The fact that Che and The Hurt Locker have finally landed distribution deals — respectively by IFC Films and Summit Entertainment — is welcome news, of course. But the fact that they took so long to happen tells you what an oddly neutured climate we’re living in right now.
I re-watched the first half of Che last night at the Elgin, and for me it’s just as tight and special and riveting as it seemed when I saw it last May in Cannes. No diminishment, no sag, no glancing at the watch. And yet the majority (or a good portion) of those who saw it with me at the Palais du Festival have been putting out the word ever since that it’s a problem movie.
Toronto Star critic Peter Howell has actually called it “Havana’s Gate.” Pete is a friend and a good fellow, but this is a grossly unfair thing to say. Because there are few films I’ve seen in my life that are more unlike Michael Cimino‘s 1981 debacle (including potential financial loss for Vincent Maraval’s Wild Bunch), I think it verges on slander. I absolutely know when a film is a gobbler or a major misfire and Che doesn’t come close. It’s one of the most exactingly reconstructed and truthfully told historical epics ever made — an immersion rather than “drama,” cholesterol-free and believable down to the last rifle and combat boot.
All these months I’ve been asking myself “what’s going on here?” A movie of this distinction may not make mountains of money or win over each and every person who sees it, but the fact that it went begging for four or five months strikes me as almost surreal. What’s wrong with this landscape, with our moviegoing culture, with today’s audiences, with “the business”?
Same thing with The Hurt Locker, which began shooting in Jordan right after Brian DePalma‘s Redacted, which was first shown at last year’s Venice and Toronto film festivals. Kathryn Bigelow‘s Iraq-War drama is ten times the movie that Redacted is/was, and yet it was forced to ran for cover when all the otyher Iraq War dramas died late last year.
Which should matter not to anyone truly of the faith. That’s one of the big problems, I suppose. The indie-film business is in a down cycle and there are fewer and fewer “Catholic” distributors as a result. But it’s just wrong for a film as strong as Bigelow’s to have to scrounge around for someone to release it.
The alleged “excitement” about and support for Sarah Palin among the American stooge strata is a disconnect also — a huge one. Eight years of leadership by a neocon Bible worshipper who’s kowtowed to corporate interests at every turn, taken us into massive debt, mired us in a dead-end war that was launched for deep-down personal reasons (which many believe is a prosecutable offense) and ignored any semblance of progressive leadership on energy and the environment, and the Walmart moms and others in the heartland are still for Palin (and oh, yes…McCain) despite the unmistakable signs that would tell anyone over the age of seven that McCain-Palin will keep the Bush routine going full tilt .
Why the slight lead in the polls for for McCain-Palin? Because the heartland moms see her as a feisty, right-thinking, flag-saluting Bible mom whom they relate to culturally. The mind stalls. Something is terribly, terribly wrong out there.
On top of which I’m getting more and more angry at assessments of the election dynamic by MSM reporters and analysts because they won’t allow for anything more than a passing acknowledgment of the racial elephant. Whenever it comes up, which is to say infrequently, it is invariably described as a minor fringe sentiment that is to be pitied and certainly marginalized in terms of frequent or extensive discussion.
And yet every now and then someone will man up and say what “we don’t really know Obama well enough” and “we’re not sure he’s ready to be president” really means. (Bob Herbert, David Gergen…who else?) The elephant — tusks, ears, trunk and all — is standing right smack dab in the middle of every discussion and reading of what’s going on out there and nobody — not the news media and certainly not Barack himself — is permitted to say it’s the absolute front-and-center factor among the less-educated voters out there, which translates as a crucial one since their votes are big factors in the swing states.

It’s nice to fantasize about the United States and Canada agreeing to classify the saying of “oh…my…God!” in a public place as a punishable misdemeanor. Just add this to the list of other small acts that result in minor wrist-slappings, like urinating in an alley or parking in a red zone. A fine of $50, let’s say. Ordinary citizens, under this new ordinance, would be allowed or even encouraged to make citizen’s arrests, with the fine to be levied by the authorities providing (a crucial component, this) that proof contained in cell-phone videos or mp3 recordings is submitted within seven days of the offense.

Two days ago I wrote that Bill Maher and Larry Charles‘ Religulous (Lionsgate, 10.3) “hasn’t [been] shot with an especially vivid sense of style or panache of any kind,” and that Charles has “made it look and sound more or less like Morgan Spurlock‘s Where In The Hell is Osama Bin Laden?” That wasn’t entirely fair. The final 10 minutes of this vital and absorbing documentary — a serious summing-up that reiterates how religious fairy-tale beliefs are keeping humanity from progressing — have been edited like gangbusters.
Here, incidentally, is a Yahoo video piece about the film that includes a good quip from Maher. America is so under the grip of yahoo religion that the presidential race is being degraded and diverted into absurd places. Sarah Palin being one manifestation of this. “Faith and family and faith” and so on. But then, as Maher says, “Americans are not great at connecting the dots.”
This 9.9 Reuters piece by Cameron French, posted yesterday afternoon, explains the Maher press conference in more detail.

