33rd Annual Telluride Film Festival 9/1-4/06
“I don’t want to hear any motherfucking phones in the motherfucking theatre!”
Welcome, welcome to you bet your skin. It’s time once again to brave being closer to the sun in the name of film. But I gotta say that it’s worth it to see the ol’ box canyon again. Telluride really is a home away from home for me and I’ll keep going back as long as I can for this festival.
Let’s talk about those movies.
Directed by: Alejandro Gonzales Inarritu
Written by: Alejandro Gonzales Inarritu/Guillermo Arriaga
Alejandro Gonzales Inarritu has made his short career with non-chronologically told, inter-connected, tragic tales. 21 Grams was a very good movie about life and death, but I’m one of the few people who was not all that impressed with his first film, Amoros Perros. I thought one story was great, one was passable and the other was just downright awful.
Babel falls somewhere in between. There’s not a bad story in the bunch, but one of them seems like such a side item that it could have been taken out with no damage to the narrative.
In trying to save his marriage, Richard (Brad Pitt) decides that he and his wife, Susan (Cate Blanchett) should take a vacation in Morocco. Unknown to him, a Moroccan sheep herder has just gotten a gun from a friend to kill jackals. His sons are sort of trained and they take it out with them to keep their charges safe.
These two worlds collide in a way that you can see coming…especially if you’ve seen the trailer.
Meanwhile, Brad and Cate’s kids are being taken care of by a Mexican woman in their Californian home. When the parents can’t get back in time for the nanny to go to her son’s wedding, she does the only thing she thinks is right: she takes the kids to Mexico with her.
Jumping to another country, Japanese businessman Yasujiro (Koji Yakusho) is blind to the fact that his deaf and mute daughter is so lonely that she is trying to get her dentist to have sex with her. Does it have anything to do with her mother’s suicide?
All of these stories intersect, but the Japanese story really seems to only be here to drive the point home that, no matter if you speak the same language as someone else, you may still not be understanding them. Heavyhanded? Oh, yes. Well made? Definitely.
I think this was a very good film, but I can’t really say that I liked it. It was so downbeat and depressing that I wouldn’t say it was one of my favorites. As one of my viewing buddies said, it was everybody’s worst day ever.
The acting was amazing across the board. Brad (in Tom Cruise’s old makeup from Collatoral) and Cate, of course, were fantastic, but all of the amateur actors were just as good, especially the Moraccan dad.
In this day and age, it’s hard to listen to and understand everything that is going on around you. That’s the point the film was trying to make. One man’s accident is another man’s terrorism. There’s also the fact that white people can get just about anything done (it just takes some time), but people with pigment have a really hard time with it. All good points. I just wish that I didn’t have to be beaten over the head with the point.
By the way, there was at least one person in the theatre near me who didn’t know that the kids were Brad’s until near the end. Talk about a dense festival goer! How do you not know this?! No context clues for me, thanks! I’m full!
not rated ’cause I didn’t see all of it
Directed by: Julia Loktev
Written by: Julia Loktev
I wish I had actually been able to stay for this whole movie. I was really liking it, but, alas, I had to work. One of the many dangers of volunteering for a festival.
A young woman (Luisa Williams) goes to a big city (New York, I think) for a mission that we find out a little bit more about as time goes by. The information is given out slowly on a need to know basis. She meets masked men in a hotel room, but she doesn’t seem afraid of them. She is led around by the men almost as if she’s a prisoner, but they never mistreat her.
I could see where things were going, but I really wanted to see how they were going to get there. (Someone finally filled in the twenty or thirty minute blank for me, but it’s not quite the same as actually seeing it.) And Williams’ performance was so good that I didn’t want to look away. She had never acted before. But she was amazing.
The film is a little bit slow, but that’s how a film like this has to be. It was almost like a documentary. The handheld camera was perfect for building the tension and showing us the confusion that the woman was going through.
I can’t wait to have an opportunity to see the whole movie.
Directed by: Christopher Smith
Written by: Christopher Smith/James Moran
A few years ago, Shaun Of The Dead was one of the best movies of the year. Now the Brits are back with Severance. Christopher Smith decided that the world needed a horror version of “The Office.”
And, for the most part, he was right.
