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:

The French educational system will be in the spotlight come late September. The Class, a fictional look at a French high school featuring a real-life teacher, will open the New York Film Festival, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Directed by Laurent Cantet, The Class won the Palme d'Or at Cannes in May and was picked up for distribution by Sony Pictures Classics in June.

Critical notices, including one from our own James Rocchi, were quite positive. James wrote in part: "Chronicling a year in the life of a junior high school class in a rougher section of Paris, there's something undeniably French about the film ... But at the same time, these kids and their teacher (Francois Begaudeau) are going through a series of challenges and opportunities that will be familiar to anyone who's ever gone to school." The film is inspired by a novel Begaudeau wrote, based on his own experiences as a teacher.

The festival will also showcase the work of Japanese director Nagisa Oshima (In the Realm of the Senses) and will feature a 30th anniversary presentation of We Spin Around the Night Consumed by the Fire, by Guy Debord, in their "Views From the Avant-Garde" sidebar.

As if often the case with certain festivals, there is no additional information at the official NYFF web site, but eventually I'm sure something will appear. The New York Film Festival runs from September 26 to October 12.

When I saw Ira Sachs' Married Life at the New York Film Festival last fall, I had a lot of problems with it. But one thing I didn't have any complaints about is how gorgeous Rachel McAdams looks in the film. And now, thanks to Rope of Silicon, you can see for yourself how amazing the actress looks as a '40s-era blonde beauty. My favorite photo is the third, in which McAdams almost looks like a dead-ringer for Kim Novak in Vertigo. But I'd be fine with looking at any of them. In fact, I'm not just a fan of the way McAdams looks in the film; I also love the three-piece style of Chris Cooper, the open-collared playboy thing that Pierce Brosnan has going on and the partially see-through top that Patricia Clarkson wears in the second-to-last pic. (Clarkson is so stunning in the film, she actually gives McAdams a run for her money, and makes it hard to believe Cooper would cheat on her with anyone.) But aside from simply looking terrific, all four of the stars of Married Life give wonderful performances, as usual.

The film, which opens in limited release March 7, is based on John Bingham's 1953 pulp novel Five Roundabouts to Heaven. Cooper and Clarkson play a married couple, and Cooper's character has a mistress (McAdams). He makes the mistake, though, of introducing the girl to his best friend, played by Brosnan. Not knowing that his mistress is having another affair with his best friend, Cooper's character decides to murder his wife, because it's a more humane thing to do than break her heart. It's a very Hitchcockian plot, which makes sense since Bingham's books were adapted into episodes of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour. And it's a good enough movie to recommend, especially because of those great-looking actors. I just wish that Sony Classics would do away with Brosnan's awful and unnecessary voice-over before releasing the movie into theaters.

Okay, is this not one of the coolest posters you've seen all year? I simply love the color scheme for this film, and since I'm seeing it tomorrow -- and interviewing writer-directors Vincent Paronnaud and Marjane Satrapi on Friday -- this poster just totally puts me in the mood for, what some are calling, a shoe-in for an Oscar nod in the Best Foreign Language category. Persepolis, which won the Jury prize at Cannes earlier this year (where our own James Rocchi called it a "masterpiece"), was France's Oscar submission, and rightfully so -- those of us in the Cinematical camp that have seen it will not stop raving. Sony Pictures Classics has sent over the exclusive poster for Persepolis (click on the image for a larger version), which is based on Satrapi's own autobiographical best-selling graphic novels featuring an outspoken Iranian girl who finds her unique attitude and outlook on life repeatedly challenged during the Islamic revolution.

In her Telluride review of the film, Cinematical's Kim Voynar had this to say: "Marjane's story could have been told in a live-action dramatic narrative film, or a documentary, but the choice to stick with this highly stylized animation approach works very well, and has the effect of removing a layer of ethnicity, thereby making the story more universal. This isn't the story of an Iranian girl, it's the story of a girl who lived through eight years of war and societal changes, who happens to be Iranian." Apart from also screening at the Toronto International Film Festival, Persepolis was chosen as the closing night film for this year's New York Film Festival. The film arrives in theaters on Christmas Day.

Pictured Above: Two of the hottest men on the planet -- Cinematical's Erik Davis and actor Javier Bardem.

And that's Josh Brolin in the background lowering his shades to check us out ... because we're just that cool. This past Saturday, I attended the New York Film Festival press screening of No Country for Old Men, which is a film that will most likely be featured among several others in the Best Motion Picture category at the Academy Awards in February. It's truly an amazing piece of filmmaking -- easily one of my favorite films of the year so far -- and one that's sure to be recognized as the Coen Bros. best film in years. I'm not going to write a full review (you can check out James' from Cannes, and we'll post another one as the release date approaches), but I will give my initial reactions.

