Cinematic Concerns

This is the forty-fourth film I saw at the Hollywood Arclight Cinemas. The cinema itself was jam-packed with people, presumably due to the five new releases coming out this week, including Into The Wild, The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford, Good Luck Chuck and Resident Evil: Extinction as well as this one. The more film-savvy among you would've noticed that they all cater to different demographics. One wouldn't expect Hollywood to do any different.

To the film. Jane Austen, Jane Austen, Jane Austen. First was Pride & Prejudice, then this year we get Becoming Jane and this one. Perhaps we can expect a remake of Persuasion soon? Or Northanger Abbey? Who knows?

I went in looking for entertainment but not quite believing I'd get it - it's chick lit flick after all. But guess what, the opening sold it to me. Beginning with an Austen quote about 'incivilities', we are treated to rapid cuts of short takes of people getting irritated by everyday annoyances that are so observational that all of us can relate to it (dollar bill not going into vending machine, car parking ticket machine too far from window, etc). It doesn't have anything to do with the rest of the film, though it does introduce the characters, and perhaps it's trying to say something about Austen's observational skills in small details of life.

Very quickly, we're swept into the world of the 6 characters and their satellites. 6, of course, so that the eventual book club would have the right amount of members for the only 6 Austen books ever to be written. Many of Austen's fans wished she would write more, and indeed, towards the end of the film as we've gone through life experiences with the characters, we wish the same as well. But I'm jumping ahead of myself.

WIth so many characters and hence subplots, the film moves briskly but slow enough that we understand the emotions of the characters. Interestingly, the film succeeds in not seeming contrived - we know the trick of course, that the stories in Austen's books will mirror the lives of the characters, but it feels more like the characters reading their lives into it rather than the other way round, which is usually what happens in life. It does also give the filmmakers lots of opportunities to utilise subtext - more than the average film, I mean - as names of Austen characters and events are used to replace painful names and things the characters want to avoid using.


It's also fun to see the in-jokes - at least I assume they are, that or someone would've noticed them and cracked a joke during the shoot - such as Emily Blunt 'not being able to go to Paris', or Maggie Grace reaching out for parking ticket with the words 'No Grace Period' on the machine. Also, we get two Brits playing Americans here - Hugh Dancy and Emily Blunt, both were good ... well, Dancy isn't playing anything we haven't seen him do before, really, but Blunt found a way to idiosyncrasise a rather uptight schoolteacher character, enforcing it with the way she pushes her hair down the sides with both hands.

Grigg (Hugh Dancy) asks in the film, "So, what, this is a rulebook?", to which Bernadette (Kathy Baker) replies, "We could do worse ..." I'm not sure I believe that Austen's books are any viable guides to love and life in reality, but this is one movie I didn't regret seeing, and for that alone it was worth it.

How Good I Think It Is: 8.5/10
How Much I Liked It: 9/10
At What Point Did I First Looked At My Watch: 18 mins

This is the forty-third film I saw at the Hollywood Arclight Cinemas.

You know you're in for a weird one when you have a title as long as this, and one that spells out the ending of the story. And on top of that, the knowledge that the film is 2 hours and 40 mins long.

I've been interested in this since watching the trailer. Before that, I vaguely heard that there were problems with the releasing of the film, but didn't know much about it - heck, I can't say for sure who Jesse James was except that he's an outlaw and he's infamous. Watching the trailer though, two things struck me: the performance of Casey Affleck, and the music.

While Brad Pitt was the one who got Best Actor at the Venice Film Festival, it's really Casey Affleck whose performance is impressive and attention grabbing. Playing the slightly creepy but infinitely sympathetic Robert Ford, the choices made with his style of speech and shifty eyes and shy behaviour made the character real to us. Generally though, the acting is top notch, from Brad Pitt down to Mary-Louise Parker in a role that doesn't require her to do much, to Paul Schneider whom I kept thinking about due to the vast difference from the really small and demure role he had in The Family Stone (he is always convincing here, always compelling), to the ever off-kilter Sam Rockwell, to Zooey Deschanel who makes the best of a 5 min role. Casting director Mali Finn does it again.

And the performances had to be strong, simply because the film moves at such a glacial pace. The story can almost be told in three or four sentences, yet plotwise it lasts so long. That's because the film takes its time to show us how things happen, with a bunch of Southerners with typically slow movements and gestures and speech. (Even so, I only understood half of what was said, due to the rather thick Southern accent. Much of the story is set in Missouri.)

The film is a drama and nothing else. There isn't any action, really. Whatever suspense about what ultimately happens is immediately deflated by the title - and if that wasn't enough, the narrator implies it without any attempt at subtlety. Yet, there remains a lot of tension in many of the scenes, as we are left wondering about the choices a character makes, or waiting in anticipation for a potential gunshot.

One thing worth mentioning is the sound design. Generally, films place the dialogue in the center speakers, and let the other elements go surround, but even so, sound designers would keep most of the sound effects in the front speakers. Here, the background sounds and offscreen voices are heard in any number of directions, or panning from one end to the other. It's a bit strange to hear that in a drama, almost as if the film didn't deserve it, but I thought generally it was really well done. Also, some dialogue lines had its volume raised for effect, very effectively I might add - gave me a scare even when I expected it.

Another thing is the cinematography. Simply gorgeous. Moody, evocative. By the very experienced Roger Deakins - the name should be familiar to most of you even though you don't know who he is and what he does ... assuming you stay long enough to see parts of the credits when you go to the cinema.

(Also, there was one shot that is nearly identical with a shot taken from Gladiator - it's seen in the trailer too, so it's either very recognisable to you or you'd never know it - and it's interesting that Ridley Scott is a producer in this film.)

Ultimately, though, the thing I remember most was Casey Affleck's performance as Robert Ford. The epilogue is particularly touching, and as we see Robert Ford for the last time ... I actually miss the shy little fellow.

Not for everyone.

How Good I Think The Film Is: 8/10
How Much I Liked The Film: 6.5/10
At What Point Did I First Looked At My Watch: 8 mins
Oscar Noms That It Deserves: Best Actor (Casey Affleck), Best Sound

This is the forty-second film I saw at the Hollywood Arclight Cinemas.

Wolfgang Petersen was there to talk about the film, in particular the problems related to the making of the theatrical version, and now this one. He describes (in rather colourful language, I might add, that sent the audience into frequent chuckles) the last few months of the making of a summer blockbuster film, where test screenings suddenly become highly significant in informing execs and producers, all who are scared shitless about the millions of dollars they dropped into such a venture - and as a result becoming control freaks (sort of) and limiting what the director could or couldn't do. Petersen talks about how they forced him to cut out the beginning prologue shot (involving a dog) which Petersen always liked, for example, and of course, the whole episode with the score. Now that the theatrical version is behind them, and they earned a good chunk of money, they're telling him, oh, we like violence, we like sex, put that in, do your version. So this is his version, and Petersen is highly enthusiastic and proud about it, saying this is how he intended it, that people have been telling him this longer version (same length as Titanic and Kingdom Of Heaven Director's Cut) feels shorter. Then he talked about the score at length - Petersen rather excitedly pointed out that James Horner's score, while amazing considering the time alloted to him (something like 5 weeks before release of the film), was overwhelming in some parts, so this time he employed a music editor to help recut the music, and now he feels the score works much better on film.

The recut score is a travesty.

But first, the film itself. It is definitely an improvement, as breast shots and sex scenes were left in, and the violence quotient is increased dramatically, and we definitely feel the messiness of war more here than in the PG-13 version. Petersen was also proud about generally giving characters more scenes thus showing their character motivations more - though to be honest I didn't feel it, I thought I understood why characters did what they did enough the first time round. Does it feel shorter? Not really. Is it more enjoyable? A little bit.

What killed this film, really, is the recut score. I felt like Petersen ripped out almost all the best parts of the score and re-arranged it with whatever is left, so, in a longer film, we get less music, and the same music is repeated over and over again - some cues are heard up to three or four times. For example, he evidently didn't like the straining vocals (that began the theatrical version) and completely removed all of that, and replaced it with cues from other scenes. In fact, that actually made the score more overwhelming here than in the theatrical version.

