The Criterion Collection site, per custom, is doing everything in its power to hide and/or obscure its plans to release Steven Soderbergh‘s twin Che pics on DVD and Blu-ray in December. And yet Variety‘s Peter Debruge confirmed this three days ago (on Tuesday, 9.1) in the midst of his story about the IFC/Criterion deal, which I paid no attention to because it only mentioned two IFC titles, Gomorrah and A Christmas Tale, that I’d read about earlier.

Agreed, Dave McNary — Jason Reitman‘s Up in the Air isn’t in the official Telluride Film Festival schedule, but it’s definitely there and going to play sooner rather than later. The publicity team is roaming around Telluride, and a friend has asked them directly if Up In The Air is going to screen there and they said yes. It just wasn’t included in the schedule to keep it a “surprise.”

To the great surprise of the Global Post‘s Paul Hockenos, Quentin Tarantino‘s Inglourious Basterds “has rocketed to the top of the German charts and even charmed the country’s most discerning film critics. When I showed up at my neighborhood theater in Berlin, the ticket line reached out to the curb. Once inside the jam-packed theater, I found myself as intrigued by the reaction of the German cinema-goers as I was by the film.

It is entirely fair and logical to assume that Brad Pitt, to go by his gray suit jacket and gray tie, was also wearing gray slacks and dress shoes when this shot was recently taken in Berlin, and not shorts, black socks and sandals.

“It was plain from the bursts of laughter and applause that they thoroughly relished all two-and-a-half hours of it, even though the graphic, blood-soaked farce would appear to break every German’s rule for political correctness. It’s a Nazi-era splatter film.”

The Cove director Louie Psihoyos has told Gothamist editor John Del Signore that he doesn’t believe director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu should walk away from his role as jury president of the Tokyo Film Festival if the allegedly green-themed festival declines to show his film, which exposes the dolphin-slaughtering Taiji fishing industry. And yet Psihoyos calls the director of the festival (a possible reference to TIFF chairman Tatsumi ‘Tom’ Yoda) “a hypocrite” in the same breath.

“Jesus, it’s a little bit daunting,” Psihoyosa says about The Cove‘s dismal box-office so far. “I mean we thought we had this crossover film. This film has action, adventure, was set up like an Ocean’s Eleven film, and at the end of the day, you know, you feel better for it. I think it’s a great date film, actually, because you want to see that hardcore guy next to you crushed, you want to see him crumble, you want to see a tear, you want to have something really interesting to talk about when you get back to his place?

“This is the film to do it. It makes the guys feel alright cause it’s got this action-adventure component, and for the women, it’s emotion-packed. It’s got everything. Except an audience!”

The Del Signore/Psihoyos q & a doesn’t specifically address one of the reasons — if not the main reason — why The Cove isn’t doing the business it could and should, and guys like Some Came Running‘s Glenn Kenny will just laugh and snort if I bring it up again. But I’ll donate my car, my motorcycle, $500 out of my savings and my 42-inch plasma to a charity of choice if it’s not true.

The Cove is dying commercially in large part because of skittish women not wanting to see Flipper harpooned to death.

In an 8.14 piece called “The Girls Won’t Watch It,” I wrote that “my head and my gut have been telling me for weeks that for every impassioned woman who will attend The Cove because she cares about the plight of dolphins and wants to feel and do something that might help the cause in some way (like my dolphin-loving friend Gini Kopecky), there are nine others who are saying to their girlfriends/dates/ boyfriends/husbands, ‘No way…can’t watch that…too much.’

“Please present any sort of observational evidence that indicates I’m wrong. I haven’t polled a cross-section of a couple of hundred women or hired a research firm to do same. I just know what women are like when it comes to blood. Sorry.

“Women call the shots when straight couples go to the movies. Guys can be harassed or cajoled into seeing a flick they wouldn’t otherwise catch on their own, but if a woman doesn’t want to see a particular film…forget it. End of discussion, wasting your breath. Which is why good-movie-seeking, green-minded guys, I suspect, aren’t pushing their girlfriends/ wives to see The Cove with them — they know it’s futile. Which is why The Cove is falling off the radar. Tell me I’m wrong.”

Screen Daily‘s Fionnuala Halligan (“[The] hopelessness will make The Road hard going for general audiences”), The Times Online‘s Wendy Ide (“Hillcoat’s vision is forthright and brutal”), and In Contention‘s Kris Tapley (“a bleak residue of style in the shadow of potential substance”) were yes/no/mixed on the Weinstein Co. release, contrasting with yesterday’s flat-out pan by Variety‘s Todd McCarthy.

Ide again: “Two elements let the film down. First is a voiceover from Mortensen, which is a little heavy on the explication for my tastes. Second, and more serious, is the labored score (co-written by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis). We know that it’s sad that the last children on Earth are starving and scared. We don’t need a musical signpost to tell us so. It would have been better to have no music at all, and let the story play out to the accompaniment of the groans of the dying planet.”

Oh, right…the review by the Hollywood Reporter‘s Deborah Young. Except it’s much more of a stand-offish description of the film than a review of it. Hillcoat does “an admirable job of bringing Cormac McCarthy‘s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel to the screen as an intact and haunting tale,” she says, “even at the cost of sacrificing color, big scenes and standard Hollywood imagery of post-apocalyptic America. Shot through with a bleak intensity and pessimism that offers little hope for a better tomorrow, the film is more suitable to critical appreciation than to attracting huge audiences.”

Informationally-challenged Minnesota Tea-Bagger: “Are you gonna vote the way the people want…the people who elected you? Or are you gonna vote the way Obama wants you to vote?” Sen. Al Franken: I’m gonna vote the way I want to vote. Now, let me tell you how I decide how to vote. I use my independent judgment, and I don’t always just go by polls.”

