On the heels of some high-profile NYFF announcements, the Toronto International Film Festival has unveiled its fair share of titles scheduled to premiere there next month. According to Variety, the list includes:

• The North American premieres of Charlie Kaufman's directorial debut, Synecdoche, New York (pictured), which has been picked up for distribution by Sony Pictures Classics since we last heard of (still) possible trims, and Steven Soderbergh's epic Che, which remains without a distributor -- James Rocchi reviewed both films at Cannes.
  
• The world premieres of Rian Johnson's Brick follow-up, The Brothers Bloom, which looks to be a special sort of con movie, and Kevin Smith's Zack and Miri Make a Porno, which looks to be a special sort of, well, romantic comedy.
  
• The North American premieres of Darren Aronofsky's sports drama The Wrestler and Gavin O'Connor's oft-delayed cop drama Pride and Glory .
  
• The world premieres of Genova, Slumdog Millionaire and Me and Orson Welles, the latest from the ever-unpredictable likes of Michael Winterbottom, Danny Boyle and Richard Linklater, respectively.

Cinematical will bring you early reviews on as many of these as we can, so stay tuned. TIFF runs from September 4th through the 13th.

Winner of the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, Stefan Ruzowitzky's The Counterfeiters tells the true story of a Nazi plot to flood the US and UK with forged currency, using concentration camp prisoners to do the dirty deeds. Christopher Campbell thought it was "not quite a great film," while Kim Voynar wrote: "At its core, this is a film about courage and morality." Critical consensus overall was 94% positive, according to Rotten Tomatoes. The DVD includes an audio commentary by the director, deleted scenes, a "making of," interviews, and more. The film is also available on Blu-ray.

Set some two decades after the events in The Counterfeiters, the much lighter, sentimental My Brother is an Only Child "follows two brothers through years of Italian history," wrote James Rocchi. Though comparisons to the more ambitious and effective period family drama The Best of Youth might be inevitable, James said My Brother is still "a handsomely made, brightly charming pleasure in its own right." The DVD appears to be a bare-bones edition without any extras.

First broadcast on network television in November 1982, The Executioner's Song left a very strong impression on me. Career criminal Gary Gilmore (Tommy Lee Jones in a powerful performance) tries to go straight, taking up with young Nicole Baker (Rosanna Arquette in a startling, sexy, star-making role) before returning to crime and eventually killing two people in brutal fashion. Sentenced to die, Gilmore insisted on paying the ultimate penalty as speedily as possible.

Less than an hour ago, I'd not a clue about the Jonathan Demme-directed, Anne Hathaway-starring dysfunctional family dramedy, Rachel Getting Married, and having now watched the new trailer over at Yahoo! Movies, I find myself equally reminded of two films I felt were of opposite worth: the winning Pieces of April and the wearying Margot at the Wedding.

Following a string of documentaries, this is Demme's first feature film in four years since his remake of The Manchurian Candidate, apparently embracing a more free-form, hand-held style on this project. Hathaway, meanwhile, seems to have shed all evidence of her tough-girl persona from Get Smart as the rehab-frequenting Kym, save for perhaps her eyeliner. And it can't hurt to have Debra Winger and Rosemarie DeWitt around, playing her mother and sister, respectively.

Jeff Wells over at Hollywood Elsewhere seems to have the only opening date around, with the film going limited on October 3rd. With any luck, whatever buzz comes from its Venice and Toronto premieres (and, in all likelihood, also Telluride, Toronto, or all three) will carry it into the looming awards season.

[Thanks, Andrew!]

By: James Rocchi

(With Baghead's limited release expanding this week, we at Cinematical are re-running our Sundance 2008 interview with Jay and Mark Duplass.)

In Baghead, the writing-directing team of Mark and Jay Duplass (The Puffy Chair) combine not two, but three separate traditions of American Indie Cinema: It revolves around two couples; it celebrates and mocks the world of indie film ... and it takes place in an isolated cabin in the woods where a masked stranger hovers outside in ominous silence. Cinematical spoke with the brothers at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival about delusions of adequacy, clumsy passes, awkward pauses and genre-melding on a minimal budget. Mark tries to sum it up: "Baghead is a movie about the funny, horrific, tragic, terrible life of being a desperate actor. ..."

This interview, like all of Cinematical's podcast offerings, is now available through iTunes; if you'd like, you can subscribe at this link. Also, you can listen directly here at Cinematical by clicking below:

Welcome to another edition of Insert Caption -- the game that's so much more dope than it is wacked. Last week, we asked you to bend down, lean forward and give us your best captions for a photo from The Love Guru. I don't know if you all brought in your own Caption Gurus (or if there was some other mystical power at work), but we received some of the most awesomest captions yet. Good job!

1. "This is hard to say, but the reason I called the four of you in to my office is to let you know that you are being downsized." -- Anthony G.

2. "We're sorry, we thought this was a shrink's office." -- Kurt P.

3. "Honey, I shrunk the agent." -- Suraj C.

See full image and all captions



This week, you're gonna have to bring out those mad skillz for a movie that's hotter than a McSkillet, ya dig? (What does that even mean?) Yup, we're shellin' out some lovin' for a little indie called The Wackness, featuring mad rhymes, dope flava ... Josh Peck, Olivia Thirlby, Famke Janssen and Ben Kingsley. Holla! But check it: One grand prize winner will take away a ridiculous Sony DVP-FX820 portable DVD player. Word. Seriously, though, The Wackness is a blast -- great soundtrack, fun movie, take your friends, the whole nine. Flick hits theaters on July 3. Sound off punks!



