Paramount Pictures has set Dec. 4 as the limited launch date for George Clooney starrer Up in the Air the Jason Reitman-directed adaptation of the Walter Kirn novel.

The studio’s release plans have been the subject of conversation since the film was warmly received at the Toronto Film Festival. Prior to the fest, Par intended to begin its rollout Nov. 13, going wide in early December. That would have put the film up against the Grant Heslov-directed The Men Who Stare at Goats another pic starring Clooney that garnered strong reaction at Toronto.

Source: Variety.com

The Warrior and the Wolf 

The Ape 

The Good Heart 

Cooking with Stella 

Contributed by: thesubstream.com

Muddled and visceral: classic martial arts filmmaking.

Star/director Tony Jaa and co-director Panna Rittikrai’s follow up to the first international Thai blockbuster Ong Bak is, in many ways good and bad, a classic true-to-genre martial arts flick. The story is convoluted and clichéd. There are storytelling elements that feel like their inclusion is to satisfy a functionary’s need to check boxes on a list rather than to tell a story – hero’s childhood friend is still alive and in the service of the bad guy, check – and there are double-crosses and hidden identities that exist for no other logical reason than to provide a hoped-for boost of vengeful je ne sais quoi to a flagging later scene. It’s also filled with some of the best fight scenes of all time. So it has that going for it.

Ong Bak 2 is, obviously, ostensibly a sequel to Jaa’s breakout original hit and he has claimed that the slight problem that they seemingly have absolutely nothing to do with each other (the sequel is set 600 years before the first) will be resolved in an upcoming third film that will connect them. While the first was set in modern day, the sequel/prequel tells the story of Tien, the son of murdered nobility caught in a power struggle in feudal Thailand. Sent to live at a dancing school, he is tossed into the wild and must escape slave traders to finally live and train with a group of martial-arts-expert bandits, who teach him how to fight. (more…)

Harry Brown 

Contributed by: thesubstream.com

Horse, Cowboy, Indian, Seamonster and Farmer: The Holy Story Pentangle

A Town Called Panic is the anarchic, frenetic feature film version of the popular Belgian cartoon of the same name. Technically crude but all the better for it, the film like the cartoon is stop-motion animated using what look like (and in some cases are) the cheap plastic toy figurines that came by the dozens in bags, complete with plastic bases affixed to their feet. It stars Indian and Cowboy, two best-friend troublemaking goofs sharing a room in a house with the older, more serious Horse. They live in a small village with an angry farmer, his patient wife, their legion of pigs, chickens and cows (who take music lessons from Madame Longrée, the red-maned object of Horse’s nervous affection) and a policeman in charge of keeping the peace.

After a birthday celebration goes awry, Horse, Cowboy and Indian are left with a mystery that leads them on an adventure that takes them in 20 minutes from the centre of the earth to the north pole in a battle with bizarre terrorist scientists, to the bottom of the ocean and back. It’s riotously creative and thoroughly enjoyable, a kids movie that doesn’t pander or play down, with enough solid character-based humour to sustain itself with older audiences over the long haul. It suffers from being a little one-note, especially at an hour plus, that’s a small complaint. It doesn’t drag at all. (more…)

Cadillac People’s Choice Award:
Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire by Lee Daniels
Runners up: Mao's Last Dancer by Bruce Beresford, Micmacs by Jean-Pierre Jeunet

Cadillac People’s Choice Award For Documentary:
The Topp Twins by Leanne Pooley
Runner up: Capitalism: A Love Story by Michael Moore

Cadillac People’s Choice Award For Midnight Madness:
The Loved Ones
Runner up: Daybreakers by Michael Spierig and Peter Spierig

City of Toronto and Astral Media’s The Movie Network Award For Best Canadian Feature Film:
Cairo Time by Ruba Nadda

SKYY Vodka Award For Best Canadian First Feature Film:
The Wild Hunt by Alexandre Franchi

Prizes of the International Critics (FIPRESCI Prize) for Special Presentations Section:
Hadewijch by Bruno Dumont

Prizes of the International Critics (FIPRESCI Prize) for Discovery Section:
The Man Beyond the Bridge by Laxmikant Shetgaonkar

Award For Best Canadian Short Film:
Danse Macabre by Pedro Pires
Honorable mention: The Armoire by Jamie Travis

Special Jury Citation from the Best Canadian Feature jury:
La Donation by Bernard Émond

Contributed by: thesubstream.com

The weirdest, funniest movie in the festival.

Symbol is Japanese comic legend Hitoshi Matsumoto’s second feature, the follow up to his lovably weird, boldly alienating and completely hilarious Dai Nipponjin (aka Big Man Japan, 2007). Two seemingly unrelated stories play in parallel in the film. In one, Mexican luchador Escargot Man must face the seemingly insurmountably strong and youthful Tequila Joe in a wrestiling match while his young son looks on. The other features Matsumoto as a nameless, pyjama-clad unfortunate who wakes up inside a large, seemingly endlessly tall white void of a room with walls studded with stylized cherubs’ penises that, when depressed, cause various household objects (chopsticks and sushi, space heaters, 3-d glasses) to be dispensed into the room. I’ll let you read that again.

Symbol is a near-masterpiece of weird, conceptual, existential humour and expertly handled, perfectly sustained and timed slapstick comedy of the oldest, best school. I can think of no comic actor other than Matsumoto who could pull something like this film off… you’d have to go back to Andy Kaufman or before him Chaplin to find someone who could theoretically create a long-form, slow-boil whopper of a joke the way Matsumoto has, one that never gets boring, the set-up for the ultimate punch-line disguised and hidden behind masterfully funny vaudevillian shtick. It’s one of the funniest film’s I’ve seen in the past couple of years, and it looks like a Tom Friedman art installation, and it’s smarter than I think I can really get a handle on. I loved it utterly. Completely bizarre, radically funny and oddly, wonderfully moving, and I won’t say anything more. 9.5/10

Source: thesubstream.com