In Contention

Tag: Telluride Film Festival

  • TELLURIDE: Boyle returns with ‘127 Hours’ in tow

    Danny Boyle’s “127 Hours” made for a fascinating companion piece tonight with Peter Weir’s “The Way Back,” which I caught (and loved) this afternoon.  Both films, at their heart, are obviously about surviving at all costs, but they come from drastically different filmmakers with drastically different sensibilities when it comes to visual storytelling.

    Where Weir chooses the majesty of epic scope and films his true story with a lingering sort of patience, Boyle sets about filming his true story with the energy and vibrant spirit we’ve come to expect of his work.  Both films, however, find their groove in the naturalistic, mundane moments that inhabit tales as harrowing as these.

    I understand Boyle’s film was very well-received this afternoon when it debuted.  My audience in the evening was slightly more muted but clearly loved the film.  It helps when you have Aron Ralston in the crowd, of course.  His is an unbelievable tale and one with a rather beautiful message about the necessity of community and society to carry us through the day-to-day.

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  • TELLURIDE: ‘The Way Back,’ ‘The King’s Speech’

    The second day of Telluride has brought treat after treat. I decided early this morning to skip the world premiere of Danny Boyle’s “127 Hours” in favor of Tom Hooper’s “The King’s Speech” because I could slide two films in rather than the one. Peter Weir’s latest, “The Way Back” (which didn’t generate many reviews at all from last night’s premiere — most must have been at “Never Let Me Go”) was playing shortly after.

    It couldn’t have been a better decision. I was treated to both the film of the festival so far and a profoundly moving work of art from a modern master.

    Let’s dive in…

    “The Way Back” (****)

    Peter Weir has made a career out of visual feasts with thematic resilience. Some might consider him the David Lean of our time, and with good reason. But the key difference is that Weir has slowly developed an art house niche out of epic scale filmmaking.

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  • TELLURIDE: ‘Never Let Me Go,’ ‘Tabloid’

    On the first day of this year’s fest, things are off to an interesting, up and down start. I would bore you with an intro, but it’s late and I’m fading. Let’s get to the reactions…

    “Never Let Me Go” (**)

    I went back and read Guy’s summation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel “Never Let Me Go” after seeing the film tonight (I’ve never read it and knew nothing of the story’s plot going in). He wrote of a “discussion of mortality and the human condition” in an emotional context that, for a filmmaker like Mark Romanek (who knows from visual emotional storytelling — just look at the video for Johnny Cash’s cover of Nine Inch Nails’ “Hurt”), seemed a perfect marriage of material and artist.

    Shockingly, however, Romanek’s adaptation kept me at arm’s length from frame one. There is a distance here, a cold sense of removal from what would otherwise be an extremely moving narrative. I wanted desperately to feel for the characters and their plight (I won’t hazard particulars for fear of spoilers). But I felt nothing…at all. I wanted them to rage against their circumstances and show an ounce of the spirit they in one instance even set out to prove they have, but there was, again, nothing.

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  • TELLURIDE: ‘Inside Job,’ ‘Chico & Rita’

    It’s a bit of a scorcher in Telluride this year.  Relatively speaking, of course.  I’ve got all these long pants in the suitcase but can’t seem to shake the shorts as of late.

    Anyway, tonight brings “Never Let Me Go” and “The Way Back.” I’ll likely hit up the former and catch the latter sometime later in the weekend.  Errol Morris’s “Tabloid” also screens late tonight, and I can’t wait to catch that one.  I’m debating “Tamara Drewe” this early evening.  Guy’s Cannes review doesn’t instill confidence, but I’ve heard from others that it’s quite entertaining.  What to do?

    By the way, there are a bunch of rumors concerning Terrence Malick’s “The Tree of Life” suddenly popping up at Telluride because Brad Pitt is in town. Same as the rumor that “The Descendants” would show up because Alexander Payne is here. Sometimes, people just want to go see movies in a laid-back environment — even celebrities.  That’s all I’m saying.

    Anyway, on to the first set of capsule thoughts…

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  • OSCAR TALK: Ep. 30 — Reporting from Telluride and Venice

    Oscar TalkWelcome to Oscar Talk.

