Now here’s a novel idea: John August has posted an audio commentary for his new movie The Nines, which opens in NY and LA this weekend. On his blog, August suggests you watch the movie once (“The movie is confusing enough … on your first viewing,” he warns), then download the audio file to your favorite MP3 player, buy another ticket and see what he and star Ryan Reynolds have to say about the movie. As August puts it, “in the age of iPods, there’s really no reason why audio commentary has to be relegated to DVD.”

In theory, I love the idea, although theatrical volume levels being what they are, my ears are on the verge of bleeding already, and I don’t think my poor little iPod could compete. On the other hand, if you don’t feel like spending the $20 and four hours that August's suggestion entails, you can settle for a game my friend Charlie Fonville and I indulged over lunch:

1. One Night at McCool’s
2. 2 Days in the Valley
3. Thr3e
4. Fantastic Four
5. The Fifth Element
6. Leonard Part 6
7. Se7en
8. 8MM
9. Nine Months
10. The Ten

There are so many movies with numbers in the titles (a handful of ’em in theaters now), you can make your list a million different ways (the only rule: no sequels). I chose to go with some of the worst/most unpleasant movies of all time. Your turn.

—Posted by Peter Debruge

Here's this weekend's Fandango Five – Ticket Sales (as of 8/31/07 9:00 a.m. PT):

Not exactly excited about the movie choices this Labor Day weekend? There’s ping-pong sports spoof Balls of Fury, a Halloween remake from Rob Zombie and a Death Wish sequel from the director of Saw (Death Sentence is actually better than you might think, by the way).

Never fear: If you live in Los Angeles, you have an alternative. Private Property, the best narrative feature I saw at last year’s Toronto film fest, opens today in Los Angeles. Simply put, this is one of the best films of 2007. I’m only slightly partial, as it stars my favorite actress, Isabelle Huppert, as well as real-life brothers Jeremie and Yannick Renier (the former you’ll recognize as the star of one of my top picks of 2006, L’Enfant).

Huppert plays a middle-aged mother, Pascale, divorced and ready to move on with her life. The Renier sibs play her sons, Thierry and Francois, who seem old enough to be independent but still live under the same roof where they were raised. Pascale wants to sell the house and move in with her lover. Thierry objects. This is the family home. What right does she have to sell it — and by extension, push her own kids out of the nest?

This is the movie I wanted The Squid and the Whale to be. Don’t get me wrong: I admired Noah Baumbach’s portrait of divorce, but it seemed too specific. By contrast, this movie rings true. It understands the aftermath of parental separation, with the kids turning hostile and the mother overwhelmed. The unpleasantries aren’t offset by sitcom-style punchlines or a silly tennis instructor. Private Property feels raw, unornamented.

There’s psychology to spare in Joachim Lafosse’s movie (and little to no stylistic interference in his direction), yet the characters don’t easily reduce to simple explanations. In his own appreciation of the film, Roger Ebert observes:

What draws us into "Private Property" is how so many things happen under the surface, never commented upon. At any given moment, we cannot say for sure what the characters fully feel, since they often act at right angles to their emotions.

You sympathize with the mother, who spends her days picking up after grown men who still behave like boys, but you also understand what the sons are going through. Thierry’s the hothead, and Francois’ the mama’s boy. She’s spoiled them their entire lives, and now, they’re no longer her priority. In a not-quite-Freudian sense, they see themselves as being replaced. This is powerful stuff. Don’t miss it.
—Posted by Peter Debruge

This just in, Robert Koehler’s review of Paul Haggis’ latest, In the Valley of Elah:

Working overtime to be an important statement on domestic dissatisfaction with the war and the special price paid by vets and their families, Paul Haggis’ follow-up to “Crash” is too self-serious to work as a straight-ahead whodunit and too lacking in imagination to realize its art-film aspirations. … It also continues a line of recent movies addressing the first Gulf War (“Jarhead”) and the current one (“Home of the Brave,” “Grace Is Gone”) that fail to capture the realities of war experience and familial angst beyond basic truisms and pictorial sur-faces.

Doesn’t sound like he liked it much. Personally, I wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss the film. It’s clear that Haggis has learned something from working with Eastwood, trusting his actors (and the audience) to convey many of the Big Ideas he felt compelled to put directly in their mouths in Crash. And then, as Premiere.com’s Glenn Kenny wondered in his reaction to an early screening, “Can a good, often wrenching, entirely pertinent film completely blow it in its last five minutes? … I really hope not.”

Oh, but it can. Suffice it to say, from now on, In the Valley of Elah should instead be called “Flags of Our Sons.” Kenny again: “In this case, the filmmaker shows us how that war distorts, mutates, deranges, the people who fight in it, and what happens when the derangement comes home.” The showing I love; it's the telling I could do without. It all reminds me of the poster above for the Rod Lurie movie The Last Castle, which was withdrawn out of sensitivity after 9/11. Now, Haggis might argue, would be the time to hang it.

