It’s 1:08 pm, I’m not even half-packed and I have to be at the Toronto airport by 2:30 pm. So adios and vaya con Dios until my return to Los Angeles this evening.

This 9.12 Boston Herald piece by Gayle Fee and Laura Raposa seems to offer the best shoe-leather reporting and thorough analysis as to why Robert De Niro recently walked off the Martin Campbell-directed thriller Edge of Darkness, which costarred Mel Gibson.

Boiled down, Campbell “repeatedly shot and re-shot a scene [in which De Niro’s] character tries to hit a ball out of a sand trap” at Gannon Golf Course in Lynn, Massachucetts. De Niro finally got sick of it — how many fucking times do I have to hit this fucking ball and knock sand into my shoes and into my eyes? — and said fuck it, fuck you, I’m outta here. (These aren’t quotes, of course — I’m just putting myself into De Niro’s golf shoes.)

A fully thought-through, cleanly-written primer about the whys and wherefores of movie titles by Kristin Thompson and David Bordwell.

There is surely a curse attached to films that have used metals in their titles — The Golden Compass, The Silver Chalice, Cross of Iron. Exceptions to the rule?

“Given that The Hurt Locker is set in Iraq and [director] Kathryn Bigelow has been a bit off the radar of late, journos and industryites mostly had a ‘show me’ attitude about it,” senior Variety critic Todd McCarthy wrote yesterday. “For the majority, Bigelow delivered, with a strong charge of visceral, stops-out action cinema.

Hurt Locker star Jeremy Renner

“I’m apparently not the only one to have noticed this, but it didn’t take long for me to realize that the film is a very cleverly disguised real-world remake of Bigelow’s ex-husband James Cameron‘s Aliens. (McCarthy may have been referring to my 9.9 review, but has anyone else made this observation?)
“The Hurt Locker is about a bomb-defusing squad of U.S. soldiers; as in Aliens, death can strike you from anywhere, anytime, and Jeremy Renner‘s risk junkie is Sigourney Weaver‘s Ripley, right down to the outer space outfit he sometimes has to wear.”

Aliens‘ Sigourney Weaver at controls of powerloader

If only Ed Harris‘s Appaloosa was (a) less interested in charming the audience with “amusing” dialogue between Harris and Viggo Mortensen and (b) didn’t envision Renee Zellweger‘s character as some kind of two-timing slut who goes skinny-dipping with the bad guys. These things aside, it’s not half bad.

Righteous Kill (Overture, 9.12) — a.k.a, the new DePac — “may not be dead on arrival after all,” a Manhattan media friend wrote yesterday. “I attended the New York premiere and despite the hassle of being forced into an overflow screening room across the street from the Zeigfeld, the film played fairly well in a non-industry room of 100 or so.

“I honestly don’t know why [Overture hasn’t shown] this until two days before the release date. It’s fun to see these two guys. The script gives them plenty of eye-rolling moments, and it’s obvious DeNiro took Pacino into a private trailer and said ‘If you do the hoo-hah guy in this thing I’m walking off the movie.’
“But that said, it’s a fairly mediocre thriller with two amazing guys. And that’s worth the price of admission simply because they will probably never do it again. The film does have one trick up its sleeve that I thought worked pretty well, But once it’s revealed the thing goes on too long.
I was asked yesterday by a journo friend about DeNiro and Pacino’s diminished leading-man, tough-guy cred. I didn’t have any hot info so I just spewed opinion.
“The bottom line is that they’re both well past their leading man days — DeNiro is 65, Pacino is 68 — and nobody wants to see a movie about a couple of grandpa-aged urban detectives. 13 years ago they were beautiful in Heat — lean and muscular and in their middle-aged prime with great haircuts. Today they’re softer, grayer, saggier…less cool. It’s a hard pill to swallow, but they’re just not top-dog machismo types any more. It’s over.
“But of course, they knew this going in when they signed to make Righteous Kill. Producer Avi Lerner is an older, behind-the-curve rug-merchant producer in the Golan-Globus tradition and was willing to pay them their fees, so they said ‘sure, why not? How can we lose?'”

Zac Efron is astute, capable and alert as the young-lad protagonist in Richard Linklater‘s Me and Orson Welles, a light-hearted period drama set against the creation of Welles’ Ceasar, a modern-dress adaptation of Shakespeare’s classic, at Manhattan’s Mercury Theatre in 1937.

But Christian McKay‘s performance as Welles is the thing to see and hear. He’s got the deep timbre, the stentorian voice, the attitude, the swagger, the size — much better than Vincent D’onofrio‘s Welles in Ed Wood (which someone voiced for him anyway…right?), and a truly thrilling act of bringing a legend back to life. And it’s not the first time he’s played Welles, either.

I decided against running this Funny Or Die video of Gina Gershon inhabiting Sarah Palin, but I thought it over while I was watching Richard Linklater‘s Me and Orson Welles (which I just came out of) and decided okay, it can’t hurt. But it’s really not that good. The video, I mean.

“John McCain has demonstrated in the last two months that he does not have the character to be president of the United States. And that is why it is more important than ever to ensure that Barack Obama is the next president. The alternative is now unthinkable. And McCain — no one else — has proved it.” — the concluding graph of Andrew Sullivan‘s latest (9.11.08) column, called “McCain’s Integrity.”

I went to see Phillipe Claudel‘s I’ve Loved You So Long last night at the Elgin with an even-handed attitude. I was expecting a good film (but not necessarily great because it’s French-made, and you never know with those guys) with a presumably moving, Oscar-calibre Kristin Scott Thomas performance, which I’d been told about from just about everyone.

It turns out that Scott is that and more — she’ll definitely land a Best Actress nomination, and she just might win, considering that she achieves so much in ILYSL with very little “acting” plus the fact that she’s been around for a couple of decades — but the film itself is a landmark-level achievement. It’s remarkably tight, absorbing and affectng every step of the way — a genuinely profound growth journey taken with quiet and gentle steps.
Whatever happens on the Oscar nomination front, this film has immediately shot to the top of my list of the year’s best films.
You wouldn’t think that a quiet little domestic drama about a female ex-con finding her way back into the swing of things, or one about two sisters who haven’t been in contact for 15 years (and who were even close to begin with) slowly coming to know and care for each other would be all that gripping, but is this ever! And the reason it holds you ever step of the way is because you’re hungry for any and all details that may explain why Thomas committed the crime that put her away.
When the answer finally comes at the end of the third act, it makes for a very sad and yet satisfying resolution. The ending actually borders on being comfortable. I didn’t think anything smacking of completeness or contentment could come from this film, given the particulars, and yet Claudel has come up with an ending that really and truly works.
I have to get down to the festival but I’ll try and add stuff to this review when I’m back at it tomorrow morning. I’m on a plane and back to Los Angeles tomorrow afternoon, thank God.