    In case you’re new to the site and/or the podcast, Oscar Talk is a weekly kudocast, a one-stop awards chat shop between yours truly and Anne Thompson of Thompson on Hollywood. The podcast is weekly, every Friday throughout the season, charting the ups and downs of contenders along the way. Plenty of things change on route to Oscar’s stage and we’re here to address it all as it unfolds.

    Today we’re chatting from the Telluride and Venice festivals respectively. The former is just gearing up while the latter has bowed a number of films already (I’m sure you’ve caught Guy’s coverage). So Anne has more to say about the movies today than I do, but this is what’s on the docket…

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  • TELLURIDE: Claudia under the stars

    It’s one of the joys of Telluride, the spirit of communal film-going evident in the outdoor screen set up each and every year in the middle of town.  Tonight, I’m heading back to the room, quite drunk and full after a meal with colleagues, and suddenly: the unmistakable wail of a harmonica.

    There is no way I’m going to hear the sounds of Sergio Leone’s “Once Upon a Time in the West,” to me one of the two best films ever made, and not stop to soak it in.  And under the stars?  In the crisp Colorado air?  Sold.

    Unfortunately, it was the end of the film.  I had no idea that was the choice for tonight’s introductory screening (which dovetails with the Claudia Cardinale tribute scheduled during the fest), but I stopped, grabbed a spot on the grass with the rest of the viewers and watched Harmonica exact his revenge with a big smile on my face.

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  • TELLURIDE: Settling in with the freshly unveiled line-up

    I’m just settling in here in the Colorado mountainside as the Telluride Film Festival prepares to draw the curtain on its 37th dance tomorrow afternoon.

    As I look over the schedule (I Tweeted the films earlier this morning), I’m seeing plenty to chew on. For starters, the world premiere of Peter Weir’s “The Way Back” is slated for tomorrow night. I was crushed, though, to see it slotted at the exact same time as the world premiere of Mark Romanek’s “Never Let Me Go.” But both will screen plenty throughout the fest, as a tribute to Weir is in store to go along with the former, while Romanek and actress Carey Mulligan are in town to promote the latter.  Author Kazuo Ishiguro will also be here to sign copies of his novel.

    Telluride is preempting Toronto on Romanek’s film, as well as the new Errol Morris documentary, “Tabloid.” Meanwhile, Sylvain Chomet’s animated “The Illusionist” has been playing the festival circuit all year and is definitely near the top of my must-see list.

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  • OFF THE CARPET: Once more into the breach

    So nine years ago yesterday I started a crappy, embarrassing little amateur site on Yahoo!’s now defunct Geocities platform and called it Oscar Central. It was a way to blow off steam in film school, maybe fold an offline hobby (Oscar-watching, predicting, obsessing) into an online community that seemed to already have healthy numbers. Plus, hey, it was the early years. I figured some low tech internet training was far from the worst thing I could be doing.

    That’s a long way of saying today kicks off my 10th season of Oscar coverage online, and in that decade, plenty has changed. One thing has remained the same, however, and that is a focused interest, both from myself and a growing readership, in the admittedly arbitrary and somewhat solipsistic process of awarding the “best” in filmed art and entertainment.

    To put it more succinctly: Here we go again.

    The 2010-2011 Oscar season takes its first real steps Wednesday as the 67th annual Venice Film Festival sets sail on the Lido. That opening night will see Darren Aronofsky’s “Black Swan” get its toes wet as Fox Searchlight tests the season’s waters, perhaps with a worthy follow-up to the director’s 2008 awards title “The Wrestler,” perhaps not. Two days later the 37th annual Telluride Film Festival lifts its curtain in the mountains of Colorado, bringing any number of “surprise” bows (we all know what they’ll be but, again, I’ll respect the fest’s wishes in this space), before Toronto’s media circus fills in the cracks and brings us to mid-September and the fiery beginnings of Oscar’s 83rd barbecue.

