Alejandro G. Inarritu‘s Birdman (Fox Searchlight, 10.17), an audacious, darkly hilarious serving of snap-crackle brilliance and psychological excavation par excellence, blew the roof off the Werner Herzog theatre last night. I was giddy, ecstatic, swooning as I half-stumbled into the night air…so was almost everyone I spoke to about it over the next two or three hours. Okay, not everyone but those who were hungry and adventurous and receptive enough to revel in a work of reaching, swirling genius…pig heaven!
Like I said on Twitter last night, it’s an all-but-guaranteed Oscar nominee in several categories — Best Picture, Best Director (Inarritu), Best Actor (Michael Keaton), Best Original Screenplay, Best Supporting Actor (Edward Norton), Best Supporting Actress (Emma Stone), Best Cinematography (Emmanuel Lubezki), Best Editing, etc.
Birdman is not just a visual groundbreaker — not actually a single seamless, roving Steadicam shot from start to finish but a wonderful illusion of this. It’s more profoundly a searcher, reacher and a mad leaper of a film with one live-wire, mad-rodent performance after another. Everyone sings and dances and somersaults in this tag-team circus but Keaton is the leader and the daddy. He opens himself up and slices in like a surgeon in an awesome, at times unsettling tour de force. Whether he wins the Best Actor Oscar or not, you can absolutely call him the Comeback Kid.
For the sheer immersive pleasure of it I saw Andrey Zvyagintsev‘s Leviathan this morning at Mason’s Hall Cinema. Not quite as cool as seeing it all big and wowser at the Salle Debussy last May, but certainly good enough. It’s 2:50 pm now. At 4 pm I’m seeing Robert Kenner‘s Merchants of Doubt at the Nugget. At 6:45 Alejandro G. Inarritu‘s Birdman (allegedly a big one) screens at the Werner Herzog. And then a Sony Pictures Classics gathering at La Marmotte; also a Fox Searchlight party at the Sheridan. Three films, two parties, three or four hours of filing time…that’ll do for today.
To my surprise, Morten Tyldum and Graham Moore‘s The Imitation Game (Weinstein Co., 11.21) works quite well. Although mostly a tale about the personal, bureaucratic and old-school morality issues that interfered with and ultimately shut down the beautiful mind of Enigma code-breaker Alan Turing, The Imitation Game nonetheless conveys the melancholy alone-ness and heartache that … Read more
I returned an hour ago from tonight’s first-ever Telluride screening of Jon Stewart‘s Rosewater, an entirely honorable, you-are-there absorbing political melodrama — well-honed, believably acted, tightly crafted. Prior to that evening (which began just after 9 pm) a packed Werner Herzog Cinema audience saw Morten Tyldum‘s The Imitation Game, which struck me and everyone I spoke to afterwards as a Best Picture contender; Benedict Cumberbatch‘s performance as Enigma code-breaker Alan Turing will definitely land a Best Actor nomination. The day’s first screening was Jean-Marc Vallee‘s Wild [see below]. It’s 12:30 am and I’m too beat to write anything. I’ll give it another go tomorrow morning from 7 to 9 am before catching a 9:30 am Leviathan screening.
Scrappy, despondent, somewhat resourceful Cheryl Strayed (Reese Witherspoon) goes on a thousand-mile journey-of-self-discovery hike in Wild , another in a long line of solo survival-in-the-wilderness tales (127 Hours, All Is Lost, Gravity, Tracks). Witherspoon handles herself pretty well. Okay , quite well — it’s one of those “watch me get down and pull out the … Read more
I remember darkness from my childhood and teen years. You’d go outside around 9 or 10 pm and you’d either have enough moonlight to make out certain shapes or it would be so dark you could barely see your hand. There were streetlights, of course, but I’ve got myself convinced that they weren’t as bright … Read more
This, from my perspective, is an exceptional, quite brilliant trailer. This is it — the mini-version, the bullets, the sex, the snippets, the all of it, the bottles and bottles of vodka, the Phillip Glassyness, the symphonic smack…wow.
You can walk right into a little downtown Telluride store called the Green Room and buy a modest amount of potent weed. Out-of-staters don’t get to buy the same quantity as Colorado residents but so what? This is 21st Century Colorado, and nobody blinks an eye. I haven’t turned on in decades but as a … Read more
The Telluride Film festival is tributing Francis Coppola‘s Apocalypse Now, or rather its 35th anniversary. People forget that it was released on 8.15.79, which by today’s standards would indicate a dump strategy. There’s a big, knock-your-socks-off screening this afternoon (2 pm) at the Werner Herzog theatre, followed by an on-stage discussion between Coppola, cinematographer Vittoria … Read more
I arrived in Telluride around 6:15 pm. The rental (three stories if you count the converted basement) is at 548 West Pacific, or rather the alley (i.e., almost a street) behind that address. I went for groceries, roamed around, said hello to Leslee Dart, Baz Bamigboye and Peggy Siegal in front of the Sheridan Hotel, etc. Just the usual setting-up, getting-ready, breathing-in-the-thin-mountain-air stuff. Eugene Hernandez and pallies are having some sort of gathering over at the Sheridan right now (i.e., 10:15 pm). Friday morning, 6:50 am: A sizable assembly at the Sheridan last night. Life Itself director Steve James, Ryan Werner, Sony Pictures Classics Michael Barker and Tom Bernard (all hail Leviathan!), Indiewire‘s Anne Thompson, Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Eugene Hernandez, James Rocchi (jacket-less due to United having misplaced his luggage), In Contention‘s Kris Tapley. Shots of tequila, gang’s all here. I stayed for about an hour. Flopped at 12:30, awoke at 5:30.
