EW‘s Mark Harris has posted two dead-on reasons why people should see Charles Ferguson‘s No End In Sight, that infuriating doc (in a good way) that I’ve written about two or three times about how U.S. officials totally cocked up the Iraqi occupation and all but incited the insurgency with their outrageous bungling.

One is that “it’s made by someone who knows more than you do,” Harris writes, “so you’re guaranteed to come away from it smarter…[plus] the precision with which Ferguson lays out [the mistakes] is riveting.” And two, “the movie doesn’t fetishize outrage. It seems to have been made with the kind of calm focus that is bred by deep anger, but it always stays on mission. In an era of shout-first-ask-questions-later filmmaking, Ferguson’s frosty intensity is exciting.”

Whenever mainstream publications report about a breakup of a celebrity couple (as People.com has in the case of Heath Ledger and Michelle Williams), it’s always because of work pressures and being apart shooting different films, blah, blah.

But in the real world people break up for one of three reasons — infidelity, money problems, or one of the partners having a drug/alcohol problem that isn’t being remedied. Money isn’t an issue with these two and I’ve never heard of booze or snorting being an issue with either (especially with a young daughter to look after) so…anyway, whatever. (An occasional, very obscure fourth reason for breakups — one of the partners realizes he/she will be happier with a lover of the same sex — isn’t an issue here either.)

“The way the torrents of archly amusing, vocabulary-bending dialogue trip off the tongues of the characters here, you know you’re in the hands of some manner of distinctive writer, and she would be Diablo Cody — a young scribe very handy at shotgunning bright teen quips, as well as catching the attitudes of two distinct types of adults. In fact, the voluminous ruminations of precocious sprite Juno MacGuff (Ellen Page) cascade so thick and fast at the outset that they almost weigh things down, so heavy are they with self-conscious cleverness.” — from Todd McCarthy‘s mostly positive review of Jason Reitman‘s Juno, filed yesterday afternoon from the Telluride Film Festival.

Richard Corliss Darjeeling Limited Venice Film Festival Blast #1 (about the similarities between Owen Wilson and the character he plays): “It’s a shock, but not a surprise, to see Owen Wilson in The Darjeeling Limited, the new semi-comedy from Wes Anderson that premiered at the Venice Film Festival last night.” And a little jarring, he adds, when you consider dialogue in which Owen’s head-bandaged character says he has “some healing to do” but is “still alive” after he “smashed into a hill on purpose on my motorcycle.”

“As Francis Whitman, the eldest of the three Whitman brothers, Owen is clearly in physical distress,” Corliss reports. “His head is wrapped in two thick bandages, one horizontal, one vertical, as if to keep his brains from seeping out. The nose Wilson’s fans know to be charmingly broken has a Band Aid on it. His right hand and wrist are taped, and he uses a cane to walk.

“He looks a mess — funny, in the context of the film; not so, given Wilson’s hospitalization a week ago for what was described as a slashed-wrist suicide attempt. The actor was released Saturday and is in his Santa Monica home, People.com reported, under 24-hour watch by friends and family, instead of on the red carpet in Venice.

“In the movie, Francis is a man on a quest: to reconnect with his brothers Peter (Adrien Brody) and Jack (Jason Schwartzman). They’ve met in India, on a long train trip, for what Francis hopes will be a three-way spiritual quest. ‘I want us to be completely open,’ he tells Peter and Jack, ‘and say yes to everything, even if it’s shocking and painful.’ Okay, then, Peter has an open question for Francis: ‘What happened to your face?’

“He had an accident, Francis replies, and banged himself up pretty severely. Of his surgeons, he says, ‘They did all the procedures right, the result of which is I’m still alive.’ He admits he has ‘some healing to do,’ to which Jack cheerleadingly says, ‘Gettin’ there, though,’ and Peter offers the compliment, ‘Gives you character.’ Later Francis reveals that the incident was not quite an accident: ‘I smashed into a hill on purpose on my motorcycle.’

“This — along with the fact than Wilson is one of three brothers (Andrew and Luke are in movies too) — concludes the witness report on the coincidences between Francis Whitman and Owen Wilson. Enough already. I feel creepy just passing this information along, as if a critic were auditioning to be a coroner.”

Richard Corliss Darjeeling Limited Venice Film Festival Blast #2 (i.e., about the continuing Wes Anderson poised-attitude problem that dogs it): “Picaresque movies often feel longer than they are. For them to work, they need an interior spring with more thrust than Darjeeling Limited‘s attempt at reconstituted brotherhood. The problem is in Anderson’s approach, which is so super-cool, it’s chilly.

