From Nerve Media, a pic of Heath Ledger skateboarding over Christian Bale during a break on the set of The Dark Knight, presumably sometime in mid ’07.

Moneyball and Brad Pitt launched big-time. The Ides of March buffed Clooney and Gosling, attracted enthusiasm, took no hits. The Telluride headliners — The Descendants, A Separation, The Artist, Shame, A Dangerous Method — seemed to increase in value. Miss Bala became an absolute must-see. Albert Nobbs held steady, and costar Janet McTeer gained. And Oren Moverman‘s Rampart and Woody Harrelson broke out and impressed. (Okay, all I know for sure is that I liked it alot, and so did Kris Tapley back in L.A.)

Sarah Polley‘s Take This Waltz registered positively (especially with Drew McWeeny), and seemed to boost Michelle Williams‘ stock. Butter held steady. The Lady screened, fared reasonably well, got acquired by the Cohen Media Group. I missed seeing The Island President…again. Salmon Fishing in the Yemen and You’re Next seemed to break through with buyers and critics alike, although I missed seeing both. I also missed Joseph Cedar‘s Footnote, but it seemed to impress almost everyone I spoke to. Hugely, I mean.

The Raid flared and then sank. Fernando Meirelles‘ 360 didn’t seem to generate much interest, let alone excitement. What happened with Cameron Crowe‘s Pearl Jam Twenty? Ask someone else, I heard nothing, etc. Wuthering Heights got picked up by Oscillloscope. I didn’t talk to anyone who saw Madonna‘s W.E. but the Venice Film Festival reception seemed to pretty much kill it, or so everyone seems to believe. Burning Man did nothing. Twixt died. Killer Joe and Machine Gun Preacher didn’t seem to register all that well. Love, Peace and Misunderstanding died. And tons of other films were seen, mezzo-mezzo’ed, enjoyed, dismissed, ignored and walked out on.

As I said five days ago, Christopher Plummmer‘s Barrymore performance has to be seen by Academy members. Popped into the DVD player and watched…that’s all. Because if you add this to Plummer’s gay dad in Beginners plus his assumedly impressive turn in David Fincher‘s The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo , he’s going to be awfully heard to beat for Best Supporting Actor.

Two days ago I wrote that Rod Lurie‘s Straw Dogs is “a mature complement to Sam Peckinpah‘s 1971 original” and that “in some ways [it’s] a more complex film than Peckinpah’s version.” But that’s chicken feed compared to Roger Ebert’s statement in his just-posted Straw Dogs review that Lurie “has made a first-rate film of psychological warfare, and yes, I thought it was better than Peckinpah’s.”

I just want to leave Toronto. The festival is all but over and running on fumes, and I’ve been doing the 18-hour work day for seven days straight (this is my eighth) and I just want to go back to New York and downshift and resume my normal 14-hour work day. I always feel this way around the eighth or ninth day of any film festival. Later.

Yes, I want to catch Take Shelter at 6 pm — definitely looking forward, etc. But I couldn’t get into the Duplass brothers’ Jeff Who Lives At Home. Jonathan Demme‘s I’m Carolyn Parker: The Good, The Mad and the Beautiful wasn’t my idea of transporting. And Francis Coppola‘s Twixt was some kind of dreadful. And it put me…okay, not just the Coppola film but the whole day so far has put me into a cranky closet. Sorry. I’m working on an escape. Sourpuss moods are unattractive, I realize.

The industry-media mob began leaving the Toronto Film Festival on Tuesday, and they really took off yesterday. You could almost hear a pin drop in the main upstairs lobby of the Scotiabank plex on Richmond and John. I’ve got an 11 am screening of Jay and Mark Duplass’s Jeff Who Lives At Home at the Elgin, a film yet to be chosen in the early to mid afternoon at the Scotiaplex, and then Jeff Nichols‘ Take Shelter at the Ryerson at 6 pm.

I regret reporting that I had dealings yesterday with two mentally challenged Toronto Film Festival volunteers.

