The Oscar-winning Coen Brothers recently produced this ad, ridiculing the term “clean coal.” It’s amusing, but doesn’t give much substantive critique. In reality, the coal industry has done much to clean up its nitrogen and sulphur emissions, which our big acid rain problem in the 1970s, 80s and early 90s. Emissions of these pollutants are down 70 per cent, which is what the coal industry means when it says the fuel is “70 per cent cleaner.” The industry hasn’t done much to lessen its carbon emissions to date, mostly because the technology isn’t there yet. Perhaps in the future, the excess CO2 will be separated into carbon and oxygen, or piped underground (both options currently being researched), but the technology is going to need decades of research and massive investment. Plans to build the US’s first CO2 storage coal-fired plant were abandoned last year, as the $1.8 billion FutureGen project in eastern Illinois ran into serious cost overruns. Coal is considered so bad for global warming that even nuclear power, once derided by the greenies, is now considered cleaner than the fossil fuel. Nuclear energy has its problems, with storage of waste and security issues, according to Steven Chu, the Nobel-prize winning new energy secretary. Yet “the safety is better and will continue to get better, and nuclear power is far better for climate than coal.”

Brad Pitt was the paparazzi money shot at the Toronto International Film Festival for the third year in a row. Who noticed that his movie Burn After Reading was entirely skippable? The real stars of the festival were Ben Kingsley and Rose McGowan from the powerful Fifty Dead Men Walking, and Freida Pinto from the stunning Slumdog Millionaire.

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The press conference this morning for the Coen brothers’ Burn After Reading was almost as strange as a Coen brothers movie. It was roomful of studio-selected journalists, rather than an all-access TIFF press conference, so that may account for the unusual decorum. There were still about 50 of us there. Brad Pitt walked into the room as if he owned, looking very dapper in a silver vest, joshing and joking with the assembled media. He sat on a stage beside the Coen brothers, with Tilda Swinton and John Malkovich sitting at either end. And guess what? With perhaps the biggest movie star on the planet sitting up there, available, most of the questions were directed at the two nerdy siblings who made the movie. There was not a single personal question about Angelina and the twins, never mind Jennifer Aniston, whose concurrent presence at TIFF has fostered all manner of speculative nonsense in the media about a Brad-Jennifer reunion. The closest anyone came was a query about the possibility of Brad and Angelina working together again, to which Brad quipped, “Angie and I are working together every day, I can guarantee it.”

The Coens maintained their reputation for not saying anything of substance when questioned by journalists. But they at least tried to explain it’s not because they’re patronizing snobs, but because Continue…

Saw a couple of delicious movies today, or yesterday I suppose, now that it’s past midnight. Both are American movies with some profile: Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist and The Brothers Bloom so already I’m beginning to question my early grouchy impressions that this year’s line-up of prominent films looks weak. Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist stars Canadian puppy Michael Cera (Juno) as a heartbroken New York teen who has devoted himself to making brilliant mix-tapes for the stuck-up vixen who dumped him. One night, after playing a gig with his band—as the only hetero kid in a gay punk band called the Jerk Offs—he stumbles into a relationship with her infinitely more mature best friend (Kat Dennings). And they ride around New York all night, hoping to end up at a secret concert by a cult band called Where’s Fluffy.

Nick and Norah is like Juno without all the bother of a plot, never mind an issue—two barely legal characters amiably drifting through an indie-rock soundtrack and the Crayola cityscape of a benign New York nightlife. It’s romantic comedy unplugged. There’s not much to it, but its shy, minimalist vibe seems derived the music, as if the real script is the playlist of the score, colouring emotion and nuance between the faux-naif narrative lines. The leads, Cera and Dennings, have a disarming, offhand chemistry, an easy-going charm that is somehow juvenile and sophisticated all at once. Even if the bare-bones story strums at cliche like a three-chord riff, these two innocent old souls seem utterly original.  It’s like watching the young indie rock generation reinvent romantic comedy in their image, and for their peers.  I have to admit, I felt I was watching it from a parental remove. My first comment to a fellow critic as I left the theatre was: “I feel so old.” But then again, I think  even my 25-year-old son would feel old watching this film.

I’d like to go on to tell you about the The Brothers Bloom, an exquisite caper movie about a couple of con artists (Mark Ruffalo and Adrien Brody) and an eccentric heiress (Rachel Weisz). But it’s late and I’m running out of gas. Day Two approaches, and I’m still trying to get used to the idea of being treated to a double bill of two good movies at a film festival that have not left me brutalized, drained and in despair about the state of the world.

Throw in the Coen brothers’ Burn This After Reading, and the lazy, non-revisionist western Appaloosa, and it’s beginning to look like whimsical romance, screwball comedy and quaintly confectionary capers are cool again.