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Author: Susan Viebrock

Once the cat is out of the bag  – the directors of the Telluride Film Festival are notorious for keeping their selections top secret – and the weekend is in full swing, the “buzz” drives the traffic. Perfect strangers become fast friends chatting on line and at venues all over town about what’s hot and what’s not.

At a Monday morning screening of Götz Spielmann’s classic-in-the-making “Revanche” (see Views below), the elegant woman next to me introduced herself to talk the talk. “My name is Linda Clough. I am Chuck Jones’s daughter,” she said.

04 September, 2008 /

It must be in the zeitgeist. The 35th annual Telluride Film Festival was all about change we can believe in.

In film after film, we watched Everyman underdogs beat the odds and triumph over the rich and the powerful, all in the context of unvarnished reality.

A sneak peak world premiere, Danny Boyle’s “Slum Dog Millionaire,” was, hands down, our favorite of that genre.

Only a spoiler would have given a second thought to outsourcing or annoying customer service calls. But there were none in the house. Forget about the Full Maharani. There was no gauze, gaudy colors, bling, or long glance looks – well, a few of those – in this rags-to-riches fairytale about a streetwise orphan boy who becomesone of the new India’s 230 million or so arrivistes.

The only direct quote of Bollywood was a spoof: line dancing in the final credits.

03 September, 2008 /