With Fall Festival season about to kick off, this week The Rocchi Review features James chatting with Cinematical's Film Festivals Editor Kim Voynar about the strange splendor of the Telluride Film Festival, what the most-anticipated movies will be at this year's Toronto Film Festival and much, much more. Will Zack and Miri Make a Porno make a splash? Will Rachel Getting Married get Anne Hathaway some respect? And does one of the most-anticipated films for Toronto really star Jean-Claude Van Damme? 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.

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.

I don't necessarily have a soft spot for westerns -- although 3:10 to Yuma, Seraphim Falls, and The Proposition certainly didn't hurt that cause -- but because we as moviegoers aren't exactly inundated with them, it always feels like they tend to have more effort and care put into them than most other genre fare.

Judging from the MSN exclusive trailer for the upcoming Appaloosa, this looks to follow suit as Ed Harris (who also directed and co-wrote the film) and Viggo Mortensen (for whom Harris played an adversary in A History of Violence) deal with lawlessness in a small town out west, while the widowed Renée Zellweger surely tempts them both.

Toss in a supporting cast that includes Jeremy Irons and Lance Henriksen (that reminds me, The Quick and the Dead merits mention as well), and the benefit of my doubt at least has been earned. Appaloosa is scheduled to play Toronto in September, followed by an October 3rd release.

Courtesy of MySpace, we bring you the trailer for Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist. While it looks to be a little more of one of those one-crazy-night comedies than I presumed it would be, there seems to be a sizeable chunk of hipster-teens-meet-cute hanging in there to keep things getting too wacky for its own good. After all, going off Eugene's From Page to Screen assessment, I still doubt this is as much in the same ball park as Superbad, or After Hours, or even Sex Drive -- and with any luck, that's for the best.

Playlist will premiere at Toronto this September before playing everywhere on October 3rd.

OK, so I missed my flight to San Diego this morning and I've had a really rotten day, but there's always a small silver lining, right? In the movie world there is: JUST announced (like, within the last few minutes!) is the Toronto Film Festival's Midnight Madness '08 line-up. And, as usual, it looks pretty damn awesome.

I've heard some really good things about Pascal Laugier's Martyrs, Franck Vestiel's Eden Log, and Jon Hewitt's Acolytes -- plus I've been itchin' to see JT Petty's horror-western The Burrowers for over a year now! Other selections include Pracha Pinkaew's Chocolate, Toshio Lee's Detroit Metal City, and Mark Hartley's Not Quite Hollywood. Click right here for all ten of TIFF's Midnight picks --and of course you can expect all sorts of expansive festival coverage once TIFF rolls out in early September. Woo!

(Note: Rocchi got all excited about JCVD being chosen as one of the Midnight selections, which is a title I neglected to mention the first time around. Ditto Sexykiller and Deadgirl.)

( Also announced today: Toronto's Wavelengths and Sprockets Family Zone selections. )

It's been fun getting just about a superhero movie a week for the past couple of months; really, it has. And of course, everything has been building to The Dark Knight, which we'll finally get to see at various points next week. I dig it, but I'd be lying if I wasn't looking forward to the fall. Specifically the Toronto Film Festival. And more specifically still, Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist, Michael Cera's follow-up to last year's overwhelmingly successful one-two of Superbad and Juno. (It's also director Peter Sollett's follow-up to the underseen Raising Victor Vargas). It looks fantastic, and perfect for Cera, who continues to transplant his schtick into different genres and contexts.

MTV Movies has Nick & Norah's new poster, which is perfect, and sweet, and makes me want to give the movie a hug. It's pitched as a love story set in the cinematically underrepresented hipster music scene, and the poster encapsulates that to a T. (It also, for better or worse, just takes a still from the film that was released back in January). I wouldn't dare call myself a hipster, but I've dipped my toes in that world, and I'd love to see a smart movie about it. Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist premieres at Toronto in preparation for an October 3rd release.

