Daily

Let’s review the burgeoning Hurt Locker situation so far. The Toronto Star‘s Peter Howell started the buzz with his 8.31 rave. Then today Variety‘s Nick Vivarelli reported that Kathryn Bigelow‘s bomb squad actioner “gave the Lido a jolt and proposed itself as the Iraq pic that might break through to American auds.”
I also got an e-mail today from cinema2000‘s Nuno Artunes saying that “our correspondent at the Venice Film Festival has just written to say Bigelow’s movie is the best so far at the competition — 5 stars out of five, and he’s not easy to please.”
I’m mentioning all this only to put the Hurt Locker pan from Variety’s sourpuss critic Derek Elley in perspective. Nobody’s “right,” everybody has their persepctive, etc., but how could all these other guys be going “wow” and “whoo-hoo” and then aong comes Elley, less bowled over by the rush of it, and says “war may be hell, but watching war movies can also be hell, especially when they don’t get to the point.”
The best competition movie of the Venice Film Festival so far vs. a hellish unoriginal viewing experience. That’s one hell of a gap. The Hurt Locker will screen for the TIFF press on Tuesday.

This trailer for Gus Van Sant‘s Milk looks awfully good. Just a trailer, but it looks right, feels right, and is very nimbly cut. Sean Penn‘s Harvey Milk performance feels like a knockout. (If only he were taller! Sorry, but it’s hard to dislodge the Times of Harvey Milk footage of the real McCoy, who was something like 6’3″ and had really big feet.) This is definitely the Gus of Good Will Hunting and Drugstore Cowboy…but please, not Finding Forrester!

I was told last night that Fernando Meirelles‘ Blindness, which I didn’t much care for when I saw it at the Cannes Film Festival, has dropped the Danny Glover narration track. That’s a good thing. As I wrote last May, “I was hoping for a film that would rigorously avoid any attempt at pushing metaphor into viewer’s faces. That is precisely what Blindness does by way of [Glover’s] narration voice-over.” I’ll be catching the new version on Saturday night.

There are two kinds of press passes being handed out at the Toronto Film Festival — P for priority and I for insect. Other interpretations: industry, invisible, inscrutable, insignificant, indelible, insubstantial, indomitable, intelligent, insubordinate.

And so it begins, fumblingly. I’m staying in a street-facing room with bay windows in a pleasant b & b in Toronto’s Yorkville district, near the Dupont subway stop. The plan this morning was to rise at 6 am (3 am L.A. time), check e-mails, do some work, and get to the Sutton by 8:30 am to pick up my press pass in order to catch the 9 am press screening of Guy Ritchie‘s RocknRolla. But I didn’t set the alarm correctly on the iPhone and woke up at 8:45 am instead.

Little crucifix mints handed out by Lionsgate as a promotion for Bill Maher and Larry Charles Religulous

I stumbled around for a bit, and then put on a pair of white pants (which you’re not supposed to do after Labor Day) and headed down the hallway to take a shower. Except the door closed right behind me and locked itself, and I’d left the key in the room. So I went downstairs to find the owner-concierge and was told she was bereaved over a death in the family (happened just last night) and that I probably shouldn’t disturb her. “Uhm…well, I, you see, uhm…” Gentle diplomacy eventually resulted in finding a spare key.
This, for me, is what the Toronto Film Festival experience sometimes involves. Life is never as tidy or well-ordered as we’d like. You just have to muddle through and keep smiling and say “thanks much” and stay focused.
The room has decent wifi, a cable TV, a firm bed, a light blue rug, a small table with two hard chairs, no hangers in the closet and no towel.

I wanted to watch Sarah Palin‘s Republican Nat’l Convention speech last night, but I wanted to hang back with the gang (see below) a bit more. MSNBC’s First Read declared that “conservatives have found their Obama. Win or lose, Palin has already established herself as the future star of the party. She stayed within her comfort zone, avoiding issues she’s not up-to-speed on just yet. The only question is whether her tough sarcastic words for Obama played well with swing voters, who were hearing her for the very first time.” Reactions?

Sidenote: Malcolm Johnson has passed along the following: “In 2006, Sarah Palin defeated Tony Knowles for Governor. In preparation for the campaign, Knowles put together a 63-page “research document” about her hiistory as Mayor of Wasilla. Anita Dunn once worked on that campaign, is now working for Obama. Here it is.

Leaving for LAX within the hour, out of touch until sometime tonight. Maybe I can file something from the lounge before the flight.

John McCain‘s decision to cancel his appearance on the Larry King show Tuesday night was, if you ask me, another show of questionable judgment and hair-trigger temperament. He and his lieutenants reportedly became enraged over Campbell Brown‘s tough interview about Sarah Palin with McCain spokesperson Tucker Bounds, and decided to blow off the King appearance as a kind of “fuck you” to CNN.

“As a presidential campaign, we reserve the right to adjust Senator McCain’s media schedule in order to ensure the most effective use of his time,” said Maria Comella, a McCain spokeswoman. “After a relentless refusal by certain on-air reporters to come to terms with John McCain’s selection of Alaska’s sitting governor as our party’s nominee for vice president, we decided John McCain’s time would be better served elsewhere.”
McCain is obviously getting extremely prickly about all the water that Palin has been taking on, and is looking to turn things around before the worst-case- scenario (from the McCain perspective) comes to pass.

Variety‘s Anne Thompson speaking a couple of days ago with Slumdog Millionaire director Danny Boyle in Telluride. I presume Anne was shooting as she spoke and vice versa, but I could’ve done without the gentle wiggle-sway effect. And what about that finger?

Producer Jerry Weintraub wanted Guillermo Del Toro to direct a Tarzan movie (which I could see if GDT was allowed to be imaginative), but The Hobbit project got in the way of that. So Weintraub has, I’m told, reached out and found a director who knows from mummies and vampires and colliding worlds to take over the reins. Tarzan, meet…Steven Sommers!