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District9_smallposter2 "District 9" is this week's movie at Telluride's Nugget Theatre. The aliens came to Earth 30 years ago. As it turned out, they were survivors of a dying world, and brought neither the threat of interplanetary war nor wonderful technological advances, so they were consigned to a refugee camp in South Africa while the world decided what to do with them.

Impatience with this situation comes to a head as a multi-national company with no reason except profit to care about the creatures under its control, looks for ways to profit from the responsibility it has undertaken.

The movie is rated R for violience and language. Check the Nugget website for reviews and trailers. See below for movie times.

12 September, 2009 /

Art1 Some of us in Telluride heard that totally subversive speech by our President on Tuesday. You know the one: Obama actually urged kids to make the most of themselves. Take responsibility. "Just like Mao," said Fix News talking heads.

Telluride's Ah Haa School for the Arts must have gotten hold of an advanced copy of Obama's pep talk. Starting September 14, every Monday and Wednesday, ARTrageous After School Days, 3:15 – 5:30 p.m., offers a wide array of creative projects, from puppet-making to recycled creations. Wednesday is clay day. For two hours, young kids get to create critters that would make Wallace and Grommit proud. What's more, Ah Haa plays the willing chauffeur and plans to pick up students outside school on ARTrageous days.

09 September, 2009 /

IMG_5356 Director Todd Solondz, whose "Life During Wartime," had its North American premiere this past weekend at the Telluride Film Festival, is distinguished as an independent filmmaker who dares to go places others fear to tread. Solondz takes on universal themes – "Life During Wartime" is about forgiving and forgetting –  in character-driven stories whose denizens are quirky in the extreme. In high relief under bright lights, these eccentric individuals become Everyman, warts and all. The character actors in "Life During Wartime," both young and old, are fearless, giving flawless performances of very flawed individuals.

09 September, 2009 /
[click "Play" to hear Susan's conversation with Hannah Rothschild]

HBO contact sheet Jazz Baroness Hannah Rothschild's "The Jazz Baroness" hit a high note at the Telluride Film Festival, the documentary's North American premiere.

Like jazz itself, "The Jazz Baroness" is based on a melodic line – the leitmotif is Rothschild's great aunt,  Baronness Pannonica de Koenigwarter or "Nica, " an exotic beauty and mother of five, who left home in 1951 headed for New York in search of the man who wrote 'Round Midnight. Variations on the "melody,"  the improv, is provided by virtuosic friends, jazz musicians and historians – Sonny Rollins, Quincy Jones, Thelonius Monk junior, Roy Haynes, and Curtis Fuller among them – whose lives were touched by the exotic butterfly. The Duchess of Devonshire and other luminaries tell their side of the story too. Rothschild is the bandleader, deftly, sensitively defining the rhythm and pace of her ensemble cast, debunking myths, replacing scandal with fact.

07 September, 2009 /

The Telluride Choral Society announces its Fall concert, with the first rehearsal for adults, Wednesday, September 9. Rehearsals are every Wednesday from 5:45 to 7:15p.m., Christ Church, 434 W. Columbia. Artistic director David Lingle is preparing singers for a Mahler and Brahms concert with the...

07 September, 2009 /

The Telluride Film Festival is not only about film. Conversations between film buffs in the theater waiting lines, a hike in the hills surrounding Telluride between films, face time with actors, directors, and the chance to watch William Wegman sign your personal copy of...

06 September, 2009 /
[click "Play" to hear Kate Sibley speak of TFF's educational outreach]


2006 alumni The Telluride Film Festival stands out among the more than 2,000 similar events around the globe for lots of reasons, not the least of which is location, location, location.

The Telluride Film Festival is known to frown upon brown-nosing stars or the media. Quality trumps quantity: the Festival directors vet their selection down to just 20 – 30 films, new and restored, feature length and short. (Only New York does the same diligence.)

05 September, 2009 /

In 1966, long before I had even heard of Telluride, I fell in love with Anouk Aimee, one of the Telluride Film Festival's tributees for 2009. I was a young 707 pilot for Northwest Airlines and saw "Un Homme et une Femme" on a...

04 September, 2009 /

Have you checked out our new horizontal navigation bar? Slick, isn't it? Have you seen it lately? Just in time for the 2009 Telluride Film Festival, we've put up a link to a new page collecting all the best stories from TFF, both past and...

04 September, 2009 /
[click for Gary Meyer's conversation with Susan about the Festival program]

Pasted Graphic It is deja vu all over again as the curtain goes up on the 36th annual Telluride Film Festival, this weekend, September 4 – September 7. The picture on the world screen is dark as pitch: war, genocide, political debauchery and corruption, economic bubbles burst. If there's a silver lining, the toughest times may produce the greatest art – or not.

In 1929, after the global stock market crash, the top grossing film was "The Broadway Melody," escapist treacle based on a backstage show business love triangle. "Broadway Melody," MGM's first musical, was also the first sound film to win Best Picture at the Oscars. The recession of the early 1990s produced "Home Alone," a feel-good family classic featuring an eight-year-old left behind when his family heads out for a Christmas vacation. In 2001, the year America lost its innocence – and possibly its mojo – the trifecta of 9/11, the collapse of the dot.com bubble and corporate scandal led to another socio-economic contraction. The film to beat: "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone," a movie about a boy magician and his fight against Voldemort and the forces of evil. (Parsing the metaphor is child's play.) Which brings us to the present crisis and the sanguivorous. (And more obvious metaphors about blood-suckers.)

04 September, 2009 /