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SLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistan may consider granting permission for the shooting of a film about slain U.S. reporter Daniel Pearl, an official said on Thursday.

Police last month detained crew members who were shooting for the movie “A Mighty Heart” near the hotel in the southern city of Karachi from where the Wall Street Journal reporter was abducted in early 2002.

Actress Angelina Jolie will star in the movie based on Mariane Pearl’s book on the ordeal of her husband.

Officials said the Karachi shoot had been stopped because filming permission had not been granted.

“They didn’t apply for permission. They just came in without any permission and started shooting. This is not the way,” the home secretary of the southern province of Sindh, Gholam Mohtaram, told Reuters. Karachi is the capital of Sindh.

“They made ordinary people wear police uniforms and started shooting, which was objectionable.”

Mohtaram said the government would consider permission for shooting if request was made “through proper channels.”

Pearl, 38, was kidnapped in Karachi in January 2002 while researching a story on Islamist militants. He was later killed.

English filmmaker Michael Winterbottom, famed for such war-based films as “Welcome to Sarajevo” and “The Road to Guantanamo,” is directing the movie.

Oscar-winning U.S. actress Jolie visited Pakistan as the U.N. refugee agency’s goodwill ambassador last year in an expression of support for the survivors of a devastating earthquake.

by Michel Comte

TORONTO (AFP) - A lack of Western movies at the Toronto film festival this week, with one beautifully shot exception, David Von Ancken’s “Seraphim Falls,” begs the question: where have all the cowboys gone?

Von Ancken’s first feature film, starring Irish-born actors Liam Neeson and Pierce Brosnan in a tale of revenge and redemption, is the only film in this genre at the Oscar precursor and the last of a sporadic few in recent years.

Some suggest that US President George W. Bush, often described as a cowboy for his foreign policies and whose popularity has waned in his second term, has hurt the burly cowboy image and the Wild West genre.

Others point to a young breed of Hollywood producers who do not identify with the genre, as well as slumping ticket sales, and fears of spiraling production costs for features mostly shot outdoors and vulnerable to the whims of Mother Nature.

“George Bush is a fake cowboy with very little substance,” Von Ancken told AFP. “This film is not about the president clearing brush on his ranch for a photo op, it’s about two men linked by their rage.”

“There is even an anti-war sentiment in this film because the two main characters are trying to work out their feelings about their war-time experiences in a post US-civil war era,” he noted.

“I think there is a reservoir of people interested in the genre who just don’t get to feed in that trough very often,” he insisted.

“But there is a big risk in making them, particularly if it’s an expensive production, because most of the action is filmed outdoors and you risk being washed out by the elements. Most studios will not take that inherent risk,” he said. “We filmed 47 out of 48 days outside with no cover.”

Film festival co-director Noah Cowan said only a handful of Westerns were offered to be shown here, and only one was chosen because audiences are no longer enthralled with cowboys.

The genre is “old-fashioned and young Hollywood doesn’t see its future in the Western,” he said.

“There are still a lot of liberals in the mountains and on the plains and if cowboy films are what they wanted to see, they’d go see them,” Cowan said. “But they’re not, and so producers are not financing them.”

But, “the iconography of being a cowboy remains a very potent symbol in American life regardless of their feelings towards
President Bush,” he added.

A few scenes in a handful of films shown at the festival poke fun at the cowboy stereotype.

Comedian Sacha Baron Cohen as Kazakh reporter Borat Sagdiyev in a Stetson in the film “Borat Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan” tries to greet a homophobic cowboy at a rodeo with a kiss on both cheeks, but is rebuffed.

And, actor Forest Whitaker in “The Last King of Scotland” re-enacts Ugandan dictator Idi Amin’s much-publicized lassoing of his ministers at a party.

In Von Ancken’s film, Neeson and Brosnan follow in the footsteps of their gritty hero, actor Clint Eastwood, in “Unforgiven” (1992) which saw men begging instead of dying stoically, and irredeemable characters executing revenge instead of good guys saving the day.

Classic Westerns, such as those by John Ford, relied on simple storytelling: a white hat represents the good guy, a black hat represents the bad guy, and a showdown on a deserted street is likely to resolve their differences.

Since the 1970s, several films have undermined this premise, including Kevin Costner’s “Dances with Wolves” (1990) which presented Native Americans as good and the US Cavalry as bad.

Coincidentally, Costner was in Toronto this week to promote Andrew Davis’ film “The Guardian,” not part of the festival, with co-star Ashton Kutcher.

“Seraphim Falls” continues the trend of “inverted Westerns”.

“It is a Western, but not a purist Western,” said Von Ancken. “Pierce is the bad guy, but his character is more layered. It’s a parable about violence begetting violence, but also a chase movie from the snow-covered Rocky Mountains to the desert.”