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  • OSCAR TALK: Ep. 29 — Summer’s best bets, fall festival preview, stiff documentary competition

    Oscar TalkWelcome to Oscar Talk.

    In case you’re new to the site and/or the podcast, Oscar Talk is a weekly kudocast, a one-stop awards chat shop between yours truly and Anne Thompson of Thompson on Hollywood. The podcast is weekly, every Friday throughout the season, charting the ups and downs of contenders along the way. Plenty of things change on route to Oscar’s stage and we’re here to address it all as it unfolds.

    There’s a lot on the plate today as we dive headlong into the madness one more time.  Summer is giving way to fall (though a check of the weather wouldn’t make you guess as much), and with it, the first major stage of the long haul: festival season.  Let’s see what’s on the docket today…

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  • Fall festivals ready for their close-up

    In the last couple of weeks the major fall film festivals have unveiled aggressively competitive line-ups, and the amount of potential awards product landing at Venice, Telluride, Toronto and New York is, as usual, vast.

    There are plenty of overlapping exhibitions but as for firsties, Venice will get dibs on Darren Aronofsky’s “Black Swan,” Julie Taymor’s “The Tempest,” Julian Schnabel’s “Miral,” Ben Affleck’s “The Town,” and Richard J. Lewis’s “Barney’s Version” before the films make their way to other fests.  Sofia Coppola’s “Somewhere” will be exclusive to the Lido.

    New York, meanwhile, landed a real coup by boasting the world premiere of David Fincher’s “The Social Network,” which will not be at the other fests.

    Toronto is again packed to the gills with product (too much, if you ask me, but it’s a media circus after all).  Clint Eastwood’s “Hereafter” will see its first bow there before heading off to New York in October.  Tony Goldwyn’s “Conviction” will also debut, as well as John Madden’s “The Debt,” Rowan Joffe’s “Brighton Rock,” Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden’s “It’s Kind of a Funny Story” and Nigel Cole’s “Made in Dagenham.” World premieres searching for distributors at the fest include Robert Redford’s “The Conspirator,” John Cameron Mitchell’s “Rabbit Hole” and Dustin Lance Black’s “What’s Wrong with Virginia,” any of which could end up being awards season possibilities.

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  • Jason Reitman in a gondola

    I had to hand it to /Film‘s Peter Sciretta in Telluride, who got a few minutes with “Up in the Air” director Jason Reitman right after I did. His and FirstShowing‘s Alex Billington’s idea: interview Reitman in a gondola.  Get it? — up in the air.

    Anyway, Reitman’s a good sport and clearly had a good time here.  It’s worth a look.  Peter is taking donations for a tripod:

  • WEEKLY WRAP: Festivals, festivals and festivals

    George Clooney in Up in the Air• After weeks of hype, “Up in the Air” landed in Telluride, and delivered. (And finally got a trailer too.)

    • Meanwhile, as some compare director Jason Reitman to Billy Wilder, we interviewed him at the festival.

    • We also got chatty with possible awards contenders Paul Schneider and Venice prize-winner Mark Boal.

    • On the other side of the Atlantic, our Venice coverage continued, including a first look at Michael Moore’s “Capitalism: A Love Story.”

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  • INTERVIEW: Jason Reitman

    Jason ReitmanTelluride Film Festival

    Four days ago, Jason Reitman finalized his latest film, “Up in the Air,” by making one final song change. Two days ago he unveiled it to its first-ever first audience, his nerves shot. Today, somewhat more relaxed in the wake of a warm reception to the film, he’s sitting outside at a cafe on a sunny day, the famous gondolas of Telluride swinging around and up the hillside to Mountain Village behind him as he thinks back on the experience.

    “It felt really good,” he says. “I’ve never had that short a period of time between finishing a film and it showing for the first time. I’m used to having a few weeks to get nervous, but I was really making creative choices up until the last second. It was almost surreal, it’s like, ‘Oh, yeah, I’m watching it with an audience.’ And there’s this moment when you give up the movie. It stops being yours and starts being everyone else’s. It’s unusual. People laugh at a certain point or they’ll find something moving that you didn’t expect. They start telling you what the movie was. I didn’t expect that emotional experience for myself. A lot came together Saturday.”

