Telluride Film Festival #38 Review: In Darkness

The first big premiere I saw was at the Palm, at the Telluride High School, the festival does a good job of transforming the school's auditorium into a cool theater.

The movie, In Darkness, is so new there is not a movie poster or still to show you. It is directed by Agnieszka Holland who directed a movie adaptation of one of my daughters' favorite books, The Secret Garden ( 1993)...

and many T.V. series such as The Wire and Cold Case

In Darkness, highlights the true story of a group of Polish Jews forced into the sewers of Lvov after the Germans destroy the ghetto and begin to annihilate or imprison any Jew they see.

The group is helped by a reluctant Catholic sewer inspector, who ultimately makes great sacrifice for their protection, even endangering his own family to do so.

Holland, is Polish,  the daughter of both a Jew and an Agnostic, and knows all to well the horrors of the Holocaust. But it felt like the movie mostly highlighted the worst of people during this horrible time. Soha, the greedy sewer inspector, played by Robert Wieckiewicz only helping the Jews in the beginning for money. A German soldier, after making a Rabbi dance, gleefully ripping out a part of his face by pulling on his long beard. One of the Jewish women, who gives birth kills her baby in the dark of the sewers.

I am sure all these did happen during the war and worst.  But what we did not see, other than in Soha finally deciding to help the entrapped sewer Jewish, is any act of kindness, courage, selflessness in any of the other characters and I know those things also existed because they have been highlighted in such great Holocaust movies as Schindler's List ( 1993)

And my favorite Defiance

All three movies are based on the heroics of real ordinary people resisting the oppression of the Germans as they lay waste to Northern Europe. Defiance is also about Jews escaping after the destruction of the Ghettos. But where the Jews in In the Dark hid in the sewers and I mean no disrespect in the comparison, these people had such little assets and time to save themselves, any story of the Jews resistance is to be applauded, the Jews in Defiance were able to run to the forest around them and were much better off, but there were also other things very different between the two groups in hiding.

No true leader emerged  in In Darkness, were in Defiance, almost immediately Tulva Bielski in real life...

and played by Craig in the movie, brought the terrified people together....

In In the Darkness, although Soha, does rise above his known world and help the Jews hiding in the sewer, there is no central leader amongst the hidden Jews and the character, like real life people entrapped in dire times, revert almost to an animistic way of survival.

In both movies,  women attach themselves to men for protection, but where in In the Darkness, it is a raw act of just sex, with the women killing her child after the father steals the groups supplies and sneaks off to save himself, in Defiance, although Tuvia has proclaimed that no baby can be in the camp due to the need to hide from the Germans, he softens when the women he loves asks him for compassion. The Bielski partisans even find ways to continue with their tradition, the youngest brother being married under the canopy and eventually, though not highlighted in the film, go on to create a school for the many children that come there for protection.

A strong leader if needed for survival....
There is much documentation of the unbelievable leadership of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark...

 which protected the lives of all 33 men that went with them and created such a great mass of documentation. Lewis and Clark brought a respect to the whole group, including a black slave, allowing him to vote with the rest of the group on life threatening decisions.

The Shackleton Expedition,

 Where after things did not well for his exploration ship The Endurance, in Antartica, the leader of the expedition succeeded in saving every last man.

There are also times, when no leader emerges, leaving everyone to "save themselves", it usually does not go as well, ever heard of the The Donner Party

Telluride Film Festival #38: The dogs are so unimpressed.

I love all the dogs up here, well, I love dogs. Telluride is a dog town, with places to tie them and many store fronts complete with dog leash anchors and treats at the ready. There is actually an ordinance here you can't leave them in in an unattended car. These dogs are great because  they  are so unexcited about the "who's who" in town, they just want to be scratched behind the ear and be there to clean up a sandwich that George Clooney might drop running from the mob of "women who should no better" chasing him with cellphone cameras.  

I didn't try really hard as I walked by, it was so funny, I came around the corner and here this screeching and I had just been in the Conversation with Olivia Harrison, the widow of the late Beatle George Harrison...

who is here with a documentary of her husband's life and career, so many "connections" here- what this blog is all about, "pondering the connections in Hollywood"!

Telluride Film Festival #38: From the Darkness

One of the films I will be reviewing this weekend is In Darkness, but this morning I woke up in the dark, about 5, so I got up and started working, waiting for the sun to come up and The Steaming Bean, down in town to open, so I would have Wifi.

