The slate for the 34th Telluride Film Festival (Friday, 8.31 through Monday, 9.3) has been announced, and while there are many smart and stirring selections made by men of good taste, there are also no major pulse-quickeners or mind-blowers. It’s basically a bunch of Cannes stuff along with a few Toronto ’07 selections.
The idiosyncratic standouts for myself (if I were attending, that is) are a Norman Lloyd documentary (Matthew Sussman‘s Who Is Norman Lloyd?, a look at Lloyd’s 70 years as an actor-producer-writer) and a digitally remastered version of Richard Lester‘s Help!
The only thing that could save Telluride ’07 from “meh” status will be if that rumored-but-later-denied showing of a There Will Be Blood reel (as part of the Daniel Day Lewis tribute) turns out to be real.
The slate includes…
Todd McCarthy‘s Pierre Rissient: Man of Cinema, about the influential publicist, sometime film distributor and film buff who discovered talent such as Jane Campion and Abbas Kiarostami.
Lee Chang-dong‘s Secret Sunshine, which “stars Jeon Do-yeon, winner of the Best Actress prize at Cannes, as a young woman trying to adjust to a new life with her young son amidst tragedy.”
Who Is Norman Lloyd?
Rails and Ties, Alison Eastwood‘s directorial debut [which] stars Kevin Bacon and Marcia Gay Harden in a story about two families in physical, emotional and psychological collision.
Julian Schnabel‘s The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Cristian Mungiu‘s film, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days.
Eran Kolirin‘s The Band’s Visit
Wayne Wang‘s A Thousand Years of Good Prayers.
Stefan Ruzowitzky‘s The Counterfeiters.
Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Parronaud‘s adaptation of Satrapi’s graphic novel of the same name.
When Did You Last See Your Father?, David Nicholl‘s adaptation of poet-novelist Blake Morrison’s memoir, directed by Anand Tucker, tells the story of a son’s conflicting memories of his dying father.
Todd Haynes‘ I’m Not There.
Barbet Schroeder‘s Terror’s Advocate.
Sean Penn‘s Into the Wild,.
Baltasar Kormakur‘s Jar City.
Etgar Keret and Shira Geffen‘s Jellyfish.
Li Yang‘s Blind Mountain.
Sarah Gavron‘s Brick Lane.
Kevin Macdonald My Enemy’s Enemy, a documentary “that tracks Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie, a.k.a. the Butcher of Lyon.”
Aleksei Balabanov‘s Cargo 200.
Noah Baumbach‘s Margot at the Wedding.
Werner Herzog’s Encounters At The End of The World, an exploration of “the vast empty splendor of Antarctica and the meaning that Herzog, with the help of physicists, biologists and volcanologists, tries to extract meaning from it.
Khuat Akhmetov‘s Wind Man.
Mark Kidel‘s Journey with Peter Sellars.
Mark Obenhouas‘s Seep!, a doc about extreme skiing.