    Reitman began conceiving the story of “Up in the Air” — which strays considerably from the film’s source material, a 2002 Walter Kirn novel — six years ago. (Sheldon Turner, who shares screen credit on the adaptation, penned a draft early on, but Reitman came from his own place on things.)  He began turning over its themes in his head, considering them in their barest form.. “They started coalescing further a few years ago,” he says, “and then, really in the year leading up to the movie, right after ‘Juno,’ it suddenly felt like, you know, this was a question I really needed to ask. I go through the same questions that the main character does.”

    In the film, George Clooney stars as career transition specialist Ryan Bingham, a hired gun terminator. It’s an element of the film that skims the zeitgeist but its the personal journey of the character that Reitman wanted to dig at, notions of one’s responsibility to engage with the world around you, with one’s family, and the idea that no man is — or at least no man should be — an island unto himself.

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  • OSCAR TALK: Ep. 2 — ‘Up in the Air,’ disagreeing on ‘The Road’ and Toronto looms

    Oscar TalkWelcome to the second installment of Oscar Talk with yours truly and indieWIRE‘s Anne Thompson.  We tried to set aside some time in Telluride to do one of these, but time never seemed to permit.

    Anne is in Toronto this week, and, at the time of this recording (yesterday, so all “todays” and “tomorrows” should be re-purposed accordingly), was gearing up for a screening of Jon Amiel’s “Creation.”

    We tightened things up slightly this time, clocking in at just over 25 minutes.  Here are a few of the topics we discussed:

    • Which films are going to be tested by their exposure in Toronto (John’s coverage begins this weekend)?

    • The story out of Telluride, “Up in the Air,” and the awards prospects for the film across the board.

    • The dueling Best Supporting Actress hopefuls from the film, Anna Kendrick and Vera Farmiga.

    • The cool reception Jane Campion’s “Bright Star” is receiving in some quarters and how that could work against its major Oscar potential, despite exquisite craftwork.

    • By popular demand, Anne and I disagree on something: John Hillcoat’s “The Road.”

    • The “schizophrenic” marketing of the film, moving from genre/suspense to the love/warmth at its center.

    Have a listen below.  And by the way, these should be filtering in through iTunes now, so you can subscribe to the podcast here.

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  • INTERVIEW: Paul Schneider

    Paul SchneiderTelluride Film Festival

    Paul Schneider has had a headache since he was nine years old.  Or at least, he says, that’s what it feels like.  Since the rush of a film festival isn’t the best environment for migraines, a corner booth in an unassuming cafe is a nice distraction for the actor.

    Schneider left the North Carolina Piedmont with a degree in film editing and a role in his friend David Gordon Green’s feature debut “George Washington” in the spring of 1999.  He moved to Los Angeles for what he calls “six weird months” before retreating to home base and a year living in Raleigh, and that’s when things started happening.  Green’s film hit the festival circuit, later became one of the most celebrated debuts of 2000 (landing on Roger Ebert’s top 10 list) and put Schneider in a position to make some moves.  He picked up an agent and things started to come together.

    “I thought it was sort of a fancy situation,” he says, sipping coffee, looking off in the distance, thoughtfully choosing his words.  “I was farther ahead in this game than I was in the editing game.  I was still around what I liked.  I was still around this thing and I thought I’d just give it a whirl.  Even a moderate success in acting can afford you a lot of time and a lot of money to do a lot of other stuff.  But it kind of just kept on happening.”

    From “George Washington” Schneider starred opposite Zooey Deschanel in Green’s equally respected “All the Real Girls” (which Schneider co-wrote while he and Green were in film school).  He landed roles in Cameron Crowe’s “Elizabethtown,” Tom Bezucha’s “The Family Stone” and Andrew Dominik’s “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford,” but despite the indication that directors were banging down his door, Schneider makes it clear that he didn’t have much autonomy, nor does he today.

