Deadline‘s Michael Fleming is reporting that the new life-of-Moses movie, which Warner Bros. is allegedly trying to get Steven Spielberg to direct (yecch!), is “not a remake of the 1956 Cecile B. DeMille-directed The Ten Commandments.” And yet it covers “Moses from birth to death” including “his awakening to the plight of the Hebrew slaves that led Moses’ struggle against the Pharaoh for their freedom out of Egypt, the Burning Bush, the Ten Plagues, the daring escape across the Red Sea, receiving the Ten Commandments, and delivery to Israel.” Which is precisely what the DeMille film covers, so what’ll different about this one, Mike, besides less corny dialogue? We all know the answer: better visual FX.

I saw Asghar Farhadi‘s A Separation at this morning’s New York Film Festival press screening, and yes, it hit the mark again. This well-honed, deep-well family drama is now the official Iranian submission for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, and is destined to be among the five nominees…unless the foreign language committee gives it the same kind of blowoff that they did with Four Months, Three Weeks and Two Days. Let’s call that highly doubtful.

(l. to. r) Sony Classics co-prez Tom Bernard, A Separation director Asghar Farhadi, Sony Classics co-prez Michael Barker at Gabriel’s — Wednesday, 9.28, 2:05 pm.

I caught most of A Separation earlier this month at the Telluride Film Festival but this time I saw the first 40 minutes. The same levels of excellence prevailed — spot-on dialogue, riveting situations, characters you can’t help but believe and invest in.

Shot in Teheran, A Separation is basically about class and repression and honor among families. Particularly two families — a relatively well-to-do one and a lower-class one headed by a hot-tempered husband and a submissive, deeply religious wife. The plot centers on a claim by the latter couple that the pater familias who hired the poor wife to take care of his Alzheimer’s-afflicted dad pushed her down a flight of stairs and caused her to miscarry. Iranian law says this can be rectified with a payoff, which the angry, lower-class husband desperately needs to pay off creditors.

All of it adds up to a fascinating window into family and community values, not just as they exist in present-day Tehran but pretty much anywhere when you boil it all down.

NYFF co-honcho Scott Foundas (l.), Farhadi and translator during Walter Reade theatre press conference — Wednesday, 9.28, 12:35 pm.

There’s a metaphor or two in this tale of a hardscrabble lower-middle class family, particularly the hair-trigger father venting his resentments and economic frustrations upon an upper-middle class dad (and to some extent his wife, daughter and senile father) over a misunderstanding..and a lie that only comes out at the end.

As I said in Telluride, “The combination of Farhadi’s simple, direct shooting style and the deeply compelling performances (the cast is headed by Leila Hatami, Peyman Moaadi, Shahab Hosseini, Sareh Bayat and Sarina Farhadi) are blended in this instance with a story that hits on a riveting moral-ethical issue. The upshot is a dividend that is socially and psychologically revealing in a way that is truly exceptional.”

NYFF co-director Scott Foundas interviewed Farhadi on the stage of the Walter Reade Theatre following this morning’s showing. A few of us then traipsed over to Gabriel’s on West 60th for a luncheon with Farhadi and Sony Classics chiefs Tom Bernard and Michael Barker.

I was given some personal chat time with Farhadi, but it’s on the digicorder and I can’t easily convert to mp3 and transcribe and all that in a Starbuck’s on West 57th. Later.

Sony Classics will release A Separation on 12.30.11.

The Best Picture forecast in yesterday’s Gurus of Gold post-Toronto update has Alexander Payne‘s The Descendants on top, followed by Steven Spielberg‘s War Horse. The latter lost a lot of heat yesterday when everybody took a look at that Harlequin Romance horse’s-mane-with-Fabio-hair poster, but perhaps the Guru vote was counted before this.

At this juncture War Horse‘s best Guru friends are EW‘s Anthony Breznican, Hitfix‘s Gregg Ellwood, In Contention‘s Kris Tapley and Movieline‘s Stu Van Airsdale.

The Help, significantly, now sits one slot below the fifth-ranked Moneyball. The Artist and Midnight in Paris are ranked third and fourth respectively. Seriously? Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone is the only Guru to give Moneyball a #1 ranking. It seems a bit strange that after those Moneyball raves and that $20 milliion opening last weekend that some people are still putting the perfectly likable and satisfying Midnight in Paris above it in the Best Picture likelihood rankings, but whatever.

While sitting at the bar last night at Phebe’s I accidentally knocked some water onto the keyboard of my Macbook Pro. I didn’t have a hair dryer with me, but I naturally picked up the device and wiped it off and hung it upside down and swore and hissed. Which didn’t help. The screen freaked out, flashing an insane psychedelic collage of pink and white and purple and black impulse doodles, like some kind of alien sanskrit code…meltdown, crash, finality.

