Although Joel and Ethan Coen have been busy in Toronto talking about their newest film Burn After Reading, which opens tomorrow, last weekend the buzz around town was all about small crowds gathering at hotel entrances hoping for a glimpse of Brad Pitt. He definitely steals the movie, which is hard to do considering some of the talent that’s stacked up in this film.

On that note, I’ve gone back and forth on this movie in my own head. At first I didn’t care for it, then I kept thinking about the performances and realizing how good some of them are. George Clooney’s Harry Pfarrer is actually a pretty decent character, especially when he gets paired onscreen with Frances McDormand. Their dinner scene together works with a bit of Cary Grant / Katherine Hepburn spark.

However, despite the strong performances throughout the film, the plot drags on and by the time you come to the end, you find yourself thinking “Is that it?” When the writer and director end up being the same person, there’s not really anyone else you can fault for the final product. Miller’s Crossing is one of my top five films, and I never get tired of The Hudsucker Proxy or The Big Lebowski. Unfortunately Burn After Reading represents, for me, a misstep for the Brothers Coen. Read on to find out what they had to say about the film, winning the Oscar, and an Easter egg hidden on the Fargo soundtrack.

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When I sat down yesterday with Adria Petty, director of TIFF controversy-baiting, press magnet doc Paris, Not France, I asked her if she wanted to respond to some of the rumors as to why her film has mutated in the span of a week from a relatively normal festival entry into a mysterious object, destined to have a single screening in a form that––in the words of its sales agent, Cassian Elwes––”will probably never be seen again.” Before I could start ticking off the laundry list of reported factors––concerns from the Hilton camp, legal pressure from the record company who hired Petty to make a 20 minute DVD extra, clearance rights on the Beatles and Madonna and, well, Paris Hilton songs used within––Petty broke in.

“I’ll just tell you the truth,” she said. “The truth is that we just didn’t want the film pirated. There’s a lot of people involved in the film that own it or financed it. It was in a lot of different camps and different layers. And basically, at the end of the day, instead of having the whole thing canceled or pulled because of all these greedy or annoying people, Paris and I, who wanted the film to screen at Toronto and were honored by it, we were like, look let’s just do it once in one big theater. And then we put the night vision goggles in one time––because everybody is like, who pays for the night vision?”

Of course, every filmmaker who comes to a major festival is concerned about piracy, and many screenings at TIFF are patrolled by guards wearing night vision goggles to detect the use of recording devices. Piracy may have been an issue here, but in the above passage and elsewhere during our talk, Petty alluded that the major issue contributing to Paris’ “orphan” status may be its origin as a work of pure promotion. Warner Brothers Records didn’t want the film she turned in, but now, presumably because cigar-chomping execs look at a girl like Paris Hilton and see a walking dollar sign in a diamond tiara, it seems they’re afraid to let it go.

Excerpts from the interview, in which Petty sets Page Six straight, compares her film to Cocksucker Blues, and explains why Paris Hilton is not like Michael Jackson, follow after the jump.

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A hit at the most recent Rotterdam Film Festival, Paul Krik’s feature debut Able Danger is a Flatbush, Brooklyn set post 9/11 conspiracy tale that hinges its low budget thrills directly to a studied pastiche of classic film noir and a healthy cynicism of our government’s possible role in the events of 9/11 and the subsequent dive into a state of perpetual middle eastern war in the name of defending freedom. Krik, who occasionally goes by the name Dave Herman, has the hip threads and thousand yard stare that are par for the course for Brooklyn conspiracy theorists, but he also has sure handed feel for cinema. With deftness he milks paranoia out of his crisp, hi-def B&W images and creates an altogether plausible conspiracy that barely name checks the controlled demolition theory, but nonetheless synthesizes large quantities of suspicious information from that sunny tuesday morning seven years ago. On the eve of his film’s NYC release at the Pioneer later this week, we caught up with Paul to talk about––what else?–– Entourage, Atlas Shrugged, the desire to work with Cate Blanchett and Greek versus German philosophy.

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Gerard Butler is serving as the posterboy for Guy Ritchie’s RocknRolla, but the truth is that he’s just one piece in the pie. He just happens to be the piece who has the added fruit filling of having starred in 300. So, he’s now the de facto go to “face” for any film he’s going to co-star in.