This year, I have one pass down from the Acme pass I had last year, that got me into all the movies at the Chuck Jones Theater up in Mountain Village, including the first viewing of The King’s Speech, I know I mention that way too much. The Acme, for the money, let me see all the movies I wanted to and some I went to just because I figured at the $500 plus price, each would cost me about $50. Like, 12 Hours...

I still think of my grandma teaching me how to  bone a whole chicken every time that movie comes up. My husband was so green with envy, because 12 Hours did not have a wide release here in the Southwest, go figure, literally where the events happened and he did not see it until it came out on DVD. I wouldn't watch it again, nor let my younger daughter, but he and daughter #1 had a grand old time late one night.

What I didn’t like about the Acme pass was many of the movies were at the same time as the very interesting panel discussions in Elk Park, the backlot films in the library and the conversations in the court house, accessible to all the pass holder and even free to the public, though pass holders get in first.

This year, I did not get my act together quick enough to get the Acme pass, so downgraded one level to the Cinephile, a preselected“selection” by Meyer and the other directors of the festival, consisting of a lot of Art House films, foreign films, documentaries and just a few of the big premiere films that I had such easy access to last year, like.....I won't mention that Oscar winner again, that I saw first, before most everyone else on the planet.

To confess, I am not going to most of the film offered on the Cinephile pass, but it does allow me access to repeat viewing of the big premiere films on Monday, I won’t know what those are until when the TBA are released on Sunday night.

I do have one big sneak preview film for tonight at 11, yes 11 at night. But I won’t know what that is until I head on down to the coffee shop, here in about a half hour, when the sun comes up.  I will probably know what that sneak peek movie is before I can get wireless and post this- but I wanted to post my prediction what that movie will be….as a record for all, who knows it might be another Oscar contender.

Oh by the way, I was totally right about Butter! It is here, Jennifer Garner is here, guess she was in the coffee shop like ten minutes after I headed out yesterday, with her two little girls, so don’t know about her hubby, Ben Affleck, but I totally guessed right on the first sneak peek of the weekend. Alas, no Jackman though.

Okay- my guess for the second sneak peak is one of two based on this evidence- George Clooney is in town, was honored with a tribute and is mostly touting his new movie The Descendants directed by Alexander Payne. But Clooney co-wrote, directed and stars in The Ides of March

Is he really coming to come all the way to a festival known for being the first to highlight Oscar contenders and Not tout his "baby"? 

But, possible there is some contractual reason why the idea of pushing two movies is frowned upon, in that case, Johnny Depp is here too and he has a new art housey movie coming out, The Rum Diaries, so new there is not a movie poster or still I can show you, but the movie is based on the book...

The fact Depp is here, is not totally an indication Rum Diaries will be shown to the all us “Joe Blow movie goers”. There are a lot of private parties and showing up here in what the Hollywood Reporter declared as the richest town in Colorado. I would of bet Aspen, where the joke is the billionaires pushed the millionaires out  to Carbondale down the road, but I digress. Last year, Brad Pitt was in town, with The Tree of Life...

 which was viewed only privately.

So – like I said, I’ll know before this is posted, but wanted to preserve my guesses. Oh, and there is a TBA who will be talking at the town courthouse this afternoon, my guess is on Garner, her movie Butter premiered last night at the Chuck Jones. It could be Clooney, though don’t know how they will get him in there, it probably only seats 70 people, Glenn Close had her talk yesterday and I didn’t try real hard to get in, the line too long.

Today, I might hang around the courthouse and see what kind of a line there is. The movies I want to see today aren’t until later and don’t feel so guilty about not getting to all the ones on my pass.

Well the sun is up…

Sorry, I know the view is pretty amazing here, and I am only here because of my friend’s kindness in inviting me, actually the house is her parent in laws, which are also a sweet as anything, but I do hope you are having a wonderful weekend with those you love. If it is any consolation, those I love are not with me, they are all camping in Utah while I am up here in Telluride and I miss them terribly

Telluride Film Festival #38 Review: The Story of Film

Before the first Cinephile viewing, we had the privilege of a little conversation with Gary Myer, Co Director of the festival with Tom Luddy and Julie Huntsinger. To read up on the history of the festival click here.

The film we saw was The Story of Film,  ...

directed and narrated by Mark Cousin. It is so new, I can not find a Internet Movie Data Base listing for it,just its Facebook page. The selection by Meyers and the other directors was a great way to start the weekend of movie watching. I will be mentioning it again in these posts.

