Despite having previously established my feelings about this weekend's Quarantine, I must confess a new willingness to give it a fair shot later tonight. Regardless, this week's Cinematical Seven is all about first-person horror movies, with a couple of oh-so-subjective stipulations:

• We're leaving The Blair Witch Project (1999) out of this. It might not have been the first of these movies, but it was undeniably the most successful and influential. There are only seven slots here, and I feel like everyone has already made clear whether they find this scary or just stupid (I fall in the former grouping, though I say this having not seen the flick since my teens). If you still feel the need to take BWP to task, comment away.
• Also omitted will be The Last Broadcast (1998), which drew mild controversy at the time of its release for its similarity to Blair Witch. I'm only not writing about it because the copy of it sitting just over on my shelf here has remained unwatched. My bad.
• The previous film by the guys behind Quarantine is The Poughkeepsie Tapes (2007), which -- being in the hands of the Weinsteins -- has not yet seen the light of day beyond a couple of festivals. Having not attended any of said festivals myself, I'll just sit here and guess that it'll get dumped to DVD (probably under the Dimension Extreme label), and not any earlier than next year at that.

Now, on with the list...

You'd think that being married to Madonna, Guy Ritchie would have picked up on the value of occasionally reinventing oneself. But no, he keeps making the same movie, the same ultra-cool exercises in British gangster violence and stylish criminal shenanigans, and RockNRolla is the latest entry. Then again, the one time he did try something different, the result was Swept Away, so maybe he's wise to stay in his comfort zone.

At any rate, RockNRolla inspires strong feelings of "meh" in me. It's not nearly as clever, funny, or stylish as Snatch or Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, though the accents are a lot less indecipherable this time around, so that's nice. It's also not as good as Gangster No. 1 or Sexy Beast or many of the other gritty British gangster capers that have come around in the last several years. It feels like a rerun -- which isn't necessarily a bad thing, after all. People watch reruns all the time.

Our narrator is Archie (Mark Strong), who works as the calm, suave right-hand man to Lenny (Tom Wilkinson), the most powerful money-lender and underworld boss in London. Half the city's councilors, judges, and cops are in Lenny's pocket, and he has leveraged this influence into a massive fortune in real estate.

Lenny is not a figure to be messed with, but the Russians don't know that. A new mover and shaker named Uri (Karel Roden) has come to town to strike a deal with Lenny -- it involves paying Lenny to bribe city officials to get a construction project underway -- and he's a formidable figure himself. Lenny is old school; Uri is dangerously modern.

What were the breakout films at this year's Fantastic Fest? Which French horror film had audiences squirming and arguing at Fantastic Fest and Toronto's Midnight Madness? What question couldn't James shake during Zack and Miri Make a Porno -- and what, according to Scott, is that film's secret weapon? And which October films are waiting to be your new fave film of the fall? Joining James this week to talk about all of the above -- and more -- is Cinematical's Managing Editor Scott Weinberg. ... Cinematical's podcast is now available through iTunes; you can subscribe at this link. Also, you can listen directly here at Cinematical by clicking below:



As ever, you can download the entire podcast right here -- and those of you with RSS Podcast readers can find all of Cinematical's podcast content at this link.

In Miracle at St. Anna, four African-American soldiers are trapped behind enemy lines in Italy near the end of World War II; caught between indifferent leadership and hostile troops, the four fight to survive -- and protect the Italian villagers they've come to know during their exile. Director Spike Lee spoke with Cinematical from New York about the challenges of film financing in modern Hollywood ("it's hard to get stuff made today that's not superhero, comic-book, TV show, sequel stuff. ..."), shooting in an 800-year-old Italian town (" ... all we had to do was take down the satellite dishes ...") and the challenges his new film faces (" ... historically, women do not run to see, or even walk to see, or even crawl to see World War II films ..."), The Wire ("'Omar's Coming!'"), sequel possibilities for Inside Man and more.

Lee even touched on politics and race in the here-and-now: "I'm optimistic. We're going to have a Black president. The 44th President of the United States is going to be a Black man ... I think this is a definite indication of how far America has moved in how it views race. ..."

Cinematical: I was very curious if you could talk a little bit about the genesis of what brought you specifically to Miracle at St. Anna as a film?

