Telluride: Day 1

TELLURIDE, Colo. -- Bronze sunsets. Chapped lips. What I saw yesterday:

The David Fincher tribute. Clips of Se7en, The Game, Panic Room and Zodiac (which is also playing in full in a director's cut -- with six additional minutes -- tomorrow). Regrettably, no Alien3. A very tense medley of movies -- all about people who are wrapped in an inescapable situation. Fincher talking with Todd McCarthy of Variety afterward. A poor interview. Oh well. Fincher is a San Francisco kid. Inspired to be a director after watching a making-of of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid: "Blow up balsam wood trains, scout locations out West and hang out with Katharine Ross? Good deal." Worked with George Lucas. Boyhood friends shaved their heads to be part of THX. Did music videos with Madonna, Michael Jackson and Iggy Pop. Fincher came off as a bit of douchebag, as my friend Tom said, but that was probably because he was annoyed with the inane, disinterested "discussion points" that Todd McCarthy dribbled out.

Flame & Citron. Introduced this movie last night at the Nugget Theater. Most expensive Danish-speaking film ever made. Budget? $9 million. Extravagant! Intricately epic 2.5-hour espionage flick, dirge-like, monotonous, incessant, featuring assassinations every scene by the title characters, two Danish operatives working against the Nazi occupation in Copenhagen. Citron is played by Mads Mikkelson, who was the villain who wept blood in Casino Royale. I introduced the director, Ole Christian Madsen, who shot the movie in Prague. Flame & Citron just got U.S. distribution on Thursday at the festival, so you'll be seeing it sometime next year I bet.

Notables in attendance: Jeff Goldblum (here with Paul Schrader's Adam Resurrected) holding court on Main Street. Peter Sellars, Ken Burns, Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall. Greg Kinnear and Lauren Graham here with Flash of Genius. Salman Rushdie too, sans Padma.

Looking forward to: Mike Leigh's Happy-Go-Lucky, which has been irking people here, as rumor has it.