He turns in a very solid performance as the down on his luck criminal One-Two in the movie, and it’s besides playing a role where he’s a homosexual struggling to break free from the bounds of oppression in Middle America, it’s at the other end of the spectrum from his turn as King Leonidas. Check out the interview with him below and find out why he just can’t fake an orgasm.

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John Malkovich enjoyed a particularly high spike in popularity and geek credit when he appeared in Charlie Kaufman’s Being John Malkovich, but he’s been in more than 20 films since then and he hasn’t managed to have that lightning strike twice.

He was excellent as the poseur art teacher in the otherwise disappointing Art School Confidential, and while he turns in a great performance in Burn After Reading, neither one stands above anything else he’s done. Maybe he should actually try playing a jewel thief to see what he can do with that role. Find out what he thought about working with the Coens and dropping the f-bomb a lot in the interview after the break.

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Brad Pitt’s “gum-chewing, Gatorade-swilling, iPod addicted bubble brain” Chad character in the Coen Brothers film Burn After Reading ends up walking away with every scene he’s in, and as a result he’s the best thing about the movie. Which is not to mean that this a great movie. Far from it. It’s a mediocre Coen Brothers movie with a standout performance by Pitt.

His portrayal of a simple gym employee who gets sucked into international intrigue, serves as a counterpoint to the image of Pitt that we’ve seen in films like Babel and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. It’s obviously not his first comedic role, but it’s definitely the most vapid role he’s played since Floyd in True Romance. We caught up with him in Toronto, and you can find out about Chad, what he’s working on next, and life with Angelina, just beyond the break.

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And the right thing sure ain’t any sort of riff on Jungle Fever. Spike was in Toronto promoting both his film Miracle at Saint Anna and the relatively new online film festival Babelgum, where he serves as “the ultimate jury.” Meaning, he picks the final winner.

We caught up to ask him what he thought about vice presidential nominee and hockey mom Sarah Palin, and it looks like he wants a showdown between Barack and Sarah.

“I think with that speech…when she said that speech it allowed Joe America to go after her. None of this stuff about how you can’t go off on her because she’s a woman. The stuff the she spoke, he should go after her hard. It’s time to take the kid gloves off.”

Can we assume that Spike is ready for some Democratic mudslinging? If he doesn’t ultimately direct the definitive Obama biopic with Denzel Washington playing a prominent role, then there is no justice in the world.

Ever since the great Italian director Sergio Leone rode into town, it’s been clear that the Western is not solely the domain of American filmmakers. Leone’s Spaghetti Westerns boosted Clint Eastwood’s career and forever changed the genre. A new film from Korea, what many are calling a Kimchi Western, may change the genre once again. Kim Ji-Woon’s The Good, the Bad, and the Weird is in many ways an homage to Leone’s The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, but is also an excellent example of the energy and originality emerging in Korean cinema.

The Good, the Bad, and the Weird, set in Manchuria in the 1930’s, follows the story of three bandits, all in pursuit of map that leads to an untold amount of treasure. Woo-sung Jung (the Good), Byung-hun Lee (the Bad), and Kang-ho Song (the Weird) all give excellent performances. Cool and outrageous enough for an action comedy, but not overdone. Kang-ho Song, who you may recognize from the hit Korean monster movie The Host, is particularly good at playing his own brand of lovable dork.

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(Complete interview with Paul Schrader available here.)

Adam Resurrected is the new movie by Paul Schrader (Affliction, Auto-Focus) premiering here at Telluride 2008. I was at the first screening which was also the first time Schrader ever watched the movie with an audience. “I realized watching it how exhausting it is, ” he told me right after the screening, “And it’s full of extremes. Literally, that old saying ‘you don’t know whether to laugh or cry’ is true here, and some scenes I think either emotion is fine with me.”

It’s in the navigation of extremes that my crush on Jeff Goldblum, who plays the title character, was born. I’m not one to get into Oscar buzz, but I will with Jeff and even add easily excerpted blurbs: Jeff Goldblum is magnificent. Jeff Godlblum’s peformance is a tour de force. I want to make out with Jeff Goldblum in the back of his Toyota Prius. Like how Daniel Day-Lewis’ character, Daniel Plainview (There Will be Blood), would have seemed flat or absurd in another actor’s hands, Jeff Goldblum’s wry delivery and velvet wit take the absurdity of Adam Stein and make him believable. …Read more

Hunger is the first feature film by Turner Prize winning British Video artist Steve McQueen. It took the Caméra d’Or prize at Cannes, honoring outstanding work by a first time director. The film is gut-wrenching, but not without tact. Political themes are deeply explored, but Hunger avoids being overly preachy. The film follows the true story of the last six weeks in the life of inmate Bobby Sands, a hunger striker and member of the IRA. Because it’s based on actual historical events, it’s not too much of a spoiler to say that the film does not have a happy ending.