“In his elaborate visual construct, virtually every shot is followed by with the camera point-of-view shifted 90 or 180 degrees — which is geometrically groovy, no question, but pretty quickly predictable. Same goes for his stories, which rely on gifted people behaving goofily. Anderson has the attitude for comedy, but not the aptitude. His films are museum artifacts of what someone thought could be funny. They’re airless. Movies under glass.

“[Owen] Wilson has appeared in all five of Anderson’s feature films (Bottle Rocket, Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou and the new one) and co-wrote the first three — the ones I prefer in the the director’s oeuvre. The Darjeeling script is by Anderson, Schwartzman and Roman Coppola (Francis’ son, Sofia’s brother) and it doesn’t add luster to anyone’s reputation.

“The Darjeeling program includes a related 13-min. film, Hotel Chevalier. Schwartzman’s Jack seems uneasy when he gets a call from an ex-girlfriend (Natalie Portman) who insists on showing up in his swank hotel room. He draws a bubble bath for her. They flirt and parry and wind up in bed, exchanging dialogue that we hear again, at the end of Darjeeling, as part of a story Jack has written.

“It’s a beguiling vignette that, as Closer and My Blueberry Nights did, shows Portman as a comic actress in fresh bloom. I wish that she, and some of the feeling and wit of the short film, had been in the long one.”

Jason Schwartzman, Natalie Portman in scene from a 13-minute Wes Anderson Darjeeling Limited short called Hotel Chevalier, which is described above by Corliss [still provided by Dazza Buser of www.natalieportman.com]

It’s safe to say that Variety‘s Derek Elley has problems with Woody Allen‘s way with earthy British dialogue — the Cockney accents and what Elley claims is a generally irritating-to-British-ears quality — in Cassandra’s Dream (Weinstein Co., 11.30), which has just played the Venice Film Festival.

But the most startling observation is that this supposedly super-dark drama — debt, murder, self-destruction and a femme fatale straight out of the Jane Greer handbook — is “actually a low-key, bumpy black comedy.” There’s no indication of this at all in the trailer, of course, but then trailers always lie.

The drama costars Ewan McGregor, Colin Farrell,Tom Wilkinson, Hayley Atwell and Sally Hawkins

I’m just starting to come out of denial and face the distinct possibility that it’ll be the deeply divisive and (in some redneck quarters) deeply loathed Hilary Clinton vs. the eccentric Rudolph Giuliani (Vanity Fair‘s Michael Wolff says there’s reason to regard him as an out-and-out whackjob) in the ’08 Presidential race.

This, at least, is what’s indicated in a late August Gallup phone survey that was conducted, according to the N.Y. Times, from 8.23 to 8.26. Putting aside my Barack Obama loyalties, I’m more or less fine with Clinton on her own terms. But the lunchbucket rurals truly despise her, or so I’m given to believe. I read a piece yesterday (or the day before) that claimed some Democratic legislators up for reelection next year are terrified about how Clinton’s coattails may affect their chances.

How is it and why is it that Clinton is now (according to Gallup) beating Obama among Democratic voters by a nearly two-to-one margin — 48% to 25%? Because of that bullshit cheap shot she threw at Obama that implied he would talk to guys like Hugo Chavez without the usual advance diplomatic spade work? Because women are behind her because she’s a woman and it’s time to assert gender politics in a seismic way? Because Obama is African-American (which, of course, no one will ever cop to)?

Something’s strange here…off. Obama is the brilliant and charismatic “right now” guy — a man in his ’40s, almost a GenXer — who brings vision and practical-mind- edness to the table and who isn’t tied into decades-old battles and resentments and histories. And yet Hilary — a brittle, occasionally snippy, over-scripted boomer who brings along truckloads of poisonous baggage left over from the ’90s and Bill Clinton‘s Presidency — is way in front. Why isn’t the race closer?

In an ideal world it would be Obama or John Edwards vs. Fred Thompson. I don’t agree with Thompson’s right-wing beliefs and alliances plus he’s looking a bit old and crotchety these days, but he’s an urbane and witty guy who knows acting and the movie business, and he can feign a Bubba pickup-truck attitude at the drop of a hat.

The most crowd-pleasing film of the Telluride Film Festival so far, reports EW Popwatch blogger Chris Willman, is Jason Reitman‘s Juno (which will also plays Toronto). “Everyone’s always ready for a laugh at these things, so that’s not surprising,” Willman rationalizes. Wait…he’s saying it’s insubstantial?

