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Was anybody's Oscar prospects made or dashed at this year's fest?

As Picturehouse made sure to remind me... The Women is Picturehouse... Slumdog Millionaire was Warner Independent and then picked up by WB when the former shut down. I guess you could say that Slumdog was "dumped by the same company" when you're talking about the overall parent company Time Warner, but I don't think it was dumped as much as being ported over to Fox Searchlight for distribution and marketing in the U.S. because Warner Bros. might not feel it's capable of marketing that movie in the States and think Fox Searchlight can do a better job. They're probably right but WB are still distributing it in foreign markets where it'll probably do as good or better business. (It's similar to Kite Runner last year, which was produced by DreamWorks but distributed by Paramount Vantage, except of course, SDM is crossing corporate studio lines.)

"Was anybody's Oscar prospects made or dashed at this year's fest?"

Maybe Keira Knightley's in The Duchess.. i thought she was great and her best performance but I guess most people felt it was just more of the same in terms of period costume dramas so she'll probably be forgotten/ignored by Oscar time.. they should have released it later in the season.

ED... yes, The Women was Picturehouse... which doesn't exist anymore. It was big WB that decided to spend at least $10 million more in marketing than Bob Berney had decided to spend in order to release a film that Berney had decided to dump.

And Slumdog? Bullshit. Big Warner, which controls all of the product that WIP paid for, decided to dump Slumdog... didn't want to make the investment of marketing to release the film. The notion that they gave up financial interest because they "think Fox Searchlight can do a better job" is just not true, especially since the movie was up for grabs all over town.

No studio gives up financial interest on a movie they can make $1 of profit on, whether domestic or foreign.

Within companies - like Paramount, where DW's options for releasing The Kite Runner was to have the big studio team market it or the specialty division market it - strategic choices are made. Absolutely. But "ported over" is a figment of your (and the studio publicists') imagination. Money is not that forgiving on rhetoric.

Next, we'll be talking about how the Weinsteins "ported" their movies over MGM because MGM is a major... when the reason was always simple... dollars from pay TV... period.

Follow the money, ED... follow the money.

Warners CHOSE to release The Women widely, at a massively inflated cost. Warners CHOSE to sell domestic on Slumdog Millionaire to Searchlight because they didn't think they could have a success with it. If you don't think they are kicking themselves after the response at Toronto, you would be wrong... even if they really have abandoned the marketers who would know what to do with a film like this.

Moreover... what non-US territories do you think WB has? As far as I know, WB has none, with Pathe taking all international when WIP took domestic.

