a string of career disappointments saw her snubbed for leading roles in The Matrix and Shakespeare In Love – she also auditioned unsuccessfully for Nicole Kidman’s role in Moulin Rouge.

“I kept wondering when someone was going to turn around to me and say, ‘You’re not supposed to be here’,” admits the 31-year-old Glaswegian. “After Train-spotting, because I wasn’t trained as an actress, I was sure that I would never act in another film ever again.”

How wrong she was. The affable young actress has followed-up Trainspotting with starring roles in numerous feature films.

Read the full story