Rants and raves about burning topics that have caught my attention midweek, be it greedy corporate shenanigans, frustration or joy in regards to the Philly sports teams, a movie, show or DVD that has fired up my imagination, an intriguing personality, or what’s happening in the region. — Lori Hoffman, Associate Editor, Atlantic City Weekly.

Some years, the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) can’t come soon enough. This is certainly one of those years. Film critics tend to bitch more about an endless parade of movies that offer the same old, same old than “regular” moviegoers, but really people — this was a bad summer. Other than Inception and Toy Story 3, there weren’t many movies that were good enough to see a second time.

My annual trek to Toronto will clear my head and reboot my love of quality cinema. Will a see some bad movies in T.O.? Of course I will. Sometimes a plot summary and the cast will sound terrific, but the execution will disappoint. Still, the one thing I know I will find at the festival is filmmakers who are passionate about their work and who have something to say. Another big aspect of an international festival is seeing how other cultures view world events, and seeing how America is being perceived these days in works from other countries.

Documentaries are given their own special place in Toronto, in the Reel to Reel program. One doc I’m really looking forward too is Inside Job, an in-depth exploration of what caused the financial crisis from the Oscar-nominated director of No End in Sight, Charles Ferguson. At the other end of the documentary spectrum is The Promise: The Making of Darkness on the Edge of Town. The documentary explores the creative process of Bruce Springsteen’s pivotal 1978 album, featuring footage from his “glory days.”

The Film Festival uses its Gala Presentations and Special Presentations to showcase the big name Hollywood stars and their movies hoping for Oscar glory. Check out my story here for more info on the big-ticket movies.

John Sayles

Sure it is fun to rub elbows with the stars at press conferences. However, by the time the festival is halfway through, my passion has usually been ignited by an unexpected gem, a little movie I find by accident, usually because the big movie I planned to attend is full and I have to scramble to find a movie to see in five minutes. It might be a martial arts movie or a bizarre Danish comedy or a moving exploration of war and its aftermath from a Middle Eastern filmmaker.

One of my favorite filmmakers, John Sayles, is bringing Amigo to Toronto, a drama about the American occupation of the Philippines in 1900. Yep, I didn’t know we occupied the Philippines either, but you can bet Sayles will make a statement about our modern occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan with his historical drama.

I’m getting excited just thinking about it.

Rants and raves about burning topics that have caught my attention midweek, be it greedy corporate shenanigans, frustration or joy in regards to the Philly sports teams, a movie, show or DVD that has fired up my imagination, an intriguing personality, or what’s happening in the region. — Lori Hoffman, Associate Editor, Atlantic City Weekly.

When New Jersey governor Chris Christie came to the Boardwalk July 21, called Atlantic City “A dying town” and announced his proposal for the state to oversee Atlantic City’s casino and tourism district, it unleashed a state and local news cycle that wailed away at Atlantic City. As the busy summer season was entertaining guests with great dining, shopping and entertainment, the news about Atlantic City was mostly negative, some of it justified, some of it warmed-up rehashing of old issues.

Dennis Gomes

Well, this week the news cycle got much brighter, topped by the news that Dennis Gomes, a veteran Atlantic City casino executive who was largely responsible for the development of The Quarter at the Tropicana and before that worked diligently for the Trump Taj Mahal, has purchased Resorts. For all the details, check out Mike Pritchard’s story here.

Dennis Gomes returning to town in the casino biz is a godsend. If anybody can turn around the town’s struggling first casino, he can. That perception is held across the industry. Gomes has an excellent track record, and that is what the moneymen and business analysts look for, previous success.

Dennis Gomes is also a kickboxing enthusiast who helped make the Tropicana one of the top spots in town for mixed martial arts events during his tenure there. I brought that up just to reinforce that Gomes is tough when he has to be.

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It was announced this week that Atlantic City International Airport is handling a record number of passengers. The South Jersey Transportation Authority, which operates the airport, says more than 688,000 passengers were booked on commercial flights from the airport between January and July. That’s up 29 percent from the first seven months of 2009.

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Rants and raves about burning topics that have caught my attention midweek, be it greedy corporate shenanigans, frustration or joy in regards to the Philly sports teams, a movie, show or DVD that has fired up my imagination, an intriguing personality, or what’s happening in the region. — Lori Hoffman, Associate Editor, Atlantic City Weekly.

