Personally, I would've loved Jerry Seinfeld's Bee Movie to have been live action, in crazy costumes, like the spoof trailers we previously shared with you. There's nothing quite like Chris Rock and Seinfeld battling the elements on a fake windshield. That being said, I have to agree with Erik Davis -- the animated version looks pretty damned spiffy. The movie finally comes out on November 2, and Seinfeld has been making his rounds to promote the flick. The Globe and Mail has reported that just the other day, he was in Toronto for a red carpet event for the movie, and talked with the audience about the making of the film.

During the screening, he did some stand-up, chatted about families, and also about the bee crisis: "Since we started writing this four years ago, there has been a bee crisis. Have you heard of this? Colony collapse disorder. Bees have suddenly stopped working, following the exact plot line of the movie. It freaks me out. What we were writing about actually happening. I have to be more careful about what we write." Somehow, I don't think they're following the exact plot, unless there's a lawsuit I'm missing.

Bee Movie is about a bee named Barry who has just graduated from college, which is pretty redundant since he has one career choice: making honey. He leaves the hive and befriends a human named Vanessa (Renee Zellweger). While on a shopping trip with her, he discovers the world of packaged honey -- Ray Liotta's brand of honey, to be exact -- and decides to sue humans. What happens after that? Well, you'll have to see the movie.

Although the Toronto Internatinal Film Festival has officially come to an end, Cinematical is still not done shoveling out reviews and interviews from the fest. Our writers have only so much time to scribble down their reviews in between screenings, and so the week after a festival is usually reserved for the remainder of our content. That said, we've already covered the most highly-anticipated fall films that screened Toronto, and based on what I read I wasn't that impressed. Both Eastern Promises and Atonement seemed to score well, while Ang Lee has to hope the Academy introduces a new category this year: Best Ballsy Director, for the guy who went and followed up his Oscar darling with a foreign language, NC-17-rated espionage sex thriller called Lust, Caution. Nice. The festival favorite seemed to be Juno, which will probably join Lars and the Real Girl in a race to become the year's Cinderella Oscar story. I also wouldn't count out Waitress; a film that has the whole real-life drama added on for extra spice.

But what about the rest of the season? What's coming out, what's getting good buzz and what should you go to see once it arrives in theaters? The Coen Brothers' No Country for Old Men is being touted as one of the boys best films in years, and lots of folks (including yours truly) are real interested in what Paul Thomas Anderson plans to do with his turn-of-the-century oil tale, There Will Be Blood. Ridley Scott's American Gangster is scoring lots of high marks for the performances (Denzel Washington, Russell Crowe) and Ben Affleck's Gone, Baby, Gone is also drawing lots of buzz for being, well, a good film that's actually directed by Ben Affleck!. Apart from the awards contenders, New Line is hoping to resurrect some of the December dollars they enjoyed during the Lord of the Rings run by shelling out The Golden Compass, and Vince Vaughn will be beaten up by Santa's elves in Fred Claus. Oh, and how can we forget Jerry Seinfeld's animated flick Bee Movie, as well as Robert Zemeckis' "It's good, because they look real" flick Beowulf? I could go on, having skipped a ton of films opening in the next few months, but here's where I open it up to you:

Which films are you looking forward to seeing the most this fall?

A coming-of-age tale adapted from Michael Noonan's novel, December Boys is primarily notable for providing Daniel Radcliffe with his first big-screen opportunity to prove himself more than just Harry Potter. Otherwise, it's a cloying, unremarkable affair. Rife with clichés and corniness, Rod Hardy's film concerns four orphans in the late '60s whose lives are oh-so-forever-changed when they're given a summertime break from their arid Australian Outback home and sent to vacation with a couple that lives by the sea. There, the goal of being chosen by foster parents is complicated by profound life lessons and, in the case of Radcliffe's virginal orphan Maps, sexual awakening at the hands of a blonde (Teresa Palmer) with a thing for Creedence Clearwater Revival. "I can teach you if you want," coos the teenage seductress, and the terrified/excited look on Radcliffe's face as he awaits entry into manhood has a vibrancy otherwise sorely absent from the proximate action. Combining the dewiness of The Cider House Rules with a few fantastical interludes seemingly culled from outtakes of Big Fish, it's a film with overwritten plotting and underwritten characters, often too content to simply work its audience over with a familiar, trite brand of adolescent nostalgia.