(1) I asked a female Scotiaplex lobby volunteer how much the media-industry attendance had dropped since the previous day (the absence of bodies was quite noticable) and she said that it was pretty much the same as last weekend and that nothing had changed. I looked at her, smiled and said, “Okay, thanks”…but she was clearly short a couple of cards in the deck.

(2) Then I went into a dark theatre and stood at the side looking at the audience, and a flashlight-beaming volunteer said, “Can I help you?” I’m cool, I said in a half-whisper. Just let my eyes adjust to the dark. The volunteer said, “I can’t have you standing here, sir…you’ll have to find a seat.” Will you hold on?…I’m waiting for my eyes to adjust. He started in again: “Sir? I’m sorry, sir…” Jesus, get away from me, you little rodent! To which he replied, “Excuse me?” If I was Lee Marvin and this was Donovan’s Reef, I could have dropped him with my rifle butt…but I had to ignore him.

I’d like to buy a nice, smallish, bouncy pillow with a battery inside it that keeps the pillow somewhere between cool and room-temperature normal. I don’t like resting my head on overly heated, faintly damp pillows, which they all eventually turn into due to body-warmth (or head-warmth) transference. We’re always flopping the pillow over so we can sleep on the cool side, and this is the solution. I’ve been surfing around for cool pillows but haven’t found any so far.

Bobcat Goldthwait‘s God Bless America “may turn out to be my favorite viewing experience of the Toronto Film Festival,” Marshall Fine has written. “Outrageous, bitter and wildly, inappropriately funny, God Bless America had me roaring at the story of a newly-minted spree killer who decides to eliminate what he sees as the worst of American popular culture, beginning with a spoiled rich brat who’s the star of a reality show and ending up on the stage of an American Idol doppelganger with an AK-47.

Tara Lynne Barr, Joel Murray in Bobcat Goldwait’s God Bless America

“Frank (Joel Murray) is an average guy from Syracuse who tells his cubicle-mate at work that he doesn’t find morning radio amusing because ‘I’m not afraid of foreign people or people with vaginas.’ Goldthwait summarizes his film in a line of Frank’s early on: ‘Why have a civilization if we’re no longer interested in being civil?’

“Goldthwait’s previous two films also specialized in the viciously funny: the horrifyingly squirmy comedy Sleeping Dogs Lie and equally unholy and painfully laugh-provoking World’s Greatest Dad. Hopefully, God Bless America will find a wider audience than the previous two, which barely got released.

“Goldthwait’s films have teeth and aren’t for everyone, but there’s definitely an audience that shares his sense of outrage about just how low our lowest common denominator has fallen. God Bless America is Goldthwait’s most snarlingly subversive comedy yet.”

In a 9.18 N.Y. Times piece about standout character performances, Manohla Dargis and A.O. Scott have praised Judy Greer‘s third-act turn in The Descendants. “Best known for kooky-friend roles in romantic comedies, Greer makes a strong, poignant impression in three scenes opposite George Clooney. [She’s] playing a fairly tangential character: the wife of the man Mr. Clooney’s wife had an affair with. But whether clueless, bewildered or tearful, Greer shifts the film’s center of gravity and alters its emotional chemistry.

Judy Greer in The Descendants

“A star imports outsized individuality into every role, playing variations on a person we believe we know. A character actor, by contrast, transforms a well-known type into an individual.” And in The Descendants, “Ms. Greer reminds Mr. Clooney’s character and the audience mesmerized by his star power that it is not all about him.”

Last night friend-of-HE Nick Clement — a.k.a. “Action Man” — saw the eight- or nine-minute Girl With the Dragon Tattoo sizzle reel that Toronto critics were also shown at the Straw Dogs screening. Clement also saw Moneyball as the main attraction. He emailed his responses to both last night.

