Friday, September 30, 2005

Midlife Surge

Midlife Surge

Maybe I'm slow, but my awareness levels suddenly shot up the other day about Gong Li, Gong Li, Gong Li...some eighteen years after her film debut, and just over three months shy of her 40th birthday.

This was after hearing she gives the big burn-through performance in Memoirs of a Geisha (Columbia, 12.5). The word, in fact, is that she pretty much steals it from Zhang Ziyi, the star...as far as the "whoa, mama" thing is concerned. I mean, take it with a grain...

A seemingly dated photo of Gong Li, costar of Memoirs of a...

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 6:36 PM on Friday, September 30, 2005

Thursday, September 29, 2005

In all the coverage of

In all the coverage of Sony Pictures refusing to distribute Albert Brooks' Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World, no one has noted the obvious, which is that the title makes it sound like a documentary. We all know Brooks to be a hip and shrewd comic, but doesn't the movie also sound a tiny bit...what's the word I'm searching for? Cornball? A little dopey? How sharp and live-wire does anyone expect Muslim humor to be? Isn't Muslim culture patriarchal and redneck-y and disparaging of women, etc.? I should just shut up and wait to see it, right? Warner Independent has...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:03 PM on Thursday, September 29, 2005

I love this line from

I love this line from a review of Capote by Entertainment Weekly's Owen Gleiberman, in which he examines the final beat in the relationship between Truman Capote and condemned murderer Perry Smith: "[Philip Seymour] Hoffman makes Capote's dissolution a theatrical miracle of devastation. In his final scene with Perry, he's so conflicted that he does something I've never seen on screen: He cries, honestly, and lies at the same time."

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:27 PM on Thursday, September 29, 2005

I don't want to get

I don't want to get too excited or lose my mind or anything, but this parody trailer for Stanley Kubrick's The Shining is clever as shit, but it also has a dark undercurrent because it perfectly nails the idiot-virus affecting movie advertising attitudes right now. It shows that you can take footage from any drama and lie through your teeth and make it look like a total fluffball movie...and this is what marketing people do all the time, because all they want to do is get people to show up on opening weekend, period. The creators are affiliated with a Manhattan...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:23 PM on Thursday, September 29, 2005

For a while there, John

For a while there, John Stockwell was the director who put soul and character into movies about young people involved in personal struggles and spiritual crises. He did this with crazy/beautiful, about a smart and responsible-minded East L.A. Hispanic teenager who falls for Kirsten Dunst's alcoholic, self-destructive rich girl from Pacific Palisades, and then with the under-rated Blue Crush, a beautifully-shot, nicely finessed North Shore surfing movie with Kate Bosworth. But now, suddenly, he's become the go-to guy for exotic outdoor thrillers starring hot-looking 20-somethings. He's directed Into the Blue (Sony, 9.30), a throwaway diving-for-treasure-and-finding-thrills movie with Jessica Alba, Paul Walker and Scott...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:32 PM on Thursday, September 29, 2005

Oh, and by the way?

Oh, and by the way? I had an appointment to meet Scott Caan early last July at a hip hotel on Thompson Street in Soho, the intention being to discuss that above-average film he wrote and directed called Dallas 362...and he disappeared. He wasn't at the hotel, there was no "sorry" message left with the concierge, and no message was left on my cell phone. That makes him a Man of Honor.

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:25 PM on Thursday, September 29, 2005

Last week's tracking figures for

Last week's tracking figures for In Her Shoes, before last Saturday's sneak, weren't that hot -- 2% first choice, awareness 55%, and definite interest 23%. (The under-25 female awareness was 66%; over-25 female awareness was 68%.) But the sneak has definitely bumped things up, and today's tracking says first-choice for Shoes is now at 9%, general awareness 66% and definite interest 32%. The second sneak this weekend will bump things up a bit more and so on until the opening on 10.7. For perspective, Flightplan had a definite interest tally of 44% and 14% first-choice the day before it opened.

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:57 AM on Thursday, September 29, 2005

Wednesday, September 28, 2005

Regarding Mr. Lloyd

Regarding Mr. Lloyd

Norman Lloyd, 90, is in only three scenes in In Her Shoes and is on-screen maybe seven or eight minutes, but his performance is one of the most poignant notes in a film that's got more than a few of them.

It's not one of those burn-through-the-screen performances (along the lines of, say, Beatrice Straight's fight-with-Bill-Holden scene in Network). It's more like a coaxer. You can sense Lloyd's intellectual energy and zest for life despite his character's withered state, and you can feel and admire the tenderness he shows to Maggie ...tenderness mixed in with a...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:30 PM on Wednesday, September 28, 2005

Plays High, Sold Low

Plays High, Sold Low

In Her Shoes may or may not be appearing to handicappers as an awards-level thing. I don't care to argue this point, but every so often there's a disconnect between my views and those of jaded ivory-tower elites that just staggers me.

On the other hand, if I hadn't yet seen it and had come upon Liz Smith's rave on the film's website, I might have a moment of pause. Smith guarantees "you will laugh and cry in equal measure because this is simply a wonderful film...one of the best in years" -- fine.

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:24 PM on Wednesday, September 28, 2005

You want surreal? Read Laura

You want surreal? Read Laura Holson's New York Times story about the Universal-buying-DreamWorks negotiations that have fallen apart. Because two recent DreamWorks films -- The Island and Just Like Heaven -- respectively flopped and underperformed, NBC Universal executives involved in negotations to purchase the live-action filmmaking side of DreamWorks (along with the company's 60-film library) "lowered their projection of the rate of return for DreamWorks" and therfore lowered their offer from $1.5 billion to $1.4 billion. This still would have handed about $900 million to DreamWorks' partners and investors (David Geffen, Steven Spielberg, Paul Allen and...?). But because of the...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 7:02 AM on Wednesday, September 28, 2005

Monday, September 26, 2005

We all want to be

We all want to be recognized for our own accomplishments, but it still seems...well, funny that the mini-bio for director-writer Rodrigo Garcia in the Nine Lives press kit doesn't mention that his dad is novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez("One Hundred Years of Solitude").

