TIFF – Che' Goes 131×2

My first reaction to Steven Soderbergh

No Wonder Keith Olberman Hates Her… She's The Competition!

(If she loses, do you think Disney’ll team her up with Ben “I’m changing my name to Pete” Lyons?)

Oh My God… Father

The Godfather Blu-ray just landed on my doorstep.
It took as long as unwrapping the package to start watching.
Gordon Willis’ blacks.
The light in Bonasera’s eye… slowly pulling back… his black jacket just barely clear against the black behind him… the shadowy figures of Sonny and Hagen… the whisper in the ear… the reverse and the make-up that looks as real as ever… the cat… the f-ing cat…
The thing about Blu-ray is not just the amazing density of image, so much closer to film than anything else, but it’s the size of the sets we watch on now, in conjunction with the density of image, that makes even a 36-year-old film seem like you are seeing it again for the first time.
Would seeing a great film for the 20th time on a big screen with a pristine print be better? Sure. But that isn’t a real option, is it? Instead, I get to see something I love, looking more like the way I first saw it on a screen (better, probably, than the beat up print I first encountered, as the movie was 8 years old by the time I was 16), with all my familiarity now drawing my eye to more than the focus of the frames I know so well..
It

TIFF – Odd Images

BYOB

Long day’s journey into LA…
I was greeted on my flight to the McCain campaign dropping yet another bombshell into an impossibly dense cycle of other news… this time, the choice to deny her cooperation on Troopergate… Harvey Weinstein hocking his very worst films for Oscar until the bitter end has NOTHING on these guys… truly singular in history…
And if you want to know why Karl Rove slapped McCain yesterday, it was the same exact strategy as the Hillary Clinton campaign… attack relentlessly until the crowd starts to resent it, then confess that BOTH sides are doing it and try to make your attacks seem just the same as the other sides when they are not really even close.
It makes the movie business seem sublime.
And as far as the movie business and the funding business, the short answer is… not the biggest deal ever for movies. The movie business’ list o’ suckers had already been thinned out before this week’s loud implosions. But what this may lay out is an even faster run for the auction house for the corporations that are not 100% committed to the movies. It could also make a Reliant/DreamWorks deal for MGM move along, as the giddy hopes Harry Sloan had for a big sale are now even more unlikely.
Anyway… morel tomorrow…

Deja Vu… All Over Again

What is THE ANSWER to the indie problem of the moment?
The parade of “keynote” responses to Mark Gill’s overstated bluster of this summer continues to grow, but the one that landed in the inbox this morning was Peter Broderick’s… and it’s only Part One… and while it does a nice job of showing us what filmmakers without studio or even major indie distribution have been attempting and failing at over 90% of the time in the last five years (and which many of us journos have been writing about for just as long), it offers no real insight into the future or any realistic idea of how to get there.
All the pieces are sitting on the table… but there is a startling lack of insight into the one thing that rules the roost when push comes to shove… for indies or for majors… the money.
Perhaps he’ll cross that bridge in Part II.
Anyway… have a look… and have at it.

It's Crappy… But It's Box Office!!!

Klady’s Weekend Estimates…

This is actually quite a good number for The Coens… though one should keep in mind that even Leatherheads opened to almost $13 million and it’s the worst wide opening for a Brad Pitt film in nine years. Mixed bag. Focus, I imagine, will be pleased.
11a- This just in… This is not only The Coens’ best opening (by around 50%), but Focus’ best opening ever (by $10 million). Do keep in mind that both entities release most of their product via platform, but still, very much worth noting.
The Tyler Perry is a little low for him, but he is close to unrecognizable in the ads and he shows once again that even without a Madea in his films, he can open in the $20m range (if not $20m this time).
Righteous Kill‘s opening shows that even if everyone can see that it’s a pig in a poke (with lipstick), they want their beloved actors to be there.
And Tropic Thunder closes in on paying for its domestic marketing with its domestic box office. Foreign release has barely begun, but conservatively, the film will have to significantly improve on its domestic number overseas (at least $250 million total ww) to not be in the red when the books are closed.

