Film

IMG_2253 Five Mountainfilm in Telluride grantees, from a field of 75 filmmakers, photographers, and adventurers, each receive $5,000 and an Apple laptop computer to help with new projects that key into Mountainfilm’s mission to educate and inspire audiences about issues that matter. The grants are the first made under the new Mountainfilm Commitment initiative designed to help ensure that important stories are told – and heard.

“The projects we’re supporting with grants cover very diverse ground but we think each are really worthy, compelling and vital,” said Mountainfilm Executive Director Peter Kenworthy. “We were at real pains to narrow the field because we were presented with such outstanding applications. We think our top five choices reflect the kind of breadth, depth and excellence that Mountainfilm strives for in its programming. We couldn’t be more pleased or excited to be partnering with them.”

Red_movie_poster_final_01-404x600 Telluride's Nugget Theatre has one film on the program for the week of Friday, November 5 through Thursday, November 11, "Red".

"Red" stars Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, Helen Mirren, John Malkovich: good cast with guns. Should be interesting. Rated PG13.

For showtimes, see below, and see the Nugget website for trailers and reviews.

 

 

 

This Halloween weekend at the Nugget you can catch the scary, new vampire flick "Let Me In" that pays homage to the classic Swedish original horror movie "Let the Right One In." The core story is the same in "Let Me In," a young...

 

 

Above is the trailer for Wallace & Gromit: Curse of the Were Rabbit, 2005, 85 min. Rated G. The film will be presented by the Telluride Film Festival for the annual Sunday at the Palm Halloween Party, Oct. 24 at 4 p.m., an event for the whole family.

Wallace and Gromit, the Academy Award-winning claymation characters from the U.K., are probably the most lovable, cute things you can imagine—except kids wearing Halloween costumes. And this Sunday at the Palm, you can see both.

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.

 

 

 

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!

 

 

 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.

 

(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.