Since I have to get my Toronto wish list down from 40 to 30 films (to be seen over nine days, starting on 9.9), here are some films I’m thinking of jettisoning. I’m aware of the cruel-sounding nature of this procedure, but I don’t know what else to do. I don’t want to dump any of these — I want to see everything — but something’s got to go.

Special Presentation Dumps (6): Brighton Rock (d: Rowan Joffe); Cirkus Columbia (d: Danis Tanovic); Henry’s Crime (d: Malcolm Venville); Love Crime (d: Alain Corneau); Stone (d: John Curran); The Whistleblower (d: Larysa Kondracki).

Gala Dumps (5): Barney’s Version (d: Richard J. Lewis);...

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I’ve seen the wholly respectable Secretariat (Disney, 10.8) but can’t get into it without a green light. The rules are the rules. But it’s great watching the various YouTube videos of the 1973 Kentucky Derby, the Preakness and the astonishing finale at the Belmont Stakes.

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“Like many changes that are revolutionary, none of Washington’s problems happened overnight. But slow and steady change over many decades — at a rate barely noticeable while it’s happening — produces change that is transformative. In this instance, it’s the kind of evolution that happens inevitably to rich and powerful states, from imperial Rome to Victorian England. The neural network of money, politics, bureaucracy, and values becomes so tautly interconnected that no individual part can be touched or fixed without affecting the whole organism, which reacts defensively.

“And thus a new president, who was elected with 53 percent of the popular vote, and who began office with 80 percent public-approval ratings and large majorities in both houses of Congress, found himself for much of his first year in office in stalemate, pronounced an...

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I tried seeing John Scheinfeld‘s Who Is Harry Nilsson? once more a couple of weeks ago, but I could only make it up to the point when he finishes 1971′s Nilsson Schmillson, after which it was all downhill.

I just can’t stand watching people destroy themselves. And yet for some reason these John and Harry pics, taken during their infamous Troubadour fracas on 3.12.74, always bring on the chuckles. Famous and gifted people getting all primitive and sandbox. The baser the emotions, the funnier it seems.

Scheinfeld’s doc opens at the Cinema Village on 9.12, or smack dab in the middle of the...

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Earlier today Movieline reported the Jim Cameron vs. Mark Canton battle over Piranha 3D, which Cameron basically feels is a sleazy and essentially worthless piece of shit.

“I tend almost never to throw other films under the bus,” Cameron said last week, “but Piranha 3D is exactly an example of what we should not be doing in 3D. Because it just cheapens the medium and reminds you of the bad 3D horror films from the 70s and 80s, like Friday the 13th 3D. When movies got to the bottom of the barrel of their creativity and at the last gasp of their financial lifespan, they did a 3D version to get the last few drops of blood out of the turnip.”

At the beginning of

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The Guardian‘s Shane Danielson took issue today with a sentiment I posted on 8.13 about the extraordinary clarity in the forthcoming Psycho Bluray (which has already been released in England).

I said I “love being able to see stuff that you weren’t intended to see” — like the pancake makeup on Martin Balsam’s face in a certain closeup — “but which Blu-ray has now revealed.” Danielson says he’d prefer it if Bluray transfers looked less exacting and...

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It’s being widely reported/repeated that a CBS News/Vanity Fair poll has found that three out of four Americans haven’t been turned off by Mel Gibson‘s ugliness, and would probably pay to see him in Jodie Foster‘s The Beaver.

If, that is, Summit had the smarts and chutzpah to release it, which of course they don’t. Because they’re worried about industry consensus and all that. On 7.10 I explained the reasons for ignoring the

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Anton Corbijn‘s The American (Focus Features, 9.1) is a moderately soothing art piece and an excellent Machete antidote. After you’ve had your blood sausage and micro-waved tacos, The American will feel like a drink of cool mountain water. It’s certainly a tasteful walk (wank?) in the woods. You’ll feel unsullied when it’s over, and gratified that Corbijn and Focus Features respect you, and are not treating you the way Robert Rodriguez treats his fans. This is the other side of the mountain.

Georeg Clooney, Violante Placido in Anton Corbijn’s The American.

And yet there’s something about The American — a lot actually — that feels tastefully repressed and mummified. It’s vaguely Antonioni-ish but at the same time not really because it...

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Late last March Tim Blake Nelson‘s Leaves of Grass was set to open at Manhattan’s Angelika — a bad place to see a film. But then it was yanked at the last minute. Telepathic Studios had bought distrib rights from First Look’s Avi Lerner, allowing for a much wider opening than Lerner had planned.

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I’m polishing my review of Anton Corbijn‘s The American, which I saw last night at the AMC 19th Street. But I first need to explain the absurd circumstances it was shown under. This is one of the quietest films I’ve seen in in my life — George Clooney raises his voice slightly once or twice, and nobody ever shouts — but during the entire thing the dialogue was competing with and mostly losing to an unusually loud air-conditioning system in the theatre.