I've never walked out of a movie at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) before, not even Golden Turkey Hall of Shame bow-wows like "The Human Stain" or "Revolver." The sheer investment of time and energy that it takes to get into any TIFF screening--upwards of two hours for the really hot titles--discourages auditorium-hopping.
But when you see people fleeing in the middle of a brutally bad flick (and there were plenty to choose from this year, trust me), your mind begins to play tricks on you. Do they know something you don't?
As it turns out, nobody knows anything at TIFF. Everyone is capable of (repeatedly) making the same boneheaded decisions that you are. Some folks are just better at playing movie russian roulette. I'm sure that it was possible to have had a great time at the recently concluded 33rd edition of the Toronto Film Festival. That just wasn't my experience this annum. Sure, there were plenty of good films to see, but even the best ones were overshadowed by the soul-crushing disappointments and flat-out stinkers, many of which, ironically, were the most difficult to get into.
The few "big" studio films to premiere at TIFF (Spike Lee's WWII epic "The Miracle of Saint Anna;" Oprah-endorsed "The Secret Life of Bees;" "Pride and Glory" with Colin Farrell and Edward Norton; Ed Harris' oater "Appaloosa;" supernatural rom-com "Ghost Town;" Greg Kinnear's Oscar wannabe "Flash of Genius," et al) sank without a trace, leaving the Great White North without the requisite bounce they were hoping for; and that many desperately need to make any sort of commercial inroads.
Toronto's reputation for being the official launching pad for the upcoming awards season took a serious beating in 2008. Conspicuous by their absence were such heavily touted Oscar contenders as "Milk," "The Road," "The Soloist," "Revolutionary Road" and "Doubt." The official line was that they weren't ready in time, but conspiracy theorists like me spent the entire festival debating the veracity of that claim. Anything to keep our minds off the (generally) underwhelming movies that did manage to show up.
With his shot-in-Pittsburgh rom-com "Zack and Miri Make a Porno," former Sundance whiz kid Kevin Smith officially became culturally irrelevant. Like John Waters whose shock-at-all-cost modus operandi became passé once gross-out comedy went mainstream with the Farrelly Brothers, Smith's potty-mouthed, pop-culture-referencing schtick now seems positively antiquated in the Judd Apatow era. Maybe Smith should do a Broadway musical version of "Clerks" (a la Waters' "Hairspray" smash) for his next act.
Any hopes that Sony's "Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist" might become this year's "Juno" died halfway through the TIFF press screening when it became apparent that director Peter Sollett (of "Raising Victor Vargas" fame) was more interested in sophomoric toilet humor than pathos or insight. The only thing "Juno" and "N&N" have in common is the same leading man-child, Michael Cera.
Sollett wasn't the only TIFF filmmaker experiencing a precipitous sophomore slump.
Rain Johnson followed his brilliant 2005 high school noir "Brick" with "The Brothers Bloom," a failed Wes Anderson homage that repeatedly hits the same note of arch whimsy. Even with its spectacularly gifted cast (including Mark Ruffalo and Oscar winners Adrien Brody and Rachel Weisz), Johnson's grifter farce fails on nearly every conceivable level. And Neil Burger blew whatever indie cred he earned with 2006's "The Illusionist" by inflicting pedestrian Iraq homefront road movie "The Lucky Ones" on TIFF audiences.
It wasn't just relative newbies like Sollett, Johnson and Burger who came up short.
Oscar-winning director Jonathan ("Silence of the Lambs," "Philadelphia") Demme's self-indulgent, multiculturalism-with-a-trowel "Rachel Getting Married" squanders terrific performances by Anne Hathaway, Rosemarie DeWitt and long m.i.a. screen veteran Debra Winger on piddling material. The result is as wearying as spending two hours in the company of a recovering addict which, come to think of it, Hathaway's sister-of-the-bride character is.
Despite a bravura performance by Jeff Goldblum in the leading role, Paul Schrader's Holocaust drama "Adam Resurrected" is so unfocused, meandering and overwrought that most of the audience at a morning press screening bailed before the end credits. Currently without a U.S. distributor, "Adam"'s only hope of finding an audience is via the Jewish Film Festival circuit.
British stalwart Mike Leigh was represented by one of his least satisfying films to date. "Happy-Go-Lucky" is a character study about a young woman (Sally Hawkins' Cockney elementary schoolteacher Polly) who's more fingernails-on-a-blackboard grating than charming or endearing. After two hours with the relentlessly chipper Polly, I felt like wringing her scrawny neck.
"Iris"/"Notes on a Scandal" director Richard Eyre erred with the decently acted, if profoundly inconsequential "The Other Man." Not even a reunion of "Kinsey" stars Laura Linney and Liam Neeson--playing a straying wife and her cuckolded husband--could make "Man" a must-see.
Larry Charles created tsunami-like waves at TIFF with "Borat" in 2006, but his new documentary "Religulous"--made in tandem with political satirist Bill Maher--was too scattershot and seriously overextended at 103 minutes. Perhaps it would have worked better as a one-hour HBO comedy special.
Some of my fondest TIFF memories were supplied by films that arrived either sans buzz (the lushly appointed period romance "The Duchess" starring an excellent Keira Knightley and Ralph Fiennes) or suffering from bad buzz. Maybe it was diminished expectations (they flopped at Venice and Cannes respectively), but "The Burning Plain" (the directing bow of "Amores Perros"/"Babel" screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga with Charlize Theron and Kim Basinger) and "Synecdoche, New York" (another directorial debut, this one by surrealist scenarist extraordinaire Charlie Kaufman) both seemed pretty okay to me.
I was particularly taken with "Synecdoche" which features a dream cast (Philip Seymour Hoffman, Samantha Morton, Catherine Keener, Emily Watson, Hope Davis, Michelle Williams, Jennifer Jason Leigh, et al) in a Hellzapoppin' comic phantasmagoria that felt very much like Kaufman's personal spin on Fellini's masterpiece "8 1/2."
Most of my favorite Toronto films came from ringers--pet directors who never seem to let me down. Arnand Desplechin's "A Christmas Tale," Olivier Assayas' "Summer Hours" and Claire Denis' "35 Shots of Rum" all told beautifully nuanced stories of families in crisis. Michael Winterbottom's superb "Genova" also dealt with a family trauma (Colin Firth takes his two young daughters with him to Italy for a teaching gig after the tragic death of wife Hope Davis), and Terrence Davies' Liverpool memento mori "Of Time and the City" proved that auteur filmmaking is alive and well, at least on the international circuit.
Jia Zhang-ke's "24 City" continued the award-winning Chinese director's winning streak with an artful blend of documentary and fiction. Kelly Reichardt's "Wendy and Lucy," featuring an award-caliber performance by Michelle Williams, displayed the same humanist rigor as Belgium's Dardenne Brothers. Guy Ritchie returned from the dead with "RocknRolla," another boys-with-guns gangster flick, but his most larkishly entertaining and accomplished work to date. Richard Linklater's winsome life-in-the-theater fable "Me and Orson Welles" features an amazing simulacrum of the "Citizen Kane" genius by newcomer Christian McKay that has to be seen to be believed. Veteran Swedish director Jan Troell (1972 Best Picture Oscar nominee "The Emigrants") reclaimed his rightful place in the cinematic pantheon with the exquisite "Everlasting Moments," an intimate family saga set in the early 20th century. And genre specialist Kathryn Bigelow ("Point Break," "Near Dark") may have finally made an Iraqr movie that audiences will actually pay to see. "The Hurt Locker," Bigelow's crackerjack suspense thriller about a military bomb disposal unit stationed in Baghdad, opens in theaters next spring.
I could tell you about "Lovely, Still," a lugubrious gender-reversal spin on "Away from Her" reimagined as a 90-minute "Twilight Zone" episode; the repulsive French splatter flick "Martyrs;" or "The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond" based on a "rare original screenplay" by the late Tennessee Williams that had an early morning press screening audience howling with unintentional laughter, but I'd rather end things on a more positive note.
The happiest distributor leaving Toronto was undoubtedly Fox Searchlight. After wowing them at Telluride, Danny Boyle's irresistible, ingeniously structured Charles Dickens Meets Bollywood "Slumdog Millionaire" maintained its exalted buzz status by winning TIFF's Audience Choice Award. And Twentieth Century Fox's boutique label was also the lucky winner of the "Wrestler" sweepstakes. Darren ("Requiem for a Dream") Aronofsky's superbly gritty melodrama about a down-and-out pro wrestler (Mickey Rourke in a revelatory performance destined to win him at least a Best Actor nomination) parlayed its Venice Golden Lion into a $4-million acquisition deal with the company. Not surprisingly, F-S has already announced an awards-wooing December 19th release date.
Hmmm; maybe TIFF hasn't lost its Oscar-prognosticator status after all.