P.S. Good news from the Elah junket, thanks to Collider... Haggis provides an update on the new Bond movie:

I’m on page 22. … It’s an original and it’s not based on any book or short story or anything that Ian Fleming had done. Although it is based on Ian Fleming ideas. And it starts right after the last one, two minutes after Casino Royale this movie starts.”

This is it, the Holy Grail of Stephen King adaptations. Don’t ask me why (I haven’t read it), but the fans love The Mist. I figure it must have more to do with the monsters than the inclement weather, which might sound scary on the page, but pretty much just obscures everything on screen. Yahoo has the trailer.

Actually, from what I’ve heard, it’s the humans that are supposed to be frightening here. In the novella, a mysterious mist descends on the town, forcing a group of anxious yokels to take refuge in a supermarket, where they must cope with one another’s company in a pressure-cooker situation. Marcia Gay Harden is the religious zealot (you can even see her beating her Bible in the trailer), Thomas Jane plays Joe-Hero and Andre Braugher is dead meat.

Another reason the fans are so worked up is that Frank Darabont is directing. He helmed The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile, two of the only classy King adaptations to date (personally, I’m partial to Rob Reiner’s Stand by Me).

One thing I recall from The Mist’s Comic-Con presentation last month was the fact that Darabont brought along the camera guys from The Shield (d.p. Ronn Schmidt and camera operator Bill Gierhart), which means the movie will have a completely different look from Darabont’s earlier pics. Expect more handheld, docu-style coverage, which, if it works as planned, should make audiences feel like they’re trapped right alongside the characters. I can't wait to see how this experiment plays out.
—Posted by Peter Debruge

Telluride officially announces its lineup.

As always, it scoops Toronto on a few key pics (notably Sean Penn's Into the Wild, Noah Baumbach's Margot at the Wedding and Wayne Wang's A Thousand Years of Good Prayers) and is the first to bring a number of notable Cannes faves stateside (IFC yanked 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days from the L.A. Film Fest earlier this summer, so Telluride scores the North American debut).

No word yet on what exactly (if anything) they will be screening from Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood in connection with the fest's Daniel Day-Lewis tribute, and no sign of Tamara Jenkins' The Savages. The full lineup after the jump.
—Posted by Peter Debruge

[Posted by Peter Debruge]
I have a hard enough time keeping up with arguments about whether carbs are going to kill me that the arguments and counter-arguments featured in all these sky-is-falling environmental documentaries, such as Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth and Leonardo DiCaprio's The 11th Hour, are starting to drive me crazy. The latest salvo, from Greenpeace co-founder Dr. Patrick Moore (who calls Hour "another example of anti-forestry scare tactics"):

Rather than cutting fewer trees and using less wood, DiCaprio and Berman ought to promote the growth of more trees and the use of more wood. ...

There is a misconception that cutting down an old tree will result in a net release of carbon. Yet wooden furniture made in the Elizabethan era still holds the carbon fixed hundreds of years ago.

Berman, a veteran of the forestry protest movement, should by now have learned that young forests outperform old growth in carbon sequestration.

It's worth noting that Moore isn't contradicting the movie's alarm over global climate change (as these films' harsher critics have), just clarifying the strategies we need to fight it. For me, the movie that really conveyed the scale of how humans are changing the earth is a terrific documentary, Manufactured Landscapes, that's flown largely under the radar all summer. Though not political per se, the film is more reflective (rather than reactive) as photographer Edward Burtinsky records the profound effect industrialization has on our environment (particularly in China, which is repeating today many of the mistakes Western culture made more than a century ago).

[Posted by Peter Debruge]
After releasing two high-concept live-action teasers — one with Chris Rock, the other with Steven Spielberg — and pulling an in-person stunt appearance at Cannes, Jerry Seinfeld’s Bee Movie finally reveals the goods in a new trailer. (If nothing else, you've gotta credit those earlier spots with selling the faces behind the animated characters.)

Remember, this is what Seinfeld’s been doing with his time since the show went off the air. It’s also a stab at a new franchise from the folks at Dreamworks Animation, who cashed in big time on Mike Myers’ star-driven CG shtick. But are the kiddies hip enough to follow the New York comic’s wisecracks? And will parents appreciate the preschool colors and, um, lower-brow humor? You decide.

[Posted by Peter Debruge]
Just stumbled across this preview screening writeup of Atonement, which opens the Venice Film Festival tomorrow. So what does Pride & Prejudice’s Joe Wright make of Ian McEwan’s celebrated novel? Says the spy:

There are parallels with The English Patient, both stories told by a dying narrator, of love and loss against the backdrop of the war. There's even a cameo for Anthony Minghella as an interviewer.

According to IMDb, this is Minghella’s first appearance in front of the camera (does anyone remember another?), so he must’ve had a good reason to accept the gig. Given the crowded season ahead, he could prove a good-luck charm (though Minghella’s own quite wonderful Breaking and Entering didn’t quite catch on last year).

By taking Atonement to Venice, then Toronto, Focus is repeating a strategy that served them well on Brokeback Mountain (the Golden Lion win effectively kicked off six months of accolades for that picture).

