My Tellurium-Plated Life

As I'll be busy throughout the fest, I thought I'd post the official Telluride Film Fest widget in the regular part of the blog. I'll update my own schedule and this little contraption is pretty neat, given that it will feature updated information as it happens at the fest. Moreover, there will be some clips of on-the-street interviews shown on Starz! through the weekend and apparently Turner Classic Movies (my home theater!) will be featuring two days of TFF material. The lineup, by the way, has already been announced. Enjoy!

Whee!!

I'm here! (And already having issues with altitude.... maybe some wine will help....)

Just like Casey Kasem...

Right now, we are counting down to several things:

• The first day of classes, for the whole family;
• The first day in "Green Room" (aka the Big Kids' Room), for Xan;
• J&A's departure for Telluride, which happens during the first week of classes; and
• the relaunch of this.

We can't do anything if you want to participate in the first three; for #4, however, please e-mail me if you're wondering how you can participate in making my students' lives that much better or worse. (Yes, grading is involved. Señor Pájaro, here's your chance!)

Telluride 2007 (a week later)

See that picture? That's one happy cat, taking in the gorgeous mountain air, so thin and so wonderful that all you can do is avoid it entirely by sitting inside a theater to watch movies.

Many people reading this may know that Angela and I are fortunate enough to work the Telluride Film Festival each Labor Day weekend. I have been going since I was a stealth programming intern distribution manager way back in '94 and have tried to go every year since. I have not been to any of the world's other major festivals -- heck, I've only attended other film fests of any sort in Lima and Washington -- but from what I hear, I don't want to go anywhere else. Telluride is special: a fantastic location, a fest where stars are free to walk down the main street without the stalkerazzi, and where the U.S./World Premieres of the Movies That Will Be for that year share space with some quirky, fun stuff, retrospectives and restored/re-found films you'd never see anywhere else. (Heck, last year, one of my favorites turned out to be William Wyler's Dodsworth, which I had never seen.) It also is, as Ken Burns said at the staff introduction, "home" of sorts, where I see fellow film geeks (many of us part of the so-called "Dartmouth Mafia" of former directors of the Dartmouth Film Society) who are not necessarily also film academics. It's the fest-for-folk-who-really-love-movies, and it's a pleasure to be able to go.

Last year, I attempted to post daily, but I was caught up in my new position as "ringmaster," which means basically I'm the emcee at a particular theater. In the case of my theater, this also meant I came up with trivia questions to auction off the TCM (our theater sponsor) versions of Scene-It. (It's all about having Rosebud as a game piece, trust me. This is why, this year, the aforementioned Ken Burns was thrilled to win a copy for himself, heh heh.) Back then, I still got a chance to see some of the "new cool stuff" when The Last King of Scotland and Jindabyne still played at my theater.

This time, however, not a chance: the "big" movies sailed past my theater into the larger spaces only, leaving only the more esoteric choices for us. This usually doesn't bother me, but I winced at seeing a movie play twice in our theater, if only because that meant I couldn't see another movie, dammit. (Don't they think of me?) Chained as I was to the theater, this means that I can't comment on the likes of the premieres like Juno (the big fest hit), Persepolis, Margot at the Wedding, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, The Savages or Into the Wild. All missed, because of programming. (I did catch two of the "bigger" films, but we'll get to that in a moment.) And, if you're interested in commentary on those films (and others), check out JJ's blog: a former student (who is the spitting image of Jack Nicholson these days, I tell ya) and an alum of the Telluride Student Symposium program, he is now also a happy fest slave like me, only he's at a theater that gets the bigger films. (Further tangent: if you ever want to see someone run quickly, try dancing close to a former student. I laughed myself silly.) In any case, the two blogs together give a nice overview of a lot of the fest.

