Your weekly insight into the world of script buying, selling, wheeling, and dealing..and okay, maybe a little bit of gushing about that historic Oscar win.

Writers can write from anywhere, right? So is it really still absotively mandatory for an aspiring screenwriter to physically live in La La Land? It’s a question that has been asked for decades. And the answer never changes: Definitely maybe.

Obviously it doesn’t matter where you do your actual writing. Coffee shops. Your bathroom. The Overlook Hotel in the off season. The latter spot doesn’t work out for every writer, but if you survive all the way to “FADE OUT,” you face an even scarier challenge: selling your script to Hollywood.

It looks like nobody wanted to take on what’s sure to be the money-making behemoth, Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland this weekend. Therefore, I only have one more movie to tell you about this weekend. These sparsely populated weekends are a rarity, but when they happen, it’s usually around this time of the year.
 

This week, rumblings of remakes and adaptations abound. Oh, and the big screen's gone viral...

Big releases this weekend include the Kevin Smith comedy, Cop Out and the R-rated remake of a George Romero horror film, The Crazies. But there are also a lot of indies out this weekend that you may not know about...

This week, there's exciting script news for fans of the action/adventure genre, and encouraging news for anyone who aspires to not only be a writer, but who also hopes to keep the lights on someday...

This weekend sees the release of Martin Scorcese’s long-awaited Shutter Island. (Thank goodness too, the creepy woman in the trailer gives me a start every single time I see it, and it’s been kind of ubiquitous leading up to the release.) Nervous to compete with a legend, there aren’t many other big studio releases, but there are a nice flock of indies to choose from. So what’s out?
 

The annual Hollywood issue of Vanity Fair recently hit newsstands and it's chock-full of great articles on the biz. It has some old (RAGING BULL, JOHN HUGHES, the animated SNOW WHITE, and LOVE STORY) and some new -- specifically, Annie Leibovitz photographs many young Hollywood ingenues, as well as photographs of the people behind Oscar contenders THE HURT LOCKER, AVATAR, INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS, and CRAZY HEART.  See below for more details.

Delayed releases, directors as writers, memorial films, do-overs, and more this week...oh, and of course, Nicolas Cage news. (I know you can't get enough.)

This holiday weekend sees the release of The Wolfman, Percy Jackson and the Olympians: Lightning Thief, and Valentine's Day. What else is out?