Like they did with the scissor schism poster, the marketers make Antichrist look like a pretty good 2-minute horror flick — by removing the other 103 minutes of hollow misanthropic brainy stuff.

The beginning of Antichrist was fascinating, peeping through the emotional keyhole at Charlotte Gainsbourg’s breathtaking portrayal of deranged relationshipwreckage. The haunting cinematography, jumpy dialogue, and unsettling direction in the first 50 minutes promised to be a great setup for the final psychological breakdown. But then the more berserk things got, the more disengaged I became. Wesley Morris of the Boston Globe says, “I don’t think I breathed for the last half.” About the time Morris stopped breathing, I stopped caring. The only thing I felt in the second half was the sensation of a red hot icepick dipped in pepper spray stabbing me in the eye, as punishment for being intrigued by the first half.

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Films big and small are vying for the right audience to get them into the awards race. Thanks to Ryan for posting A Simple Man’s trailer (below). Meanwhile, the film most likely to be chosen by China as their official foreign language submission got some good ink today:

Friday, September 11, 2009 06:20 PM

A film likely no one will forget

Guy Dixon

The Asian film industry will be closely following the reaction to one film in particular at TIFF this year. Nanjing Nanjing (English title: City of Life and Death) graphically depicts the horrific devastation of Nanjing by Japanese forces in late 1937 to early 1938. The film deals with the mass murder and rape in epic proportions, somberly, without gratuitously showing more gore than necessary, yet also not shying away from the atrocities. Shot to perfection in black and white, it is widely seen as China’s likely submission for an Oscar for best foreign-language film.

Of course, the film hasn’t avoided controversy. It was a box-office success in its Chinese release earlier this year, after having passed official censors. Yet a campaign criticizing the portrayal of some of the Japanese soldiers in more human terms, especially the central Japanese lead, has erupted on the Internet, said TIFF programmer Giovanna Fulvi. Arguably, though, the humanness of the Japanese soldiers in the film makes the atrocities committed that much more sickening and immediate.

Entertainment Weekly’s Owen Gleiberman writes at length about Moore’s Capitalism: A Love Story (loves it, but wishes Moore had been more reserved) but also drops some tidbits as to his reaction of Up in the Air (looks to be a grade A) and A Serious Man (probably loved it too)

Film festivals often have an uncanny way of channeling the mood of the moment. But I doubt if that dynamic has ever been at work more strikingly than it is at the 34th Toronto International Film Festival, which got underway yesterday. In an age of shrinking specialty divisions and financially battered media outlets, gather a bunch of movie people and a bunch of journalists in the same place, and you can just about taste the currents of anxiety in the air. (The mood is especially noteworthy in clean, orderly, mall-friendly Toronto, one of the most un-anxious cities I’ve ever been in.) The thing is, the anxiety — economic, romantic, spiritual – is streaming off the screen as well. The first three movies I’ve seen here — Michael Moore’s scathing, mad-as-hell Capitalism: A Love Story, Jason Reitman’s exquisitely funny and touching Up in the Air (a comedy of love, loneliness, and downsizing), and the Coen brothers’ uncharacteristically humane slice of spilkes A Serious Man — all ripple with echoes of the current age of monetary woe and cosmic uncertainty. I’ll talk about Up in the Air and A Serious Man in my next two posts, but for right now, let me devote the headline to a man who still has no peer at grabbing headlines…

The NY Times has a photo spread of A Serious Man, the Coen brothers new dark comedy. They have a whiff of Diane Arbus.

Hollywood Reporter’s Kirk Honeycutt on ASM:

TORONTO — The always surprising Coen brothers have finally made a very serious movie with “A Serious Man.” It’s about God, man’s place in the world and the meaning of life, so naturally it’s one of their funnier movies. And because the year in question is 1967, the oracle of human wisdom and experience can be found in the lyrics of the immortal rock band Jefferson Airplane. Of course, it can.