Incidentally, Ang Lee’s latest, Lust, Caution is also going to Venice, but something tells me the Mandarin dialogue, NC-17 rating and “what’s it about?” plot could cool its chances (then again, there are those who think the Acad’s just waiting to award Lee for some good, hetero lovemaking).

P.S. Don't miss this video (or these pics, snapped by an extra during Atonement's most audacious scene) revealing the set of the Dunkirk evacuation. There's at least one Oscar nom right there:

[Posted by Peter Debruge]
Last night, I saw “Ladron que roba a ladron,” the latest Spanish-language release from Lionsgate (who brought us “La Mujer de mi hermano” last year). These movies are what they are, considering their telenovela casts and modest budgets, but they herald a legitimate trend to reach out to Latino audiences with reasonably polished theatrical releases.

“La Mujer” never went beyond 217 venues, but still managed to earn more than $1 million at the box office, and that exposure no doubt helped lend a certain legitimacy to its eventual DVD release. Of course, home video is where these movies traditionally do most (if not all) of their business, but things could change in recent years.

Salma Hayek built her entire Ventanazul production company on the same idea. For our July Women’s Impact Report, she told me: "I think we are the only company right now whose sole mission is to specialize in two things: 1) appealing to the Latin market and 2) taking a Latin story or a Latin talent and appealing to the global market."

[Posted by Peter Debruge]
A glossy new edition of Delmer Daves’ original 3:10 to Yuma hits DVD today, and anyone with an appetite for Westerns would be well advised to revisit the Glenn Ford-Van Heflin two-hander before/after seeing James Mangold’s remake (opening Sept. 7). In the movie, a desperate homesteader (Heflin/Christian Bale) agrees to the suicide mission of guarding a dangerous outlaw (Ford/Russell Crowe) until the next prison-bound train rolls in to town, while his gang circles like vultures looking for a chance to break their boss out of captivity.

The original is a strange animal, a tense 92-minute staring match between its two leads. Dave Kehr compares it to “High Noon” in his NYT DVD column today, pointing out:

There isn’t even much gunplay in “3:10 to Yuma”: This is a psychological drama, as intense as a Bergman marital duel, but played out in a forceful exchange of looks and gestures rather than in Bergman’s torrents of words.

It’s the two leads who make the strongest impression in Daves’ film, but this time around, everybody seems to be talking about Crowe’s second-in-command. As Todd McCarthy put it in his review:

If anyone's going to gain the most, career-wise, from "3:10 to Yuma," it will definitely be Foster, who puts the kind of indelible imprint on this juicy role that, in earlier eras, allowed such thesps as Lee Marvin, Richard Boone, Dan Duryea, James Coburn, Jack Palance, Lee Van Cleef, Strother Martin and others to immortalize themselves in the annals of Western villainy.

I’m not sure what to make of Foster’s scenery-chewing, crazy-eyed, vaguely swishy performance (nor his character’s hand in the late-movie twist that simply didn’t occur in the original), but if all this talk gets Western-averse contemporary audiences into the theaters, I’ll take it.

[Posted by Peter Debruge]
Steve Carell’s a funny guy, but I actually prefer him in semi-serious mode (a la Little Miss Sunshine). Apple just posted the trailer for Carell’s next movie, Dan in Real Life, in which Juliette Binoche literally finds herself torn between two brothers (not sure why the trailer flipped the shot above, unless her sweatshirt really is printed backwards, but it pretty much sums things up, doesn’t it?).

Carell plays an advice columnist — like Carrie Bradshaw if she weren’t getting any. With Pieces of April’s Peter Hedges at the helm, looks like an opportunity for the actor to exercise his dramatic talents a bit. (As for Dane Cook, who plays the other brother... well, I’m yet to be convinced that he can even handle comedy.)

[Posted by Peter Debruge]
What is "Mumblecore"? A fair question, considering that even the most obscure-cinema-savvy film buffs are still playing catch-up with the group of scrappy shoestring pics that have earned a generation of indie filmmakers their nickname.

The group consists of such helmers as Andrew Bujalski, Joe Swanberg and the Duplass brothers, known for their low-budget, handheld, thinly-veiled self-portraits (imagine Once without all the Frames songs). While not necessarily autobiographical, the films afford an offhand insight into late-twentysomething slackerdom, reflecting none of the “Hollywood” demand for happy endings or closure.

I stumbled across the Mumblecore movement (a phrase that suggests greater organization and strategy that its members actively pursue) quite by accident at Sundance a few years back in the form of The Puffy Chair, from Jay and Mark Duplass. The movie basically served as a feature-length version of what, two years later, would become the norm on YouTube and other video-hosting sites.

Last year, Bujalski’s Mutual Appreciation opened to positive notices from New York’s more esoteric critics, including Dennis Lim (author of a recent New York Times profile). The trailer itself featured Lim's semi-endorsement, “A master of the mixed message and a veritable sculptor of dead air,” which sounds about as appealing as a hipster funeral — and yet, somehow says everything about their approach (precisely what after the jump).