A group of corporate types are out in the woods for a team-building retreat. There’s all the typical characters here: the incompetent boss, the brown-nosing yes-man, the hot girl that everyone’s after, the stoner and the cynical “cool guy.” They drive around for a while trying to find the cabin they were going to have all of these team-building activities in. Of course, they get lost.
That’s when they start to get picked off one at a time, Rambo style.
Severance isn’t the greatest horror/comedy ever made, but it’s definitely worth seeing for us gore/horror hounds. There are a few jokes that fall pretty flat and others that are VERY predictable. But it’s got enough really good comedy to go around and enough gore for two movies. The program called it “‘The Office’ meets Deliverance.” I think it might be closer to “The Office” meets Hostel. But it’s not as disturbing as either of those movies…or “The Office” for that matter.
Check it out if you get a chance. It’s actually already a pretty big hit in England. It would be cool if it was a big hit here.
THE U.S. VS. JOHN LENNON (2006)
Directed by: David Leaf/John Scheinfeld
Written by: David Leaf/John Scheinfeld
Ok, so there was really no doubt about me loving this movie from the very instant I walked in the theatre. Hell, the very instant I saw the first print ad in a magazine a couple of months ago. So that tells you that I’m a really big John Lennon fan.
That also means that I knew a lot of the information in the film before I saw it, so there were really no big surprises for me.
For those of you who don’t know what the deal was between John and the Nixon administration: John Lennon and Yoko Ono were, of course, huge proponents of peace, as any thinking person should be. They held a few events to promote the idea of peace. They were really strange events. Bed-Ins, Bag-Ins, etc. They were willing to be the world’s clowns as long as it meant that their peaceful message was reported in the news.
Good for them, I say.
Nixon and Hoover didn’t think so. Since Nixon wanted the Vietnam War to go on as long as possible (or so it seemed), he was very scared of the fact that someone as powerful as John Lennon was now hanging out with people like Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin. So he set Hoover on their asses and tried to have them deported. What was the charge? John was busted for marijuana possession a few years before in England.
Fuck that. We all know why.
The directors of this film (David Leaf and John Scheinfeld) had been shopping the idea around for ten years. It basically took the Bush administration to get it made. The similarities are amazing. The scare tactics, the tapping of phones, the celebrities being ostracized. The only real difference is that the people of the 60s and early 70s had real heroes trying to stop the war. And there were reporters who weren’t afraid to attack the administration. Where are our John Lennons? Where are our Carl Bernsteins?
Anyway, back to the movie. It’s really hard for me to be completely objective with a movie like this. I’m so passionate about both subjects that I can’t distance myself enough to really say whether the movie was actually as amazing as I thought it was. There were certainly some very powerful moments. And, for someone who isn’t so knowledgeable about the events on those five years, the movie would be a lot more enlightening.
As it was, for me, it was just a very moving experience that allowed me to get just a bit closer to one of my personal heroes.
John Scheinfeld introduced the film by talking about his experiences with Yoko while making it. He took a rough cut to the apartment that she still lives in in the Dakota in New York to let her watch it. She sat silently with no expression taking notes the entire time. There was no way for them to tell how she felt while she was watching. Then, when the credits rolled she clapped her hands like a little girl and said that, of all of the films made about John, this is the one that he would love.
How amazing would that be? She’s saying this over Backbeat (my personal favorite Beatles movie without them actually being in it) and Imagine (one that she had a LOT of involvement with). She liked it so much that she allowed them to go into the studio and take the instrumental tracks from some of John’s songs to use as a score. She’s never allowed anyone to do that before. That’s something to put on your headstone.
A friend of mine saw it at a different screening at the outdoor theatre here in Telluride. She said that, during the scene where thousands of people were singing “Give Peace A Chance” to the White House, the whole audience started singing along. Just one more reminder of how powerful John was and still is.
There will never be another John Lennon. But I wish there could be. We need him now more than ever.
THE GOLDEN AGE OF ALEXANDER KORDA (1968)
In 1931, a Hungarian immigrant went to London and changed their film industry forever. Check that: He MADE their film industry.
Alexander Korda, director of England’s first hit film, The Private Life Of Henry VIII, did a little bit of everything in and out of the industry. He was an adventurer, director, producer, writer and studio mogul. He built Denham, a huge studio that had seven separate studio spaces and a huge backlot. He produced some of England’s biggest hits including The Jungle Book, The Theif Of Baghdad and Catherine The Great.
