Tomorrow starts with the Patron’s Brunch in the mid-morning. (Unless it gets rained out.) The first film of the day will be J.C. Chandor‘s All Is Lost (which I can’t wait to see again) at the Werner Herzog cinema. Then it’s a toss-up between the 6:30 pm Robert Redford tribute at the Palm at 6:30 pm or The Lunchbox at 6 pm. The final screening is Errol Morris‘s The Unknown Known at 9 pm at the Sheridan Opera House.
Day: August 28, 2013
Soaker
I’m not saying that Telluride ’13 is going to be as monsoony as Cannes was three and a half months ago, but a thunderstorm is coming down now and the Friday-to-Sunday forecast is for scattered showers. I’m just sitting here by an open window inside my cramped unit at the Mountainside Inn, digging the rain and watching Rachel Maddow and…whatever, thinking about taking a walk and maybe getting some dinner. No pressure. Where will tomorrow morning’s elite outdoor brunch happen if the rain continues?
Another Educated Oscar Spitball Piece
This morning Hollywood Reporter award-season columnist Scott Feinberg posted a rundown of leading Oscar contenders in the major categories. The usual suspects, nothing that new, an underlining of conventional wisdom. The subhead boasts that Feinberg’s early-bird 2012 projections “foresaw 8 of the 9 eventual best picture nominees, as well as the eventual best actor and best actress winners.” The thing that stood out for me is Feinberg’s stabbing poor Fruitvale Station between the ribs by calling it one of the Best Picture “possibilities.” Please, Mr. and Mrs. Academy Member — don’t let the conventional wisdom crowd take this little movie down. The fact that it hasn’t earned all that much from Joe and Jane Popcorn doesn’t mean squat in the overall scheme.
Durango Dude
I read about the Telluride lineup when I touched down in Pheonix, but there wasn’t time to plug in and post a riff. Almost every film I predicted would be here is playing here (All Is Lost, Blue Is the Warmest Color, Gravity, Inside Llewyn Davis, Labor Day, Nebraska, The Invisible Woman, Under the Skin). The exception is 12 Years A Slave, but that’ll be one of the three TBA add-ons — trust me. There’s also Errol Morris‘s The Unknown Known, the Donald Rumsfeld doc. Plus Ritesh Batra‘s The Lunchbox, Gia Coppola‘s Palo Alto, Zak Knutson and Joey Figueroa‘s Milius, the opening of the Werner Herzog theatre, tributes to Robert Redford and T Bone Burnett and the Coen brothers, conversations between Bruce Dern and Leonard Maltin. Plus Don DeLillo, author of Libra and one of the great American novelists, is here…wow.
Weight Of Weightlessness
There’s no relation between the fact that I’m sitting inside a McDonald’s (free wifi!) at Burbank Airport at 5:20 am, and the fact that Alfonso Cuaron‘s Gravity has premiered to rave reviews at the Venice Film Festival. But there’s no harm in just stating facts. Here’s Justin Chang’s Variety review…over the moon. Significant sentence: “As visual an experience as the film is, it would be far less effective without the exceptional sound work by production mixer Chris Munro and sound designer Glenn Freemantle, which makes especially potent use of silence in accordance with the laws of outer-space physics.” Dozens if not hundreds of second- and third-rate filmmakers who’ve worked on mediocre space-adventure flicks are scratching their heads as we speak. A potent use of silence, observing laws of outer-space physics? This might work for a high-falutin’ film festival movie like Gravity, but generally speaking popcorn-eaters want to hear stuff in space movies. You know…booms, whushes, pyoom-pyooms.