And Fey As Palin… legally

McCain's Just Sayin'…

TIFFed

And so it ends, not with a bang, but with slumdog.
I will have a lot more to write when my delivery system is an actual keyboard and not a virtual qwerty.
In the end, it was an unexpectedly good festival, albeit more about tiny, wonderous tapas and never ever the great grand meal journalists and others have come to expect.
A festival with Slumdog Millionaire (after being unceremoniously dumped by the folks who brought you The Women this weekend), Hunger, Rachel Getting Married, Che’, Hurt Locker, Disgrace, The Wrestler, Blindness, A Christmas Tale, Fear Me Not, Waltz With Bashir, Everlasting Moments, All Around Us, and many others, can’t be considered a disappointment. Even more impressive, the narrative features line-up turned out to be better than the doc line-up.
It will also be remembered as the first festival in a long while without a sale by Cinetic. (The Zac Efron/Claire Danes starrer, Me & Orson Welles, will surely land somewhere. And the “big sales” were all under $5 million, even with a stunning level of excitement when the “big hits” landed.
But that, in a nutshell, is the story of this year’s Toronto. It was great at the unexpected… and a car wreck for expectations. And perhaps this is a good thing… perhaps a very good thing…

Still Saying No

10 days in Toronto without the talking head channels has kept my interest in the election at bay. Watched Palin with Charlie Gibson last night, though I thought it was very generous of ABC not to show the handler throwing the fish in her mouth after she evaded most questions with “but look over there.” Anyone who has accused Obama of not being specific – in spite of tons of detail on most positions available from his campaign website – should be forced to watch Palin’s answer to the question of what makes her and McCain’s economic plans differ from Bush’s… even her platitudes were off subject.
That said, I am pleased to see that people of conscience – left, right, and center – are beginning to call the lies out in no uncertain terms. Of course, the spin will be that the truth is just “complaining” from “them”… the ever-present “them” that wants to throw older, white people out of their perfect homes only to replace them with boom box carrying junkies who fornicate on the front lawn and get all uppity about equal rights for women, homosexuals, other ethnicities, and those evil foreigners… ALL of them evil foreigners!
The truth is, for me, my positive feelings about Obama and what he stands for have become completely secondary to my sad, disappointed anger and fear about John McCain and the depths to which he has sunk. After eight years of fighting with fellow Democrats about Bush not being the anti-Christ, suddenly I find myself seeing analogies to John McCain in TIFF movies about fascists of the past.
Really… not kidding.
People allow themselves to be conned on this planet every day. And I am not talking about the political con of George Bush, calling himself a “compassionate conservative” while throwing money at big business, claiming it will built the economy, while under-regulation (like Clinton’s failure to get control of the internet boom before it busted) left us with a problem economy, including record-breaking deficits. THAT, I expect. That is par for the course. That is America making a choice and not thinking too much.
I’m talking about outright lies meant to divide and force the election discussion to be about who you are comfortable with and not about the future of the American government. I can actually live with Sarah Palin spinning her anti-choice position as somehow “personal,” suggesting seconds after saying Roe v Wade should be dumped, that the “personal” is not the political. That is traditional election year bullshit.
But the endless, outright lies…
And sad to say… once again, a Clinton has led the way.
Bill Clinton destroyed the feminist movement by having a sexual tryst that by every standard that the mainstream feminist movement had maintained about workplace behavior would have seen him fired from any CEO job in America… and then letting the feminists defend him against the “vast right wing conspiracy.” That was the end. The standard could no longer be held because it was abandoned for political expediency.
Likewise, Hillary’s desperate – much more desperate than McCain, given the virtual impossibility of coming back from Obama’s pre-PA lead – mudslinging at Obama has become the standard for McCain because… taa-dah… it worked. She still couldn’t win. But she wounded him and the party with him. And now that Sarah Palin is pretending to be a woman of Hillary’ substance – and even as a bit of a Hillary basher, I can see that she is objectively far more qualified than Palin – where is Hillary Clinton, speaking out against Palin? Why is she not taking on this battle when she is the best person to do it?
She should just say no to Palin… and if she wants to be well remembered, she will.