Spike Lee: I needed something to read; I went into my wife's office; looked up on her shelf upon shelf of books (laughs) and the spirit told me to go to this one book -- all the time my head is twisted to the side, trying to read the titles -- read this title, Miracle at St. Anna; that sounds interesting; take the book off the shelf, see the cover of a Black soldier with a young Italian kid, World War II, said "Let me read this. ..." After the first chapter, I said "I want to make this into a film, called up James McBride, we met ... and here we are. That's the abbreviated version. ...

I guess when you make a movie about the Irish Republican Army and Northern Ireland's infamous "Troubles," you're bound to court some controversy. Fifty Dead Men Walking, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival despite legal threats from the man whose life it's based on (he has since dropped his suit), has now drawn more fire because of comments made by one of its stars, Rose McGowan.

During an interview in Toronto last week, McGowan, who plays an IRA operative in the film and whose father is Irish, said: "I imagine, had I grown up in Belfast, I would 100 percent have been in the IRA.... My heart just broke for the cause. Violence is not to be played out daily and provide an answer to problems, but I understand it."

This has caused a bit of a hullabaloo in that part of the world, where the IRA was officially classified as a terrorist group. (Its proponents saw themselves more as freedom fighters, striving to throw off the shackles of British rule.) Martin McGartland, the British secret agent whose infiltration of the IRA is the basis of the film, said, "Rose McGowan's comments were insulting to victims of IRA terrorism and she should apologize. It's easy to say this sort of thing when you live in L.A." A victims' advocacy group leader said, "She may as well add that she would have joined al-Qaeda and flew those planes into the Twin Towers had she been born a disgruntled Muslim."

There are indie filmmakers who try to work in the realm of small character dramas and succeed only in making myopic films that feel inert and meaningless; there are those who attempt to stand out from the pack by writing scripts replete with quirky story lines and witty dialogue, only to end up with a mundane mess; and then there are a few who manage to achieve, through a combination of richly drawn, yet simple stories and excellent cinematography, a level of filmmaking that inspires without overwhelming, impresses without overreaching. Ramin Bahrani falls firmly in the latter camp, and with his latest film, Goodbye Solo, the director builds on the excellence of his previous work with a finely drawn tale of a cabdriver and the fare who changes his life.

Bahrani starts with an intriguing premise: Solo, a cab driver (Souléymane Sy Savané) picks up a routine fare, only to find his life turned upside down when the man he picks up asks him to take him to the remote mountaintop location of Blowing Rock in two weeks, where he plans to jump to his death. Solo's troubled by both the plans of his fare, William (Red West) to end his life, and the implications to himself of being a party to the man's suicide; he decides to befriend the older man in an attempt to persuade him to change his plans. This is the simple set-up for the film, and it's all Bahrani needs to make a thoughtful, compelling film that explores the relationship between these two vastly different men and the way they're changed by the friendship they form.

Based on journalist Mark Boal's real experiences following bomb disposal experts in Iraq, The Hurt Locker isn't just a welcome return to big-screen action from director Kathryn Bigelow (who has wrung both fame and infamy with Near Dark, Strange Days and Point Break). It's an assured, confident, swaggering piece of moviemaking that manages to not only evoke every war of the 20th century but also, despite the claims by makers and some reviewers that it's an 'apolitical' film, speaks very specifically to the Iraq war. Even so, plunging us into the thick of things alongside the highly-trained men (and they're all men here) who defuse bombs for the Army, Bigelow and Boal avoid the speeches and postures and long, contemplative talks of home front films like Stop-Loss and In the Valley of Elah by staying in Iraq, and they shun the loopy, loony formal experiments of Brian De Palma's Redacted. Boal and Bigelow stay laser-focused on one group of men with a singular mission, and make us live in the constant possibility of death. Viewed from half a world away, a bomb is a political concern; viewed from less than a foot away, a bomb's just a high-stakes exercise in problem-solving, where making a mistake means a final, terminal education in the physics of expanding gases.

