Film

Prudence

By Tracy Shaffer

Sunday afternoons at the Mercury Café are always an eclectic mix with swing dance, poetry slams and tarot readings on the calendar. But last week the place levitated to a place even the Tibetan meditation class would envy. The occasion was a concert by the brilliant jazz band, Zuri, featuring the angelic voice of Prudence Mabhena, to benefit the Cunningham Foundation.

Hosted by Zuri cellist James Bailey, the event opened with some “world-inspired, improvisational, high-energy jazz”, as vibes playing percussionist Greg Tanner Harris describes the Zuri sound (I’d have gone with “jaw-dropping, eye-popping” myself), while artist Laurie Maves painted the scene on canvas for auction. Soon Prudence rolled in gracefully; the most grounded human being I’ve ever seen, with a soul that emanates from her brown/black eyes. She is pure spirit and a set of pipes that will make you believe in God.

by Jim Bedford

Thehangoverpart2_smallteaser The Nugget Theatre in beautiful downtown Telluride shows movies all year long and screens a hot new film this coming week. Bluegrass Festival is in town and the weather's beautiful, but find time for a little movie fun.

Friday through Thursday, June 17-22, the Nugget heads to Thailand for some pre-wedding hijinks with the HANGOVER II crowd. Our old pals from last year, Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, Zach Galifianakis and Justin Bartha are careful not to make the same mistakes twice, so they make a bunch of hilarious new ones. Along the way they meet up with Paul Giamatti and of course, Mike Tyson again.

See the Nugget website for trailers and reviews, and below for movie times.

[click "Play", Susan speaks with Mark Meatto and Michael Bohlmann]

 


How to Grow a Band It takes a lot more than water. To grow a band requires blood, sweat, and tears. Also, you need to find someone to do your laundry. The Western premiere of the show-all, tell-all feature-length documentary, "How To Grow A Band," takes place during Telluride Bluegrass. The FREE screening is scheduled for Saturday, June 18. 2011, 11 a.m. at The Nugget. (Seating is limited, so reserve your ticket in advance at https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/181677)

"This film documents the beginnings of Chris Thile's grand vision for a truly modern stringband and the struggles to realize this vision," explained Brian Eyster of Planet Bluegrass. "Personally I am very excited to see the results of the filmmakers' efforts. They will be on-hand for the screening and the band may join them."

 “…A gripping look at the nature of creativity and performance art," raved The Tennessean.

May 31, 2011
 
TFF38_Poster_Kalman BERKELEY, CA – Telluride Film Festival (September 2-5, 2011), presented by National Film Preserve LTD., proudly announces famed New York artist Maira Kalman as the 38th Telluride Film Festival poster artist.
  
Maira Kalman has worked as a designer, author, illustrator and artist for more than 30 years. She has written and illustrated thirteen children’s books including Ooh-la-la-Max in Love, What Pete Ate, and most recently, 13 WORDS in collaboration with Lemony Snicket. Kalman is a regular illustrator for The New Yorker magazine, one of her most notable works being the 2001 “New Yorkistan” cover in collaboration with Rick Meyerowitz.
 

by Jim Bedford

Wiigapatow_poster MV5BMTQzMDU3NDEwN15BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwMTI3MDU0NA@@._V1._SY317_CR0,0,214,317_ The Nugget Theatre in beautiful downtown Telluride shows movies all year long and screens two films all this coming week. Spring has sprung in Telluride.

Friday through Thursday, June 3-9, the Nugget stays literary with Sara Gruen's wonderful WATER FOR ELEPHANTS, starring Reese Witherspoon, Robert Pattinson and Christoph Waltz. We also get girls-behaving-badly all week with BRIDESMAIDS, as Saturday Night Live's Kristen Wiig and Maya Rudolph show the ladies can HANGOVER as well as the guys.

See the Nugget website for trailers and reviews, and below for movie times.

