THE FIRST TEN BETS FOR TFF #45
Here you have it. My first official stab at guessing/predicting/projecting/hoping for films that will play at The SHOW in Telluride over Labor Day weekend.
The first set of predictions every June is fraught with uncertainty. I look at a lot of factors: Studios. distributors, TFF histories, especially with directors. The buzz around films we know are coming in the fall and will almost assuredly play some if not all of the Telluride/Venice/Toronto triumvirate. Oscar hopefuls, Cannes titles and a lot of the time, especially in early July...it's about intuition.
It all factors into my assessments.
Here's the history of success, or lack thereof, for each of the last seven years that I have been using the "Ten Bets" format:
2011: 8/10
2012: 5/10
2013: 6/10
2014: 7/10
2015: 4/10
2016: 3/10
2017: 7/10
As you can tell, last year was a bounce back after low years of 2015 and 2016.
Overall, I manage an average of 5.7 correct guesses with the initial Ten Bets of each season.
So...crossing fingers... here's the first Ten Bets for 2018 (in order of likelihood):
10) Beautiful Boy- I think Amazon Studios will land at Telluride with this, at least and maybe more.
9) The Front Runner- Jason Reitman was once a T-ride favorite. My guess is that this film gets him back.
8) Burning- this was Cannes' unrewarded critical darling from a director who has played TFF before. This was actually higher on my list until word broke yesterday that it had been grabbed for U.S. distribution by Well Go USA Entertainment. See below.
7) Sunset- If its half as good as his first film (Son of Saul), Laszlo Nemes will return.
6) The Old Man and the Gun- This feels like Fox Searchlight's best play for Oscar season and thus its best chance at a Telluride berth...though they do have other possibles.
5) Cold War- Pawel Pawlikowski with a good shot to return to TFF.
4) Capernaum- Cannes Jury Prize winner and SPC's most likely shot for the schedule.
3) Peterloo- Mike Leigh's film about labour strife in Britain.
2) The Other Side of the Wind-Orson Welles "last film". If this doesn't play Telluride I will be greatly surprised and, for that matter, upset.
1) If Beale Street Could Talk- It would a shock if Barry Jenkins' follow-up to his Oscar winning Moonlight does not make The SHOW's lineup.
Others on my "just under the Ten Bets" list: Boy Erased, The Sisters Brothers, The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, The Eyes of Orson Welles, Dogman, On the Basis of Sex, Girl, Happy as Lazzaro, Shoplifters, He Dreams of Giants, First Man, Widows, A Star Is Born, Cheney (Backseat), Roma, At Eternity's Gate, Everybody Knows.
What do YOU think? What films do YOU think might play? What films do YOU WANT to play?
Drop me a note at any one of the contact methods listed below.
Looking at this list before I punch the button to publish, I'm saying to myself...naw...these can't all happen...but what if they did???
So, there you have it. Let's see now how many of these films actually make the lineup.
AWARDS DAILY'S CRITICS' LIST
Jordan Ruimy, writing and compiling for Awards Daily has posted a "Best Of" critics assessment for the first half of 2018.
TFF #45 films pop up on the list with some frequency. Included on the list are:
#31-Loveless
#24-Foxtrot
#13-Lean on Pete
#6-The Rider
#1-First Reformed
Pretty impressive for the films that played last year but weren't released until this year. The complete list from Awards Daily is here.
BURNING HAS A HOME
As I mentioned above, Lee Chang-dong's Cannes critical fave Burning has a distributor. Variety reports that Well Go USA Entertainment has acquired the film and plans a limited release on Oct. 26th in NYC with expansion after that.
The film was right at the top of the critics' polls after its screening at Cannes but had languished without a distributor until yesterday.
As you see above, I still have it listed among my first Ten Bets list, albeit lower than I was thinking earlier this week, despite the fact that Well Go USA has essentially no Telluride history to speak of.
The complete story is linked here from Variety
That's your Friday MTFB. Come back for more on Monday.
EMAIL: mpgort@gmail.com OR michael_speech@hotmail.com
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