Thursday, March 8, 2018

The Oscar Dust Settles / Looking Ahead to Oscar 2019 and Telluride

It's the Thursday after the Oscars....


THE OSCAR DUST SETTLES




Let it be said that I personally enjoyed Oscar Night 2018.  Largely for these reasons:

1) The Telluride Film Festival Streak of screening the Best Picture winner clicked over to eight straight years in a row  and nine of the last ten.   That's cool.  More about that a little later.

2) I had a big night in the prediction department going 21 of 24 (and 20 of 21 in the non-shorts categories.  The only feature category that I whiffed on: Visual Effects where I had War for the Planet of the Apes and Blade Runner 2049 won.  In a side note: I did list BR 2049 as a possible player in the category.

3) I loved seeing Guillermo Del Toro win.  Such a warm and kind fellow human.  Needless to say, I plastered the pic he took of himself with me and my wife all over Twitter and Facebook...again.  And here it is:


This was taken at the Fox Searchlight party at the New Sheridan Bar.

Notes on the season...

As mentioned in Monday's post, Telluride films picked up seven Oscars:

The Shape of Water had four: Best Picture, Direction, Production Design and Original Score
Darkest Hour had two: Best Actor and Makeup and Hair
A Fantastic Woman was Best Foreign Language Film


In addition to TFF #44 continuing the Best Picture string, I'm going to note that the People's,  Pro's and Composite Telluride rankings featured here every year after the fest have become surprisingly predictive.

For example, I've done The People's Telluride Ratings and The Professionals Ratings (or some version of them) here now since 2012 and the Composite of the two since 2013.

Up until last year, and Moonlight's win, the film that finished as the second highest rated film in the People's Ratings won the Best Picture Oscar.  Moonlight broke that string when the 2016 T-ride crowd rated it #1.  This year...the #2 spot was golden again as that's where The Shape pf Water finished (2nd to Lady Bird).

However, the Composite ratings have been five straight years of invincible with the composite top rated film in each year since I started it in 2013 winning Oscar's top prize.

Of the three metrics, the Pros are a bit more all over the place:

2012- Argo was #2 to The Central Park Five
2013- 12 Years a Slave was #1
2014-  Birdman was #1
2015- Spotlight was #3 behind Son of Saul and Anomalisa
2016- Moonlight was #1
2017- The Shape of Water was #1

So...if you're looking to wager next fall after TFF #45 concludes, check the #1 Composite rated film in this space about two weeks after the fest.


LOOKING AHEAD TO OSCAR 2019



The Oscar season never really ends.  Any number of Oscar Prognosticators have already started the running tote board for next year's awards.  That. as you know, can offer us clues about what films might be on the Telluride SHOW list in six months.  So...because this is what it is...I'll be looking at some of the "year-out" predictions for clues for possible films make The SHOW lineup starting with this article from Awards Circuit's Clayton Davis.

Among Davis' Best Picture predictions are some that have a real chance to be at Telluride:

Backstreet (the Adam McKay Dick Cheney movie with last year's TFF Tribute recipient Christian Bale as Cheney)

If Beale Street Could Talk (Telluride favorite Barry Jenkins follow-up to a little film called Moonlight...maybe you've heard of it)

Martin Scorsese's The Irishman. I can see Netflix wanting to play this at Telluride.

Boy Erased.  Joel Edgerton's drama about gay conversion therapy.

At Eternity's Gate-could Julian Schnabel return to Telluride with this story of Vincent Van Gogh starring Willem Dafoe?

Mary Queen of Scots with Saoirse Ronan and Margot Robbie and from Focus Features (which had a very nice Telluride 2017 with Darkest Hour.

On the Basis if Sex-Mimi Leder's Ruth Bader Ginsburg pic starring Felicity Jones and also from Focus Features.

Private Life-Tamara Jenkins first feature since 2007's The Savages, which was great and played Telluride.  Paul Giamatti stars.

Widows-Steve McQueen.  He's played Telluride with Hunger, Shame, 12 Years a Slave.  

Roma-Alfonso Cuaron.  After Gravity's success at T-ride and the great run that he and his amigos -Inarritu and now Del Toro have also had a TFF play wouldn't surprise.


That's all for today.  More to come on Monday!

EMAIL:  mpgort@gmail.com OR michael_speech@hotmail.com

TWITTER @Gort2 (and follow me there as well)

FACEBOOK Message me on FB MTFB's Facebook Page

COMMENT TO THE BLOG



No comments: