The Sedona Film Festival group was invited by Lionsgate to have the first screenings of 3:10 to Yuma in Arizona. On Monday night 8/13 they presented a screening in Scottsdale and on Tuesday night, 9/14, in Sedona. My husband and I were lucky enough to get tickets to their Tuesday night Dinner and a Movie series presentation of the movie. Peter Fonda attended the dinner and also was present for a Q&A after the movie.
"If I had to describe this movie in one word it would be "riveting"...or "dynamic"...or "intense", or how about two words, "massively entertaining.""
and
"Yuma is a combination of one Hell of an intense ride and a wonderful psychological and moral study of two men. I am glad it was Christian Bale playing opposite Russell, he was fantastic, and Russell was his charismatic best; charming and appealing, but also manipulative and cold, dark and dangerous. However, as we know, Russell can humanize even the darkest of characters. Without giving spoilers there was at least one spot where the audience gasped when they thought he might be harmed. So Big Bad Ben had the audience eating out of his hand. 
The editing, the pacing were perfect, just perfect. The action sequences are tense and exciting, the dynamic between Russell and Christian is riveting, in both the tense times and the quiet times. What I remember of the score I really enjoyed. I'll have to pay more attention to it on Sept 7 but some of it sounded like a throwback to the early Westerns, it was effective and quite good.
I thought Ben Foster was excellent, really a vile, snake of a person, a sociopath with no redeeming qualities (except for maybe his devotion to getting his boss free 
). IMO he didn't steal the movie though, Russell and Christian were the heart of the movie."
My Dinner and a Movie in Sedona - 3:10 to Yuma Screening
There are two ways to get to Sedona from my house; longer way round by freeway and slightly shorter route over Mingus Mountain, a steep, twisty route I don’t travel in rain or snow. We opted for the mountain route and managed to run into rain, a road construction delay, and down the mountain, the cops. Well, we didn’t run into them but they were patrolling enough to keep our speed down. By this time I was wondering if we’d make our ‘5:15 Trolley to Sedona'.
Dinner
We made it right on time and were whisked off to the Bella Terra restaurant and a really delicious meal. There were 30 in the group so it was a nice semi-intimate dinner. Peter Fonda was a few minutes late, he came in as we were getting our main course, and he talked and answered a few questions while waiting for his dinner. This was more 'dinner talk', about Sedona and last being here in 1978, riding motorcycles up Oak Creek Canyon, and flying a plane up Oak Creek Canyon early one morning back in his youth. About being an avid America’s Cup follower (he had on a Cup tee shirt) and other things like that. And, no, I didn’t talk to him, ask him for his autograph or take his picture, not my thing as you know. :)
Q&A
The host of the evening was, I thought pretty good at first, especially in a funny bit of sexual innuendo and banter about a pistol that kept sticking in the holster of another Film Festival man (they were gussied up in Western gear), until after the movie and the beginning of the Q&A, when he thought he was being funny by saying to Peter “Well, I’m sure we all enjoyed you beating up Russell Crowe”…and then mentioned something about the phone toss. There was some tittering in the audience but I was glad to see Peter interrupt him right away with some very nice words about Russell. He prefaced them with (I’m paraphrasing, I didn’t take notes, lol) “Whoaaa, now, Russell is a consummate professional, he’s a committed actor and was wonderful to work with. He works very, very hard, was totally professional on set, and helped work with the stuntmen and extras. He’s got a rep, but I think that’s mostly the media, and I found him to be a wonderful guy. Plus, he’s got kids now and he’s probably mellowed.” His comments got a positive reaction from the audience, especially when he mentioned Russell helping the other actors/stuntmen/extras. Fonda’s stock went up in my book after those comments. :)
He talked about Russell one other time. Someone asked about his thoughts re: the difference in acting styles/preparation of Russell Crowe and Christian Bale. Peter’s response was (again, paraphrasing) “None, really. When you’re as good as they are, you just do what you do.” He talked about how committed and talented they both are. He also quoted Gary Cooper a couple of times, something like "if you know who you are (the character) you don’t have to act.” He used a different word which I can’t remember but essentially meant immersing yourself into the character using a whole bag of little tricks that each actor has. Russell and Christian are both excellent at that, and I must say Peter was very good in his role as well. He told the same story I’ve heard already about Mangold not wanting him in the movie at first, said he thought he was too ‘laconic’. But Peter met with him, showed him he had the energy, got hired, and then they ended up doing it more low-key than was originally planned.
I asked him if he would tell us a little about ‘cowboy camp’, even though I knew he didn’t have to go, but all he mentioned was that Ben Foster had never ridden a horse or fired a gun before this movie, but learned quickly and did a good job, and then he started rambling (more about this later :) ).
He said that this was the first time he’d seen this cut and mentioned about 40 frames (or a second or two) of him with Ben Wade he noticed was not there. I wonder if he meant a bit from the trailer, which I noticed was gone. There was a second bit from the trailer with Ben talking to Dan that was also not in this cut. I believe this is the final cut as it was complete with a pretty great soundtrack and all closing credits in place. One interesting little tidbit. As we know, some of the original was shot in Sedona. The host introduced Peter to a member of the audience who played the younger son in the original film. It was just a cool moment.
Man, oh, man, we thought Russell can ramble when interviewed or doing Q&As. Holy Moly, Fonda can ramble with the best of them, ramble and wander all over the place, he’s got 45 years of movie stories to tell. LOL! A lot of his stories ended up mentioning money but were fairly amusing and if a lot of questions mosied around to be about him, Easy Rider, Ulee’s Gold, his cameo in Ghost Rider etc., well, I can’t really blame him, he’s the one doing the promo slogging right now. And I was glad to hear that he has been slogging, Lionsgate has got him traveling and working pretty hard. He’s been doing 12 or more print, radio and/or TV interviews a day as well as some of these Q&As in the evening. He’s been on the East Coast, as we know, with Ben Foster, and now he’s touring some of the West. He goes to San Francisco today, then mentioned several more cities, I remember Seattle and another NW city and Dallas and a couple of others. That gives me hope that Lionsgate will spend the money to have Russell and Christian do a fair amount of prominent promos.
Dennis and I sat at the theater with a lady from the Sedona Film Office and we struck up a conversation. She had been involved for a long time with trying to get Yuma filmed in Sedona and she mentioned the previous version with Tom Cruise and Eric Bana. She seemed a little surprised that I knew about that :) and we went into a discussion of Az not being able to compete with New Mexico and their huge tax rebates for films. New Mexico really needs the money more than Az so the politicians just won’t go for it here. Sedona came pretty close to getting Yuma for awhile but can’t/won’t compete with NM in their generous financing arrangements. We had an interesting convo about filming and discussed other movies shot here and other movies that they’ve lost to NM. I didn’t mention Russell until we were discussing Yuma again she said she "I love Christian Bale" so I said, “And I love Russell Crowe” and we just grinned at each other.