Friday, June 28, 2019

First Ten Bets for 2019 / The Distributors 2019: Many a Firm Part One / Variety's 31 Flavors of Oscar

Your final Friday of June has arrived...


FIRST TEN BETS FOR 2019



Well, it's here.

My very first "Ten Bets" for TFF #46.

I've been posting my guesses predictions for Telluride in this format since 2011.  Some years I have a better track record than others with the initial stab.  My track record throughout the years on the first Ten Bets looks like this:


2011: 8/10
2012: 5/10
2013: 6/10
2014: 7/10
2015: 4/10
2016: 3/10
2017: 7/10
2018: 5/10

Last year I landed just below my average accuracy getting five titles correct: The Other Side of the Wind, Peterloo, Cold War, The Old Man and the Gun and The Front Runner.  But I also missed on Beautiful Boy, Sunset, Burning, Capernaum and the stunning miss on Barry Jenkins' If Beale Street Could Talk.

Other films that I listed on 2018's "just under the Ten Bets" that actually made it to The SHOW included: Boy Erased, The Eyes of Orson Welles, Girl, Shoplifters, and First Man.

Last year's half right/half wrong moved my average over the eight years of Ten Bets to 5.6 correct picks per year.'

And so with that as a backdrop...drumroll please...here's your first Ten Bets for TFF #46


10) The Good Liar
9) Little Women
8) A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
7) Jojo Rabbit
6) Family Romance LLC
5) Portrait of a Lady on Fire
4) Lucy in the Sky
3) Varda by Agnes
2) Nomadland
1) Parasite

Other films in serious play: The Goldfinch, Untitled Noah Baumbach Project, Untitled Todd Haynes Project, Atlantics, The Climb, The Laundromat, Radioactive, Country Music, The Lighthouse, Harriet, The Truth, Synonyms, Motherless Brooklyn, Ad Astra.


I'll be updating the Ten Bets each Friday for the rest of the summer and, as has become my custom, it will expand as we move through time.  Ultimately the final Ten Bets will come on Wednesday, August 28th with up to 25 films that I will predict or deduce that will make the TFF #46 lineup.


THE DISTRIBUTORS 2019: MANY A FIRM PART ONE

Casting a glance today at smaller distribution houses and the films that they have that could make the Telluride program:

-COHEN MEDIA GROUP



This company is a consistent T-ride player.  Its history:

2017: The Insult, Face Places
2016: Journey Through French Cinema
2015: Hitchcock/Truffaut, Marguerite, Rams
2014: Magician
2013: No Show
2012: The Attack


So what's in the CMG larder:

Safy Nebbou's Berlin hit Who You Think I Am.  The film focuses on a 50 year old woman (Juliette Binoche) who creates a fake social media profile.

At the moment, it seems to be the only film CMG has but don't discount the possibility that they'll acquire a film this summer that might also make the lineup.


-KINO LORBER



Another group that has been a frequent entrant in Telluride's fest.  Kino Lorber's track record:

2017: Film Worker
2016: Fire at Sea
2015: Ixcanul, Sembene!, Taxi
2014: The Decent One
2013: Burning Bush, La Maison de la Radio, Manuscripts Don't Burn
2010: La Quattro Volte, Poetry
2007: Blind Mountain


After five straight years with at least one film in play at TFF, Kino Lorber was absent last year.  They could return- and have a good chance to do so, this year with a film that scored well at the Berlin International Film Festival. 

Nadav Lapid's Synonyms won the top prize, the Golden Bear, last February.  It has played a bunch of international fests since then.

IMDb describes the film as " A young Israeli man absconds to Paris to escape his nationality, aided by his trusty Franco-Israeli dictionary.


-IFC FILMS



IFC also has, at least for the moment, a single film that seems possible for T-ride and that is Hirokazu Kore-eda's The Truth.   Described as a film that focuses on the stormy reunion between a daughter and her mother who is an actress involved in a sci-fi film in which she plays a woman who never ages.

After Kore-eda's stellar run in 2018 with Shoplifters which played TFF #45, won the Palme d'Or at Cannes  and was Oscar nominated for Best Foreign Language film, you have to think that The Truth would be under real consideration for a return to Telluride for the director.


Chances for today's batch of films:

Synonyms 50%
The Truth 50%
Who You Think I Am 40%

I'll have a look at some of the other smaller distribution outfits on Monday.


VARIETY'S 31 FLAVORS OF OSCAR




Variety's Tim Gray posted a lengthy piece on Tuesday called "Oscar: 31 Upcoming Films that Could Enter the Awards Race". 

There are actually more than 31.
 when you look at all the lists and categorizations.

As you might expect, a slew of potential T-ride selections are on his various category lists.

Among the possible T-ride players that Gray includes are (in the order he lists them):

Untitled Jay Roach Fox News Project
Ford v. Ferrari
Harriet
A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
Little Women
Judy
The Aeronauts
The Laundromat
The Pope
Atlantics
Untitled Sally Potter Project (Molly)
Jojo Rabbit
The Woman in the Window
Joker...yea, I said it.
Motherless Brooklyn
The Good Liar
1917
Against All Enemies
The King
The Last Thing He Wanted
Les Miserables
The Lighthouse
Lucy in the Sky
Untitled Todd Haynes Project
Untitled Noah Baumbach Project


The complete article is linked here.


That's the Friday MTFB.  I'll have more on Monday.  Have a great weekend!

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

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1 comment:

Jordan Ruimy said...

Do we know, for certain, that Nomadland is ready?