Telluride kicking off with a new batch of hard-to-market films

Late yesterday afternoon the Telluride Film Festival announced its slate of movies. The SpoutBlog team is going to be on the ground there and you can follow all their reviews, interviews and other coverage here.

As usual, these movies are ones that will likely be critically acclaimed but hard to market to a mainstream audience. Jeff Wells thinks the line-up is a stiff, with few big-name attractions and a general lack of movies that are going to generate much buzz. That could be because many of those that were speculated to be there from the major studios simply aren’t ready and it’s also a symptom of the general indie consolidation that’s gone on in the last year or so. Some seem to be skipping Telluride in favor of Toronto, which is more of a buyer’s event and not a showcase.

Telluride, whatever the strength of its line-up, does kick off the festival season, something that’s going to be heavily scrutinized in the light of that consolidation as a smaller number of buyers vie for a smaller number of films.

So while the industry is watching Telluride, five new mainstream films are entering multiplexes on this, the last weekend of a summer that managed to beat expectations despite a few notable bombs.