Cinematical

• The Rocchi Report: Before Toronto
  

  Filed under: Festival Reports, The Rocchi Report, Columns, Toronto International Film Festival

  
  
  I grew up near here, but at the time it wasn't near at all; Toronto was just stations on the TV, voices on the radio, where the Sunday paper came from. It was an hour-and-a-half drive, or a well-planned afternoon on a terrific transit system, and it was a world away. Coming to Toronto for the Film Festival is, for me, always a bit disconcerting -- I remember how awestruck I felt at age 14 seeing the inside of Toronto's retail landmark Eaton Centre for the first time. Bear in mind, the



• The Rocchi Report: You Are at Cannes.
  

  Filed under: Cannes, Festival Reports, The Rocchi Report, Columns

  
  
  You arrived on the 15th. It's the 25th. Ten days and ten nights, a nice round number. Round because it's rolling over you, and you feel that weight. How is the cat doing? What about the mail? How are the plants? You left all these things in the hands of friends, but you still worry. You'd like to go take care of them yourself. Because then you'd be home. You still need to get thank-you gifts for the custodians of your keys, the cat, the plants. You've seen 24 films. You needed to go back through...
  



• The Rocchi Report: Cannes-do, Cannes-do
  

  Filed under: Cannes, Hollywood Truths, The Rocchi Report

  
  First of all, everything you imagine about a film festival like Cannes is wrong, wrong, wrong. You don't rub elbows with stars; you don't go to fabulous parties. You wake up, you see three or four movies, you write -- a lot -- and try to come to grips with the fact that for every movie you're seeing there are four, five, six more that you're missing. You try to not think about it, because you'd go mad -- but you do think about it, and you do go a little mad.
  
  The thing you also need to know about Cannes...
  



• The Rocchi Report: What I've Learned.
  

  Filed under: The Rocchi Report, Columns

  
  
  I went to a café without wireless to write this column, because I'm finding that the communications options offered by the internet have turned my attention span into a twitching, wretched thing. And I wanted to think. This column is going to be all about what I've learned in two months as Cinematical's Editor-in-Chief, and one of the things I've learned is that my column turned out to be bi-weekly. It's verging on tri-weekly. And I try, weakly, to get it in on a regular basis, but who knows and/or cares if that's going to happen? So I retreat to a lead-lined café in a part...
  



• The Rocchi Report: Pixar and Pix-aren't
  

  Filed under: Animation, Deals, Disney, The Rocchi Report

  
  
  I don't often sit around thinking about the artistic and financial fate of major media conglomerates (no more than two, three times a day, anyhow), but between The Wild's release last Friday and last weekend's scathing TV Funhouse mockery of all things mouse on SNL, I've been thinking about Disney Animation, their merger with Pixar, and where they're going.
  
  First off, I don't know if The Wild is the last film to come out of Disney Animation before Pixar takes over, but regardless, it's a great demonstration of why that deal seems so necessary. The Wild...
  



• The Rocchi Report: Endless? Bummer.
  

  Filed under: Action, Cannes, Tom Cruise, Brett Ratner, Movie Marketing, Comic/Superhero/Geek, The Rocchi Report, Columns

  
  
  I look to the coming summer movie season much as ancient cavemen must have looked toward the huge thunderstorms that swept across the blasted plain; with terror, and fear, and a little bit of awe. It was not just the first day of spring that made me think of summer, nor was it the call of the sparrow as she returns from the sunnier climes in the South where she has rested for the past months; it was the frickin' fact that X-Men: The Last Stand is playing...