I turned it on and off a few times, hoping and praying. But it seemed pretty much dead and dysfunctional. The crazy colors stopped after a couple of restarts, and then it reverted to the desktop image and all the usual-usuals, but the cursor was still and immovable. I looked into the abyss and gulped. I have an iMac back in West Hollywood but I figured I’d have to buy a new Macbook Pro right away, and knew this would set me back about $1200 and change.

And then about two hours later, the whole mechanism kicked in and returned to life like nothing had ever happened. I guess the touch pad or whatever finally dried itself off or something. Wow! Spared.

My first reaction to hearing about Roman Polanski: A Film Memoir, Laurent Bouzereau‘s documentary about the filmmaker recalling aspects of his life during his house arrest in Gstaad two years ago, was “why did Polanski sit down with Bouzereau instead of Marina Zenovich, whose exacting and persuasive Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired doc surely earned her Polanski’s allegiance?”

My second reaction was to search for reviews of Bouzereau’s doc, which screened last night at the Zurich Film Festival with Polanski in attendance. Others besides The Hollywood Reporter‘s Scott Roxborough may have watched the film and filed a review, but I could only find his.

The key quote from the doc is Polanski describing Samantha Geimer, the now-middle-aged woman whom he sexually assaulted in 1977 when she was 13, as “a double victim — my victim and a victim of the press.” Otherwise the doc “offers little new information not already in the public record,” Roxborough reports.

“The Greimer case takes up only a small portion of the film. The bulk is dedicated to Polanski’s childhood in German-occupied Poland, including his escape from the Warsaw ghetto and his early life and career.

“If there are any surprises to be had in Roman Polanski: A Film Memoir, they may be for people expecting a monster to see instead a human being, thoughtful, eloquent and emotional as he reflects on what, by any accounts, has been an extraordinary life.”

I’ve just come out of a 3:30 pm press screening of Roman Polanski‘s wickedly hilarious Carnage, and on top of all the cackling and chortling and guffawing I was delighted to discover that The Playlist‘s Oliver Lyttleton was dead wrong when he wrote from the Venice Film Festival that there’s “almost nothing to enable the identification of [this] movie as a Polanski picture.” What horseshit!

Carnage felt to me as much a part of Polanski’s realm as The Pianist or Repulsion or Tess or Cul de Sac or The Ghostwriter. I felt relaxed and soothed and charmed because i knew whose world I was in right away, no question, and I felt double pleasured with all the condemnations from the HE pitchforkers ringing in my head from this morning’s discussion.

True, it’s basically just a capturing of Yasmina Reza‘s one-set, four-character play, but every shot, every cut and every line tells you that someone highly intelligent directed this puppy. This is not just a film about bile and self-loathing and lacerating words and puke. It’s about artful chiseling and razor-sharp precision.

Carnage is wonderfully tight and concise, acted to perfection by Jodie Foster, John C. Reilly, Christoph Waltz (finally in a really good post-Inglourious Basterds film, and playing a funnier, more interesting character than Col. Hans Landa!) and Kate Winslet, beautifully timed and cut (congrats to Herve de Luze), exquisitely framed within a widescreen aspect ratio…and no jiggly hand-held shots! Everything shot is captured from a tripod or a super-smooth steadycam.

Oh, and there’s a very cool cameo appearance that you need to look out for. I didn’t spot it myself, but MSN’s Glenn Kenny did.

Carnage (which was called God of Carnage on stage) is about two married New York couples meeting to discuss a violent altercation between their respective sons. The conversation starts out politely, correctly, considerately and then, gradually and almost imperceptibly at first, relations start to decline. Then they degrade and degenerate, and before you know it we’re into bitter, adolescent, at times close-to-submental rage. Accompanied by alcohol, incredible ferocity, despair and self-disgust.

You may go in knowing what’s to come, but the anger and disdain and guttural rage that gradually push through are snarlier and more manic than you might expect. And if you have any rot or mildew or serpents or hamsters festering inside, a piece as well done as this is pure pleasure.

The basic idea is that beasts and bile lie within everyone, ready to pounce and lash out, and it doesn’t take much to prod the shit into the open, especially with a quart of top-grade, single-malt scotch at the ready.

Like the play, Polanski’s film runs only about 85 minutes. But what a great alcoholic, vomitous duke-out! What a battle! Everyone is mad and sweating and drained by the end. No one has anything left. And then the kids get together and patch things up and life goes on. And it’s over in less than 90 minutes. This is my idea of a good time and a great popcorn movie…cheers!

October 1st is just around the corner, and New York City has been slamming me with hot weather and high humidity and occasional showers. It’s too hot to wear a suit or sports jacket or anything but slacks and a T-shirt. I’m constantly damp. It’s not like equatorial Africa but it’s in that general ballpark. I guess I’ll have to wait until I return to Los Angeles if I want a little cool fall weather. I sure as hell am not getting that here.

“To love a film by Roman Polanski, as I know from other irate readers, is to guarantee that you will be accused of going easy on a criminal,” writes Manohla Dargis in a 9.21 N.Y. Times piece that appeared in Sunday’s print edition (i.e., the day before yesterday).