Ellen Page, Michael Cera in Juno; director Jason Reitman

Deadline pressure kept Willman from mentioning Juno, however, in the body of his second Telluride report. He has, however, given a thumbs-up to Tamara Jenkins‘ The Savages (in my opinion a sharply written, very well acted family drama that may fizzle with audiences because of Phillip Bosco‘s bellowing, all-too-real performance of an old man suffering from dementia) and Sean Penn‘s longish, in-and-out Into The Wild (which is nonetheless Penn’s finest film ever). It’s a thumbs down, however, for Brian DePalma‘s Redacted.

“Everybody’s dying up in the Colorado mountains right now,” he begins. “Although mostly just on-screen. The altitude only makes Telluride Film Festival-goers feel like they’re about to expire as they huff and puff and sprint between four, five or six screenings a day. But the second and third days of this year’s Telluride Film Festival have found an even greater abundance of cinematic terminal cases than usual.

There’s a good chance you already know what kind of protracted and inglorious end meets the solitary mountain man of Into the Wild, Sean Penn‘s highly anticipated adaptation of Jon Krakauer‘s non-fiction bestseller. Julian Schnabel‘s The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is based on a well-known memoir by a French magazine editor who became paralyzed and dictated the book by blinking his one good eye; the movie version has been expanded to include the real-life protagonist’s eventual death.

“On the fictional side, Rails and Ties, the directorial debut of Alison Eastwood (Clint’s daughter), has Kevin Bacon shutting down emotionally as he deals with the terminal cancer of his wife, played by Marcia Gay Harden. And in The Savages, Laura Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman struggle with finding a nursery home for their dad (Bosco), who’s suffering from dementia and probably dying of Parkinson’s disease.

“But other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the wonderful mountain scenery?”

Please, God…don’t give the 2007 Best Picture Oscar to Elizabeth: The Golden Age. Not because it doesn’t deserve the honor (I’ve seen nothing, know nothing) but because of that atrocious, calcified coffee-table book title. It sounds like a PBS documentary with a fund-drive during the intermission. Ask yourself, readership: if you were Shekhar Kapur and feeling wonderful about having directed a real, full-hearted “movie” that was also a stirring historical drama about Queen Elizabeth (who reigned from 1558 to 1603) with the great Cate Blanchett in the lead role, would you want it to be called “Name, Colon, Bland Allusion to Rich Cultural Era in 16th Century England“?

I somehow missed Ramin Setoodeh‘s 8.29 Newsweek story about the “awkward situation” faced by Fox Searchlight in the selling of The Darjeeling Limited (opening 9.29) in the wake of last weekend’s suicide attempt by costar Owen Wilson.

“If Wilson skips the normal pre-opening publicity duties, journalists will likely become obsessed with his condition — and virtually ignore the movie itself,” Setoodeh surmises. “If he does submit to interviews, journalists will likely become obsessed with his condition — and virtually ignore the movie itself.”

Correction: this syndrome — ignoring the film, feeding off a near-tragedy — will most likely only kick in among empty, parasitic, rancid-soul slimeball journalists who have possibly themselves flirted with suicide.

Movie Marketing Madness blogger Chris Thilk disagrees. “This is going to have a tremendous impact on the film’s marketing,” he telles Newsweek. “If you take Wilson out of the mix, it’s not just the loss of a leading man, it would severely impact the movie’s brand identity.”

“Those of us who weren’t crazy about Crash thought it reduced each of its dozens of characters to one small virtue and big flaw. In In The Valley of Elah, Haggis is more open to his characters’ drives and demons.

“The good guys, the ones so well played by Tommy Lee Jones, Charlize Theron and Susan Sarandon, have nuances worth noting; and even the ones capable of committing the most heinous crimes seem like decent people to whom some awful thing happened. (Special mention to Wes Chatham, who could be Matt Damon‘s younger, cuter brother, as a soldier testifying to Hank about the killing.)

“The combination of dedicated actors and a superior script helps make Elah a far more satisfying film than Crash.” — Time critic Richard Corliss in a 9.1.07 piece, “Iraq War Films Focus on Soldiers,” filed from the Venice Film Festival.

Thompson on Hollywood‘s Peter Debruge has linked to a post on a Paul Thomas Anderson fan site that was written by a projectionist who frequents a forum called film-tech.com, and from this has glommed the technical details from a print of There Will be Blood. The aspect ratio is 2.39:1 (the standard Scope aspect ratio isn’t 2.35 to 1?) and it’s 8 reels long, which indicates a running time in the vicinity of 160 minutes, give or take. The average 2 hour movie is about 6 reels, or 20 minutes a reel.

There Will Be Blood director Paul Thomas Anderson prior to Friday night’s Telluride Film Festival showing of 20-minute reel from his forthcoming film. [Photo snagged from Spoutblog‘s Karina Longworth.]