The 1968 British documentary The Golden Age Of Alexander Korda was shown during this program of interviews with Alex’s nephew and author of the biography, Charmed Lives. I had to miss the interview and Q&A, so that sucks. But the film was pretty informative even if it did have the stiltedness of all British documentaries made in the 60s.
Korda was an amazing man that I need to find out more about. And so do you.
Directed by: Jean Gremillon
Written by: Alexandre Arnoux
I may lose my film geek card, but I didn’t like this movie. It was chosen by the guest director at the festival, J.P. Gorin. He chose three films by Jean Gremillon to show us. This one, hopefully, was the weakest one.
Maldone (stage actor Charles Dullin) is a man in turmoil (as evidenced by his constant scowl). He is a rich man who has run away from his riches. He has taken a job as a bargeman and has learned to love the life of a poor man.
He has also learned to love a gypsy girl who can’t really seem to return his affection.
When Maldone’s brother is killed in a horseriding accident, he is rushed back to his home by his family’s trusty assistant who looks like he just stepped out of a Shaw Brothers flick. (Of course, this was made in 1928, so people looked different…but THAT different?!)
His “happy” life back home ain’t so happy, what with a wife he doesn’t love and riches he doesn’t want.
I think a big thing that kept me from truly enjoying this film is the fact that drama hasn’t changed a bit since the silent era. Acting certainly has, but drama has not. I knew exactly where the story was going the instant I saw the gypsy girl. And even the film itself I had seen before. Other silent films did the same stuff before this. So what was the big deal? And it wasn’t even a very engaging story or characters that I could care about. I really didn’t like Maldone. He was pretty much just a jackass. The only person I felt sorry for was his wife.
After the screening, a woman was screeching about how amazing the film was and how it makes today’s films look like shit. That may be true, but she was being obnoxious about it and was almost sucking J.P.’s dick for choosing it.
But it was made better by the fact that she thought that two musicless shots were problems with the print and not intentional silence. Dumbass. If she couldn’t tell that the music stopped for a reason, she had no business talking about the movie…or any movie, for that matter.
Directed by: Pál Fejös
Written by: Edward T Lowe Jr/Tom Reed
Based on story by: Mann Page
This film, however, is what I want from a silent film. It’s a simple story with real characters and interesting things happening all the time.
Jim (Glenn Tryon) and Mary (Barbara Kent) are two lonely young people in New York City. As one character says, “It’s hard to be alone in the city.” They have friends, but all of their friends are hooked up with other people, so they feel like third wheels on nights out.
Luckily for them, they are both called to the beach by a truck with a band in it. They meet-cute on the bus and things just escalate from there.
Nothing extraordinary happens in the film, but the characters are so interesting that it doesn’t matter. You really want these two crazy kids to get together in the end. When things don’t look like they’re going to work out, you feel terrible for them…even though you know how it’s going to end.
Lonesome was released in 1928, just after The Jazz Singer broke down doors with sound sequences. Some people will say that digital video is the biggest advancement to ever hit film technology, but it has to be sound. No one has ever said that digital was just a fad. They’ve resisted it, but I think everyone knows that, eventually, all films will be shot on digital. Back in 1927 when Al Jolson told the world that they “ain’t heard nothin’ yet” the entire industry said, “Bah! Talkies will never catch on!” But it’s a technology that is still in use today.
Director Paul Fejos (another Hungarian in Hollywood) knew that The Jazz Singer had something going for it, so he added a few sound scenes to his silent film. He also threw in some tinted scenes to really wow ‘em.
As Bill Pence said in his introduction to the film, the least realistic scenes were the ones with sound. Everything else was spot-on perfect for a romantic comedy and for plain ol’ real life. (“Oh shit! I’m late for work! No time for a shower. Just run a wet rag over myself.” And the way he lets his feet breath after work.)
The story, as simple as it is, is still relevant today. That sense of loneliness at the beginning is still as powerful as ever. Especially if you’re in a big city and all alone with no one to share your life with. (Trust me. Ladies, my number is….nevermind.)
The Alloy Orchestra is always amazing. They added their own soundtrack to the film and brought it to life, complete with a live vocal rendition of “Always” that sounded just like an old 78.
