MCN’s Len Klady has written that the New York Times “has decided it won’t print reviews of selections playing at the upcoming New York Film Festival. Though the exact reasons behind the decision are a bit sketchy, it appears the publication was persuaded by a film industry emissary that a potential blot on a [NYFF entry] was neither good for it or them.” What the hell does that mean? Exactly which “film industry emissary” said what to which person or persons at the Times? Nobody’s gonna bully me into not writing about The Queen on the day it opens the NYFF, which is Friday, 9.29.

When in doubt, when something in your chest tells you those sourpuss Toronto Film Festival critics can’t be trusted, consider the jottings of Larry King.

When I think of the respectable and rewarding things about the films of Brian De Palma, I always think of those visual arias that are his well-known specialty — those searing displays of virtuoso camerawork and choreography that are worked out just so.
My right-off-the-top-of-my-head favorites: (a) a fantasizing Angie Dickinson being mauled in the shower in Dressed to Kill, (b) Sissy Spacek‘s freckled hand reaching out of the grave to grab a horrified Amy Irving, (c) Al Pacino lying on a Grand Central Station escalator in Carlito’s Way, (d) Tim Robbins meeting instant death when his face plate is removed during a space walk in Mission to Mars, and (e) Irving using her telekinetic powers in The Fury to make bad guy John Casse- vetes explode into pieces.
But I almost never think of De Palma’s movies being good as entire creations because they really and truly stopped being that a long time ago. The last entirely decent De Palma film — by which I mean a De Palma that didn’t once make me squirm or groan or shake my head in sadness — was Mission Impossible, although I did squirm here and there. Scarface was the last one before that. The last beginning-to-end 100% enjoyable De Palma film was The Phantom of the Paradise.
But I’ll always admire De Palma for those little slices of cake. There’s one of two of them in his latest, The Black Dahlia. Problem is, you have to sit through the whole film to enjoy them, and by that time they come along you’re so numbed and despondent over the turgid, impossible-to-follow plot and florid acting and the general over-ladled quality of the damn thing that nothing seems so enjoyable as the thought of getting up and jamming.

“Silence is hugely important. I use silence to fight against the tyranny of noise, the fucking noise of TV and even movies. In silence, the seeds of profound things can grow.” — Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu to the Toronto Globe & Mail sometime late last week.

“Will Martin Scorsese‘s The Departed becomes a question-mark film?” asks Dennis McDougal in a 9.17 N.Y. Times piece. “Will it reintroduce Jack Nicholson to a new generation, as Batman once did? Or will his Frank Costello [character] smack of geriatric retread: The Last Detail‘s Badass Buddusky meets The Shining‘s Jack Torrance, only more debauched?”

(l.) Jack Nicholson in The Departed; (r.) in The Last Detail

I won’t see The Departed for another couple of days, but of all the characters Nicholson has played, Badass Buddusky is by far the the most kind-hearted, sentimental and childish, which he covers up with standard enlisted-man macho bluster. Jack Torrance is a little more in the realm of the Costello character, whom McDougal describes as a character who is “losing his mind” and who is allegedly seen in the flm “eating an insect, wielding sex toys, bathed in blood and more or less personifying evil.” But Torrance, of course, is a fuckup — a would-be amateur who can’t write, can’t kill and gets spooked by old-crone ghosts.
Will The Departed “even the score for Mr. Scorsese?” McDougal asks. “Or will it simply provoke nostalgia for an era when Nicholson and Scorsese together would have been a sure thing?
“In any case no one can accuse these two old pros of lacking self-awareness. According to a scene included in a trailer for the film, The Departed has Costello asking after an acquaintance’s sick mother. Sadly the man tells him, ‘She’s on her way out.’ And Nicholson replies, ‘We all are. Act accordingly.'”
Oh, and I love this other McDougal graph, which opens the piece…
“There was a time, not so very long ago, when the first-ever pairing of tMartin Scorsese with Jack Nicholson would have been a guaranteed hit. But that was before DVD’s, MySpace, YouTube and, most recently, the decline and falter of Tom Cruise. When Viacom’s chairman, Sumner Redstone, evicted Mr. Cruise from Paramount last month, citing his ‘erratic behavior,’ it signaled a new era when no amount of star power could assure that a picture would be seen as an event.”

Everyone loves or at least greatly respects Tombstone, the 1993 cult western with Kurt Russell, Val Kilmer, Bill Paxton and Sam Elliott. And many of the more ardent fans have probably watched the Disney Home Video Director’s Cut DVD, which came out in January ’02. Now it turns out there’s an ironic element contained on that nearly five-year-old disc — ironic bordering on comedic, I’d say — by way of the commentary track by director George V. Cosmatos, who died in April 2005.

The Cosmatos rap will seem like a mild hoot to anyone reading this recent piece by Henry Cabot Beck in the October edition of True West magazine. That’s because it reveals/contends/proposes that the guy who ghost-directed Tombstone, who deserves the lion’s share of the credit for this much-loved western, and who certainly should have recorded the DVD commentary nearly five years ago is none other than Kurt Russell.
Cosmatos, no offense, was never anything but an amiable hack — a guy who did the shots, got the lighting right, etc. This is more or less acknowledged in the article by Russell, who swore to Cosmatos he would never tell the truth about their deal behind the making of Tombstone while he was alive.
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Boiled down, Russell tells Beck that (a) it was he, Russell, who went out and raised the production dough through biking pal Andy Vajna, (b) that after Tombstone‘s original director Kevin Jarre was canned Russell decided to “ghost” direct Tombstone by hiring Cosmatos to shoot it like he was told to and nothing beyond that.
It also explains (c) how Kevin Costner, who was working with Larry Kasdan on Wyatt Earp at the time, pulled strings all over town to keep Tombstone from getting a distribution deal with anyone with Disney, (d) how Vajna wanted Richard Gere to play moustachioed lawman Wyatt Earp and (e) how Jarre wanted Willem Dafoe to play Doc Holliday but was forced to accept Val Kilmer in the role — which turned out to be a good thing because Kilmer was exceptional.