TIFF MUSINGS:

*Another thing that made this year's festival such an ordeal was the increasingly obnoxious behavior of TIFF attendees. Blackberries and cellphones were a routine annoyance at press and industry screenings. Jostling for a place in line--TIFF is all about queuing
up--was more stressful than ever. I witnessed at least two fistfights break out during interminable waits for "Priority Press" screenings. Even Grand Poobah Roger Ebert got involved in a highly publicized fracas that made the front page of the New York Daily News. Or maybe everyone was just grumpier than usual because the movies were so bad.

*Unlike TIFF '07, there was no "Juno," "Into the Wild," "No Country for Old Men" or even "Atonement" to make your heart beat a little faster, and give your weary bones--and even wearier posterior--a much needed shot of adrenaline. There were, however, a slew of marginal titles, most of which departed the festival still seeking a U.S. distribution deal.
Three movies that left empty-handed were "Easy Virtue," a dawdling, decorous period romp starring Colin Firth, Jessica Biel (surprisingly good) and Kristin Scott Thomas directed by Stephan Elliott ("The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert"); John Stockwell's clunky "Middle of Nowhere" that teamed real-life mother and daughter Susan Sarandon and Eva Amurri as, what else?, mother and daughter; and "Uncertainty," a maddeningly opaque urban-romance-noir-whatzit by Scott McGehee and David Siegel ("The Deep End"). And so it goes.