At this beachside idyll, Maps, Misty (Lee Cormie), Spit (James Fraser) and Spark (Christian Byers) find their friendship tested upon learning that the couple living next door to their cottage can't have children, and may want to adopt one of them. The possibility of being "saved" most fiercely consumes Misty, a devout kid who takes to sycophantically doting on the pair, a carnival motorcycle stuntman (Sullivan Stapleton) and his French wife (Victoria Hill). His yearning for family is the film's touchingly sentimental crux, complicated by the juxtaposition of the older Maps' angry disinterest in being adopted. Alas, December Boys can't leave well enough alone, tapping into genuine feelings of loneliness, acceptance and inclusion only to then embellish them with unneeded affectations. The off-putting directorial attempts to shamelessly tug at the heartstrings occur so frequently that empathy for these four comrades - dubbed the "December Boys" because of their shared birthday month - is muddied by indifference wrought from insistent emotional manipulation.

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford starts with images, moments, visions -- all grounded in the dry, calm tone of the narrator explaining where we are, and who we're watching. We meet Jesse James -- played by Brad Pitt -- and Robert Ford -- played by Casey Affleck; their ultimate relationship can hardly be in doubt, given the title of the Ron Hansen novel Andrew Dominik's adapted for the screen. But this isn't a mystery. Instead, Dominik gives us -- through gorgeous camerawork and a ridiculously talented group of actors -- a carefully-crafted dreamlike vision that captures the moment in time when The West became America, when a frontier became part of civilization, when the myth of the West went from something lived to a story that was told.

With amazing cinematography (courtesy of regular Coen Brothers collaborator Rodger Deakins) and a sprawling cast (Pitt and Affleck aside, other parts are played by Sam Shepard, Sam Rockwell, Paul Schneider, Ted Levine and Jeremy Renner), you can feel what Dominik's shooting for. He's made a rich, ripe,'70s-styled Western that exploits and explodes the Western mythos, equally influenced by Altman's range and reach in depicting the affairs of men and Malick's wide-eyed wonder in depicting the natural world. (There are a few Coen Brothers touches in with the Malick and Altman, as well; a tea spoon shows bitter knowledge sinking in, death comes as clumsy fumbling lunges.) With its wintry tones and measured movements, you'd be excused for thinking that The Assassination of Jesse James is far from Dominik's first feature, the low-budget, brawling and messy prison story Chopper. At the same time, though, both are about criminal aristocrats -- the best possible kind of bad men. You want to see them change their lives, but know full well they can't.

Unfortunately, those of you living in the UK and really looking forward to the much buzzed-about directorial debut of Ben Affleck, Gone, Baby, Gone, will have to wait some time before seeing the film. That's because Buena Vista International UK has suspended the release of the film indefinitely due to similarities between the flick and the real-life case of Madeline McCann, the British girl who's been missing since early May. Though the case is a fairly popular topic here in the States, I gather it's a much bigger deal in Britain -- especially now that the two parents have become official suspects in their daughter's disappearance from a Portuguese apartment.

Based on a book by Dennis Lehane (Mystic River), Gone, Baby, Gone follows two detectives tracking the case of a missing four year-old girl, and how it subsequently affects them both professionally and personally. It stars Casey Affleck, Ed Harris and Morgan Freeman, among others. By total coincidence, the name of the actress portraying the missing girl in the film is Madeleine O'Brien, which I'm sure would just add fuel to the fire across the pond. Affleck, who is totally behind the decision to pull the film, had this to say while at the Deauville Film Festival: "We are acutely aware of the situation. We have a greater concern for that than the release of our film, which is just a commercial matter, whereas this is a matter of life and death." Gone, Baby, Gone was also scheduled to have, what Variety calls, a "splashy" Oct. 26 Times London Film Festival gala screening, but it's since been pulled from the lineup. No word on when the film will arrive in the UK; I imagine it will depend on where the McCann case goes from here. Gone, Baby, Gone will arrive in US theaters on October 19.