What annoyed me a whole lot, was that he took out the pulsating low drums and random smashes of larger drums that was scoring the Hector vs Achilles fight scene. I thought that if anything worked really well in the theatrical version, it was that scene, and I thought a huge part of it had to do with those drums - it generated a huge amount of suspense and tension, as we almost want to will Hector to survive but with the knowledge that he won't. Well, so what did they replace the score with? Danny Elfman's Planet Of The Apes. I couldn't believe it. Flat out shocked and got pulled out of the film for the remainder quarter of it. I don't know whether it worked with the rest of the audience, most of which probably won't know that it was a score piece taken from another film, but for that change alone the film dropped half a point, at least in my eyes. I honestly think the film would've worked better if James Horner was given a chance to rescore it, or it had been passed to another composer entirely to rescore.

That's pretty much what I felt about this one. A slight improvement on the theatrical version.

How Good I Think The Film Is: 7/10
How Much I Liked It: 6/10
At What Point Did I First Looked At My Watch: 12 mins

This is the forty-first film I saw at the Hollywood Arclight Cinemas.

I don't care for The Beatles or their music.

But I enjoyed the film, for the most part.

Even if it jumps around between stories and introduces characters rather arbitrarily.

And it's interesting to see Joe Anderson (also in Becoming Jane) pulling off the American accent with American mannerisms.

And to see The Beatles' songs Americanised into such genres as black gospel, punk rock, and so on.

And while Bono's appearance is surprising, and Eddie Izzard's came out of nowhere (like much of the scenes in the film, really), my favourite cameo is with Salma Hayek(s), who actually looks very un-Latino here.

Also, I wonder which cut I saw - Joe Roth's, or Julie Taymor's?

Not a film, but a two-hour plus music video.

How Good I Think The Film Is: 7.5/10
How Much I Liked It: 7/10
Oscar Noms That It Deserves: Best Cinematography, Best Art Direction, Best Sound

This is the fortieth film I saw at the Hollywood Arclight Cinemas.

Twist and turns of the story didn't make sense some of the time.

Interesting casting. Took a moment to recognise Tudyk and Wilson, for example. Ben Foster continues to play evil well ... with the same piercing, bloodless looks and glances, which most of the audience won't recognise anyway.

Good direction.

Even better music - except where it conforms to the Westerns of yore with that trumpet (?) sound.

And I noticed the little joke they played at the end credits - Hairstylist to Ben Wade, Driver to Ben Wade, Dialect Coach to Ben Wade, etc.

How Good I Think The Film Is: 8/10
How Much I Liked It: 6/10
At What Point Did I First Looked At My Watch: 6 mins

This is the thirty-ninth film I saw at the Hollywood Arclight Cinemas.

I didn't expect to care about it, as I was walking into the cinema. I just needed to de-stress, and I thought this a good choice, having forgotten about the way I cared about space and the planets when I was young. When the movie began, I was thinking, well, a 7.5, maybe.

Then the more I watched the more engrossed I was in it. It was ten talking heads, all of them former astronauts, and as the movie (and every subsequent review you'll read) will tell you, they are, to date, the only people alive who've ever visited a world beyond planet Earth.

The documentary kept throwing us images - rockets launching and blowing up in the beginning growing pain stages of the program, rockets launching and succeeding, mission control room shots, astronauts in space with floating stuff, jettisoning of boosters, Earth at a distance, Earth-rise, rolling desert of the Moon seen through the lunar module window, the planting of the flag, the moon rover, bouncy astronauts kicking up moon dust ... I could go on and on. We've seen them before. Kind of.


But, as many reviews will tell you, much of the images here have not been released, indeed, have not been sound-synched before the making of the documentary. And maybe that's it. Maybe that's why it kept me interested and, more significantly, reminded me of how awe-inspiring it is, that idea of men going to the moon. Stepping on its soil. Low gravity. How it's like to be there. The sensation of being there. The sensation of being Mike Collins, alone in the orbiting module - that sense of tranquility, of being somewhere and doing something and seeing and sensing things that no one has ever been, done, or experienced before.

How I would like to go to space. Or make a film about it.

Amazing how it still calls to us. Makes us ashame of the fact that we haven't been back.


The other great thing about the documentary is the music. Not a big orchestra, but still managed to convey a humbling sense of wonder and awe, of being the astronauts, their feelings and thoughts, all that. It was actually a little distracting, and I find myself taken away from the words that were spoken, occasionally. But that's fine.

How Good I Think The Film Is: 8/10
How Much I Liked It: 9/10
At What Point Did I First Looked At My Watch: 40 mins
Oscar Noms That It Deserves: Best Documentary, Feature

At nearly 24 hours, it was the longest bus-ride I've ever taken. After that, it was another hour and a half by shuttle before I arrived at Telluride. Situated in a box canyon nearly 9000 ft high in the mountains, that means that the quaint little town is surrounded by mountain on three sides. It is obviously beautiful. And it is obviously very different from my life in LA. And I am happy to be here - away from sirens, from chopper rotor sounds, from masses of people, from rudeness, from chaos.

Into tranquility.

I spent the first night walking about town, and then finding myself eating at one of the many (really expensive) restaurants, at the Sheridan Chop House (below the Hotel Sheridan). Want a meal below 20 bucks? Less than half the restaurants here serve such fare. Immediately outside, I could see the Abel Gance Cinema - really an open air cinema that is set up in what's usually known as Elks Park. Most of the 9 screening venues were redressed into a cinema from what were formerly school gyms, stage halls, and so on. Tonight they're screening The Last Of The Mohicans, in anticipation of a tribute to Daniel Day-Lewis on Day 1 of the festival. The projectionist steps out and starts handing out cookies, sees me, and asks me, 'Want some hors d'oeuvres?' I mentioned that we have something in common: I used to do cinema projection back in university. Gary invites me in, and mentions another thing we have in common - he's visited Malaysia, some years back, to install projectors in a shopping mall in Cheras. Cheras Leisure Mall, he still remembers. He allows me to do a reel changeover - exhilarating, haven't done it in years. I bid goodbye, and went back to sleep.

And slept for 11 hours. I needed it.


Day 0
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I spent the morning checking into the condo - I got the queen bed room, which is real nice, and the unit has a kitchen too. After brunch, I went to the Brigadoon (think of it as festival HQ) to check in with Austin and Erika, who are the coordinators of the Student Program. Received my festival pass - which allows me into pretty much all the films, plus the Opening Night Feed and Labor Day Picnic, and on top of that, free meals at the staff canteen, free poster (great poster this year, by the way) and t-shirt (with said poster on it), which is more than what the $600 Festival Pass buys you. For free. This is the Telluride Film Festival Student Symposium Program - for more information, look up www.telluridefilmfestival.com/symposium.html.

Went back to condo, and met my fellow mates - Alex, Evan and Fareed. A couple more have yet to arrive. Chatted, showed them my unfinished short film. Then off we go.

The program begins. There are 50 of us, college students and graduates from various parts of the country - though a slight heavy concentration from Colorado and California. After going through all the introduction and house rules, off we go to dinner at one of the local Italian places, before watching our first film - that Bob Dylan film.


Day 1
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Nothing until noon, so I decided to wake up early (... like, 8 am), bought ingredients from the grocery store and made spaghetti for everyone. At around 20 bucks it costs a third of my dinner on my first night here, and fed 6 people. The first program of the day is a SAG Indie talk - which is marginally useful, as presenter kept insisting that 'everything's on the website, really' - followed by a session with Ken Burns, Peter Sellars and Edith Kramer.