“Serious Man” will do serious business among the Coens’ many admirers but is not likely to expand the membership rolls greatly. In commercial terms, it’s not as gripping as “No Country for Old Men,” nor as knee-slapping hilarious as “Fargo” but rather a quiet sort of movie that finds sly humor in the quotidian lives and mind-sets of a Midwestern Jewish community about 40 years ago. So the movie narrows its audience to adults who take comedy seriously.

And Variety’s Todd McCarthy:

More than anything, “A Serious Man” would seem to represent a moderately jaundiced memoir of a specific time and place, that being the Minnesota of the Coens’ youth. Many such quasi-autobiographical works in literature and film take the form of an escape story by a gifted soul just too sensitive or different to cope any longer with a restrictive environment. To the contrary, the Coens have chosen to identify not with the son but with the father, a man who, as narrative circumstances play out, could have decided to bail out at a certain point. But such a thing never occurs to him for an instant.

There is usually a movie that captures the hearts of bloggers early on — however, I usually reserve judgment until actual film critics write actual reviews. Sometimes, though, a film can manage to live up to and even surpass the hype. There Will Be Blood was this film two years ago and it looks like Up in the Air is that film this year. How far it will go, where it will go remains to be seen. What is certain is the unanimous praise everywhere. Just because we don’t link to it doesn’t mean it isn’t there. By now I’m sure you’ve already read the same posts and sputters I have.

Feel free to use this space, however, to share links about the massive response to Jason Reitman’s Up in the Air. So, it looks like the Oscar contenders right now are: The Hurt Locker, Up in the Air and then performance-driven An Education and Precious. And yes, for the animated slot, Up.

Gee, no pressure. Rolling Stone’s Peter Travers has seen 40 minutes of Avatar and believes that, of Oscar’s Best Picture Ten, Avatar will be the one to beat (thanks again to Jordan):

Travers does Oscar talk and fall preview stuff, but the money shot:

With the Academy Awards’ Best Picture category expanded from five films to 10, James Cameron’s Avatar, the Titanic director’s first film since, well, Titanic, seems like a lock for a nod. The less-than-impressive teaser trailer already has the movie-loving message boards worried, but Travers insists that after seeing 40 minutes of the “spectacular” 3D footage, it’s Cameron’s Best Picture category to lose. Also in the Oscar hunt are Jason Reitman’s Up in the Air, which might net George Clooney a Best Actor trophy, and the musical Nine, which stars Daniel Day Lewis and is partly based on Federico Fellini’s 8 1/2.

That’s actually fucking, no fooking, but we try to keep our PG-13 rating around here. Josh Olsen will not read your fucking script. He just won’t do it. And here are the great reasons why not. Olsen lays out what it’s like to have even moderate success in Hollywood — friends want you to read their scripts, work needs you to read the potential scripts and when friends are involved, your opinion really counts. So what do you do if major suckage occurs?

Most people get that. But sometimes you find yourself in a situation where the guilt factor is really high, or someone plays on a relationship or a perceived obligation, and it’s hard to escape without seeming rude. Then, I tell them I’ll read it, but if I can put it down after ten pages, I will. They always go for that, because nobody ever believes you can put their script down once you start.

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Overnight AP news from the Academy Board of Governors.

Actress Lauren Bacall, producer-director Roger Corman and cinematographer Gordon Willis are the first Oscar winners of the season.

Bacall made her screen debut with Humphrey Bogart in “To Have and Have Not” in 1944. She went on to star in more than 30 films, including such classics as “The Big Sleep” and “Key Largo.” Corman has directed more than 50 films and produced more than 300 during his five-decade career, including “It Conquered the World” and “The Little Shop of Horrors (1960). Willis is a two-time Academy Award nominee for “Zelig” and “The Godfather, Part III.”

Producer John Calley (Postcards from the Edge, The Remains of the Day) will receive the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award.

UPDATE: The Hollywood Reporter makes clear AMPAS efforts to embrace a more diverse audience with 10 BP nominees don’t extend to retaining the best aspects of its 81-year heritage.

In a break with tradition, this year the Academy’s honorary awards will be handed out at the new event in November. While the awards will be acknowledged during the Oscarcast on March 7, the show won’t devote the same amount of time to toasting the honorees on air as in past years.