[Posted by Peter Debruge]
Roger Ebert weighs in on the whole Bourne Ultimatum Queasicam debate brought up by David Bordwell last week. I'm with Anne Thompson that Paul Greengrass is advancing the medium through cinematography and editing, but don't pretend to think that it's a comfortable moviegoing experience for the average audience.

Ebert quotes a filmgoer who had a particularly violent reaction:

We went to see BU on the IMAX in San Francisco. Near the end, when Webb is having the flashback to when he is forced to show his commitment to the project, the lady next to me spontaneously unleashes a huge amount of vomit all over my leg and all over the floor in front of her! I have never experienced anything like it in my life! Now all the action sequences, the nauseating use of moving cameras, and the relentless score were enough to make anyone dizzy, but to throw up?

The anecdote triggered Jeffrey Wells' memory of seeing the second movie (also directed by Greengrass, featuring even more aggressive editing):

Sometime during the third act of a showing at the Writers Guild theatre, an older woman sitting on the left side spewed on the floor. ... The next day I mentioned the episode to a Universal publicist in an e-mail ... Her voice shrill and agitated, she read the riot act in order to dissuade me from mentioning the incident in the column.

This diminishes my admiration not one bit, but explains why I chose to sit in the next-to-last row when I saw the movie. My take on the joker who thought it might be a good idea to screen the film on IMAX (published as a guest commentary on Ebert's site) after the jump.

[Posted by Peter Debruge]
I’ll be subbing in while Anne Thompson is on vacation this week, doing my best to keep the updates frequent and lively. Comments are welcome and will be read, but let's try to keep things civil (that means you, Don Murphy).

My friend Steve at Collider.com has been sitting on a big Speed Racer scoop. True to form, he took full advantage of the In the Valley of Elah press conference to get Susan Sarandon (who says of Speed, “all I do is make pancakes in the movie”) to confirm a juicy rumor about the Wachowskis’ latest game-changing innovation. According to Sarandon:

They’re doing something where they’re layering film so that the front and the back are in focus like a cartoon and they’re also doing two dimensional and three dimensional stuff and mixing and everything is very, very saturated with some new kind of film, so they actually have to treat the actors in some way so we can hold our own with the background. So it’s every color that wasn’t in The Matrix is seriously in this film.

Now, I know Speed Racer is the toon that introduced a generation of Americans to Japanese anime, but until now, I hadn’t understood why the Wachowskis would pick this as their next project, fearing that their G-rated live-action stab would turn out like another Herbie movie. Sounds like they’ve got it all figured out. (Who knew it would take 40 years for HD technology to catch up with primitive animation techniques?)

Weekend boxoffice Update: Superbad scored as predicted.

Word is, some clips from Sweeney Todd may emerge at the Venice Film Festival. Meanwhile, reports The Daily Mail's Baz Bamigboye, Burton has been ordered to slash some of the gore from Sweeney Todd. It's normal for a movie to be cut down from its rough cut length. The question is, how happy is Burton about reducing the blood? And is this article describing a hard R-rated film that Warners and/or DreamWorks wants to cut down to a softer R?

SUNDAY UPDATE: DreamWorks has always said it was an R. Anyone who knows the show knows that it involves killing and meat pies.

MONDAY UPDATE: My sources say that the issue of cutting back the violence is "wild rumors." Neither studio has seen the whole film; it won't screen until the third week of September. But as a measure of their enthusiasm, on the basis of all that they have seen and the strength of their marketing materials, the studios have decided to release the movie wide at Christmas instead of limited at Christmas and wide in January. That suggests they expect robust holiday business. As for the violence, the movie is what it is. That's not going to be the issue.

Critic Roger Ebert sent this response to the Associated Press story stating that he withdrew the trademarked "Thumbs" from Disney's Ebert and Roeper show. "I was NOT contacted by a Disney publicist or by e-mail," he states.

"I am discussing with Disney my association with the show that Gene Siskel and I started more than 30 years ago. In addition to my personal involvement, we are discussing the continued use of our THUMBS trademarks, owned by myself and the Siskel family.

Contrary to Disney’s press release, I did not demand the removal of the THUMBS. They made a first offer on Friday which I considered offensively low. I responded with a counter-offer. They did not reply to this, and on Monday ordered the THUMBS removed from the show. This is not something I expected after an association of over 22 years. I had made it clear the THUMBS could remain during good-faith negotiations.

During my absence from the balcony, I have been excited to participate in the show in ways other than being on the set. I love the show and I love the THUMBS and I hope we will all be reunited soon."

Here's Variety.

Here's this weekend's Fandango Five – Ticket Sales (as of 8/24/07 10:00 a.m. PT):

Movie Fandango User Rating % Fandango Sales

Superbad “Must Go” 35%

The Bourne Ultimatum “Must Go” 11%

Rush Hour 3 “Go” 5%

The Simpsons Movie “Go” 4%

Underdog “Go” 4%

Editor and Publisher examines the trials and tribs of online journalism. We're all figuring out this frontier every day, and learning the hard way that the world of online media is a constantly evolving beast.