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Contrary to what Hitfix‘s Greg Ellwood reported a day or two ago, there will be a press screening of Clint Eastwood‘s Hereafter during the Toronto Film Festival. It’ll happen a day before Sunday evening’s public screening at the Elgin (9.12, 9 pm) — on Saturday, 3 pm at the Scotiabank plex.

Update: The press screening schedule for the New York Film Festival was sent out this afternoon, and Hereafter — part of the 2010 slate — wasn’t on it.

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Another no-laugh-funny “comedy”, although I grin every time I think back on it. Director Frank Perry really knew how to convey that lackadaisical ’70s thing — casually hip and born to swagger. Every character was a “character” in this film. Eccentric, imaginative, unsettled, peculiar. (Megan Fox would fit right in if somebody were to try an exact remake.) Those muttering scenes between Harry Dean Stanton (Curt) and Richard Bright (Burt) were classic. I would have films like this again.

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Diablo Cody‘s 8.29 Red Band Trailer interview is with Megan Fox. It gets pretty good when they talk about how shallow and predatory many journalists have become. (A brief transcript follows the video.) I love Cody’s observation that Fox has a skewed sensibility and that press people don’t know how to handle beauty mixed with perversity. Fox’s handicap, I feel, is her thin and reedy voice. It doesn’t suggest rivers of soul or passion. Beep-beep-beepity-beep-beep-beepity-beep.

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“We wanted to do a movie in the vein of the ’70s foreign films that influenced so many great filmmakers today,” George Clooney recently told L.A. Times reporter John Horn for a piece that ran yesterday. “We felt if we kept the budget low, that the outside influences (like a studio) would be minimal and we were lucky that Focus was on board with the concept from the beginning.”

“On board”? As in believing in Clooney and director Anton Corbijn‘s vision, embracing it, standing behind it, and giving the marketing effort the old college try? Focus Features marketers have run ads and TV spots and decided to open it in 200 theatres, but they’ve all but abandoned any attempt to sell it with interviews. Clooney has done almost nothing, and Corbijn hasn’t even come to...

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Even if Anton Corbijn’s The American was a straight-ahead popcorn thriller, Ethan Maniquis and Robert Rodriguez‘s Machete would kick its box-office ass regardless. I don’t know what The American will be specifically, but it seems to be a truffles and foie gras and elite bullets type of film whereas Machete is strictly a Taco Bell meal with boobs, blood sauce, bikinis and severed limbs, and a side order of pro-Mexican immigrant, anti-racist-cracker politics to keep it spicy.

It’s not a slur to say that Machete is aimed at a typical twelve-year-old mentality. For me, the political satire and anti-yahoo stance makes it...

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Four days before I posted that Dutch film critic’s review of Anton Corbijn‘s The American, Big Hollywood‘s Kurt Schlichter reviewed Rowan Joffe‘s screenplay, and I have to say it’s moderately amusing. Even though Schlichter is one of “them,” he can be funny. Except he needs to spell arrivederci correctly next time.

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The first thing I noticed about the new Movie City News redesign, which looks relatively decent (or at least better than before, being more balanced), is a preponderance of robin’s egg blue. The typeface, the MCN Tweety-bird, the MCN Twitter box, the bars…light blue all around. Plus some light violet. It reminds me of the colors and the vibe in a little boy’s bedroom.

The idea is to convey a certain spirituality or placidity or something. It’s all right or isn’t a “problem,” per se, but it doesn’t feel like a sale. It needs to man up on some level. A little red or orange, maybe.

The second thing I noticed is that Hollywood Elsewhere’s status has been upgraded. After being linked and referred to by MCN for several years as a “gossip,” I’m now included on...

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With a list of 29 contenders, Scott Feinberg is figuring 2010 is the best year ever for documentaries. The list of serious award contenders is much shorter, of course. The Tillman Story, Restrepo, Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work, Countdown to Zero, Exit Through The Gift Shop, Smash His Camera, Waking Sleeping Beauty, Tabloid, Inside Job, Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer, Freakonomics and two Feinberg didn’t mention — Werner Herzog‘s 3D cave-painting doc, and Thom Zimny‘s Bruce Springsteen doc, The Promise: The Making of ‘Darkness on the Edge of Town‘?

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What’s up with Clint Eastwood‘s Hereafter slated for only one public screening at the Toronto Film Festival (Visa Elgin, Sunday, 9.12 at 9 pm) and, according to Hitfix’s Gregory Ellwood, no scheduled press screenings at all? What’s the point of bringing a serious film by a respected, brand-name director to a big festival like Toronto and then taking steps to limit access?

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I have some nagging Toronto Film Festival questions about wifi. In my estimation TIFF has always been the least press-friendly festival in terms of wifi press lounges that are close to screening rooms, certainly compared to Cannes which has two wifi rooms inside the Palais. And from what I can gather so far things haven’t changed much.

