"Take a close look at the lineup the Telluride Film Festival," advises Eugene Hernandez at indieWIRE. "These are films you’ll be hearing a lot about over the next few weeks during a fall festival swing that begins in Venice, travels to Telluride and continues through to big-city fests in Toronto and then New York. For many movies on the roster, the journey even dates back to Cannes in May."
The festival opens tomorrow and runs through Labor Day; meantime, here's the Show:
Viviana García Besné's Perdida, a look at the Calderon family, a cinema dynasty in Mexico.
Dr. Biju's The Way Home. See the description from the London Indian Film Festival.
Joseph Cedar's Footnote. See the Cannes roundup.
Mark Cousins's The Story of Film: An Odyssey. Trailer (scroll down about halfway).
David Cronenberg's A Dangerous Method. Premieres tomorrow (Friday) in Venice.
Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne's The Kid with a Bike. Shared the Grand Prix (with Nuri Bilge Ceylan's Once Upon a Time in Anatolia) in Cannes.
Asghar Farhadi's A Separation. Swept the Bears in Berlin.
Rodrigo Garcia's Albert Nobbs. TIFF: "Glenn Close co-wrote and stars in this adaptation of the play about a 19th-century Irishwoman who disguises herself as a man and works as a butler for 20 years. Mia Wasikowska, Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Aaron Johnson co-star in this intelligent and often surprising period drama."
Mia Hansen-Løve's Goodbye First Love. Special Mention in Locarno.
Michel Hazanavicius's The Artist. An audience favorite in Cannes.
Werner Herzog's Into the Abyss: A Tale of Death, A Tale of Life. TIFF: "Herzog explores the legacy of a triple homicide in Texas interviewing the victims’ families and those convicted for the crime including one man on death row, eight days before his execution."
Agnieszka Holland's In Darkness. TIFF: "Holland focusses on a little-known phenomenon in Second World War Poland, Jews hiding in the underground sewer systems of the major cities to escape deportation and the death camps. A sewer worker who discovers a group of Jews on his rounds must decide whether he will place his, and his family’s, life in jeopardy. If the Germans catch on, he will die."
Lisa Immordino-Vreeland's Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel. About the fashion editor.
Cristián Jiménez's Bonsái. Cannes roundup.
Aki Kaurismäki's Le Havre. Cannes.
Shannah Laumeister's Becoming Bert Stern. About the photographer.
Greg Macgillivray's Hollywood Don't Surf. Cannes: "Examines 50 years of the film industry’s attempts to put surfing up on the big screen, highlighting the production saga of Warner Bros’ 1978 surf epic Big Wednesday."
Steve McQueen's Shame. NYFF: "An explosive portrait of a sex addict walking a tightrope between presentable respectability and the wild side [Michael Fassbender], this incendiary drama captures the anger and the ecstasy of its anti-hero’s incessant drive for conquest in contemporary New York, where any woman he meets he believes is ripe for the taking. Madly attractive but with cruelly cold eyes, this compulsive Casanova finds his style cramped by the abrupt arrival of his unstable sister (Cary Mulligan), whose insecurities crack open issues of his own."
Joshua Marston's The Forgiveness of Blood. Silver Bear for the Best Script in Berlin.
Alexander Payne's The Descendants. George Clooney plays the heir of a prominent Hawaiian land-owning family whose life is turned upside-down when his wife is critically injured in a boating accident.
Micha X Peled's Bitter Seeds, a documentary about biotechnology in the food industry and its impact on a village in India.
Lynne Ramsay's We Need to Talk About Kevin. Cannes.
Eryk Rocha's Passerby. Telluride's Gary Meyer tells Eugene: "It's a film that cannot be categorized."
Martin Scorsese's Living in the Material World. A doc about George Harrison.
Jon Shenk's The Island President. Doc on Mohamed Nasheed.
Béla Tarr's The Turin Horse. Jury Grand Prix (Silver Bear) in Berlin. And, as Anne Thompson reports today, Hungary is sending this Horse to the Oscar race.
Wim Wenders's Pina. Big, big roundup.
Alexander Zeldovich's Target. Golden Donkey from the Ferroni Brigade. Twice.
CAETANO VELOSO'S GUEST DIRECTOR PROGRAM
René Clair's Le Grandes Manoeuvres (1955).
Leonardo Favio's Aniceto (2008).
Jean-Luc Godard's Vivre sa vie (1962).
Glauber Rocha's Black God, White Devil (1964).
Tânia Quaresma's Nordeste: Cordel, Repente e Canção (1975).
Billy Wilder's The Apartment (1960).
ADDITIONAL FILM REVIVALS
Boris Barnet's The House on Trubnaya Square (1928), with a score by Dennis James, commissioned by the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley for its 25th Anniversary, will be performed by its composer and his Filmharmonia Ensemble.
Karl-Heinz Martin's From Morning to Midnight (1920), with a new original score performed live by the Alloy Orchestra.
Vasili Shukshin's Happy-Go-Lucky (1972).
Plus, Serge Bromberg returns to Telluride with Georges Méliès's A Trip to the Moon (1902), completely restored by Lobster Films and the Groupama Gan and Technicolor Foundation. Along with other surprises from attics and flea markets, Bromberg accompanies it all with live piano and stories.
And a Spotlight on Marcel Pagnol: Merlusse (1938) and Harvest (1939).
BACKLOT PROGRAM
Edgardo Cozarinsky's Notes for an Imaginary Biography.
Pascale Cuenot's In the Tracks of George Delerue.
Alberto Gout's Aventurera (1950).
Marcelo Machado's Tropicália.
Elfi Mikesch's Mondo Lux - Die Bilderwelten des Werner Schroeter.
Peter von Bagh's Sodankylä Forvever.
Christian Weisenborn's I Am My Films, Part 2… 30 Years Later.
Plus: Documentary Revolutions is a double feature of new films, Chris Durlacher's The Documentary Film Mob and Mandy Chang's The Camera That Changed the World.
And Sarris, Silents and Sounds is a collection of short films including Casimir Nozkowski's Andrew Sarris: Critic in Focus, Julia Titova's Sergei Prokofiev, Stacy Steers's Night Hunter and Werner Herzog's Ode to the Dawn of Man.
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