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Monday, Sep 22, 2008 5:18 PM UTC

Coppola, Spielberg, Hammer Films and you

News roundup: I'm back, and so is New York's oh-so-cultured fall fest. Plus: Coppola's controversial "restoration," Hammer Films reborn, and 12 movies you haven't seen (but should have).

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Topics: Beyond the Multiplex, Steven Spielberg, Movies,

Coppola, Spielberg, Hammer Films and you

A scene from Robert Altman’s “McCabe and Mrs. Miller” — high on the list of embarrassing holes in my movie-watching résumé.

I’m back from vacation, I know you’re excited. I went tidepooling with my kids and pretty much had the computer turned off — was there some big news in the business pages or something? Maybe I shouldn’t have sold all those millions of Morgan and Lehman shares the day I left. What a big uproar!

I’m crazy-busy this next couple of weeks with the 46th edition of the New York Film Festival, that creakily lovable high-cultcha institution that kicks off the fall movie season in thoroughly anachronistic style. Full preview and loads of updates to come.

Just a few tidbits before I dash over to Lincoln Center: I have yet to weigh in on the new HD-ready “Coppola Restoration” of the “Godfather” trilogy — possibly the most-anticipated DVD in the medium’s brief history — but blogger/critic Glenn Kenny has been busy studying it, and has multiple reports.

Glenn and the blogger Filmbrain have also been busy cataloging 12 films they haven’t seen but wish they had. Trust me, if and when my turn comes the list will be far more embarrassing. Frankly, I think listing stuff like Robert Downey Sr.’s “Sweet Smell of Sex” or Penelope Spheeris’ “Uncle Tom’s Fairy Tales” is pushing into a different, can-you-top-this category. I mean, those are close to unseeable. Whereas my list will include movies by Fellini and Altman, which I could easily see but continue not to as an obscure point of pride. That’s all you get for now.

Alison Willmore at IFC’s IndieEye blog has taken a powder on the highbrow NYFF for a few days and gone way the other direction, filing great reports from Fantastic Fest in Austin, Texas. It’s something like the hipster Comic-Con, with actual movies instead of just endless P.R. blasts. I am so totally going next year. Alison wasn’t completely crazy about Kevin Smith’s “Zack and Miri Make a Porno” (the F.F. opener), but I want to see it anyway.

Yeah, yeah, Steven Spielberg and DreamWorks got a new kajillion-dollar deal from the Indian financiers at Reliance ADA Group, and it’s a new era in the globalization of entertainment. Yada yada. I’m more excited about the rebirth of Hammer Films, the legendary ’60s-’70s British horror outfit that’s been disinterred with Dutch financing for David Keating’s creepy-sounding “The Wake Wood,” in production now for fall 2009 release.

Andrew O

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  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
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  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
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  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
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  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
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  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
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  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
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