“With less than one hour to go and no restraining order in place, I feel comfortable now letting you all know that this film was the subject of legal threats and was almost not shown at all here at the festival,” William Morris agent Cassian Elwes wrote in a bulk mailing to buyers last night before the only screening of Paris, Not France at the Ryerson at 6 pm.
“This version will probably never be seen again. I am hoping that Paris will see, with the audience tonight, that there is nothing to be afraid of here. And will eventually let the film be distributed.
“What was originally conceived to be a 20-minute puff piece extra on the DVD release for her album, has in fact become a fascinating examination of what it’s like to be a star in our star-obsessed culture.
“I can guarantee you three things: you may be the only people to ever see this version, you will not be disappointed, and everyone will be asking you if you saw it.”
I was going to try and go myself, but at the last minute I asked myself, “Why are you making any kind of effort to see a doc about Paris Hilton? Where are your priorities?”

New Quantum of Solace trailer — same old same old. You’ll be looking at the Blu-ray DVD of this film seven months from now, and you’ll think twice before renting or buying it.

An anonymous buyer whose judgment is usually on-target has shared the following about some Toronto Film Festival entries that are up for grabs, or were up for grabs until recently:
Richard Linklater‘s Me and Orson Welles: So-so. The first half drags a bit too much. Christian McKay gives an incredible performance as Orson Welles but it’s not enough to save the film.
Davis Guggenheim‘s It Might Get Loud: A fun rockumentary. Sure to enjoy a long life on DVD and TV.
Lance Daly‘s Kisses: Dark, gloomy, and a bit fucked-up for a movie about two kids spending a night on the mean streets of Dublin. Could have been so much better…
Darren Aronofsky‘s The Wrestler: Great, fantastic and downright sublime, although it will be a very tough to sell to the immature (pathetically so) U.S. movieger. Fox Searchlight was the perfect choice to distribute. Hopefully, it will enjoy a bountiful Oscar run.
Richard Eyre‘s The Other Man: A disaster. The biggest cinematic trainwreck of the festival. It had so much potential but the last act is one of the worst pieces of garbage ever assembled on-screen.
New York, I Love You (anthology film, many directors): Very cute and funny. The best segments belong to Brett Ratner (a nice surprise) and Yvan Attal.
Stephan Elliott‘s Easy Virtue: Surprisingly not bad. A bit of editing in the first act could turn this one into a potential surprise hit. Jessica Biel‘s performance is — no kidding — a comedic revelation.

Watching Kathryn Bigelow‘s The Hurt Locker is like having your heart operated on by a construction worker wielding a power pneumatic nail-driver. And the high-voltage stuff, which happens often, is, no joke, on the level of the armed creature-hunting and creature-evading sequences in Aliens, the classic 1986 thriller directed by Bigelow’s one-time-squeeze James Cameron. Where are the monsters, will they rise up and kill us when we round the next corner, and do we have a chance of killing them first? Except this time the monsters are just lying there, waiting to go fuck-you-bluh-doom!

Hurt Locker star Jeremy Renner

I had a couple of minor issues and confusions, one of them to do with the not-good-enough ending, another about the identity of a minor character who seems to die and then perhaps is alive later on. But you can’t sweat the small stuff.
Set in Baghdad and the full maelstrom of that godforsaken conflict, this is a full-power throttle, nail-biting, bomb-defusal suspense film that gradually becomes a kind of existential nerve ride about the risk and uncertainty of everything and anything, plus an explanation of the addiction that war is for some guys who go through it and can’t quite leave it alone.
The Hurt Locker is absolutely a classic war film in the tradition of Platoon, The Thin Red Line, Pork Chop Hill, Paths of Glory and the last 25% of Full Metal Jacket, and it damn well better be acquired by someone and set for release sometime between now and 12.31. Because I’m getting tired of this shit.
Something is very wrong with life, the world, human nature and the film business when a movie this knock-down good is still hunting for distribution. I’m obviously aware of all the Iraq War films that died last year but this movie is something else. You don’t shun movies like this. If you’re a distributor and that’s your judgment — walk away, we can’t sell it, we’ll lose our shirts — then you need to get out of the movie business and start selling refrigerators or cars. A buyer told me a little while ago that it only cost about $15 million or less. How could the numbers not work?