The Phillies are hot and are at home for their longest stretch of the season, with two more games against the Giants, three games against Washington and four games against Houston. Add in the return of Chase Utley, and the expected return of Ryan Howard later this week, and the Fightins should be in first place soon — at least on paper. Problem is, the games aren’t played on paper.

Roy Oswalt (Photos by: Tom Briglia / PhotoGraphics Photography)

During what looks like a soft stretch for the Phils, excluding the two games with the Giants, Atlanta is not exactly facing murder’s row themselves. They have two more games at home against Washington (where they are 43-16, the best home record in the majors), followed by a road trip against the fading Cubs and three against Colorado, ten games back in the west.

Both the Phillies and the Braves have great starting pitching and have done well despite major injuries (Chipper Jones is lost for the season). The Braves have the better bullpen but the Phillies have a much better offense.

When the Phillies still had their best players on the field, they had a horrible stretch beginning in late May. The entire team went in a slump that could really not be explained. Three shutout losses to the Mets was the nadir of that stretch.

In the same way, the Phillies going 19-5 while Utley was out, Placido Polanco was just getting back and both Shane Victorino and Howard landed on the DL cannot be explained either.

Sure, Raul Ibanez and Jayson Werth got hot, Carlos Ruiz delivered key hits, GM Ruben Amaro, Jr. got Roy Oswalt, and the back end of the bullpen started pitching like it was 2008 again, but Jimmy Rollins was still popping up on the first pitch and the middle relief was no relief at all.

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Rants and raves about burning topics that have caught my attention midweek, be it greedy corporate shenanigans, frustration or joy in regards to the Philly sports teams, a movie, show or DVD that has fired up my imagination, an intriguing personality, or what’s happening in the region. — Lori Hoffman, Associate Editor, Atlantic City Weekly

This week the money figures were released for the Atlantic City casinos, which were down about five percent from the same month a year ago. This news, of course, generated the usual spate of stories about Atlantic City slipping into the ocean.

Now that our own governor has declared that Atlantic City is, in fact, falling into the sea, it is hard to maintain my “glass is half full” mentality.

However, if I were looking for a rose-colored glasses story, it would be the great press that Boardwalk Empire is receiving. The national television press was just introduced to the new fall TV season at the annual preview in Hollywood and a lot of buzz was generated by Boardwalk Empire. With Martin Scorsese at the helm of the pilot, the advanced word has been that this series will be HBO’s biggest new show in the fall.

As noted in a story in The Guardian, out of London, if the HBO series is a smash hit as expected, there could very well be more tourists who are curious about today’s Atlantic City and will visit our town, perhaps for the first time.

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Rants and raves about burning topics that have caught my attention midweek, be it greedy corporate shenanigans, frustration or joy in regards to the Philly sports teams, a movie, show or DVD that has fired up my imagination, an intriguing personality, or what’s happening in the region. — Lori Hoffman, Associate Editor, Atlantic City Weekly

I will be attending my 23rd Toronto International Film Festival this September. The event runs from Sept. 9-19. The current state of movies makes the trip to Hollywood North even more important for a film critic who needs to see the work of maverick filmmakers who want to engage the heart and the brain.

My nickname is “The Moviejunkie” because I love all types of movies, from popcorn flicks to intimate foreign films. However, after months of uninspired filmmaking from a Hollywood industry that only cares about box office results, this film lover needs to see something different.

Film festivals are more important than ever because independent low budget cinema, foreign language films and Oscar worthy films have been relegated to the fringes of the movie business. They are the afterthought.

If you’ve still been bothering to go to movies in theaters, you know how bad that experience has become, and I’m not talking about the string of TV commercials you have to sit through before the coming attractions. For every Inception that comes along to blow your mind, you have to sit through dozens of bland, cookie cutter action movies and formulaic comedies.

If you love movies — and film critics by definition love movies — it is very depressing. That’s why a trip to Toronto to see the work of the best filmmakers from around the globe recharges my batteries every year. It is also why filmmaker and prominent actors love to bring their smaller movies to Sundance, Cannes, Toronto, New York and Venice.

The only way to break a small movie is to get it noticed at one of the festivals. And it is only the top buzz movies at Sundance, Cannes and Toronto that get U.S. distribution. Winter’s Bone, opening locally this Friday (Aug. 6) is a prime example, a film that won the 2010 Sundance Grand Jury Prize.