The structure is somewhat atypical. The film opens by following a prison guard through his daily routine, which includes powerful, slow shots of him dipping his bloody knuckles in water after beating inmates. Pensive, nearly silent scenes gradually add together to give the viewer a chilling picture of the facility and the abuses occurring there.

The camera then begins to watch the travails of a new inmate upon his arrival. He is stripped naked, refusing to don a prison uniform as part of a protest to be recognized as a political prisoner. The film continues with wordless long takes. Two prisoners in a tiny cell, walls smeared with human waste. Cleverly discreet exchanges of contraband during family visits. Body cavity searches. Brutal beatings.

More after the jump.

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Veteran documentarian Ken Burns is on the Board of Governors for the Telluride Film Festival. The creator of classic PBS documentary mini-series like The War, Baseball, and Jazz, all of which have a total runtime of many hundreds of minutes, it’s a wonder this guy watches anything other than the archival material he uses to assemble his films. He mentions a film called Hunger by Steve McQueen that’s playing here. No, it’s not the ghost of the Steve McQueen you might be thinking of, this Steve McQueen is a Turner Prize winning British video artist turned filmmaker. A full review of Hunger with an interview is coming soon.

Ken Burns talks Mad Men and David Fincher after the jump.

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Mike Leigh’s Happy-Go-Lucky begins as a leisurely yet engaging character study, seemingly unconcerned with a traditional conflict/resolution narrative. Sally Hawkins’ performance as Poppy, a bubbly, sarcastic, and endearing elementary school teacher is a delight to watch. An hour into the film, I pleasantly resigned myself to enjoying it as a disconnected series of episodes. This could have been annoying, if not for the stellar performance by Hawkins. Her comedy and breezy demeanor nearly covers Poppy’s immaturity and apparent fear of commitment, while still giving us a glimpse that something more lurks beneath all the giggles and quips.

The character is so delightful, in fact, it almost comes as a surprise when conflict eventually erupts between her and her driving instructor Scott, played by Eddie Marsan. It’s a marvel that the animosity between these two characters, and the eventual resolution, is so well-rendered, considering how late it appears in the film. This is by no means sloppy filmmaking on the part of Leigh. On the contrary, he has perfected a sort of inverse method of story telling. Whereas normally we are dumped into a narrative-in-progress and bombarded by exposition to let us know who the characters are supposed to be, Leigh takes his time, building his characters first, then letting the drama follow.

When I asked him if the conflict between Poppy and Scott was part of the initial concept of the film, he said, “No…you explore and develop, and out of it comes the drama. It can’t be there at the beginning because you have to have the characters there before you have the drama.”

More from Leigh after the jump.

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Jeff Goldblum is at Telluride to promote his new film, Adam Resurrected, directed by Paul Schrader. The film follows the story of a Holocaust survivor who also happens to be a clown. Committed to an asylum after the war, he becomes a ring leader of sorts. On the opening day of the festival Goldblum was graciously hugging young fans and striking odd poses for snap-shots. We got a chance to ask him about his media intake, which includes a substantial amount homework from Schrader.

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Relaxed and genteel with a disarming smile and quick wit that strike you immediately upon meeting him, James Ponsoldt, the Athens, GA native who made a big impression at Sundance 06′ with his tragically underseen Nick Nolte high school baseball umpire drama Off The Black, is a well-rounded guy. He has a masters degree from Columbia, was the president of his class at Yale, edited the student paper, was a receiver on the varsity football team and reads modernist literature with regularity. Perhaps more importantly, the Filmmaker Magazine contributor and Sundance Institute Lynn Auerbach Screenwriting Fellow for his adaptation of Benjamin Percy’s Iraqi war short story Refresh, Refresh was also one of the founding members of Yale’s Porn n’ Chicken club, where students gathered to watch XXX films and eat fried chicken.