*Some smaller films suffered from being viewed in a pressure cooker environment like TIFF. Neither "Hunger" (an impressionistic look at the final days of IRA political prisoner Bobby Sands that won the Camera d'Or for best first feature at Cannes) or Norwegian minimalist Bent Hamer's low-key quirkfest "O'Horten" registered the way they might have in the real--i.e., non-festival--world. Hopefully I'll get the chance to take a second look when they open theatrically in 2009.

*The lack of additional late-nite screenings for some of the more popular movies was both confounding and irritating. Last year I was able to see "Lars and the Real Girl," "No Country for Old Men" and "The Visitor" at 10:30 P.M. Sometimes it felt like the festival staff didn't want critics to see any movies at all.
For example, a seemingly arbitrary last minute scheduling change meant that I was forced to miss "Lymelife," a buzzed about "Ice Storm"-y drama set in late-seventies Long Island starring Alec Baldwin and Rory and Kieran Culkin. Produced by Martin Scorsese and directed by the talented Derick Martini ("Goat on Fire and Smiling Fish"), "Lymelife" is certain to find a distributor. Too bad I wasn't allowed to take an early peek.

---Milan Paurich[TIFF '08]

I've never walked out of a movie at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) before, not even Golden Turkey Hall of Shame bow-wows like "The Human Stain" or "Revolver." The sheer investment of time and energy that it takes to get into any TIFF screening--upwards of two hours for the really hot titles--discourages auditorium-hopping.
But when you see people fleeing in the middle of a brutally bad flick (and there were plenty to choose from this year, trust me), your mind begins to play tricks on you. Do they know something you don't?
As it turns out, nobody knows anything at TIFF. Everyone is capable of (repeatedly) making the same boneheaded decisions that you are. Some folks are just better at playing movie russian roulette. I'm sure that it was possible to have had a great time at the recently concluded 33rd edition of the Toronto Film Festival. That just wasn't my experience this annum. Sure, there were plenty of good films to see, but even the best ones were overshadowed by the soul-crushing disappointments and flat-out stinkers, many of which, ironically, were the most difficult to get into.
The few "big" studio films to premiere at TIFF (Spike Lee's WWII epic "The Miracle of Saint Anna;" Oprah-endorsed "The Secret Life of Bees;" "Pride and Glory" with Colin Farrell and Edward Norton; Ed Harris' oater "Appaloosa;" supernatural rom-com "Ghost Town;" Greg Kinnear's Oscar wannabe "Flash of Genius," et al) sank without a trace, leaving the Great White North without the requisite bounce they were hoping for; and that many desperately need to make any sort of commercial inroads.
Toronto's reputation for being the official launching pad for the upcoming awards season took a serious beating in 2008. Conspicuous by their absence were such heavily touted Oscar contenders as "Milk," "The Road," "The Soloist," "Revolutionary Road" and "Doubt." The official line was that they weren't ready in time, but conspiracy theorists like me spent the entire festival debating the veracity of that claim. Anything to keep our minds off the (generally) underwhelming movies that did manage to show up.
With his shot-in-Pittsburgh rom-com "Zack and Miri Make a Porno," former Sundance whiz kid Kevin Smith officially became culturally irrelevant. Like John Waters whose shock-at-all-cost modus operandi became passé once gross-out comedy went mainstream with the Farrelly Brothers, Smith's potty-mouthed, pop-culture-referencing schtick now seems positively antiquated in the Judd Apatow era. Maybe Smith should do a Broadway musical version of "Clerks" (a la Waters' "Hairspray" smash) for his next act.
Any hopes that Sony's "Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist" might become this year's "Juno" died halfway through the TIFF press screening when it became apparent that director Peter Sollett (of "Raising Victor Vargas" fame) was more interested in sophomoric toilet humor than pathos or insight. The only thing "Juno" and "N&N" have in common is the same leading man-child, Michael Cera.
Sollett wasn't the only TIFF filmmaker experiencing a precipitous sophomore slump.
Rain Johnson followed his brilliant 2005 high school noir "Brick" with "The Brothers Bloom," a failed Wes Anderson homage that repeatedly hits the same note of arch whimsy. Even with its spectacularly gifted cast (including Mark Ruffalo and Oscar winners Adrien Brody and Rachel Weisz), Johnson's grifter farce fails on nearly every conceivable level. And Neil Burger blew whatever indie cred he earned with 2006's "The Illusionist" by inflicting pedestrian Iraq homefront road movie "The Lucky Ones" on TIFF audiences.
It wasn't just relative newbies like Sollett, Johnson and Burger who came up short.
Oscar-winning director Jonathan ("Silence of the Lambs," "Philadelphia") Demme's self-indulgent, multiculturalism-with-a-trowel "Rachel Getting Married" squanders terrific performances by Anne Hathaway, Rosemarie DeWitt and long m.i.a. screen veteran Debra Winger on piddling material. The result is as wearying as spending two hours in the company of a recovering addict which, come to think of it, Hathaway's sister-of-the-bride character is.
