Thursday, July 19, the Telluride Flm Festival presented WAITRESS and every seat (but one) was filled. And we turned away at least 50 people. So we will be bringing it back in August for a few days so everyone who missed it can see it. Those who did get to see it said it was a brilliant film, worth seeing twice! So stay tuned…
Please join us for this special event sponsored by the owners of the Nugget Building, the owners of the Nugget Theatre and the owners of the Telluride Watch newspaper. EVAN ALMIGHTY stars Steve Carell (40-Year-Old Virgin, Little Miss Sunshine) in a Noah’s Ark reworking that also stars Morgan Freeman as God and John Goodman as a shady senator. It is directed by Tom Shadyac and there will be a couple-of-minute Valley Floor thank you video before the show, produced by TCTV, that should also be alot of fun. The weekend screenings (6 & 8 PM on Fri, Sat & Sun and 4 PM on Sat) are FREE to all Nothing Festival Participants 
but we will be giving out tickets anyway so we can do a drawing before every show so be on time! See you there.
I’m going to have to watch HARRY POTTER AND THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX again a couple of times because last night (opening night) I was just noting what they left out and what was different. But it was a very good rendering of the Book 5 and I loved how Sirius’ house, the Room of Requirement and the Ministry of Magic looked. It is so interesting to watch these kids grow up in their parts. I really like how Neville is growing up and how Luna was portrayed. Jim, who doesn’t read the books, seemed to be able to follow the story pretty well with only a few questions. I hope JK Rowling is as pleased as I have been with how things are going movie-wise.
Not on opening day! Sorry. I’ll be going out of town myself to see it on opening night. Why? Because we are a single screen theater and cannot compete with the multiplexes who can guarantee to the movie company that they will play it every single night for a month. We have to wait for at least two weeks because we have one week’s worth of audience in our small town. If we got a film on opening day we would have a great first week, a really good second week but two really dismal final weeks where the audience would be wanting something new to watch. If we had a second screen we could move the film onto it and open a new movie…but we don’t. So we book the films as soon as we can get them for just one week.
It is Memorial Day Monday noon and the festival is winding down. The festival will move to Town Park to eat a feast and hear the winning films (which I am sure will be posted at Mountainfilm.org very shortly). Everyone I talked to said it was a really good festival with high quality movies. The Nugget highlights included “Dalai Lama Renaissance” on Saturday morning and Beth and George Gage’s “Our Land, Our Life”. They both had to be repeated this morning in bigger theaters! “The Eiger Sanction” starring Clint Eastwood also sold out at High Camp Cinema at the Mountain Village Conference Center as well as David Breashears “Remnants of Everest”, where, in his introduction, David thanked Jim Bedford for first bringing him to Telluride! From my perspective, behind the Nugget concessions stand, the most popular purchase was “popcorn and bottled water”;)
Summer has started.
This blog is, of course, my thoughts on the movie business. I know what I like and want in the movie experience. But I would like to make the experience better for everyone. So tell me what you like, what have been your favorite movie experiences, how I can improve the Nugget experience. It never hurts to tell me again if something bothered you last year or if the popcorn wasn’t to your taste…anything! For instance the Monday night manager, Sherry, wants me to have Junior Caramels in the cconcessions stand. I’m tempted but I’m afraid I will love them so much I will become addicted. But if she bugs me enough I will give them a try.
What is on your list?
I just saw The Queen again and liked it even more the second time. Helen Mirren deserves every bit of her Oscar for this role. I was captivated. Go see The Queen if you are an anglophile and want to see an inside look at the Royals. Steven Frears sure is getting to be a more accessible director with Mrs. Henderson Presents and now this. What’s not to love?
This review sums it up for me…
Plot holes? “The Last Mimzy” has them by the pound. It also includes a few egregious bits of product placement, one of which is used as a joke that doesn’t quite come off. You can’t really argue that this is a well-made movie, but it is a good one — true to the emotional reality of its young characters and young audience and flattering the latter into thinking way outside the box. There are worse things to teach than intellectual ambition.
Ty Burr can be reached at tburr@globe.com
Of course those “missing reels” are the x-rated sex scenes!
GRINDHOUSE FANS, PLEASE TAKE NOTICE:
GRINDHOUSE is more than one movie in its 191 minutes. And that’s not all…..
GRINDHOUSE is two features back-to-back with some really neat fake previews (of movies that aren’t likely to be made) stuck between them. The idea here is to take you back (or if you were never there, to put you there) to the days of “B” movies from the 1950’s, as these are the films that Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez grew up watching when they were kids.
And no, the 35mm film print you’re watching isn’t scratched or missing reels, in fact it’s a brand new polyester print. But Tarantino and Rodriguez SO wanted to take you back, they printed the scratches on the film and tell you they left out non-existent reels. Have fun!
The Filmmakers and who did what in GRINDHOUSE:
•Robert Rodriguez-(”Planet Terror”) (fake trailer segment “Machete”)
•Eli Roth-(fake trailer segment “Thanksgiving”)
•Quentin Tarantino-(”Death Proof”)
•Edgar Wright-(fake trailer segment “Don’t”)
•Rob Zombie-(fake trailer segment “Werewolf Women of the S.S.”)