Tomorrow morning I’ll again try to riff through the last three days of Telluride Film Festival viewing (10 films since Friday morning) without getting all bogged down. Frances Ha, The Central Park Five, The Attack, the wifi dead zone that is Mountaintop Village, etc. I got a decent video of Bill Murray tossing off remarks before this evening’s screening of Hyde Park on Hudson , a settled but slight film made with obvious craft and modest ambition, but YouTube uploads take forever where I’m staying so I’ll post it tomorrow morning.

Today Sasha Stone and I recorded a special Telluride-centric Oscar Poker with four guests — Hollywood Reporter columnist Scott Feinberg, Jett Wells, renowed cinematographer Svetlana Cvetko (Inside Job) and editor-screenwriter David Scott Smith. We discussed Ken Burns, David McMahon and Sarah Burns‘ Central Park Five (major criticism), Noah Baumbach‘s Francis Ha, Dror Moreh‘s The Gatekeepers, Pablo Larrain‘s No, Ben Affleck‘s Largo, etc. Here’s a stand-alone mp3 link.

Scott Tobias tweet: “Fair warning Toronto press folks: If you boo the Malick, I will punch you in the back of the head. Rhetorically.”

Wellshwood reply: “Don’t let Tobias intimidate you, Toronto press corps! If To The Wonder is a meandering, airy-fairy wank then boo at will. Slap it down.”

As with all film festivals, Telluride chatter is constantly about what everyone’s seen and felt and heard. After two days of this I’ve heard too many people say that a given film is “really good” or that he/she has “heard really good things” about it. Your brain turns to chewing gum after hearing this 30, 40 times. Last night I began asking chatters to try and express their reactions with a bit more specificity. I don’t think that’s asking too much. I try to gently draw them out.

Best buzz so far: Ben Affleck‘s Argo, Pablo Larrain‘s No, Dror Moreh‘s The Gatekeepers, Wayne Blair‘s The Sapphires, Ken Burns‘ The Central Park Five. Good buzz: Noah Baumbach‘s Frances Ha, Christian Petzold‘s Barbara. Flat or downish buzz: Roger Michell‘s Hyde Park on Hudson, Sally Potter‘s Ginger and Rosa, Ramin Bahrani‘s At Any Price.

It’s 8:50 am, and I have to so much to write about yesterday’s screenings and 90 minutes to do it in before leaving for Pablo Larrain‘s No, which is screening at the Chuck Jones at 11:30 am…I’m stalled, choking, frozen in my tracks. So to get the engine started, two worthless asides. If you write about something, anything….

Since my mid teens I’ve always carried at least two combs and occasionally three. I never want to walk around with just one comb because if I lose that I’m fresh out, hence the two-comb rule. But I don’t even want to be faced with a two comb situation because if I lose one then I’m down to one so it’s better, really, to have three. Then if I lose one I at least have two left.

If you wear glasses for reading (like me) it’s usually impossible inside a low-lighted shower to differentiate between the shampoo, the conditioner and the body wash containers because the labels are always subtly worded. So I have to keep the glasses near the shower and then open the shower door and half step out into the light and put the glasses on to read the labels, but the steam is so intense at that point that the glasses fog up and I can’t see anything. So you also have to keep a small wash rag near the glasses in order to wipe them off. But if the steam is really opperessive you’ll have maybe four or five seconds to read the label before the fogging occurs.

Obvious solution: Read the labels before turning the water on, but that takes a certain organizational discipline and clarity of mind that’s hard to summon when you’re half awake at 6:30 am.