Gurus o’ Gold – A Pre-Toronto Look At The 2010/11 Field

Update: The last 3 Gurus have chimed in. Not a lot changes at the top.

TIFF starts in 2 days and by its end, only 8 of the 42 charted films will still be unseen.

Frenzy on the Wall: Who’s the Biggest Star in the World (Right Now)?

William Goldman is one of the greatest screenwriters of all-time, but he was also a fantastic essayist and one of the most insightful minds when it came to writing about films. His collection of essays, The Big Picture, has been read so many times by me that the pages are starting to break free from…

The Weekend Box Office Report — Four Day and Summer Charts

Summer of Our Discontent Domestic box office for the summer season dropped 3% from 2009 on an estimated gross of $4.05 billion. On an even graver note admissions sank at least 10% and possibly as high as 12%.  Following a fast start in early May, movie going appeared to lose steam mid-stream and though the…

26 Weeks To Oscar: The Year Of… Patience

The awards season has gotten off to a rousing “uh, okay.”

Yeah, the festival season is upon us and there is a lot of drool dripping over some of these films – including my own happy salivations – but festival excitement is not, in and of itself, an answer.

Heartbreaker, director Pascal Chaumeil actors Romain Duris and Vanessa Paradis

DP/30 chats up the director and 2 stars of this runaway French hit.

The Weekend Box Office Report

A trio of new national releases did little to bolster the overall picture with The American topping the charts with an estimated $13.1 million (all figures are for the 3-day portion of the holiday). It entered the weekend with an additional $3.1 million from a Wednesday pre-weekend launch.

Tamara Drewe, dir Stephen Frears

At 69, Stephen Frears is one of the oldest working directors and one of the most prolific of any age. This year, he decided to take on the adult graphic novel, Tamara Drewe. He’s making the fest circuit with the film, but took 30 minutes to chat with David Poland about the film and a life in cinema.

TIFF Preview, Part Two

Previously, I wrote about what you might consider the more “indie” sections of the Toronto International film fest: Contemporary World Cinema, Discovery, and docs, plus Canada First!, which is always interesting. Now let’s take a peek at the Galas and Special Presentations, plus everyone’s favorite late night, wild ‘n’ crazy section, Midnight Madness.

Friday Estimates by Klady, The American vs The Mexican

Labor Day Weekend… great for Telluride and Jerry Lewis… not so great for movie box office. The American with a gun and the Mexican with a Machete face off and Drew Barrymore will be a Distance fifth.

Review – Never Let Me Go

Sometimes an artist’s instrument is so sharp that many of the viewers will not feel the incision, either on the surface nor in its unusual depth. Such is what you’ll find in Mark Romanek’s new film, Never Let Me Go.

EASY A, actor Emma Stone, director Will Gluck

In anticipation of their film’s launch at the Toronto Film Festival, director Will Gluck and budding superstar Emma Stone chat with David Poland. (DP/30 now in living color… and it streams!)

MW on Movies: The American, Machete, Going the Distance, Mesrine: Killer Instinct, Mesrine: Public Enemy No. 1 and Lebanon

The American (Three Stars) U.S.; Anton Corbijn, 2010 I like George Clooney. No off-color psychological speculations, please. What I like about him is the easy-going “good guy” way he plays the Hollywood game. I like his politics, his philanthropy, his unpretentious smarts, his good-natured jock style, his taste in movie scripts, his daring as a…

The Gronvall Files:Going the Distance from Fact to Fiction with Director Nanette Burstein

Change is good, although it’s not always easy to reinvent oneself. But New York filmmaker Nanette Burstein, a Best Documentary Feature Oscar nominee for On the Ropes (which she co-directed with Brett Morgen), doesn’t miss a step in her transition from nonfiction film to narrative features.

TIFF 2010 Preview, Part One

The Toronto International Film Festival is looming ever closer, and as always, one of the greatest challenges faced by film journalists attending the fest is determining which films on the fest’s packed slate they’ll see. With roughly a week to cover the fest and only so many hours in the day to see (and write…

Review – The American

It’s an odd thing. About 20 minutes into The American and similarly in another film I can’t review right now (Sept 4), I was strongly struck by the sense that critics would be wildly split on the film. Masterpiece or Bore. I feel The American is a beautifully rendered, intimate, deceivingly simple film loaded with…