HANDICAPPING CANNES
Neal Young of the Jigsaw Lounge has begun setting the line for the winner of this year's Palme d'Or for The Cannes Film Festival. It's all academic at this point as we don't know which titles will be named to the competition list. Cannes usually has somewhere between 20-24 films in the competition category and Young lists 25 with odds of less than 30 to 1.
On his list of 25 are these that I continue to point to as potential Telluride choices:
Olivier Assayas' "Clouds of Sils Maria" which Young has listed at 16:1 for the Palme.
The Dardennes Brothers "Two Days, One Night" at 25:1
Mike Leigh's "Mr. Turner" also at 25:1
Xavier Beauvois' "The Price of Glory" at 28:1
Two other films are mentioned that earn their way onto the Telluride watch list: John Boorman's "Queen and Country" which Young lists at 16:1 and "Christian Petzold's "Phoenix" at 20:1.
Other films that Young includes that are in the over 30:1 category and that have some Telluride potential are:
"Birdman", "The Search", "Everything Will Be Fine", "Far From the Madding Crowd", "While We're Young", "Coming Home" (see story below), "Foxcatcher", "The Face of an Angel" and "The Look of Silence".
Take a look at Young's complete betting line/list here:
http://www.jigsawlounge.co.uk/film/reviews/cannes2014bet/
FOX SEARCHLIGHT IS 20 AND GREW UP IN TELLURIDE
The folks at HitFix put together a look back at Fox Searchlight's 20 year history this week by naming what they consider the 20 best films that the Indie Studio has distributed. It will come as no surprise to serious Telluride watchers that a number of those films played at Telluride over the years. On the HitFix list that are Telluride alums:
#20 "The Descendants"
#17 "Juno"
#15 "Slumdog Millionarie"
#13 "Shame"
#5 "12 Years a Slave"
#1 "Black Swan"
I also semi-include Terrence Malick's "The Tree of Life" (at #4 on the HitFix list) which didn't actually play Telluride but did screen there secretly as an attempt to get a distribution deal in 2011 which it did.
You can see their entire array of Fox Searchlight's "20 Best" here:
http://www.hitfix.com/in-contention/the-20-best-fox-searchlight-movies-of-the-past-20-years#oHa0Jr8dAKqHyDiT.99
"COMING HOME" TEASER
I have been relatively high on the notion that we could see Zhang Yimou's "Coming Home" at both Cannes and then Telluride this year. I was, therefore, fairly excited to see posts this week about a teaser/trailer for the film including this link to it via Thompson on Hollywood:
http://www.indiewire.com/article/watch-moving-teaser-for-zhang-yimous-coming-home#.UyxZq2nOSnc.twitter
But the Thompson article throws some water on the Telluride notion when it reveals plans by Sony Pictures Classics (the SPC connection was actually another thing working in favor of a Telluride play) that they plan to do a preview screening of the film in New York on Mar. 27th. Knowing Telluride's predilection for showing only films that have not played in the U.S. prior to their T-ride unveiling (though that's not a hard and fast rule) I would say that the preview definitely reduces the chance that we'll see "Coming Home" over Labor Day weekend.
More on Thursday...
There is no screening of the ZY film tonight at NYU, Its a Q@A with Ang lee and Yimou. Although I think it was screened for Ang lee.
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