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 6:03 PM on Monday, September 26, 2005

My advice is to brush

My advice is to brush aside David Poland's dissing/dismissing of Tony Scott's 9.25 N.Y. Times piece about Republican party pro-life talking points in Just Like Heaven, The Exorcism of Emily Rose , and even Michael Bay's The Island. Libertas, the rightie website affiliated with the Liberty Film Festival, discussed the right-to-life issue in The Island with some enthusiasm last summer, and it seems to me that Scott's observations about Heaven and Emily Rose are fairly astute, and a long way from wild ravings. To some extent, Hollywood is obviously winking at Bubba Nation with these films.

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:50 PM on Monday, September 26, 2005

Sunday, September 25, 2005

It was in the cards

It was in the cards for several weeks, and now Miramax president Daniel Battsek has finally announced his acquisition of Gavin Hood's Tsotsi, a profoundly gripping drama that I saw and wrote about during the latter stages of the Toronto Film Festival. More in the vein of Walter Salles' Central Station than Fernando Meirelles' City of God, Tsotsi has the chops to shoot right to the top of the list of Best Foreign-Language Feature hopefuls.

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:35 AM on Sunday, September 25, 2005

If you have the slightest

If you have the slightest appetite for good political theatre, reading this Daily News story about Warren Beatty's anti-Arnold-Schwarzenegger speech in Oakland the other day will get your blood going. There are those who would love to see Beatty run against Schwarzenegger, but I there's no way he'll ever drop his Artful Dodger mentality and hang his hide over the side. It would be terrific, of course, if he did run. And I don't agree at all with the view of Dick Rosengarten, co-publisher of California Political Week, that a Beatty candidacy wouldn't fly. "I'm not sure two movie stars can run...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:25 AM on Sunday, September 25, 2005

The Great Liberal Hope who

The Great Liberal Hope who might actually pull the trigger some day will be Ben Affleck. Truth, Justice and the American Way will probably result in a career upsurge so it won't happen any time soon, but when Affleck hits his next career pothole (five or ten years from now...who knows?) he might actually start making the moves. If you saw him on the political talk shows during the '04 Democratic Convention in Boston, you know he's got the makings.

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:22 AM on Sunday, September 25, 2005

You should have heard the

You should have heard the crowd chortle with delight when Bill Hurt went into his irritated-older-brother shpiel in the last act of A History of Violence at the Grove yesterday afternoon. Hurt had them in the palm of his hand. He got a laugh with almost every line, every facial tic...and it was fantastic to feel a performance work as well as this. Being there put all doubts to rest: Hurt will be one of the Best Supporting Actor nominees when they're announced in January. A performance that rocks as well as this one can't not be recognized. Hurt nails it the way...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:44 AM on Sunday, September 25, 2005

Saturday, September 24, 2005

Stephen Frears' Mrs. Henderson Presents

Stephen Frears' Mrs. Henderson Presents is a nicely confident British period piece...funny, ascerbic, touching at times. And it sinks in, yes, but not that deeply -- it has that wry Frears sensibility, and satisfies only as far as it goes. If you're looking for a delightful time at the Royal in West Los Angeles, it does the trick...but it's not an A-list Best Picture contender. Why? It's more of a chuckler than a feeler -- it's emotionally earnest and Judy Dench is terrific in the lead role (ditto Bob Hoskins as her stage manager), but even with the dead-son element it doesn't quite...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:51 AM on Saturday, September 24, 2005

And yet Curtis Hanson's In

And yet Curtis Hanson's In Your Shoes, dismissed by a certain columnist as a good commercial film but not an awards-calibre thing, has an emotional resonance factor (it's not about shoes or bickering sisters but resolving family hurt) that might persuade some in the Academy to think about Oscar-ish distinctions. Maybe I'm alone on this one, but I don't think so. It got to me (and I can be kind of a hard-ass), and I've felt how it plays with a crowd. If any- one catches In Your Shoes at one of those sneak preview screenings being held across the country this evening...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:46 AM on Saturday, September 24, 2005

"A masterpiece of indirection and

"A masterpiece of indirection and pure visceral thrills, David Cronenberg's latest mindblower, A History of Violence, is the feel-good, feel-bad movie of the year," N.Y. Times critic Manohla Dargis declared in her 9.23 review. "That sounds far grimmer or at least more relentlessly grim than this shrewd, agile, often bitingly funny film plays. The great kick of [it] -- or rather, the great kick in the gut -- comes from Mr. Cronenberg's refusal to let us indulge in movie violence without paying a price. The man wants to make us suffer, exquisitely. Decades of mainlining blockbusters have, for better or perhaps for...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:56 AM on Saturday, September 24, 2005

A TV comedy show is

A TV comedy show is usually two things -- what the creators intend it to be in their heads as they're fine-tuning the season opener, and what the creators change it into after they've shifted into panic mode after an initial bad review or two, or when the ratings are much lower than expected. So let's see what happens with Comedy Central's The Showbiz Show with David Spade from here on...

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:29 AM on Saturday, September 24, 2005

The instant a film is

The instant a film is described as a "romantic comedy," it's dead to me. That's why I wouldn't watch Dirty Love on a plane...even if I was dead-bored. You can always depend on a "romantic comedy" to be arch, off-the-ground and phony as a three-dollar bill. There have been exceptions, yes, but 96% of the time the term means the movie will be farcical and dumb-assed. It will contain nothing angular or vaguely thoughtful, nothing perverse, no laughs... and it will have a juvenile and relentlessly hyper attitude about sex. It means loyal readers of Star, In Touch, People and Us will be...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 7:53 AM on Saturday, September 24, 2005

I don't believe in airing

I don't believe in airing dirty laundry if you're profiling someone involved with a new film (actor, director, etc.) for its own sake. However, you should absolutely get into it if it applies to the work. Naturally, being an L.A. Times piece, you won't find this criteria in Michael Goldman's interview with Jenny McCarthy about Dirty Love (First Look, 9.23). Starring and written by McCarthy, the film is described on the IMDB as "an edgy comedy about a girl who has fallen out of love" and more particularly about "a jilted photographer who sets off on a mission to get back at...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 7:09 AM on Saturday, September 24, 2005

Friday, September 23, 2005

I love that they're trying

I love that they're trying to sell the new four-disc Ben-Hur DVD to the religious right, offering to Christian retail outlets a "Ben-Hur Bible Study Guide" by the Rev. Robert H. Schuller and his son, the Rev. Robert A. Schuller, the co-chairmen of Crystal Cathedral Ministries. This is just as phony a sales pitch as the original author, General Lew Wallace, calling his book "A Tale of the Christ." As co-screenwriter Gore Vidal explains on the "making of" doc, Ben-Hur is the story of unrequited love, betrayal and revenge between a Jewish boy and a Roman boy. Rage and bitterness are washed clean...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 2:32 PM on Friday, September 23, 2005

Speaking to the Hollywood Reporter's

Speaking to the Hollywood Reporter's Anne Thompson, Steven Soderbergh says the "skewed studio system" -- i.e., the overall economics of cost vs. revenue -- "needs to be rethought. People need to be made true partners in the real risk/reward ratio. Everybody needs to be talking about fair compensation and participation. It can be done. The force of economics is irresistible." In other words, stars should risk it like the producers do...in line with the Robert Evans philosophy of "everybody risks it...if the movie hits, everybody makes out...if it doesn't, at least nobody gets hurt." That means putting a harness on their agents...