The NYT has launched its MyNYT with its own reporters' picks.

On the same day that President Bush flies to New Orleans to visit the area ravaged by Hurricane Katrina almost two years ago, comedian Harry Shearer skewers the President in a music video (from his latest CD Songs Pointed and Pointless) with the refrain "We're going to make New Orleans whole."

Here's a preview of the video, which debuts on My Damn Channel Tuesday, August 28th:

I'm still not sure that Mark Cuban has ever understood the movie business (2929 Entertainment), theatrical exhibition (Landmark Theatres), indie film distribution (Magnolia Pictures) or even high def cable (HDNet). But he does understand the Internet --love his blog: his latest post, "the internet is dead and boring"-- and insists on doing his press interviews by email. Judging from this Portfolio Q & A, clearly, Cuban is impatient with the pace of change.

It's a new deal at Telluride this Labor Day weekend as veteran directors for 34 years Bill and Stella Pence will be gone.

Here's my preview of the fest, although I won't be there this year because I'm dropping Nora off at college. It's a civilized, well-programmed festival, and I'm sorry to miss it, but first things first. While no one is officially confirming any of the titles that will be there, I got enough of them right so they're a little mad at me...they like to keep their selection a surprise up to the last minute.

Here's what to expect:
Alison Eastwood's Rails & Ties, which no one has seen
Tamara jenkins' Sundance hit The Savages, with Laura Linney (a Telluride resident)
Variety critic Todd McCarthy's Pierre Rissient documentary, which debuted at Cannes
Cannes prize winners 4 Months, Three Weeks, 2 Days and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
some early footage from Paul Thomas Anderson's December release There Will Be Blood
Xtreme ski doc Steep

I know more, but Tom and Gary would really kill me. The distributors tell me!

John Clark assesses Tom Cruise one year later, post-Paramount, post-Katie and Suri.

I'm curious to see if UA chief Cruise and partner Paula Wagner will be able to put a strong commercial slate of pictures together. Sight unseen, Lions for Lambs looks like a talky drama for adults--which may be terrific--but could prove a hard sell. Former Miramax and Disney PR vet Dennis Rice will give it everything he's got. But it takes a concerted, sustained and coordinated effort to put that kind of movie across.

The Coens' No Country for Old Men is one tough wicked hardboiled nasty piece of work, and thus it makes good marketing sense for Miramax to release a red band trailer so that audiences can see why the mean SOB played by Javier Bardem is really, really scary. (The movie is a close adaptation of the Cormac McCarthy book, btw, which is well worth reading.) The blood-splattered trailer creeped me out all over again: it will be live beginning Friday.

UPDATE: Here's Chris Thilk on why red band trailers work.

David Lynch talks Inland Empire (and other things) at MTV.com on the occasion of the experimental digital video's DVD release. While I admired Lynch's witty marketing efforts on behalf of the film (including hanging with a cow on Hollywood Boulevard), I somehow managed to skip this one.

There's a lot to catch up with in Toronto, which marks the official start of the Oscar race. Countless awards season hopefuls will come out of there either dead or alive.

I've already screened Julie Taymor's audacious Beatles musical Across the Universe (a must-see, no matter how far out it gets); Tamara Jenkins' Sundance hit The Savages, which should get noms for Philip Seymour Hoffman and Laua Linney; Neil Jordan's smart psychological actioner The Brave One (which should earn Jodie Foster serious Oscar buzz for her performance as a vengeful victim of violence); Terry George's intense drama Reservation Road, which pits Mark Ruffalo against Joaquin Phoenix; Julian Schnabel's exquisitely crafted French-language The Diving Bell and the Butterfly; Paul Haggis's In the Valley of Elah (a strong Oscar contender thanks to a fierce performance by Tommy Lee Jones); the Coen brothers' No Country for Old Men (also starring Jones, it should last through the entire Oscar season; Javier Bardem will score many kudos, no matter what).

I'll see Michael Clayton and fest opener Fugitive Pieces before I go, and will miss other Toronto screenings because yes, I am going on vacation next week. Peter Debruge will fill in.

We tend to take Tommy Lee Jones for granted. Here comes the fall award season again, with two more great performances from this veteran actor. Oscar voters will have to pay heed to both the Coen brothers' Cannes fest hit No Country for Old Men as well as Paul Haggis's tough gem of a picture, In the Valley of Elah. In both films, Jones conveys depths of sadness, grief and disappointment in the darkness that is extant in today's world.

For the moment Miramax will likely campaign for supporting actor for Jones' honest sheriff in No Country for Old Men (as well as the extraordinarily villainous Javier Bardem), while WIP will pursue best actor for Jones in Elah, which he carries easily. While Charlize Theron is exemplary in Elah as a local cop who helps Jones investigate the death of his soldier son after his return from Iraq, Susan Sarandon in a smaller role as Jones' wife carries the movie's emotion.

Both films will play Toronto, which will prove their Oscar launching ground.

Legendary writer recluse Harper Lee (To Kill a Mockingbird) made news by showing up at a public Alabama event.

