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Culture

[click "Play" to hear Seth Cagin speak about film noir]

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Telluride Film Festival Cinematique, a collaboration between the Wilkinson Public Library and the Telluride Film Festival, is a film club catering to local cineastes, who want After-the-Festival to last year 'round. Each of the four-film series develops a theme. Last season's hot button was the French New Wave of Varda, Truffaut, Godard, and Chabrol. This season, the subject is film noir.

What is this thing called film noir? We all understand the word "film." Film is, according to Orson Welles, nothing more than "a ribbon of dreams." The word "noir" is French for "black." The defining characteristic of these "dark films" is fatalism and alienation, shady motives, and bleak prospects: one false move and you're out. Predatory "femmes fatales" populate this bleak landscape, sirens who lure hapless heroes into the world of illicit desires.

26 September, 2009 /
[click "Play" to listen to Erika Gordon about "Sunday at the Palm"] 

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The Telluride Film Festival leaves no child – or parent – behind. It is an educational engine that runs throughout the year. This Sunday, September 28, the Telluride Film Festival in collaboration with the Telluride R-1 School District and The Telluride Foundation re-opens the 2009/2010 Sunday at the Palm season with the first in a series of films that are free and open to the general public. Show time is 4 p.m.

Harrison Ford's Indiana Jones is an Everyman for all seasons, the quintessential action hero, both vulnerable and charming. In the four-time Oscar winner "Raiders of the Lost Ark," he shows everyone, not just the smart-mouthed, hard-drinking Marion Ravenwood, a real good time.

25 September, 2009 /

"Tarantino films have a way of growing on you. It’s not enough to see them once." (Roger Ebert) Quentin Tarantino; a war movie; the Hero, the Nazi, the Girl. With me so far? Enough said? And to Roger Ebert's point (see above), "Inglourious Basterds"...

24 September, 2009 /

Every season, Telluride's Ah Haa School for the Arts seasons its schedule of classes with high profile visiting artists. This fall, October 2 – 4, photographer Bill Ellzey teaches an intensive. The workshop is designed to help digital photographers focus on the Telluride...

23 September, 2009 /

Telluride's Wilkinson Public Library and the Telluride Historical Museum are presenting a free movie, "The Soul of a People" tonight, Wednesday, September 23. Showtime is 6:00 pm at the Library program room. The film is set during the Great Depression, and documents the...

23 September, 2009 /
[click "Play" to hear Susan's conversation with Sophia Tolstoy Penkrat]


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Over Labor Day weekend, Michael Hoffman's "The Last Station" enjoyed an auspicious world premiere at the Telluride Film Festival.

At the heart of the soaring biopic is a conundrum: author Leo Tolstoy's (Christopher Plummer) struggle in the last years of his life to balance fame and fortune with a commitment to a life devoid of material possessions. Weighing in for privilege is Tolstoy's wife of 48 years (and 13 children) Sofya (Helen Mirren). Her opponent in the debate is proto-Communist Vladimir Chertkov (Paul Giamatti), head of the Tolstoyan movement, a quasi political cult, which advocates pacifism, social equality, vegetarianism, and celibacy. The referee in the pitched battle is Tolstoy's secretary, Valentin Bulgakov, (James McAvoy).

21 September, 2009 /
One of the truly great rock voices of all time agreed to be the closer opening day, Friday, September 18, of Steve Gumble's 16th annual Telluride Blues & Brews Festival. And why not be neighborly? The enduring gravel-throated super star, Joe Cocker, lives just up the road a piece in Crawford, Colorado.


[double-click video to view in larger format]

18 September, 2009 /
[click "Play" to listen to Jackie Greene on his music]


[double click to view in larger format]

Into the fame game? There's no shortage of legends at the 16th annual Telluride Blues & Brews Festival, 
this weekend, September 18 – 20: Joe Cocker, Bonnie Raitt and Taj Mahal to name drop three. Then there's the skinny, soft-spoken man-boy who bears an uncanny resemblance to another icon, who, on more than one occasion has also performed in Telluride. But at this point in Jackie Greene's meteoric career, any allusion to Bob Dylan is so much horse exhaust.
17 September, 2009 /