Similar to Joel Schumacher‘s Trespass, that Nic Cage-Nicole Kidman hostage thriller, Michael Brandt‘s The Double — an espionage thriller starring Richard Gere and Topher Grace — is another another nearly-straight-to-DVD release. It’s opening in roughly 100 theaters nationwide on 9.23 before hitting disc. Image Entertainment is distributing.

Jim Field Smith‘s Butter will play the 2011 Toronto Film Festival, of course, but you never know if it’ll appear somewhere else first. I’ve been avoiding reading about it, to be honest. I mean, a little-girl orphan in Iowa (Yara Shahidi) with a natural butter-carving talent entering an annual butter-carving competition? Going up against the ambitious wife (Jennifer Garner) of the reigning champion (Ty Burrell)?

I know we’re not supposed to judge a movie by its synopsis, but still…

I was going to embed A.O. Scott‘s Critics Picks’ essay about Nicholas Ray’s In A Lonely Place, but the N.Y. Times tech guys, as usual, haven’t posted this video on YouTube yet. So the hell with it. Instead, in honor of the forthcoming Criterion Bluray of Wes Anderson‘s Rushmore, here’s Scott’s essay about that, posted two years and two months ago.

I only suffered once through Return of the Jedi (although I’ve watched pieces of it since on laser disc and DVD), but I remember the finale pretty clearly, and I’ll bet at least $1000 that the version I saw at Loew’s Astor Plaza in June 1983 didn’t have Darth Vader going “noooo!…no!” when the Emperor is zapping Luke at the climax.

I haven’t seen the forthcoming Jedi Bluray, and for all I know the clip below (a portion of the original mixed with an alleged audio recording from the Bluray Jedi ) is a phony. So let’s hold off for now. But if the Bluray does have the “noooo!,” watch out.

“It’s hard to believe this because Vader crying ‘Noooo!’ was one of the most widely derided aspects of Revenge of the Sith,” explains Badass Digest‘s Devin Faraci . “It’s easy to believe because George Lucas is so out of touch and loves the idea of on-the-nose symmetry between the two trilogies.

“What is purported to be an audio recording of the scene has hit the web, and someone has timed it to the original scene in Jedi so that you can get a sense of how this supposedly works. I’ve embedded that below. It’s actually two ‘No’s, and it doesn’t sound exactly like the one from Sith, but similar.”

“My name is Molly” was first spoken in a good film by a cool actor (i.e., Joe Don Baker) in the legendary Charley Varrick (’73). The line returns in this scene between Ryan Gosling and whatsername…Evan Rachel Wood in George Clooney‘s The Ides of March.

No, I don’t think anyone had this in mind when the line was written or when this scene was shot. But the instant I heard Wood say it, I immediately thought of Charley Varrick . Right away, less than second…wham.

The Ides of March will have its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival on 8.31.11 — i.e., tomorrow night. Reviews will be in sometime later tomorrow morning or early afternoon. Here‘s the trailer.

Not to sound like what I’m sounding like, but why wasn’t this uploaded and passed around before X-Men: First Class came out?

N.Y. Press is no longer a print publication, having published its final edition on 8.24.11. The publication lasted for 23 and 1/2 years, give or take, starting on 4.13.88. And what of film critic Armond White? Most high-profile crickets are primarily online voices anyway so lacking a print component is hardly the end of the world. The Fake Armond tweets about this are funny.

With Phil Contrino‘s wifi knocked out by the moderate tropical rainstorm that began as Hurricane Irene, yesterday’s Oscar Poker was just between Sasha Stone and myself. We talked about Hurricane Irene and possible Telluride Film Festival selections and the most likely Best Picture contenders. Here’s a non-iTunes, stand-alone link.

This Danish TV spot for Fleggaard was uploaded last January, and actually dates back to spring 2010. Fleggaard is a kind of Danish Costco. (Although the stores are located just across the German border.) For all I know everyone has seen this thing except me. I was a virgin until today.

Deadline is reporting that Josh Brolin will star in Spike Lee‘s Oldboy, a remake of Park Chan-wook‘s 2003 cult thriller. The script (which I wouldn’t mind reading if anyone has a PDF lying around) is by Mark Protosevich. Pic will roll in March or seven months’ hence. Brolin’s next gig is Warner Bros’ Gangster Squad. Then comes Oldboy followed by a June lensing of Jason Reitman‘s Labor Day, costarring Kate Winslet. Let’s ignore the fact that Brolin is in Men in Black 3 — nobody wants to think about that.

Albert Brooks‘ Real Life “hammers on a conundrum ducked by most documentaries, An American Family included: no matter how unobtrusive a filmmaker tries to be, his subject is still likely to react to the cameras by subtly altering his behavior, thereby making existence into a kind of performance, infusing life with fiction’s DNA and creating a hybrid monster that’s at once real and unreal.” — from a “Press Play” essay on this 1979 film by Robert Nishimura and Matt Zoller Seitz.

Update: Variety‘s Gregg Goldstein covertly reported on 8.23 (i.e., behind Variety‘s paywall) that Fox Int’l is working with David Dinerstein‘s D2 Films to give Gerardo Naranjo‘s Miss Bala a limited domestic release starting on 10.14, along with another Fox International production, The Yellow Sea. Indiewire also ran a story.

“News of both pics comes three months after Fox announced its Fox World Cinema label, designed to capitalize on the North American ancillary value of FIP films” Goldstein wrote.

Earlier: Acclaimed during last May’s Cannes Film Festival and now scheduled to play at the Toronto Film Festival in less than two weeks, Gerardo Naranjo‘s Miss Bala will, according to the IMSDB, be released by 20th Century Fox on 10.14. Yup, that’s what I said. Obvious question: why is “big Fox” releasing a Mexican-produced, Spanish-language action thriller with no big stars? Isn’t this kind of film outside their comfort zone?

It’s possible, I suppose, that 20th Century Fox isn’t handling U.S. distribution for Miss Bala, as the IMDB says. I tried for a yea-nay from a Fox rep earlier today, but she didn’t reply. Perhaps tomorrow (i.e., Tuesday).