In a classic case of all-too obvious image spin, Lindsay Lohan poses for some photos for OK! Magazine---from rehab. She's reading the AA bible!

She doesn't seem to realize that sometimes, doing nothing is best.

On the other hand, her lawyers have been working overtime. Lohan's a luckygirl indeed if she gets off without any felony cocaine charges.

Everyone is so hot and bothered about what writing phenomenon J.K. Rowling will do next that speculation has gotten out of hand.

Late-summer schadenfreude is coalescing around beleaguered Portfolio editor Joanne Lipman.

The latest idea: Conde Nast should replace her with a gifted magazine editor in need of a job: Tina Brown.

LA Weekly critic turned film-fest-selection-committee-member Scott Foundas reveals the inner workings of the New York Film Festival.

The Weinstein Co. is setting a very limited release for Todd Haynes' I'm Not There, reports the NYT. At least Harvey knows better than to use the many stars who play Bob Dylan in the movie---Cate Blanchett, Heath Ledger et al-- to push it into wider release than the film can sustain, as Paramount Vantage did with A Mighty Heart.

The movie will likely play Telluride over Labor Day weekend as well as Toronto, I hear.

The AFI Awards will do their thing again for 2007, for the eighth time.

The American Film Institute's 2007 outstanding achievement awards in film and television will be announced on Sunday, December 16, 2007. Ten AFI Movies of the Year, 10 AFI TV programs of the year and up to 10 AFI Moments of Significance will be determined by the AFI’s two juries of 13.

The AFI will honor the creative ensembles for each of the honorees at a lunch on Friday, January 11, 2008, at the Four Seasons Hotel in Los Angeles.

Deadline for TV submissions is November 1, 2007. Film submissions are due on November 9. Details about the selection process, submission forms and lists of past AFI Awards honorees are available on AFI’s website at AFI.com.

There seems to be some debate about whether Paul Grassgrass's radically hand-held mise-en-scene in The Bourne Ultimatum is too herky-jerky to be good cinematography. I will argue that whether it's hand-held or not, shot-for-shot Paul Greengrass's Bourne Ultimatum advances the art of action filmmaking and will change it forever. David Bordwell compares Greengrass's smartly-edited direction to Tony Scott. There's no comparison! Two different animals, entirely.

[Hat Tip: David Chute]

It was no surprise that Superbad scored a big opening this weekend. Written by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg and directed by Greg Mottola, its appeal is broad; Nora went to see it with her girlfriends at the Thursday night midnight show. Of course they're square in the demo--kids about to go to college. But middle-aged women friends of mine liked it just as much. It will continue to grow.

Lest we think that producer Judd Apatow can do no wrong--and yes, he is riding high with more projects in the pipeline than he can humanly deliver--I do predict that one of them will not be a mainstream commercial hit, no matter how well it turns out. Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, written by Apatow and Jake Kasdan and directed by Kasdan, stars John C. Reilly in a spoof of the recent musical biopics Walk the Line and Ray:

This trailer sank like a stone at Comic-Con. It might have been the wrong crowd; but the right crowd may be a small sophisticated niche in NY and LA. Apatow's strength is in finding the human touch in relationships between men and women. Somehow, a satire of biopics about musical legends--who most audiences still care about--may not sit right with moviegoers when it opens December 21.

But as of now, every project with Apatow's name on it is getting made. We'll see how serious indie David Gordon Green does with The Pineapple Express, also written by Rogen and Goldberg, due in 2008.

Apatow's upcoming pics include:
Step Brothers (2008) (pre-production) (producer)
You Don't Mess with the Zohan (2008) (filming) (producer)
Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008) (post-production) (producer)
Drillbit Taylor (2008) (post-production) (producer)
The Pineapple Express (2008) (completed) (producer)

Meanwhile, Apatow's crew, from Rogen to Michael Cera and Jonah Hill, are getting hotter than flapjacks.

Fandango Five – Ticket Sales (as of 8/17/07 9:00 a.m. PT)

Movie Fandango User Rating % Fandango Sales

Superbad “Must Go” 43%

The Bourne Ultimatum “Must Go” 13%

Rush Hour 3 “Go” 10%

The Simpsons Movie “Go” 4%

Stardust “Go” 4%

Fandango Weekly Poll (as of 8/17/07 9:00 a.m. PT)

Thousands of fans are traveling to Graceland this week to remember Elvis Presley, who died 30 years ago. Which travel destination was best captured in an Elvis movie?

Las Vegas: Viva Las Vegas 44%

Hawaii: Blue Hawaii 41%

New Orleans: King Creole 10%

Acapulco: Fun in Acapulco 4%

Everglades National Park: Clambake 1%

And which Presley movie co-starred the singer with an ingenue who later became a nun and is still a voting member of the Academy?