Beck got the goods from Russell while speaking with him at a Beverly Hills Poseidon junket four or five months ago.
“I mentioned to him that I write for True West and suggested we talk about Tombstone sometime,” Beck relates, “and then Russell went straight into it, pulling the lid off the can of worms and giving me an extra 20 interview minutes of unheard skinny — how he put the project together, how he ghost-directed the picture, Costner’s involvement, Jarre’s firing, casting issues…really loaded with good material.
Beck thereafter sent two messages to Russell through CAA agent Rick Nicita “thanking [Russell], letting him know I intended using the stuff, and requesting follow-ups, but when I heard nothing back I ran with what I had, especially since none of it was off the record and because the 125th anniversary of the Gunfight at The OK Corral is coming at the end of October and all the scholars and academics and buffs are converging in Tombstone and this was hot poop.
“When CAA finally noticed I was running a story, they called Russell, literally one week before the True West issue hit the stands (8.28 or 8.29) and the next thing I knew I had Russell calling me from the set of Quentin Tarantino‘s “Death Proof” short (which is part of Grind House) in Austin. He wasn’t all that happy, although he did admit he would have likely done the same thing in my shoes. I had some copies sent and called his hotel but I’ve heard nothing — I’m guessing he’s steamed for several reasons.

“There are two stories here — the story of Tombstone, and the story of the story. Things I think are most fun are Russell admitting he directed the picture but promising he’d keep mum for Cosmatos, Costner’s hardball, and the Gere/Dafoe casting business.
“Pity, really, that Russell was kept in the dark and then got pissed, because I really wanted to follow up, and I still think there’s a book here.”

I’m sitting in the Philadelphia airport, my plane is late (naturally) and one of the 2006 Toronto International Film Festival’s People’s Choice awards went to Alejandro Monteverde‘s Bella, and the FIPRESCI Critics Prize went to Gabriel Range‘s Death of a President, which I saw and isn’t half bad. Read all about it at IndieWire.

Flying back to Los Angeles today. Back up sometime tonight, or certainly by Sunday morning.

Condolences to Sony Home Video’s Ben Feingold on the occasion of his termination as head of Sony Home Video, but I always heard he was a real mass-market, go-for-the-big-numbers guy who wasn’t into classic titles or the aesthetic particulars. You know…a kind of antithesis of a serious movie lover or a DVD special-edition connoisseur. It was Feingold who approved the issuing of that pan-and-scan DVD of Sydney Pollack ‘s Castle Keep a year or so ago, which resulted in Steven Spielberg and George Lucas complaining to Sony Pictures oncho Michael Lynton, who led to Feingold finally issuing a new version in the correct 2.35 to 1 aspect ratio. If Lucas and Spielberg hadn’t spoken up Castle Keep would almost certainly still be viewable only in pan-and-scan. I’m basically saying that as my DVD-watching interests are concerned, I’m not feeling all that melancholy about Feingold’s departure.

A nicely written, cleanly structured profile of Little Children director and cowriter Todd Field, by THR columnist Anne Thompson.

Okay — I blew my Toronto Film Festival experience by not seeing Borat. If there’s a consensus among the various columnists, it’s that more people connected in a dynamic, jolting, oh-my-gosh way with Sacha Baron Cohen‘s deranged put-on comedy (20th Century Fox, 11.3) than with any other Toronto Film Festival attraction. Fine… whatever. It guess it’s something to look forward to seeing when I get back to L.A.
Toronto is the festival that presides over the death and downgrading of imperfect films. All The King’s Men died here. Bobby was all but pummelled to death. Stranger than Fiction pretty much died. For Your Consideration, Infamous and The Fountain (a film I really and truly liked) all died here. Breaking and Entering found respect and muted enthusiasm, but that’s all.
Babel and Volver solidifed their already commanding positions. Venus did fairly well, but Peter O’Toole did better. Catch a Fire tried for traction and found some, but I’m not sure if it was enough. Little Children did moderately well, although it became clear that some had recoiled due to the second-act “ick” factor. And Guillermo del Toro‘s Pan’s Labyrinth gained.
My biggest Toronto favorite (apart from the films I loved but had already seen in Cannes) was Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck‘s The Lives of Others. And I’m hugely pissed that I couldn’t manage to see Paul Verhoeven‘s Black Book his return to Dutch filmmaking by way of a World War II melodrama, as well as Patrice Leconte‘s My Best Friend, which Variety‘s Robert Koehler brought to my attention two or three days ago. I nodded and said thanks and wrote a note to myself…and didn’t see it.
The Last King of Scotland didn’t ignite, but Forrest Whittaker‘s performance as Idi Amin did…sort of. Penelope Cruz has played the role of her life in Volver, and to my mind she became an all-but-certain Best Actress nominee out of her TIFF exposure. Kate Winslet caught a Best Actress wave with her Little Children performance, and costars Patrick Wilson and Jackie Earl Haley popped through in more general terms.
I’l try and add to this piece later on, as well as get into the mezzo-mezzo’s that I didn’t feel very much about one way or the other.

“The Departed, which I have seen, will be the year’s best American film as of it’s October 6th release date,” reader David Erlich has proclaimed. “It is, without a doubt, the most riveting work that any of the players — Matt Damon, Leonardo DiCaprio, Jack Nicholson — have been involved with in ages. That being said, the film has no chance of Oscar recognition for Best Picture, if only because of the last act.”