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Rants and raves about burning topics that have caught my attention midweek, be it greedy corporate shenanigans, frustration or joy in regards to the Philly sports teams, a movie, show or DVD that has fired up my imagination, an intriguing personality, or what’s happening in the region. — Lori Hoffman, Associate Editor, Atlantic City Weekly

The news cycle created by Gov. Christie’s plan to form a partnership with Atlantic City government to clean up the town and create a more family-friendly atmosphere continues. AC Weekly columnist David Spatz weighs in this week and AC Weekly reporter Mike Pritchard has more coverage of the plan.

Atlantic City has been seriously hurt by the downturn on the economy. Gaming is a business that is always going to take a hit in bad economic times since most people gamble with the money they can afford to lose and a lot of people don’t have extra money these days.

Competition from neighboring states has done the most damage, as the Pennsylvania and Delaware casinos continue to draw patrons away from our region.

As I noted in an earlier blog, Christie’s “dying town” quote sent a lot a writers running to their laptops to declare that it might be too late to salvage the seaside resort.

I grew up in this area and I’ve heard the “AC is dead” declaration plenty of times. I’m 56 and believe me, I saw Atlantic City when it was really a dead town, in the late 1960s and early ’70s. The Steel Pier was shuttered, the Boardwalk was falling apart and nobody wanted to be in the Inlet section of town anytime of the day.

People still came for the beach and a few good restaurants, but AC was just a shell of its former glory as the “World’s Playground” from the turn of the century to the 1940s. That period also included its infamy as a mobster’s paradise in the Roaring Twenties, a period that will be revived when the series Boardwalk Empire debuts on HBO in September.

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Gibson is the centerpiece of my movie-themed collage.

Rants and raves about burning topics that have caught my attention midweek, be it greedy corporate shenanigans, frustration or joy in regards to the Philly sports teams, a movie, show or DVD that has fired up my imagination, an intriguing personality, or what’s happening in the region. — Lori Hoffman, Associate Editor, Atlantic City Weekly

Pictured is a collage I made 23 years ago. As you can see, the center of my movie tribute is my love of Australian movies and in particular, the American movie star who grew up Down Under, Mel Gibson.

I have never met Gibson. This tribute was based on my passion for his film work, from the early days of Mad Max, Tim and Gallipoli, to his early Hollywood years and such gems as The Year of Living Dangerously, The Road Warrior, Mrs. Soffel and Lethal Weapon.

Unfortunately, Gibson’s lethal weapon these days is his mouth, when he is drunk and/or angry. It was easier for movie stars in the golden era from the 1930s to 1960s when actors had contracts to film studios and those studios has public relations machines that jumped on every possible scandal created by bad behavior and took care of it. The classic film A Star Is Born shows exactly how that Hollywood machinery worked.

Hey, it used to work for politicians too. The press knew all about JFK’s womanizing but rightly figured it was personal and had nothing to do with how he was running the country.

We liked it better that way. We wanted our movie stars to reflect our ideals and beliefs, on and off the screen. We didn’t want to know what they were really like if they were as flawed as we were. We wanted them to be the icons of perfection we worshiped on the big screen.

Movie stars have been on their own since the death of the contract system in the early 1970s. Gibson’s latest bad press isn’t even why I’m so sad about the man whose movie work has given me so much enjoyment over the years. We have all had moments when we have been stupid and screamed at the people we love. Luckily for us we weren’t famous enough to have the calls recorded and leaked to the Internet.

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Rants and raves about burning topics that have caught my attention midweek, be it greedy corporate shenanigans, frustration or joy in regards to the Philly sports teams, a movie, show or DVD that has fired up my imagination, an intriguing personality, or what’s happening in the region. — Lori Hoffman, Associate Editor, Atlantic City Weekly

For the first time since 1996 at Veteran’s Stadium, the National League defeated the American League in the MLB All-Star Game, earning the home field advantage for the NL in the World Series this October.

Theories abound as to why pitching is so much better this year (the NL pitchers dominated in the 3-1 victory) and hitting — in particular home run hitting — is down so much.

Of course the most obvious theory is that the hitters have stopped taking steroids now that the MLB has effective, random testing. And while pitchers were also guilty of taking steroids, they gained more advantages in endurance and recovery after pitching a game rather than an improved curve ball or a better slider.