Ken Burns is, of course, the famous documentarian, and very frequent Telluride-goer. He mostly talked about his latest documentary, The War. He says confidently, "A documentary is never objective", and that "style is the manipulation of techniques". Peter Sellars is a (rather eccentric-looking) American theatre director, and has been to the festival many times as well. He's all about building up people, and certainly many of the students were enamoured with him. He says, "filmmaking is about going to worst place together, and seeing what happens", "when you meet people who think they're in heaven - it is hell", "we're the only industry in the world where we're paid to do what we want to do or feel like doing; once you stop doing that you've joined the rat race", and "never resent your other job, coz it allows you to be in touch with the average human being and the everyday world". (Very truncated paraphrasing, I know.) Edith Kramer (essentially film programmer/curator) is the guest director of the festival this year - Telluride has the distinction of inviting a guest director each year to select some of its movies. Feisty Kramer says, "programming films is inviting people to come to dinner; presentation is part of it, I mustn't stuff you, but hopefully given you a taste that makes you want more", "I'm an eater ... you have to be an audience; if you cease to be an audience you can no longer become a programmer/curator", "filmmaking is hard, coz one cannot repair it once it's shot, unlike a novel, where you can tear pages out".

She also said, as a film programmer who sits at the back of the auditorium, "I can see everyone and everything that happens". That I can relate to - I used to do it myself. I used to watch the entire audience jump at a scary moment I knew was coming up, and I could sense whether people were fidgeting and texting, or they were paying full attention.

After all that, it was time for the Opening Night Feed, which is when Colorado Blvd (main street) is closed down and most of the passholders congregate to have dinner (served by countless hardworking volunteers). I bumped into Wayne Wang and his agent and told him that I loved Anywhere But Here, and of course, The Joy Luck Club was an important film for the Chinese community. He made me promise to watch his film. Then I saw another pair of Chinese people walking about, inquired and found out that it's Chinese director Li Yang and HK producer Alexandra Sun, who are here for the film Blind Mountain. Another person I met was Joy Wong, a sales rep for the British company The Works; explained to me the difference between sales and distribution as far as the film industry goes.

After that, it's films, films, films. On the way back on the gondola (free by the way, Telluride's probably the only town in the US where all the public transportation is free), saw a Chinese girl but didn't speak to her directly.


Day 2
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Very early start - woke up at 6.45 am for a 7.30 am discussion and meeting. Expected lots of people to turn up late but ... no, most everyone showed up on time, and I was one of the later ones. That's a change from the usual - I guess college students are a different breed.

We get Tom Shadyac, director of such films as Evan Almighty, The Nutty Professor, and Ace Ventura; and sponsor of our little program. Fellow mates were surprised at his level of intellect, given the sort of films he does; says, "directors create freedom for artists to be free", "don't shunt investors; if they're nervous, find out why, could be helpful", "comics act best when they put on a mask", "you might think your film sucks, but then you show it to an audience and you find out exactly how they feel about it", "grotesque humour, fart jokes and stuff isn't funny unless it has context" (using There's Something About Mary as an example), and quoting Frank Capra - "the studio wants you to be right".

After that was Blind Mountain, which left most of us shaken due to its intensity. Then it's Herzog's documentary about Antarctica - the guy's quite popular around here. During the queue, met Chinese girl again - and this time we speak, which is when I found out she's Malaysian too! Passed her my business card through the queue. Thing about Telluride is that the queues are one of its defining distinctions, in that people seem to take pleasure in queueing, because one gets to talk to the person in front, or back, or both about films they've seen, or want to see, or their favourites, or their least favourites, or what they do for a living, and so on. And if you get a bonus, who knows, it could be Willem Dafoe or Ang Lee in front of you. It happens, and one's surprised at how much they're willing to talk to you. Only in Telluride. Cannes? Forget it. (Or so goes the impression.)

After that, I queued up for Into The Wild ... couldn't make it, so went for Wind Man instead. Disappointed me. After that, I queued up for The Counterfeiters ... couldn't make it, so went for The Band's Visit instead. Enjoyed it. Then we saw Brick Lane - ooh, a British film!


Day 3
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Morning discussion; split into two groups, I joined the group with Howie Movshovitz (film critic at the Colorado Public Radio and teaches at the U of Colorado at Denver), affable guy and, needless to say, knowledgeable in film. After that, off to see the German silent film, which was okay, then the old Italian film, which was absolutely, humongously horrible. Bleh.

Afternoon session with the creator of Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi, along with her producer Kathleen Kennedy, and in turn Kennedy along with her husband Frank Marshall, with whom I immediately took the chance to go up to to gush over my love for The Bourne Ultimatum. Still can't stop thinking about it. After that, it's British director Sarah Gavron and her producer Chris Collins (who also did My Summer Of Love before this) and her actress Tannishtha Chatterjee.

Then it's one of the three tributes to Shyam Benegal accompanied by the showing of his film Ankur, followed by a Q&A with him. Did plan to skip this one, but glad I didn't. Good Indian film - enjoyable, and not too forceful. After that, I made sure I caught The Counterfeiters, and this time, I succeeded.


Day 4
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Quick morning discussion - by now, only about half the class showed up on time. After that harrowing Romanian film that won the Palme D'Or, off we went to the Labor Day Picnic, held at the town park at the edge of the town, where we get proper steak and salad. Director Li Yang sat next to me and we chatted again, briefly. Saw Gavron from afar. Saw Kevin McDonald, whom I've been looking out for days, so finally flagged him down, but couldn't chat long as he has two kids on the tow. Then, a panel about women and films and whether there's been a gender shift; guests include Jennifer Jason Leigh, Laura Linney, Gavron, Chatterjee, Sun, and others. Laura Linney, in particular, is perplexed by the question, half wondering why we're still asking it - and truly, I see her point; though Gavron relays a story on how when she's director of a short some gaffer came up to her expecting her to get him coffee.

On that note, about this particular festival. There has certainly been some sort of unifying theme going on here. Many of the films are about women, women going through hard times and suffering. More than a few involve the issue of abortion. Another conclusion I came to myself - the more restrictive a country is, the easier it is to come up with good stories (think China, think Communist Romania, think Nazi Germany, think caste system in India, think Iran ...).

Our last guests, Cristian Mungiu and Shyam Benegal. And then it's wrap up time. Unlike others I wouldn't go so far to call it 'the most amazing experience in my life', couldn't for the life of me figure out why others think that to be the case. It has been good, however - there's no denying that - and I definitely needed it, needed to get away from the city, to get away from Hollywood and its infecting culture. To get away from my silly little thesis. Gradually I began to think about how I would like to come back here next year - a process that is still growing even today.

One last film - Into The Wild. Finally.

Drinks with fellow mates. Well, I didn't drink.

Many of them left in the night.


After Day 4
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Left Telluride ... without seeing Wayne Wang, getting his contacts, and apologising for not being able to watch One Thousand Years Of Good Prayers, which is the one thing I wished to do before leaving. Sigh.

Left Telluride ... at 11 am.

Arrived in Hollywood the following day, 5 pm. Longest duration on a journey anywhere.

Back to ... here. Back to life.

In total, I saw 15 movies in 12 different languages in about 4 days. I would have seen more, but because the Student Symposium involved discussions as well as sessions with filmmakers, 15 is just about the maximum possible films I could go to. I've heard other festival goers going into as much as 19 films though. Next time, then, I guess.

The following are the films in the order that I saw them, and their corresponding reviews - as you can imagine, took some time to write the reviews to 15 movies.

1. I'm Not There

2. The Way You Wanted Me (Sellaisena Kuin Sinä Minut Halusit)

3. Persepolis

4. My Enemy's Enemy (Mon Meuilleur Ennemi)

5. Blind Mountain (盲山)

6. Encounters At The End Of The World

7. Wind Man (Человек Ветер)

8. The Band's Visit (ביקור התזמורת)

9. Brick Lane

10. People On Sunday (Menschen Am Sonntag)

11. Dillinger Is Dead (Dillinger È Morto)

12. Ankur

13. The Counterfeiters (Die Fälscher)

14. 4 Months, 3 Weeks And 2 Days (4 Luni, 3 Săptămâni Şi 2 Zile)

15. Into The Wild


The following are films that I wanted to see which I didn't get a chance to.

1. One Thousand Years Of Good Prayers

2. Juno

3. The Diving Bell And The Butterfly (Le Scaphandre Et Le Papillon)

4. When Did You Last See Your Father?

This is the fifteenth and final film I saw at the 34th Telluride Film Festival.

