Wrapping Telluride, 9/5.

Variety's Todd McCarthy looks back on the Telluride Film Festival: "[O]ne film was far more frequently mentioned by people as their No 1 favorite than any other - Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's East Germany-set political thriller The Lives of Others, which was confoundingly rejected by the Berlin and Cannes film festivals but picked up for the US by Sony Classics. Werner Herzog, not known to often praise pictures from his native country, said it was the best German film he's seen in ages." (Earlier: "Germans. Films. Awards.")

At indieWIRE, after noting that this year's edition "will also be remembered as the final festival for event co-founders Bill Pence and Stella Pence," Eugene Hernandez mentions that The Last King of Scotland "was informally hailed as the best of the fest by numerous attendees" and has notes on the reception of Infamous (including a bit from "A Tale of Two Trumans," a chapter in producer Christine Vachon's forthcoming memoir, A Killer Life), Fur and Little Children.

Updated.

Succeeding Bill Pence will be Gary Meyer, a choice with particular resonance for the San Francisco Bay Area. For SF360, Hilary Hart writes, "the inspired programmer and dedicated operator of the beloved neighborhood theater, the Balboa, said that this new position was both exciting and scary, but that he wouldn't have taken it without the amazing support team of staff and volunteers that keeps the festival running smoothly. No major innovations are expected for next year, just the necessary tweaks."

Mike Goodridge on Little Children in Screen Daily: "An unsettling and richly-drawn portrait of dysfunction in affluent suburbia, it sits somewhere between American Beauty, Douglas Sirk's 1950s period and Todd Solondz's Happiness in tone, style and content but it is unique in its characterisation of the purposeless ennui rampant in contemporary America." More from Variety's Todd McCarthy, who pinpoints a Kubrick connection.

Also: "The team behind The Mother - director Roger Michell, writer Hanif Kureishi and producer Kevin Loader - reunites for Venus, another portrait of an old character being revitalised by love for a younger.... The film emerges triumphant... The 74-year-old [Peter] O'Toole is a class act by any standards and his work here can’t fail to draw attention from awards voters and audiences."

And: "The Last King of Scotland is a compelling, well-made film but the fact that it is more fable than real life story will soften its impact with critics and audiences..... For all its awkward blend of fact and fiction, the film’s glimpse into the soul of such a man is perhaps more germane today than it was 30 years ago."

Updates: "Among the films that lacked distribution, only thrill-seeking documentarian Asger Leth's Ghosts of Cite Soleil generated any interest from buyers," notes Anne Thompson, who calls it a "shocking cinema vérité." Earlier: Anne's big wrap-up; and Hollywood Reporter subscribers can read this one.

Kim Voynar at Cinematical: "Venus is a sublimely directed and acted film, handling what could be seen as a rather controversial storyline - an octogenarian man hitting on a twenty-something girl - with ease and finesse."

Also: "There are filmmakers who make good films, even great films, and then there are filmmakers who take making a movie to a whole new level of artistry, so far above the mean as to be incomparable to anything else. Alejandro González Iñárritu is such a filmmaker, and with Babel he tells his story with such power and control that by the end of it you are at his cinematic mercy, utterly exhausted and spent, and yet fulfilled on a soul level in a way that is almost indescribable."

"[T]he best new film I've seen in Telluride this year isn't new at all - or, rather, it isn't all new. It's called Directed By John Ford and it's a revision by director Peter Bogdanovich of his 1971 documentary of the same name, about the life and work of the great American filmmaker," writes Scott Foundas. "Even at its most conventional, when Bogdanovich relies on talking-heads appreciations (retained from the 1971 version) from veteran Ford collaborators John Wayne, Henry Fonda and Jimmy Stewart, the film has an extraordinary vitality and intimacy... That in itself is fairly remarkable in a day and age when most celebrity interviews seem the product of so much well-oiled publicity machinery and nobody has a critical or unkind word to say about anybody else."

Posted by dwhudson at September 5, 2006 9:41 AM