Despite a bravura performance by Jeff Goldblum in the leading role, Paul Schrader's Holocaust drama "Adam Resurrected" is so unfocused, meandering and overwrought that most of the audience at a morning press screening bailed before the end credits. Currently without a U.S. distributor, "Adam"'s only hope of finding an audience is via the Jewish Film Festival circuit.
British stalwart Mike Leigh was represented by one of his least satisfying films to date. "Happy-Go-Lucky" is a character study about a young woman (Sally Hawkins' Cockney elementary schoolteacher Polly) who's more fingernails-on-a-blackboard grating than charming or endearing. After two hours with the relentlessly chipper Polly, I felt like wringing her scrawny neck.
"Iris"/"Notes on a Scandal" director Richard Eyre erred with the decently acted, if profoundly inconsequential "The Other Man." Not even a reunion of "Kinsey" stars Laura Linney and Liam Neeson--playing a straying wife and her cuckolded husband--could make "Man" a must-see.
Larry Charles created tsunami-like waves at TIFF with "Borat" in 2006, but his new documentary "Religulous"--made in tandem with political satirist Bill Maher--was too scattershot and seriously overextended at 103 minutes. Perhaps it would have worked better as a one-hour HBO comedy special.
Some of my fondest TIFF memories were supplied by films that arrived either sans buzz (the lushly appointed period romance "The Duchess" starring an excellent Keira Knightley and Ralph Fiennes) or suffering from bad buzz. Maybe it was diminished expectations (they flopped at Venice and Cannes respectively), but "The Burning Plain" (the directing bow of "Amores Perros"/"Babel" screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga with Charlize Theron and Kim Basinger) and "Synecdoche, New York" (another directorial debut, this one by surrealist scenarist extraordinaire Charlie Kaufman) both seemed pretty okay to me.
I was particularly taken with "Synecdoche" which features a dream cast (Philip Seymour Hoffman, Samantha Morton, Catherine Keener, Emily Watson, Hope Davis, Michelle Williams, Jennifer Jason Leigh, et al) in a Hellzapoppin' comic phantasmagoria that felt very much like Kaufman's personal spin on Fellini's masterpiece "8 1/2."
Most of my favorite Toronto films came from ringers--pet directors who never seem to let me down. Arnand Desplechin's "A Christmas Tale," Olivier Assayas' "Summer Hours" and Claire Denis' "35 Shots of Rum" all told beautifully nuanced stories of families in crisis. Michael Winterbottom's superb "Genova" also dealt with a family trauma (Colin Firth takes his two young daughters with him to Italy for a teaching gig after the tragic death of wife Hope Davis), and Terrence Davies' Liverpool memento mori "Of Time and the City" proved that auteur filmmaking is alive and well, at least on the international circuit.
Jia Zhang-ke's "24 City" continued the award-winning Chinese director's winning streak with an artful blend of documentary and fiction. Kelly Reichardt's "Wendy and Lucy," featuring an award-caliber performance by Michelle Williams, displayed the same humanist rigor as Belgium's Dardenne Brothers. Guy Ritchie returned from the dead with "RocknRolla," another boys-with-guns gangster flick, but his most larkishly entertaining and accomplished work to date. Richard Linklater's winsome life-in-the-theater fable "Me and Orson Welles" features an amazing simulacrum of the "Citizen Kane" genius by newcomer Christian McKay that has to be seen to be believed. Veteran Swedish director Jan Troell (1972 Best Picture Oscar nominee "The Emigrants") reclaimed his rightful place in the cinematic pantheon with the exquisite "Everlasting Moments," an intimate family saga set in the early 20th century. And genre specialist Kathryn Bigelow ("Point Break," "Near Dark") may have finally made an Iraqr movie that audiences will actually pay to see. "The Hurt Locker," Bigelow's crackerjack suspense thriller about a military bomb disposal unit stationed in Baghdad, opens in theaters next spring.
I could tell you about "Lovely, Still," a lugubrious gender-reversal spin on "Away from Her" reimagined as a 90-minute "Twilight Zone" episode; the repulsive French splatter flick "Martyrs;" or "The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond" based on a "rare original screenplay" by the late Tennessee Williams that had an early morning press screening audience howling with unintentional laughter, but I'd rather end things on a more positive note.
The happiest distributor leaving Toronto was undoubtedly Fox Searchlight. After wowing them at Telluride, Danny Boyle's irresistible, ingeniously structured Charles Dickens Meets Bollywood "Slumdog Millionaire" maintained its exalted buzz status by winning TIFF's Audience Choice Award. And Twentieth Century Fox's boutique label was also the lucky winner of the "Wrestler" sweepstakes. Darren ("Requiem for a Dream") Aronofsky's superbly gritty melodrama about a down-and-out pro wrestler (Mickey Rourke in a revelatory performance destined to win him at least a Best Actor nomination) parlayed its Venice Golden Lion into a $4-million acquisition deal with the company. Not surprisingly, F-S has already announced an awards-wooing December 19th release date.
Hmmm; maybe TIFF hasn't lost its Oscar-prognosticator status after all.