The Hurt Locker follows three soldiers -- bomb tech James (Jeremy Renner) and his subordinates Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) and Eldrige (Brian Geraghty) into the jaws of death; it's all last names in The Hurt Locker, as seen on patches and heard in urgent radio dispatches. Early on, Bigleow establishes that people will be killed in this film -- with a bravura sequence that depicts a bomb's detonation on the macro and micro level, billowing bursts of smoke and pressure and flame intercut with gravel and dust leaping choreographed in lockstep by the pressure wave, as if God had slammed his fist on reality hard to make a point -- and while Renner, Mackie and Geraghty are fine actors, they're also unknown enough to subconsciously let us know that they aren't safe from what may happen.

It's hard to imagine for the few exhausted stragglers still going from film to film, but the end is in sight for the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival. Joining us this week on The Rocchi Review is critic, journalist, analyst and man-about-town David Poland, best known for his work at Movie City News and The Hot Blog, as well as his "Lunch with David" videocasts. Which films got a boost out of Toronto? What's it like to work at the Festival as a journalist? How crazy is it to feel 'behind' in covering movies that may not open for at least another three months? And what classic graphic novel did David dream of finally seeing adapted for the big screen after catching Waltz with Bashir? We talk about all those topics, Che, Slumdog Millionaire, Rachel Getting Married and much much more this week, all live from the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival. Cinematical's podcast is now available through iTunes; you can subscribe at this link. Also, you can listen directly here at Cinematical by clicking below:



As ever, you can download the entire podcast right here -- and those of you with RSS Podcast readers can find all of Cinematical's podcast content at this link.

It must be said, right off the bat: We all have bad days, we all behave obnoxiously sometimes, and (once in a while) we all do really stupid things that we regret big-time three seconds later. Having said that, it simply must be asked: Lou Lumenick ... what the &%!#$ing &$)# were you thinking? I hesitate to even write about this story, but since a dozen other movie sites have picked up on it, we'd be a little tacky if we just brushed it under the carpet. Plus, hey, it's interesting.

Anyway, according to various sources, NY Post film critic Lou Lumenick got into a brief altercation with Chicago Sun-Times film critic Roger Ebert during a press screening at the Toronto Film Festival. More specifically (and allegedly, I suppose I should say), it seems that Lou ignored numerous shoulder taps from Roger, and then -- in a fit of full-bore film critic snittiness -- whirled around and landed a half-solid pop on Ebert's noggin, er, knee. The weapon was some sort of portfolio or rolled-up program.

For his part, Roger Ebert has been (as usual) the epitome of class. At first he tried to keep the situation quiet, but once word got out, he penned this explanation. And since the guy already has a Pultizer, I say he now deserves a nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize. Because let me tell you right now: If I was struck silent by a throat malady and the PROFESSIONAL FILM WATCHER in front of me refused to turn around and at least acknowledge my simple request, well, then I suspect we'd be reading blog posts about how "Cinematical Film Critic Scott Weinberg Just Wrapped a Fire Hydrant Around the Head of an Unidentifiable Man."

And for HIS part, Lou Lumenick has remained distressingly silent. Whether or not the guy was dead-wrong or drop-dead apologetic, there's no excuse for him not addressing the story by this point. Something along the lines of "Dear sweet lord, was I an asshole the other morning. I'm really, truly sorry" published on the New York Post editorial page should just about do it. Me? I'd have written that email six minutes after the incident occurred. Before sending it to every movie site, blog, and message board in the universe.

Today I leave Toronto to head home to Seattle, leaving James Rocchi behind to see the fest through to its exhausting end. It's been a decent fest overall, not great but good. I saw a several films I enjoyed here, including Burn After Reading, Goodbye Solo, and 35 Rhums, as well as a couple of fun midnight picks with JCVD and Detroit Metal City.

I missed being able to see a lot of films I really wanted to see, due to schedule conflicts and the lack of a cloning machine at our hotel that would allow me to be multiple places at once (or at least, the ability to see far enough into the future to foresee which of two films screening opposite each other will be wretched).

It seems that lots and lots of people who attend this fest (I'm talking normal people, not those of us crazy or masochistic enough to work in any aspect of the film business) want very, very much to attend the big parties, and seem to think if they can't get in, they're missing something fun or perhaps even life-altering. There's always a gaggle of scantily clad girls and hipsters hovering around the entrance of these events, hoping to finagle a way to crash the party.