The story of Christopher McCandless was known to me when my sudden urge to go world-adventuring returned inexplicably a few months ago coincided with my discovery of this film staring Emile Hirsch and, much to my surprise, directed by Sean Penn, whom I imagined would usually be more entrenched in political stuff. Perhaps that's unfair, perhaps I'm just basing that on the Sean Penn stereotyped persona. Anyway, ever since then, I've been anxiously awaiting this film.

So it was that this film became the one that I most wanted to see during the festival, and I made sure I watched it at the end of the festival when it emerged as one of the final TBAs to be screened at Telluride, going so far as to arrive in the queue nearly 2 hours earlier.

In the end, it was a film that's good but not impressive. That's partly to do with the fact that I read up on his story before hand and am fairly acquainted with it; and here Penn decided to stick very, very close to the original story, rather than to adapt and render it more easily plotted for a filmic structure. No, instead, we are treated to a non-linear structure of film, with multiple narrators doing complex voiceovers accompanied by scribbling on screen of actual quotes by McCandless. That non-linear structure is the other part of why I think it worked less well than it could have. My fellow students and I agreed that the film might have worked better if Penn had kept it fairly linear. After all, it is a story about a journey.

The cinematography here is gorgeous, though - especially as Penn decided that the film should be filled with slo-mo shots of beautiful landscapes and McCandless' reaction towards it. In particular, a shot of McCandless spinning his head under a makeshift showerhead, sending thousands of swirling points of water flying away from his hair, is visual poetry, plain and simple.


Emile Hirsch - always thought of him as a younger Leonardo DiCaprio - is definitely well-casted as the young philosophical-intellectual adventurer McCandless, whose mind and personality combined with his dissatisfaction with his parents led him down this path, that many of us youngsters see as heroic and fulfilling and noble, while others think of him as a selfish, spoiled brat who didn't appreciate the life he had. The rest of the powerhouse cast - Catherine Keener, William Hurt, Marcia Gay Harden, Vince Vaughn, Jena Malone, Kristen Stewart, Hal Holbrook - were casted such that we need not worry about the quality of their acting, and while they almost disappear under the exuberance of McCandless, they remain prominent enough.

As I told others, this is a film I sort of understand, because I think I understand why McCandless did what he did, whereas I suspect most people thought of him as a fool, an insane young man, an ingrate, someone who had to invite trouble in his life. I just think of him as the ultimate representation of the restless young man, which I am to some extent, though try as I might I don't think I could ever become McCandless.

Watch it. See what you make of him.

How Good I Think The Film Is: 7.5/10
How Much I Liked It: 8/10
Oscar Noms That It Deserves: Best Actor

PS - I did not see Sean Penn. I heard he enjoyed his time in Telluride though, the place being devoid of paparazzis ... and desperate film students.

PPS - I would later have the chance to ask editor Jay Cassidy (who was nominated for an Oscar for this work) about the decision to make it nonlinear. His straightforward answer was that "it didn't work when we cut it linear".

* Links to my thoughts and reviews on other Telluride films.

This is the fourteenth film I saw at the 34th Telluride Film Festival.

I had wanted to watch And When Did You Last Saw Your Father?, starring Jim Broadbent and Colin Firth in a story that seems reminiscent to Big Fish instead. But this was part of the programme and I couldn't really leave as the whole group went together.

I knew that it won the Palme D'Or at Cannes this year. I knew vaguely that it's about abortion. And I knew it's going to be one of those depressing stuff.

Turns out it's not depressing - it's intensely, achingly tense. The style of the film is one of composing the film out of long takes, whether it's static or tracking, sometimes lasting up to what feels like ten minutes. It tracks the lives of two young female university students over the course of a day, one seeking abortion and the other helping her out. It is very intensely 'in the moment' - for some films you have that for a few scenes, but in this case it is constant and, well, the entire film is like that. What that means is that the film is very focussed on the situation the characters are in at that very moment in the scene and what their choices and/or reactions are, which is what gave it its morbid tension.


The brilliance of this movie is that it seems to defy a lot of the so-called rules of scriptwriting or filmmaking, but on closer analysis is found not to be the case. For example, the style of the film borders on realism - director Cristian Mungiu insisted on not having music, and of course the long takes helps maintain the style of naturalism desired. One of the most talked about scenes in the film is a long shot, lasting what seemed like ten minutes (but probably shorter in running time), when the friend of the girl who went through an abortion had to go to her boyfriend's mother's birthday party; the camera is framed with her off-center and surrounded by all these strangers who talk across her, as she sits in silence throughout the entire shot. What they are talking about has nothing to do with abortion, just their own everyday businesses and gossips ...

... and it is probably one of the most tense shots ever seen in recent cinema.

To sit through this movie is to go through an experience, unlike most movies. It joins the chorus that is the New Romanian Cinema that has risen quite suddenly in the past couple years or so to dominate headlines in the international film industry. It shows us a different way of making movies. It is worth watching.

Mungiu later visited us for a discussion. He said he had 30 days to shoot the movie, so the long takes were partly a result of that limitation. He said that not all actors could do long takes like that, so the casting was very much key - he needed actors who could learn up to 10 pages of lines, and ... here's the bombshell ...

... he acted out the lines for the actors, exactly how they wanted it.

Now, here in film school, we're being taught that giving lines to actors is a major no-no. (I can imagine my Working With Actors instructor Heidi Davis breathing down our neck if we dare do that to actors here.) But in the film, the acting was completely naturalistic, and one couldn't tell at all that the director was giving lines to actors ... it's probably down to the brilliance of both director and actors and the fact that they both could communicate. On that note, Mungiu talked about how there should be no secrets between director and actor, that they are completely honest with each other and could talk about anything. If it sounds easy, it's just coz you've never had to direct dramatic stuff like this before.

Mungiu also talked about how he didn't want to use a tripod, or steadicam; instead, his DP came up with a special device, which hangs the camera in front of the camera operator and allows him to follow the characters everywhere, leaving some flexibility so that the camera still shakes (unlike the cool gliding quality of the steadicam) but, I'm guessing, minimising the shakes in the up-down direction. Mungiu also mentioned that he doesn't storyboard, that he needs to stage the action first and observe it before he can decide how it needs to be shot.


Many reviewers seemed to be held up by the shot of a fetus, bawling over the fact that it was done for shock value. Mungiu brushes that off, and explains that part of directing is determining whether a shot should be there or not and in this case, he feels it should be there. He didn't do it for shock value, it's just there for us to see - and I can certainly see his point of view. I find it rather amusing that so many were put off by it, or at least deeming it as something worth mentioning at all.

I asked Mungiu the significance of the title, at which point Mungiu let out a slight smile, as if suggesting that's he's been asked that often enough, as he asked me back, "Well, what do you think it means?" (A question he used as a reply rather often.) He says that it's not meant to be taken literally ... what it is, is that he likes the countdown nature of the title. I like that sort of complexity - in the movie it suggests that the pregnancy of the girl is somewhere around 4 months, and much is made of it in one of the many tense scenes before the abortion ... but then deny that the title has anything to do with that variable in the film. Love that kind of stuff, that kind of messing with the audience.


How Good I Think The Film Is: 9/10
How Much I Liked It: 8/10
Oscar Noms That It Deserves: Best Director, Best Foreign Language Film

* Links to my thoughts and reviews on other Telluride films.

This is the thirteenth film I saw at the 34th Telluride Film Festival.

I tried once to get into the film. It was interesting, simply coz it's yet another film about the Holocaust, but on top of that, it is about the Nazi attempts to create inflation in Britain by flooding it with counterfeit notes. Economics and filmmaking, exactly the two things I studied at tertiary level education.

Well, when I arrived there, nearly an hour early, I was shocked to see, oh, about 600 people queueing up outside the cinema (that seats less than 500). I didn't realise the film was this popular.