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:57 PM on Friday, September 23, 2005

You're hearing it here again,

You're hearing it here again, and I don't know anything except for having read the Jarhead script way back when and knowing how unshakably hard-core the "Troy" character is: Peter Sarsgaard is going to score big with his performance as this guy...the steely- eyed Marine buddy to Jake Gyllenhaal's Anthony Swofford character...the hard guy who never wavers or shudders or loses focus...who always has his shit wrapped tight. I haven't been to an early screening -- this is merely what I got when I met this guy on the page, and I'm just tellin' ya...

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:06 AM on Friday, September 23, 2005

On the other hand, I

On the other hand, I can understand a reader's reluctance to buy what I'm saying because I also claimed that Cameron Crowe's Elizabethtown was going to be the shit based on having read the script...and look what happened in Toronto. (The shorter version is about to be screened for the junketeers, but let me repeat that the longer version isn't a total wipeout because it finds the groove at roughly the halfway mark...it gradually becomes a film about what makes life joyful and worth hanging onto.) Scripts are blueprints -- when you read a good one you start directing the "movie" in your...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:57 AM on Friday, September 23, 2005

What happens when you see

What happens when you see Martin Scorsese's No Direction Home: Bob Dylan a second time? (My first exposure was in the Varsity 8 last Friday at the Toronto Film Festival.) This masterful doc, which I saw yesterday on the Paramount Home Video DVD, gets a little bit better because the basic theme seems that much clearer, and the half-ecstatic, half-tragic arc of Dylan's experience from '62 to '66 is that much harder to miss. Dylan's basic motto/game plan was to always live and work in a state of becoming -- no standing still, no looking back, always the next thing, etc. This was...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:25 AM on Friday, September 23, 2005

In a 3.16 lead piece

In a 3.16 lead piece called "9/11 Pitch Meeting," I argued that the story behind the forthcoming Oliver Stone 9/11 movie, about a couple of Port Authority police officers named Will Jimeno and John McLoughlin who found themselves buried inside a small pit under 20 feet of rubble after the collapse of the North Tower, and were eventually found and dug out, isn't nearly as intriguing as the story of Port Authority employee Pasquale Buzzelli. I've passed this along before...Buzzelli was the guy who was in a stairwell on the 22nd floor of the North Tower when it came crashing down...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 7:55 AM on Friday, September 23, 2005

In Glenn Whipp's interview piece

In Glenn Whipp's interview piece with Jodie Foster, she relates a story about seeing March of the Penguins with her two kids at a Sunday noontime matinee and getting into an argument with a woman who went "beserk" because one of her kids was talking in the usual piercing way that little kids talk and disturbing the vibe. "One son's older, so he was quiet all the time, but my little one says things like, 'Is that the baby? Is he carrying the egg?'" Foster relates. "And I'm trying to keep him quiet, but he's not screaming or anything. He's just asking...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 7:27 AM on Friday, September 23, 2005

If you want a demonstration

If you want a demonstration of how fair and thorough David Poland's Movie City News is in terms of links to showbiz stories on its main page, click on it right now. (I wrote this Friday morning at 7:19 am.) The link at the top of the page says "Kilday On The Doc Race for Oscar...But Leaves Out A Lot Of Titles, Including Sony Classics' Sundance Directing Winner The Devil & Daniel Johnston , Which Is Oscar Qualified." And of course, naturally ...you expected otherwise?...Poland ignored my lead piece on the exact same topic, which went up last night around 6:30...

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 7:08 AM on Friday, September 23, 2005

Thursday, September 22, 2005

A friend who's seen Martin

A friend who's seen Martin Campbell's The Legend of Zorro (Columbia, 10.28) says it runs something like two hours and fifteen minutes, give or take. If this sequel to Campbell's The Mask of Zorro (1998) is anything like its sire, Legend is going to be throwaway crap. (The trailer gives you ample indication of same.) If you're making a piece of glossy junk, it goes without saying you don't let it run too long. 95 to 100 minutes...105 or 110 minutes, tops. You certainly don't let it go as long as two hours, and anything longer than that would be burdensome beyond reason.

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:50 PM on Thursday, September 22, 2005

The Dangerous Lives of Altar

The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys, Panic Room, A Very Long Engagement...you can't help wondering why Jodie Foster agreed to star in Flightplan. Two-thirds of it is half decent, but what was the point? I'm told that the script, written by Peter A. Dowling and Billy Ray, has been kicking around for some time and that there was once a third-act resolution that involved terrorists. But the Islamic baddies were thrown out after 9.11 and eventually replaced with....here he comes!...aaahhh!....the former editor of The New Republic!

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:04 PM on Thursday, September 22, 2005

"There's no black and white,

"There's no black and white, left and right to me any more...there's only up or down. And down is very close to the ground, and I'm trying to go up without thinking about anything trivial, such as politics." -- Bob Dylan, as quoted by Martin Scorsese in No Direction Home: Bob Dylan. I want Todd Haynes to succeed with I'm Not There: Suppositions on a Film Concerning Dylan, which is in pre-production, but how can suppositions of any kind compete with majestic echoes?

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 6:10 PM on Thursday, September 22, 2005

Regarding "Violence"

Regarding Violence

If you've seen David Cronenberg's A History of Violence, you know it's a philoso- phical double-dealer, and this is what makes it a complex, cut-above film. It's not just saying violence is a kind of terrible virus -- it's also saying it has a way of turning us on.

When Jack (Ashton Holmes), the son of cafe owner Tom Stall (Viggo Mortenson), defuses a potentially violent encounter with a school bully by sarcastically acknow- ledging the other guy's alpha male superiority, etc., you admire Jack for being a hip and clever guy.

