Monday, September 26, 2016

La La Will Be Later / Assessing Toronto in a Telluride Context / Listening to the Oscar Whisperers

I hope it's a good Monday for everyone and welcome back from the weekend.

LA LA LAND WILL BE LATER




We found put over the weekend that the release plan for Telluride (and Venice and Toronto) hot and what looks to be the momentary Oscar front runner for Best Picture, Damien Chazelle's La La Land has had its release plan altered.  The film was originally scheduled to open inn a limited capacity on Dec. 2nd but as of this weekend the limited release date has been moved to a week later on Dec. 9th. The wide release date will remain Dec. 16 which has been its announced wide release date all along. Here's the full story from Variety.

Meanwhile, we also learned this week that the film's cast was almost very different with Emma Watson penciled in for the Emma Stone role and Miles Teller-who starred in Chazelle's breakout hit, Whiplash, a couple of years ago, was very close to re-upping with the writer/director but reportedly turned down a $4 million offer to play the role that went to Ryan Gosling.  That story is here from Indiewire.

ASSESSING TORONTO IN A TELLURIDE CONTEXT



We're a week removed from the close of the Toronto International Film Festival and three weeks from the close of TFF #43.  As occurred after Telluride, critics have now weighed in individually and collectively.  Indiewire and The Film Stage have both weighed in with critical consensus and it's interesting to look at that in the context of films that first played T-ride and then followed with screenings at TIFF.

Here's what Indiewire came up with...

the top film from Toronto critics was the same film that ended up with Toronto's audience award as well as finishing in the #2 spot in MTFB's People's, Professionals' and Composite ratings: Damien Chazelle's La La Land.  Other multi-critic favorites from TIFF were:

#2) Moonlight
#3) Toni Erdmann
#4) Arrival

Telluride films all.

The complete report from Indiewire is here.

Meanwhile, The Film Stage named their 20 Best films at Toronto last week as well and included in that listing were: Into the Inferno, Moonlight, Una and Wakefield.  The complete article and grades for a ton more TIFF films can be found here.



LISTENING TO THE OSCAR WHISPERERS



Awards Circuit is hot and heavy into Oscar analysis after the close of the three bog fall film fests with their weekly podcast Clayton Davis and his crew are hard at it trying to decipher which way the Oscar wind is blowing.   Here are links to the last couple of podcasts.

AC Podcast Ep. 10

AC Podcast Ep. 11

And, not strictly and Oscar crystal ball, but New York Times film critic A.O. Scott takes podcasts his preview of the fall film season in the context of Telluride, Toronto and Venice.  That podcast is here.




That's a wrap fro Monday.  More to come on Thursday including The FAC's look at the Supporting Acting categories and the screenplay categories.

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