What I Liked:

• Jar City (Mýrin): This was a taut thriller from Iceland which, in many ways, could have been very standard fare. Yet, between the extraordinary Icelandic atmosphere (complemented by the horrifying Icelandic food, which led me to actually ask the director if the food was supposed to be taked as "horrifying" or if it was just Icelandic fast food... and 'twas the latter...), and a cast who looking more intriguing than attractive (I don't think it's an accident that the only classically "good looking" character gets his nose broken early on), there lies a carefully spun story that left a gritty, yet satisfying taste in my mouth. A week later, I still remember this one as what was ultimately my favorite of the fest.
• Secret Sunshine (Milyang): This one won the Best Actress award at Cannes (apparently the first time for an Asian) -- and wow, I can understand completely. This contemporary story finds a young widow and her son returning to her husband's small hometown, where she puts up a front to try to establish herself as a successful person -- with disastrous results that lead to the second part of the movie, which becomes less an exploration of faith as much of an examination of a singular character. Smaller than it initially appears, the movie follows the character of Shin-Ae through a cavalcade of situations and emotions that becomes riveting.
• A Thousand Years of Good Prayers: I think a lot of people didn't like this one but here's another quiet meditation that turns out to be more than it initially seems. We forget that the guy who made Maid in Manhattan, Because of Winn-Dixie and The Joy Luck Club, also made things like Smoke; here, Wayne Wang films a not-so-simple story about culture- and generation-clashes (between a Chinese father and the Americanized daughter he is visiting) in a quiet, natural way. I'm also now inspired to read the story by Yiyun Li upon which the film is based.
• Edith Kramer: Every year, Telluride brings in a guest director to program some (hopefully) unusual yet interesting material. This year, the selection fell to the former curator of the Pacifica Film Archive, no small cookie. While I was only partially enthralled by her selections (I'm still not quite there yet with George Kuchar and I thought the "old film" selection of Millions Like Us was good but not overwhelmingly thrilling), I was charmed by Edith herself, who was a delight to work with, had some amazing stories to tell and absolutely, positively refused to sit down in the theater at all, preferring a side stance so as to view the audience along with the film. A true film lover, she charmed me every time she walked into the theater.
• Peter Sellars: Several years ago, I was told that I should be thoroughly insulted if I did not receive a hug from fest regular Peter Sellars, who really did seem to hug everyone; last year, therefore, his presence was sorely missed. This year he came back, and with a documentary about him to boot. I knew he was simply one of the most amazingly wonderful human beings I've ever known; I had no idea that he is literally brilliant. Watching the doc on him (particularly given how absolutely, shamefully ignorant I was concerning what he did outside the festival), I just sat in awe of what he has accomplished and what he is. Today, I asked a colleague about him and she happily extolled his importance in the history of both theater and opera. The funny thing is that I can't even aspire to be what he is, on so many levels. And yet, the man still hugs me. Such a thrill.

What I Am Solidly on the Fence About:

• I'm Not There: Ah, the new Todd Haynes, a.k.a. the flick where Cate Blanchett plays Bob Dylan. Overall, I thought that the notion of having her (and Christian Bale and Richard Gere and Heath Ledger and...) play Dylan was a thrilling, compelling choice. Let me go on record right now by saying that she is seriously the best thing about the picture, bar none. The idea of fragmenting Dylan's life, intermixing the yarns of his songs and the yarn that was his life, is tour-de-force. And yet -- for experimental it wants to be, I actually have a problem with the very thing that it's getting press for: its use of stars in these roles. Yes, Dylan is a star now, and so are the characters that he sings about, but oddly enough, I could rarely get beyond the notion that I was watching Richard Gere on screen to really be able to process more beyond that. In the end, I couldn't tell whether the film was brilliant or a brilliant mess -- and, a week later, I'm still not sure, although I'm tending toward the latter.)

