Christopher Smith‘s Severance (Magnolia, 3.07) , a reputedly witty horror-thriller, shot to the top of my Toronto must-see list earlier today when I found out it’s being screened at this weekend’s Telluride Film Festival. I don’t know when a horror film of any kind last played Tellruride, but obviously it wouldn’t have been accepted if it hadn’t been two or three cuts above the norm.

“Personally I think that horror comedy is veyr hard to do really well,” says a buyer who saw it at Cannes last May, “but I think Smith really nails it. And it’s intelligent to boot.”
I’m told that if you’re a fan of Dilbert and “Dilbert humor”, you’ll enjoy Severance‘s brand of humor a bit more fully.
Severance is about an international arms dealer who treats his six employees to a mountain retreat getaway in Eastern Europe. And of course, they all get knocked off one by one…but not by a monster. They’re attacked by a renegade band of mercenaries looking to settle a score with the arms dealer because he screwed them on a deal.
I haven’t quoted a review from the IMDB in a long time but fuck it. It’s from Kris60 from Berkeley, and it starts off by saying that “yes, it’s a slasher movie by definition: people meet horrific ends through discomforting means. But unlike slasher movies with sophomoric scripts, this one get points for smart dialogue, strong political perspective and a high humor quotient.
“The title might persuade some that it;s a reference to losing one’s job. And upon hearing it’s a slasher film, one might think the reference cuts more towards Marie Antoinette. Both are borne out, yet the title’s other reference — which comes quietly but cleverly to light at the conclusion — is somberly delightful.
“For the squeamish, give this one a pass — you won’t make it past the first bit of nastiness. For those who are a little braver, but wouldn’t usually attend a film in which most of the cast is guaranteed to wind up sprung from this mortal coil, do give this one a go. You’ll be pleasantly surprised! ”
The screenplay is by Smith and James Moran, and the costars are Danny Dyer, Laura Harris, Tim McInnerny, Toby Stephens, Claudie Blakley, Andy Nyman, Babou Ceesay and David Gilliam.

Kazu Workman of Crescenta, California, has passed along a review of the Ridley/Russell ‘s A Good Year, posted by Kellvin Chavez from Latino Review, And okay, all right…A Good Year may not be Oscar-caliber but at least there’s a notion afloat that it gives fans of quality acting and gorgeous cinematography something to look forward to.

A persuasive argument piece by MSNBC’s Sarah Bunting that Steve Carell deserves a Best Supporting Actor nomination for his work in Little Miss Sunshine…hail to that. (He and Alan Arkin have been topping the list of Best Supporting Actor possibles in the Oscar Balloon since last spring.)
But the thing you really want to look at on the same page is that MSNBC slide show of Oscar bait movies …hah! The banner copy says that “Martin Scorsese‘s The Departed will take on Clint Eastwood‘s Flags of Our Fathers“…hah!! (Which is the reason why Warner Bros. isn’t bringing The Departed to Toronto — because it’s such a tangy Oscar contender.)
Of the eleven films listed by MSNBC as likely Oscar bait, exactly four are rock-solid contenders for Best Picture or Screenplay or some level of acting award — Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu‘s Babel, Todd Field’s Little Children, Flags of Our Fathers and Pedro Almodovar‘s Volver.
And there are two likely-possibles as far as the acting categories are concerned — Phillip Noyce ‘s Catch a Fire (i.e., Derek Luke as a Best Actor contender…maybe) and Ryan Murphy‘s Running with Scissors (i.e., a possible Best Supporting Actress nod for Annette Bening).
The list also includes Chris Nolan‘s The Prestige but my gut tells me this is more in the realm of an entertainment than Oscar glory…but maybe not. (Disney publicists are convinced it’s their ’06 Oscar missile.)
Anything’s possible, but I will eat both of my loafers if any of the following four films, listed as hotties by MSNBC, significantly distinguish themselves in the derby: Ridley Scott‘s A Good Year, Steven Zallian’s All The King’s Men, Brian DePalma’s The Black Dahlia and The Departed.

“I’m very confused personally,” actress Karen Young, 47, says to the San Francisco Chronicle‘s Ron Dicker. “I feel like I was in this generation of women who were supposed to take care of ourselves, supposed to be totally self-sufficient and even support a husband. There was a lot of talk about being that way, and I don’t think it actually transpired. We kept our names, but that was about it.” — from Dicker’s 8.27 profile of Young.

I met Young at last year’s Toronto Film Festival when her latest film, Laurent Cantet‘s Heading South (Vers le sud),was first being shown. She’s also pretty good in Factotum, but me Young will always be FBI agent Robyn Sanseverino. She’s been kicking around since the early ’80s and that, so far, is her definitive role.

For some reason I never watched “How Scarface Got His Groove Back“, this trailer mash-up from editor Steve Kenny, when it surfaced last June. It’s not bad except for Brendan Raher‘s narration. He sounds too much like the guy who lives across the hall who just broke up with his girlfriend — trailer narrators always sound a little bit like slick Martians. (Editor’s Note: I came upon this Trailer Mash site — all trailer mashes, all the time — becuase David Poland linked to it this morning. That means Poland owns all links to this site in perpetuity.)