Viggo Mortenson as...

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 6:01 PM on Thursday, September 22, 2005

Wednesday, September 21, 2005

This Is Bad

This Is Bad

I can't overstate what a besotted, drugged-out feeling it is to be back in Los Angeles...to once again stand on the roof of a certain West Hollywood high-rise and smell the faintly noxious air and gaze out at the milky haze and tell myself, "It's okay...despair not."

There is only way to live in this town and that's to crawl into the cave of your own head and your work, and to feed off screenings and DVDs and the faces and bodies of pretty women, and to savor those special times in which you happen to be in the company...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 3:33 PM on Wednesday, September 21, 2005

Tuesday, September 20, 2005

With Serenity due to open

With Serenity due to open in ten days, I can feel the words taking shape in my head: "Get Joss Whedon." (Yesterday's misspelling was unfortunate, I agree.) Does this mean we should try and "get" Whedon in the sense of trashing his movie, fixing his game, beating him up in an alley, etc.? Not necessarily. Does it mean we should try to really get Whedon in the sense of arriving at a more profound understanding of who this ultra-crafty guy really is and what his wowser films are about deep down? I'm not certain. Thoughts?

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 6:24 PM on Tuesday, September 20, 2005

Writing about Bubble, a certain

Writing about Bubble, a certain columnist has said, "Steven Sodebergh's most recent experiment has journalists with no actual depth of insight who were outraged by previous experiments flip-flopping and somehow embracing this one...and vice versa." That's a direct reference to, among I-don't-know-how- many-others, myself...I'm one of those "with no actual depth of insight." I don't know how to say it in a limited space, but Bubble is (a) not as whack-cool as Soderbergh's Schizopolis but (b) it's way, way cooler than Full Frontal, which put Soderbergh into the critical doghouse. I could watch it another four or five times easily, but I don't...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 6:14 PM on Tuesday, September 20, 2005

Monday, September 19, 2005

The Guardian's John Patterson hates

The Guardian's John Patterson hates Madonna and Guy Ritchie... whatever...but his 9.17 tear-down piece is wrong about two things: (1) Madonna's palatial home near the Hollywood Reservoir was not in Silver Lake and didn't even border on it -- it was adjacent to Beachwood Canyon and is therefore smack dab in Hollywood; and (2) his observation that Madonna had to be "either terribly thick-skinned or terribly thick-headed" by continuing to make movies "after the quadruple-whammy of Shanghai Surprise, Body Of Evidence, Four Rooms and Evita" is 75% correct. Evita is a completely honorable and (for me) curiously touching film. I've...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:35 AM on Monday, September 19, 2005

Good God...$50 bucks a year

Good God...$50 bucks a year to henceforth access all sections of the N.Y. Times online.

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:34 AM on Monday, September 19, 2005

Back to Los Angeles and

Back to Los Angeles and the real world starting today...not a pleasant thought. In fact, I am filled with dread. The best film opening this coming Friday (9/23), hands down, is David Cronenberg's A History of Violence. There's also Flightplan, which I haven't seen. Plus Polanksi's Oliver Twist, The Prizewinner of Defiance, Ohio (Woody Harrelson's character seems like such an asswipe in the trailer), and Tim Burton's Corpse Bride.

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:27 AM on Monday, September 19, 2005

Saturday, September 17, 2005

The Thing About My Folks,

The Thing About My Folks, that amusing and surprisingly touching little family film with Paul Reiser and Peter Falk?...the one I first wrote about after seeing it at the Santa Barbara Film Festival last February? It opened limited yesterday (9.16) and...well, do what you think is best. It's not a Luchino Visconti film but it has a certain caringness about it...paternal love, compassion, recognizable family values. "With movies that are quality-level and playing well, there's two kinds of buzz -- good word-of-mouth and what we call compelling word-of-mouth," Jeff Dowd said earlier this year. "The Thing About My Folks has compelling...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:38 AM on Saturday, September 17, 2005

Whenever I think back upon

Whenever I think back upon the lightning-in-a-bottle period in Bob Dylan's career, the time ('62 to mid '66) when he wasn't just the greatest '60s generation poet-troubador of all time but someone (or something) who wasn't just cable-connected to the heart of the early to mid '60s tumult but in various ways was a kind of Zeus figure, sculpting and cutting through to the bone and voicing the whole evolving drama in head-turning verse...I just crumble inside. More often than not I think of the lyric Dylan wrote for a sad song from "Nashville Skyline" that went, "Once I had mountains in the...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 6:45 AM on Saturday, September 17, 2005

I saw Phillis Nagy's Mrs.

I saw Phillis Nagy's Mrs. Harris, an HBO movie that will air sometime in early '06, at Roy Thomson Hall last night with two women friends who are...well, agreeably seasoned. The film is a restrained (read: more than a bit dull) account of the downfall of Jean Harris (Annette Bening), the teacher who shot and killed Scarsdale Diet guru Herman Tarnower (Ben Kingsley). The film reminds us that powerful men who are used to getting what they want can be heartless dogs, and that women of taste and refinement sometimes throw caution to the wind in getting involved with guys of this sort,...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 6:19 AM on Saturday, September 17, 2005

I've seen so many good

I've seen so many good films at the Toronto Film Festival, I'm feeling a little worn down. This one's Oscar-worthy, that one's stellar, this one stirred me to the depths of my soul...gimme a break already. It's almost like I need to see a few stinkers now (or well-made worthy film that I simply don't care for...whatever) just to restore my sense of equilibirium. Peter Jackson, I miss you.

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 6:02 AM on Saturday, September 17, 2005

Drive a mint-condition Mercedes sedan

Drive a mint-condition Mercedes sedan into the middle of any dirt-poor neighborhood and then park it and leave it there -- the next morning it will be completely stripped. Leave a fresh and untouched edition of the Wall Street Journal and the Toronto Globe & Mail on a dining table at the Manulife Center early Friday morning during a visit to the local facilities, and when you return the two papers will either have been fully leafed through or flat-out stolen. Like Alaskan wolves or wild dogs roaming the plains of Africa, movie journalists cruise the Manulife Centre looking for fresh and free...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 5:47 AM on Saturday, September 17, 2005

I gave up on doing

I gave up on doing columns on just Wednesday and Friday during the Toronto Film Festival...or at least, I put up a new lead story a lot more often, whenever something happened or the spirit moved, etc. I kind of liked doing this. Keep adding, keep rolling...keep it fluid and malleable. I'm thinking I should maybe keep on like this.