What I Really Didn't Care For

• Let's forget for a moment that this is a feature film doing what documentaries have already done. Let's really forget the politics of it all. Let's just look at Redacted, the de Palma secret flick that just won him the Best Director prize at Venice, somewhat inexplicably from my point of view. It's about the current war and, like I'm Not There, also has an ambitious, innovative way to present itself: by using the same tools used by the soldiers to document their own stories: regular video cameras, blogs, videophones, etc. I thought this was inspired and, when I found out that my little theater was going to have the U.S. Premiere of the film (having debuted only a night before in Venice! with a live feed from there featuring de Palma himself!!!), I actually got a little excited. (This, after I figured out the title. "Redacted?" I kept saying, "why are they not giving me the name? How silly." This is what I get for actually knowing what words mean.) And yet -- like the Haynes film, actually -- it seems this didn't quite work. Here, the acting seems "fake" throughout and the amateurish quality (which might have been intentional) of the atrocities, while stark, were otherwise unconvincing for me. The Q&A didn't help me with the film either. It doesn't matter that I agree with the film's politics: I didn't think the film was all that to begin with.
  

¡Ay, Ninón!

I only just found out about this blog-a-thon, so I'm late on the scene; nonetheless, I was taken for a moment by the idea of "the performance that changed my life." Indeed, there are so many that I consider near and dear to my heart: Gene Kelly in Singin' in the Rain, Claude Rains in Casablanca, James Dean in Rebel without a Cause, Emily Watson in Breaking the Waves and (perhaps surprisingly) Arsinée Khanjian in Speaking Parts. I saw all of these for the first time (or at least seriously for the first time) either right after college or during graduate school and therefore during my formative period as a professional film geek; hence, all these are at least influential.

But which performance changed my life? That would probably be...

Ninón Sevilla as Elena Tejero in Aventurera

Ninón is not the best-known actress from the Golden Age of Mexican Cinema from the 1940s; indeed, she may not even be the best, considering that she would be competing with luminaries like María Félix and Dolores del Rio. But she's definitely got something. (She's the one in the center of the picture above. As if you could look anywhere else -- although yes, Miguel Inclán is one of the most amazing character actors ever.) In the cabaretera films (a genre which mixes the musical, the melodrama and film noir in a singularly Mexican way), Sevilla was by far and above the best. In this film, she captivates the screen: defiant, sexual, sure of her destiny and her doom. She's fierce and she's fiesty and she wears pineapples on her head in one rump-shaking dance number.But why is this the performance that changed my life? Well, there are three extra-diegetic factors that contribute to this. For one, this is one of my favorite movies that I saw the first time I went to the Telluride Film Festival in 1994, back when I was an intern. Shown as a rediscovered classic (which had only recently been subtitled -- finally -- in English), the movie made an indelible impression that I couldn't shake for some time afterwards, as I had never seen anything like it before. Secondly, it helps that only a couple days after seeing the film, I actually had a long chat with the woman in a van ride back to Montrose, whereupon she became the first movie star I ever actually had a conversation with. (I almost fell out of the van when I realized who I was sitting next to -- and she was thrilled to finally speak Spanish with someone other than her translator.) Aged 73 then, she still had the fire and verve in her and was an immensely classy lady.

Finally, and this is the most important reason, I believe this is one of the very first Latin American films I had ever seen. That seems strange now, since I am now a film scholar who specializes in Latin American cinema, but I was not really introduced to the region's cinema until my first semester of grad school, which happened immediately after this festival. By this point I knew I wanted to do something with Latin America and I knew I wanted to do something with film, but somehow I never realized the two could go together. Thus, the performance that carries this film was a starting point into what would eventually become my future. And for that, muchisimas gracias, doña Ninón.

Oh, and just in case you think I'm the only one who thinks she's amazing, I will point out that in some research I did years ago, she is mentioned in Cahiers du Cinéma in the Christmas issue of 1953. The title of that piece demonstrates the company she kept: "Greta, Marlene, Ninon." Priceless.
This entry is part of the Performance That Changed My Life Blogathon -- please feel free to visit the other sites on the list at that site, particularly since they probably had more time to prepare and I'm late, heh. Thanks to Emma for putting all of this together!

