OK, so I missed my flight to San Diego this morning and I've had a really rotten day, but there's always a small silver lining, right? In the movie world there is: JUST announced (like, within the last few minutes!) is the Toronto Film Festival's Midnight Madness '08 line-up. And, as usual, it looks pretty damn awesome.

I've heard some really good things about Pascal Laugier's Martyrs, Franck Vestiel's Eden Log, and Jon Hewitt's Acolytes -- plus I've been itchin' to see JT Petty's horror-western The Burrowers for over a year now! Other selections include Pracha Pinkaew's Chocolate, Toshio Lee's Detroit Metal City, and Mark Hartley's Not Quite Hollywood. Click right here for all ten of TIFF's Midnight picks --and of course you can expect all sorts of expansive festival coverage once TIFF rolls out in early September. Woo!

(Note: Rocchi got all excited about JCVD being chosen as one of the Midnight selections, which is a title I neglected to mention the first time around. Ditto Sexykiller and Deadgirl.)

( Also announced today: Toronto's Wavelengths and Sprockets Family Zone selections. )

While The Dark Knight dominated the weekend box office here in the US -- with a little love spared for Mamma Mia! and Transsiberian -- in Asia things looked a little different. The Good, the Bad, the Weird , which was just picked up by IFC for the US, opened in its native South Korea to outstanding returns, according to Variety.

The film, a salute to Spaghetti Westerns with a modern twist, is expected to surpass 2.2 million admissions over the weekend, which would make it the fastest to hit that mark this year, beating out police comedy Public Enemy Returns. Its opening day returns put it in the company of previous monster smashes D-War and The Host. We should hear more about The Good, the Bad, the Weird when it plays at Toronto in September.

The news is not as good in Japan, where master filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki's latest animated achievement, Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea, was expected to dominate. Opening on a record number of screens for a local picture (481), Ponyo is said by its distributor to have earned 83% of the total made by Miyazaki's blockbuster Spirited Away, which sounds good. But as reported by Mark Schilling in Variety, those numbers may be misleading.

Further ensuring that the band Pulp should have new fans in the future, front man Jarvis Cocker continues to seek younger listeners. This time, in an interview with Time Out Chicago, he claims to have written a few tracks for Wes Anderson's stop-motion-animated film The Fantastic Mr. Fox, which is based on the novel by Roald Dahl. He says there are three or four songs and then some music that could become part of the film's score. Additionally, in response to questions regarding his solo track "Disney Time", he notes that writing music for a kid's movie is his chance to "do better" than Disney films, at least in terms of corrupting young minds.

A few years ago, Cocker contributed to the soundtrack for Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and even appeared in the movie as a member of the fictional group The Weird Sisters, performing the songs he composed, "This is the Night", "Do the Hippogriff" and "Magic Works." Pulp has also written songs specifically for movies in the past, including a rejected theme song to the 007 movie Tomorrow Never Dies (both the original version of "Tomorrow Never Dies" and a retitled version called "Tomorrow Never Lies" were later released as a bonus track and a B-Side, respectively). In the interview, he suggests that Quantum of Solace could now use his solo effort "Quantum Theory", to which he'd change the lyrics appropriately.

When QOS arrives in theaters this fall, don't be surprised if Cocker's song isn't heard. As for Fantastic Mr. Fox, we'll have to wait until November 2009 to see if the man's music makes its way to impressionable ears.

[via I Watch Stuff]

If Harvey Weinstein didn't exist, someone would have to invent him. One week his garbage gets recycled into source material for The Village Voice, the next he and his brother Bob cut a 95-film, multi-year deal with Showtime and resurrect Scream. And then he gives a wide-ranging interview with The Hollywood Reporter which includes his explanation for why The Weinstein Co. created Third Rail Relasing, a new distribution label. Is it to showcase undiscovered independent gems? Introduce the world to global filmmaking talent?

No, it's for dumping the garbage. He told THR: "We should have had Third Rail two years ago, t's a good way of differentiating between what we really believe in, and what has been for ancillary value."

Third Rail recently released Death Defying Acts, with Guy Pearce and Catherine Zeta-Jones, admittedly only to fulfill a contractual obligation. Other barely there releases this year include music doc Lou Reed's Berlin, Hong Kong action flick Flash Point, and Aussic croc thriller Rogue. (I really liked the latter two, by the way.) The widest release (48 theaters, per Box Office Mojo) was George A. Romero's Diary of the Dead, which made just under one million dollars. But I guess Harvey didn't "really believe" in any of them.

What are going to be the biggest surprises at this year's ComicCon? Can McG and Christian Bale make us care about Terminator: Salvation? Will the movie adaptation of Twilight please fans, or alienate them? What's behind the venom being directed at Batman's detractors on-line? And does Meryl Streep's Mamma Mia! have a chance against The Dark Knight this weekend? Joining James this week to talk all things ComicCon is Cinematical's Editor-In-Chief Erik Davis. ... 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.

When you see the words "performance artist" in a news article, you can almost bet the words "publicity stunt" will soon follow, and I believe that's what we have here. A Beijing artist named Zhao Bandi, who uses images of pandas in all his work and walks around all the time carrying a stuffed panda, is suing DreamWorks over its offensive depiction of the animal -- the Chinese national symbol -- in the recent animated hit Kung Fu Panda.