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 5:42 AM on Saturday, September 17, 2005

Friday, September 16, 2005

You didn't hear it from

You didn't hear it from me, but don't be too surprised if you read about Miramax president Daniel Battsek acquiring distrib rights to Gavin Hood's Tsotsi, a flat-out extraordinary South African drama based on a novel by Athol Fugard. I finally saw it yesterday afternoon after being badgered to death by Donna Daniels' publicity team for the last two or three weeks to do just that. Set in a Johannesburg shantytown, Tsotsi (pronounced "Sawt-see") is about a bloodless teenage thug (Presley Chweneyagae) who discovers a measure of humanity in himself when he starts to care for an infant who happened to be in...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 6:50 AM on Friday, September 16, 2005

Thursday, September 15, 2005

Toronto's Eleven

Toronto's Eleven

I've only been coming here since '98, but it seemed to me like the best Toronto Film Festival ever. Too many good films, too many I didn't get to see, the energy always there...every day felt like a full deck.

I saw (or re-saw) eleven films here that I know will matter in terms of awards or box-office or causing some kind of a stir over the next thirteen and a half weeks, and that felt fairly bountiful.

Brokeback Mountain costars Heath Ledger, Michelle Williams

I'm just sorry that the festival fathers didn't...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 7:57 PM on Thursday, September 15, 2005

John Turturro's Romance & Cigarettes

John Turturro's Romance & Cigarettes is somewhere between being admirably brave, extremely amusing and horribly embarassing for everyone concerned, including those in the audience. But then you're always risking pain when you make a musical, and you can't say that Turturro doesn't have creative cojones. A story about infidelity, stifled dreams and floundering family values among working-class types in Queens and Brooklyn, Cigarettes is at least something "different." And it's extremely comforting that the actors don't wail and croon on their own...they do it karaoke-style (i.e., on top of established recordings on the soundtrack). They also indulge in some half-assed dancing here and...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 6:19 AM on Thursday, September 15, 2005

I have a screening to

I have a screening to catch in less than two hours and doing my usual early-morning nutso thing, and Robert Wise has just died at the age of 91. I'm sorry it finally happened, but Wise had a rich life and a distinguished career as a director for about 20 years, from the late '40s to late '60s. It was 37 years ago when Wise seemed to surrender the ghost with the arrival of Star!, that godawful Julie Andrews musical debacle that permanently clouded Wise's reputation as a director who occasionally mattered. Star! made him into a joke. The irony is that two...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 5:26 AM on Thursday, September 15, 2005

We're supposed to be in

We're supposed to be in a wind-down phase at the Toronto Film Festival, but there are still several...well, a few intriguing films left to see. At the top of the anyone's list has to be Martin Scorsese's 201 minute No Direction Home: Bob Dylan, even though it'll shortly play on PBS, Gavin Hood's Tsotsi (which a friend saw last night and raved about), Annette Bening and Ben Kingsley in Mrs. Harris, Hermine Huntgeburth's The White Masai, and my three cleanup viewings -- The War Within, The Notorious Bettie Page and Harsh Times.

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 5:01 AM on Thursday, September 15, 2005

David Ayer's Harsh Times, a

David Ayer's Harsh Times, a violent Los Angeles-based drama starring Christian Bale and Freddy Rodriguez, has been acquired for distribution by Bauer Martinez Distribution, the new theatrical distribution arm of Bauer Martinez Studios. (Apologies for the earlier error naming Lions Gate as the distributor.) It will have one final Toronto Film festival screening on Saturday evening, which I plan to attend. Movie City News is calling it "Crash for one" while another observer has described it as "a lot like Training Day, but with more of a gritty approach, and with actors who seem actually believable...which makes sense since it's based on the...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:34 AM on Thursday, September 15, 2005

Wednesday, September 14, 2005

I can see why Fox

I can see why Fox Searchlight and Paramount Classics were fighting over the U.S. distribution rights to Jason Reitman's Thank You For Smoking. (Fox Searchlight won.) The script is very witty and sharp. The dialogue, if nothing else (and there's plenty else, starting with Aaron Eckhardt's performance as Washington, D.C.'s all-time smoothest pro-tobacco lobbyist)...if nothing else describing the rationale "I have a mortgage to pay" as a "yuppie Nuremberg defense" will give it a kind of instant fame in chat rooms and cocktail parrties. Okay, somebody is now going to tell me that some comic coined the "yuppie Nuremberg defense" term ten or...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:59 AM on Wednesday, September 14, 2005

I saw Curtis Hanson's In

I saw Curtis Hanson's In Her Shoes (20th Century Fox, 10.7) this morning and it got me. It's "commercial," yes, but not in the pat sense of that term -- this is the best classy chick flick since Terms of Endearment, and they both have award-level Shirley MacLaine performances. Once you get past the first half-hour, which has a rote, almost sitcommy flavor and is all about showing us what an infantile self-destructive screw-up Cameron Diaz's character is (and why her older sister, played by Toni Collete, is perfectly justified in wanting her out of her life), In Her Shoes starts to touch...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:28 AM on Wednesday, September 14, 2005

Tuesday, September 13, 2005

Niki Caro's North Country is

Niki Caro's North Country is an honestly acted, decently assembled 1989 period drama about a landmark class-action sexual harassment case, but it feels way familiar and is nowhere near surprising or "whoa" enough to make you tell your friends to stop what they're doing and go see it...although it is a sturdy, close-to-first-rate effort. It's a little slow at times. For a movie that's about a real-life courtroom case, it feels a bit curious that the idea of single-mom-and-coal-miner Charlize Theron suing the mining company she's been woriking for doesn't come up until the movie has been running for a good hour and...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 5:01 AM on Tuesday, September 13, 2005

Suddenly, starting yesterday (i.e., Monday)

Suddenly, starting yesterday (i.e., Monday) morning, all those vaguely bothersome humanoids with industry passes started cramming into the press and industry screenings, and within hours journos were heard bitching to one another about getting shut out of showings of essential-to-see films. I couldn't get into Mary Harron's The Notorious Bettie Page and then I was shut out of Michael Winterbottom's Tristram Shandy. And yet this morning I got into the 10 a.m. Walk the Line press screening without any difficulty. Peter Howell told me that local Fox publicists had a well-attended press screening a couple of weeks ago, so maybe that was why....Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:50 AM on Tuesday, September 13, 2005

