Noted over the weekend, Penn and Teller’s “Tim’s Vermeer” might be the breakout hit of this year’s Telluride Film Festival. Talking to everyone from Oscar-nominated directors to casual movie-goers at the fest, it was clear to me that the film delighted just about everyone who managed to catch it, giving the film a nice boost into the Toronto Film Festival over the next week or so.
It could be poised by Sony Classics to be one of this year’s Best Documentary Feature nominees. That branch tends to like movies that follow a single subject and in the case of Tim Jenison, the subject couldn’t be more fascinating. The man received a standing ovation at Telluride, after all. The film is “an unassuming work that says that, for all our faults, humanity can achieve wonders,” I wrote at the time. “Invention and expression are one and the same…What is art if not the height of ingenuity?”
Check out a new clip from the film embedded at the top of this post. It does a good job of setting the overall scene for the theory Jenison puts to the test throughout the film.
“Tim’s Vermeer” plays the Toronto International Film Festival today.