Taking pictures of the back of your head

When I talk about experiences at the Telluride Film Festival, I often mention the wonderful surprise that was Yi Yi, a thrilling three-hour film set in contemporary Taiwan. You have to understand that another Taiwanese film that had something to do with dragons or tigers was also in the festival; we all knew that that martial arts adventure was going to hit it big. Yi Yi was the opposite: quiet, introspective, thoughtful, building up an impressive story around a family trying hard to connect. As it happened, it opened in our little Masons theater as our first screening; while it was not that well-attended at first, everyone who saw it was floored by it. The film quickly became the film to see, the film that everyone (including me, especially me) would tell other people about while waiting in line. As it happened, Yi Yi also closed our theater, a screening where we sold out and turned away nearly 100 angry people who desperately wanted to see this really magical film.

Which is why I'm stunned now, up late grading papers but about to head for bed, as I read that director-writer Edward Yang has just died, leaving Yi Yi as his final word. The movie features Yang-Yang, the young boy seen above, who takes pictures of the back of people's heads because he wants to take note of the things that people don't, or can't, pay attention to. I am saddened that Yang won't be able to show us such fascinating elements anymore.

George Wu has a wonderful review of the film in Senses of Cinema.

TFF Posting 1: Hamming it up

This year's Telluride Film Festival has finally gotten underway, so I am now free to talk about some of the films involved. As it turns out, I will probably be seeing a whole bunch of films... but those films will largely be ones shown at my own theater, given that my new job entails me making sure things run smoothly and emceeing every show. I am what is called a "ringmaster," and so far things have run smoothly. We'll see what happens this afternoon, however, and whether I'll be able to keep it together when introducing one Laura Linney in a couple hours. (Woohoo!)

Some quick takes on what I've seen:

• Dodsworth -- This 1936 William Wyler comedy opened our house and I'll be surprised if I'm tickled by anything else to quite such an extent. This failed box-office chamber piece follows Walter Huston as he gets old and realizes that the woman he loves is an absolute twit. The come-uppance is priceless and had the audience cheering. Sam Goldwyn, Jr. was lovely and had some wonderful bon mots about his father and"Willie" (and he insisted to me that the VHS transfer is quite good), while I finally was able to place TCM's Robert Osbourne not by his face but by his voice. This only proves that sometimes the most fabulous things at this festival are the old ones with restored prints.
• Ghosts of Cite Soleil -- This was a riveting documentary about rival gangs led by brothers in Haiti during the tumultuous time in Haiti when Aristide was on the outs. I say "riveting" precisely because I desperately needed to drink some water about an hour into it and didn't reach for my bottle because I was afraid I would miss something. I actually liked this (mainly because it's very stylish and keeps the adrenaline going), but I also think it's a wee bit too long and not exactly the best doc I've seen of late.
• Babel -- I loved this, precisely because it's a multi-layered, difficult film that everyone should really watch. Alejandro Gonzales Inarritu brings another fractured narrative that is ultimately quite satisfying. Oddly enough, I found the film most connected with his short film from the collection 11'09"01 (and I wish I could find him to ask about it), but I'm also noticing that his films seem to be very stark, very bleak... and yet feature a glimmer of hope right at the end. (I have not seen 21 Grams to see whether this theory hold up, but if it does, it's a cinematic mindset I very much like.) I added Amores perros at the very last minute to my film class syllabus for this semester with the idea that Babel might be released right when their final project will be assigned. I think I made a good call there.
• Day Night Day Night -- A tense, brilliant debut about a girl preparing for a moment. (To say more would be giving quite a bit away.) Director Julia Loktev's camera work is stunning -- formal, cold, gorgeous -- and the debut performance by Luisa Williams (whose work here reminded me of Catalina Sandino Moreno in Maria FUll of Grace) was luminous. They also happen to be raelly nice, very genuine folks and I had a blast chatting with them afterwards.