It's not that I haven't

It's not that I haven't been seeing films the last couple of days, or thought through my various reactions. I've seen Niki Caro's North Country, Michael Haneke's Cache (finally, after missing it in Cannes last May), Liev Schrieber's Everything is Illluminated, Andrucha Waddington's The House of Sand, Laurent Cantet's Heading South, et. al. There have been two or three others, but none have so moved me to my core that it has felt mandatory that I file an immediate review. That's been my policy for the last couple of days...fuck it. But I guess I'd better put something down about something...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:48 AM on Tuesday, September 13, 2005

Apparently enough people who saw

Apparently enough people who saw James Mangold's Walk the Line a couple of months ago told Fox publicists that portions of it were too much like Taylor Hackford's Ray (early stuff showing a very young Johnny Cash growing up impoverished with his family in the rural south, and particularly the death of his brother). So a few trims were allegedly made in this section, etc. But the version I saw this morning (i.e., the 10 am screening on Tuesday, 9.13) doesn't seem any different than the one I saw in Manhattan in mid-July, so I don't know what's up here. More later...

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:41 AM on Tuesday, September 13, 2005

Monday, September 12, 2005

Curried Hell

Girl Power

It was early Wednesday afternoon, and I was standing in the hallway of the 26th floor of Toronto's Four Season's hotel, waiting for my ten-minute quickie with In Her Shoes director Curtis Hanson.

And then a door opened about three feet away and Shoes costar Shirley Maclaine, who owns each and every scene she appears in, peeked out and said hello.

A Fox publicist sitting to MacLaine's left smiled and nonchalantly said "hey." I forget how Maclaine replied, but I think she was mainly looking to take a breather.

In Her Shoes star Toni...

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:24 PM on Monday, September 12, 2005

Guess what's surprisingly good? And

Guess what's surprisingly good? And is easily one of the best edited films I've seen at the Toronto Film festival so far, not to mention one of the most unsettling and a dead-serious spiritual seeker? Abel Ferrara's Mary, which I saw Sunday night at the Isabel Bader theatre. I didn't have many hopes for this thing because -- frankly? -- I've been wondering about Ferrara lately. How long has it been since he's really hit the mark, which I guess was Bad Lieutenant in '92? Half improvised and half "written" by Ferrara and Simone Lageoles and one or two others, and excitingly captured...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:03 AM on Monday, September 12, 2005

Congratulations to Sony Pictures Classics

Congratulations to Sony Pictures Classics for acquiring Tommy Lee Jones' The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada...and I'm sure everyone concerned is breathing a huge sigh of relief. A film as good as this one (which everyone saw in Cannes last May) deserves to be released during Oscar season, but the clock was ticking all summer long and no distribution deal. In her story about the pickup, the Hollywood Reporter's Anne Thompson said that Europa Corp., the film's producer, had been asking $6 million for the film but that Sony did not meet that price. However, SPC did agree that Jones would...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 3:47 AM on Monday, September 12, 2005

Sunday, September 11, 2005

Cheers to the Brokeback Mountain

Cheers to the Brokeback Mountain team -- director Ang Lee, producer James Schamus and Focus Features -- for having taken the Golden Lion (i.e., the best feature prize) at the just-wrapped Venice Film Festival. A BBC report claims that George Clooney's Good Night, and Good Luck "had been the hot favourite among film critics to take the Golden Lion," but at least David Straitharn -- Good Night's Edward R. Murrow -- took the Best Actor prize, and Good Night's screenplay, by Clooney and Grant Heslov, was named best also. And...wow, this is a head-turner...director Abel Ferrara won the Jury Grand...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 6:08 AM on Sunday, September 11, 2005

There's apparently some concern at

There's apparently some concern at Sony/Columbia about Rob Marshall's Memoirs of a Geisha (Columbia, 12.9), a pricey period drama and a presumed Oscar contender (in the costume and production design categories, at least). The story is about how a young girl (Zhang Ziyi) "transcends" her fishing-village roots and becomes one of Japan's most celebrated geishas. Research has apparently indicated that the exotic story elements (the film is set in Japan in the 1930s and '40s) aren't being understood and/or absorbed as clearly as Sony would like, so Cold Mountain director Anthony Minghella has been brought in to write some voice-over narration. Adding narration...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 6:06 AM on Sunday, September 11, 2005

Some buyers told me yesterday

Some buyers told me yesterday about a couple of recently-arisen festival favorites. First and foremost is Ward Serrill's The Heart of the Game, a doc about the development of a naturally talented female basketball player from Seattle over a six-year period. The festival program calls it a film about "girls, basketball and the evolving relationship of race and sports in the United States," blah, blah. (It screens at 11:15 this morning at the Cumberland. Will Hollywood Elsewhere manage to attend or will the slow-motion rigors of posting a fresh column interfere once again, for the 349th time?) The other one to...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 5:38 AM on Sunday, September 11, 2005

About halfway through a chat

About halfway through a chat I had last night with documentarian Eugene Jarecki, director of Why We Fight (and the excellent The Trial of Henry Kissinger, which I saw here in Toronto in '03), I asked if he's given any thought to shooting a documentary about the ongoing Katrina disaster, which would naturally include the Bush administration's sluggish response to the crisis. He said it would be an absolute natural, but that he's focusing right now on promoting Why We Fight, etc. And then I went to Jeannette Walls' column this morning and read that Michael Moore is said to be...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:48 AM on Sunday, September 11, 2005

Friday, September 9, 2005

Stephen Frears' Mrs. Henderson Presents

Stephen Frears' Mrs. Henderson Presents showed this morning at 9 a.m., and it's obviously going to be huge with the over-30 crowd (an exhibitor suggested after the screening that it could make as much as $100 million) and without question provide Judy Dench with an Oscar nomination for Best Actress. It may even nudge itself into the Best Picture competish. "Inspired" by a true story, it's a British period piece (late '30s, Word War II) about a spirited and snobbish widow from the upper classes (Dench) who buys a debilitated London theatre, revovates it, and then hires a dignified old-school producer (Bob Hoskins)...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:53 AM on Friday, September 9, 2005