Essentially, No Country for Old Men is a morality tale about an older man (Tommy Lee Jones) and a younger one (Josh Brolin) who get all mixed up in a drug deal gone wrong. Brolin plays a quiet hunter who stumbles upon a group of dead bodies and a bag full of money out in the middle of nowhere, while Jones plays the should've-retired-last-week Sheriff who's itching to help save the hunter before a psychotic killer (Javier Bardem) catches up to him ... and the money. The film offers up plenty of edge-of-your-seat chills, with equal parts blood and guts, but it also slows up and surprises you -- just when you think it's heading in one direction, you're off on another, bumpier path. For those that have read Cormac McCarthy's novel, you already know where this thing is heading from the get-go, so I recommend settling in for some beautiful cinematography (from Roger Deakins) and a plethora of top-notch performances (particularly from Brolin and Bardem).

If you haven't read the novel and you're going into this one fresh, you might find it hard to connect with some of the choices made (if only because the film doesn't go where you think it's heading after act one). There's no clear hero here; all of these men have faults, they make bad choices and their actions will ultimately catch up to them. But do they have it in them to walk away before the water boils over? That's the question. And only the Coen Bros. can make you laugh out loud during even the most dramatic (and chilling) sequences. No Country for Old Men arrives in theaters on November 21. Below, I've included a photo gallery with pics from the No Country screening, as well as from The Darjeeling Limited screening and the Before the Devil Knows You're Dead screening. Additionally, you can check out some exclusive stills from the movie here. Enjoy.

Welcome to The (Mostly) Indie Film Calendar, a weekly look at what's happening beyond the multiplexes all around North America. If you know of something indie-related happening near you -- a local festival, a series of classic restored films, lectures, workshops, etc. -- send the info to me at Eric.Snider(at)weblogsinc(dot)com and I'll add it to the list. (Please put "Cinematical" somewhere in the subject line so I can separate you from all the effing spam I get.)

First, a few indie films are opening theatrically today, all of them noteworthy in some way:

• My Kid Could Paint That, a documentary about a 4-year-old modern artist and the controversies surrounding her work, sold for nearly $2 million after it premiered at Sundance. Cinematical's Scott Weinberg reviewed it then and said it "gets exponentially more entertaining as each successive question and contradiction is offered." (L.A., NYC)

• Finishing the Game is a mockumentary from Justin Lin (whose first film, Better Luck Tomorrow, was much better than his subsequent films, Annapolis and The Fast the Furious: The One That for Some Reason Took Place in Tokyo) about an attempt to finish the movie Bruce Lee was working on when he died. Scott Weinberg saw this one at Sundance, too, and called it a "confident and consistently amusing comedy." (NYC)

• The Good Night is the first film by Jake Paltrow (Gwyneth's brother), a dramedy about a songwriter's midlife crisis involving a beautiful woman he sees only in his dreams. This was yet another Sundance premiere; Kim Voynar reviewed it there and said it has a clever script and solid performances, but has some pacing issues. (NYC)

• Lake of Fire, a documentary about the abortion battle in the U.S., is Tony Kaye's first film to hit theaters since American History X. Ryan Stewart posted a mixed review on Wednesday. (NYC)

• Kurt Cobain: About a Son uses 25 hours of previously unreleased tapes of Cobain interviews to construct a documentary of his life. (L.A. and NYC now; Seattle Oct. 12; Philadelphia Oct. 19; further dates here.)

After the jump, festivals and events in Chicago, Portland, New Jersey, L.A, New York, San Diego, San Francisco, and Arizona....

Oh, sure, everyone heard about the New York Film Festival opening last Friday. But did you know that another festival was having its opening-night party at the same time just 12 miles away? That'd be the Coney Island Film Festival, a raucous three-day event that isn't nearly as big as NYFF but that's probably twice as much fun.

James Israel at Indie Wire put together a delightful blog entry comparing the two fests in a comic-book style. For example: "At NYFF, actors Bill Murray and Tilda Swinton made an appearance, while Coney offered Serpentina and her incredibly large snake."

It's a very creative way of spotlighting both fests. Bonus: I'd never heard of the Coney Island Film Festival before, but I sure won't forget it now!

You see this kind of thing a lot, actually, where a city has multiple film festivals with widely divergent styles. New York is a huge city with plenty of fests, ranging from the glitzy Tribeca to the more indie-minded Big Apple Film Festival; from the critic-programmed NYFF to the goofy Coney Island. But what about tiny Park City, Utah? James Israel could do a strip very similar to this one, comparing the huge, increasingly corporate Sundance to the quirkier, more do-it-yourself Slamdance. Or look at Austin, home to both the fun-but-sometimes-serious South By Southwest and the all-crazy-all-the-time Fantastic Fest. SXSW is the kind of festival that would have a woman dancing with a snake; Fantastic Fest would have her eat it.

