Stephen Frears‘ Philomena is basically a gentle, tender-hearted, intelligently written film about an elderly Irish mother named Philomena Lee (Judi Dench) looking for a son she was forced to surrender for a blind adoption back in the mid ’50s, and about the fiendish Irish nuns who, consumed by the belief that Philomena was an unfit mother due to becoming pregnant out of wedlock, arranged to sell the boy to American parents. On top of which they kept his origins a secret, even when he returned to Ireland as a grown AIDS-afflicted gay man, trying to find his biological mom. The nuns, based in a convent near Limerick, refused to tell him anything.

Philomena had likewise been unsuccessful in learning any facts about her son (whose adopted name was Michael Hess) and didn’t come to the truth until she hooked up with author and former government guy Martin Sixsmtih (Steve Coogan), whose book, “The Lost Child of Philomena Lee,” is the basis of Coogan and co-writer Jeff Pope‘s screenplay.

I sometimes think that Jimi Hendrix was put on the planet to be that guy and do that thing that he uncorked so phenomenally between 1966 (the launch days in England) and mid ’68, and that maybe on some level he allowed himself to slip out because he knew deep down that he’d hit such a peak during that period that he’d never be able to repeat or recharge it. In any event there’s an upcoming two-hour American Masters doc called “Jimi Hendrix — Hear My Train A Comin'” (11.5.13), and it might be a little something better or extra because those awful Jimi Hendrix Estate people (who’ve blocked every Hendrix biopic ever attempted or so I’ve read) have cooperated fully.

I saw this on my way over to last night’s Warner Bros./Gravity party on King Street. Anyone who would wear these shoes in a sincere, non-ironic way is seriously screwed up in an aesthetic fashion or style sense. I’ve been around and acquired a thousand distastes (which is the basis of taste) and I know what looks half-decent vs. not so hot vs. classic vs. something wild and these shoes are dead fucking atrocious. I mean, I’m tempted to call them a metaphor for the coming Apocalypse. And look at that dork wearing them…God! John Varvatos is…I don’t what he’s doing but I can guess.

If you don’t review a film right away someone will come along and post your thoughts. Sure enough the opening paragraph of Scott Foundas‘s Variety review of Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom expressed my exact feelings about this Weinstein Co. release. It’s a “classic” biopic in the sense that it feels like it was made 30 or 40 years ago. It’s basically the life of Nelson Mandela by way of the sensibility of Richard Attenborough‘s Gandhi (’82). That makes it a reverential but generally mediocre film about a great man and a great saga, but one that is saved or at the very least enobled by Idris Elba‘s stirring, highly charismatic performance as Mandela — the first breakthrough performance that the 41 year-old Elba has given on the big screen or anywhere else for that matters.

It’s been almost six years since Tracy Letts‘ August: Osage County opened big-time on Broadway and five and a half years since it won a bagful of Tony Awards. And it’s been a good three-plus years since the film version began to be developed. And now the climax — the 12.25.13 Weinstein Co. release will be shown today (late this afternoon at a p & i screening, early this evening at Roy Thomson Hall) and the verdicts will be flying fast and furious by…oh, a little after 7 pm eastern?

The buzz around town is guarded. Almost every press person I’ve spoken to about it has offered a variation of the following: “Hopefully, yeah, sure…looking forward. An obvious Oscar nomination possibility for Meryl Streep…okay, maybe Streep but Harvey can’t play the ‘she’s due’ card any more. But almost certainly one for Julia Roberts, right? Or maybe not. Who knows? But translating a successful stage play definitely isn’t easy, especially when you cut roughly an hour out of the play’s over-three-hour running time, and John Wells directing …I don’t know, man. Remember The Company Men?”

I’ve just come back from buying stuff at one of those all-purpose pharmacies and markets. I sauntered up to the counter and put my stuff down. The 20something checkout guy said “hey” and I muttered “how are ya?” and then…

Checkout guy: Would you like a bag?
Me: Yes. (Quizzical expression, slight smile.) I mean…well, have you ever met anyone buying two or more items who doesn’t want a bag?
Checkout guy: Well, some people bring their own.
Me: Uh-huh. You’re talking in code then. What you’re asking is “do I want to buy a bag?”
Checkout guy: Right.
Me: Okay. (Pause.) I’m guessing a dinky plastic bag is worth nothing, maybe a tenth of a penny but you guys charge…what, a dime?
Checkout guy: Five cents.
Me: Local governments are charging stores a tax for plastic bags for pollution reasons so the stores are passing the cost along. I get it. Back in West Hollywood I bought two large cloth bags for grocery shopping. But I almost never take them with me because I tend to drop into Gelson’s or Pavillions on impulse so I wind up paying for paper bags almost every time. Stores have been providing free bags for decades, over a century. No more.

