MCN Blogs
David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

39th Telluride Film Festival

It’s an interesting line-up… but I’ve seen 6 of the films (2 of them twice), will see 9 more (and shoot interviews will the directors) in the next 11 days, and really, have 4 films that will be added to my radar because of their placement at Telluride.

It’s still my favorite festival in the world and I would love to be there – family makes it complicated – but aside from the camaraderie, beautiful location, and the luxury of wandering from excellent film to excellent film without too much worry about getting in and knowing you’ll be seeing them with a passionate, intelligent audience… not sure it isn’t redundant for those of us also attending TIFF this year.

In a way, I am happy for the festival. The last few years became awards hype fodder – and look for some TBAs to be announced in the next 24 hours (Argo, Silver Linings Playbook, Anna Karenina and Only God Forgives seem most likely) – and it bent the idea of Telluride. It was always a festival about perspective, down to its silent film roots, and not about launches.

Here’s the list of new films…

THE ACT OF KILLING (d. Joshua Oppenheimer, Denmark, 2012)
AMOUR (d. Michael Haneke, Austria, 2012)
AT ANY PRICE (d. Ramin Bahrani, U.S., 2012)
THE ATTACK (d. Ziad Doueiri, Lebanon-France, 2012)
BARBARA (d. Christian Petzold, Germany, 2012)
THE CENTRAL PARK FIVE (d. Ken Burns, Sarah Burns, David McMahon, U.S., 2012)
EVERYDAY (d. Michael Winterbottom, U.K., 2012)
FRANCES HA (d. Noah Baumbach, U.S., 2012)
THE GATEKEEPERS (d. Dror Moreh, Israel, 2012)
GINGER AND ROSA (d. Sally Potter, England, 2012)
THE HUNT (d. Thomas Vinterberg, Denmark, 2012)
HYDE PARK ON HUDSON (d. Roger Michell, U.S., 2012)
THE ICEMAN (d. Ariel Vromen, U.S., 2012)
LOVE, MARILYN (d. Liz Garbus, U.S., 2012)
MIDNIGHT’S CHILDREN (d. Deepa Mehta, Canada-Sri Lanka, 2012)
NO (Pablo Larraín, Chile, 2012)
PARADISE: LOVE (d. Ulrich Seidl, Austria, 2012)
PIAZZA FONTANA (d. Marco Tullio Giordana, Italy, 2012)
A ROYAL AFFAIR (d. Nikolaj Arcel, Denmark, 2012)
RUST & BONE (d. Jacques Audiard, France, 2012)
THE SAPPHIRES (d. Wayne Blair, Australia, 2012)
STORIES WE TELL (d. Sarah Polley, Canada, 2012)
SUPERSTAR (d. Xavier Giannoli, France, 2012)
WADJDA (d. Haifaa Al-Mansour, Saudi Arabia, 2012)
WHAT IS THIS FILM CALLED LOVE? (d. Mark Cousins, Ireland-Mexico, 2012)

Be Sociable, Share!

One Response to “39th Telluride Film Festival”

  1. berg says:

    I saw 13 films but looking over the list makes me regret the ones I missed … my favorites were Final Cut: Ladies and Gentlemen, Francis Ha, and The Hunt

The Hot Blog

Quote Unquotesee all »

It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon