A week or so ago the Toronto Film Festival re-invited veteran journalists to sign up and get themselves squared away, so that’s what I did. I know that the whole show is moving south sooner or later to the Bell Lightbox, so I asked Toronto Star critic Peter Howell what’s doing. “They’re still building the Bell Lightbox,” he answered. “It may be ready for part of the 2010 fest, and supposedly will be ready for 2011. The press part of the festival this year will still mostly happen at the [Bay and Bloor] Manulife Centre.”

The Harry Potter movies have always made money, but they haven’t mattered for years. Certainly not to people like me. They’re just big-budget cult movies that spin round and round inside their own CG-pumped fishbowl. I got off the boat five years ago (i.e., after Alfonso Cuaron ‘s Azkaban) and I’ll never get back on. Ever. I might feel differently if the producers were to venture out into the world and leave Hogwarts behind, but that’s never been in the cards.

Variety‘s Todd McCarthy, in any event, has reviewed the latest — Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Warner Bros. 7.15):

“Kids’ stuff is a thing of the past in [this entry],” he writes. “Suddenly looking quite grown up, the students at Hogwarts are forced to grapple with heavy issues of mortality, memory and loss in this sixth installment in the series of bigscreen adaptations of J.K. Rowling‘s Potter tales. Dazzlingly well made and perhaps deliberately less fanciful than the previous entries, this one is played in a mode closer to palpable life-or-death drama than any of the others and is quite effective as such.”

And yet Half-Blood Prince is rated PG rather than PG-13, he notes, and is the third-longest feature in the series at 153 minutes….good God!

I thought at first that the N.Y. Observer‘s Sara Vilkomerson had echoed my view that Marion Coltillard‘s Public Enemies performance “is an award-quality nail-down,” in part because “no dramatic actress in recent memory has conveyed as much intestinal steel.” I was led to think so by an online friend who said she’d climbed aboard the Cotillard train, etc. But then I read her piece (“We Say Oui to Marion Cotillard“) and realized all she was saying was that her “total and unabashed girl-crush” was going “stronger than ever.”

Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs took the #1 spot with a three-day haul of $42,500,000 and a five-day haul of $67,506,000, averaging $10,368 per situation. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen took a 61% hit from last weekend’s opener with earnings of $42,500,000 — expected. And yet it’s only $7 million away from a $300 million gross. Public Enemies was third with a three-day take of $26,172,000 and a five-day haul of $41,044,000, averaging an overall $7,850 per situation.

If Enemies triples its three-day opening figure, it’ll end up with a little more than $75 million, give or take. It would obviously look better on the ledger sheet if it ends up cresting $100 million. But will it? $7850 per situation isn’t all that terrific.

The best per-screen average anywhere was earned again by The Hurt Locker. Kathryn Bigelow‘s edge-junkie film expanded from 4 to 9 screens this weekend, and took down $126,000. The total gross stands at $365,000.

I’m guessing that most megaplex morons will most likely steer clear of The Hurt Locker because…well, because they’re primitive types who tend to get all queasy when they sense complexity. But it’s clearly starting to catch on and stands a better-than-decent chance of taking in a good $30 million or so. That’s an appropriate amount for one of the two or three best films of the year so far…no?

This may be the best modern-consciousness upgrade to happen to the legend of Fred Astaire since that 1997 Dirt Devil ad. I realize many people saw that ad as a desecration, but for 97% of viewers it was an introduction to the guy.

The Toronto Star‘s Peter Howell has listed his ten favorite road movies. Here’s his list coupled with my critiques/reactions, followed by my own top ten:

(l. to r.) Randy Quaid, Otis Young and Jack Nicholson in Hal Ashby’s The Last Detail.

Howell: 1. It Happened One Night (Wells reaction: Moderately appealing but Frank Capra is thoroughly over by any reasonable 21st Century standard); 2. One Week (Wells reaction: What?); 3. Two-Lane Blacktop (Wells reaction: I bought the Criterion DVD only to realize what a meandering and enervated thing it is, and seriously lacking in visual intrigue); 4. Y tu mama tambien (Wells reaction: perhaps not a top-tenner but a very fine film); 5. Thelma & Louise (Wells reaction: Driving your car over a cliff is a romantic-nihilist-crap finale, but if you’re going to use this don’t gussy it up with slow-mo photography and a personality clip reel); 6. Easy Rider (Wells reaction: definitely a top-tenner); 7. The Sure Thing (Wells reaction: A likable tits-and-zits ’80s movie, nothing more); 8. The Motorcycle Diaries (Wells reaction: 100% agreement); 9. Duel (Wells reaction: Not sprawling or meditative enough to qualify as real road movie); 10. The Cannonball Run (Wells reaction: pure garbage — a choice that insults and degrades the genre).

Wells: 1. The Grapes of Wrath (first because of the compassion and humanity and assertive political current); 2. The Wizard of Oz (the great-grandfather of all road movies); 3. Sideways (“I’m not drinkin’ fuckin’ Merlot!” — the kind of line that the Cannonball Run creators didn’t have the creative edge to even consider using); 4. Badlands (“This is the last time I get together with the hell-bent type”); 5. The Last Detail (again — compassion for sympathetic trapped characters, humor, melancholy resolution); 6. Apocalypse Now (a river is a road and vice versa). 7. Little Miss Sunshine (greatest 21st Century road movie thus far); 8. Easy Rider; 9. The Motorcycle Diaires. 10. Rain Man. Honorable Mentions: Planes Trains and Automobiles, Five Easy Pieces, Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, Y tu mama tambien, Road Trip, The Straight Story, Fandango.