Since World War II spawned its share of war-themed movies, both direct and indirect, it's only natural that our era does the same, especially given that the Iraq War has gone on for several years now. A lot of movies over the past four or five years have dealt with the attacks in New York, soldiers in war, prisoners of war, and endless variations on these and other themes. Even the recent Western 3:10 to Yuma, hidden underneath its character-driven gun slinging, has a little something to say about the occupation. Most movies tackle their subject head-on, such as the numerous documentaries of the past few years and films like United 93 and World Trade Center as well as war films about other eras like Letters from Iwo Jima and Days of Glory. How refreshing, then, to see a movie like Richard Shepard's The Hunting Party, which has on its mind the topic of war criminals still at large. It wants to know why the U.S. has been unable to find certain outlaws, when just about any civilian with a passport, the price of a drink and a line of B.S. can do it. But instead of grousing or hand wringing, it becomes a spry, surprising and intelligent comedy.

The movie is told through the point of view of a TV news cameraman nicknamed Duck (Terrence Howard), who once worked together with reporter Simon Hunt (Richard Gere) in any Third World war zone worth covering. Their lives together were dangerous and exciting. They dodged explosions, drank in dive bars and romanced local girls. But when the tragedy got to be too much for Simon, he melted down on the air, effectively ending the relationship. Duck has since been promoted to a highly paid New York studio job, while Simon works for increasingly desperate TV stations so far off the radar that he eventually disappears. For the five-year anniversary of the end of the war in Bosnia, Duck, a polished TV anchorman (a perfectly cast James Brolin) and a network executive's son, Benjamin (Jesse Eisenberg), arrive to cover a routine press conference. Simon is also there, and he convinces Duck to help him cover the story of the decade: finding an infamous war criminal known as The Fox (Ljubomir Kerekes) with a $5 million bounty on his head.

It was almost a year ago when Jette brought us a first look at some of the behind-the-scenes for the big-screen version of 30 Days of Night. Since then, there have been teaser posters, fancy websites, the promise of new short films, and the R rated trailer released in August ( who could forget, of course, the image of Josh Hartnett hacking at a child with an ax -- something like that tends to stay with you). Shock Til You Drop is now hosting three new posters for the vampire flick. Fans of the graphic novels have been pretty eager to see what Ghost House and director David Slade (Hard Candy) have planned for the story of a group of vampires descending on a small town in the wilds of Alaska for a 30-day feeding frenzy.

Based on the graphic novel by Steve Niles, Night stars Josh Hartnett as the local sheriff and Melissa George as his wife -- it's up to both to save their town before the vampires wipe it clean. Ben Foster (3:10 to Yuma) also stars as "the harbinger of the vampires. Well really a scout who was sent into the town because he can be out during the day. He is tentatively known as a "bug-eater", not a vampire but something akin to a ghoul. They find him snooping around town and trespassing so they arrest him" -- at least according to the message boards at IMDB, and since I haven't read the original graphic novels, I'm just going to have to take their word for it. 30 Days of Night is set for release on October 19.

[via Solace in Cinema]

Last week Peter Martin told us about rumors that Ang Lee might be working on a less explicit version of his NC-17-rated Lust, Caution for release in China. Now The Hollywood Reporter confirms it's true: Moviegoers in mainland China will see a version with less lust and more caution.

(With a film called Lust, Caution, and a story about cutting out the naughty parts, the headlines practically write themselves. I apologize.)

