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September 5, 2007
Telluride Highlights
Telluride has come and gone. Unfortunately I wasn't able to post any updates here during the festival, so I'll try to sum things up now, and provide links to interesting content.
Sadly, I was not able to interview Daniel Day Lewis, despite how psyched I got about the possibility. I did meet him, but when I asked for a short interview he kindly replied, "I'd rather not, I'm resting my voice." Oh well. Incidentally, Paul Thomas Anderson, director of the upcoming holy-crap-I-have-to-see-that movie There Will Be Blood, was also standing right there, but he too declined to be interviewed.
What made the sting of those rejections all the more bitter was that about 90 seconds before that I had asked Sean Penn for an interview, but to no avail. He was very nice and said, "You'll see me around all weekend, we'll do it later."
Thanks to persistence and some dumb luck, the third time I ran into him he agreed to be interviewed, check it out here. He was in Telluride with a film he directed called Into the Wild. I hadn't seen the film when I interviewed him, but I did catch it right before leaving town on Monday. It was my third attempt to see it, people were really buzzing about it. I didn't think it was all that great. I wrote a short review here.
The highlight of the festival for me was seeing the unconventional Bob Dylan biopic I'm Not There and talking with writer/director Todd Hanyes. I'm Not There explores seven different identities adopted by Dylan over the course of his career, with a different actor playing each one. The stars include Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, and Kate Blanchett (yes, she plays Dylan, and she's amazing). This film is very dense and lacks a traditional narrative, so it tended to divide audiences. I absolutely loved it. We've got four exciting months to go, but it's currently my favorite film of the year. Here's a link to a post I wrote about my experience seeing the film, and here's a link to my interview with Todd Haynes.
My second favorite film of the fest was Juno, directed by Jason Reitman (of Thank You For Smoking fame). It's a dark comedy about a 16 year old girl who gets pregnant and tries to find adoptive parents. Think Knocked Up meets Superbad, but from a girl's perspective. Full time Spout blogger Karina Longworth reviewed it here.
Karina also provides this list of festival highlights. Be sure not to miss Paul's interview with living legend and all-around fascinating character Werner Herzog.
Posted by kevinb at September 5, 2007 6:52 PM