“Some of this anger can be blamed on avid Polanski supporters who assert that he did nothing wrong, or that he’s an old man now and has suffered enough. And, true, that Swiss chalet of his where he stayed after he was arrested in Switzerland in 2009 while waiting to hear if he would be deported to America sure looked as chilly as a medieval dungeon.

“Some Polanski apologists repellently portray his victim as a culpable seducer rather than a 13-year-old who was drugged and marinated in booze. Others trivialize statutory rape, never mind that their opinions are legally immaterial. Some detractors remain insistent that he should return to America to face judgment, as do I.

“Mr. Polanski belongs to a long line of liars, adulterers, sadists and slaves, wife beaters, rapists, miscellaneous miscreants and even murderers who helped make Hollywood great.”

Am I reading this correctly? Manohla Dargis, film critic for the N.Y. Times, feels that the great Roman Polanski should man up and fly to Los Angeles and surrender himself to prosecutors, face the political-cultural music, and most likely do some time? 34 years after the offense? Despite his having already done 42 days in Chino?

The beautiful amber-pinkish red sunset clouds and the obvious bond between Joey the horse and Albert (Jeremy Irvine) tell us that Steven Spielberg‘s War Horse (Touchstone, 12.28) is going to lay it on thick. This is basically going to be an emotional family-friendly film about caring and love and the romance of beautiful photography (by Janusz Kaminski, of course) and the always affecting strains of John Williams‘ score.

If you’re the sort of moviegoer who lives for stark, this-is-life, take-it-or-leave-it, matter-of-fact realism, chances are you’re going to feel a bit starved by War Horse in this respect. Maybe.

Which is fine in and of itself. There’s nothing wrong with making this kind of movie with this kind of material if it’s handled well. But a presumably studio-written synopsis that I found this morning on Coming Soon has scared me half to death.

“Set against a sweeping canvas of rural England and Europe during the First World War, War Horse begins with the remarkable friendship between a horse named Joey and a young man called Albert, who tames and trains him,” it reads. “When they are forcefully parted, the film follows the extraordinary journey of the horse as he moves through the war, changing and inspiring the lives of all those he meets — British cavalry, German soldiers, and a French farmer and his granddaughter — before the story reaches its emotional climax in the heart of No Man’s Land.”

“Changing and inspiring the lives of all those he meets”? Isn’t that what Lassie used to be do when she made her way across the Scottish and English countryside and running into farmers and children and constables and whatnot?

I’m always soothed whenever I meet a horse. I smile and feel good and want to pet him and tell him I like him a lot. That’s one thing. But does a horse inspire me and lead me to change my life? Animals warm our hearts but they don’t ‘inspire’ us. In fact, they explain us. The way you respond to an animal always reveals an aspect of who and what you are.

That is why the way the exploitive way the donkey was treated in Robert Bresson‘s Au Hasard Balthazar revealed the selfish and cruel side of human nature. The donkey was a kind of saint, a Christ figure, and he was constantly shat upon and used as a beast of burden by almost every working-class figure he runs into (except for a couple of female characters). But along comes War Horse delivering…what, the opposite message? That people are basically kind and decent and compassionate and that Joey brings this out in them?

I’m sorry, but that passage about “changing and inspiring” makes War Horse sound like sentimental slop.

Perhaps N.Y. Times critic Ben Brantley‘s description of the play provides a hint or two.

“I once attended a midnight show of Steven Spielberg’s Jaws, where the audience was heartily enjoying the carnage wrought by a man-eating shark until a pooch was seen swimming in the ocean, and someone seated near me, expressing the feelings of multitudes, called out, ‘Oh, God, not the dog!’

“War Horse taps that same keg of emotion. It’s ‘Oh, God, not the horse,’ elicited to bring home the savagery of war.

“The play also speaks, cannily and brazenly, to that inner part of adults that cherishes childhood memories of a pet as one’s first — and possibly greatest — love. This is a show for people who revisit films like National Velvet and Old Yeller when they need a good cry.

“In truth, the script of War Horse makes that of National Velvet (I mean, the heavenly 1944 movie, starring the 12-year-old Elizabeth Taylor) seem like a marvel of delicacy.”

A couple of months ago In Contention‘s Guy Lodge passed along a kind of consensus view among some London critic friends that Rachel Weisz‘s performance in Terrence Davies‘ The Deep Blue Sea “is a career-best, according to trusted sources who have seen it.”

Music Box Films acquired the film for US distribution earlier this month at the Toronto Film Festival, and is presumably intending to put it in theatres before 12.31.11 so that Weisz will qualify for awards action.

Based on the play by Terence Rattigan, Sea is a 1950s-era tale about an affair between a married socialite (Weisz) and an ex-RAF pilot (Tom Hiddleston). Eventually and quite naturally Weisz’s older husband (Simon Russell Beale), a judge, finds out and the shit hits the fan.