Film

“Telluride Inside…and Out” is now the go-to spot for weekly posts about what's coming up at the Nugget Theatre. The 5 pm movie through Thursday, January 22 is "Bedtime Stories."

Cast: Adam Sandler, Keri Russell, Guy Pearce, Russell Brand, Richard Griffiths, Teresa Palmer, Lucy Lawless, Courteney Cox, Jonathan Pryce
Director: Adam Shankman
Screenplay: Matt Lopez, Tim Herlihy
Length: 1:35
Rated: PG, for some mild rude humor and mild language
Subtitles: none

“Telluride Inside…and Out” is now the go-to spot for weekly posts about what's coming up at the Nugget Theatre. We begin with this week's blockbuster, "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button." Showtimes: 7:30 pm, through Wed. January 21.

Cast: Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett, Taraji P. Henson, Julia Ormond, Jason Flemyng, Elias Koteas, Tilda Swinton
Director: David Fincher
Writer and Screenplay: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Eric Roth
Length: 2:48
Rated: Rated PG-13 for profanity, sexual situations, violence
Subtitles: none

Howie It has never been about blockbusters or crowd-pleasers, although films such as this year’s “Slum Dog Millionaire” may turn out to be both.

The Telluride Film Festival has always been about quality not brand names and Hollywood endings – although at times both appear on the screen.

The art of filmmaking, the TFF’s core value, is what drives their programming not just over Festival weekend, but throughout the year. Case in point is this weekend’s program: “A FREE Cinematic Weekend with Howie Movshovitz of NPR.”


[Click play button to hear] Howie Movshovitz has taught film at the University of Colorado, Denver, for about 30 years. He has also been Colorado Public radio’s film critic since 1976 and a regular contributor to NPR. He first began...

[ click play button to hear] Telluride Mountainfilm is the annual gathering of the tribe over Memorial weekend. What began as an adrenaline rush has evolved into Ground Zero for the survival of the planet through...

Ok, maybe not Seattle exactly, but across the lake in Bellevue, last night Clint and I hooked up with part-time Telluride local and former Mountainfilm director Arlene Chester Burns at the Bellevue Art Museum. The get-together was to celebrate the opening of an exhibition of...

The mission of the National Film Preserve, the 501 C (3) umbrella corporation under which the Telluride Film Festival operates all year, is to celebrate the art of filmmaking, not the business, which pumps out and promotes easy-to-swallow audio-visual capsules.

Each year, Festival directors Tom Luddy and Gary Meyer, screen hundreds of movies to find the highest quality product about 20 – 30 features, that collectively provide a great perspective of the past, present and future of film. Documentaries are given as much prominence as features.

This year, as in years past, the 35th annual Film Festival was as educational as it was entertaining, and it was played as a contact sport – minus the teeth. On the field, almost no one is overtly mollycoddled or petted. Actors, directors, cinematographers, buffs and students walk side-by-side down Main Street and side streets of town critiquing what they have just seen. But most of the buzz comes from the lines.

Hollywood regularly spits out films featuring the kvetching narcissistic alpha males who rule Tinsel Town. “Revanche” is an indie flick whose star, Johannes Krisch, is a virtual unknown in the U.S. The talented actor is, however, a big stage star at home in Austria, which his countryman, writer/director Götz Spielmann, described as a “more of a theatre place than a movie place.”

Spielmann spoke Monday morning, September 3, at the Sheridan Opera House. He was in town all weekend for the screening of “Revanche" at the 35th annual Telluride Film Festival.

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.