Pence, along with his fellow co-founders, created a world-class film festival that helped put Telluride on the map. He has died at age 82.
Howie Movshovitz
Special to The Colorado Sun
Posted inCulture
A movie about politics, lies, corruption and greed still resonates 80 years later
Frank Capra’s “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” is an election-season reminder that democracy matters
Posted inArts, Culture, Opinion, Opinion Columns
Movshovitz: “The Day the Earth Stood Still” still speaks to us, if we’re willing to listen
“Gort, KLAATU BARRATA NICTO” A loose translation of this famous line spoken near the end of the brilliant 1951 movie “The Day the Earth Stood Still” (forget the splashy, nowhere 2008 version with Keanu Reeves) would go something like “Gort, Klaatu says don’t incinerate the Earth — yet.” To go backwards in the story, Gort […]
Posted inArts, Culture, News
Movshovitz: The coronavirus pandemic will inspire filmmakers, but we’ll have to wait a while to see
Movies are not a popular art for nuthin’. They may not appear to take on serious aspects of our lives at the moment they hit the screens, but what’s going on in the world registers in all sorts of ways, both obvious and opaque. Great and traumatic events — hot world wars, cold wars, financial […]
Posted inOpinion, Opinion Columns
Opinion: Nazi tactics? In these coronavirus times, find inspiration from an era when fear and uncertainty fell from the skies
Coloradans, like others around the country, are growing restless amid the stay-at-home orders across the state. Gov. Jared Polis — the state’s first Jewish governor — delivered an emotional response this week to a prominent Republican who accused officials of using Nazi tactics to shut down the state. President Donald Trump has compared the struggle […]
Posted inArts, Culture, Opinion, Opinion Columns
It’s election season. Here’s a guide to some of the best political movies
The more I think about political movies – in this overheated political world – the less I understand just what IS a political movie. Certainly political movies can be more than stories – or documentaries — about elections or mayors, or about presidents. Just about every film French director Jean-Luc Godard has made – and […]
Posted inArts, Culture, Opinion, Opinion Columns
The greatest classic Christmas movies ever, according to film critic Howie Movshovitz
Christmas must have held special resonance during World War II. You can hear it in the yearnings of Irving Berlin’s “White Christmas,” cherished by soldiers away from home, and in “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” written by Hugh Martin and Ralph Blaine in 1944. World War II was different from our long-running wars in […]
Posted inArts, Culture, Opinion, Opinion Columns
Movshovitz: Colorado theaters are teeming with documentaries. But what makes a good one?
Now that every Tom, Jane, Dick or Harriet has a digital camera and seems to be making a documentary, it might be a good time to think about what they’re doing and just what is “documentary” anyway. “Documentaries have been with us since the movies began, and they’ve left — and are leaving — a […]
Posted inArts, Culture, Opinion, Opinion Columns
Here’s why film lovers know the Telluride Film Festival is the best on the planet
For a lot of people who care about the movies, the Telluride Film Festival is the very best festival on the planet. Filmmakers say the same thing. They like the film-savvy audience; they like the intimacy of a festival tucked into a small town (no matter how glitzy), and they like it that there’s no […]
Posted inArts, Coloradans, Culture, Music, News
For the small band of silent film musicians in Colorado, each accompaniment is unique
At their best, music and film work hand in glove. Try to imagine “The Godfather” without Giovanni “Nino” Rota’s score. Or “Vertigo” without Bernard Herrmann’s music, or “Gone With The Wind” without Max Steiner. But when films first emerged more than a hundred years ago, they rolled into town with no sound and few cues […]