By J James McTigue

The Baffin Babes are four rad chics with whom it would be fun to have a beer, go dancing, or ski tour 1200 kilometers in the Canadian Arctic over 80 days. Except you weren’t invited on the ski trip; they chose to do it all on their own.

Babes Swedish sisters Vera and Emma Simonson, along with Norwegian friends Inga Tollefson and Kristin F. Olsen spent 80 days traveling along the eastern coast of Baffin Island, the largest island in Canada and the fifth largest island in the world.

At Mountainfilm in Telluride they will be presenting their trip, the glacial scenery, and remote Inuit villages they visited, as well as the fun they had, in a multimedia presentation at 6:45 Friday night at the Sheridan Opera House and 9:30 a.m. Monday at the Palm. (Palm showing is free to the public).

[click "Play" to hear Susan's conversation with Judith and Richard]

 

kicker: trash to treasure

MickysMonkeyWeb October 5, 2010, the Town of Telluride passed an ordinance against single-use plastic shopping bags, making Telluride the first community in the state of Colorado to pass such a ban. 

The ordinance followed the popularity of the film "Bag It," made by Telluride local Suzan Beraza. "Bag It," which screened on National Public Television in April and garnered awards  at film festivals across the country, became as much a call-to-action as a documentary, not just locally, but nationally.

"Bag It" is  just one of a number of populist responses to another film, the Sixties pop phenomenon "The Graduate," a movie that predicted a future of plastics. Artists Judith Selby Lang and Richard Lang's work represents another kind of response. They make "found art."

by Jim Bedford

MV5BMTQzMDU3NDEwN15BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwMTI3MDU0NA@@._V1._SY317_CR0,0,214,317_The Nugget Theatre in beautiful downtown Telluride shows movies all year long and hosts a great MountainFilm festival over the weekend before getting back to our regular movie schedule on Monday.

Monday, May 30 through Thursday, June 2, the Nugget gets all literary with the film of Sara Gruen's wonderful WATER FOR ELEPHANTS, starring Reese Witherspoon, Robert Pattinson and Christoph Waltz. Love and the circus; what more do you need!

See the Nugget website for trailers and reviews, and below for movie times.

Friday, May 27
     MOUNTAINFILM   970-728-4123

[click "Play" to hear Susan's conversation with Tosh and Oscar]

 

Shakespeare Like the Telluride Film Festival, Mountainfilm in Telluride vets hundreds of movies submitted by hopeful directors from across the globe to select the best of the best to screen at its annual event. This year, festival director David Holbrooke whittled down the number of picks to about 60 features, including "Shakespeare High."

"Shakespeare High" is a feature-length documentary that tells the story of a socio-economic cross-section of teens in Southern California who study Shakespeare to compete in a drama festival run by the many thousand-strong volunteer teacher organization, DTASC (Drama Teachers Association of Southern California). The Festival, now 90 years old, counts among its alumnae Val Kilmer, Richard Dreyfuss, Mare Winningham, Sally Field, Nicolas Cage and Kevin Spacey. Spacey is also an executive producer (through Trigger Street) of the film.

[click "Play", Susan speaks with Laura Antrim Caskey]

 

 

Antrim_lightstalkers Laura Antrim Caskey is a photojournalist now living in Rock Creek, West Virginia. Rock Creek is also the home of Appalachia Watch, a grassroots nonprofit group Antrim started in 2006 to focus on the environmental costs of mountaintop removal coal mining.

In April 2011, Antrim became one of eight winners of The Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights' 43rd Annual Journalism Award for "Dragline," a photographic exposé of mountaintop removal coal mining and the campaign to end the practice. 

Currently Laura Antrim Caskey is the West Virginia correspondent at Bag News Notes. She is also the poster artist for the 33rd annual Mountainfilm in Telluride. Her image is also on the program for 2011. An exhibition of her work is scheduled to hang at the Telluride Conference Center in Mountain Village, "Appalachia: A Land and People Under Threat."