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Film

Minds of Mountainfilm - Tom Shadyac from Mountainfilm in Telluride on Vimeo.

 

 

This weekend, people enjoying the 2010 Mountainfilm program will be surrounded by skyscrapers instead of mountains—the film festival is screening some of its finest flicks in New York City at the Lincoln Center this Oct. 22-24, including Tom Shadyac's I Am and Reel Thing Productions' Bag It. Mountainfilm is also sharing its message about the extinction crisis (the festival's 2010 theme) by hosting a discussion with a panel of experts at the event.

Over the years, Mountainfilm in Telluride has evolved from its roots as a cinematic collection of outdoor adventures into something even more significant. Today, Mountainfilm offers a broader perspective on the world, a group of films, books and conversations by people who share a love for the natural world and a passion for protecting our place in it. The documentaries presented still portray the pioneering adventurers of the outdoors, but now films like I Am and Bag It also make another type of connection with audiences. They ask tough questions about how over-consumption and greed are affecting our world.

18 October, 2010 /

 

 

 

Above is a trailer from Ticked Off Trannies With Knives, another of the feature films set to screen at this weekend's Telluride Horror Show. This film made a big splash at the Tribeca Film Festival.The following is a continuation of yesterday's Q&A with festival director Ted Wilson. Read the first segment here.

Telluride Inside: Does the horror film industry have its own set of stars? Actors, screenwriters, producers?

Ted Wilson: If you’ve made a horror film that had an audience, you’ll always have a place in the horror world, even if you haven’t made a film in thirty years. The legends of horror never die and remain revered by fans forever. Wes Craven, John Carpenter, George Romero, Roger Corman, and on and on. We hope to have them all at the Horror Show some day!

14 October, 2010 /

 

 

 The excerpt above is from "The Translator," a film by Sonya Di Renzo, and one of the films selected for the Lunafest from the 600 or so entries the organization receives each year from aspiring women filmmakers. Women make less than 6 percent of the 250 top-grossing films in today's industry, and Lunafest offers a venue for women to break through and get their work seen.

These are not "chick flicks." The films that get selected and screened by Lunafest are created by women, about women and for women, but these are not saccharine romances with corny dialogue and predictable endings. This is cinema at its most powerful: great storytelling with compelling subjects and important messages, and above all, entertaining.

12 October, 2010 /

 

(Above is a trailer from Tucker and Dale vs. Evil, one of the feature films playing at the Oct. 15-17 Telluride Horror Show.)


One of my earliest childhood memories is of being shooed out of the TV room when the movie my aunt and uncle were watching turned really gory. I can vividly recall the scientist, whose arm had just been torn off by the monster he’d created, streaking blood across the wall as he died a slow, horrific, cinematic death. I don’t remember my first day of kindergarten or much else from those tender years, but that movie has stuck with me all this time.

Over the years, there were other things that contributed to my closet fascination with the horror genre: old Twilight Zone reruns, Stephen King novels, a masked Michael Myers lumbering after Jamie Lee Curtis in "Halloween." Scary movies are one of my guilty pleasures, but it’s always been hard to find someone to catch a flick with me. Until now.

11 October, 2010 /
[click "Play" for Seth Berg's interview with Susan]

 

 

10-11 TFFThe Telluride Film Festival and our five-star Wilkinson Public Library co-host the second in the fall Cinematheque film series programmed by Telluride Film Fest co-director Gary Meyer, celebrating the work of director Martin Scorsese.

"Mean Streets" screens Monday, October 11, 6 p.m. (Pre-SHOW reception is 5:30 p.m.).

Sit down. Getta grip. I'll lay this on you as gently as possible: Italian-American gangster films did not begin on the Jersey shore with "The Sopranos." The origin of the species is not  "Saturday Night Fever." Or "Married to the Mob."  Or "Casino." Or, god help us, the reality TV show "Jersey Shore," that so artfully extols the virtues of shellacked hair, boobs, bad language, and barfing. Or even Scorsese's "Goodfellas."

09 October, 2010 /

Salt_smallteaser Inception_smallimax Telluride's Nugget Theatre has two movies on the bill for the week of Friday, October 8-Thursday, October 14: "Salt", rated PG 13, and "Inception", also PG 13.

"Inception" is a repeat, a story about industrial espionage in which a clever spy must plant an idea in the mind of a company principal, and the victim must believe that idea is his own.

Angelina Jolie is a CIA agent on the run in "Salt"; on the run because she has been fingered as a rogue agent, and must use all her skills to stay ahead of her fellows. Staying ahead means using her abilities to run down an elevator shaft by bouncing off the side walls, for example. According to the critics, she makes it believable.

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

06 October, 2010 /

IMG_7909 Telluride Inside... and Out immediately called Shlomi Eldar's "Precious Life" one of the most powerful films we saw at the Telluride Film Festival last month.

"Precious Life" is a documentary about a Palestinian family trying to save the life of their infant son in an Israeli hospital. Susan had only a few moments to chat with Shlomi after the screening, as he was being rushed off to another event. Shlomi promised to take some time after the dust settled (he was headed for the Toronto Film Festival immediately after Telluride) to do an interview with Telluride Inside... and Out. This article, conducted by email, is the result of that conversation.

S_1 Susan Viebrock: At any point in your life did you imagine yourself directing a major documentary?

Shlomi Eldar: I started this project only because I couldn't get into Gaza Strip after Gilad Shalit has been kidnapped and after the blocked of Gaza by Israel. I had to find new stories so when I have got the e-mail from Dr. Raz Somech I said to myself "let's try and make a piece about it, it might be interesting." Only when one single person donated the whole amount of money I found myself following the process and the journey of saving Muhammad. Something inside me told me that it can become a film. In short I didn’t think or mean to make a major documentary and I didn’t realized that I could take 3 years working on that film.

03 October, 2010 /

Easya_smallposter The movie for the week of October 1 through 7 at Telluride's Nugget Theatre is "Easy A", rated PG-13. Olive (Emma Stone) invents a weekend tryst rather than admit she spen the weekend home alone. The resulting rumor is used to elevate her social status, using a modern adaptation of the Scarlet Letter. "Easy A" has a good cast and critics have commented positivley on the intelligence of the comedy. See below for movie times and the Nugget website for trailers and reviews.

 

 

30 September, 2010 /
[click "Play" for Erika Gordon's conversation with Susan]

Space.odyssey

The Telluride Film Festival doesn't mess around. No fluff. Not ever. Just culturally significant films that also entertain. Considered one of the most influential of all sci-fi films ever, and one of the most controversial,"2001: A Space Odyssey," (1968, 141 minutes) opens the 2010/2011 season of  the Telluride Film Festival's Sunday at the Palm series. The screening takes place Sunday, September 26, 4 p.m. at the Michael D. Palm Theatre.


"2001: A Space Odyssey"  is a meditation on man's inventiveness, but it comes with a warning label. (Think "Hal.") James Cameron owes a debt to Stanley Kubrick, whose film is the daddy of special effects, surrealism, and scientific realism in cinema.

24 September, 2010 /