An attempted "Chinatown" shot from "The Black Dahlia." I've been holding back my thoughts about Brian De Palma's "The Black Dahlia" since I saw it at the end of July, and now (especially after ten days at the Toronto Film…
The Los Angeles Times -- which likes to fancy itself as the "paper of record" for the entertainment industry -- has officially jumped the shark. Wednesday it inaugurated a weekly column by Jay A. Fernandez called Scriptland, which is to…
Wayne Newton and Suzanne Pleshette -- er, Emilio Estevez and Demi Moore stud the all-star cast of "Bobby." We're told that Emilio Estevez's "Bobby" takes place at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles on June 5, 1968, but it feels…
Eric Rost, hawking his wares. JT Petty's "S&MAN" (pronounced "sandman") is a little like "The Blair Witch Project" in that it starts off as a documentary about a filmmaker making a documentary, and then turns itself around on the viewer.…
Attack of lamb. The DNA of "Black Sheep," the New Zealand silly, tepid horror-comedy (accent on the second; it's not the least bit scary), traces back to "The Howling," "The Birds," "Night of the Living Dead" (and "Dawn of the…
A "news photograph" from "Death of a President." "Death of a President," the documentary-style speculative fiction about the assassination of the 43rd President of the United States, is seamless, intelligent and maybe even necessary to an understanding of George W.…
More coverage of the 2006 Toronto International Film Festival can be found at RogerEbert.com editor Jim Emerson's associated blog, Scanners.
View image 1) I haven't seen a bad film yet at the 2006 Toronto festival, but I haven't experienced the ecstatic highs of last year, either, when "The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada," "Brokeback Mountain," "Cache," "A History of Violence,"…
View image Three tales in "The Fountain": Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz. There's nothing tepid about Darren Aronofsky, and I love him for it. "The Fountain," his grand mythical fantasy that interweaves three tales about the fear of death and…
View image Not for the wee ones. Guillermo del Toro's "Pan's Labyrinth" is that rarest of cinematic rarities, a fully and flawlessly realized fantasy film. It's also, as of today, my favorite movie of the dozen or so I've seen…
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