Once upon a filmmaking, there was a time in the not so distant past, where I eagerly awaited Filmmaker Magazine's 25 New Faces of Film, Sundance Film Festival Audience Winners, Festival de Cannes Official Selections, and the IFC Gotham Independent Film Awards.

This morning, the 2016 Gotham Awards nominees were announced. For many insiders, journalists, filmmakers and Academy voting members, today signals the advent of awards season and the red carpet parade. Each year the list of names, production companies and distributors become more recognizable and achingly familiar, leading to the inquiry: Where is the independence? What is independent film?

While posing the rhetorical threat, I will offer some of this year's roster of nominations: Paramount Pictures, Amazon Studios, Roadside Attractions, Fox Searchlight Pictures, Sony Pictures Classics, Annette Benning, Natalie Portman and Jeff Bridges. There is nothing particularly independent about said nomenclature and as a producer of independent film, the evolution from indie to Hollywood is to change or evolve the studio system from a closed narrative to an inclusive movie production arena where all stories are told. It is also to emerge from meager budgeted innovative cinema production to fully secured productions capable of being articulated to larger audiences.

With that said, I congratulate the 2016 Gotham Awards nominees, and look forward to not fully knowing any of the winners.

Cannes' Sleeping Beauty

FROM CANNES - Independents take note as Sundance Selects, a sister division to IFC Films and IFC Midnight, acquires the U.S. rights to fresh directing talent Julia Leigh’s Sleeping Beauty.

Beauty features an emerging cast of actors including Emily Browning, Rachael Blake, Ewen Leslie, Peter Carroll and Chris Haywood; with Jessica Brentnall producing from Leigh's screenplay.

A haunting portrait of Lucy (Browning), a university student drawn into a mysterious hidden world of unspoken desires, Sleeping Beauty premiered in competition this week at the Cannes. Hollywoodteur Jonathan Sehring, president of Sundance Selects, said, "For the last 5 days, people throughout Cannes have been discussing Sleeping Beauty. We are thrilled to introduce Julia Leigh and her arresting debut to American audiences."

"Along with the entire Sleeping Beauty team, I'm extremely pleased that the film will be getting a release in the U.S. through such a fine distributor as Sundance Selects, especially under a label that has featured films from so many directors we admire," Leigh said sounding very much like a Hollywoodteur puppet. Leigh and Browning are repped by UTA, who sold their Beauty.

Ryan Gosling Cannes

FROM CANNES -- Indie darling, latent hot-boy and Oscar nominee Ryan Gosling is set to star and make his directorial debut with a remake of the 1980 Taylor Hackford movie The Idolmaker. The original Idolmaker, starred Ray Sharkey in a story about the life of rock music promoter and producer Bob Marcucci, who discovered Frankie Avalon and Fabian.

Gosling who is in Cannes for the premiere of the competition film Drive, co-starring Carey Mulligan and directed by Nicolas Winding Refn, has been showing hollywoodteur personality traits with a focused shift from indies to more mainstream - if cool flicks. In Warner Bros' Crazy, Stupid, Love he co-stars with Steve Carell opening on July 29th, he is starring in another re-make, the 1970's glam-tech sci-fy Logan's Run, and joins A-listers Sean Penn and Josh Brolin in Warner Bros' Gangster Squad, scripted by Will Beall.

Let's pray to the Hollywoodteur deities that Gosling can successfully infuse vision, quality and ROI to his now trending selection of upcoming mainstream movies pursuits.

Meryl Streep Prepares for Another Oscar

Bonjour de Cannes -- The brothers Weinstein are making their hollywoodteur status known. This time closing a deal with Pathe for U.S. rights to the next Meryl Streep Oscar nomination - the Margaret Thatcher biopic The Iron Lady.

The Weinstein Company is partnering with Ron Burkle’s Yucaipa Companies on the acquistion. It’s their third joint venture this year, following pick-ups of Our Idiot Brothers and The Details. Iron Lady will be completed by September in time for a 4th quarter launch.

Harvey and Bob Weinstein can hardly focus on the gigantic Cannes red carpet on the croisette as they formula plans for their Oscar generating machine and plot mansion and mantle slots for another Oscar trophy. The essential plan is to focus on a major awards run singling out Streep's performance and control and finance - finesse rather, the attention and fall-out for tons of notoriety and ROI (rent-on-investment).

Directed by Phyllida Lloyd, who directed Streep in Mamma Mia!. The Lady screenplay was penned was by Abi Morgan. The film was produced by Damian Jones with a $13 million production budget financed and produced by Pathe, Film 4 and the U.K. Film Council.

He's Back! Schwarzenegger Lines Up the Million Dollar Paychecks.

Ultimate Hollywoodteur and former California governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, has zeroed (salary) in on the film that will mark his return to the big screen: Cry Macho. Enough of the Governor comedy, Cry Macho is the story of a down-on-his-luck horse trainer, Mike, a once well-regarded horse trainer whose wife and son have died. His former boss makes him an offer he just cannot refuse: $400,000 to kidnap the boss' trust fund son, who is living with the man's ex-wife in Mexico. But when Mike locates the boy, trouble ensues with the ex-wife. Now with the Feds hot on their trail, the two form a father-son bond, as they head to the American border.

Schwarzenegger is also attached to a Hollywoodteur sized "Terminator" package. Hollywoodteurs cannot manage and leverage billionaire lifestyles by nearly bankrupting states alone with their benign personal political aspirations. Another noted Hollywoodteur, Al Ruddy, an Oscar winner for both The Godfather and Million Dollar Baby, will produce, while Brad Furman, who helmed the recent The Lincoln Lawyer, has been tapped to direct, with filming set for September.

Speaking in true Hollywoodteur rhetoric, "I guarantee that you'll get another look at Arnold Schwarzenegger in this movie," says Ruddy. "Arnold always plays these big muscular guys, but there's a sweetness to Arnold in real life, and we want to bring that sweetness to the screen. Now that Brad's met with Arnold, he's convinced there's an accessibility and vulnerability there that he wants to bring out." As the French say, "bon chance!"

Arnold's reps at CAA hammered out a $12.5 million plus 25% of first-dollar gross. The project, which Ruddy has been nurturing for years, will be financed by Bill Block's QED International, which will begin offering Macho to international buyers in Cannes next week. The film is based on the 1975 novel, Cry Macho, by N. Richard Nash, who also wrote the screenplay.

New Gus Van Sant Flick Is In The Cannes

The new Gus Van Vant film Restless will open Un Certain Regard, selection of the Festival de Cannes, on the evening of Thursday, May 12. Restless will be released in the Fall by Sony Pictures Classics in North America, with Sony Pictures Releasing distributing in the rest of the world.

Produced by Columbia Pictures, Imagine Entertainment and 360 Pictures, the coming-of-age film examines the relationship of two outsider teenagers played by Mia Wasikowska and Henry Hopper, who are brought together by unseen circumstances. Restless director, Gus Van Sant, received the Palme d’or in 2003 for Elephant and the 60th anniversary award for Paranoid Park (2007). His first nomination at the Festival de Cannes was in 1995 for To Die For.

Un Certain Regard chooses close to twenty films each year for its official selection. The president of the jury, Emir Kusturica, will present the Prize Un Certain Regard on May 21.

The official Un Certain Regard selection was announced on Thursday, April 14th.