The House Next Door

1. The slate for the 2008 Toronto Film Festival has been announced. You can access the full selection at indieWIRE. And Girish Shambu wants your input on what films to see.

["The balance of the lineup for the 33rd Toronto International Film Festival, set for September 4 - 13, 2008 in Canada, has been announced. A total of 249 feature films are on tap for the event, 76% of which are either world, international or North American premieres. 61 films mark a filmmaker's feature directing debut. A total of 312 films from 64 countries will screen at this year's festival, compared to last year's 349 films from 55 countries. indieWIRE also posted an interview with TIFF co-director Cameron Bailey in a separate article."]

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2. "My Top Ten Criterions": The great Robin Wood chooses his favorites. (Hattip: GreenCine)

["This month we asked critic Robin Wood—whose books include Hitchcock’s Films and Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan and who recently wrote essays for the Criterion releases The Furies and Le plaisir—to pick his ten favorite films released by Criterion. Newly retired from teaching, Wood told us he intends to spend the remainder of his life enjoying himself with movies, operas, and concerts on DVD, while writing books and articles on Michael Haneke, Tsai Ming-liang, Satyajit Ray, and others, and spending a happy old age with his partner, Richard Lippe, and their cats."]

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3. At Moving Image Source, David Schwartz converses with Paul Schrader about the late Manny Farber.

["The first thing they would do in a Manny Farber School of Film Criticism is shut down! One thing he said to me early on which seemed to have really informed a lot of his thinking—because he was first and foremost a painter and he was a great admirer of Jackson Pollock—he said the insight of seeing Jackson Pollock's work is the insight of seeing something designed on the vertical presented on the horizontal. Before Pollock, painting was seen horizontally and made horizontally and I think he liked that idea, that you would do something vertically and view it horizontally. My point being that that kind of perception difference, to try to see things in a different way, at a different angle, that was underneath everything he wrote about films. He was not in the great American critical mainstream. His job was to take that odd approach, find that unexpected insight. He couldn't imagine himself writing the way a professional film critic does, like David Denby works—Manny simply couldn't do that."]

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4. Karina Longworth notes that the Bill Maher/Larry Charles collaboration Religulous is now playing an unadvertised, awards-qualifying run in Manhattan.

["Sure enough, a Moviefone search reveals that the film is currently playing a publicity-free two matinees per day run at the Creative Entertainment Coliseum Quad on 181 Street–the same theater where Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired had its qualifying run last spring. So far there’s been no surreptitious Manohla Dargis review of Religulous, so if you find yourself in Claremont or in the noseblood section of Manhattan and decide to check it out, by all means, report back."]

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5. "Gasp! Bigfoot 'body' is a rubber Halloween costume": What a surprise...

["Melting ice uncovered a hoax this week, as the "Bigfoot" found in a Georgia woods turned out to be . . . a rubber Halloween costume. Bigfoot hunters Matt Whitton and Rick Dyer had tossed their find in a freezer and frozen it in a solid chunk of ice - to preserve it, they said. The two men finally turned over the freezer and on Aug. 17, Bigfoot enthusiasts waited with bated breath as the apparent 7-foot-7 inch "body" slowly defrosted at an undisclosed location. After hours of waiting, a dark patch of hair emerged. Steve Kulls, Executive Director of Squatchdetective.com, told Fox that he extracted a hair sample and burned it. It was apparently made of synthetic fibers and "melted into a ball uncharacteristic of hair," Kulls said. An hour later, the group's fears were confirmed when further melting revealed a rubber foot. "It's heartwrenching," said Bob Schmalzbach, Vice President of Searching for Bigfoot, Inc., in an interview with Fox News. "We thought it was the answer to a mystery that's been going on for too long." As today, the two Georgia men who perpetrated the hoax were nowhere to be found. According to the Web site of Searching for Bigfoot, Inc, the organization plans to pursue legal action against the men."]

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Quote of the Day: Michael J. Fox

"I am careful not to confuse excellence with perfection. Excellence, I can reach for; perfection is God's business. "

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Image of the Day (click to enlarge): For all you Sopranos fans... (Hattip: Ross Ruediger)



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Clip of the Day: A (pretty funky) reporter meets the wrong end of a zorb ball.

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"Links for the Day": Each morning, the House editors post a series of weblinks that we think will spark discussion. Comments encouraged. Suggestions for links are also welcome. Please send to keithuhlich@gmail.com.