Changing the awards format to include a broader range of movies is fine. It’s a shame the Academy can’t find a way to open a bigger umbrella without leaving its legends out in the rain.

Roger Ebert explains that he’s saving his actual review for the weekend Creation opens in theaters. His blog entry from TIFF addresses other issues on his mind :

I expected the film to be focused on Darwin’s theory of the origin of species and the controversy it provoked in mid-19th century, but it is primarily about his domestic life, centering on Down House, Bromley, where he and his wife Emma lived from 1842 until until his death in 1882. There they had ten children, three of whom died young. The film is much concerned with his grief at the loss of Anne (1841-51) who was one of the brightest and most delightful, and whose direct questions perhaps helped embolden him to publish On the Origin of Species in 1859, after a 20-year delay.

The rest of Ebert’s TIFF entry seems to involve his disappointment that the movie wasn’t controversial enough. He apparently wanted more dispute between the agnostic Darwin and his devoutly Christian wife. Maybe those philosophical debates and marital battles took place in real life but I suspect they did not. I don’t imagine Charles and Emma Darwin as a 19th Century James Carville and Mary Matalin.

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Hello again everyone. It will be my privilege to once again share my thoughts and experiences with all of you as I try to navigate The 2009 Toronto International Film Festival in the next 10 days. I have approximately 25 films on my plate which will be approximately 2 to 3 films a day. As well, I will be interviewing some of the artists involved with this years crop of films.

Tonight, I attended the opening night Gala at Roy Thomson Hall for Creation. This is the first time in the history of TIFF where a Canadian film was not the opening film. There were opening remarks from the co-directors of TIFF, Piers Handling and Cameron Bailey, about the changes the festival has made this year and that it will be once again a festival first and foremost for lovers of film. The organizers were criticized last year for making many films inaccessible for regular film goers and making TIFF seemingly more elite. I remarked on those very sentiments in last year’s comments. After the organizers spoke,¬†some of the cast including Paul Bettany and Jennifer Connelly, and director Jon Amiel came out and spoke briefly before the film began.

I just saw the film a short time ago and still absorbing it to write a review. I will have one for you in the next day or so. But I will say this much, Bettany gives an impressive performance as Charles Darwin and is probably his best thus far. I will have more to say about the film later.

2009 brings yet another controversy at TIFF. I won’t go into any details but you can read up on it here.

Tomorrow is full day with 3 films on my schedule including Damn United, Up in the Air and Bright Star.

(click to enlarge)

Thanks to Bill for bringing these beasts to our attention. Two more after the cut.

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We’ll expand these quotes as reaction evolves. In the beginning, there was THR:

Collee and director Amiel move seamlessly back and forth from the lovely times when Annie (Martha West) was the apple of her father’s eye to the present as he is wracked with writer’s block and the fear that by writing his book, he will lose the love of his deeply religious wife.

Thanks to the writing, pacing and Bettany’s nuanced performance, it is one of the best delineations of intellectual and emotional struggle seen on film in many a year. The actor’s scenes with Annie and Emma have an extraordinary tenderness that grips the heart just as Darwin’s scientific dilemma engages the brain. West is unaffected and winning as the girl, and Connelly, with a perfect English accent, shows the wife’s anguish as well as her undying loyalty.

Variety predicts “respectable critical support,” but its own critic’s entusiam is subdued:

Amiel, demonstrating some of the visual panache more creatively deployed in earlier work (“Queen of Hearts,” the “Singing Detective” mini) than later genre projects “The Core” or “Entrapment,” finds opportunities to illustrate theories of natural selection and such in brief montages, sometimes deploying digital and time-lapse effects. But despite that and pleasant (if modestly scaled) period trappings, “Creation” feels somewhat static in storytelling terms. Once basic conflicts are established, we simply wait for Darwin to come to terms with his grief, marriage and imminent notoriety. Not much “happens,” though the pic does its best to maintain energy in both physical presentation and mixed-chronology structure.