• Advancing the dangerous notion that an Oscar is the first step to the Nobel Prize, Variety asks An Inconvenient Truth director Davis Guggenheim and producer Laurie David to confirm that “the film played a part” in Al Gore’s Nobel lauding. Meanwhile, the Guardian reveals that the film’s recent battle for educational clearance in Britain was engineered by “a Scottish quarrying magnate who established a controversial lobbying group to attack environmentalists’ claims about global warming.”
• According to Pamela McClintock, Across the Universe has managed “by the far the best showing among specialty releases so far this fall” by drawing repeat visits from teenage girls. Meanwhile, the under-marketed expansion of The Assassination of Jesse James was, as could only be expected, a failure, grossing less than $400,000 on 163 screens.
• Taylor Hackford will direct his wife, Helen Mirren, in Love Ranch, about “a couple who opened the first legal brothel in Nevada and the violence that resulted when their relationship was tested by infidelity.”

• Kevin offered three tips for documentary filmmakers in search of the truth.
• A look at three fine examples of pre-code cleavage.
• It’s now easier for documentary filmmakers to qualify for an Oscar nomination.
• Did YouTube “borrow” branding from a successful internet film festival?
• Nikki Finke claimed Warner Brothers had instituted a corporate policy against casting women, then baited Gloria Allred into threatening a WB boycott. WB was like, “No you didn’t,” and then Nikki was like, “Yes, in fact, I did.”
• In more devastating Warner Brothers news, the studio continues to show a lack of support for Jesse James by making it nearly impossible for non-coastal critics to see it.
• Michel Gondry’s working on an autobiographical animated film with his teenage son.
• Harmony Korine explains how he solved his filmmaking block by joining a cult of fishermen in the Amazon.
• Juno is not a remake of another film about a pregnant teen with ‘Juno’ in the title.
• The Austin Film Festival memorializes Moonlighting.
• “Any network that can be used to share cat pictures can be used to bring down a government.” This and other pearls of wisdom from from academic/blogger Henry Jenkins.
• On FilmCouch, Paul and Kevin talk to Rob Parrish, the mastermind of Next to Heaven, a web series carved out of the public domain. Watch the most recent episode of Next to Heaven here.

New York Film Festival:

• Mark Cuban confirmed to us that he would not release Brian DePalma’s director’s cut of Redacted. DePalma took the case to the DGA, who ruled that Magnolia could release the “redacted” version. DePalma eventually gives up.
• Peter Bogdanovich explains why his Tom Petty movie is four hours long.
• The Silent Light trailer breaks Karina’s heart.

Chicago Film Festival:

• The Affleck Brothers on the red carpet.
• The Filmspotting gang shares their take on the fest.

Descendants of the real Jesse James have posted a glowing review of Andrew Dominik’s The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford on the James family website. Someone in the outlaw’s family tree must be an SEO genius, because Brad Pitt’s name is all over this site. The actor’s publicist will surely be pleased will all the pullquotes; auteur theory loyalists will be up in arms. Here’s an excerpt:

Brad Pitt has stripped away the myth. He stripped away the legend and the lore. He stripped away the western and all the gratuitous violence…As T.J. Stiles’ book Jesse James, Last Rebel of the Civil War marked a turning point in the writing of Jesse James history, Pitt’s movie marks a turning point in movies about Jesse James.

It’s star worship for sure, but that seems to fit with the themes of the film, and elsewhere on the site the James family members prove themselves to be serious art film aficionados. Director Dominik gets his due on a separate page, on which the James family accuses Warner Brothers of “assassinating” Dominik’s “original, artistic vision” by insisting that his four-hour first cut be trimmed. And another page of the website carries the subheading, “Two of the performances in this film merit Academy Awards. But, are voting members of the Academy smart enough to know why?” The essay that follows is certainly more compelling and concise than any Oscar blogging I’ve seen recently.

The two films that have hit me the hardest here in Toronto are Control, which I wrote about here, and The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford. Both films, based on real-life characters and incidents, are simultaneously technically superlative and heartbreaking. With one day left to go in my Toronto 2007 tenure, I find myself nursing heartache for two, studio-backed movies which I’ll soon be able to pay $11 American to see again at will. And sitting here in my hotel room, listening to Joy Division and New Order and thinking about Sam Riley’s performance in Control and Brad Pitt and Paul Schneider’s in Jesse James, there is no such thing as soon enough.

Two weeks ago, The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford was the film Warner Brothers had “no idea what to do with.” As of this writing, it’s the most gushed-over title at the Toronto Film Festival, and word has hit the wires that star Brad Pitt has won the Best Actor prize at the Venice Film Festival. If the folks at WB still havn’t figured out what to do with Andrew Dominik’s masterful, Malickean tragedy of celebrity envy, they probably don’t deserve to have their name on it.

…Read more