Chunky slabs of brute beauty in a heroic style and earthy palette that must surely have been influenced by the paintings of Thomas Hart Benton.

Many years Urs looked after his aging mother. But now he sets out for a dangerous journey: He carries her up a mountain to find a better place for both of them. But his mother doesnt want to leave her home…

“Urs” is a 10-minute animated short-film with which Moritz Mayerhofer graduated at the Filmakademie Baden-Wuerttemberg, Germany. He worked three years to create a deep atmospheric film where he would find the fragile relationship of a man to his mother in the middle of a gigantic mountain range.

Find out more at the official site.

Day 5

It was one of those full days from morning to night at the festival which included four screenings.¬† Four screenings is not something I would recommend. The first screening of the day was Precious: Based on the Novel ‚ÄúPush‚Äù by Sapphire with director Lee Daniels present at the screening. The film begins with the quote, ‚ÄúEverything is a gift from the universe‚Äù and tells the story of Claireece ‚ÄúPrecious‚Äù Jones (Gabby Sedibe), who is an illiterate teenager living in Harlem in 1987.¬† Physically and emotionally abused by her mother Mary (Mo‚ÄôNique) and being pregnant a second time by her own father, Precious fantasizes of another life. ¬†When she is given the opportunity to go to an alternative school she meets a teacher, Ms. Rain (Paula Patton),¬†and it’s there where she begins to feel valued and ultimately loved. Lee Daniels takes you on an emotional journey that you will not soon forget.

Mo’Nique gives a searing performance and is unbelievable considering that she has mainly been known for her comedy up until now.  Sedibe is heartbreaking as the resilient teenager. The film is powerful and profound. I have not left a theatre so moved since Into the Wild.

The second film of the day was Harry Brown, Daniel Barber’s first feature film. Michael Caine is the title character and plays a widower and former Royal Marine. After a friend is killed by thugs in South London and police do very little to protect the public housing apartments where he lives, Harry takes matters in his own hands and seeks vengeance. The film is dark and extremely violent.  Michael Caine is charismatic in whatever he does and makes this film a better film than it would have been otherwise.

The third film of the day was Neil Jordan’s Ondine. Both the director and it’s star, Colin Farrell were present at the World Premiere of this film at The Winter Garden Theatre.  Farrell has been a busy man in Toronto. Not only is he in town promoting 3 films at the Festival; Triage, Ondine and The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnussus, but this will have been my third encounter with Mr. Farrell during the Festival since he was at the same screenings for Bright Star and for Chloe. At the Ondine screening, Bono and The Edge of U2, who were in town for their world tour, also came to see the film and support their fellow Irishman.  Ondine tells the story of a simple fisherman named Syracuse(Colin Farrell) who “catches” a beautiful woman in his nets one day called Ondine (Alicja Bachleda).  Syracuse, is a recovering alcoholic who is separated from his former wife and is a father to Annie, his wheel-chair bound daughter.   Syracuse begins to fall for the mysterious Ondine who begins to transform his life. Christopher Doyle’s luscious cinematography adds to this fable/love story. Farell gives a touching performance.

The last film of the day was The Damned United.

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What’s black and white and red all over? Don’t you dare say those darn reds in the liberal print media in America, because they’ve all been bought out and laid off.

Following Invictus, THR sees dead people and whatnot in Clint and Matt’s future.

Clint Eastwood and Matt Damon are reteaming for “Hereafter.”

Eastwood will direct the original supernatural thriller by Peter Morgan, with Damon stepping in to the lead role; filming is set to begin this fall.

DreamWorks originally acquired the spec thriller from Morgan, an Oscar nominee for “The Queen” and “Frost/Nixon,” last year, and it quickly piqued Eastwood’s interest.

Exciting news this morning as we learn France has sorted through its annual bounty of brilliant films and chosen Jacques Audiard’s knockout Un proph√®te as its official submission for Best Foregin Language Film. Sasha posted the trailer below. Winner of this year’s Grand Jury Prize at Cannes, Un proph√®te is epic every sense of the word. I was lucky enough to see it just last week, and it’s not only my favorite film by my current favorite French director, I’ll venture to say it’s the greatest prison movie ever made. Here’s a rough list of my personal top 10 of the durable genre (prison camps and prison castles count too).

• Un proph√®te (2009)
• La grande illusion (1937)
• The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
• The Great Escape (1963)
• Empire of the Sun (1987)
• In the Name of the Father (1993)
• Midnight Express (1978)
• Cool Hand Luke (1967)
• Stalag 17 (1953)
• Kiss of the Spider Woman (1985)

Honorable mention:

• Papillon (1973)
• Escape from New York (1981)
• Birdman of Alcatraz (1962)
• Bronson (2009)
• Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence (1983)

Audiard’s previous 4 films — See How They Fall (1994), A Self-Made Hero (1996), Read My Lips (2001), and The Beat that My Heart Skipped — have been nominated for a total of 29 C√©sar awards. If you haven’t seen those movies, do yourself a great favor and queue them up for a mini-fest in anticipation of his finest film to date.

5 more stills from Un prophète, after the cut (via flixter.)