I know there are dozens of folks out there with Photoshop skills who can throw together a decent likeness of what Heath Ledger will look like as The Joker in Chris Nolan’s The Dark Knight. A guy sent me a version today that didn’t quite make it, but it put the hook in. I know this is doable & not difficult. I’ll post the best one and provide all links, etc.

Holy moley…there goes that idea of a John Mark Karr thriller with Naomi Watts playing Karr, which I mentioned last Tuesday. The D.A.’s office in Boulder, Colorado, announced its decision earlier today not to file criminal charges against Karr in the death of JonBenet Ramsey because his DNA doesn’t match the evidence found at the scene of her death 10 years ago. Amazing. The guy’s a pathetic charlatan. Kick him out of jail, put him on a bus. No TV-movie deals, no rights to his story…over.

Tom Cruise has put together a deal with a group that includes Daniel Snyder, the owner of the Washington Redskins and a chairman of Six Flags, Inc., to finance the overhead costs of Cruise/ Wagner Prods., according to this L.A. Times story by Claire Hoffman.

Six Flags? The Washington Redskins? Do they sound like rock ‘n’ roll Chateau Marmont-type names to anyone? A bunch of opportunistic guys can’t just get together and fund a Hollywood company — it can’t really work unless they can hear the “music” in their own heads…unless they have the right kind of attitude and profile. The right car, the right diet, the right kind of girlfriends or wives, the right wardrobe.
Look at Snyder’s photo — he looks like a guy who likes to eat steak and pasta, and who buys his suits at Men’s Warehouse. White shirt, red tie…gimme a break.
The question, of course, is whether any…hold that thought. Let’s just see what surfaces when the various folks in this financing group are explored as far as their associations are concerned.
When you’re desperate for someone to fund your operation, you’ll take money from a drunk skunk. Cruise’s TVQ rating has reportedly dropped over 40% over the past year and he’s not what he once was. The upside is that this can result in a liberated attitude on Cruise’s part — he could do some of his best work over the next 10 or 15 years because of this devaluation. But the bottom line is that he and Wagner pacted with somebody outside the loop. A deal with the likes of Snyder tells you no one was standing in line to make a deal. Nobody groovy, I mean.

In a dull piece about the culture of box-office reporting and editorializing, Slate‘s Bryan Curtis is calling Exhibitor Relations spokesperson Paul Dergarabedian one of the industry’s “color men… whose job it is to peer at the data and extract larger truths.”
Whoa there, sunshine. Dergarabedian does not extract larger truths from box-office data. He extracts larger homilies and bromides. He’s an extremely dull, water- soluble stats man who would choke on real color. There’s something vaguely anesthetic and Orwellian about Paul Dergarabedian. I’ve seen saying this for five or six years now and nobody ever listens. Journalists writing Sunday box-office stories need to find a guy who talks bluntly and colorfully (someone who talks like a cigar-chomping sports writer from the ’70s), and then toss Dergarabedian’s phone number once and for all.
And box-office assessment is no longer a Sunday routine, by the way. The basic indicators in any box-office weekend are 90% discernible when Friday’s numbers are made available on Saturday morning. I know a guy who’s been giving me figures on Friday night.

Speaking of belligerent assholes and the avoidance of same, Illinois Senator Barack Obama won’t run for President in ’08…but he should. Everybody says it’s too soon for the guy. But he’s 44 years old and JFK ran when he was a year younger (having made his early plans for making a run on the U.S. Presidency when he wasn’t quite 42) so what’s the problem? Obama is thoughtful, reputable, charismatic, learned. And in possession of that inner connectedness that people seem to recognize and respond to. Everyone knew this right after he spoke at the Democratic Convention in the summer of ’04. All I know is, Obama’s got “it” and Hilary doesn’t.

Sherrybaby star Maggie Gyllenhaal, interviewed by New York‘s Emma Rosenblum, addresses that dumb-ass pickle she got into last year by saying the United States was “responsible in some way” for 9/11. “It was just terribly misunderstood,” she explains. “I never said anything like, ‘We deserved this.’ Nothing like that.
“Instead of apologizing, I wrote a little clarification of what I meant. I said that as important as it is to continue to honor all the people who were hurt and killed on 9/11, which was catastrophic, it’s also equally important to be brave and patriotic enough to look at the ways we can change the way we live, in order to help what is undeniably a really bad situation in the world. And I’m proud of having said that.”
I think what she really meant — and I totally agree with her — wasn’t that we need to look at ways of changing the way we “live” (like what…eating Big Macs?) as much as we need to look at how commercially, culturally, politically and militarily the U.S. is impacting foreign cultures and creating all kinds of hate, and we also need to look at the belligerent, reactionary, oil-addicted assholes we’ve voted for and installed in the highest echelons of government.