Another year, another Telluride

It's a new year and I'm back... with my first impressions of five movies from the 2005 edition of Telluride @ Dartmouth, perhaps the finest cultural event in this town.

Having followed this event for three years now, I sense that the opening night features the movie most likely to become a mainstream hit. In 2003, it was Girl with a Pearl Earring, and in 2004, it was Being Julia. In hindsight, neither of these ended up being even close to the best mainstream movie of the year; in fact, each of these was soundly beaten by a Clint Eastwood movie: Mystic River in 2003 and Million Dollar Baby in 2004.

This year's opener was Capote, a movie based on the events in the life of Truman Capote that led to his landmark "non-fiction novel" In Cold Blood. As a movie, it is fairly ordinary, despite a terrific performance from Philip Seymour Hoffman in the title role. Having only seen him in throwaway sidekick-type roles before (such as in Magnolia and The Big Lebowski) I enjoyed the revelation of his considerable acting talents. But beyond his acting the movie does not have much going for it. Read the NYT's Capote obit from August 1984 and consider the wealth of aspects of Truman Capote that a great movie could have brought out. The present movie does only lip service to most of these. Score: 5.5/10