Hey folks, Harry here... It was announced today which 3 films were the faves of TELLURIDE and AMELIE came in first, NO MAN'S LAND came in second and THE DEVIL'S BACKBONE came in third! Now I'm lucky enough to have seen 2 out of the 3. AMELIE is still my favorite film I've seen this year... an absolutely magical film... THE DEVIL'S BACKBONE is also exceptional as well, and lucky us... it's coming to theaters this November! My review of THE DEVIL'S BACKBONE will be coming shortly!
Telluride Wrap - Day 1 (Friday)
The one film on the schedule that was a must see for me was Amelie and apparently Jean Pierre Jeunet and Audrey Tautau were going to attend the screening the first screening (or at least the schedule said so). Since the Amelie screening had me winding up at the MAX, I decided I would stay there for the other two films screening afterwards, Shot In The Heart and No Man's Land. Now that I had my nightly schedule squared away, I still had a few hours to kill before the opening feed. I decided to kill time checking out the opening of this Harold Lloyd exhibit at the Telluride Historical Museum. It was, rather conveniently, the opening gala at the museum; which apparently means free booze and signing in. It was kind of odd signing the guest book, I signed in under the alias Jarrette Moats - Houston, TX under a hundred unpronounceable names - Los Angeles, CA.
The Lloyd exhibit was a delightful surprise, I was expecting it to be just a couple of signed photographs and a bunch of long boring mini-biographies to walk by. Instead the exhibit, titled The Rogue's Gallery, was a exhibition of hundreds of personally signed pictures sent to Harold by many celebrities of the era. The comprehensive exhibit spanned from Thomas A. Edison to Cecille B. Demille. Even more-so they added icing to the cake by including various personal Lloyd memento's including his famous hat. This is one exhibit that deserves a nation-wide tour. In fact, you might just want to email thethirdgenius@aol.com and inquire about possible tours.
Afterwards I headed down to the press meeting, where they basically told us DON'T USE CELL PHONES!, introduced us to everyone, and handed out kits. It was kind of nice to meet a lot of the other press here, it seems that most everyone comes to the festival as a vacation and not really with intentions of covering it, they basically just watch movies and forget about the critical aspect to it all here and I must say it seems like the filmmakers also seem to leave the promotional gag at home.
FINALLY, it was time for the opening feed FREE FOOD!. Much to my dismay, they were serving this horrible Mexican food with a side of some unknown chicken things. So after wasting a bit of the food, I grabbed a complimentary bottle of water and began to make my way to the theatre in which Amelie was playing at 6:30. This first theatre I was at, called The Max, is the high-school gymnasium amazingly converted into a perfect theatre, in fact if they had not mentioned it to me I truthfully would not ever suspect it is really a high school gymnasium. After sitting around waiting in line for about thirty minutes, they ushered us into the theatre I was excited I was finally going to see Amelie.
Tom Luddy got up and gave his opening festival speech-thing, sadly he delivered the bad news Jean Pierre and Audrey were still in France and they are not going to make it to the festival :(. Tom introduced us to Salman Rushdie, who introduced the film instead as co-director of the festival. Oddly enough, Faye Dunaway was also in the room to watch Amelie. Finally, my first film experience of the festival began!
FIRST REVIEW STARTS HERE --- AMELIE
Amelie is my favorite film of the year and I am very skeptical that any of the upcoming films (yes including Vanilla Sky and Road to Perdition) will change that opinion, although I still hope for the best from those. It will take a very very very very very very special film to overshadow this. From the intro of the film till the final frame of the credits Amelie grabs you and never loses your interest for its entire run-time.
Amelie is a new fairy tale from the director of City of the Lost Children, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, which of course follows it's main character through her home town of Montramarte, a area of Paris. One day Amelie stumbles upon a box in her apartment's bathroom. The box is full of little mementos of a boy's life, Amelie decides to find the boy and deliver his child-hood box to him. She figures that if this causes some sort of happiness for this man, that she should begin to fit do-gooding into her daily schedule. During all of this do-gooding she winds up with a booklet of ripped-up photo-booth photos, this sparks an odd flirtation with the collector of the photos for Amelie.
Amelie is perfect because of Amelie, Audrey Tautau creates an extremely likeable character out of Amelie. Audiences are unable to take their eyes off of her, she is perfect. She deserves a best actress academy award for her performance. Although, Audrey gives an astonishing performance in Amelie, Jeunet has put together an ensemble cast of characters that can compete for screentime with Amelie. Like, her Gnome-loving father, the struggling author, the conspiracy-theorist boyfriend, the collector of odd items, the tennis-playing nuns, the perfectionist fruit-seller, or even the old man who constantly paints the same painting.
Oh my god, Jeunet was a able to craft possibly the best visual film of the year, and the film did not even need the visuals, they are just more icing on the cake. Bruno Debonnel, director of photography, has shot a film so well that even the most mundane of scenes are interesting on lighting and photography alone.