TIFF MUSINGS:

*Another thing that made this year's festival such an ordeal was the increasingly obnoxious behavior of TIFF attendees. Blackberries and cellphones were a routine annoyance at press and industry screenings. Jostling for a place in line--TIFF is all about queuing
up--was more stressful than ever. I witnessed at least two fistfights break out during interminable waits for "Priority Press" screenings. Even Grand Poobah Roger Ebert got involved in a highly publicized fracas that made the front page of the New York Daily News. Or maybe everyone was just grumpier than usual because the movies were so bad.

*Unlike TIFF '07, there was no "Juno," "Into the Wild," "No Country for Old Men" or even "Atonement" to make your heart beat a little faster, and give your weary bones--and even wearier posterior--a much needed shot of adrenaline. There were, however, a slew of marginal titles, most of which departed the festival still seeking a U.S. distribution deal.
Three movies that left empty-handed were "Easy Virtue," a dawdling, decorous period romp starring Colin Firth, Jessica Biel (surprisingly good) and Kristin Scott Thomas directed by Stephan Elliott ("The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert"); John Stockwell's clunky "Middle of Nowhere" that teamed real-life mother and daughter Susan Sarandon and Eva Amurri as, what else?, mother and daughter; and "Uncertainty," a maddeningly opaque urban-romance-noir-whatzit by Scott McGehee and David Siegel ("The Deep End"). And so it goes.

*Some smaller films suffered from being viewed in a pressure cooker environment like TIFF. Neither "Hunger" (an impressionistic look at the final days of IRA political prisoner Bobby Sands that won the Camera d'Or for best first feature at Cannes) or Norwegian minimalist Bent Hamer's low-key quirkfest "O'Horten" registered the way they might have in the real--i.e., non-festival--world. Hopefully I'll get the chance to take a second look when they open theatrically in 2009.

*The lack of additional late-nite screenings for some of the more popular movies was both confounding and irritating. Last year I was able to see "Lars and the Real Girl," "No Country for Old Men" and "The Visitor" at 10:30 P.M. Sometimes it felt like the festival staff didn't want critics to see any movies at all.
For example, a seemingly arbitrary last minute scheduling change meant that I was forced to miss "Lymelife," a buzzed about "Ice Storm"-y drama set in late-seventies Long Island starring Alec Baldwin and Rory and Kieran Culkin. Produced by Martin Scorsese and directed by the talented Derick Martini ("Goat on Fire and Smiling Fish"), "Lymelife" is certain to find a distributor. Too bad I wasn't allowed to take an early peek.

"Warners CHOSE to release The Women widely, at a massively inflated cost."

David, I should put you in touch with the Picturehouse publicist who contacted me after finding last week's column on Google Alerts, asking me to remove any mention of Warner Bros in connection with "The Women." I had noted that it was getting a wider release than any Picturehouse release due to WB's involvement in distributing and was asked to remove said statement and any other reference to WB.