Next up, two biggies: Jindabyne with Laura Linney, and The Last King of Scotland with Forrest Whitaker. Both sold out earlier today. We may be swamped. Viva la cinema!

No rest for the wicked...

...so I must be very wicked indeed. The semester has started off smashingly, and I'm excited by the new classes which seem to have gone well for their first meetings.

But no time to contemplate, because in just a few hours, I'll be starting my journey to the Telluride Film Festival, where suddenly I have new duties as a Ringmaster (which is a fancy way of saying that I'll be a combination emcee-moderator, and that I won't be wearing as many long sleeve t-shirts this time around). This may cut into my ability to watch many films even more than usual, but I'm also thrilled and honored at the opportunity. Although I'm not bringing my computer (nor any liquids or gels, of course), I will blog when I can about the festival.

In the meantime, we'll see whether my tea bags for coca tea -- to help with altitude adjustment, left over from my experiences in Cuzco -- will make it in my check-in luggage.

TFF, Day 4+: Closing Conversations

It's late and I've been up since 3:30am MST in transit, but I did want to get notice about one more movie in. We managed to stick around just long enough for the first night of the After-the-Fest Fest. I almost stayed for Fateless, a stylish meditation on the Holocaust, but decided that perhaps I wanted my Festival experience to end on a high note. Unexpectedly, Conversations with Other Women turned out to be a fun and breezy, yet contemplative way to end the festival. Starring Aaron Eckhart and Helena Bonham Carter as two late-thirtysomethings who meet at a wedding, the movie is witty and light until after it has already taken a couple of interesting turns and then it's way too late: you're sucked in. It's also done enitrely with a split screen. When I heard about this, I thought, "Egad, what a tired gimmick," but it turned out to be very effective, particularly when the image would momentarily shift from what the character was doing to what s/he was thinking. A fascinating flick, and a great way to end.

Back to everyday life and my adorable, sweet little kid with the beginnings of a tooth sticking out. Amazing, that kid is.

TFF, Days 3 & 4: Festival of the Bs (and, When the Parents Are Away...)

The festival is officially over, although we'll get to watch two more films at the After-the-Fest fest tonight. As you may be able to tell from a lack of entry yesterday, things were pretty hectic ovr the past couple days. In full, my favorite film remains the Singaporean film Be with Me. That said, there were still plenty of fun thigns to see. Here's a recap of what I saw, in the order that I saw them:

• I saw another of the Eugene Green films, but my second experience wasn't as good as the first. Green's style, which I liked for the highly entertaining modern-day fairy tale Le monde vivant I found far less effective with his most recent film, Le pont des arts. I wondered after seeing the first film whether his style would work with a more urban setting and a more "realistic" narrative; ironically, I found it less effective than the parable. Then again, I could be wrong: many other people I respected loved it.
• Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain (snarkily called by some passholders Bareback Mounting)was a really beautiful adaptation of Annie Proulx's short story, although I found it a bit long. Then again, Proulx's economy of words is hard to dictate in film. Gorgeously shot by Rodrigo Prieto, the film is a love story between two cowboys and the Alberta mountainside that stands in for Wyoming. (If you're a South Park fan, you may be amused if I tell you that everyone here was saying, "But there was no pudding!") I could never really get over the fact that Jake Gyllenhal looked like the budding movie-star that he is; Heath Ledger, however, is completely unrecognizable in the role and deserves some recognition for it. And oh yeah: the sex is violent, just like in the story.
• My good friend Pam Chandran told us we had to see Spirit of the Beehive yesterday morning, an allegorical film by Spanish director Victor Erice from the 60s. My manager asked me to tell her what it meant afterward. I said, "You know, I think this is the 4th Spanish civil-war oriented allegorical film that I've seen and I always think they're so beautiful and so deeply allegorical that I never get it." We may think twice now about taking Pam's advice, even if she was my rush chair.
  