Last week I interviewed the two musical stars of Once, Margeta Irglova and Glen Hansard, in the garden at The Four Seasons. I managed to coax a scoop out of Hansard, who has been turning down movie offers right and left it seems. He was delighted to be considered for Zach Snyder's The Watchmen, but he's sticking with his music for now. Peter Debruge, my colleague and frequent contributor to this blog, also reviews some indie flicks on this show:

[Posted by Peter Debruge]
For anyone who loves movies, assembling special-edition DVDs for Criterion sounds like a dream job. Not only do they get to spiff up and research the world’s best films, but in many cases, they also have a chance to work directly with the directors when doing so (including the late Ingmar Bergman on that five-disc Fanny and Alexander set).

On Criterion’s “On Five” blog, Lee Kline discusses the task of restoring Terrence Malick’s Days of Heaven (a movie that makes my all-time top-10 list):

Terry made it clear that the new transfer needed to feel natural and not too “postcardlike.” [You gotta love that these guys are on a first-name basis with “Terry,” one of Hollywood’s most reclusive helmers.] We weren’t allowed to use words like golden or warm. The natural beauty of the land needed to be represented, since that was what they were going for when shooting. When we first started to take out the gold and the warmth, it was heading toward a really different place from the previous transfer. Not bad, mind you, just different and definitely more natural. I would sometimes joke in the room that such and such a shot was pretty, and then I would say to Terry, “But not too pretty!” … After three days of Terry, Billy, and John’s expertise, we were finished. It looked beautiful, but boy, was it different. I told Terry that people were really going to be pretty surprised by this new transfer, since it was such a radical departure from before, but he said it was perfect.

That’s what I love about Criterion: Those guys can take a perfect film and make it perfect-er.

Kim Voynar at Cinematical digs into the foreign film selection in Toronto.

Scott Karp and blogger Robert Young of GigaOM are forming a social network and news aggregator for journalists called Publish2, Inc.

On the other hand, I've got social networks coming out of my ears, all needing care and feeding. I rarely go to Journalspace or Tagworld or MySpace anymore, although I continue to passively grow my MySpace friends. The movie review site Criticker is an escapist time waster. I check Rottentomatoes and Metacritic for the reviews.

iKlipz is fun for streaming video (their player is excellent) if I had the time. I search for specific things on YouTube, I don't browse. LinkedIn and Facebook are the most active right now. Facebook is on the cover of Newsweek--Nora uses it constantly; she's already in touch with her college roommate.

I have yet to figure out Stumbleupon or Spout (which does boast Karina Longworth's excellent blog) and I know Withoutabox is building a filmmaker community, but I don't go there. Huffington Post is for politics, and I use the journalist community site Mediabistro.com quite a bit.

Jodie Foster knows how to pick her roles, and she scores with Neil Jordan's The Brave One, which is likely to inspire Oscar talk when it debuts at The Toronto International Film Festival next month. It's also going to generate some controversy for Foster's role as a victim of violence who picks up a gun and starts to use it.

I talked to Foster before she left for Australia to shoot Nim's Island, co-starring Abigail Breslin. (She'll return to do press in Toronto.) We talked about "The Brave One," not her personal life.

[Posted by Peter Debruge]
I have an unnatural preoccupation with Uwe Boll, the director fanboys love to hate. Why do they despise him so? In their eyes, Boll butchers their favorite videogames by directing nonsensical adaptations of Alone in the Dark, BloodRayne and House of the Dead (the latter inexplicably intercuts shots from the first-person-shooter zombie game with frantic action scenes).

Is the German-born Boll any worse than all the low-budget genre directors working today? Not necessarily. He just catches flak for defiling hardcore gamers’ sacred cows. But Boll's strategy is pretty clever, when you think about it, since the popularity of the titles compels studios to give him decent budgets and respected actors to make his movies.

Personally, I’m not so sure someone like Peter Jackson could do much better with the same material, but it’s always entertaining to see how the fan community reacts to the latest Boll “abomination.” Variety’s own Dennis Harvey attended the San Francisco premiere of Postal (another vidgame adaptation, this one doubling as post-9/11 satire) and didn’t completely hate it.

A couple writers from Wired caught the screening, too, instigating an angry (and amusing) back-and-forth with the director over the nasty remarks in their review. Boll writes:

Chris wrote that article in bad faith to damage me. His whole goal is to destroy my business. If he cannot see that scenes (for example WELFARE OFFICE, Job Interview) are genius in that movie - then there are 2 possibilities: he is dump and has no idea what movies are or he hates me and is dissappointed about his own shitty career.

He ignored also that the audience enjoyed the movie and tons of other critics LOVED it.

That’s right. Boll referred to the “genius” of his own work. “Tons” of critics loved it. Those late to the Boll bandwagon are in luck. He has three more films in the can: BloodRayne: Deliverance (a straight-to-video sequel that inexplicably takes place halfway across the world a full century later), Seed (which sounds like that Cleaver movie on The Sopranos) and In the Name of the King (a Dungeon Siege vidgame adaptation starring Jason Statham and Burt Reynolds).

Ed Limato is finalizing a three-year deal to bring many of his top-drawer clients, including Mel Gibson, Denzel Washington and Richard Gere--to the William Morris Agency, reports Variety.