Danis Tanovic's L'Enfer, which was

Danis Tanovic's L'Enfer, which was press screened Thursday afternoon and which I was fairly pleased with (although it doesn't stand up to Tanovic's No Man's Land), is getting zapped. A Variety critic I just spoke to hasn't seen it, but he just told me he's heard from three different people that the Tanovic is "just plain bad," "don't bother," "not well directed," etc. Apart from my view that these folks are being way too harsh and dismissive, it reminds me once again how varied reactions can be at a festival of this calibre with all kinds of headstrong know-it-alls chit-chatting a film up...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:44 AM on Friday, September 9, 2005

I've been watching festival movies

I've been watching festival movies for exactly one day and already I despise that Universal-produced trailer that exhorts audiences to show some love for the festival volunteers. It starts with a small team of filmmakers taking bows in front of a big festival and receiving modest applause, and then after they leave the stage a lone festival volunteer comes on stage to turn off the mike and the crowd rises to its feet and cheers him like he's a pre-couch-bouncing Tom Cruise. It's sickening, and I have to watch this thing every day, probably two or three times a day, for the next...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:53 AM on Friday, September 9, 2005

Disney is junket-screening Robert Schwentke's

Disney is junket-screening Robert Schwentke's Flightplan (9.23), the Jodi Foster thriller about a mother who can't find her daughter aboard a plane, in Toronto. The talk among festival-attending journos was that it probably was nothing to run over and catch with any particular haste. This is wildly speculative, but one big-name reporter assumes that Disney's decision to have its L.A. all-media screening only two days before the national opening is indicative of quality issues.

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:46 AM on Friday, September 9, 2005

Daily Mail columnist Baz Bamigboye

Daily Mail columnist Baz Bamigboye also had mixed reactions to Cameron Crowe's Elizabethtown while attending the Venice Film Festival. He also says that the party thrown at that festival for the film was "flat," which has nothing to do with Paramount's decision not to throw any kind of shindig here, and yet the meaning or import of the no-Toronto-party decision has been a matter of discussion among journos. Crowe films are regarded by most journos as semi-events, and the Toronto Film Festival's hosting of Crowe's Almost Famous in 2000 was treated by DreamWorks as a very big deal with a very swanky party....Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:35 AM on Friday, September 9, 2005

No clear consensus among journos

No clear consensus among journos as to which may be the better movie about a Middle Eastern suicide bomber who experiences second thoughts -- Joseph Castelo's The War Within (Magnolia, 9.30), which is set in Manhattan, spoken in New Yawkese and is about "a Pakistani involved in a planned attack in New York City experiences a crisis of conscience," or Hany Abu-Assad's Assad's Paradise Now Paradise Now (Warner Independent, 10.28), which is set in Israel, spoken in native tongues and, according to a 9.6 piece in the New York Times, is about "two young Palestinians who volunteer to become...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:11 AM on Friday, September 9, 2005

Thursday, September 8, 2005

Toronto Shake

Master Builder

Sydney Pollack's Sketches of Frank Gehry , which I caught yesterday at a public screening at the historic Elgin theatre, is a stirring, hugely likable portrait of the most daring and innovative architect of our time.

As corny as this sounds, Sketches left me with a more vivid feeling of celebration and with more reasons to feel enthused and excited about life than anything I've seen so far at this festival.

Director Sydney Pollack, architect Frank Gehry at Saturday afternoon's cocktail party for Sketches of Frank Gehry in downtown Toronto -- 9.10, 6:25 pm.

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:49 PM on Thursday, September 8, 2005

I don't know why I

I don't know why I keep referring to this as a nine-day festival. In its fullest, most alive state, the Toronto Film Festival is intended to last for roughly six and a half days..sorta half-assedly starting today, September 8th, but really starting on the morning of Friday, the 9th, and ending sometime in the middle of Thursday, the 15th. All the hot films and hot parties are front-loaded (i.e., standard procedure for every big-time festival these days), with quasi-leftover clean-up movies like Mrs. Harris, The Matador and Edison trying to derive whatever energy or enthusiasm may be left during the last two and...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 6:08 AM on Thursday, September 8, 2005

Which relatively unheralded film will

Which relatively unheralded film will be the first surprise must-see... the first stop-what-you're-doing-and-see-this-film no matter what? And which medium-profile release with big names will be the first to bomb out, like The Human Stain did two years ago?

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 5:28 AM on Thursday, September 8, 2005

It's 8:40 ayem in Toronto

It's 8:40 ayem in Toronto on the first day of the festival, and a loud rumble was just heard over the city, followed by rain showers. Not a "bad omen" or anything, but I'm thinking twice about catching the 9:30 a.m. screening of The President's Last Bang...because I don't have an umbrella and it's warm and cozy where I'm sitting. And no, I don't anticipate that my Toronto Film Festival "Word" items over the next nine or ten days will be as banal as this one.

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:41 AM on Thursday, September 8, 2005

Wednesday, September 7, 2005

Cash It

Cash It

Walk the Line (20th Century Fox, 11.18), a frank, straight-from the-shoulder biopic about the late Johnny Cash, is making a lot of moves right now. It played Telluride last week and will hit the Toronto Film Festival very soon, so I guess it's time to jump in.

I was cool with it, felt good about it and admired it in most of the ways that usually count. For above all (and because there are many pleasures in the way it unfolds), Walk the Line is a solid, strongly composed thing -- cleanly rendered and always touching the bottom of the pool....Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 7:39 AM on Wednesday, September 7, 2005

Tuesday, September 6, 2005

Phillip Seymour Hoffman's performance as

Phillip Seymour Hoffman's performance as Truman Capote in Bennett Miller's Capote "was the talk" of the last week's Telluride Film Festival, the Hollywood Reporter's Anne Thompson has written, which has led to presumptions that "an Oscar nomination for Hoffman [is] inevitable." In other words, Thompson and her Rocky Mountain ilk, many or most of whom were "wowed" by the performance, are more or less concurring with my view in last Wednesday's column that Hoffman "is right at the top of my list right now -- he's the guy to beat in the Best Actor category. Anyone who's seen Capote...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:29 AM on Tuesday, September 6, 2005

Monday, September 5, 2005

There's a view that advance-praising

There's a view that advance-praising a film or setting up high expectations before it gets seen at a film festival, as I may have done in the case of Cameron Crowe's Elizabethtown in last Saturday's Peter Howell/Toronto Star forecast piece, is not necessarily desirable because it sets the movie up for a fall. By this criteria or scenario or what-have-you, someone else coming along and going "nyah, nyah...Garden State was better," as Variety's Leslie Felperin has done in her review out of the Venice Film Festival, balances the high-expectation effect, which I guess is a good or at least...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:00 PM on Monday, September 5, 2005