• Labor Day Picnic followed. Mmmmm, steak. Mmmmm, ice cream.
• But I didn't stay long because I was running up for a gondola ride to the Chuck Jones Theatre to see two films in a row. The first was the other silent film at the festival Anthony Asquith's A Cottage on Dartmoor. An interesting little thriller that involved an attempted murder a la Sweeney Todd (sans meat pies), the real stunner was the amazing piano accompaniment by Stephen Horne (who occasionally accompanied his own piano with flute and/or plucking the inside of the piano). Really, a great experience.
• Contributing to my "festival of the bees," I stayed up at the Chuck for Bee Season, the new film by Scott McGehee and David Siegel, the guys behind Suture and The Deep End. Some of my students may know that I loooooove The Deep End, so I was really excited to see this. I liked it, but I'll have to sit on it for a while. It was not as tightly structured as their other films, but perhaps this is because it's an adaptation. The acting is really quite good, though, particularly Flora Cross as the young girl. I have no idea how they're going to market this one, though; hopefully it'll still find an audience.
• I ran down to see the Palestinean film Paradise Now, though I only was able to catch the last half hour or so. I will have to check this out when it gets released (which it apparently will). It seemed both powerful (as you would expect a film about suicide bombers to be) and gorgeously shot.
• Finally, our theater closed with a documentary called Sisters in Law, about Muslim women in Cameroon fighting for their own justice. It's always fun to see a doc sans voice-over, in my opinion, and most people really enjoyed it. Must remember to tell Pat Aufderheide about this one for the Center for Social Media.

Missed at the festival, though I wanted to see them: Everything Is Illuminated, Hidden, Capote, Three Times, Live and Become, all the Mickey Rooney films and (ironically, the only Latin American oriented feature) The Lost City. Nonetheless, a good year.

The trend through most of the films I did see, however, was "the word." In many of these films, the main argument revolved around the use and power of the word: Bee Season, Sisters in Law, Be with Me, both of the Green films, and even A Cottage on Dartmoor, where a missed note provides a misunderstanding that nearly leads to murder, all had this in common.

Up tonight: Conversations with Other Women and Fateless, though we may only see one of these.

The more amazing thing, however: we called Linda this morning to see how she and Xan were doing and discovered that, in the few days we've been away, our little boy has hit a milestone: his first tooth, which emerged yesterday with little fanfare and a lot of drool. We can't wait to see it... although let's just say that Angela is looking to the first meal back with just a little trepidation.

TFF, Day 2.5: On Chang and Theresa Chan

This is the first chance I've gotten since yesterday morning and there's been a bunch of film watching going on. First, the stuff that didn't thrill me at all. I had to work two films -- The President's Last Bang, about the last hours before the Korean president was assassinated in the 70s, and Lemming, a French thriller-romance-oddity starring festival tributee Charlotte Rampling -- both of which underwhelmed me at best, made me think why some art films are useless at worst. That said, I've had an amazing other experience withfour other films I've seen.

First up, my Kong festival continued with a double feature of Chang and I Am King Kong. The first was a silent film dramatizing the life of a family in Siam, directed by the same pair that directed King Kong. Seeing this earlier film, the character of Carl Denham was obviously close to home for director Mairen Cooper. All the scenes of natives shooting the tigers (and the conspicuous absence of an ASPCA statement saying "no animals were harmed in the making ofthis picture) made me a little queasy; that said, the movie featured some extraordinary filmmaking with wild close-ups of both an elephant stampede and a growling tiger. Plus, it was accompanied by the always amazing Alloy Orchestra, which is why I went in the first place. The rain kept me inside, however, to see the documentary on Cooper that followed and wow, what a lifethat man had. It turns out that indeed Denham's character is all about Cooper, who was Indiana Jones with a camera before there was Indiana Jones. If nothing else, the audio interviews with Cooper provided the most colorful uses of the word "goddamn" (and the most frequent usage) that I've heard since my dad used to hit his head on our low basement when I was a kid. It will accompany the November DVD release of King Kong, so check it out.