Tattoo quickie: “As the lights went down for Moneyball and light flooded the screen, the footage began with…wait…Christopher Plummer in closeup, talking about some dark family stuff? And then wham…massive excitement levels. It was like watching a mini-version of David Fincher‘s upcoming film, but not in a bad way. Now I’m even more anxious to see what Fincher has cooked up based upon what I saw tonight.

“This movie isn’t going to stretch Fincher as a filmmaker, and yeah, the material is completely within his comfort zone, but if this particular story had to be re-imagined by Hollywood, I can’t think of another director for the job. In short, from what I saw tonight, the film looks INCREDIBLE, with an icy visual style that harkens back to Seven and The Game (a film I adore).

“Rooney Mara looks extremely intense and Craig looks appropriately weathered and intrigued by all the things going on around him. The score that was used was very TSN-esque, very low-level, almost a constant electronic humming, that then progessed and crescendoed into an explosive finale. Combined with all the dark and nasty and exciting imagery on display (snippets of lesbian sex, the infamous assault sequence, violence, car chases, general deviancy) the reel got a huge charge out of the audience, with lots of chatter and buzzing after it was over.

“I think some people were perplexed as to what they were watching as it clearly wasn’t a trailer, and at these free screenings, they typically don’t show trailers (maybe one). And, now having seen some real footage from the film with dialogue and characters and plot points established, I guess you can’t rule out the film from getting a possible genre-category Best Picture nomination (think District 9) from the Academy.

“One thing’s for sure — it’s gonna make a shit-ton of money at the box office, despite the hard R they’ve obviously gone for.

“And I loved how after the on-screen ‘A Film by David Fincher’ credit came up, there was a ‘Screenplay by Steven Zaillian‘ credit; not since the first trailer for Bad Boys II do I remember a trailer that gave an in-name shout-out to the writers (Shelton, Stahl and Hancock got credited).”

Moneyball Elation: “No huge need for me to re-review as you’ve covered all the bases in your previous posts. But Moneyball is right up there among the finest sports films ever made. It’s wonderfully written, sharply directed, and features the best movie-star performance from Brad Pitt in a long time, and possibly ever.

“Jonah Hill is perfectly cast as the stats man, bringing lots of laughs to the surprisingly funny script (you can clearly see both Aaron Sorkin and Steve Zaillian‘s hands all over the script), and Hill and Pitt have dynamite chemistry (the trade-deadline scene was my favorite). The terrific, almost ambient score (loved the frequent “Explosions in the Sky”-esque guitar riff) is balanced beautifully by the numerous (and startling) moments of silence, which really help bring you into Billy Beane‘s psyche.

“In many ways Moneyball is definitely this year’s The Social Network , except here you’re not watching a group of prissy assholes bickering over money and fame, but the story of a deeply charismatic GM with a serious love for baseball who is starved for something new in the sport that he’s been involved with all his life.

“It’s worth noting the audience response to Moneyball, which was extremely favorable. Mixed demographics, almost every seat taken, people of all ages. A huge round of applause greeted the film at the end, people laughed in all the right places, and Pitt and Hill cast a spell on the entire crowd with their back-and-forth. For a movie that’s all about words and people talking, people were amazingly courteous and respectful, which is shocking because these free screenings tend to always bring out the texters and morons. But not tonight.

“It might’ve had something to do with the fact that there were four security guards pulling people out of the theater for using phones. But I’d like to think that when a good story is being told that people are enjoying, they’ll all shut the fuck up and do what they’re there in the theater to do — watch the movie. Not text their friends or chit-chat or browse Google every 20 minutes.

“Moneyball is a very quiet movie at times, so it can easily be ruined by unappreciative audiences. But based on what I saw and felt tonight, this movie will be a big hit and have terrific word-of-mouth. And for a sports movie that avoids almost every sports movie cliche in the book, that’s saying something. I loved it.

“All in all, another splendid night at the movies. This fall has been sensational so far: 50/50, Contagion, Warrior, Moneyball and now Drive (!) this weekend, and we’re not even done with September! It’s gonna be a great few months coming up.”