Lee's new film, which won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival and is currently showing at Toronto, got its NC-17 rating for the United States a few weeks ago -- a rating he and Focus Features didn't argue with. As Monika Bartyzel reported on Aug. 24, Focus CEO James Schamus said, "When we screened the final cut of this film, we knew we weren't going to change a frame. Every moment up on that screen works and is an integral part of the emotional arc of the characters."

Well, apparently in China, about 30 minutes' worth of moments aren't quite as integral to the characters' emotional arcs. That's how much Lee has cut from the film's 156-minute running time to appease Chinese censors. (There's no rating system in China, so every film has to be generally acceptable for all audiences.) Lee reportedly has done the editing himself to maintain artistic integrity, and he's satisfied with the new version.

Which brings up a question: If the film works just as well when it's 30 minutes shorter and containing less sex and violence, why not release that version in the U.S., too, and avoid the box office death that an NC-17 rating all but ensures? I'm speaking from a purely financial standpoint. Obviously, if cutting stuff out harms the film's message or impact, leave it in and keep the rating. I suspect the film really isn't as good in its shorter form, and that Lee is doing what he has to in order to secure the lucrative Chinese box office. Sometimes you have to make tough decisions like that when art and commerce intersect.

Margot at the Wedding is a film torpedoed by its own self-indulgence. The film starts by offering us a thin premise -- a frosty, New England writer named Margot comes to town for the occasion of her quasi-bohemian sister Pauline's wedding to a slob -- and then more or less does nothing in the way of development, opting instead for ninety minutes of hints and innuendo. Nothing in this family dysfunction drama ever rises to the surface, even in the third act. Usually, you at least know what the director was going for, whether they succeeded or failed, but not here. Nicole Kidman and Jennifer Jason Leigh have to be given some amount of credit for doing the requisite character-building work, playing past the obvious physical dissimilarities between them and creating a workable, sisterly dynamic that can go from warm to freezing in an instant, but there's so little in the way of compelling events for them to react to that it's almost hard to maintain interest. Margot at the Wedding is a ninety minute film, with about twenty minutes worth of content.

Jack Black is the third lead as Malcolm, Pauline's soon-to-be-husband who has no job and no ambition to do anything except possibly commit infidelity. It's hard to say whether Noah Baumbach hired Black to play a thinly-disguised version of himself or whether he intended to have him do heavy lifting, acting-wise, because there's an odd mixture of both on display. There are moments when he's simply playing his part with none of his usual verbal or physical affectations, and there are other moments, such as in a late scene where he's supposed to be doing some crying, when he's unwisely allowed to lapse into a light version of Jack Black schtick. Both incarnations of his character seem to be a noticeably bad match for Jennifer Jason Leigh, by the way. Her natural gravitas doesn't mesh well with his absurdist persona, and whenever they are together on screen, there's a palpable sense of 'acting' going on that undermines Jason Leigh's seemingly honest attempts at character development. Theirs is just one of several of the film's actor pairings that don't seem very natural.

New Line was nice enough to provide Cinematical with the exclusive one-sheet for Love in the Time of Cholera (click on the poster for a larger version), based on Nobel Prize-winning author Gabriel García Márquez's novel of the same name. Adapted for the screen by Oscar winner Ronald Harwood (The Pianist) and directed by Mike Newell (Donnie Brasco, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire), Love in the Time of Cholera tells the tale of two lovers, Florentino Ariza (Javier Bardem) and Fermina Daza (Giovanna Mezzogiorno), one more obsessed than the other, who part ways at an early age to live two very different lives. The film then tracks each over the years (we're talking late 19th century through the first decades of the 20th century), while Fermina settles down with a doctor (Benjamin Bratt) her father forces her to wed and Florentino engages in 622 affairs (not kidding about that) in an attempt to mask the pain he feels due to the one that got away. Also starring in this sure-to-be-an-Oscar-contender are Liev Schreiber, John Leguizamo, the very lovely (and talented) Catalina Sandino Moreno and Hector Elizondo. Love in the Time of Cholera (which also happens to be one of my favorite titles of all time for a number of reasons -- love is but a disease, after all) arrives in theaters on November 16.