Friday, August 29, 2008

Telluride: Day 0

TELLURIDE, Colo. -- Well, I'm here again. Fest starts today. Won't have time to compose essays or reviews, so I'm just going to spit out brief thoughts. Saw two movies last night:

American Violet. Sentimental, simplified deposition drama about racist plea-bargain tactics in Texas. Star of the show, the charismatic Nicole Behaire, makes quite an impression, but the movie feels made-for-TV/after-school-specialy. Should've been a hard-hitting documentary rather than a syrupy drama. One staffer muttered "it's social, liberal Hollywood pablum." Release date unknown.

Baraka. From 1992. Remastered, in 70mm print. In the vein of Godfrey Reggio's mindf*cks. This one strings together footage of beautiful locales and human creations, set to thumping monk music. It's mesmerizing, and builds slowly to make several large points about humanity, our ingenuity and our cruelty, our capability for greatness and depravity. Features time lapse, highspeed filming to make us see the insane operational aspect of human routine. Available via Netflix.

Also, take a look at the fancy new Telluride widget. Goes into more detail than I can about the schedule:

1 comment:

ah said...

jealousy.
two things surprised me this morning: the VP pick of mccain, and the lineup of telluride. both seem relatively unpredictable and foreign, but each got me searching the web frantically for more information. the media is doing its part on palin, so i look forward to your part on telluride (no in depth reviews necessary)