This morning, I saw two interesting films. The first was Le monde vivant, part of a three-film retrospective of French director Eugene Green that the festival is putting on. It's very stylized and yet features some simple filmmaking related closely to innocence and myth. I think some of the audience found it silly, but I found it utterly charming. I just got out of an Iranian film called The Iron Island, clearly a parable about hopelessness among the unprivileged in Iran where a rusting ship stands in for the country as a whole. The ending left me a little unsatisfied, but thinking.

Finally -- and this will disappoint Jen Lien, although I'm hoping she will comment on what she knows -- my favorite film of the festival so far was the Singaporean Be with Me that I was hoping to get into when I wrote yesterday. Mesmerizing: so much so that I traded shifts with Angela to ensure that she could see it this morning. With very little dialogue and an almost still camera, the film is a lovely slow boil that becomes totally engrossing when we start putting everything together. It features an amazing performance from Theresa Chan, a blind and deaf woman who nonetheless learned how to speak (speak! audially articulate!) English even after both disabilities developed. It's a heartbreaker -- and you'll be surprised if I say that none of the sad parts involve her, but rather the other three characters that are revolving around one another. Interesting uses of language and just gorgeous cinematography. In my mind, it ranks up in festival fare with 2000's Yi Yi (by Edward Yang) which became a festival favorite by word of mouth. Indeed, I haven't talked to a single person who has seenthe film who didn't totally love it.

On the parental front: yes, I am being a bad father in that I hadthe cell phone all day yesterday and by the time I realized I should call, it was way too late. We called Linda this mroning, however, and the little boy is having the time of his life. We keep seeing lots of babies around here though, which makes us think we should have brought him. We'll see what happens next year.

Up for possibility this afternoon is Brokeback Mountain which, surprisingly, was announced to show in our theater this evening.

TFF: Day 1 - The 800 lb. gorilla

There are a whole bunch of iMacs around the festival, thanks to Apple's sponsorship this year, so I'm actually able to offer a quick update. (This is also because I just found out that the movie I wanted to see, Andy Garcia's directorial debut The Lost City was sold out. I expected this, so no big deal, although I hope to catch it during the festival. It is an adaptation of Guillermo Cabrera Infante's Three Trapped Tigers and therefore might be appropriate should I teach my course on the Boom again. Right now, my attempt to see it justifies the price of my ticket as a legitimate tax write-off, so there we go.) We've also connected up immediately with the Dartmouth/Alpha Theta crew, which is fab.

There is not much to say right now, other than we are slowly remembering that we are over a mile above sea level and that running up stairs is a bad idea. The weather is pretty good though: typical Telluride with a mix of sun and clouds and the chance of thunderstorms all day. Thankfully, no snow this year (yet). Angela and I both now seem to be no longer considered newbies at our theater, which is a good feeling too.

There are some big-name films at the festival (Everything Is Illuminated, Brokeback Mountain, etc.) but one quickly learns at this festival to avoid the big box films, at least right away, and head for more esoteric fare. The theater that we work at is perfect for this: the Mason's Hall is small, intimate and clearly has the most eclectic program.

So far, we've only seen one film, but it was a beaut: King Kong. No, not the new one by Peter Jackson. This was the old one, with Fay Wray and the special effects that inspired Harryhausen. I hadn't seen the whole thing before, and certainly not from such a beautiful 35mm print, so I was thrilled. Poor Kong: he fights off all sorts of beasts (dinosaurs, snakes, pterodactyls, racially stereotyped natives, Hollywood producers) and the girl is totally unappreciative in the end. I mean, really, what's a guy gotta do?

Next attempt: a Singaporean flick called Be with Me. Not sure if I'll get into that, but we'll see.

To-Hell-I-Ride

Sorry for the lack of updates of late -- beginning of semester business already draggin' me down. And now, I'm heading out of town with Angela to Telluride for FilmFest. Update perhaps throughout, definitely when we get back.

Feel free to guess the ratio between film watching enjoyment and baby missing blues.