This time, I made it, and was glad to see it. I like the film, because it sets itself up not as 'another Holocaust movie', but a genuinely interesting and occasionally humorous drama about this Jew who survived through his talent and personality traits - which may seem distasteful by modern standards but is very much integral to his being able to live through the war. On top of that, Austrian director Stefan Ruzowitzky utilises the Greengrass style of smash zoom, i.e. seemingly random (but not really) zoom-ins at certain moments. Shakycam is also extensively employed, but not to Greengrass's level and certainly was never distracting.


Story focuses on Solomon Sorowitsch, a talented counterfeiter who goes by the odd abbreviation Sally to avoid offending the more xenophobic Germans he has to deal with, is captured before the war and sent to concentration camps, where his calculative and selfish nature kept him alive. Some time in 1944, he gets shipped to the outskirts of Berlin along with a few other Jews (among them a young Russian Jew who Sorowitsch watches out for, and a Communist Jew named Burger who insists on preserving principles over life), and is ordered to engineer perfect counterfeit pound sterling notes in the millions. This, Sorowitsch does very quickly - and it is a little surreal to see all these Jews working hard to support the Nazi regime in their plan and cheering when they succeeded.

There is a slight resemblance of this story to The Shawshank Redemption, however. Never mind that both are prison movies, there are other parallels which I shan't reveal here.

Sorowitsch is ably played by Karl Markovics, portraying Sorowitsch as someone whose brain is constantly churning, always calm and collected, yet suggesting a tortured past buried deep within that clearly Sorowitsch would never allow himself to reveal. Sorowitsch is a fascinating character which I liked a lot - and it is to Markovics' credit that he never comes off as repulsive, despite what political correctness would call the immorality of his character. His motto is 'adapt or die'.


The script wastes no words or plot - it moves along swiftly. One thing that impressed me is how it seemed to stay ahead of the audience at all times. When Sorowitsch and the other new Jews were being shown around the counterfeit notes factory, the chief said in the second line of his introduction, "Once we've succeeded making the notes, they will probably bring us outside to shoot us."

The film's brutal but not overly so, and it isn't complicated - even though, I suspect, many in the audience wouldn't know how printing counterfeit money could aid the war effort ... and it's not just that it allows the Germans to buy more machinery. It's a fine piece of entertainment, that's what it is. Right down to the last line in the film.

How Good I Think The Film Is: 8/10
How Much I Liked It: 8/10

* Links to my thoughts and reviews on other Telluride films.

This is the twelfth film I saw at the 34th Telluride Film Festival.

Now, I've always heard Yasmin Ahmad talking about Satyajit Ray, but have never had the mood to dive into those films coz those kinds of Indian film sounded heavy and long - meaning, as great as they might be (and at the risk of sounding shallow for a film student to say this) it's just too tedious to sit through.

Shyam Benegal can be considered a contemporary of Ray (or perhaps just slightly younger), and makes similar sorts of Indian films, what some academicians term 'parallel Indian cinema' to differentiate it from the Bollywood films; i.e. serious melodramas that usually contain social dilemmas as themes. However, Benegal is unheard of outside of a narrow circle of filmmakers throughout the world; the film festival itself acknowledges on its brochure that it didn't expect most people to know who Benegal was, but encourages them to come anyway for any one of the three (or all) screenings of Benegal's films.

In fact, I was considering not going, which would've allowed me to squeeze in two films instead of just one - but on the other hand, there's no guarantee to get into any of those two, so finally I decided to just go for it.

Well, the film works really well, and I didn't regret seeing it. Wasn't as tedious as I imagined - or maybe it's the indie nature of the film festival that allowed me to slide into films like these. Benegal's noted strength is his portrayal of strong women characters, and that is no different here, his first narrative feature film.

It tells the story of Lakshmi, an untouchable who works for Surya, a newly-graduated and newly-married young urban man for whom the village is an entirely different world. Under orders from his father, Surya enters the village and takes up residence there, pompous as expected, denying his step-brother water to his portion of the field ... but is soon infatuated with the ever-capable and dependable Lakshmi. Lakshmi herself just tries to live her life as best she could, with her only ambition being to have a son with her often-drunk deaf-mute husband.

If all that sounds complex, believe me it isn't. The movie takes its time - but not too much. It reveals the routines of daily village life in India in between telling the story, and it leads us to respect the women who work in it - though perhaps a little too one-sidedly, the men all come across as useless as pigs. The twist and turns of the story are completely natural and unforced, and the story leads to an unsettling climax, one which brings all the cast together to one spot and breaks down some of them while strengthening others. Like Blind Mountain, the ending is neither happy nor unhappy; it's a mixture of complex emotions and is all the better for it, and in both films, the end comes abruptly, such that we know this isn't the end of the story for the characters, just for the film, and leaves us wanting to know more about what happened. Brilliant.

During the Q&A session, a woman asked Benegal whether a decision Lakshmi makes is due to Lakshmi wanting to make a point about women finding their strength. Benegal simply answered, not really, that's just what Lakshmi wanted, her desire - a fact that was revealed in the opening images of the film. So often people try to read into small details or characters motivations, when it's either really simple or is a consequence of location shooting.


Benegal was also kind enough to join us for the Student Symposium. He says he tends to write ensemble pieces, partly due to the fact that, especially in those early days, he had almost a repertoire of actors who wanted to continue to work with him and that he casted in his subsequent films, and partly because he doesn't believe in characters that are there just to reflect the so-called main characters. He follows characters rather than plots (this statement will drum up the plot- vs character-driven debate among film students). He shoots as chronologically as he can, and he shoots pretty fast - he mentioned Ankur was shot in about five weeks (unless I remembered wrongly).

A couple more quotes. When asked about how he edits, he replies that he used to wait till he finishes the film before he begins editing, but now he edits as he goes along, because "it's easy, you know, with an Avid and a laptop ..." I don't know why, but that just cracked me up a little, coming from someone past 70 years of age. He also said, "when you're young, you tend to be a bit arrogant and reject a great deal", which got me thinking about myself. As for making films, "when I start each film, it's as if it is the first movie I'm making, and when it ends, it's as if it's the last ... it has to be like that".

How Good I Think The Film Is: 8/10
How Much I Liked It: 8/10
At What Point Did I First Looked At My Watch: 25 mins

* Links to my thoughts and reviews on other Telluride films.

This is the eleventh film I saw at the 34th Telluride Film Festival.

I had a choice to go for The Savages, which stars Laura Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman; but I saw the trailer to that and realised that it was definitely not my cup of tea, so I decided to go for this one even though I had no desire to see it at all. It is yet another film picked by Edith Kramer for the film festival.

Should have gone to The Savages. Would have regretted less.

Most atrocious film ever.

Film has bored guy going back home. Then cooking. Then watching old home videos. In between, repairs a gun. Does other weird stuff. Kills wife. Boards ship and sails into sunset.

Waste of time. I can't think of a worse film I've seen in my life.

Edith Kramer calls it a very smart film, and mentions that 'smart' is a word she rarely uses.

How Good I Think The Film Is: undefined
How Much I Liked It: 0/10

* Links to my thoughts and reviews on other Telluride films.

This is the tenth film I saw at the 34th Telluride Film Festival, also the only silent film I saw there (but accompanied by the Mont Alto Orchestra).

When introducing this film, Paolo Cherchi Usai seemed to gush as he mentions no less than Robert Siodmak, Billy Wilder, Fred Zinneman and Edgar Ulmer collaborating on this pre-WWII film set in Berlin and its outskirts. He reminds us that that's as if "Martin Scorsese, George Lucas, Francis Ford Coppola joined forces to make a film" in today's terms.

Still, ultimately, to me anyway, the film is just another silent film. Not a bad one, but not good enough to beat back the exhaustion I have accumulated over the past few days of film festival-ing.

The film begins with the statement that 'no professional actors were used', and it portrays the days in the life of Berliners in one single Sunday, a day of leisure and relaxation, a day of no work, where people are more inclined to be happier and smile more. In particular, we focus on four Berliners, two young girls and two slightly older men, as they meet up to go flirt and frolick by the lake; though the film does cut away to other activities in the city, including an incredulously random sequence involving young men slapping each other's butts, that for today's audience screams out in blaring red signals 'Homoeroticism!'

