Benicio Del Toro is Che Guevara in Steven Soderbergh's new film.

On this edition of the Plastic Podcast we chat about some of the films we saw at this year's Toronto International Film Festival.

0:00 Intro
2:28 35 Shots of Rum (Denis)
4:29 Festival Anxiety, Goodbye Solo (Bahrani)
5:44 Listmaking
7:39 Rachel Getting Married (Demme)
9:31 Still Walking (Kore-eda)
12:20 Summer Hours (Assayas)
14:15 Snow (Begic)
15:04 Rain (Govan)
15:53 Experimental Films: Nathaniel Dorsky
19:26 Experimental Films: James Benning
22:25 The Wrestler (Aronofsky)
24:55 Slumdog Millionaire (Boyle)
27:57 Che (Soderbergh)
33:02 Dislikes
36:25 Two-Legged Horse (Makhmalbaf)
38:23 Outro

Further Reading

• Index of our Toronto coverage
• Video of Variety's Robert Koehler, The Village Voice/L.A. Weekly's Scott Foundas, and Cinema Scope's Mark Peranson and Andrew Tracy kvetching (or if you prefer whingein') about the festival.
• Audio of SpoutBlog's Karina Longworth and Kevin Kelly talking about TIFF and sharing a funny anecdote about seeing Burn After Reading while sitting next to noisy celebs.
• Audio of James Rocchi and David Poland talking about TIFF and offering, among other opinions, spirited defenses of Che and Slumdog Millionaire.

I don't have the census in front of me, so I don't know the exact number of presidential campaign managers who currently reside in the U.S., but given the television coverage of the election it must be millions, which explains why so many news programs are aimed at people who want to know what "works," what statements "connected" with Merkins, how a particular candidate can move her numbers, what sorts of attacks a candidate is likely to make in the coming week, and how his actions will be seen by potential voters.

Millions of campaign managers. Or perhaps just a handful who have such deep pockets and voracious TV-viewing habits that news programs can't afford to ignore them. Advertisers are known to covet this handful, hence the many ads for shit shovels.

Millions of campaign managers. Or a deep-pocketed few. Either way, I feel left out since I'm merely a voter. I realize I'm not in their target market, but I had trouble finding a weekend yak show that could help me evaluate the candidates and their stated plans.

K.C.Bailey/Columbia

Nick (Michael Cera) and Norah (Kat Dennings) in Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist

Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist opens up on what appears to be the same street where Juno was filmed. This is no accident. Like Juno, it also stars Michael Cera as a sensitive young man somewhat befuddled by women who throws himself into his hobby as a way to deal with the outside world. Here, that hobby is playing and listening to music. And like Juno, the leading lady is a sharp-talking brunette who might be a little too aggressive for him but still has a heart of gold.

The comparisons aren’t terribly flattering for Nick & Norah, which doesn’t have the thematic depth or scintillating dialogue of its predecessor. But it does have Cera, who continues to play a variation of his wonderful Arrested Development character (no complaints from me), and Kat Dennings as Nora, who’s endearing and compelling. In fact, the scenes with just the title characters are pretty wonderful, as they slowly come to realize they like each other, despite some holdover feelings for old exes.

The problem is the movie keeps tearing us away from our protagonists and focusing on those exes or other friends, who can’t match Nick and Norah in the personality department. This is a bit unusual, as most romantic comedies feature sidekicks that are at least as interesting and quirky as the leads. Not so here, and so the inevitable scenes designed to keep our lovers apart quickly grow irritating.

I was also a bit surprised that director Peter Sollett, who made the wonderful Raising Victor Vargas, doesn’t capture the vibrancy and specificity of Manhattan nightlife. This feels like it could’ve been made in any city. And am I the only one who was consistently surprised at how the characters kept driving around New York and, even more amazingly, kept finding parking spaces? At least the wall-to-wall music is good, befitting a movie that’s about how people find each other in a song. If it had focused just on that, we might have been talking about moving beyond Juno, instead of falling short.

Lionsgate

Bill Maher outside the Vatican City

Bill Maher has gained a devoted following with his HBO show Real Time with Bill Maher. His intellectually skeptical approach to politics and other issues, combined with healthy doses of humor, have made him a darling of many. Now he’s decided to take that platform to another level and take on religion. Yes, all religion.

Maher’s thesis is that religion is not only wrong but decidedly harmful, not only for the people who practice it but society as a whole. He argues that the only proper perspective is doubt, and that anyone who claims any certainty on faith is deluded. To clear up that delusion, he hit the road with a film crew in tow to interview people around the world (though mostly in the U.S.) and challenge them to justify their beliefs. Snippets of those interviews make up the bulk of his new documentary.

For someone who celebrates doubt as much as he does, Maher is certainly sure of himself. This reaches its nadir in the movie’s closing minutes when he offers his own sermon of fire and brimstone. Images of the most awful religiously motivated atrocities (a plane flying into the World Trade Center features prominently) intercut with Maher deploring all religions and calling on the atheists of the world to stand up for themselves.

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KerryBrown/MGM

Simon Pegg and Megan Fox try to imagine themselves in a much better movie

a) utterly wastes the comedic talents of Simon Pegg, one of the funnier guys working in movies today.
b) has its main character be an utter jerk and idiot except when he suddenly needs to be warm and sensitive. Flip a coin before each scene to figure out which personality he’ll be.
c) has entire scenes revolving around a pig running through a high-class reception and an irritating dog flying out a skyscraper window. Those are two different scenes, by the way. Apparently, animals in motion are comic gold.
d) assumes chewed-up food and naked transsexuals are inherently hilarious.
e) is marketed as a comedy even though most audiences will laugh twice. Maybe three times if they’re drunk.

And that's one guaranteed way to lose friends and alienate people.

Inspired by Rob’s re-evaluation of the Coen brothers’ latest (even if his original opinion remains largely intact) and various defenses of the film (check out the great comments thread in that post), I’ve been trying to understand my own relationship to the Coens. Because unlike a lot of critics, I’m not consistent. I think O Brother, Where Art Thou? is one of the great comedies of the last fifteen years, and I was more than happy when No Country won Oscar earlier this year. I even remember liking Intolerable Cruelty, though I don’t remember much about it besides Roger Deakins’s incredible cinematography and George Clooney’s white teeth. But I’m much less comfortable with their brand of humor in Burn after Reading, and even Fargo troubles me. So when Rob remarks about Burn, “I’m not sure they ever strayed far,” I disagree and obviously think the film a serious step backwards. But why?

I think much of it has to do with mockery. The Coen brothers have enjoyed making fun of the dolts from the very beginning. Blood Simple might be a tight little noir, but it still relies for much of its humor on mocking the idiots. Ditto, Raising Arizona, of course. I re-watched Miller’s Crossing last night, another fave of mine, and noticed how many of the secondary characters are just caricatures set up for the Coens’ mocking camera. But why does it bother me in Burn and Fargo but not in O Brother and Miller’s Crossing?

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• What do Arnold M. Picker, Alexander E. Barkan, and Ed Guthman have in common? And also who the heck are they? They're all people who appear on a list that's now more famous than most of its entries: Nixon's list of enemies compiled by chief counsel Charles Colson. The operative word is "most," because debuting at number #19, and still better known than the list on which he appears, is one Paul Newman.
• He passed away this week, you know. Many good remembrances have been written. Here's just one, from David Edelstein at New York Magazine.
• We thought of The Hudsucker Proxy, which may not be his best film, but it features one of our favorite of his performances. That gravelly voice almost sounds like Keenan Wynn's.