Super Troopers 2
This sequel isn't just more of the same from Broken Lizard—it's a lot more, and for no good reason.
It's the end of the 'ride
TELLURIDE, Colo. -- There are times when I wonder why I even go to the new movies at Telluride, since the special programs and retrospectives are so valuable. On Sunday I saw a surprise screening of the latest Werner Herzog documentary and then attended his birthday party on the lawn of the Mason's Hall. And an hour later I was watching a beautifully restored print of the 1931 Bela Lugosi "Dracula," with a new score composed by Philip Glass, who conducted a live performance of it with the Kronos Quintet.
Drawing success
TELLURIDE, Colo. -- The day began with one of the most wondrous films I ever hope to see. "Princess Mononoke," by the Japanese master of animation Hayao Miyazaki, is a symphony of action and images, a thrilling epic of warriors and monsters, forest creatures and magical spells, with an underlying allegory about the relationship of man and nature. Not a children's film, it is a film for all ages that demonstrates why, for some stories, the special effects wizards are only spinning their wheels, because some images cannot be visualized unless they are drawn.
Telluride gets high marks
TELLURIDE, Colo. -- It's a combination of a film festival and a ski weekend, greatly improved by the absence of snow. Moviegoers at this year's 26th Telluride Film Festival can take the ski lift to the top of the mountain, but what they find there is a little unexpected: the Chuck Jones Cinema, named for the animator who brought Bugs Bunny and Wile E. Coyote to life.
Telluride earns trust of film fans
The autumn movie season begins for me on the night when the curtain goes up on the first screening at the Telluride Film Festival. After a long summer of special effects, explosions, stabbings, shootings, gross-out comedies, supernatural mystifications, horror stories and movies about the alarmingly sophisticated sex lives of teenagers, September brings relief.
'Beauty' contest
TORONTO -- "American Beauty," which opens in theaters on Friday, strengthened its position as an Oscar candidate by winning the Air Canada "People's Choice" award here Sunday, on the closing day of the Toronto Film Festival.
Cannes winners a strange crew
CANNES, France -- The survivors of the 52nd Cannes Film Festival met at the Nice airport on Monday like applicants for an emergency airlift. The carnage of the awards ceremony was still fresh in our minds. A jury led by the Canadian director David Cronenberg had produced a list of awards so peculiar that it is safe to say no one understood it except Cronenberg -- and perhaps some, but not all, of his jury members. "Perverse," Variety called the verdict.
Award ceremony passes over festival favorites
CANNES, France -- By the time I walked into my hotel after the Cannes Film Festival award ceremony Sunday night, the verdict was already in. Scandale! cried the desk clerks in unison, summarizing the television coverage. Cannes was reeling after a list of winners so unexpected and generally unpopular that the TV commentators were rolling their eyes. The instant verdict was that jury president David Cronenberg, the unorthodox Canadian director, had led his jury into the hinterlands of cinema and camped there.
'Dogma' keeps the faith
CANNES, France -- Kevin Smith's "Dogma" had its first public screening here Friday night, and the world did not end. Not even in the film. The apocalyptic comedy, which has stirred charges of blasphemy in some Catholic circles, played at midnight Friday in the festival, after press screenings earlier in the day. There was much laughter and no visible outrage.
Lee's 'Summer of Sam' a sizzling look at '70s N.Y.
CANNES, France -- Spike Lee's "Summer Of Sam" has the right title. It isn't a film about David Berkowitz, the serial killer who named himself Son of Sam - but about the summer of 1977, when his bloody string of murders coincided with a heat wave and skirmishes in the ongoing American cultural war.
Gold on hold
CANNES, France -- The Cannes Film Festival heads into its second weekend, still without a likely Palme d'Or winner, unless we have already seen it, and it is Pedro Almodovar's "All About My Mother." We have been here a week, and that entry, first screened Saturday, is the film most people mention when you ask them what they liked the most.