The others in the Student Symposium seem to enjoy it more than I do - not to say that I didn't enjoy it at all, it's a pleasant enough film, it's just that silent films get tiring after a short while. I did think I would be more interested, as the film, after all, gives us a portrait in the lives of people of a different age in a different place, but somehow I just couldn't get into it. Can't explain why.

The orchestra did a good job - I was obviously impressed with their ability to play non-stop for an hour and fifteen minutes - but the tracks are often repetitive, as is custom for silent films, and even though the music very much suited the images, I found my mind following the repetitiveness of the music and getting slightly irritated by it rather than watching the film.

I liked how the film ended though - with captions indicating that by Monday, Berliners were already thinking about the weekend, and hoping it would come sooner than later. Ah, those innocent times ... on the cusp of hyperinflation and economic catastrophe ...

How Good I Think The Film Is: 7/10
How Much I Liked It: 5.5/10

* Links to my thoughts and reviews on other Telluride films.

This is the ninth film I saw at the 34th Telluride Film Festival.

Yet again, I feel comfortable as the movie begins to introduce us to the world of the story and the characters, simply by virtue of it being a British film, owing to my biases. By the time the film ended, I felt like I saw a good film, but it's one of those films where I know it is good but can't really explain why. (One example I always give of such films, is American Beauty.)

Brick Lane is based on a novel by Monica Ali, which did very well in the UK. I vaguely heard of it, but didn't know what the story is about, which, again, almost always improves the viewing experience. The story begins in Bangladesh, where two girls run joyfully through the wet, green countryside. That is immediately contrasted with the sense of despair felt by their mother, who kills herself, and thus setting forth the story of the elder sister, Nazneen, who is very soon married to an older man living in London with rotund features and an incurable Anglophile.

Nazneen remains very conservative, praying five times a day as she should. She would have two daughters, who develop their own personality under the often incomprehensible mood of their quote-spouting father. But she would also be lonely, spending many moments reading the letters her sister sent her. Her loneliness eventually leads her to start a home job sewing clothes - and that brings about changes that would challenge Nazneen and her family.

This being a literary adaptation, there is the inevitable slight episodic quality to the narrative - though not as profound as in Mira Nair's films. However, I was engaged throughout, due to the nuanced performances of, well, pretty much the entire cast. Nazneen is played by Tannishta Chatterjee as a woman of few words - not by choice though, as she reveals in a session with us students her occasional plead to director Sarah Gavron to give her more lines - a challenging act for many actors, but she made her real to the audience and allowed us into her thoughts. Also deserve mentioning is Satish Kaushik, who plays the husband that so irritated and infuriated the audience ... yet emerging in the end as a sympathetic figure, so much so that we wish him well.


Gavron reveals her own style in this film, one of evocative sensuality, especially in the way she cuts the many montage sequences in the film, and the way the editing brings us into Nazneen's past in Bangladesh and then back to the present day in London, accompanied by flashes or fades - without ever being intrusive. From what I can see, it wouldn't be too difficult to make a boring film out of this story, so the fact that Gavron didn't fall into that trap proves her craft.

On a personal note, I have written scripts which my instructors deemed "too internal". The idea is that inner-personal conflict is best dealt with in a novel whereas films are more suitable for inter-personal and extra-personal (meaning self against society/world). Here, we see a film that is at least half inner-personal conflict worked, though it can't have been easy. But point is it worked.

How Good I Think The Film Is: 8/10
How Much I Liked It: 8/10

* Links to my thoughts and reviews on other Telluride films.

This is the eighth film I saw at the 34th Telluride Film Festival.

Eight men dressed in light blue uniforms stand at the edge of the airport platform, straight and rigid. Cars pass them by, and one after another turns their head to see whether it's for them. It's not. What to do?

Those were the opening images of The Band Visits.

This charming comedy follows this bunch of seemingly misplaced Egyptian policemen who are trying to navigate their way to an Arabic cultural centre within Israel where they're scheduled to perform some songs. Their behaviours are awkward, especially towards each other. The biggest discomfort comes from the obvious conflict between their leader, Tawfiq, a very strict and conservative middle-aged man who also happens to be reserved, and the youngest of the group with a slight rebellious streak, Khaled, who finds it all amusing but rather boring (and is immediately on the search for more interesting things to do). They arrive in an Israeli town by bus (after much haggling with the locals in the only language they share - English, to the Telluride audience's great fortune) only to realise that they've mixed up Beit Hatikva with Petah Tikva.

And, guess what, the last bus has left and won't be back until the next morning. Meanwhile, nothing happens in the near-ghost town of Beit Hatikva. They end up in Dina's little cafe, which boasts two absolute regulars and no one else. Offering them food and later a place to stay for the night, the rest of the film shows how they spend their town, a group of Arabs in a quiet Israeli town.

Nothing crazy happens. There is never talk about politics. There is talk about their separate backgrounds ... such as when Dina reminisces about how she used to watch Arabic tearjerker movies and loved them. The only 'tension' arising from the fact that one's Arabic and the other's Israeli is when one doesn't understand each other due to the way each group speaks English differently - though I must say, the standard of English of almost all the characters were impeccable. Tawfiq, in particular, uses rather Latinate words when he speaks.

I call this kind of comedy quiet comedies, where a lot of the humour is found in the discomfort or irony in those gaps in conversation between people. It's not that there isn't a lot of dialogue - I'd say about half the scenes are talky and the other half filled with silence (for instance, in a running gag involving a phone booth, not a single line of dialogue is present). It's just that so much of the emotion in the film is found within those silent moments ... I would describe the dialogue and the silent moments in the film like the positive and negative space of an image, both are important but do different things, and together they create, well, a picture.

I also liked the performances here, very subtle, very exquisite. Sasson Gabai's portrayal of Tawfiq reminded me of Bill Nighy in The Girl In The Cafe, while Ronit Elkabetz plays Dina as a charming, light-hearted woman who hides her loneliness in her knowing smile. The often static nature of the shots also accentuate the comedy - comedy often works when we're shown something as if objectively rather than being told by all the cinematic devices that something in the scene is funny.

I don't know how realistic the situation as portrayed in the film is - that Arabs and Israelis can already live peacefully with each other, without the constant interruption of cultural and religious conflict. If it is ... well, maybe that is what director Eran Kolirin meant by this being a 'political film', albeit one without politics in it.

How Good I Think The Film Is: 8/10
How Much I Liked It: 7.5/10


As I write this, I am stranded in the town of Grand Junction, in a situation rather similar to the Egyptian police band members. What was supposed to be a 4 hour wait turned into 8 hours, as the schedule has apparently changed since I bought the ticket 2 months ago. So I stumbled around, in this rather quiet town, with very few cars and even fewer people and shops closing around 5 pm. I am in a cafe that closes at 6.30 pm; asked the barrista whether there's any other cinema in town (other than the small but nice-looking one that seems to only play independent films I don't care for and certainly am not in a mood to watch after the last few days) at which point she says, not really. In fact, no cafes remain open after this. And I have to wait until at least 10 pm when the bus station re-opens.

* Links to my thoughts and reviews on other Telluride films.

This is the seventh film I saw at the 34th Telluride Film Festival.

I was queueing up for Sean Penn's Into The Wild, actually, but was 20 spaces away from actually being able to get a seat, meaning I didn't ... so, I ended up going for this one. I was mildly interested, because it's set in Kazakhstan - and anything Central Asian perks my interest. On top of that it's billed as a magic realism tale.

Boringest. Film. Ever. (Well, since I can remember anyway.)

It didn't help that I was tired to begin with, so pretty much slept through the first half hour of it. Then I was awake and ... was pretty much just waiting for it to end. The essential story is that an angel crash lands in this farmer's house in a rural village, and we spent the rest of the movie seeing disaster befalling the farmer's family. Except that the disasters don't start befalling until halfway through the film - in the meantime we're treated to a series of useless and unamusing subplots involving half a dozen side characters that were caricatural and one-note. The only characters that made an effort to be engaging were the farming couple - both were handsome-looking in a Kazakh sort of way (looking very Chinese). They were the only ones who seem to react naturally to their circumstances.

