stuff
Clips and trailer for Michael Clayton, a corporate thiller written and directed by the screenwriter of the Bourne trilogy, Tony Gilroy. It stars George Clooney, Tilda Swinton, Tom Wilkinson and Sydney Pollack. Visit the excellent official site for production notes. Reviews from Venice collected at GreenCine Daily. [photos] [imdb]
Charles Ferguson, who directed the documentary No End in Sight, an examination of the U.S. administration's actions and mistakes in the invasion and occupation of Iraq, has made a 10-minute film in response to a NYT piece by L. Paul Bremer III (head of the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq from May 2003 to June 2004) called "How I Didn't Dismantle Iraq's Army". Ferguson's film, posted at the Times website, goes methodically through Bremer's article, refuting nearly everything it says. (via)
Andrew O'Hehir at Salon.com (who also conducts a great interview with Ferguson) wrote on No End in Sight:
'Ferguson is a political scientist and one-time technology pioneer (he sold his former company, Vermeer Technologies, to Microsoft in 1996, for $133 million) whose approach to the Iraq occupation is resolutely analytical and nonideological. He was not an opponent of the war, at least going into it. That may reduce his credibility in some quarters, but his foreign-policy credentials helped gain him access to a remarkable number of diplomatic, military and intelligence insiders, including several who provided background information but declined to appear on camera. [...] You don't have to sympathize with these people as individuals, or with their hard-headed, realpolitik, we're-the-grownups approach to policy, to be profoundly shocked by the story of arrogance, piss-poor planning and all-around incompetence that unfolds in "No End in Sight."''
David Cronenberg's Eastern Promises has won the audience award at the Toronto International Film Festival. A crime thriller about Russian gangsters and emigres in London, starring Viggo Mortensen, Naomi Watts, Vincent Cassel and Armin Mueller-Stahl, Eastern Promises is released in the U.S. by Focus Features this weekend. (Hollywood Reporter) [imdb]
J. Hoberman reviews Eastern Promises at Village Voice:
'Deceptively generic, Eastern Promises features Cronenberg's most unambiguous monster and straightforward narrative in years; the movie is a cosmic struggle between good and evil. But it's also an elaborate game that's played out in a fallen world filled with subterfuge and delicately limned with the pain of exile.'
Darren Aronofsky has recorded a commentary for his movie The Fountain which you can listen to at his official site.
Photos of the Heroes cast from seasons 1 and 2 at the pre-Emmy party. I think this one with Molly has to be my favourite.
Clips from Elizabeth: The Golden Age, starring Cate Blanchett, Geoffrey Rush and Clive Owen.
Trailer for Rails & Ties, a drama about the aftermath of a deadly collision between a train and a car, starring Kevin Bacon, Marcia Gay Harden and Miles Heizer. [imdb]