Films

Toronto: ‘Che’ Finds a U.S. Home

I’m hearing Magnolia Pictures has landed the deal to distribute Steven Soderbergh’s “Che” in the United States, which is expected to be announced shortly. The two-part biopic of the Argentine guerilla who worked with Fidel Castro starring Benecio del Toro premiered to mixed reviews in Cannes. A slightly shorter version — 4 hour 22 minutes total — will be showing at the Toronto and New York Film Festivals. NYFF will be screening “Che” at the 1100-seat Ziegfeld and don’t be surprised if that’s where this epic has a reserved-seat, Academy-qualification running beginning on December 12.

Toronto: Mr. Madonna Scores

Starting my Toronto International Film Festival experience this year with a 9 a.m. screening of a Guy Ritchie movie seemed like a dicey proposition, but “RockNRolla” is a lot of fun, if familiar. The plot of this jokey crime thriller is way too complicated to describe before my next screening, but I’ll say that Gerard Butler, never one of my favorite, reveals a hitherto unsuspected talent for comedy as a hapless criminal who gets involved in a series of double-crosses. And Tom Wilkinson, cast way against type, channels Bob Hoskins as an old-school Cockney crime boss struggling to stay on top in a multicultural, very corrupt London.

(Read the full post about ‘Toronto: Mr. Madonna Scores’…)

Toronto: We’ll Always Have Paris — Unfortunately

I’m heading off to my first Toronto International Film Festival screenings this morning, but I already spent much of yesterday here chasing a manufactured controversy. I got nothing but vague answers when I tried to find out why the festival cancelled three out of four screens for “Paris, Not France,” a documentary about the attention-starved Hilton heir-head that went from flying completely under the radar to being the fest’s hottest title. The Hollywood Reporter said on its blog that the pullback was due to legal threats from the celebutard, and documentary programmer Thom Powers said the screenings, including the only press screening, were scrapped at the request of filmmaker Adria Petty (Tom’s daughter).

(Read the full post about ‘Toronto: We’ll Always Have Paris — Unfortunately’…)

DVD Extra: An Epic Restoration Before winging off to the Toronto Film Festival, I filed this report on Warner Home Video’s remarkable new version of “How the West Was Won,” which uses digitally wizardry to remove those ugly join lines that has disfigured this epic western since it was originally released in Cinerama 46 years ago. This astounding restoration took six years. (Read the full post about ‘DVD Extra: An Epic Restoration’…)

Toronto: ‘Che’ for Christmas? There are rumors that a deal will be announced in Toronto for U.S. distribution of Steven Sodebergh’s “Che,” which may be released, at least initially, in 4 1/2 hour reserved-seat engagements before the two parts are shown separately in the hinterlands. While we’re waiting for the movie’s North American debut there, Hulu is offering a free look (with “limited commercials”) of Richard Fleisher’s unintentionally hilarious 1969 “Che” with Omar Sharif as the revolutionary and Jack Palace as Fidel Castro, which amazingly is not available on DVD. (Read the full post about ‘Toronto: ‘Che’ for Christmas?’…)

Very sad. Country music star and icon of my childhood —  Jerry Reed died yesterday at the age of 71.   From CMT:   "When Jerry Reed died this week, country music lost one of its most colorful characters. Yeah, he wrote some memorable songs, made some great records and developed a guitar style that was truly his own, but his image as a redneck good ol’ boy from Georgia permeated his music and ultimately led to his success as an actor. Through the years, oth’er country music artists have been in feature films, but how many of those movies have been as successful as his work with Burt Reynolds in ‘Smokey and the Bandit’ or with Adam Sandler in ‘The Waterboy’? (Read the full post about ‘R.I.P. Jerry Reed’…)

Don LaFontaine (1940-2008)

The eponymous Don LaFontaine, who lent his melliflous voice to narrating thousands of movie movie trailers (the oft-used “In a world…” was his most famous and parodied line) as well as countless commercials and other announcing gigs before spoofing himself in a famous Geico Commercial, has died at 68.

(Read the full post about ‘Don LaFontaine (1940-2008)’…)

DVD Extra: Scott-Boetticher Flicks Finally Coming Sony has finally announced a street date for its long-rumored set of the classic Budd Boetticher westerns starring the immortal Randolph Scott: November 4. The five medium-budget titles released between 1957 and 1960 — “The Tall T,” “Decision at Sundown,” “Ride Lonesome,” “Buchanan Rides Alone” and “Commanche Station” — are considered among the finest of the genre. The set will include a full length documentary on Boetticher’s career, as well as special introductions and commentary by Clint Eastwood, Taylor Hackford and Martin Scorsese. In other Sony news, Sony Pictures Classics announced a deal to distribute Pedro Almodovar’s upcoming neo-noir “Broken Embraces” starring Penelope Cruz. (Read the full post about ‘DVD Extra: Scott-Boetticher Flicks Finally Coming’…)

If Lucy Had a Love Child, Then Who Exactly Was Loving Lucy? Waah! Sure Bristol Palin’s unplanned pregnancy is a real eye-opener, but the love child report that caught my eye in The Post this morning concerns an Illinois woman who claims her late mother was put up for adoption by Lucille Ball in 1947. My esteemed colleague Dan Mangan quotes Cassandra Lucianna Carlson as believing “that her mother was adopted for fear that a baby would derail Ball’s plans for stardom.” Sorry, Cassandra, I don’t think so. Ball had been in Hollywood for 14 years at that time and neither RKO nor MGM had been able to make her a top star. By all accounts, Ball’s biggest worry was holding onto her philandering husband of seven years, Desi Arnaz. (Read the full post about ‘If Lucy Had a Love Child, Then Who Exactly Was Loving Lucy? Waah!’…)

DVD Extra: MGM, Fox Milk Musicals; Borzage, Murnau Titles Revealed “Whoopee” (1930), Eddie Cantor musical that’s one of the best surviving examples of two-strip Technicolor, will be making its DVD debut as part of a 50 title, 61-disc “Hollywood Musicals Collection” being released Nov. 11 by Fox and MGM. With a whopping $500 suggested retail price, it’s a followup to last year’s 90-title tribute to the 90th anniversary of United Artists, which MGM seems to have prematurely stopped celebrating. The disappointing news is that almost all the titles, which span seven decades ending with “Moulin Rouge” (the one with Nicole Kidman, not the 1934 version with Constance Bennett) are already available on DVD, and many in existing box sets from Fox (Marilyn Monroe, Shirley Temple, Elvis, Rogers & Hammerstein) and MGM, which put out two collections of musicals just last year. (Read the full post about ‘DVD Extra: MGM, Fox Milk Musicals; Borzage, Murnau Titles Revealed’…)