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Reviews
The Lost People of Mountain Village (2005)
More truth here than meets the eye
Like many resort communities, Telluride and its adjacent Mountain Village empty out for both fall and spring off seasons, often called mud season because of the moisture and the freeze/thaw pattern that happens at that time of year at 9000' up in the Rockies. This Exodus is more pronounced in the newer Mountain Village, where almost all businesses close for up to two months or more and most residents flee to visit cities or warmer environs. Here is a tongue-in- cheek look at those people and the state of the Mountain Village during the down time. Like the viewer, we here in Telluride are never sure if they will come back or not. We'll just have to wait and see.
The Alpha Incident (1978)
"The shock to the system must be unbearable!"
For many years my connection to THE ALPHA INCIDENT was a long 35mm trailer that became a cult sensation amongst my pals, mostly for its perceived ineptness and terrible one-liners from the preview. The trailer itself is pretty inept, stopping almost dead half way thru for a long ticker-tape crawl that spells "until" as "untill"! Then a friend sent me a VHS of the film, only to discover that it was missing the first entire reel, highlighting and multiplying the absurdity (not that it made much difference). To me, more than the marginal acting and unreal situations and behavior, the thing it has going for it is really badly written and the dialog is delivered exceedingly poorly. The trailer has ten great/really BAD lines that deserve to be in its IMDb listing. Maybe this film was directed by passers by, but it is one of those films whose badness doesn't destroy its entertainment value..
The Wonderful Country (1959)
Classic bittersweet tale of refound love and longing to return
The first three or four times I saw this was before I had a color TV and thought it was originally B&W. I loved the story of this man unjustly accused who has to run across the border and use his gunslinger skills to become a mercenary in a Mexican civil war. Upon seeing it in color I was even more blown away by the cinematography and the depiction of the countryside.
Mitchum finds a perfect role for his laconic style, seemingly tossing in with one side that's no better than the other, always keeping within him the hope of returning to his home. It's also probably the best thing Julie London ever did on screen. But it's the story and how the country and the conflict are presented that make the movie.
Almost ten years later, in the WILD BUNCH, Peckinpah has his actors say about Mexico:"Ah, Mexico lindo (lovely)!" and "Don't look "lindo" to me; just looks like more of Texas." That's the other side and another story. THE WONDERFUL COUNTRY makes Mexico look very "lindo" and the story of unrequited love and loss of country hold up after all these years have passed.
THE WONDERFUL COUNTRY isn't available on a UA/MGM DVD but you can do a Google search and find a fair copy from a couple of wildcat sites.
Amore, piombo e furore (1978)
If you didn't see this in 1979 or '80, you didn't see all of it
I saw this at the 1978 Telluride Film Festival with Monte Hellman in attendance. We were a bit worse for chemicals at that time, but the film made an indelible impression on my pals and me. To this day we still talk about it and quote some of the most outrageous lines put into a film up until that time.
Since then I've been trying to find the version I saw, but have only encountered pablum-style crap with all the good stuff edited out and horrific washed-out video transfers.
So I need to ask, are my memories of these lines from the film accurate or did whatever was in me at the time make them up?
Testi to Agutter: "As long as I have a face, you'll have a place to sit."
And, Warren Oates to the world in general: "If they didn't have c*nts there'd be a bounty on them."
A great, OTT film for its time. Where is Monte Hellman when we need him?