I walked into Amelie not knowing much about the film's plot, but with high expectations from its French buzz. Amelie surpassed all of my expectations. Throughout the festival I asked many people questions about the films, I was never able to find someone who did not LOVE Amelie. I guess thats why it landed the coveted out-door closing festival spot. When Miramax brings this film to you go see it and bring everybody you know to it.
END AMELIE REVIEW HERE!
After Amelie, I ran outside and got back in line for HBO's Shot in the Heart, which I just saw a commercial for the night before and was very psyched finding out it starred Elias Koteas and Giovanni Ribisi. Most everyone had rushed out of Amelie quickly to get to the other side of town to watch Metropolis, but enough people remained to fill the seven hundred seat max halfway. The director of the film took to the stage along with Elias and Giovanni, and Roger Ebert sitting directly in front of them snapping pictures of them like crazy. The director mentioned that this was truly her first time seeing it, as they just got the print finished yesterday. Giovanni introduced it quickly with a "ummmmm I'm not really prepared for this ummmmm I hope you like the movie." I kinda got freaked out when I noticed that the director sat 7 seats away from me in my row, I sure hope I did not rock the row too much for her (the rows were not bolted down).
Shot in the Heart Review Starts Now
Shot in the Heart is an HBO movie that will run in mid-October about Gary Graham, one of the first people, in thirty years, to be put to death in Iowa during the seventies. The film takes place in the weeks before the execution is scheduled to take place, his family are the only ones that can ask for a stay of execution. So this brings us to his two brothers, the youngest played by Giovanni Ribisi, they have decided to travel down and see Gary oncemore before they decide what they are going to do about the stay. Giovanni has not seen much of Gary, Elias Koteas, most of his life Gary was in and out of prisons until he killed a convenience store clerk one day that put him where he is today. The memories that Giovanni does have of his brother were mostly fragments of arguments with his abusive father.
Gary's two brothers arrive at the prison right in time to witness a media circus being planned. Gary is happy sitting in jail giving loads of money to everyone in his will, as some odd cousins have come out of hiding to cash in on all of the different book, movie, TV, song, T-shirt, and whatever rights that are up for grabs at the time. His brothers are going through an akward moment in time, as Gary wants to die. Their mother won't sign the stay as she does not want gary to hate her, nor will his older brother. Giovanni never really got a chance to get to know his brother and he hates that now that he has that chance he is going to die.
Shot in the Heart in the end winds up, being an exploration into the shutaway memories of a tortured family. During the few weeks prior to the execution all the memories that they tried to forget about their father are suddenly brought up again, making this time even more troubling for the two Graham's. Another thing troubling the younger brother is his brother's lawyers and his biographer (who all will also profit off of his death) as well as an anti-death penalty human activist, who would like to see Gary stay alive to possibly delay Iowa from ever putting it back into effect and giving them more time to fight it.
Elias Kotea‚s basically plays a more subdued version of his character in Fallen, the only thing really absent from Shot in the Heart is him walking around speaking in ancient tongue and singing Time is on My Side. Except this time you get to see him in death row for nearly the entire film, instead of the first ten minutes. Giovanni Ribisi continues to grow as an actor, choosing more and more mature roles; truthfully I think this is one of Giovanni's best performances to date here he is stretching himself to play a normal mature character instead of the crazy Other Sister type roles that come so naturally for him.
Out of this all we get an HBO film that is a fantastic direct-to-cable film, but as a theatrical release that is much better than most mainstream releases but is just shy of greatness.
After Shot in the Heart, I went and got in line for the midnight screening of No Man's Land. As I shuffled into my theatre seat, a surprising sentence was uttered into the microphone by one of the 600 Telluride staffers the noon TBA at the Max will be a sneak preview of David Lynch's new film Mulholland Drive. WOOHOO! Onwards to No Man's Land.
NO MAN'S LAND
No Man's Land was a pretty good film, although I don't know if it was exactly the most appropriate film for the only midnight screening of the festival (The Devils was 11:30). No Man's Land has been reviewed a lot after being picked up at Cannes, so I'm going to attempt to keep this review brief.
No Man's Land is the story of a Serbian and a Bosnian soldier that wind up being stranded together right in between the battle lines (No Man's Land). Even to make matters worse a soldier is trapped right on top of a mine, if he gets up everyone will die. As they try to figure out a solution to their problem, a UN truck proceeds to attempt to aid them although it is a direct violation of their orders. Even more during all of this a scheming reporter monitors the UN frequencies and starts to cover the situation. Then more reporters begin to cover the situation, so that they begin to have a media circus on their hands as they attempt to aid the man on the mine.
No Man's Land is one of the better films of the year, sadly I think most American audiences are going to think they have seen this film before (although during a different war) in the much lighter Three Kings. Although they should think about the director Danis Tanovic, who actually served during the war as a camera man for the Bosnian army; it is a much more personal story for him.
Look forward to tomorrow where I'll be turning in the Saturday and Sunday wraps that include looks at: Mulholland Drive, Amadeus 2001, Lantana, The Cat's Meow, Mystic Masseur (new Merchant/Ivory film), Lovely and Amazing, Nine Queens (Nueva Reinas), The Devil's Backbone, and 35mm The Devils.
