Month: August 2013

Perhaps I need to see Errol Morris‘s The Unknown Known: The Life and Times of Donald Rumsfeld once or twice more, but my initial impression was one of muted fascination and at the same time vague disappointment. I feel I know Rumsfeld pretty well from his innumerable interviews and press conferences during the Bush years so I went in wanting to know him a little better. I’m not sure that I got that from Morris’s film, although I was certainly engaged start to finish.

The doc is an examination of who and what Rumsfeld is by way of his “snowflakes” — i.e., thousands of memos he dictated over the decades. But when one of the flakes exposes some chink in the armor, Rumsfeld shrugs and grins and throws up his hands and spins it around in his usual way.

For me the most interesting aspect was the straight biographical stuff.

Here’s what I texted to a friend last night: “Efficient, engaging, chilly, a bit frustrating. The obvious similarity to The Fog of War makes it feel deja vu-ish, but that 2004 Oscar winner was a haunting cautionary fable that stayed with you. And it was more emotional than the Rumsfeld doc, or for me it was. The Unknown Known boils down to being an exercise in the study of denial and spin and revelation and doublespeak. Perhaps the man is impenetrable. I know there’s no catharsis in the film. It’s a good intelligent work that didn’t knock my boots off.”

It’s 8 am in Telluride — less than an hour to get to the 9 am Palo Alto screening at “the Zog.” The upside is that it won’t be too crowded and I can “get it out of the way,” as I’ve been saying from time to time since I arrived here two days ago. 11:05 am update: I saw it this morning, tapping out a response now. I really hate watching teenage nihilism. There’s no aesthetic beneath it. I guess I’m really saying that teenagers are deathly boring as dramatic protagonists. They’re anxious, uncertain, confused, withdrawn…later. Give me protagonists who are fighters, schemers, lovers, poets, politicians — anything but teenagers.

Toward the end of Thursday’s Patron’s Brunch Blue is The Warmest Color star Adele Exarchopoulos and costar Jeremie Lahuerte (with whom I had spoken briefly and taken a shot of) strolled out into a nearby field and savored a moment. Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone took this pic while waiting for the shuttle. She was hardly violating their privacy — dozens of others were checking them out as they also waited for a ride back to town.

Blue kidz.

Today, the first full day of the 2013 Telluride Film Festival, was one of no small expenditure. A 6:30 wake-up and 2 and 1/2 hours of writing. Picked up festival pass and waited in line for a full hour to get on the bus to the Patron’s Picnic. Enjoyed brunch for about 90 minutes, give or take. Uploaded photos to HE, barely made it to 2:30 pm screening of Labor Day at Chuck Jones. Learned on gondola that volunteers are referring to Werner Herzog cinema as “the Zog.” Back down to village, wrote scattershot review of Labor Day, just made it to 7 pm screening of Inside Llewyn Davis at Galaxy. Had to leave 25 minutes before it ended to make 9 pm screening of Erroll Morris‘s The Unknown Known, his Fog of War-ish Donald Rumsfeld doc. Decided against attending 11:45 pm screening of Jonathan Glazer‘s Under The Skin — too whipped. It’s now just after midnight and I need six. Up again tomorrow at 6:30.

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Jason Reitman‘s Labor Day (Paramount, 12.25) is a decently crafted, amber-lighted period drama, based on the 2009 Joyce Maynard book and set during the Labor Day holiday of 1987, about…well, it’s pretty hard to put into a succinct sentence. It begins as a kind of home invasion situation that isn’t quite a hostage or kidnapping thing. It’s a family love story of sorts mixed with a criminal-hiding-out-in-the-home-of-a-single-neurotic-mom-and-her-son story. A spin on a yarn that sinks in every so often. It has a current of sincerity. It tries to do the right thing.

But Labor Day is also about how a 13 year-old boy (played by Gattlin Griffith) can, in a movie like this, turn into a slightly larger alien with CG eyes when he turns 16 or 17, and then reverse course and shrink into Tobey Maguire when he reaches maturity. It’s a horrible third-act miscalculation, and already I’ve been called a dick for mentioning this.