The hunt begins with Gideon (Brosnan) evading capture by Colonel Morsman Carver (Neeson) while painfully trying to cut gunshot out of his arm. Brosnan’s brilliant performance was felt by Toronto audiences who winced and screamed with him at its world premiere here.

“It was cold. You didn’t have to act cold,” Brosnan said about shooting the scene in minus 36 degrees Celsius weather.

TORONTO (Reuters) - Penelope Cruz channels the ghost of Italian earth mother actress Anna Magnani and Forest Whitaker hunts for the tangled soul of dictator Idi Amin.

Meanwhile, Peter O’Toole plays Peter O’Toole in a movie about an aging actor with an eye for the ladies and a hand for the drinks.

Superlative acting has captured the buzz at the Toronto International Festival, setting the stage for the Oscar campaigns to come.

With the Film Festival set to wind up on Saturday, the talk has centered about blowout performances of a handful of actors — some stars, others respected journeymen who reinvigorate their careers after years of working less and less.

Among names most mentioned are Cruz in “Volver,” Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett in “Babel,” O’Toole in “Venus,” Julie Christie and Gordon Pinsent in “Away from Her,” Kate Winslet and Jackie Earle Haley in “Little Children,” Whitaker for “Last King of Scotland” and
Sean Penn in “All the King’s Men.”

“‘Volver’ just exploded at Toronto. The critics went wild for it and for Cruz. There is a sudden respect for her as a serious actress,” said Oscars expert Tom O’Neil, an online columnist for The Envelope.Com.

“One critic told me that he had seen her make bad movies in French, Spanish and English and now she was making up for it,” he said, noting that the Spanish-language Pedro Almodovar film could catch an Oscar nomination for best film as well as one for Cruz.

Cruz called the film her most satisfying movie experience yet and said she could not bear to part with the false ass that Almodovar had her wear to make her feel and look like the heroine of a gritty 1950s Italian movie.

BUZZ FOR WHITAKER

Whitaker, who returned to acting two years ago after a five-year gap, is also the talk of the festival. His performance is getting a similar buzz to what Philip Seymour Hoffman received in Toronto last year for “Capote,” a role for which he later won an Oscar.

Whitaker said he searched for Amin’s soul. He did enormous research into the man, talking to many people who knew him, studying documentaries and television films and working with a voice coach who helped lower the register of his own voice. The result, according to many film experts, is movie magic.

The 74-year-old O’Toole, who is tied with Richard Burton for the most Oscar nominations without a victory, seven, is being touted as a certain nominee for his work as an aging English actor who falls for the grandniece of a friend.

The Hollywood Reporter said the film “hands the accomplished actor one of his best roles in years and he masterfully runs with it.”

And when O’Toole canceled a trip to Toronto, many worried if he would turn out to be as ill and frail as he looked in the film. A spokesman said it was only a minor problem.

Veteran New York film critic Rex Reed says he would give the entire cast of “Babel” — professionals and nonprofessionals — Oscar nominations. But since he can’t do that, he would opt for best supporting Oscars nominations for Blanchett and Pitt. “I was shattered by that film,” Reed said.

Other critics are raving about Todd Field’s new film “Little Children,” which stars Winslet as a suburban housewife who has an affair. Haley, a onetime child actor, plays a man who exposes himself to children.

Christie, 65, a legendary actress who appears in few films these days, plays a woman destroyed by Alzheimer’s disease while Pinsent plays her loving husband.

Many have hailed Sean Penn’s portrayal of a Southern demagogue in “All the King’s Men” but the film itself received a mixed reception. A small man physically, Penn bulks up as he plays a character based on the late Louisiana Gov. Huey Long — like all good actors, he transforms himself.

TORONTO (Reuters) - Oscar-winning British director Anthony Minghella says he hopes he can make at least five more movies with actor Jude Law.

“I would be happy to make every movie with Jude. I’d be lucky to,” Minghella told reporters at a Toronto film festival press conference on Wednesday to promote his latest film, “Breaking and Entering.”

“(Actor/producer/director) Sydney (Pollack), who I follow as best I can around the filmmaking world, worked, I think, seven times with
Robert Redford and that was an amazing collaboration…I want to get to eight at least with Jude.”

Minghella’s last three films, for which he wrote the screenplay and directed, have featured Law.

Their latest collaboration, “Breaking and Entering,” makes its world premiere at a gala screening in Toronto on Wednesday. Before that, the pair worked together on “Cold Mountain” and “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” both of which earned Academy Award nominations for Law.

“The short hand is that we understand each other, I suppose….If something works, then stick with it,” Law told the same press conference.

“Breaking and Entering” also reunited Minghella with
Juliette Binoche. They both won
Oscars for Minghella’s “The English Patient.”

“Breaking and Entering” weaves the story of a class struggle involving a London architect (Law) and his family, and the architect’s relationship with an immigrant (Binoche) and her thieving son.