I've been lucky enough to cover the Sundance Film Festival the last several years and South By Southwest the last two years, and I've enjoyed mingling with my fellow movie critics there. One topic that's always ripe for discussion when we gather is Who the eff chose some of these movies? Most festival entries have a reasonable level of quality, and the ones that utterly fail usually at least do so in interesting ways. But then there are always a few head-scratchers, where you figure it was politics or shmoozing or favoritism that got the thing added to the lineup, because there's NO WAY a committee watched it and thought it was good.

So I'm fascinated by Variety's John Anderson's behind-the-scenes look at how movies are chosen for the New York Film Festival: by a committee of film critics. My people!

NYFF (currently running through Oct. 14) is headed by festival director John Peña, associate programmer Kent Jones (who's also an editor at Film Comment magazine), and a rotating board of three full-time movie critics. Currently, those three are Entertainment Weekly's Lisa Schwarzbaum, The Village Voice's J. Hoberman, and L.A. Weekly's Scott Foundas.

Anderson's article says that since the critics aren't concerned about appealing to a mainstream audience or selling festival tickets, they feel free to choose movies that more populist fests -- like fellow New York attraction Tribeca -- might skip.

In some cases, this attitude means saving worthy films from obscurity. Anderson quotes Peña as saying that a certain film several years ago was causing headaches for its distributor, who didn't know how to market it. There was talk of sending it straight to video. But a NYFF programmer saw it, loved it, and it was invited to the fest. The film? Rushmore.

Welcome to The (Mostly) Indie Film Calendar, a weekly look at what's happening beyond the multiplexes all around North America. If you know of something indie-related happening near you -- a local festival, a series of classic restored films, lectures, workshops, etc. -- send the info to me at Eric.Snider(at)weblogsinc(dot)com and I'll add it to the list.

There are a few indie films being released theatrically this weekend, so if watching The Rock become a babysitter or seeing Jamie Foxx do CSI: Saudi Arabia doesn't interest you, here's what else you can see:

• Lust, Caution, Ang Lee's new film, opens in New York after getting plenty of advance publicity due to its NC-17 rating. Cinematical's James Rocchi reviewed it at Toronto, calling it "a challenging piece of cinema that also thrills, a complicated bold work that's bigger than its problems."

• Trade is a sobering look at the business of transporting sex slaves from into the United States from Mexico, starring Kevin Kline as a Texas man looking for his daughter. It premiered at Sundance this year and has played at several other festivals since then.

• The Price of Sugar, a documentary designed to make you feel guilty for eating sugar because of the impoverished Haitian immigrants forced to harvest it in the Dominican Republic, won an audience award at South By Southwest and opens today in New York.

• Raising Flagg, a domestic comedy starring Alan Arkin, has been kicking around for a couple years. It played for a week or two in Portland-area theaters in October 2005 (it was shot here) and is now finally getting a slightly larger release: L.A., Phoenix, Dallas, and Denver today; Bakersfield, Salt Lake City, Milwaukee, and Raleigh next week.

After the jump, a rundown of some of the special indie-film events happening this week in L.A., New York, Austin, Vancouver, Edmonton, New Jersey, and Atlanta....

There are a couple different ways to approach reviewing The Darjeeling Limited. I can look at it from the mainstream audience's point of view, or I can look at it from the point of view of a long-time Wes Anderson fan -- which, coincidentally, I happen to be. The first thing my friend said to me as the credits began to roll: "Loved it ... but the film won't make a dime at the box office." Unfortunately, and most likely, that will be the case -- The Darjeeling Limited is a tough film for audiences to grasp, in that there's not much of a story to hang onto. Sure, there's a beginning, a middle and an end, but when you look back on it, everything sort of mushes together. There's also not a lot of physical action; a majority of the film takes place on a moving train, in one compartment, which subsequently leads to a very claustrophobic feel; albeit one that was intentional. And there's dialogue -- lots of it.

But this is a Wes Anderson film, and those of you out there who appreciate his sense of humor -- his quirky characters, his hipster soundtracks and his extraordinary attention to detail -- will most likely find a lot to love in The Darjeeling Limited. Essentially, it's a meditative piece about three brothers who reunite while on a train in India, having not spoken to one another for a year following the death of their father. In that time, Jack (Jason Schwartzman) was holed up in a hotel room in Paris, unaware of how long he'd actually been there. Peter (Adrien Brody) kept busy tending to his marriage, which he always expected would end in divorce, even though he really loves his wife. And Francis (Owen Wilson), who's the reason why all three are in India, has been recovering from a terrible motorcycle accident that left him near-death, which, afterwards, inspired him to take on this spiritual journey with his two estranged siblings.