Josh Brolin is the convict and Kate Winlset is the mom. But it’s clear early on that Brolin is the gentle nurturing type who’s looking for a little love (and who isn’t?) and that Winslet misses the company of a good man. So before long the film has turned into Escaped Convict Knows Best (And He Sure Can Cook A Pie!). But it’s one of those films that are driven by a backstory that happened in the past, and that kind of thing irritates me. Or it did today at least.

Brolin delivers his best performance since No Country For Old Men, but — I’m sorry but this has to be said — Reitman’s movie isn’t very satisfying. It doesn’t get it. It’s not a catastrophe but it felt to me like a sensitive humanist misfire.

There was a vibe in the room as Labor Day ended at the Chuck Jones Theatre. The vibe said “hmmm…okay, that happened.” If people like a film they stay in their seats and watch the credits and smile and share their enthusiasm in the lobby. I noticed a lot of people in my area of the theatre bolting as soon as it was over and people generally avoiding conversation and/or talking about stuff other than the film.

But the real truth always comes out on the gondola ride down. Everybody in my gondola was down on Labor Day. And yet every person in Sasha Stone‘s gondola was fairly happy with it. So my gondola just happened to be filled with mean, snarly, judgmental shitheads and Sasha’s just happened to be filled with generous-hearted alpha people who wanted only to understand and “get it” and show the love. Do we pick our gondola-ride partners? Do people say, “I want to ride with that group over there because I didn’t like the film and it looks like they didn’t either”? Or do gondola-riders lie a little bit about how much they liked or were okay with a film? I think my gondola crew was being more honest than Sasha’s, but let’s see how it shakes out.

The first screening of the 2013 Telluride Film Festival is Jason Reitman‘s Labor Day at 2:30 up at the Chuck Jones. It’s actually a patrons-and-press-only screening so if you’re not on the list catch the 3pm screening of All Is Lost — you’ll be in good hands. It took forever to get to the Patron’s Picnic (slow buses) but it was serene shooting the shit with every heavyweight and sharpshooter in town. Everyone was there — Robert Redford, Werner Herzog, Adele Exarchopoulos, Errol Morris, Francis Coppola, Gia Coppola, Bruce Dern, J.C. Chandor, Alexander Payne — plus all the usual cool kidz from the distribution and journalistic ranks. If I don’t leave right now for the Chuck Jones I’ll miss the 2:30 screening so I’m shining the captions for now. Later.

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I observed three and half years ago that Douglas Sirk was mostly dismissed by critics of the ’50s and early ’60s for making films that were no more and no less than what they seemed to be — i.e., emotionally dreary, visually lush melodramas about repressed women suffering greatly through crises of the heart as they struggled to maintain tidy, ultra-proper appearances. I said this in a short piece called “Respectful Sirk Takedown,” but only because I felt that the cultists had taken things too far. I respect the bright fellows who claim that Sirk’s films deliver covert social criticism along with the trademark grandiose emotional sweep (or whatever you want to call it), but that ’50s soap-opera vibe sends me into spasms and I really can’t stand spending much time with the older, drearier versions of Lana Turner or Jane Wyman.

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After arriving in Telluride around 4pm I checked into the Mountainside Inn — the only poor man’s hotel in this almost oppressively upscale resort community — and watched two or three hours of the coverage of the 50th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington. A deeply moving occasion in many ways. I was half-watching and half-writing, but I somehow began to melt when one of the MSNBC guys played this tape of Peter, Paul and Mary. There’s something so touchingly innocent and open-hearted and Llewyn Davis-y about this song, and the way they sing it. Especially Mary Travers. I didn’t even know she’d passed. Complications from lukemia in 2009.

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.

Thursday and Friday screening rundown for the 2013 Telluride Film Festival.

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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?

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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.

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.

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