“I cannot dismiss Antichrist,” Roger Ebert has written. “It is a real film. It will remain in my mind. Von Trier has reached me and shaken me. It is up to me to decide what that means.

“I think the film has something to do with religious feeling. It is obvious to anyone who saw Breaking the Waves that von Trier’s sense of spirituality is intense, and that he can envision the supernatural as literally present in the world. His reference is Catholicism. Raised by a communist mother and a socialist father in a restrictive environment, he was told as an adult that his father was not his natural parent, and renounced that man’s Judaism to convert, at the age of 30, to the Catholic church. It was at about the same age that von Trier founded the Dogma movement, with its monkish asceticism.

“If you have to ask what a film symbolizes, it doesn’t. With this one, I didn’t have to ask. It told me. I believe Antichrist may be an exercise in alternative theology: von Trier’s version of those passages in Genesis where Man is cast from Eden and Satan assumes a role in the world.”

The aggressive marketing of the Beatles catelogue remasterings (including those dozens of favorable reviews that have been appearing for the last week or so). The sound is unmistakably improved over the 1987 CDs, like everyone’s been saying. To my ears the bass and drums are the most enhanced. Plus you can hear dozens of little other little grace notes and consonants and tonal effects much more clearly.

The sum effect isn’t stunningly different — you’re not going to be staggering out into the street going “what happened? I just listened to the remastered Revolver and I lost all sense of tiem and space!” — but the CDs (individually or in a package) are surely worth the purchase. And I’ve been telling myself for the last two or three years I’ll never buy another CD again. Never say never.

I’ve seen Jennifer’s Body and wouldn’t submit again with a knife at my back. I’ve seen Antichrist, of course, but I’m thinking I might watch it again in deference to that basically-bullshit, contrarian-for-its-own-sake Larry Gross argument (i.e., the Cannes critics over-reacted). I saw Pedro Almodovar‘s Broken Embraces in Cannes and loved it 90% (“I didn’t want it to end…it just won’t stop caressing and knocking you out.”) so I may duck into this if the second Antichrist viewing is too much to take.

Today’s TIFF press screening schedule — Thursday, 9.10, 6:25 pm

The three biggies today are (a) the 2:30 pm showing of Jon Amiel‘s Creation, which is the festival’s opening night film-with-an-afterparty (which no one of any taste or consequence ever attends); (b) the 5 pm showing of Grant Heslov‘s The Men Who Stare at Goats (which received a dicey Hollywood Reporter review out of Venice, thus compromising the effect of the ecstatic rave by Variety‘s Derek Elley); and (c) George Hickenlooper‘s Casino Jack, which I erroneously thought was going to show last night.

No need to interpret the expression on Rep. Joe Wilson (Republican, South Carolina) as he shouted “you lie!” during President Obama ‘s health care speech last night. But look at those two reptilian guys sitting next to him. Talk about an utter absence of God’s light. Why don’t Hollywood casting agents ever find guys with faces like this?

I didn’t even watch Obama’s health care speech last night, but I watched most of it this morning on YouTube. 65% sermon, 35% political boxing. Precise, frank, blunt-spoken. An excellent finale: “That is our character.” And the Edward M. Kennedy quote. But he threw the public option under the bus by not declaring it to be a win-or-die proposition, and that doesn’t sit well with me.

How many times do you think they rehearsed this thing? God, I love anything that doesn’t use CG and just plain old acting, writing, camera movement and choreography instead. It’s perfect. The last time I felt a charge from Robert Carlyle‘s acting was in 28 Weeks Later, or roughly two years ago. This, for me, is the best he’s been since Trainspotting.

This morning I read three Esquire magazine “What I’ve Learned” quotes that I love. They’re from actor Elliott Gould, and can be found on page 160 of the current issue. (a) “A Freudian psychiatrist once asked me if I considered myself to be omnipotent. I said, ‘I don’t know if I know what that word means.’ He said, ‘All-powerful.’ And I said no. But English wasn’t his first language — he was from Hungary. I think what he meant to ask was, ‘Are you aware you’re oblivious to reality?'”; (b) “When Bob Costas asked me if I had a drug problem, I said ‘No, I don’t have a drug problem. I have a problem with reality.'”; (c) “I don’t want to be impressed. It distracts me.”

I have nothing to add to this morning’s report by Rope of Silicon‘s Brad Brevet about this not-approved poster by Australian poster artist Jeremy Saunders. Except that I fully agree with a remark by Stale Popcorn‘s Glenn Dunks that the poster is “somewhat apt.” Right on the money, I’d actually say.

There’s a classic Mommie Dearest poster that used the phrase “No wire hangers!” as its centerpiece. Saunders’ poster is doing more or less the same thing with Antichrist. It’s selling the one thing that everyone will be talking and moaning about (i.e., as a result of being appalled and/or amazed) after seeing it. It’s sensationalistic but vivid. It’s like creating a poster for Last Tango in Paris and bannering the phrase, “Go get the butter.”

Because the Toronto Film Festival staffers have chosen not to open the second-floor media wifi lounge inside festival headquarters at the Sutton Place hotel until Friday morning, those of us with laptops who are looking to file here today or tomorrow have no choice but to use the downstairs press room, which has a bank of about 20 flatscreens. I’ve just been told, however, that I can’t use the wall plugs in the downstairs lounge because the Sutton Place doesn’t have enough electricity to power the flatscreens plus random laptoppers like myself. Some kind of overload or burnout will result, they say.

So after arguing and snarling about this I had to unplug. Which, of course, is absurd. Can you imagine the Cannes or Sundance staffers telling press they can’t plug in while filing in their media wifi rooms (i.e., inside the Palais or the Park City Marriott)? There would be a revolt. But this is Toronto so everyone shrugs. They’ve been lagging behind in providing decent wifi opportunities for the press in years past, and this a.c. power/plug-in issue is an expression of the same groove. So I guess I’ll just have to file inside Starbucks cafes (which allow you to plug in) today and tomorrow. At least it’s just a temporary problem. The upstairs media wifi lounge will allow journalists to plug in starting on Friday morning.

I flew to Toronto this morning on a tiny-ass jet and landed at 11:30 am. It took me a while to drop the bags off and pick up my badge, but now I’m sitting in air-conditioned comfort at the Sutton Place and surfing on truly excellent wifi. The new upstairs wifi media lounge is closed (“not open until Friday”….cool!) but the downstairs wifi room has more room for laptop guys like myself and fewer flatscreens, which is excellent in terms of breathing space.

Downstairs press/indusry wifi room at Sutton Place.

Do I even need to get a SIM card? All my regular iPhone calls are being forwarded to my Gizmo5 phone and everyone’s voice message is dropped into my email box as an mp3.

I’m not a fan of the hot weather outside. At all. It feels like Kansas in August with asphalt and sweat and fatigue. What happened to the idea of fall starting after Labor Day? I’m not expecting sweater weather but is it too much to ask for moderate fair-breeze warmth in Toronto, Ontario, in the middle of friggin’ September?