“The Telluride lineup did not include Jason Reitman‘s Up in the Air despite rumors that the George Clooney starrer would be a last-minute addition.” — from Variety‘s Dave McNary, posted Thursday at 2 pm eastern.

In his first “Notes on a Season” column for the L.A. Times/Envelope, Pete Hammond says that “the big question some are asking is whether 2009, a slow starter for Oscar-level quality pictures with as many as 30% fewer releases coming in the final months, is turning out to be the right year for launching the ten (as opposed to five) Best Picture nominees rule. One leading marketer says, ‘I love the idea, just not this year.’

“Another person very close to the process and a supporter of the change is still nervously eyeing the contenders, saying The Hurt Locker is so far the only certain nominee at the eight-month mark. Others would probably add Disney/Pixar’s Up to that assessment, but the spotty track record of animation in the Best Picture race adds some lingering questions as to whether Up can prevail — even with five extra slots to play with.

“So what we’ve got so far is a Summit Releasing arthouse Iraq war movie and an Ed Asner ‘toon. Hmmm. Time to get to work, Oscar Gods.”

HE note: I’m not disputing the existence of the Oscar Gods, but it it my contention that the Movie Gods occupy a higher station in the celestial realm.

An apparently legitimate (i.e., non-fraudulent) early review of Danis Tanovic‘s Triage, which will play at the Toronto Film Festival, appeared a few hours ago. The writer (who couldn’t be bothered to reply to my email) is Anya Wassenberg, a Toronto-based writer/model. She’s not a film scholar, okay, but she did she care enough about Tanovic’s film to post on artandculturemaven.com. “If you’re going to the Toronto International Film Festival at all this year, Triage is a must-see,” she says.

She calls it “a truly engrossing film that features masterful storytelling and nuanced, completely convincing performances; one that tackles some of the darker realities of human existence with a view that seems entirely authentic, and truthful in a way that mainstream films so very seldom are.” Her stand-out line: “Damn you, Colin Farrell, for making me cry!” Only I don’t get the “damn you” part. What’s wrong with weeping during a film?

If I was loaded and living in LA and looking for Hollywood Elsewhere office space, I would definitely take Madison Partners’ Brad Feld up on his offer and rent myself an historic bungalow or suite on the Paramount lot. A friend says this is “an example of how dire things are at Paramount” and “remember when 20th Century Fox sold the land in the early ’60s that eventually became Century City?” and so on. I say it’s a great opportunity for anyone looking for a little emotional uplift.

In recognition of the MCN Gurus of Gold having today taken a stab at Best Picture handicapping, HE’s Ten Most Likely are as follows (and in this order): Invictus (Warner Bros.), d: Clint Eastwood; The Hurt Locker, d: Kathryn Bigelow; Up In The Air (Paramount), d: Jason Reitman; An Education (Sony Classics), d: Lone Scherfig; Nine (Weinstein Co.), d: Rob Marshall; The Lovely Bones (Paramount), d: Peter Jackson; A Serious Man (Focus Features), d: Joel and Ethan Coen; Bright Star (Apparition), d: Jane Campion; Up (Disney), d: Pete Docter, Bob Peterson, and The Tree of Life (Apparition), d: Terrence Malick.

It’s been feeling like a relatively strong and stirring year to me, but some are going to start complaining any day now that the above films aren’t hefty enough — not broadly emotional or large-scopey or whatever — and that 2009 is therefore shaping up to be a somewhat pallid year in terms of Best Picture competition. I don’t think so — I’m calling it a pretty good, better-than-so-so year — but just you wait.

It’s worth noting that eight of the fifteen Gurus — USA Today‘s Scott Bowles, Toronto Star‘s Peter Howell, Entertainment Weekly‘s Dave Karger, L.A. Times Mark Olsen, Steve Pond, Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone, Indiewire‘s Anne Thompson and USA Today‘s Suzie Woz — have picked Mira Nair‘s Amelia as having a decent shot at ending up as one of ten Best Picture nominees.

I haven’t seen the film, but I’ve been hearing this and that. There’s nothing better than a nice surprise, but for now these guys need to lie down on the tracks and put their ears closer to the rails.

Oscar oddsmaking aside, the best films of 2009 so far are The Hurt Locker, An Education, In The Loop, Humpday, Public Enemies, Up, Sin Nombre, Adventureland, Three Monkeys, The Girlfriend Experience, Il Divo. And among the docs: The Cove, Tyson, Anvil! The Story of Anvil, Food, Inc, and Of Time and the City.

Indiewire‘s Anne Thompson has posted ten big Toronto pick-up titles. The only ones I’m feeling even somewhat keen about are Danis Tanovic‘s Triage (because Tanovic is…well, Tanovic), Don Roos‘s Love and Other Impossible Pursuits (despite the awful title, and primarily because of favorable ingering memories of The Opposite of Sex), Atom Egoyan‘s Chloe (which isn’t supposed to be half bad) and Tom Ford‘s A Single Man.

No offense, but I’m either slightly worried or starting to grind my teeth over the rest, to wit: Jon Amiel‘s Creation (experience has taught me to beware of any and all husband-and-wife teamings), Edward Norton‘s Leaves of Grass (Edward Norton playing twins feels…I don’t know, a little too gimmicky), Neil Jordan‘s Ondine (generally scared of mermaids), Brian Koppelman and David Levien‘s Solitary Man (feeling scared of Michael Douglas at this stage of the game, particularly since he did a film for Peter Hyams), Aaron Schneider‘s Get Low (sorry but I’ve been scared of both Robert Duvall and, regret to say, Bill Murray for the last three or four years), and Niki Caro‘s The Vintner’s Luck (North Country put the fear of God in).