Seeking our own quantum of solace

By Steven Zeitchik

After a two-day absence, we returned Wednesday eve and scaned the major news sites to find that the world has turned upside-down. The new James Bond, The Quantum of Solace, is opening in India _before_ it opens in the U.S.? Yeah, yeah, the economy, the bailout, the financial collapse. But Bond? India? A week early? Could this be?

In less dramatic news, it looks like it's been a surprisingly busy few days, even though the meeting between Kristi and that cipher studio exec, Rosh Hashanah, appears for the moment to have produced no first-look deals.

Amng the stories to catch up on: digital cinema is finally picking up speed after herkjerkying and lollygagging its way forward for a few years. A deal with five studios means as many as 4000 new screens will be installed by the end of next year. That could reduce print costs, increase 3-D exposure (and in turn production) and bring the Mark Cuban-Todd Wagner dream of using theaters to bring back every classic '70's movie the kids never saw just a little closer to reality.

Also, Jack Black seems to be heading back to the bumbler category of comedy, reteaming with Kung-Fu Panda writers for a Universal project that's described as a "comedic Bourne Identity" (guy who washes up on a foreign shore thinks he's a spy but he ain't). Black tried to get a little more serious with "Margot at the Wedding," where he actually played a dramatic bumbler, but he's heading back to more familiar territory with this, after an over-the-top dope fiend/Eddie Murphy satirizer in "Tropic Thunder" and an upcoming stint as a prehistoric bumbler in the Judd Apatow-produced "Year One."

Of course there's more action in a spy comedy than Black has played in his usual slacker roles. And these Damon-esque vehicles, when done comedically, require a different set of chops; the role is at once more physical and more controlled. So we'll see if Black can pull it off.

Seriously, what's with this Bond India stuff?

Over on coasts right, The New York Film Festival rolls on in the next couple days with the U.S. debuts of Cannes titles such as the Italian critical darling "Gomorrah" and the more ambivalently received "Changeling." Last weekend we were surprised that Palme d'Or winner "The Class," the neo-verite feature about a flawed teacher and his inner-city class that was one of our favorites out of Cannes this year, got a somewhat mixed reaction from the crowd at the NYFF opening.

But the French submission is still a frontrunner for best foreign Oscar. And director Laurent Cantet had one of the best lines of any director at a film fest this year; when we asked him if before making this film he studied any formula Hollywood classroom movies like "Dangerous Minds" and "Stand & Deliver" to avoid replicating the easy formula of redemption, he didn't miss a beat. "Just one: 'Dead Poets Society.' Whatever happened, I didn't want my movie to turn out like that."

But we're still upset about Bond and India.