No one will tell me, for example, if the TIFF Bell Lightbox will have any kind of wifi press room with desks and chairs and free cappucino, like the Palais does. Or, failing that, if the Lightbox will at least have accessible wifi for journalists wanting to file from somewhere within.

There will be a media lounge at the TIFF headquarters at the Hyatt...

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Update: As the son of an alcoholic and one who had alcohol issues in the early to mid ’90s, I have an abhorrence for people who flirt with, invite and/or embrace destruction with alcohol. This was the basis of yesterday’s reaction to the ridiculous demise of Nicole John, the 17 year-old daughter of daughter of U.S. ambassador to Thailand Eric John.

Yes, it’s extremely “sad” when a 17 year-old girl kills herself through drug and alcohol abuse. I understand, rather, that saying “how sad” is the socially acceptable way of responding to such a thing. I for one find such stories (which do appear with some irregularity) infuriating. And I feel it would be far healthier all around if people were to agree that...

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Stephen Frears‘ Tamara Drewe (Sony Classics, 10.8) was easily my most unpleasant viewing of the 2010 Cannes Film Festival. So the trailer has done prospective viewers a favor, I feel, by explaining where the film is coming from. The narrator’s insinuating cornball tone should suffice. If not, the pissing cow will.

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The Last Exorcism (which I may see today, having heard it was worth it) is the weekend honcho, and yet down 22% from Friday and looking at a mere $22 million for the weekend — not much of a win. Second-place Takers went up 2% from Friday, looking at $20.5 million by this evening, or perhaps even $21 million. And the third-place Expendables is looking at a $9.5 weekend tally and an $82 million cume.

Fourth-place Eat Pray Love expects 6.8 to $7 million by tonight, and a cume of $60 million, but will probably hang in there with Machete and Resident Evil 4 being the only new films with any expected heat over the next 2 weeks. And The Other Guyss is fifth with an expected $6.5 million for the weekend and an overall $99.2 million haul.

Avatar: Special Edition only did $1.5 million yesterday (up 28% from Friday) for a likely $3.8 cume. (I decided to shine it after learning of the 16- or 17-minute longer version coming out in November on DVD/Bluray.)

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This is an old routine but here we go. On 8.25 Christian Lorentzen, essayist for nplusonemag, ripped Judd Apatow a new one for his usual failings. But after reading it I had an impulse to write Apatow and ask if he wanted to respond, and lo and behold he did. So stay tuned.

Apatow’s films, Lorentzen said, “have come to be perceived as the deluxe version of the current Hollywood comedy — the sort it’s acceptable for smart people to like. They come with self-consciousness, a running time of more than two hours, and the implication of an Important Social Message.

“Thus they have earned the adulation of critics who have variously claimed that Apatow has reinvented comedy, rendering obsolete everything from Lubitsch to the Farrelly Brothers; that his films are actually...

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First a bum Eloi trailer and now this — a Fair Game one-sheet that says nothing. What is Naomi Watts doing or thinking? What does her expression or stance imply? What is Sean Penn grinning about? This movie does something very icy and cool, trust me, and this poster doesn’t have the first clue what that thing is. (Poster swiped from Awards Daily.)

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David Koepp‘s Premium Rush, a bicycle-messenger movie starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Michael Shannon and Dania Ramirez, was shooting earlier today near the corner of Sixth Avenue and 28th Street. JGL, of course, is the main two-wheeled protagonist. The plot is driven by an envelope he picks up from Columbia University, which a dirty cop (Shannon) is anxious get his hands on.

Premium Rush star Joseph Gordon-Levitt (right, red T-shirt) about to film a scene. Director-writer David Koepp (olive shirt, red baseball hat) at extreme left. That may be Dania Ramirez in light aquamarine top. Shannon (light blue shirt, tie) stands in middle.

Gordon-Levitt, Koepp,...

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The similarity was noted by Flavorwire several weeks ago. Same director, same basic concept. Although otherwise, having read Aaron Sorkin‘s Social Network script, it’s difficult to imagine two films more unalike.

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Consider the snappy playful commercial tone of the Ridley Scott/Kevin McDonald “Life in a Day” trailer, and ask yourself if it’s likely to feel as bracingly alive as this three-minute Everynone piece, which was directed by Will Hoffman and Daniel Mercadante. Be sure and watch the 720p version.

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A Dutch film critic named Robert Nijman has seen Anton Corbin‘s The American, the George Clooney assassin-in-Italy movie that opens next Wednesday, and has posted an IMDB review, having first written it for LiveforFilms.com. I wrote Nijman this morning, and he replied right away. “I saw it last Tuesday in Amsterdam, at a press screening hosted by Benelux Film Distributors,” he said. “I write Dutch movie reviews for movie2movie.nl and occasionally Engish-language reviews also, for my friend Phil over at Liveforfilms.com.”

Nijman’s English is a little rough here and there, requiring a few minor...

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