This movie doesn’t get shown very often and I’m not so sure that it’s on DVD yet. The Festival has shown it twice (apparently the only film they’ve ever repeated) and I can see why they would want to. It’s a great film that shows exactly why the movies have been a popular form of entertainment for nearly a century.
And, if you do get a chance to see it, dig those scenes of New York City. It’s funny how the subways have hardly changed at all, but Coney Island is COMPLETELY different. Let’s hope that someone decides to return it to its former glory at some point soon. That would be amazing.
Directed by: Pedro Almodovar
Written by: Pedro Almodovar
Pedro Almodovar has, in the past, been Spain’s John Waters. He has shocked with explicit and perverse sexuality and broad comedy. He’s told stories of people that a lot of filmmakers wouldn’t touch.
Strangely, those tend to be the films of his that I don’t like.
A few years ago I saw Talk To Her here in Telluride. I loved it. I’ve only seen one of his other more recent films (Bad Education), but I think that he’s grown so much as a filmmaker lately that I have to check out all of his new movies. He’s dropped a lot of the old shock value and started to tell real stories.
Volver is no different. While it’s not on par with Talk To Her or Bad Education it’s still a very good story told with his usual flair.
Penelope Cruz is Raimunda, a poor mother in the city who is just trying to make ends meet while her deadbeat husband gets fired from every job he gets. Her sister is still in the grips of their hometown where everyone believes that ghosts and bad luck come with the east wind.
Raimunda’s aunt is a dotty old woman who thinks that her dead sister is taking care of her while her next door neighbor has been keeping an eye on her.
When Raimunda’s daughter accidentally kills her dad in self defense and the dead mother (played by past Almodovar muse Carmen Maura) shows up, things get really interesting.
If you’re at all interested in the cinema of Almodovar, check this out. If you’re at all interested in Penelope’s breasts, check this out. They’re on full cleavage display, Sophia Loren style, throughout the entire film. (Barring that, this is probably Penelope’s breast…um…best work. She’s MUCH better in Spanish than she is in English.) It’s not Almodovar’s best film, but it’s very good.
INFAMOUS (or CAPOTE 2: ELECTRIC BOOGALOO, 2006)
Directed by: Douglas McGrath
Written by: Douglas McGrath
Based on book by: George Plimpton
When director Douglas McGrath went onstage to introduce his new movie to us, he said that he was so happy that we would all be out so late (it was a midnight movie) to see a movie that we had all seen last year. David Thomson, Special Medallion winner at the Festival, said that it’s always good to get two sides of a story.
Well, looks like Douglas was more right than David.
Infamous is the story of Truman Capote and how he came to write In Cold Blood. Yeah. Same exact story as last year’s Capote. Second verse, same as the first.
If this film had come out first, it may have been better. If we had seen Toby Jones as Truman before we saw Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s brilliant take on him last year, we may have thought that Toby was amazing. If we had seen the party scene that opened this film before we saw the party scene that opened Capote, we probably would have thought this one was better.
As it is, Infamous is too little too late. There’s nothing in particular wrong with the film. (Unless you count the fact that the first 40 minutes or so is basically a fish out of water comedy. See how funny Truman Capote is when he tries to fit in in Kansas dressed as a very gay cowboy!) The performances are very good. (Probably Sandra Bullock’s best work as Nelle Harper Lee.) It’s well written. The direction is interesting. And I like the interviews with the characters.
The only true differences in this and Capote are the cast and the addition of an affair between Truman and Perry Smith (Danial Craig who is very good if a bit old for the part). The cast is huge, actually. Sigourney Weaver, Hope Davis, Peter Bogdanovich, Juliet Stevenson, Jeff Daniels and Gwyneth Paltrow…although I don’t really know what she was doing in the movie. She’s in it for three minutes and has no effect on anyone. In fact, if her scene had been cut, the movie would not have been any different. She was very good, but completely useless.
If you’re really wanting to see another movie about Capote and his time in Kansas, check this out. If not, you can skip it and watch Capote again.
Directed by: Osbert Parker
Written by: Osbert Parker
Take a bunch of random clips from old film noirs. Put them in a blender. Now make a story out of them.
