Telluride: Final Day Movies

We can't believe this is our last day.  Time flew by, as always, although T3 told me today she thinks she hit her limit this year.  Here's what we saw:

Labor Day
Here's the unusual case of a mediocre book (by Joyce Maynard) being made into a better film. It's a story about an escaped convict who barges into the home and lives of a mother and son.  Despite a treacly ending, we both enjoyed the film.

Just as an aside, we suspect that this film made it to Telluride because the festival was offering a sneak peek at the new Salinger biopic. Because Maynard had a short affair and a longer legal battle with Salinger, pehaps it seemed fitting (to the festival director) to show both films at the festival.

Prisoners
Oof.  Neither Tanya nor I were big fans of this movie - a blatantly commercial film starring Hugh Jackman and Jake Gyllenhaal. The plot is time worn: Two young girls are kidnapped and the police are working frantically against the clock.. Meanwhile, one of the girls' father is going berserk at the lack of progress and decides to take matters into his own hands. I had to hide my eyes a lot during this film.

Tracks
I quite enjoyed this film adaptation of Robyn Davidson's memoir about her camel trek across the Australian desert. Tanya had issues with the film that I can't tell you about without giving something away.

Festival favorites that the Middle Sisters did not see:
Nebraska
Gravity
Ida
Tim's Vermeer
All is Lost

And there you have it. Over and out until next year.

T2

Telluride: Day 4 Movies

After a shaky start, the festival has bloomed into one of the best we've attended.  Today we saw:

Manuscripts Don't Burn
This difficult (emotionally) film is about the Iranian government's campaign to silence the country's intellectual dissidents. It's powerful and interesting (i.e. not boring), but perhaps most remarkable because it was made clandestinely (is that a word?). The filmmaker is only recently out of jail, so we are unclear about how he managed to turn up at Telluride where he is showing his movie and trashing the Iranian government on a public stage. Pray for him.

Mahanagar
My sister, Trina, introduced me to Indian filmmaker Satyajit Ray when we were both in college. (I mean she introduced me to his films.) I am a huge fan, so I was eager to see Mahanager lo these many years after it was made. It was selected for the festival (as a classic film) and introduced to us by Salman Rushdie, who told inappropriate jokes and sounded professorial and genial. If only Rushdie's books were as good as Ray's films.

Invisible Woman
What is it with directors who try to turn a famous old man's obsession with a teenage girl into a touching romance. This time it was Ralph Fiennes as Dickens (at 47) doing the dirty with a barely 18 year old actress he "discovered."  Maybe Fiennes (the director) was trying to show Dickens as a sympathetic mess, but to me he was just a mess, and a disgusting one at that.  The plot is Back Street all over again. Well acted, tho.

Lunchbox
Loved it! This Indian film starring the amazing Infan Kahn was a huge hit here. Apparently in Bombay (and maybe other places) office workers can and often do have lunches delivered to them. The lunch might be prepared by a commercial outfit or it might come from home, fresh off the stove. So this is a story about what happened when a lunch was delivered to the wrong person.  An interesting tidbit about the filmmaker: He was a lunch delivery boy before he made this film.

t2

Telluride: Day 3 Movies

T-Bone Burnett and the Coen brothers started our day off right by bringing a live band to their Q & A session.  Even at 9 a.m. it was a foot-tapping mood lifter (as if our mood needed lifting). Then we saw:

Inside Llewyn Davis
Loved it!  If you like music and you like the Coen brothers you will love this movie about a talented musician who just can't catch the bank-busting break.

The Past
Loved it! Anyone who liked A Separation will undoubtedly like this too. It's another complex family drama that takes a no-win situation and sees what one family does with it.  If you slept through A Separation, don't bother with this.  We overheard one guy go on and on about how slow the movie was and how he missed a bunch of stuff because he fell asleep. His friend said, "Oh really?  I loved it," whereupon the sleepy guy said, "Yeah, it was a great movie."  Seriously. I couldn't make this stuff up.

12 Years a Slave
Did any of you see Shame?  I think Tanya and I reported (was it last year?) that Shame was an interesting film but hard to watch.  Now the director, Steve McQueen, has presented us with a movie about slavery. I can tell you that it's the same old story but told very well. Personally, I've seen enough flesh-stripping, unless the filmmaker has something new to say.

T2