The story did start to move once the disasters started happening - house gets burned down, money and donkey stolen, son jumps off roof ... but they're never really connected to the angel. And at any case by then it's too late.

Wished I didn't go to see this one. The only merit I can offer is that the film does indicate that the Kazakhs aren't so poor that they're not incapable of making professionally looking films. (Dialogue was often atrocious though.)

How Good I Think The Film Is: 3/10
How Much I Liked It: 2/10
At What Point Did I First Looked At My Watch: 25 mins

* Links to my thoughts and reviews on other Telluride films.

This is the sixth film I saw at the 34th Telluride Film Festival.

Herzog introduced the film saying that having just finished this documentary about the South Pole, he is starting another one soon and had just been to North Pole, Alaska for research days before. Now that he is in Telluride, "it's as if the latitudes no longer matter ... except that Telluride is important because Telluride is the center of the world", leading to cheers and claps from the Telluride faithful.

The only other Werner Herzog film that I've seen is Rescue Dawn, which didn't work for me at all. However, this film had one thing going for it - I am extremely interested in Antarctica. A few months ago, an inexplicable craving for Antarctica creeped up on me and I found myself reading as much as I can about it, finding out how one could go there (not easy), and what goes on there. I also borrowed Nicholas Johnson's A Big Dead Place from the library, which turned out to be one of the funniest books I've read in a long, long time (books don't normally make me laugh).

The documentary itself didn't begin with a set plan. Herzog confesses he was worried for a while because he didn't know exactly what he was going to film. So the documentary sort of developed into something resembling a video journal. The images here cannot compare with those in Arctic Tale, which took 12 years and much more effort to shoot. (This one's shot in a matter of months with a crew of two, including Herzog the Sound Recordist.) Instead, Herzog is more interested in the people who live in Antarctica, in particular the Americans at McMurdo Station (largest base in Antarctica), Mt Erebus, and a couple other places. The thing is, it takes a very special person to want to go to Antarctica to work and live - in other words, often eccentric types. There's the linguist who works the botanic centre; the philosopher-forklift; the female explorer who's done everything under the sun AND manages to enclose herself in a small luggage bag; the scientists who found 3 new species in one underwater dive and amuses Herzog when their reply to his interested 'isn't that very significant?' was a nonchalant 'oh, yeah'.

Generally, the whole film is accompanied by Herzog's bemused and often bordering-on-philosophical narration (still coated with a thick German accent), which led to a rather extended discussion when Herzog joined us Symposium students for a session. What some in the audience would define as cynical attitudes among the scientists in Antarctica were not seen as such as Herzog; he sees them as just different people, who react to things we of the average person might get excited over rather differently. (In the cinema, the audience was constantly chuckling at Herzog's amusing comments or scenes apparently tinged with irony, for instance when a camera shot goes on for too long on a plumber-melder who was demonstrating a point with his hands. I suspect Herzog wouldn't have laughed along; I myself didn't, and thought the audience simple for doing so.)

One of the experiences of Karen Joyce (the woman who managed to climbed into a duffel bag) was to lie in a sewer pipe at the back of a truck travelling down South America (my paraphrasing might be terribly off ...). Herzog used that example in his session with us, saying that "that's how travel should be like", which surprised the whole class, although I think I knew what he meant; it is something that can't really be articulated, or at least I can't. It's all about the spirit of travelling, of adventure, think Christopher McCandless, think Jack Kerouac.



Herzog said a lot of things. For example, Grizzly Man inevitably cropped up in the conversation, and his view in making the film is that he is angry with people like Timothy Treadwell who hold a Disney-fied view of nature, but "bears don't need to be hugged!! they just need to be respected." He commented that it is ironic that there are so many treehuggers and bearhuggers in the world, yet no one thought to preserve languages; in the film, while interviewing the linguist who works at the botanic centre, he observes that "it occurred to me that in the time it took for him to lay out his arguments, there are probably three or four languages that have gone extinct". I think his point is that, isn't language more relevant to culture and humanity than nature? Perhaps my favourite quote of his that day,

"Wild nature is monumentally indifferent to human beings. Period."

On the more technical side of things, I asked him what were the challenges shooting this documentary and what camera he used. He mentioned a couple of Sony cameras (he doesn't know what models they are, couldn't be bothered; just that one's big and one's smaller), and that he shot using HD because it's too troublesome to shoot in film over there. He explains that celluloid is brittle under those temperatures. Plus, he would not have been able to shoot with a minimal crew if they've had to bring all those film equipment.

Ultimately, students were left a little confused as to what the point of the documentary was, due to its seemingly unstructured nature. But I see it as Herzog being completely frank and honest about his thoughts and feelings as he goes along making this film - and when things are left natural and unplanned like that, it's more complex and less clear-cut and, in my opinion, almost always more sophisticated (but also more nebulous) than, say, a formulaic approach to documentary filmmaking, where everything is consciously compartmentalised.

How Good I Think The Film Is: 7/10
How Much I Liked It: 7.5/10
At What Point Did I First Looked At My Watch: 15 mins

* Links to my thoughts and reviews on other Telluride films.

This is the fifth film I saw at the 34th Telluride Film Festival.

I was wandering around the Opening Feed on Friday evening and bumped into a pair of Chinese filmmakers, and at further inquiry found out that it's director Li Yang and his co-producer Alexandra Sun. Alas, I didn't know Li's work and sheepishly asked him, and he said his previous film was Blind Shaft, which I did hear of. He also informed me that this film of his was previously in Cannes this year.

Anyway, his film was part of our programme, so it was nice to have met them before hand - even though it was somewhat awkward as I didn't know what to ask and my Mandarin has become embarassingly un-fluent.

The film is amazingly gutwrenching. You could feel the entire cinema breathing ... hands trembling, at the enormously heavy emotion sitting on our shoulders watching the film. Actually, these sort of gutwrenching melodramas are by no means unique in Chinese cinema, and they're often well done - this one, extremely so.

The great thing about watching this one here is that I had no idea what the story is about. Without saying too much, it's a story that exemplifies the lives of young women who were abducted into secluded rural villages in China (here shot in Shaanxi Province) into forced marriages. It has interesting parallels with The Way You Wanted Me, the Finnish melodrama I saw the day before ... except it's so much more emotional here - perhaps Western melodrama doesn't work as well on me.

My favourite character in the film is the mother-in-law, played by one of the peasants in the village. She is not a bad person at all, even though she participates in this act of holding the girl in the house. She continues to take care of her, serves her food, tolerates her kicking and bawling, following her around to make sure she doesn't run away, all without complaint, without much fuss. I really sympathised her - all she wanted is a grandson.

The thing that I couldn't figure out is how director Li extracted such good performances from his mostly non-professional actors. ("Some of them have never even seen a cinema," said Li.) Perhaps there's something about people being more natural if they don't have the concept of fakery and pretension that inevitably accompanies the act of acting, or making films. I tried to pry out Li's methods, who just said that it's different for different directors and that his method may not necessarily be useful to me. He did mention that he acted a little before (he has a small cameo in the film).

