Emilio Estevez‘s Bobby “is bound to get mixed reactions from critics, especially those not attuned to the times and attitudes it depicts,” says a voice from Los Angeles. “Estevez is aping Grand Hotel and every other multi-story ensemble pic right up to last year’s Crash. Taken as a whole it’s admirable and, I feel, necessary.” I get what he’s saying. The under-40s who aren’t especially liberal or political-minded aren’t likely to respond like boomers who were “there” in one way or another.

James Bond is dead, poor Daniel Craig is the first mate on a sinking ship, Bourne is the new Bond, etc. But people keep sending me the brand-new Bond/Casino Royale trailer and I have to admit…fuck that, I don’t have to admit anything. But it’s well cut and gives you a good jolt. I’ve just been disliking 007 producers Michael Wilson and Barbara Broccoli more than usual because they persuaded director Roger Michell to bail on the next one.

I somehow missed this two-day-old Radar Online poll about who’s Hollywood’s biggest hack (answer: Brett Ratner), most wanted actor (answer: Brad Pitt), most dysfunctional director (answer: Michael Mann) and so on. The reporter (whom I assume is Marcus Baram, whom I’ve known since his days working for George Rush at the N.Y. Daily News) talked to roughly 50 “power brokers”.

Hollywood Reporter columnist Anne Thompson on the three amigos — directors Guillermo del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth) Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu (Babel) and Alfonso Cuaron (Children of Men) — who huddle, collaborate, advise each other on creative matters, and generally watch each other’s back.

It’s hard to find the link, but Toronto Globe & Mail critic James Adams has called Philip Noyce‘s Catch a Fire “a nail biter…a fast paced, compulsively watchable political thriller about what happens when a previously apolitical working man (Derek Luke) decides to join the armed struggle against an oppressive govt, in this case Sout Sfrica’s now defunct apartheid regime.
“Tim Robbins deftly plays a fiendishly clever Boer security agent trying to hold back the growing power of the ANC, but the real stars here are Luke as Patrick, the politicized refinery worker, and Bonnie Henna as the wife whose jealousy has consequences far beyond hearth and home. Based on a true story and shot on location, Noyce’s film is like The Battle of Algiers, unsparing in its portrayal of the many prices everyone pays when the ‘old is dying and the new cannot yet be born’.”

For years I’ve been going up to the TIFF volunteers working the VIP rooms (i.e., small 20-seat theatres) at the Varsity plex and asking what’s showing and may I slip in?, etc. But this year they’ve gone all CIA on me, claiming they don’t know what’s showing and suggesting that I speak to the publicist attached to whatever film is showing…except they won’t tell me what’s slated for later in the day. I’m wondering if this new restrictiveness has anything to do witjh a new TIFF program of buyers-only screenings, which the Hollywood Reporter‘s Gregg Goldstein explained yesterday.

Variety critic Todd McCarthy‘s glowing review of Roger Michell‘s Venus, posted yesterday from Telluride, Telluride….Telluride! Peter O’Toole, all but locked for a Best Actor nomination, “reigns [with] his first meaty leading film role in perhaps two decades, and the still charismatic and silver-tongued star scores a bull’s-eye.” McCarthy describes this “small-scaled, throughly British entertainment” as “genuinely funny, randy and moving by turns and breezily enjoyable throughout.” The Miramax release has its first press screening today at the Varsity at 4:15 pm. I’ll try and post a reaction sometime this evening…maybe.

I ran into a Bobby disser yesterday afternoon at the “indie” publicist hotel, the Intercontinental. To be specific, he shrugged his shoulders, shook his head and kind of grimaced after mentioning that he’d seen it. The best thing about it, he said with some enthusiasm, is the archival footage of Robert F. Kennedy. The worst thing, he claimed, is Ashton Kutcher‘s performance as a late ’60s hippy-dippy type.

Instead of going to that disastrous Borat midnight screening at the Ryerson last night…oh, that’s right, I haven’t mentioned this yet. Only 20 minutes worth of the film was shown before the friggin’ projector broke down. Sacha Baron Cohen, Michael Moore and director Larry Charles entertained the rowdy (as in hugely pissed off) crowd and promises were mde about the show starting any minute now, etc., but they finally had to cancel the whole show and re-schedule for midnight makeup tonight at the Elgin.
Variety‘s Stephen Zeitchik, David Poland and Justine Elias have provided colorful reportings on the particulars.
There’s a Borat press screening in a couple of hours (12:45 pm) inside a puny little 82-seat theatre at the Varsity plex…brilliant. If the festival had its act together, they’d arrange for a bigger last-minute daytime venue. (Thre’s also a 1:15 pm Saturday screening at the Paramount.)
I started this item by saying instead of going to the damn Borat screening (which I knew wouldn’t get out until 2:15 or 2:30 ayem, and then I’d get to bed at 3:30 ayem), I went to an after-party at Lobby, a narrow, darkly lit club on Bloor Street, for Ken Loach’s The Wind That Shakes the Barley. It was awful, noisy, repulsive. Wall-to-wall 20- and 30-something nocturnal party types with much-too-loud music and steely-eyed goons at the doorway keeping invited guests from coming in…a festival pigfuck extraordinaire.
I went to a little joint two or three doors down and ran into MPRM’s Jennifer Lopez and Wendy Martino. We shared stories and traded news and generally had a nice wind-down for an hour or so.

IFC Films has picked up …So Goes the Nation, a doc by James Stern and Adam Del Deo about the key battleground state of Ohio during the ’04 Presidential campaign. Any examination of Ohio ’04, of course, means an examination of the long-standing charge that George Bush‘s stooges stole the election by suppressing liberal democratic voters through various underhanded means. This story has been reported and explored quite a lot over the last couple of years, and the response from the right has consistently been “get over it.” …So Goes The Nation is being touted as an even-handed look at what happened, but “even handed” is a code term that sometimes means “bending over backwards to accomodate the bad guys’ point of view.” (Sorry to be judgmental and all, but if you conspire to steal an election, that kinda makes you a “bad guy.” ) A release says that tthe doc “looks at the election and the voting public through lenses large and small, and in doing so, examines both the U.S. voting process and the American national psyche.” The public Toronto Film Festival screenings aren’t until Thursday, 9.14, and Friday, 9.15.