"One of the creepier vanities

"One of the creepier vanities of most political leaders is the private yearning to be tested on a historical scale," writes David Remnick in this week's New Yorker, in a piece about Bush's response to the New Orleans-Katrina disaster. "Bill Clinton used to confide that, no matter what else he did as President, without a major war to fight he could never join the ranks of Lincoln and F.D.R. During the Presidential debates in 2000, George W. Bush informed his opponent, Al Gore, that natural catastrophes are 'a time to test your mettle.' Bush had seen his father falter after a...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 7:53 PM on Monday, September 5, 2005

I don't care if Sean

I don't care if Sean Penn's boat sprang a leak. I respect the way he got out there and gave it up and reached out to people in New Orleans who needed help. What is there not to admire and salute about this? Just wait for some rightie dickhead columnist to try and make fun of this in some way...just wait.

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:38 PM on Monday, September 5, 2005

Sunday, September 4, 2005

All great persons are like

All great persons are like gangsters. All small persons are like prostitutes.

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 7:06 PM on Sunday, September 4, 2005

Two favorable (one could even

Two favorable (one could even say glowing) Venice Film Festival trade reviews (from Variety's Todd McCarthy and the Hollywood Reporter's Ray Bennett) of Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain graze on one side of the pasture...fine, good grass, etc. But a "whoa there, cowboy!" review from Movie City News David Poland out of Telluride suggests the possibility of gopher holes, Liberty Valance-type adversaries and unfriendly Comanches whooping and shooting arrows in the weeks and months ahead. I also need to take exception with Bennett's lead observation, to wit: "Everything you ever imagined about the characters of John Wayne...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:01 AM on Sunday, September 4, 2005

I asked a friend visiting

I asked a friend visiting the Telluride Film Festival about Poland's "whoa, cowboy!" reaction and he answered, "I loved Brokeback. I was overcome with so much emotion. It's ultimately about repressing who you are, and it's done very honestly. [Variety's] Pete Hammond loved it too. It played extremely well, and I've spoken with a lot of straight guys here who were shocked how much they liked it."

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 7:23 AM on Sunday, September 4, 2005

In her Venice Film Festival

In her Venice Film Festival review of Steven Soderbergh's Bubble (which will soon play at the Toronto Film Festival), Variety's Deborah Young says that Ocean's Eleven and Ocean's Twelve "must have lit a fire under Soderbergh to direct a film that is, in spirit, far from Hollywood" and so rife with social commentary and "sly humor." For his story about the lives of three doll factory workers in financially-depressed Ohio, Soderbergh "uses a non-pro cast to deftly sketch the dullness of a mid-American burg, whose sheer normality could set the scene for a Stephen King horror extravaganza [in which] an unmotivated...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 7:01 AM on Sunday, September 4, 2005

Saturday, September 3, 2005

I haven't read anything or

I haven't read anything or spoken to anyone about Laurent Cantet's Vers le sud, which will show at the Toronto Film Festival. But the following description of it (provided by TIFF director Piers Handling) in Peter Howell's insider-forecast piece ("The Buzz Stops Here"") in the 9.3 Toronto Star strikes me as odd. "I loved Cantet's last film, Time-Out," Handling explains, "and this take on three middle-aged (North American) women in Haiti looking for sex and companionship from the islanders is bound to be smart, intelligent and well-acted." Hold on...middle-aged North American women looking for sex in with Haitian islanders?

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:17 PM on Saturday, September 3, 2005

Oh, yeah...Howell contacted me for

Oh, yeah...Howell contacted me for the same piece, and here's what I said about three eagerly awaited Toronto Film Festival selections (among many others): (1) Elizabethtown, directed and written by Cameron Crowe: "I've read the script so I know what it more or less is, and unless Crowe is suffering from a drug-dependency problem or has somehow lost his ability to direct movies as skilfully as he has before, it's simply going to be one the festival's best.' (2) Bubble, directed by Steven Soderbergh: "Sooner or later Soderbergh is going to pull himself out of his slump, and he's always better...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:01 PM on Saturday, September 3, 2005

Friday, September 2, 2005

In keeping with the theme

In keeping with the theme of the week, and given a certain name at the top of most readers' hit lists, I give you the uniform of our discontent. A simple shirt with a complex message. Check out the ad on the left under the Discland blurb.

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:35 PM on Friday, September 2, 2005

Here's what Glenn Sumi of

Here's what Glenn Sumi of Now, the Toronto weekly, is saying about Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain: "This eagerly anticipated film, based on Anne Proulx's short story, tracks the decades-long love affair between two cowboys. Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger) meet and eventually merge while herding sheep on a mountain, and though both get married and live in different states, they occasionally hook up to go 'fishing,' although that's not enough for Jack, the more needy of the two. After all the thinly veiled homo-eroticism in westerns, there's something cathartic about seeing men go homo on the range, and...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:30 AM on Friday, September 2, 2005

Limits of Charm

Limits of Charm

It's not "nice" to have a Keira Knightley problem. Speaking against a beautiful spirited young woman never wins you any favors. It is seen as impolite and ungentlemanly, and perhaps even uncouth. But I can't suppress it any longer.

She's 20 years old and beautiful and a near-star...her face on the one-sheets, her name in the gossip columns. And she keeps making film after film. Her next outing is Domino (New Line, 10.14), a Tony Scott urban actioner, and then comes Pride and Prejudice (Focus Features, 11.18) and then, early next July, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:16 AM on Friday, September 2, 2005

Thursday, September 1, 2005

I don't know why Robert

I don't know why Robert Towne's Ask the Dust didn't make the Telluride Film Festival line-up. I know there was a definite interest in showing it there, but I guess it wasn't quite fine-tuned enough. (Towne told me a few weeks ago he wasn't sure if it would be done in time.) But the festival is certainly showing Edmond, a David Mamet downer drama abut Bill Macy wandering around a city in a state of suicidal depression; Bennett Miller's Capote; Liev Schreiber's Everything is Illuminated, Scott McGehee and David Siegel's Bee Season; James Mangold's Walk the Line with Joaquin Phoenix and...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 2:02 PM on Thursday, September 1, 2005

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