"Darren did not put a strip pole in his office." -- Marisa Tomei.

Does the New York Film Festival still matter? The 46th edition opened last Friday, and while the fest may not have the celebrity cachet and discovery intent of Sundance and Cannes, or the welcoming populist mentality of Toronto, it stubbornly insists on being recognized as the gatekeeper for all that is worthwhile in world cinema.

Nonetheless, press conferences with a big-name American director and a resurrected American star (and his fetching, Academy Award-winning co-star) have stolen the spotlight during the first week of the festival. Looking somewhat like a guerilla himself, Steven Soderbergh arrived to promote his four-hour epic Che, starring Benicio del Toro as the revolutionary leader. According to the director, "There are a million Ches -– he means something different to everyone."

That attitude has irked some critics; Karina Longworth at Spout felt that Soderbergh's "unwillingness to make a statement may be a major part of the problem." On the other hand, Glenn Kenny of Some Came Running opined: "Silly me, I imagined that such an approach constituted a statement sufficient unto itself, but apparently not." The film will get a rare "roadshow" treatment when it opens in December: trotted around in its four-hour entirety to selected cities for one week only by IFC Films in December, complete with elevated ticket prices and a fancy giveaway program of some sort. Dreamgirls for the intelligentsia?

After the jump: The Wrestler and two fresh new films about those darn kids.

Women loved him, men wanted to be him, and now Steven Soderbergh wants to tell us all about him. (One of those claims may actually be false.) According to Variety, Soderbergh is developing a biopic of the flamboyant pianist for Warner Bros -- naturally, he'll be directing, and the busiest pen in Hollywood, Richard LaGravanese, is writing the script.

More interesting than that is the casting -- Soderbergh says he's actually drafted his old Traffic star Michael Douglas to play the man of a thousand candlelabras. He's also in talks with Matt Damon to play Scott Thorson, the man who sued Liberace for palimony, claiming they had been in a relationship for five years. To this day, apparently no one really knows what Liberace's sexual orientation was -- even Alice Cooper couldn't figure it out upon meeting him. (Thanks, Soderbergh! I learned something already.)

Despite everything being in place, this won't actually be the film Soderbergh follows Che up with -- which is a shame, because nothing should follow up Che but a man who exudes capitalism. Apparently, we're two Soderbergh projects away from getting this biopic, so don't get too wound up! You'll have forgotten all about it by the time it films, and it will be a pleasant surprise. There's not much to attract my personal interest, except the thought of Douglas donning those fabulous costumes. I can already predict an Oscar nod for a costume designer in this project's future.

If you're like me, stuck at home, reading about all the great films playing in Toronto, and wondering, "When can I actually get to see the darn things?," I have some good news. Two "big buzz" titles have been acquired for distribution: Steven Soderbergh's Che, starring Benecio del Toro in the title role, has been nabbed by IFC Films (not Mark Cuban) for North America, and Summit Entertainment has secured US rights to Katheryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker, featuring Guy Pearce and Ralph Fiennes.

IFC will release Che for a one-week awards qualifying run in New York and Los Angeles in December, according to an official statement received by Cinematical. It will then open in January via the company's "IFC in Theaters" platform, which means it will be available in select theaters and "on demand" through cable and satellite systems the same day. Ever since Che's world premiere at Cannes in May (where James Rocchi reviewed it), there has been speculation about how the film would be presented. Che is comprised of two stand alone parts -- The Argentine and Guerilla -- and the total running time is more than four hours. Now we know we'll some of us will be able to see the whole thing at one time. *

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.

Some people may consider the New York Film Festival a simple "Best Of" sort of event, but the fact that it compiles selections from earlier film fests and merely showcases them in a competition-free program is what I love about it. For those of us New Yorkers who can't always make it to the highlands of Utah and Colorado or the exotic seaside locales of Italy and Southern France, it's nice to know that major festival highlights will likely make their way to Lincoln Center in late September, early October.

This year, the lineup for the 46th NYFF is being noted for its inclusion of films that previously screened at Cannes back in May. Even Steven Soderbergh's four-hour Che (aka The Argentine and Guerilla), which played to mixed reactions in France, even while picking up a best actor prize for star Benicio Del Toro, has been given a spot. Also featured are Cannes leftovers Waltz With Bashir, Wendy and Lucy, Grand Prix-winner Gomorrah and Clint Eastwood's Changeling, which stars Angelina Jolie and has the honor of being NYFF's centerpiece film. Opening the festival is the Palm d'Or winner The Class, while the closing film is Darren Aronofsky's The Wrestler, which premieres a few weeks prior at the Venice Film Festival.

Other exciting big name films include Mike Leigh's Happy-Go-Lucky, Wong Kar-Wai's Ashes of Time: Redux, Lucretia Martel's The Headless Woman and Olivier Assayas' Summer Hours. Surprisingly, Charlie Kaufman's Synechdoche, New York, which screened at Cannes, is New York appropriate and is scheduled to open in October, is missing from the lineup.

