My brief chat with Argo director-costar Ben Affleck at today’s Telluride Film Festival patron’s brunch was mostly about Terrence Malick‘s To The Wonder, in which Affleck “stars,” so to speak. A friend who’s seen Malick’s film tells me Affleck has been all but cut out of it, just as Adrien Brody was edited out of Malick’s The Thin Red Line and Sean Penn‘s role was reduced to almost nothing in The Tree of Life.

In any event I asked Affleck if he’s seen To The Wonder and he said, “Yes, I’ve seen it”….(beat) (beat) (beat)…”and it makes The Tree of Life look like Transformers.” I didn’t take notes so the remainder of his comments are only approximately recalled, but he basically said it’s not a commercial film, that it’s the kind of thing that’s mainly for critics, and that when he’s directing a film “I’m always thinking about how to make this aspect completely clear and make this aspect understandable, and Malick doesn’t give a damn about any of that” and that his basic thing is to follow the butterfly, so to speak.

Jett and I are about to head up to the Chuck Jones theatre to see Argo, which Affleck will introduce, at 2 pm. He’ll be doing a q & a following tomorrow’s 1 pm screening.

At a dinner party last night I listened to the views of a hardcore Obama hater, an older woman who was otherwise perfectly agreeable. I say “hardcore” because she not only embraces the nonsensical view that we’re currently worse off than we were four years ago (when the country was teetering on the brink of financial catastrophe, caused entirely by a Republican-enabled Wall Street gangsta free-for-all), but she’s also a bit of a birther. Sorry, but I rarely come into first-hand contact with these people. They’re out there by the millions, I realize. I had to suppress the urge.

I’m staying at the home of producer Glenn Zoller in Telluride so I can’t complain, but my son Jett and I are staying in a large room with three bunk beds plus a 15-foot-high loft, and one of the worst snoring incidents of my life occured at 2 am. I’m hardly one to talk since I snore, I’m told, but I’m also a very deep sleeper — right at the bottom of the lake — and I was nonetheless awoken by some truly grotesque noises coming from one of the bunks.

It was like that howling satanic growl heard in the third act of The Exorcist. Something beastly, appalling…a human couldn’t be the source.

I’ve found that if you clap your hands and go “hey!” the snorer will shut up for a while, and that technique worked for a while this morning, but the snoring returned two or three minutes later. I finally had to grab the blankets and sheets and throw them down on the floor and climb down the loft ladder and trying sleeping on the couch in a nearby TV den. But between the aural trauma of the snoring and the thin mountain air I couldn’t get back to sleep for at least 90 minutes. Terrific.

Our most recent mass shooting happened early this morning in a Pathmark supermarket in Old Bridge, New Jersey. At least three dead, reportedly including the shooter, who may be an ex-Marine. If only a packing NRA member had been there.

“Clint, my hero, is coming across as sad and pathetic,” Roger Ebert tweeted tonight. “He didn’t need to do this to himself. It’s unworthy of him.” Here’s an assortment of reactions, mostly funny.

During his acceptance speech this evening before the Republican National Convention, Mitt Romney blew another dog whistle by saying “when the world needs someone to do really big stuff, you need an American.” I’m presuming the import of that statement doesn’t need explaining. (And no, I can’t figure why the embed code won’t adapt to the 460 pixel width I’ve assigned it.)

Update: I’ve just hit Telluride and I’ve learned that Ben Affleck‘s Argo is indeed playing here, albeit as a sneak preview.

Earlier: I got out the iPhone the instant my Phoenix-to-Durango plane landed (about 50 minutes ago) to review the final Telluride 2012 lineup…and I was soon feeling faint. The blood had drained from my cheeks. This?

Why isn’t David O. Russell‘s Silver Linings Playbook showing here? There’s a reason, of course, but I wanted that kind of film here and it’s not. What happened to the rumor about Trouble With The Curve and a possible Clint drop-by? People were tweeting “wait, wait…this is it?”

No Master, no Malick, no Clint, not even DePalma…no established power-hitters.

In recent years Telluride has become known as an elite, pre-Toronto, first-out-of-the-gate place to sample at least a smattering of award-season contenders. Well, not this year, pally! This year it’s Tom and Gary’s Cool Little Indie-Foreign Festival plus a sampling of Cannes Hand-Me-Downs and Sony Classics servings (Amour, No) and one or two fringies. Roger Michell‘s Hyde Park on Hudson will play here, but who knows what that is besides performances? I guess award season will start in Toronto this year, and Telluride will just be a nice cool place to hang and schmooze with maybe two or three pop-throughs…maybe.

2012 Telluride selections: The Act Of Killing, (d: Joshua Oppenheimer); Amour (d: Michael Haneke); At Any Price (d: Ramin Bahrani); The Attack (d: Ziad Doueiri); Barbara (d: Christian Petzold); The Central Park Five (d: Ken Burns, Sarah Burns, David McMahon); Everyday (d: Michael Winterbottom); Frances Ha (d: Noah Baumbach); The Gatekeepers (d: Dror Moreh); Ginger And Rosa (d: Sally Potter); The Hunt (d: Thomas Vinterberg); Hyde Park On Hudson (d: Roger Michell); The Iceman (d: Ariel Vromen); Love, Marilyn (d: Liz Garbus); Midnight’s Children (d: Deepa Mehta); No (d: Pablo Larraín); Paradise: Love, Austria, (d: Ulrich Seidl); Piazza Fontana (d: Marco Tullio Giordana); A Royal Affair (d: Nikolaj Arcel); Rust & Bone (d: Jacques Audiard); The Sapphires (d: Wayne Blair); Stories We Tell (d: Sarah Polley); Superstar (d: Xavier Giannoli); Wadjda (d: Haifaa Al-Mansour); What Is This Film Called Love? (d: Mark Cousins).

I spoke yesterday afternoon with Matthew Modine about his Full Metal Jacket app, which I downloaded last week. Great photos, haunting recollections, etc. And a nice guy to chat with. The anecdote about Kubrick’s burning of the pie-fight sequence from Dr. Strangelove broke my heart.

The Telluride flight is a two-legger — LAX to Phoenix leaving at 10:05 am, arriving at 11:25 am. (Arizona doesn’t observe daylight savings.) The Pheonix to Durango flight leaves at 12:20 and arrives in Durango, Colorado (which does roll with daylight savings) at 2:30 pm, or 1:30 pm Arizona time. And then a rental car and a 100-minute drive to Telluride. Or something like that.

What films did you once love or have a thing for, but which you’ve lately or gradually come to regard as over-valued or somewhat less charming? Films you’ve grown past and/or seen through. Or, if you want to be buoyant about it, films you didn’t much care for when young, but which you’ve come to appreciate with age and experience or whatnot.