That’s what Osbert Parker has done in this three minute film. And, while it sounds like an impossible task, he managed to do it brilliantly. It’s a totally post-modern dream of a noir cut and pasted in a computer. It’s a cool short that I hope gets Parker a lot of attention.
Directed by: Alex Weinress
Written by: Rob Carlton
A single father is trying to raise twin boys. But he has some interesting advice for others trying to do the same: pick a favorite.
This was probably the funniest and most charming short I’ve seen in a long time. It’s exactly what a comedy short should be: fun and to the point. It never wears out its welcome. Not to mention it’s got two really cute kids in it.
Directors Alex Weinress and Rob Carlton (who also played the dad) said that they made the movie for about $20. It shows, but that doesn’t matter. Story is all that matters here.
Directed by: Andrey Kravchuk
Written by: Andrei Romanov
When you’re a six year old boy in a Russian orphanage that isn’t so much giving kids up for adoption as it is selling the kids, you’ve got to know that it’s a hard-knock life. But little Vanya (Kolya Spiridonov) is trying to change all that. He is about to be sold to an Italian couple who seem nice enough. But, when an ex-inmate of the orphanage’s birth mother comes looking for her son, it raises a question in Vanya’s mind: what if MY mother comes back when I’m gone?
So he goes on a journey to find his birth mother. Will his semi-evil captors find him? Will he be rejected by his mother for a second time?
See this movie. It’s a very good Dikensian modern classic that not only shows how a little boy can overcome a LOT of hardship, but it shows us what it’s like to grow up in modern day Russia. It ain’t easy.
THE LAST KING OF SCOTLAND (2006)
Directed by: Kevin Macdonald
Written by: Peter Morgan/Jeremy Brock
Based on book by: Giles Foden
In 1970, Nicholas Garrigan (James McAvoy) graduated from medical school. Instead of joining his dad in what he thinks is a dead-end practice in his Scottish home, he chooses to go to Uganda to do some good.
Little does he know that he’s about to impress one of the most evil people in the history of Africa, Idi Amin (Forest Whitaker). When Amin hires Garrigan as his personal physician, he turns from the charming new president to the heartless dictator that the world knows in a heartbeat. Any minute he could go from Scotland-loving fool to violent monster. And that makes him scarier than any Jason or Freddy.
McAvoy (or, as I like to call him, Ewan Lite) is very good in the film, but Whitaker is abso-fucking-lutely amazing. He’s going to be at least nominated for Best Actor this year. No doubt about it. He’s scary and charming in the same breath. (Watch for Gillian Anderson in a small-ish role, too.)
Director Kevin McDonald (no, not the Kids In The Hall guy) guides us through Garrigan’s life in a Goodfellas sort of way. At first, it’s all fun and games for Nick. But, as things go south, we’re pulled down with him as he becomes Amin’s personal advisor and political scapegoat.
This, along with The U.S. Vs. John Lennon were my two favorites of the Festival. Check it out. But be ready for some violence to be done. It’s a harsh one.
Directed by: Eveline Ketterings
Written by: Eveline Ketterings
Ok, I didn’t actually see this one. But I want to comment on it.
Here’s what happens: a little girl and an older man go to a pool. They play around for a while and have some fun. Then they decide to play the “hold your breath” game. But he doesn’t let her break the surface. He hold her down while he stares in her face. She fights, but only looks confused instead of scared. Soon she dies at the hand of the man she trusted. Her little body twitches as the last bit of life leaves her. Finally, he lets her go and she floats to the top. Then he surfaces and breaths life in.
What the fuck?!?! Who decides that this is a good thing to film?! Director Eveline Ketterings was booed before she was even allowed to do a Q&A at one screening. At another she was applauded only by the two rows of people that she brought in with her.
I would love to know her reason for making this child snuff film. Was she trying to say, “Look what happens every day. Look at it and don’t look away”? If so, this film needs an explanation. If she just thought it was a fun idea to have a little girl play dead for her on camera, then she’s one sick bitch and needs to have her camera taken away from her.
I guess art is there for debate. If it causes a stir then it’s interesting. But it’s hard to call this art. It’s more like someone who decided that watching a little girl die was interesting. I wonder if she has kids or if she wants them. Too bad for those kids.
So, that’s it for my Festival. I didn’t see quite as many as I usually do, but it was close. And a splendid time was had by all…except for the viewers of When We Are Big.