The complete list of NYFF selections, courtesy of The Hollywood Reporter, can be found after the jump:

There's good news and bad news, Soderbergh fans: The bad news is that the director's two-part, Benicio Del Toro-starring Che Guevara biopic Che, as noted in a recent piece in The Hollywood Reporter, still doesn't have a U.S. distributor. Gregg Goldstein's piece (which also looks at the similar challenges faced by Cannes '08 films Synedoche, New York and Two Lovers) notes that there are four offers on the table from independent distributors, but no deal has yet been signed.

For many who saw Che at Cannes (including myself), this is vexing news. Goldstein also relates that one distributor's hopes to purchase Che as a single film with a three-hour running time has been roundly rebuffed. However, in case anyone would like to see what all the fuss is about -- albeit in blurry, bootleg fashion -- a grainy, blurry bootleg of the trailer (in all Spanish with no subtitles) for the first half of Che, The Argentine, has hit YouTube (see above) -- and while the bootlegged trailer may lack clarity and definition, it also gives a great sense of the look and the feel of the film.

Does The Argentine's trailer make you hunger for all of Soderbergh's Che? Or does it just make you appreciate how hard it's going to be to get a distributor to back a four-hour long historical drama in Spanish?

What were the surprises at this year's Cannes Film Festival? Does the showcasing of films like Waltz with Bashir and Che at the world's premier film festival mean that traditional film making has been replaced by a new wave of technology and technique? Which factor had more to do with the lower-than-expected number of sales at this year's Cannes Festival -- weak films, or the weak dollar? Is there a subtle subtext to the past few years at Cannes, and what were the films that got away this year? Joining us this week to talk about all these topics and more is Glenn Kenny, the former film critic for Premiere who's now blogging independently at Some Came Running. 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.

Kim and James both loved Steven Soderbergh's Che at Cannes and Kim, at least, was adamant that the film must be seen in its current four-hour form. Distributors understandably disagree, since a four-hour movie is a tough sell. Exhibitors would probably cry foul too -- intermissions are a logistical pain in the ass, and a long running time means fewer showings per day and more screens theaters must dedicate to an in-demand film. Soderbergh, for his part, seems to have conceded that an uncompromising four-hours-or-bust release might not be in the cards. His suggestion: show Che as one movie for a week in every market, and then split it in two.

That seems to me to be, uh... not thought through. So, what: you show the four-hour version for a week at regular ticket prices, and thereafter offer two halves instead? Do you show the full version and then stagger the two films' releases? Both options seem awkward, even giving the appearance that the distributor's trying to pull a fast one -- "I have to pay twice now?!"

On the other hand, I appreciate that Soderbergh is doing everything he can to make sure that the people who want to experience Che as a four-hour epic get to do so. (I'm pretty sure that Telluride and Toronto attendees will get that chance this fall.) He didn't talk about the possibility of cutting the whole thing down to a more pedestrian two-and-a-half or three-hour length, but I can't imagine he'd consider it if the option to release two films is available. The good news for everyone, of course, is that there's always the DVD.

Plenty of people are going to be talking about Steven Soderbergh's Che Guevara biographical films -- The Argentine and Guerrilla, screened at Cannes tonight as one presentation simply called Che -- over the next few months. There will be arguments about the politics of the films; there will be discussions of whether or not the films have any emotional center; there will be questions of if, when the film gets some kind of U.S. distribution deal, exactly how they should be released -- two films released staggered throughout the last half of the year or cut down to one three-hour film or shown as a long, big double bill that presents the separate films back-to-back. There will be talk of if Benicio Del Toro deserves a Best Actor nomination for his work as Guevara, or if Soderbergh's portrait of Che is too flat to engage us; I can easily imagine discussions of the look and feel of the film, shot in high-resolution digital with all the craft and care Soderbergh usually brings to shooting on film. I can't predict how all of these questions and possibilities will play out, but I can say -- and will say -- what a rare pleasure it is to have a film (or films) that, in our box-office obsessed, event-movie, Oscar-craving age, is actually worth talking about on so many levels.

I have to hand it to the wardrobe people for Steven Soderbergh's The Informant since it's not easy making a guy who normally looks like this look like such a schlump. The Bad and Ugly have posted some behind-the-scenes photos for the comedic thriller, and even though there is nothing earth shattering going on, they are definitely a step up from the other pics floating around out there.

The Informant is based on the true-life novel by Kurt Eichenwald. The story revolves around Mark Whitacre (Damon), a rising star at the agriculture conglomerate, Archer Daniels Midland (ADM). At the urging of his wife (who had threatened to go to the FBI), Whitacre spilled the beans to an agent that he had been involved in a price-fixing scam with other major corporations over the food additive, lysine. As if that wasn't enough of a story, it was later revealed that Whitacre (one of the most high profile, whistle-blowers in history) was suffering from Bipolar disorder and had defrauded millions from ADM.

For such serious subject matter, it came as a bit of a surprise when casting announcements first went out for the film and the list was chock-full of comedic actors (including Scott Bakula and Tony Hale). Soderbergh later confirmed that the film was going to be a "dark comedy", which makes sense because Damon is a pretty funny guy, and a great straight man. Soderbergh has just begun filming on location in Decatur, Illinois and there is no official release date, but The Informant is expected to arrive in theaters in 2009.