How Good I Think The Film Is: 8.5/10
How Much I Liked It: 8.5/10
At What Point Did I First Looked At My Watch: 10 mins
Oscar Noms That It Deserves: Best Foreign Language Film


這是我在第３４屆鐵碌萊電影節看的第５部影片。

當我在星期五晚宴邊吃邊走時﹐我碰到了從中國來的導演和制作人﹐李楊先生和孫雅麗小姐。我不知道李導演以前拍過甚麼戲﹐因此有點不好意思地問李導演。他說他前一部拍的戲是「盲井」﹐那我可有聽說過。他也告訴我「盲山」剛剛在今年的戛納電影節銀幕。

「盲山」是節目表里必需觀尚的影片之一﹐能在之前見到導演和影片制作人也算是一種福氣。雖然是有點尷尬﹐因為我不大懂要問他們甚麼﹐而且本人華文近幾年來已變得很差經。

這部電影非常的悲慘。我可以感覺到全場觀眾的呼吸聲﹐或著手在攙抖﹐看這部電影時可以感受到一股沉重的氣氛... 其實﹐這種看了令人心碎的悲慘劇情﹐在中國可拍了不少﹐而且也拍得特別好。這部呢﹐卻實拍得异常地好。

還好我之前對這部戲的劇情故事完全不知道。我也不想透露太多故事的情節﹐總之﹐這部戲講訴無數個中國少女的故事。一個被綁架到內陸偏遠村莊，然后再被強制逼入婚姻少女的生活，感情蠻深動的一部電影。

我最喜歡的角色是少女的岳母。雖然他也有份綁架那少女，但她並非壞人。她毫無怨氣地照顧少女，給他東西吃，不介意少女打她罵他，少女出門時靜靜地跟縱她。我倒很同情岳母，他做這一切只為了得到孫子。

我想不通李導演如何利用從來沒演過戲的演員﹐卻還能夠獲得那麼棒的演出。李導演還說﹐村人有些是從來沒看過電影的。有可能﹐沒演戲過的人﹐演戲時比較自然。我問李導演是如何導演演員的﹐他沒告訴我﹐只說不同的導演有不同的方法﹐他的方法不一定適合我用。他也提到之前有演過一點戲。在「盲山」里他也演了一個小角色。

* Links to my thoughts and reviews on other Telluride films.

This is the fourth film I saw at the 34th Telluride Film Festival.

It is a documentary by Kevin McDonald, who also directed The Last King of Scotland and Touching The Void, and almost all of his films have opened at the Telluride Film Festival. This one tells the story of Klaus Barbie, a staunch Nazi (national socialist) German officer who, after being captured by the Allies was later employed by the US government/CIA to help bring down foreign governments. Well, I guess it isn't so surprising that the CIA would stoop so low as to use former war criminals to further their cause. What they didn't quite realise is that Barbie then used his immunity to try and set up the Fourth Reich in Bolivia. He failed, later denies it, and is captured in the late 80s and set up for trial in France, where testimonials by still shell-shocked survivors clashes with his family and neighbours's view of him, who knew him as an eccentric but benign man.

The documentary is presented in French, which surprised the hell out of me in the opening minutes. Later I asked McDonald why that was the case and he mentioned that it's because the French paid for most of it and this is the first version.

It's a fascinating enough story, mostly because the whole thing felt like some alternative history in the post-WWII world, so unreal and obscure were some of the facts presented in it. But, many of the talking heads were commenting on it as if it was part of generally-accepted history, while others found the accusations completely random. It is also quite cerebral - lots to take in, made harder with having to read subtitles. This being a midnight screening, McDonald, during his introduction, applauded the viewers for making it to the show - 'I'd be sleeping already if I didn't have to do this intro,' says he - and truly I did doze off microseconds at a time for about a quarter of the documentary.

How Good I Think The Film Is: 7/10
How Much I Liked It: 6.5/10

PS - On another matter, I've always been curious about why McDonald chose, in scenes of Idi Amin making speeches in The Last King Of Scotland, to keep panning from his face down to his hand gestures (in what's essentially a stomach shot) and then back to his face again. I asked him and got my answer - and felt rather apologetic in delaying him as he was clutching on to two restless kids who seem anxious to be somewhere else.

* Links to my thoughts and reviews on other Telluride films.

The following are comments and opinions by Ms Satrapi when she came to talk to us about her film (along with producers Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall). [Accuracy of paraphrase not guaranteed ...]

"It takes intelligent people to be able to laugh; laughing is the height of people understanding each other."

Why Persepolis? She explains that it's because the ancient Persian city of Persepolis equates to Iran; in other words, her film is about Iran, and that it is important to know history because the reason we don't progress and history repeating itself is because we forget.

"If the movie could be made in Iran today, there would be no reason for me to make it at all."

Why in French? "Because we think in the language we speak. And this film is not made for Iranians, rather, it is made for people outside of Iran who need to know the situation in Iran. It's impossible to make the film in Iranian languages."

"This is not an autobiography - that's when people are angry with their friends and families and couldn't express it and hence they write a book. No, if I'm angry with people I just tell it straight to their face. Why tell the story of Iran through my own story? Because I'm not a historian or a sociologist. Telling it this way brings the subject to a personal level. The word 'nation' is too abstract, doesn't mean anything."

They are considering the choice of whether to dub the film when marketing to other countries. Why a dub? "Because people who are comfortable with reading subtitles tend not to need to be told all of this, they're already thinking the same way I do. I told them, don't just send me to New York, send me to Texas!"

Kathleen Kennedy adds, "It is important not to let the film be perceived as a political statement or tool."

This is the third film I saw at the 34th Telluride Film Festival.

The film won the Grand Jury Prize at this year's Cannes Film Festival. It is then famous for being banned in Iran, immediately carrying certain connotations. Then I discovered that Persepolis isn't about the ancient city Persepolis, which I'd have been very interested in. It is then famous for having Bangkok International Film Festival being told to not show the film. And then I found out that it's some cartoon about Iran's modern history and somehow involving a young girl.

Oh ... kay ...

Anyway, I saw it and thought it was fairly amusing. I didn't think it was great - or perhaps the hype influenced my feelings towards it. As it turns out, it isn't a film about Iran's history - not directly anyway - but it tells the story of the life of Marjane Satrapi - the director. She's a precocious child, with a rebellious streak; but the film spends most of the beginning act focusing on what happened in Iran in the late 70s and what happened to Marji's family and family friends; and then she is sent away to Iran, and then the film's focus narrows considerably into just about her life in Europe. Was it sad and harrowing? Of course, otherwise it might not have been worth it to be made into a film. However, that begs the question: what is the film about? When introducing the film, Satrapi mentioned how she is happy that the film made it to the United States, especially now 'at the time when Bush is talking about invading my country'. Yet the majority of the film is about her, as if she made the film to let off steam on the events in her life. [UPDATE: Satrapi says that is not the case. However, that is how it felt like to me; key word 'as if'.]

One thing that has to be said is how humorous the film is, even through the more tragic parts of the story. Satrapi clearly has a confident sense of humour; she was certainly not afraid to laugh at herself ... or others, for that matter. The animation style, while simplistic, is appropriate - and surprisingly brings out the poignancy of the story well.

How Good I Think The Film Is: 7/10
How Much I Liked It: 6.5/10
At What Point Did I First Looked At My Watch: 10 mins

* Links to my thoughts and reviews on other Telluride films.

This is the second film I saw at the 34th Telluride Film Festival.

I don't normally like black and white films of the old era (which is probably wrong for a film student to say, if one wants to be politically correct - and many film students are) ... though I did have to see a Murnau film called Sunrise and did enjoy that.

This film is one of the half dozen films picked by this year's Guest Director Edith Kramer, and she explained (extensively) about the film and what it meant and the context behind it before we saw it.

This is a film by Teuvo Tulio, which almost no one has heard of but is apparently a fairly well known Finnish melodrama filmmaker in the 40s and 50s. This one is released during the war period. It has, as Kramer gleefully points out, strangely blatant editing errors, re-using of earlier shots, clunky dialogue.

The film is about a young woman who finds love in a young man named Aarne, who subsequently betrays her and sends her down a path of spiralling despair which never lets up. The rest of the film is of her finding man after man who uses the same line on her - 'I will take care of you' - who never fails to disappoint her. And yes, as Kramer says, there were (several) moments where a twist happens out of the blue which leaves the audience going 'what the, where the hell did that ...'.

For the most part it sustained my interest. I'm not convinced that melodrama is as fascinating as Kramer made it out to be, though.

And, Finnish really sounds a little like the Celtic dialects.

How Good I Think The Film Is: 5.5/10
How Much I Liked It : 4.5/10
At What Point Did I First Looked At My Watch: 10 mins

* Links to my thoughts and reviews on other Telluride films.