But let’s look ahead to the implications of the game for the Phillies. Last year Phillies fans were confident that the team was returning to the World Series because we were in a weak division.

Carlos Ruiz

This year, I wouldn’t be shocked if the Atlanta Braves are the team that takes advantage of having the home field advantage in the World Series. It’s manager Bobby Cox’s last year, and his team will have extra motivation to get him to the Big Dance for a final curtain call. Atlanta’s Brian McCann knocking in the winning runs in the All-Star game with a three-run double added to my apprehension.

The four-game sweep of the Central Division-leading Cincinnati Reds was impressive — I mean, really, three straight walk-off wins in extra innings. That will always give a team a boost as the second half starts.

But are the Phillies really back? The hitting remains inconsistent, not just in power numbers but in clutch hits, the series against the Reds notwithstanding.

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Rants and raves about burning topics that have caught my attention midweek, be it greedy corporate shenanigans, frustration or joy in regards to the Philly sports teams, a movie, show or DVD that has fired up my imagination, an intriguing personality, or what’s happening in the region. — Lori Hoffman, Associate Editor, Atlantic City Weekly

Last year I had the opportunity to chat with Robert Osborne, the Hollywood Reporter columnist, movie buff and host on Turner Classic Movies. As someone who has interviewed countless movie stars from the golden era of Hollywood, I wondered what his take was on today’s celebrity obsessed culture.

He said, “There are stars but they certainly don’t have the mystery they once had. We now want to know everything about them and pry into their lives. We didn’t know that much about Audrey Hepburn except that we loved her and she was beautiful and we responded to her; Cary Grant was the same way. Today is a whole different ballgame. I don’t think it’s Hollywood’s fault, certainly not the star’s fault, it’s the fault of the media and the fault of our own appetites for all the inside details, which I’m not so sure is that much our business.”

Lindsey Lohan

I was thinking about all this celebrity insanity thanks to a) our celebrity weekend in Atlantic City that included a party that was shut down by police at Harrah’s because 500 gate crashers wanted to get down with celebrity host Sean “Diddy” Combs; and b) the news that Lindsey Lohan is actually going to jail, stemming from a parole violation of her two DUI convictions.

Lohan is a sad, pathetic case of someone who has talent but has squandered it. Here was an actress who showed a true spark of star power as a child and teenager. However, the excesses of the Hollywood lifestyle pulled her into the vortex and she has become someone who cannot find work because nobody trusts her to stay sober and focused, not to mention the nightmare of getting her insured. I’d rather be talking about the actress and her new film role instead of the party girl who hangs with Kim Kardashian.

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Rants and raves about burning topics that have caught my attention midweek, be it greedy corporate shenanigans, frustration or joy in regards to the Philly sports teams, a movie, show or DVD that has fired up my imagination, an intriguing personality, or what’s happening in the region. — Lori Hoffman, Associate Editor, Atlantic City Weekly

The problem with success is that sometimes we can become complacent. We assume everything will continue to run smoothly, so when it doesn’t we are surprised and don’t react as well as someone who anticipates and prepares for problems. Phillies fans were always prepared for the worst; that was our nature for decades of bad teams and low expectations with the rare 1980 and 1993 highpoints.

Nowadays, however, Phillies fans are suffering from this syndrome in reverse. We are so primed for success — a World Series title in 2008, a second National League title in 2009 — we aren’t reacting well to problems.

Chase Utley was injured sliding into second.

The front running Phillies have suddenly become the team in third place in the National League East behind the hated Braves and Mets. The Phillies hitters spent a month in a deep freeze that saw the team shut out seven times, including three straight times to the Mets. Elite teams are not supposed to hit this badly for this long — you can’t use “that’s baseball” to explain it.

Now, just when the hitting is coming around, the nagging injuries that have plagued the team all season and caused disabled list stints for Jimmy Rollins, Brad Lidge, Joe Blanton, J.A. Happ, Carlos Ruiz, Ryan Madson and Chad Durbin, has added two all-stars to the growing list. Chase Utley hurt his thumb sliding into second and Placido Polanco’s elbow has been bothering him off and on since he was hit by a pitch April 16.

Losing Chase and Polly for 15 days, let alone the horrifying thought that it might be longer, suggest that panic is a pretty acceptable emotion. I guess this is how the Mets fans felt when they suffered though so many injuries last season.

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