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Creepy, powerful, and you can’t unsee it:

Check after the cut for the same trailer, viewable outside the hulu-hoop.

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From SouthAfrica.info

ScreenAfrica reports that the South African film White Wedding will be their Oscar submission:

Directed by Jann Turner and executive produced by renowned best-selling novelist Ken Follett, White Wedding was produced by its two stars, Rapulana Seiphemo and Kenneth Nkosi. It is described as appealing, feel-good movie about love, commitment, intimacy and friendship and a host of maddening obstacles that can get in the way of a happy ending. Uplifting and at times uproarious this is a movie that affirms the dream that romance can overcome any obstacle.

ScreenDaily reports:

Starring up-and-coming actor Tahar Rahim, the film follows a young man as he is taken under the wing of the Corsican mafia during a prison stint. As he rises through the ranks, it becomes clear he has designs on creating his own network.

Sony Pics Classics is distributing the film in the US. Meanwhile, the best foreign film coverage on the net can be found over at The Film Experience. No one does it like Nat, and I mean no one.

Cinematical has the exclusive look at the new IMAX character banners for the Spike Jonze adaptation of Where the Wild Things Are. Check them out.

I think this is new, but I hope it didn’t turn up in last year’s coverage — TIME has no date on it and I can’t remember if I read it or not. So if it’s old, there is no harm in reading it again. The top ten moments:

Blood Simple to No Country for Old Men

1. Blood Simple (1984)
2. Raising Arizona (1987)
3. Miller’s Crossing (1990)
4. Barton Fink (1991)
5. The Hudsucker Proxy (1994)
6. The Big Lebowski (1998)
7. Fargo (1996)
8. O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000)
9. The Man Who Wasn’t There (2001)
10. No Country for Old Men (2007)

The Big Lebowski is full of favorite moments for me — too many to mention. TIME points out the Jesus moment with John Turturro, totally great – I guess I’d have to put the meeting with Larry (“You’re killing your father, Larry”) right at the top. But I’d also add Burn After Reading to this list, and I’d include the moment that the crew working in the gym finds the CD and tries to figure out what’s on it, “It just lying there, right on the floor there.” Burn After Reading, as I’ve said before, is going to be a cult favorite eventually – the same thing happened with The Big Lebowski – no one really admired it until about five years later and then it became arguably the most popular film by the Coens. “It was just lying there, on the floor there.”

I don’t think I’ve ever actually typed the word “God” in a post entry. TIME’s Richard Corliss made me do it with his intricate review of sorts of the Coen Brothers A Serious Man, not to be confused with A Single Man. I don’t think there is one called A Serious, Single Man (it’s probably too brainy of a concept to do a YouTube mash-up of the two movies – I’m just hoping Oscar voters know them well enough as separate entities when it comes to voting). Here is how Corliss ends his piece on the film:

As Fate keeps stomping him, he embraces Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle. What he tells his class about the theory ‚Äî “Even if you can’t figure it out, you’re still responsible for it on the midterm” ‚Äî applies, in spades, to his crumbling life. And yet for most of the movie he hangs in there, behaving honorably, seeking the wisdom of his ancestors, trying to observe the Jewish concept of Hashem. “Receive with simplicity everything that happens to you,” says Elie Wiesel’s Rashi. To absorb God’s body blows, this disquieting, haunting movie says, is to be fully alive. To do otherwise could kill you.

That last sentence may well be my favorite of this entire awards season so far, which seems like it began with Cannes and ended with Toronto. Alas, this is just the festival phase. Now come the movies. To absorb God’s body blows is no easy feat. Leave it to the Coen brothers, though, to go there.

Indiewire’s Peter Gnegt talks to Tom Ford about A Single Man:

“No matter how much you love something, there are those moments where you think, ‘shit, maybe I’m just way out on a limb and other people aren’t going to feel this way’,” Tom Ford said yesterday regarding his film “A Single Man.” “But then after the screening in Venice, we had a standing ovation for ten minutes. And it was amazing. It was very emotional, and it was just like a great release of ‘yes, it spoke to other people.’”

He talks up the background a bit – this is important, I think, to the overall Oscar take on this movie – specifically, that it is so much Isherwood:

“A Single Man” was adapted from Christopher Isherwood’s 1964 novel of the same name, regarded as one of the first and finest novels of the early gay liberation movement. A meditation on love and death and isolation, it follows a single day in the life of George (Firth), a middle-aged gay Englishman working as a college professor in 1962 Los Angeles. His longtime lover, Jim (played by Matthew Goode in a series of flashbacks) has recently died in a car accident, and as a result George is the midst of self-destruction.

UPDATE: here is the YouTube version…

First heard about Everybody’s Fine from AD reader Jon Pace a few days ago, but at the time couldn’t find enough material to build a post. This afternoon Amanda lets us know the trailer is online. As Jon wrote, “De Niro movies were a huge reason why I fell in love with movies (I think a lot of people might say that), so it will be nice to be reminded of why, if Everybody’s Fine is good. A comeback of a different sort.”

This looks to fit nicely alongside movies like About Schmidt, The Savages, and other tales of family fractures undergoing repair.