In Country Movie

Here during the 14th running of the Festival of Festivals, the odds in favor of the dedicated moviegoer have been nothing less than startling. It's enough to make one superstitious. "In Country," the gala festival opener directed by Toronto's own Norman Jewison, was what Canadian festival programmers dream about: a warmly received, moving film headed for widespread exposure and made by a Canadian director.

Director Norman Jewison thinks of himself as a farmer. "I am," he said. "I really am a farmer. I live on a farm. We have 85 head of breeding cattle. When I'm not making movies, I'm back on my farm, shoveling real manure. "What do I do--a film every two years? So most of the time I'm in Canada, taking care of the farm. It's added years to my life." When Jewison isn't farming, he does movies like "Rollerball," "Jesus Christ Superstar," "Moonstruck" and "In Country."

Director Norman Jewison thinks of himself as a farmer. "I am," he said. "I really am a farmer. I live on a farm. We have 85 head of breeding cattle. When I'm not making movies, I'm back on my farm, shoveling real manure. "What do I do--a film every two years? So most of the time I'm in Canada, taking care of the farm. It's added years to my life." When Jewison isn't farming, he does movies like "Rollerball," "Jesus Christ Superstar," "Moonstruck" and "In Country."

Here during the 14th running of the Festival of Festivals, the odds in favor of the dedicated moviegoer have been nothing less than startling. It's enough to make one superstitious. "In Country," the gala festival opener directed by Toronto's own Norman Jewison, was what Canadian festival programmers dream about: a warmly received, moving film headed for widespread exposure and made by a Canadian director.

Unauthorized Cuban showings of Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" will not disqualify the divisive film from Oscar eligibility for best documentary, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and Lions Gate Releasing said Tuesday. Under Oscar rules, documentaries can be disqualified if they are shown on television or the Internet within nine months of their theatrical release.

With the unusually large number of fall films still in the country's movie theaters, there was a noted tendency among moviegoers to stick to established winners rather than take chances on smaller, less-hyped films. As a result, last weekend's box-office winners are all holdovers. The ads for Columbia's "Someone to Watch Over Me" have begun to emphasize star Tom Berenger's appearance in (and Oscar nomination for) "Platoon," and the campaign helped to keep the film riding high in its second week.

Chinese conglomerate Dalian Wanda Group announced that it has received regulatory approvals for its planned acquisition of AMC Entertainment, the second largest theater chain in the U.S. Wanda and AMC said Wednesday that they received notice from the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. that the inter-agency committee has cleared the transaction. The owner ofChina'slargest movie theater circuit announced in May that it had reached an agreement to buy AMC's 5,034 screens in 346 theaters in the U.S. and Canada for $2.6 billion, creating the world's largest cinema operator.

At last, at last it's been published, a dead-bang bestseller that puts the explosive social issue of sexual harassment between best-selling hardcovers, not in some incoherent government report destined for the recycling bin. Here is the predatory, omnipotent, salacious boss, and here is the prey, the dependent employee afraid to say no or even yes to the boss's advances, for fear of losing job and family and reputation. Oh, wait, sorry. I skipped something. There's this asterisk. The gimmick.

— Say "Kazakhstan" to most filmgoers and their minds will jump to "Borat," Sacha Baron Cohen's mockumentary about a plow-driving, shower-averse horndog that took the U.S. box office by storm in 2006. The film put the vast but obscure oil-rich nation of 16 million, wedged between Russia and China, on the map for many Americans but left Kazakh officials objecting that Cohen had misrepresented the country: For starters, many of its inhabitants are not Eastern European-sounding people with bushy mustaches but Koran-reading Central Asians.