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  • TELLURIDE: ‘Red Riding,’ ‘A Prophet’

    Tamar Rahim in A ProphetThings are winding down in Telluride.  I saw the last film I’ll see here last night (Jacques Audiard’s “A Prophet”) and have a few things to square away before I hop the shuttle for Montrose and, finally, the flight back to Los Angeles.

    The fest has been a low key delight.  An IFC-sponsored dinner Saturday night brought out a number of the principals from films on display (where I had fun throwing back a few and discussing “that moment” when you decide film will be your life with “Red Riding” producer Andrew Eaton).  Nicolas Cage was strolling the streets last night with his kid, free of the usual adoring mob.  Jason Reitman, Viggo Mortensen, Paul Schneider, Carey Mulligan, etc. have made themselves available for interviews, priming the pump for Oscar season.  Good times all around.

    The big winners of the fest, from what I can gather from conversations with a number of attendees, are Michael Hoffman’s “The Last Station,” Todd Solondz’s “Life During Wartime” and, of course, Jason Reitman’s “Up in the Air,” among others.  Unfortunately, I missed (again) Michael Haneke’s “The White Ribbon” and a number of the once-in-a-lifetime screenings from Alexander Payne’s program, but I had a full, enjoyable time regardless.  I have a few more interviews to get to today, but I thought I’d rattle off the last pair of capsule reviews before I head off into town for some meet-and-greets.

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  • Werner, Werner, what have ye done?

    Nicolas Cage in The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New OrleansDon’t get me wrong.  I’m kind of glad to know there’s a lunatic out there making films.  Never a dull moment, that kind of thing.  But I want to know what happened to Werner Herzog.  What happened to the artist who gave us grand statements like “Aguirre, the Wrath of God,” “Fitzcaraldo” and “Woyzeck?”  Who is this new guy?

    “The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans” is a train wreck from the starting gun with a performance that almost captivates for two acts and soars of the rails for the last big push.  It would be embarrassing if it wasn’t so oddly endearing for being so utterly brazen.  And yet it doesn’t have the balls to embrace that sense of cinematic anarchy because it is, in the final analysis, a generic, inconsequential story.

    Intriguingly enough, the crowd response was considerably positive.  That could have had something to do with the fact that Nicolas Cage was on hand to talk about the film, but the madness of it all clearly struck a nerve with this early morning crowd.  Color me confused.

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  • REVIEW: “Up in the Air” (****)

    Up in the AirTelluride Film Festival

    Jason Reitman began adapting Walter Kirn’s novel “Up in the Air” five or six years ago (in the wake of an earlier draft by Sheldon Turner).  The country was on better economic turf, he wasn’t married, he didn’t have a child.  He was drawn to a book jacket with a quote from his friend, “Thank You for Smoking” author Christopher Buckley, enchanted by a lead character obsessed with collecting frequent flyer miles who lives a single-serving lifestyle from airport to airport.

    Today, unemployment rates are skyrocketing, tangible human connectivity is becoming a relic of another century, Reitman has settled down with a wife and daughter and futures all around are uncertain.  But in some ways, there is hope, a sense of turning an all important corner.  By the end of “Up in the Air,” that is just where Reitman has left his protagonist.

    Meanwhile, Kirn’s novel has been transformed from an otherwise unremarkable example of corporate comedy into a piece at once deeply personal and serendipitously relevant.  This is one of the year’s finest films.

    George Clooney stars in perhaps the role of his career (one certainly drawing parallels to his own lifestyle) as Ryan Bingham, a career transition counselor who zips from hub to hub 270 days a year.  In a nutshell, he is part of a third party firm hired out to corporations for the purposes of firing discontinued clientele.   He lives a life of isolation, a stranger to his Midwest family, who sees him rarely and kills his commitment-less buzz anytime they call with an update.

    He has airport check-in down to a science, stereotypically zeroing in on those who are quickest to follow behind at security, Moonwalking out of his shoes as he does so, his luggage immaculately packed, his system a work of streamlined art.  When he isn’t letting people go in the name of other companies, he gives motivational addresses meant to steer attendees clear of the extra baggage in their life, their commitments, extraneous relationships, anything that keeps them from living a life as he believes it is meant to be lived: in motion.

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