It is actually a 15 part series documentary of the evolution of Cinema. We saw the first two parts yesterday. Mostly the film highlighted the coming together of inspirations- including Eastman's invention of film, Edison's invention of sound and the Lumiere brother's inventions in France, inspired by the component on the new mechanized sewing machines...

 that allowed the continuous feeding through of the film strip and walla you have Moving Picture!

After that there were many, many "ah haa" moments literally made by directors on set, such as the realization that unlike theater the camera could have a 360 degree view of the actors, that there could be wide and close up shots and editing could achieve both duel action in two different places such as watching fireman rush to a burning building and those trapped inside and it could create emotional tension as well.

One of the landmark film the documentary highlights is The Thief of Bagdad (1924) starring Douglas Fairbanks, where the evolution of "story" is evident verses just watching interesting things happen.

 Although The Story of Film was interesting and it had many things to highlight, I have to the say it had a well, homemade quality to it that was distracting, especially since it was about highlighting Hollywood at it's best. The director Mark Cousins, who also narrates the film, gives the film an Art House feeling with slow pacing, often showing us close ups, after close up of rundown parts of Los Angeles and other important cities to cinema, that hold part of its history. Often himself cutting to a new view sooner or later than the narrative would dictate.  And frankly, the continuing close up and than slow motion shattering of a red Christmas ball hanging from a branch near the Hollywood sign held no connection with me and looked like something my teenage daughter might figure out to do, messing around with Adobe.

I much more enjoyed last years offering here at the Festival of Turner Classic Movies documentary, Moguls and Movie Stars...

which also showed the first two parts to its seven part series and gave a very concise overview of the history of Film, decade by decade. Highly recommend buying or renting the DVD to see the whole series.

Telluride Film Festival #38: Garner, Jackman and Butter

So I am finally up here...

at the Steaming Bean Coffee Shop,  getting ready for the 38th Annual Telluride Film Festival.

I drove up the canyon this morning, got my pass, had to get a new lovely photo taken, literally in the Box Office, via a  McIntosh laptop because for some reason mine didn't take when I sent it online. That done and a few hours before the "official schedule is released, I headed here because....I just got a new laptop myself and with jumping in to teaching again  this week, I had no time to download the needed software, like Photoshop, to prep my photos of the festival for this blog. Did I tell you I was ill prepared? But enough about me....

Let's talk about Jennifer Garner...

Hugh Jackman...

And Butter....

I will pause to let you collect your thoughts.......


I don't know what you were thinking about, but I was thinking about their new movie titled....

Butter (2011)

About Butter Sculpting at the State Fair!



This is soooo new, there is not even a movie poster online to show you or any stills from the movie, but rumor has it that it will be one of the sneak peeks here at the festival!

Last year's surprise was just a little British movie called The Kings Speech...

I was lucky enough to see its first public view with Firth, Rush and Tom Hooper, the director in attendence...

Telluride is known to have the Midas Touch when it comes to awards seasons, so.....who knows about Butter's chances, yes there are a few other contenders on the schedule to be viewed this weekend and I'll tell you about them in the coming days and  who actually is here.... George Clooney is here for sure, Jackman, not sure, but one can hope!

Count down to the Telluride Film Festival

I'm going to the show again this year, what will be the 38th annual Telluride Film Festival, just a little festival, always on Labor Day weekend and at 8,700 ft. the highest film festival around. Sundance, hosted in Park City Utah is only 7,000 ft.

Many Hollywood's movers and shakers love this little festival sandwiched between the more posh Venice and Toronto Festivals. They walk around town in Levis or Wranglers, cowboy boots and very, very expensive sunglasses, breathing in the mountain air, being one of the gang and not being bugged by the "paparazzi", which are banned, officially or unofficially I do not know.

I am very ill prepared this year, having taken a part time teaching position last minute and  starting school this past week as well. So, today, Thursday, I am trying to get educated and will drive up the Dolores canyon early tomorrow and  dive in to a weekend of film.


To start off here is the 2011 poster for the festival designed by Maira Kalman, a fellow freelance illustrator...

Just like me, Kalman does work in the Children's publishing industry,recently working with Lemony Snicket on 13 WORDS. She also illustrates for such noted magazines as The New Yorker, who has not hired me yet though I do on occasion send their Art Director a postcard and Kalman just illustrated the new Strunk and White Elements of Style. I still have my very odd addition, I mean edition from college- ahhh, have not referred it in a while I confess.

It's Thursday afternoon and just got the low down from IndieWire- of the list of films and found out that to be honored and in attendence is both George Clooney, with  his new  movie The Descendants (2011)

And Glen Close with her movie, Albert Nobbs  (2011)...

 where she plays a women, playing a butler...