Come to think of it, I think I'll take on the novel by Rachel Cohn and David Leviathan in my From Page to Screen column next week. Hope you'll check it out.

I would like to punch Variety in the face for writing "preem" instead of "premiere," as in "Spike Lee's WWII pic Miracle at St. Anna will world preem at the Toronto Film Festival." Yeah, I know, they use this sort of cutesy Hollywood "inside baseball" terminology left and right -- I find all of it irritating, but preem? Seriously? That is nothing if not horrible. And it's all of three letters shorter than the whole word.

Anyway, the unnecessary slang obfuscates what I want to write about: Miracle at St. Anna will have its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in early September. The other big get Toronto announced yesterday is the world premiere of Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist, the indie kid romantic comedy starring Michael Cera. I'm much more excited about that one, to be honest. Prestige war movies are a dime a dozen; Michael Cera playing "a member of the queercore band 'The Jerk Offs'" is something special.

Also announced: Kathryn Bigelow's Iraq actioner The Hurt Locker, a drama called Disgrace with John Malkovich, and a few others. This is in addition to the 27 films announced last week.

This will be my first year attending Toronto (back-to-back with Telluride, where I've gone four times now), so needless to say I am aquiver with anticipation.

Mike Jones over at Variety's The Circuit Blog posted yesterday the first 27 films announced for the upcoming Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF)and, not surprisingly, most of them hail from previous fest premieres at Cannes, Berlin and SXSW.

The Gala Presentation will be South Korean director Kim Jee-woon's The Good, The Bad and The Weird, which I saw at Cannes earlier this year and loved. Somewhat reminiscent of Tears of the Black Tiger, the film is a crazy, busy Western that centers around a map to a treasure happened upon by a (seemingly) bumbling fool, who ends up being pursued by a good-guy law-enforcement type, a wicked bad guy dressed in black, and, at one point, an entire army. It runs a little long, but it's funny and sharp, with a spectacular chase sequence near the end and a nice final payoff. Toronto film fans should really enjoy this one.

Last year, the Toronto International Film Festival opened with Jeremy Podeswa's World War II film Fugitive Pieces -- an opener that elicited descriptors from "smart choice" to "leaden and pretentious." This year, we're going to get more war, but this time around, it'll be a few years earlier for WWI and it comes from a surprising source.
The NY Post reports that Paul Gross' Passchendaele will kick off the festival on September 4. Yes, this is the Paul Gross of Mountie-clad Due South, who starred with now-director Peter Berg in Aspen Extreme, and recently was one of the Men with Brooms. He wrote the feature, and stars as Michael Dunne -- a man injured in France who comes home to Calgary. However, a romance with a nurse inspires him to go back to France to protect her younger brother, who is embroiled in the third battle of Ypres, otherwise known as Passchendaele.

Unfortunately, even though Gross has a ton of light fare under his belt, this film should prove to be just as heavy as last year's selection. Passchendaele wasn't a battle that ended in great strategic gains, but rather a battle that gained a little bit of land in exchange for the deaths of approximately half a million men. (And most of the territory was regained by Germany the next year.) Still, kudos to you, Mr. Gross, and I can't wait to see what you've done!

We thought it would arrive as part of After Dark's 2007 event, but since unrated flicks cannot screen as part of AD Horrorfest, at least there was a good reason for the delay. And now with the U.S. release of Xavier Gans' Frontier(s) only a few weeks away, it only stands to reason that we'd be treated to a new poster, trailer, and website for the freaky French fright flick.

May 9 is when the stylish horror salad bar will hit the cinemas, but if you're not presently a part of the release pattern, fear not: You can pick up the DVD only a few days later. Click here to delve into the nutty, nasty world of Frontier(s), which is full of dangerous downloads, powerful pictures, and some decidedly violent videos. And then, since you're already hanging out at Cinematical anyway, feel free check out my review of the flick right here. Word is that the DVD will contain some extra goodies for the horror freaks; I shall update this post as soon as I receive an official note from After Dark.