edited by Jonathan Doyle

Mafioso (The Criterion Collection, 3.18.2008) Nino Badalamenti is a supervisor in a car manufacturing plant who hasn't taken a vacation in over two years. On his way out the door to visit his beloved childhood hometown of Sicily -- with his blonde wife and daughters -- Nino is handed a package by his boss and asked to deliver it to a powerful and influential Sicilian gangster named Don Vincenzo. Once in Sicily, Nino has a hoot seeing friends and family, but his wife has trouble fitting in and is unfairly dismissed as a snob by Nino's family. Even more worrisome, Nino finds himself entangled in an intricate web of secret mafioso dealings and is eventually sent on an unexpectedly... elaborate errand. (continued)

Upcoming

July 2

Hancock

July 3

The Whackness

July 4

Diminished Capacity

Gonzo: The Life and Work of Hunter S. Thompson

Holding Trevor

Kabluey

We are Together

July 9

Full Battle Rattle

July 11

A Man Named Pearl

August

Eight Miles High

Garden Party

Harold

Hellboy II: The Golden Army

Journey to the Center of the Earth

Meet Dave

Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired

The Stone Angel

July 18

A Very British Gangster

Before I Forget

The Dark Knight

The Doorman

Felon

Lou Reed's Berlin

Transsiberian

July 22

Two Tickets to Paradise

July 23

Boy A

Telluride '07 Slate Announced

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The slate for the 34th Telluride Film Festival (Friday, 8.31 through Monday, 9.3) has been announced, and while there are many smart and stirring selections made by men of good taste, there are also no major pulse-quickeners or mind-blowers. It's basically a bunch of Cannes stuff along with a few Toronto '07 selections.

The idiosyncratic standouts for myself (if I were attending, that is) are a Norman Lloyd documentary (Matthew Sussman's Who Is Norman Lloyd?, a look at Lloyd's 70 years as an actor-producer-writer) and a digitally remastered version of Richard Lester's Help!

The only thing that could save Telluride '07 from "meh" status will be if that rumored-but-later-denied showing of a There Will Be Blood reel (as part of the Daniel Day Lewis tribute) turns out to be real.

The slate includes...

Todd McCarthy's Pierre Rissient: Man of Cinema, about the influential publicist, sometime film distributor and film buff who discovered talent such as Jane Campion and Abbas Kiarostami.

Lee Chang-dong's Secret Sunshine, which "stars Jeon Do-yeon, winner of the Best Actress prize at Cannes, as a young woman trying to adjust to a new life with her young son amidst tragedy."

Who Is Norman Lloyd?

Rails and Ties, Alison Eastwood's directorial debut [which] stars Kevin Bacon and Marcia Gay Harden in a story about two families in physical, emotional and psychological collision.

Julian Schnabel's The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

Cristian Mungiu's film, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days.

Eran Kolirin's The Band's Visit

Wayne Wang's A Thousand Years of Good Prayers.

Stefan Ruzowitzky's The Counterfeiters.

Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Parronaud's adaptation of Satrapi's graphic novel of the same name.

When Did You Last See Your Father?, David Nicholl's adaptation of poet-novelist Blake Morrison's memoir, directed by Anand Tucker, tells the story of a son's conflicting memories of his dying father.

Todd Haynes' I'm Not There.

Barbet Schroeder's Terror's Advocate.

Sean Penn's Into the Wild,.

Baltasar Kormakur's Jar City.

Etgar Keret and Shira Geffen's Jellyfish.

Li Yang's Blind Mountain.

Sarah Gavron's Brick Lane.

Kevin Macdonald My Enemy's Enemy, a documentary "that tracks Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie, a.k.a. the Butcher of Lyon."

Aleksei Balabanov's Cargo 200.

Noah Baumbach's Margot at the Wedding.

Werner Herzog's Encounters At The End of The World, an exploration of "the vast empty splendor of Antarctica and the meaning that Herzog, with the help of physicists, biologists and volcanologists, tries to extract meaning from it.

Khuat Akhmetov's Wind Man.

Mark Kidel's Journey with Peter Sellars.

Mark Obenhouas's Seep!, a doc about extreme skiing.

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Posted by Jeffrey Wells on August 30, 2007 at 12:10 PM

comment #1

karatechimp says ...

Honestly, it looks pretty good to me. I'd be happy to see at least 10 of those films this weekend.

And I'm betting they'll show "There Will Be Blood" during the tribute.

They always seem to screen a few others in speacial slots 'unannounced' so that the NYFF won't get their panties in a wad.

Telluride is one of the best.

Posted by karatechimp at August 30, 2007 01:05 PM

comment #2

Mgmax says ...

20 years ago, the two best things I saw at Telluride were a pair of Soviet silent comedies by Boris Barnet.

That was when I decided it was stupid to pay a couple of thousand bucks to see Miramax's fall release schedule two weeks before everybody else. I go to old movie conventions like Cinevent and Cinesation now, and spend practically nothing. If I want to see mountains, I go to mountains, not a film festival.

I'm sure it's still a cool fest for some, but not for me.

Posted by Mgmax at August 30, 2007 01:46 PM

comment #3