I am curious about Todd Haynes' Bob Dylan movie I'm Not There, starring Cate Blanchett and Heath Ledger and others as different incarnations of the folk singer, which will screen in Toronto. Shawn Levy has the film's
music list.

As a youngish Boomer I am all-too susceptible to the music of my youth. I'm also looking forward to another Toronto musical selection, Julie Taymor's Across the Universe, which features 30 Beatles songs performed by U2's Bono ("I Am The Walrus," "Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds"), Joe Cocker ("Come Together") Eddie Izzard ("The Benefit Of Mr. Kite") and others.

Friday night I had a fabulous time at the sold-out Hollywood Bowl as Cheap Trick performed Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, with help from guest singers Aimee Mann and Joan Osborne. Cheap Trick really rocked, even accompanied by an orchestra and a sizeable sitar section. (Within You Without You was probably the most dated song.) I know every Beatles album so well that I remember the order of the songs. But there are plenty of others just like me.

On the other hand, I Am Sam, which boasted an entire soundtrack of Beatles covers, completely bombed.

The Invasion, Warner Bros. and producer Joel Silver's troubled remake of The Invasion of the Body Snatchers--which for some strange reason does not lean on that recognizable title--did not play well in Comic-Con. Nor is it screening any better here. The troubled production, for which the Wachowski brothers apparently did reshoots, was expensive, too: some $80-million, I hear. Aren't horror classics supposed to be remade on the cheap?

Here's the Variety review. Safe to say, this is not a rave: "a slick but forgettable characterless thriller," writes Dennis Harvey.

The Toronto International Film Festival has announced the final international line-up. New news: Gala Presentations of Alexi Tan's Blood Brothers, and Rituparno Ghosh's The Last Year; Special Presentations of Julio Medem's Chaotic Anna, Jan Schütte's Love Comes Lately, Ang Lee's Lust, Caution, Sergei Bodrov's Mongol, Hans Weingartner's Reclaim Your Brain, Milcho Manchevski's Shadows, and Cannes Festival favourite Chacun Son Cinema. The 32nd Toronto International Film Festival runs September 6 – 15, 2007.

Here's the total sleection, organized by country:

Argentina

THE PAST Hector Babenco, Argentina/Brazil Masters

Australia

UNFINISHED SKY Peter Duncan, Australia Contemporary World Cinema

Austria

LOVE COMES LATELY Jan Schütte, Germany/Austria/USA Special Presentations

RECLAIM YOUR BRAIN Hans Weingartner, Germany/Austria Special Presentations

THE COUNTERFEITERS Stefan Ruzowitzky, Austria/Germany Contemporary World Cinema

FOREVER NEVER ANYWHERE Antonin Svoboda, Austria Contemporary World Cinema

Bangladesh

ON THE WINGS OF DREAMS Golam Rabbany Biplob, Bangladesh Contemporary World Cinema

Belgium

ANGEL François Ozon, France/UK/Belgium Special Presentations

L'AMOUR CACHÉ Alessandro Capone, Italy/Luxembourg/Belgium Visions

Brazil

THE PAST Hector Babenco, Argentina/Brazil Masters

[Posted by Shalini Dore]
It’s rare to have a Q&A session go on so long that the moderator has to leave. But that’s what happened Tuesday night at India Splendor’s final screening, Guru.

Variety’s Asia bureau chief Patrick Frater had a plane to catch so he left India Splendor organizer Bhuvan Lall in charge. Guru”director Mani Ratnam and stars Aishwarya Rai (looking breathtakingly beautiful in green) and Abhishek Bachchan fielded questions ranging from the message of the movie and its reference to Bachchan’s character taking dowry to what it was like growing up in an “elite” family. And when Lall tried to end the session around 11:30 p.m., the stars said they were willing to continue. At one point Bachchan even told the audience of 300 at the Billy Wilder Theater not to bother with the mics but just shout out their questions.

“You may have thought we were elite, but we were really a middle-class family,” Bachchan said. Whatever his actor parents, Amitabh Bachchan and Jaya Bhaduri did outside the house, at home they were just Dad and Mom. “And every day we all had dinner together.”

A question about what they liked about each other as an acting couple brought forth a long response from Bachchan to which Rai quipped, “Honey, I’ve already said yes.”

And even though they both said that the reason they decided to do this film was “the chance to work with Mani” that didn’t stop a little playful banter between the stars and the director. When they were asked if they had ever thought of becoming writers or directors, Bachchan said he was happy to leave that to his director.
“That’s what he says but all actors want to direct,” Ratnam said laughing.

“Directors all really want to act,” Bachchan quickly retorted.

At midnight Lall said the lights would go out and ended the session, which was the signal for a surge to the stage as audience members tried to get their photos taken with the trio or for an autograph. India Splendor ends Wednesday, which is also the 60th anni of Indian independence.

I saw this trailer at Comic-Con and was unimpressed, even if Helen Mirren and Ed Harris do join Nic Cage and Jon Voight. It just looks so over-the-top preposterous.

Of course, the first movie made a global fortune, so this may score too. What do you think?