This is a huge bounce-back for Bigelow, whose career has been on a low-flame for the last five or six years despite the fine, tight chops she showed on K-19: The Widowmaker (2002) and The Weight of Water (’00). This is unquestionably her best film ever. It’s also a great boon for Jeremy Renner, who plays the lead role Staff Sergeant William James, a bomb-defusing risk junkie. It’s a solid plus for costars Anthony Mackie and Brian Gerahty, and an occasion for three strong cameos by Guy Pearce, Ralph Fiennes and David Morse.
There is no “wrong” or “right” judgement about any film, but now that I’ve seen The Hurt Locker I’m stunned that Variety‘s Derek Elley could have panned it the way he did, calling it a hellish thing to sit through, and one that says nothing new about the Iraq War U.S. troop experience, and that it takes too long to get to the point (such as it is). What did Elley see over there? Was he on painkillers?
Mark Boal‘s screenplay is based on his first-hand experience with with a bomb squad in Baghdad sometime in ’04 or ’05. I loved that it doesn’t tell a carefully structured story with some kind of problem that has to solved or catharsis built into the third act. What it is, mainly, is a kind of you-are-there docudrama — feel it or run from it but this is what’s it really like, hombre.
There are something like six or seven action-suspense scenes, but what moves it along, simply, is character. Renner’s risk addiction, Mackie’s alarm at this tendency (and then his gradual acceptance and even submission), Gerahty’s shock and horror at what he encounters almost every day.

Hurt Locker costar Anthony Mackie

The movie starts to get classically emotional a little less than hour in when Renner becomes friendly with a young Arab kid named “Beckham” (Christopher Sayegh). The next beat in this bond shifts into a dark and tragic gear about 25 or 30 minutes later.
I don’t want to reveal too much here, but the only thing that didn’t feel quite right was a close-to-the-end sequence when Renner goes home to his (divorced?) wife and kid, and right away we can spot the familiar syndrome of the war veteran who can’t quite settle down and groove with a midle-class, comforts-of-home lifestyle. I don’t want to register a major complaint about this; it doesn’t work against the film as much as it fails to add anything significant.
This is probably the best film I’ve seen at the Toronto Film Festival so far. And to see it I had to blow off my last shot at seeing The Wrestler as well as a 12 noon press screening of I’ve Loved You For So Long, which I’ll at least be able to catch tomorrow night. But no Wrestler, dammit! Sorry, Darren Aronofsky, for this twist of fate. Hoping to see it very soon back in Los Angeles.

Yesterday morning MTV.com’s Casey Seijas reported from the Toronto Film Festival that he’d spoken with Michael Caine — here to talk about Is There Anybody There? — and that Caine is persuaded that Johnny Depp and Phillip Seymour Hoffman are the top candidates to play the Riddler and the Penguin in Christopher Nolan‘s next and final Batman film, which will be shot…what, two or three years from now?
“They’ve already got them in mind,” Caine reportedly said. “I read it in the paper.” That admission right away would seem to throw out the authority and/or legitimacy of Caine’s observation, except that he also allegedly said that “he confirmed the news through the studio itself.”
Assistant: Mr. Robinov? Michael Caine on the line!
Jeff Robinov: What’s he want?
Assistant: He’s calling to confirm whether or not we’re absolutely and finally inclined to hire Johnny Depp and Philp Seymour Hoffman for the next Batman movie.
Robinov: Sure, whatever…tell him we like those guys. Wait a minute, let me pick up. Put him through. [Click] Michael? Howza boy?

The principle reason for the McCain-Palin surge in the most recent Gallup and Zogby national polls, to hear it from one CNN analyst this morning, is the under-educated, blue-collar older female vote. A lot of these gals, many of whom were Hillary Clinton supporters previously, have fallen for Palin largely because she’s (a) female, (b) feisty and (c) being attacked or looked down upon by the snooty liberal media for her teenaged daughter becoming pregnant out of wedlock — an occurence that tens of thousands of not terribly bright or inquisitive Walmart moms can apparently relate to.
What hope can there be for anyone — for any of us, for the fate of this country — when an election decision of this magnitude is being made by a large portion of the citizenry on the basis of female identity, gut character assessment and cultural lifestyle issues alone, and absolutely no attention paid to Palin’s record or beliefs, her being inadequate to the task of the Presidency, her hypocrisy, her alleged “sambo beat the bitch!” line, her appalling views on nearly everything (global warming, eradicating polar bears, teaching creationism, an apparent interest in banning certain books from her local library)?
On top of which it shows that gender is all with these incredibly wise and perceptive women. Hillary, Sarah…what’s the difference? Does it matter all that much who a candidate is, her beliefs about what government should or can do for its citizens, he kind of policies and priorities that she stands for? Just vote for the woman candidate because she’s one of us, and because she’s stand-up tough like you have to be in this world.

I would have preferred a clip of Palin himself offering some sort of present-tense evaluation of his Oval Office qualifications. The best thing about this ad is the site and concept behind it. All it boils down to otherwise is a career clip reel…blah.