The film has been successful in China, too -- or, as Variety puts it, "has done boffo B.O." -- which suggests the average Chinese citizen doesn't find it insulting. But Zhao says differently. His two major points of contention? First, Po, the panda voiced by Jack Black who is the film's protagonist, has green eyes, and green is the color of evil. (I have zoomed in on the eyes in the picture so you can see for yourself how evil they are.) Second, Po's father in the film is not another panda but a duck. (Well, Zhao says he's a duck. I thought he was a goose. If I'm right, will that technicality invalidate the lawsuit?)

Variety quotes Zhao as demanding to see DreamWorks' "creative meeting records" to explain Po's green eyes, which he insists must be a "conspiracy." As for the duck issue, Zhao says this: "Drawing the father of the giant panda as a duck is an insult to the Chinese people. In a few years time, I'm worried some young Chinese people will think their ancestor is Donald Duck." I confess I don't see why thinking you descended from a duck is any worse than thinking you descended from a panda, but my knowledge of Chinese culture is somewhat limited.

Imagine you're a filmmaker and you've got this cockamamie story about astronaut chimps that just won't go away. You don't have much money, but the story involves lots of technology and outer space effects. What do you do? You could use your imagination and shoot in darkness with lots of odd angles and perspectives, like Mario Bava's sci-fi masterpiece Planet of the Vampires (1965). But that would raise all kinds of questions about how to present the chimps. You could do a hand-drawn animated cartoon, something like Persepolis, for comparatively little money. But that would expose the fact that you really don't have much of an idea. So you decide to make a big, computer-animated film, make it fast, fill it with annoying jokes and hope no one notices how cheap and unfinished it looks. But what you don't do is open it three weeks after the astonishing WALL-E so that everyone notices the difference.

Space Chimps comes from the folks who brought you the universally despised animated film Happily N'Ever After (2006), and although I didn't see the earlier film, I'm told Space Chimps represents something of an improvement. Regardless, everything here has a kind of mechanical sheen rather than organic textures, and it feels like something closer to Tron than a cartoon about monkeys. Then comes the story: Ham (voiced by Andy Samberg) is the grandson of a famous chimp astronaut, who actually went into space. The younger Ham works at the circus, getting himself shot out of cannons. In the film's opening scene, he rockets toward the moon and reaches out for it, disappointed when gravity's pull inevitably begins dragging him back toward Earth.

I'm fairly certain that a good majority of you will be taking full advantage of the summer weather this weekend by playing some friendly summertime games with the neighborhood children. However, if you happen to get the urge to visit your local multiplex (or IMAX theater) to watch one of them moving pictures in color and surround sound, then we here at Cinematical would be interested to know what you'll be watching.

In one corner we have the year's heavyweight champ of movie marketing in The Dark Knight. He's big, he's a bat and he's ready to take your hard-earned dollars. In another corner, we have one of Broadway's most beloved musicals arriving on the big screen for the first time: Mamma Mia! For the kids too young for Batman, we also have Space Chimps -- and for those in desperate need of an indie fix, we have Transsiberian. I'm happy to say there's a little something for everyone this weekend ... but what will you be watching?

Aw yeah, this is just about my own personal version of Christmas Eve. The first wave of titles for the Austin's lovely Fantastic Fest has splattered into my inbox, so instead of me rambling on about how great Austin is in late September, especially if you're a massive fan of films gory, scary, sexy, twisted and weird, I'll just direct you to a very handy FF press release.

But not before I say this: Of the flicks chosen already, I've seen precisely five: Let the Right One In, Donkey Punch, Spine Tingler, Terra, and Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer. A Swedish vampire coming-of-age story, a British thriller about boat-bound terror, an American documentary about a beloved schlock-slinger, a multi-national animated adventure story, and a scrappy little indie full of monsters that Rick Baker would adore. So from just one random sampling, this is one eclectic mixture of movies. Oh, and for the Hollywood fans: DJ Caruso's Eagle Eye will have its premiere at Fantastic Fest. By only a few days but damn cool anyway. Oh, and a screening of The Tingler? Beyond cool.

Click on in for the first full press release on Fantastic Fest 2008.

Those manatees really know how to keep themselves busy. In one of the more irreverent news items of the day, Family Guy creator Seth McFarlane -- whose voice work is currently on display in Hellboy II: The Golden Army -- has told TV Week that he hopes to get a Family Guy movie off the ground in a year or so. The announcement was first picked up by Ain't It Cool News, where most commenters seem fairly lukewarm about the idea. Honestly, it's hard not to agree with them. Family Guy already has two feature length titles out on DVD, and neither one really raised the bar for the show or even played better than a decent episode.

At least The Simpsons movie had a plot that made sense for ninety minutes. Family Guy, with its incessant randomness, generally works as a series of distractions. In other words, not the sort of thing that really needs to get expanded beyond the half hour structure. Then again, the show has its devout base, which eagerly anticipates each sloppily constructed gag like clockwork, so maybe the new film project is good business sense. Either way, the South Park two-parter that took Family Guy to task remains far more entertaining (and insightful) than Family Guy's entire six-season run.