It is very over due movie adaptation of  a 1982 stage production Close starred in and has since worked to bring it to the big screen.

Less known to be honored is Tilda Swinton, didn't recognize her name, but most once I saw her pic. I knew she was the icy Queen in Disney's interruption of C.S. Lewis Narnia...

She stars in We Need To Talk About Kevin...

which  premiered at Cannes and  will be viewed at the festival. It about the aftermath of a High School killing spree and I confess won't be high on my list to see.

Let' s see....less than twenty four hours ago, I was in a swarm of the  first of the school year confusion,  starting my seventh year, after a two year hiatus teaching Art and various other classes in a one room school house near the Four Corner's Monument and two Indian Reservations.  60%  of the students are Navajo or Ute, 30% Hispanic, many English as a second language homes, and  maybe 10% Anglo students.

I have the cutest kindergartners and 1st graders you ever saw, many of them Navajo, with their big brown eyes and no desire to talk, they learn quickly the big kids will do their talking for them and my challenge to to get them to to talk for themselves and  trying to get all the kids to sit still long enough to do Art class...

and now for four days I am going to rub elbows with Big Wigs from Hollywood and probably some other movers and shakers, rumor has it some Bushes might be in town for the weekend and gaze upon George Clooney!

....it is a strange, strange world, I live in!

Review: Cowboys and Aliens

First off, I have to say, I think the movie poster is fantastic. Such a classic Western pose of the "stranger" coming to town and it is a pretty nice view of Daniel Craig's "arse" ...( I apologies to my children if they ever read this.)

Being a Western and Sci Fi nut, I thought " How ingenious! Aliens could come to our planet at any time in history- what a brilliant idea to have a "mash up" of two such opposite genre!" Then when I found out two of my favorite actors, Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford would be in it, it even sound better!

So I waited, with everyone else, through the huge hype Universal Picture and Dreamworks taunted us with for months, studying the trailer-okay maybe I was a little bit more obsessive than most...

Maybe the attention was out of desperation. Has there been such an unbelievable dry summer of no fun, blockbuster movies? I am just waiting for something different than a comic book hero remake?

Yes, there was the last of the Harry Potter movies, which I will be reviewing next, so don't want to go down a different rabbit hole right now. But please, Hollywood, give us a new idea!!

But right now I am reviewing Cowboys and Aliens....

which by the way, does actually stem from a graphic novel written by Scott Mitchell Rosenberg, which in turn stems from a Farside comic strip. Thus continues my rant on Hollywood's source material as of late!!

Watching the movie, I had a sense I had been in the scenery they were riding through so checked the location shoots on IMDB.

The movie was filmed in my "neck of the woods", well desert...

near Abiquiu ,New Mexico...

 which is Georgia O'Keeffe country.

There is a wonderful retreat center there called Ghost Ranch, that use to be a dude ranch, where O'Keeffe rented a cabin and painted many of her infamous paintings of the black and white cliffs. She later restored a house in the Pueblo town of Abiquiu.

I always am snapping photos when I drive through Abiquiu and the Rio Grande River valley on my way to Santa Fe....

Did I mention I was sooooooo ready for this movie to come out!!

And then July 29th came, finally, like a promise of an oasis of water in the desolate desert of a "no interesting movie summer," and amazingly, everybody in the house was available, including a boyfriend, to go over to Durango for an afternoon of good eating and a movie......

But alas, the promise of a refreshing movie that would quench my thirsting for good cinema was in reality more like the "water holes" one does actually find in the desert of the Southwest. Muddy, a little stinky, with gnats buzzing around it. But yes, being parched, one would take their chances to drink from it to sustain them until they reached the next water hole. But no thirst could be truly quenched from such a water hole like that, and I hate to say I was still very, very......very thirsty after watching Cowboys and Aliens.I hate it when actors, good actors, are not given enough to work with, you can see them on the screen, trying to squeeze as much out of their scenes and dialogue.

I always like to watch movies at least twice before I review them. If once is enough it was a really,really bad movie!! I got a second opportunity to see Cowboys and Aliens in LA, here for the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators publishing conference.

I had to send my kids a text message of me eating sushi in LA, we don't get much of it here in the Southwest.

Like I said before, Cowboys and Aliens has a great premise. The setting, old West costumes and props are great, the actors are great, the action and special effects are great and there is even Olivia Wilde, naked.......