Read the official rules for this contest

I noticed an unusual number of young girls clutching dolls at a multiplex on Saturday afternoon. This made me very nervous. I know it's summer and school's out, but the early Saturday crowd tends to be non-teenage people like me who try and catch up with the latest Hollywood releases without the distractions of the Friday/Saturday night teen crowd. What were all the young girls coming to see? Kung Fu Panda? Get Smart? Sex and the City?

Nope, the hordes of girls were lining up politely to see the latest trendy indie release: Kit Kittredge: An American Girl. One of the last three releases from distributor Picturehouse, which is due to shut down completely very soon, Kit Kittredge may be based on a doll, yet has further indie cred thanks to Little Miss Sunshine star Abigail Breslin. And maybe all those little girls will grow up to write their own Juno some day? In any case, the film opened in five theaters in five cities, two weeks in advance of a wide release, and grossed a super impressive $44,600 per screen, according to estimates compiled by Box Office Mojo.

Picturehouse also scored with another one of their last-gasp releases, the Mongolian war-mongering Mongol, which expanded to 94 screens and turned in a muscular performance of $7,914 per screen.

In the prologue for Brick Lane, young Nazneen and her beloved sister Hasina (Zafreen) play together during what will be their last carefree moments on this earth. Their mother looks at them sullenly, and through a series of close-ups and cuts, the film practically screams out: Mom's going to commit suicide! She does, and the film expects us to be surprised and shocked. Nazneen is shipped off to London for an arranged marriage, and by the time the credits finish, Nazneen has been there long enough to raise two 'tween girls.

The time jump is a bit jarring, and it's done with the same carelessness as the prologue. But soon we meet Nazneen's husband, a fat, cartoonish lout, Chanu (Satish Kaushik), who is apparently educated and well-read but who lacks the most basic elements of common sense. When he mentions the promotion that he's sure to get at his job, we know it's all over for him. Nobody ever gets a promotion in the first reel of a movie, but Chanu doesn't know that, nor do the filmmakers. It's as infuriating as watching teenagers in horror films split up to search the woods.

Here it is, the groove, slightly transformed ... and another trailer for The Wackness has hit the net. I'm not sure why folks were all over Sony Pictures Classics when they picked this flick up at Sundance, because, not for nothing, but they've promoted the hell out of it ever since. This is, like, the fifth or sixth trailer I'm seeing ... for a Sundance film! They've done viral videos, photos, posters -- props definitely go out to the fine folks over at SPC, and now it's our turn to tell all you crackerjacks to go see this dope show when it hits theaters on July 3rd.

Featuring one of the best soundtracks I've heard in quite some time, The Wackness tells of the quirky relationship between a pot dealer (Josh Peck) and his therapist (Ben Kingsley) -- both of whom have no friends and no sex life. There's a cute summer crush (Olivia Thirlby), an ex wife who's barely "there" (Famke Janssen) and a hippie chick (Mary-Kate Olsen) who likes to swing her arms a lot. The film takes place in 1994, so if you grew up in the '90s, there's a ton here to relate to. I had fun with it, I know a lot of other people had fun with it, so if you're just chillin' over Fourth of July weekend, take it over to the theater and settle in for some dopeness, er, wackness.

Red Band trailer (which is also available over at IGN in a larger size) posted after the jump due to random drug use and a little foul language.

An epic tale of a famed warrior edged out the modern explorations of a Bavarian filmmaker. Sergei Bodrov's Mongol (Picturehouse) earned $21,400 per screen in its second week of release at five theaters, according to estimates compiled by Box Office Mojo. Does this prove that indie film lovers like their blockbuster-style movies, too? If nothing else, I think it shows that people like a wide variety of movies, no matter if they're heading to the arthouse or the multiplex.

Unlikely as it seems, Werner Herzog has made a G-rated film, suitable for the entire film. Encounters at the End of the World (ThinkFilm) moved Jeffrey M. Anderson to write: "Herzog's film is something closer to art; it has a direct line to its creator's soul. If you see a lot of documentaries and that tired, old PBS format with the talking heads, narrator and clips has started to wear thin, Herzog's open, honest film is as refreshing as an icy breeze." The film grossed $17,500 at one theater in Manhattan.

Opening at two theaters in Austin, rather than the tired old Manhattan and Hollywood, Baghead (Sony Pictures Classics) did very nicely, thank you, earning $4,450 per screen. Jette Kernion commented recently on the unusual release pattern. At Sundance, Eric D. Snider reviewed it ("a blast of fresh air"). James Rocchi interviewed filmmakers Jay and Mark Duplass. We even premiered the poster. All I'm saying is: Go Baghead!

Sony Pictures Classics (SPC) has added an educational element to their Cannes booty. Previously they picked up Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne's drama Lorna's Silence, Norwegian director Bent Hamer's comedy/drama O'Horten, and animated Israeli doc Waltz with Bashir. (Eric Kohn explained why the latter deal was an especially good match of film with distributor.)

Variety reports that SPC's latest deal is their acquisition of US distribution rights for Laurent Cantet's The Class, which won the most coveted prize at Cannes, the Palme d'Or. The film was inspired by Francois Begaudeau's book based on his experiences teaching class in a rough section of Paris. The French-language title, Entre les Murs literally means "between the walls" or "inside the walls," which may give a further hint as to its concerns. (Thanks to commenter Céline for the linguistic assist.)