Telluride fest high on Day-Lewis and documentaries

31/08/2007 20:07

By Gregg Kilday

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - A tribute to actor Daniel Day-Lewis, new documentaries from Barbet Schroeder, Werner Herzog and Kevin Macdonald, and a restoration of King Vidor’s classic silent film "The Big Parade" will greet cineastes when the 34th annual Telluride Film Festival begins Friday in the Colorado Rockies.

The high-altitude, low-fuss festival, which runs through Monday, will boast first looks at Hollywood product that could well figure in the fall’s awards race.

The lineup includes Sean Penn’s "Into the Wild," an adaptation of Jon Krakauer’s account of a fateful trip into the Alaskan wilderness, which will be released by Paramount Vantage; Noah Baumbach, in his first film since "The Squid and the Whale," looks at two contentious sisters (Nicole Kidman, Jennifer Jason Leigh) in Paramount Vantage’s "Margot at the Wedding"; Todd Haynes’ Bob Dylan study "I’m Not There," from the Weinstein Co.; and Allison Eastwood, making her directorial debut with the family drama "Rails and Ties," starring Kevin Bacon and Marcia Gay Harden, from Warner Independent Pictures.

Also on tap is a strong selection of titles that earned critical applause at Cannes, including the Romanian Palme d’Or winner "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days," which IFC Films has picked .....continued below

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up for U.S. release; Miramax Films’ "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly," the screen adaptation of Jean-Dominique Bauby’s memoir about his life after a stroke that earned Julian Schnabel a directing prize at Cannes; Lee Chang-dong’s "Secret Sunshine," for which Cannes hailed Jeon Do-yeon as best actress; and the animated "Persepolis," which won a jury prize at the French fest.

On the documentary front, Telluride is welcoming back such regular visitors as Shroeder, who looks at a French lawyer who defended such controversial figures as Carlos the Jackal and Holocaust denier Roger Garaudy in "Terror’s Advocate"; Herzog, who explores the Antarctic in "Encounters at the End of the World"; and Macdonald ("One Day in September"), who tracks Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie in the Weinstein Co.’s "My Enemy’s Enemy."

The nonfiction titles also include Daily Variety critic Todd McCarthy’s "Pierre Rissient: Man of Cinema," a portrait of the indefatigable publicist and film buff who championed the work of Jane Campion and Abbas Kiarostami; Mark Kidel’s "Journey With Peter Sellars," which focuses on the peripatetic theatre director; and Mark Obenhaus’ extreme skiing documentary "Steep!" which should feel right at home in the mountains of Colorado.

As for the tributes, Day-Lewis will take part in an onstage conversation about his career. French composer Michel Legrand also will be feted, while two of the films for which he provided music -- "Five Days in June" and "The Young Girls of Rochefort" -- will screen.

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