But, the screenplay is bare bones and more of a treatment, than a plump, fleshed out script.

Warning: if you haven't seen this movie- I am about to tell you the entire plot in a paragraph!!

Stranger ( Craig) wakes up in the desert with a odd metal bracelet on his wrist and no memory of who he is.

Stranger comes to town, controlled by a wealthy rancher ( Ford) with an out of control son.

Stranger apparently isn't a stranger and but an outlaw and just stole Rancher's gold.

Stranger and the Rancher's son are arrested, and local infighting starts, but is interrupted when Aliens, not a word known in the old West, so identified as Demons, descend down from the sky in spaceship and adducts several town folk.

Stranger, Rancher put issues aside and go to get their kin back, joined by the town folk, outlaws and a nearby band of Apaches.

Stranger gets his memory back and takes the "posse" to the mother ship and twenty plus minutes of cowboys, town folk, Apaches and outlaws battling the aliens ensues. Ending with most of the "kin" being saved and the aliens tucking their tails between their lizard like legs and heading for home.

Olivia Wilde who actually is an alien herself, though there is no hint of that, no set up, until late in Act two- is killed and thrown in a fire by the Apaches and rises from it....naked, like a phoenix, at the end of the movie sacrifices herself and blows the ship up.

That is the whole story!

Okay, first, did the screenwriters even "google" Apache burial customs-

 I did because being from the area the film takes place I know that all the other tribes of the Southwest- Ute, Navajo and the Pueblo Indian would never, ever bring a body back to the camp and throw it in a fire, turning it to ash.

Most Native American tribes are very "Kosher" when it come to the dead- they abhor dead bodies, often unceremonially burying them where they die, in the dark of the night and those who have to touch the body are considering unclean.

Writers have to know the rules of the universe genre restricts and follow them!


Which leads me to being gut shot, stabbed, or falling off your horse in the Old West. Physic does apply! Especially since these are cowboys, not super heroes and there should be some accurate residual effect to physical injury, instead of one or two winces of pain, before hopping back on that horse!

These guys of late are tougher than the "Duke"!

Injured, Craig makes his way to the desolate town, with a nasty stab in his side, though he doesn't seem to suffer from it much, though later we find he was impaled with a foot long alien probe.

Than this is just confusing...the preacher of the town stitches Craig up, though he doesn't seem to reside in a church, but then there is a character "Doc" who is the bartender of the saloon.

"Doc" the bartender actually has the most developed character arc of any of the characters, a mouse of a man in the beginning ,there are many "set ups" of his character changing, learning to handle a rifle and a classic Western "payoff" of him finding his manhood at the end.

Did I mention Olivia Wilde is naked? Probably that fact with the special effects and action enough for some, but for the rest of us, her lack of a character arc was disappointing and such a missed opportunity.

What a great thing to hint out through the first act, the stranger getting an inkling there is something different about this beautiful girl wearing a six shooter on her curvaceous hips.

The writers did think of a brilliant idea, unfortunately in the second act, a humming bird, interacts with Craig, as if it is a spirit of someone else.....hummmm?, but apparently the humming bird was busy elsewhere when Craig woke up in the desert in the opening scene of the movie.

Now how cool would that of been to open the movie by seeing the desert sky, the tips of the red rock formations near Abiquiu, the sage brush and then watch a hummingbird buzz around the screen before waking Craig up, who was passed out in the red dirt. But they didn't hire me to write the script!

I did read a little about the production and think the answer lies in a little story I found on Wikipedia. Apparently Steven Spielberg was one of the films executive producer and provided the director, Jon Favreau with a collection of Westerns to watch. I conclude that Spielberg, a professed lover of the Western genre and someone who actually knows who John Ford is, ( a test of Western genre lovers) should of directed this or at least found another director who already loved Westerns.

I have to give kudos to Craig, a.k.a James Bond and as British as they come...

on his depiction of Jake Lonergan. I loved his twangy accent and he can were a western hat and ride a horse, though a few times he "posted" in the English style. Cowboys don't move a muscle in the saddle, becoming one with the movement of the horse.

Harrison Ford is always fun to see in a Western. One of my family favorites and a real hoot to watch is The Frisco Kid (1979) with Gene Wilder. "Shi-et!" and "Tuckis".

Though it is hard to see one of my movie idols age! Here is a post on that...It's An Odd Thing....

Ahhhh, but alas, I am still thirsty and unsatisfied and trying to think of a distant hope of a movie coming up in the early Fall that might quench my thirst.... one can only hope there is water out there on the horizon!