Oh, and to respond to the other bit (re: Slumdog), I think Warner International has been growing...they made a BIG SHOW at ShoWest this year to show off their success in places like Japan and Europe, although most of it seemed to be about their productions rather than distribution. From what I understand when I asked Fox Searchlight, they're only doing America and Warners is handling the rest of the world similar to the way Beowulf was split up with Paramount handling America and WB doing everywhere else.

EDouglas, Armond White called. He wants his crankiness back.

I know Armond White and he is probably one of the LEAST crankiest New York critic I've ever met.... though I'm not sure how either of my posts can be read as "crankiness." I just didn't see the connection between WB getting a studio like Fox Searchlight to take some of the risk on marketing/distributing a difficult film was being connected to the final release of Picturehouse.

I was being snarky about your long post on how TIFF jumped the shark this year because it didn't have a Juno or a No Country or an Into the Wild.

If White is one of the LEAST crankiest critics, then who is cranky? (Rex Reed doesn't count.)

I'm guessing Lou Limenick might be considered crank, seeing as he likes assaulting members of the press at press screenings.

BTW: Even if you didn't recognize the guy behind you was Mr. Ebert, I don't think whacking someone is ever acceptable.

Jimmy: EDouglas didn't write the long cranky TIFF post - movieman did.

Ed Gonzalez HAS to be a crankier NYC critic than Armond White.

White comes off as a loon beyond belief with his contrarian bullshit, but taken at his goofy word, I get the sense he at least has fun coming up with his ridiculous opinions and needling bullshit.

Ed Gonzalez, I don't even know why that guy's a film critic. Yeah, yeah, I get that "SLANT MAGAZINE" is an "edgy" site that filters their opinions through a prism of both snark and supreme touchiness about sociopolitical issues, but I've always felt, if you see 100 movies a year and you hate 90 of them, you're not an interesting read or a "discerning critic," you're just kind of an asshole. At the very least, you don't really like movies very much, so you're insulting your readership.

It'd be like having a "football critic" who doesn't like football, doesn't like sports, and finds any mere discussion of the game to be an in-road to discussing issues of racism and homophobia. The writing might be mildly attention-grabbing in a "HEY MA LOOK AT ME" kinda way, but it's ultimately condescending and worthless as any sort of reportage or critism.

movieman, you deserve to relax at the pub with a nice, cold beer after that terrific 'tiff' summary! (sorry to hear you were a bit underwhelmed, though; i enjoyed your insight into the films on offer, as always)

My apologies to EDouglas.

To quote Nicholson in A Few Good Men: "Don't I feel link the fucking asshole."

Lex, like yourself, I think Armond White actually believes in the ridiculous bullshit that he occasionally spews forth. I have no idea what he's like in person. but in print he definitely comes off as someone who is crazy and has a huge chip on his shoulder. Maybe that doesn't equate to 'cranky' but it's not far off.

...glad you enjoyed the read, Leahnz.
I'm still decompressing from my TIFF experience, and furiously scratching the beyond-itchy bites I got from the bed bugs at the Comfort Hotel on Charles St. W. (in a room that I paid $200 a night for in U.S. dollars!)
I guess that was TIFF's parting gift from a year to forget.

Armond White is one entertaining crank though. Sometimes I'm absolutely flabbergasted at the claims of quality he makes for things like Torque or You Got Served. But he may have the last laugh -- yesterday's critically dismissed B movies often hold up better than Oscar bait.

Yes ED... those people are afraid to call me...

I have worked happily with Picturehousers and Fine Liners before that... and anyone who called you is just trying to do what they are being forced to do. Bob Berney is out there starting a new company, not finding money to wide-release The Women.

It was a horrible choice by Jeff Robinov to bend to Nikki Finke's accusations (which genuinely scare him, I am told) and secondarily, the potential of S&TC, spending more on P&A than any Picturehouse movie in history.

Pubs do what pubs do.

And as far as Warner Int... yes... they are very, very good... but again, they don't own international on Slumdog as far as I know. Pathe does. The only interest they have left is the domestic that they held onto when Searchlight didn't cover WIP's entire investment.

And movieman... you aren't planning on billing me for that feature story there, are you?

No worries, Dave.
I just wanted to make sure that it ran somewhere in an unexpurgated fashion.

...since you never know what even a "well-meaning" editor will do...

Yancy, as much of a fan of dance movies as I am, You Got Served is quite possibly the worst movie I have ever seen. I felt my braincells rotting away as I watched it.

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