The generic road-movie definition calls them stories that happen over the course of a journey. As Howell writes, “The characters in transit have to experience some change to their attitudes and outlook, or else the trip is wasted. They have to not just go somewhere, but more importantly, they have to arrive.” Agreed.

Howell’s kicker — “And if they can do it with a smile, all the better” — is where he and I differ. To hell with smiles as ends in themselves. Remember those smiley buttons from the ’80s? The face of emotional fascism. Smirks and frowns are far more trustworthy.

For the last two weeks I was afflicted with a kind of malware that had the effect of re-directing Google searches to idiot-trash sites. Google wasn’t entirely useless as I could at least copy URLs and paste them into an address bar, but easy click-throughs were out. I tried running my Trend Micro Anti-Virus and Super Anti-Spyware softwares — no help at all. This morning I paid $30 for the latest version of PC Tools Spyware Doctor — partial success! There are still crap fragments in the system but Google seems to be mostly working again. Just saying.

The lead-in copy for a 7.5 N.Y. Times story by Alex Williams called “Getting Through The Summer Job Blues” reads as follows: “Will Ehrenfeld, a Tufts senior, is staying home for the summer after he could not find a job.” Somebody explain it to this kid. There’s no giving up, and any job seeker who figures “okay, game over” and decides to just hang at home is a dead man. So Willy tried? Gave it his best shot? Losers always whine about their best. Winners go home and enjoy endless carnal knowledge of the prom queen.

Last night’s fireworks-over-the-Hudson kick-out (which I saw from the New Jersey side) was fine. Whatever. But it didn’t hold a candle to that euphoric lightshow that burst out of the Eiffel tower nine and half years ago in Paris. The kids and I were there, standing a couple of blocks south, open-mouthed. Once in a lifetime.

Time Out‘s Adam Lee, disappointed with Public Enemies, asks if Michael Mann has “lost it.” My not agreeing is neither here nor there. The point is that Lee doesn’t seem to want to allow that directors sometimes go through slumps only to creatively re-charge.

John Huston began an eight- or nine-year slump in the mid ’70s after The Man Who Would Be King, but came back with Under The Volcano (’84) and then Prizzi’s Honor (’85).

Alfred Hitchcock went through a five-year slump after Notorious (’46) but was back in the saddle and slinging the six-shooter in ’51 with Strangers on a Train. Then he slumped again after The Birds (’62). If you ask me he didn’t really and truly bounce back with Frenzy (’72), although a lot of critics said he did.

Martin Scorsese started slumping after Taxi Driver (’76) but came back guns blazing with Raging Bull (’80) and After Hours (’82) and then slumped back again. Then he really kicked into gear with the magnificent The Last Temptation of Christ (’88) and Goodfellas (’90). Then came Scorsese’s whopper-sized, 13-year Cape Fear-to-Aviator slump (’91 to ’04). Then he re-charged and surged back with No Direction Home, The Departed and Shine a Light. Now he’s slumping again.

Steven Spielberg was on fire and could do no wrong between Duel (’71) and Close Encounters of the Third Kind (’77), went off the rails with 1941 (’79), came back with Raiders of the Lost Ark (’81) and E.T. (’82). Then he fell into a nine-year-slump starting with ’84’s Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and stayed in it until the double score of Jurassic Park and Schindler’s List in ’93. He slumped again for five years and then sort of came back with Saving Private Ryan (with a great first 30 minutes) in ’98, and then went into another big slump — 11 years and counting.

Other examples?

Three pages of N.Y. Times movie ads are linked below — a group playing in May 1962 and another from October 1955. How many have you seen or even heard of? How many have any kind of must-see rep today? Maybe 10%, if that. The same rule will almost certainly apply 40 or 50 years from now. What films that have opened over the last six to twelve months will be considered essential downloads in 2049 or ’59?

5.27.62 N.Y. Times movie ads; 10.1.55 ads; ditto.

The hand-carved totem pole on the site of the 1969 Woodstock Music and Arts Fair, which I wanted Jett to see on our way back to town, was the only old-timey artifact on the entire grounds — and it’s gone. Taken down because of too many termites, I was told. I took a shot of the pole during a visit last April. I was feeling moderately cranked about seeing Ang Lee‘s Taking Woodstock at the time, and wanted to start feeling it.

7.4.09, 12:25 pm

4.11.09, 6:35 pm

The Bethel Woods Art Center, which sits on the top of the huge sloping hill, is a combination outdoor theatre and ’60s culture museum. It’s a weird thing to visit a place that tries to portray the hippie era like a high-end museum might display ancient Egyptian art. It’s not a “bad” place, exactly, but it’s awfully sterile and tourist-trappy and corporate-vibey.

There’s a gift shop inside the center — the exact same kind of Disneyland-ish knick-knack shop that they have across from Graceland. They sell all kinds of Woodstock books, CDs, T-shirts, etc. And yet they weren’t selling Michael Lang‘s Road to Woodstock, which just came out in stores a few days ago. A first-hand tale of how the Woodstock festival came together by the producer with the most famous name, and the ultimate Woodstock tourist-trap shop isn’t selling it over the 4th of July holiday and a month before the 40th anniversary? I asked the kid at the desk and he didn’t know a thing.