After a slow morning I caught three Toronto Film Festival films this afternoon — Justin Chadwick‘s Mandela: Long Road to Freedom at noon, John Carney‘s Can A Song Save Your Life? at around 2:15 or 2:30 and then Stephen Frears‘ Philomena at 4:30 pm. I had issues with all three (a lot of people did), although Philomena is clearly the best of the three. And then I shuffled back to the pad and took a 45-minute nap. And now I need to attend an 8:30 pm Gravity party (i.e. more Alfonso Cuaron) followed by a screening of Ron Howard‘s Rush (my second viewing) at Roy Thomson Hall followed by a Rush party starting at around 11:30 pm. I haven’t been able to file a damn thing. Tomorrow morning, I’m thinking.

I had to hang around the Dallas Buyers’ Club party until 1:15 am in order to snap Jared Leto, who is unquestionably the big breakout “everybody’s talkin'” guy of the Toronto Film Festival and an all-but-guaranteed Best Supporting Actor nominee. Indiewire‘s Anne Thompson was disagreeing with me (and virtually the rest of the world) about this prediction, and so we agreed to get into a back-and-forth about it. She’s dead wrong. Deadline‘s Pete Hammond said that Leto’s touching performance as Matthew McConaughey‘s cross-dressing drug-distribution partner is analagous to Chris Sarandon‘s performance as Leon in Dog Day Afternoon.

Dallas Buyers Club costar and likely Oscar contender Jared Leto last night at Cibo on King Street, where the after-party was held.

I’m not complaining about having been invited to five parties tonight. It’s lovely to be asked, and it always feels soothing to greet and be greeted and not drink alcohol, etc. But as I sit on my stool at a Starbucks on Queen and John Streets I guess I am sort of whining about it, whiny little bitch that I am. Four or five parties in the space of four and a half hours will wear you down. But I really want to say hello to all my industry pallies at the Sony Classics party uptown, and then at the Fox Searchlight and IFC Films and Metalhead parties down in this neck of the woods, and finally at the Dallas Buyers Club party which starts at midnight. All hail Matthew McConaughey and especially Jared Leto!

I saw Nicole Holofcener‘s Enough Said a couple of hours ago. It’s another myopic, mild-mannered visit with the denizens of Holofcenerland — upscale, educated, liberal-minded 40- and 50-somethings who live west of the 405. It’s a bittersweet experience due to the presence of the late James Gandolfini, whom I’ve long felt a special kinship with (and whose funeral I attended last June in Manhattan), but otherwise it’s basically about how it’s a bad idea for a divorcee (Julia Louis-Dreyfuss) to go out with an ex-husband (Gandolfini) of a client she’s getting to know (Catherine Keener) because one way or another the ex-wife is going to list every shortcoming of the ex-husband in spades, and that stuff is toxic, a kind of poison, and it’ll kill the relationship pretty quickly if you let it into your head so you shouldn’t. That’s basically what the film is saying.

It’s 3:35 pm Toronto time, and so far I’ve seen Peter Landesman‘s Parkland, which isn’t anywhere close to being as authentic and grounded as it needs to be (and I’m saying this as a fan of Landeasman’s script) and Jean-Marc Vallee‘s Dallas Buyers Club, which looks to me like a definite maybe among Best Picture contenders. The last third in particular delivers the tragic dimensions and brings home the sadness and humanity. The surprise is that everyone sat down expecting to see a Best Actor-calibre performance from Matthew McConaughey. They got that, but when the lights came up the first words out of everyone’s mouth were “Jared Leto, right?” Leto’s performance as McConaughey’s drag-queen ally and drug-dispensing partner is, trust me, easily and squarely in the Best Supporting Actor race now. And Jennifer Garner really nails it also — her Dallas Buyers Club doctor is probably the best role she’s ever had and the best performance she’s ever given.

Jason Bateman‘s Bad Words, a tartly ascerbic spelling-bee comedy aimed at the diminishing ranks of non-moronic moviegoers, went over extremely well at the Ryerson last night. It’s a kind of Rushmore-meets-Bad Santa piece about a pissed-off, close-cropped 40something guy (Bateman) who takes advantage of a loophole to compete against kids in the National Quill Spelling Bee competition, and in so doing bonds/warms up to/gets down with a reporter (Kathryn Hahn) and a 10 year-old Indian kid (Rohan Chand) as he seeks a kind of satisfaction that has nothing to do with winning the $50,000 first prize. Dry, subdued, bordering-on-perverse performances + Andrew Dodge‘s witty-ass, occasionally scatalogical screenplay resulted in much laughter with some in the audience wondering if the film goes “too far,” as one questioner inquired. Trust me, the “too far” stuff is one of the main reasons the film went over so well.

At Toronto’s Ryerson theatre last night following screening of Bad Words (l. ro r.) director-star Jason Bateman, costars Rohan Chand, Kathryn Hand.