I was just standing in the kitchen washing dishes, when it suddenly hit me: Whatever happened to Whit Stillman? Stillman, of course, being the writer-director of one of the best films of the 1990's, Metropolitan (1990), the talky, witty comedy of manners that accomplished the seemingly impossible feat of making spoiled New York debutantes seem like interesting, likeable people. Stillman hasn't made a film since 1998's Barcelona, and aside from a few rumors about a biopic set in Mao-era China, Red Azalea (the project's since been killed), there hasn't been much info out there.

So I did some intensive research (i.e., thirty seconds of Googling) and found this article from a Whit Stillman fan site that brings us up to speed on Whit's recent activities:

Currently living in Paris, Stillman has been busy adapting Winchester Races, a project with British producer Stephen Evans that would combine two unfinished Jane Austen novels, The Watsons and Sanditon, into a single script. The script would merge two characters: Emma Watson, a young woman who returns to her family after a long absence during which she's been raised by her aunt, and Charlotte Hayward, an attractive country girl who is taken up by a family of comically optimistic real-estate speculators. Should it eventually get made, the film would return Stillman to familiar territory. Both Metropolitan and Barcelona were considered Austen-esque comedies of petty manners.

Great news! For a while there I was afraid Stillman would get desperate and sell out by making some kind of cop buddy flick, so I'm glad he's still making the kinds of films that appeal to maybe 5,000 people outside of Europe.