The Distributors 2019: Neon / Pico Iyer Will Lead Us / First Gaze at Little Women

Good Thursday to all...


THE DISTRIBUTORS 2019: NEON

Film distribution company NEON has come on like gangbusters in the past couple of years.  Their The B Side: Elsa Dorfman's Portrait Photography played Telluride in 2016.  NEON also played with Border and The Biggest Little Farm last year.  Additionally NEON ended up as the distributor for the Aretha Franklin documentary Amazing Grace which was expected to play TFF in both 2015 and 2016 but, due to legal issues did not.

So...it's not a lengthy Telluride resume but it is relatively intense of late.  As a matter of fact, their emergence is so recent I didn't even handicap their chances with films last year and as you can see above, they landed two.

Now, as we're assessing the 2019 landscape, NEON seems poised to make a splash again this year as they have acquired two huge titles from Cannes.  Palme d'Or winner Parasite and Best Screenplay winner at Cannes: Portrait of a Lady on Fire.  At the moment, these two films seem to be the only two NEON films with a shot at TFF #46.

I'm bullish on the chances for both films to make it to the 2019 version of The SHOW

Chances...

Parasite 60%
Portrait of a Lady on Fire 60%

More distribution analysis tomorrow.


PICO IYER WILL LEAD US

The Telluride Film Festival officially announced that author Pico Iyer will serve as Guest Director this year.

Here's the text of the official announcement:

BERKELEY, CA – Telluride Film Festival (TFF), presented by National Film Preserve LTD., is proud to announce its 2019 Guest Director, Pico Iyer. The celebrated author is set to select a series of films to present at the 46th Telluride Film Festival running over Labor Day Weekend, August 30 through September 2, 2019.

Festival organizers annually select one of the world’s great film enthusiasts to join them in the creation of the Festival’s program lineup. The Guest Director serves as a key collaborator in the Festival’s programming decisions, bringing new ideas and overlooked films to Telluride. In keeping with Telluride Film Festival tradition, Iyer’s film selections, along with the rest of the Telluride lineup, will be kept secret until Opening Day.

“Pico is a tremendously gifted writer with unrivaled wit,” said TFF Executive Director Julie Huntsinger. “His enthusiasm for film, especially within his writing, has buoyed and enchanted us. It has made working with him to create this year’s Guest Director program a particularly delightful experience. Both Tom Luddy and I are thrilled to have him with us this year.”

Pico Iyer is the author of two novels and thirteen works of non-fiction. His books have been translated into 23 languages and both his 2008 meditation on the XIVth Dalai Lama, The Open Road, and his TED Book, The Art of Stillness, were best sellers across the U.S. They have also made him a Guggenheim Fellow, a Pulitzer Prize nominee and a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.

An essayist for Time since 1986, he is a constant contributor to The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, Harper’s and more than 200 other newspapers and magazines worldwide, and he has published introductions to 70 other works.

Iyer has also written many liner-notes for Leonard Cohen, essays for several Criterion Collection DVDs and a screenplay for Miramax. His writing on Malick, Farhadi, Bertolucci, Scorsese and many other filmmakers has appeared all over, and his writing on movie studios from North Korea to Hyderabad has borne out The New Yorker’s assertion that “As a guide to far-flung places, he can hardly be surpassed.”

Born in Oxford, England, in 1957, Iyer was educated at Eton, Oxford and Harvard. This year he’s been serving as Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton.

“In the times I’ve been to the Festival I’ve seen as many rich and original films in three days as I get to watch in the next twelve months combined,” said Iyer. “So when Tom and Julie asked if I might be willing to serve as Guest Director this year, I felt as stunned and delighted as if I’d been given the keys to the kingdom. Movies have actually been my secret passion for as long as the Telluride Film Festival has been around. But nobody had intuited this until Tom and Julie, a dream team of sorts, sensed my excitement and offered me a chance to share my enthusiasms and passions with others. The invitation to help choose films for the Festival this year was the most exciting one I can remember receiving; I only hope I can pass on a fraction of the delight that I have found at Telluride to others in this inspiring community.”

Past Guest Directors include Jonathan Lethem, Joshua Oppenheimer, Volker Schlöndorff, Rachel Kushner, Guy Maddin, Caetano Veloso, Michael Ondaatje, Alexander Payne, Salman Rushdie, Peter Bogdanovich, B. Ruby Rich, Phillip Lopate, Errol Morris, Bertrand Tavernier, John Boorman, John Simon, Buck Henry, Laurie Anderson, Stephen Sondheim, G. Cabrera Infante, Peter Sellars, Don DeLillo, J.P. Gorin, Edith Kramer and Slavoj Žižek.

The Guest Director program is sponsored by Turner Classic Movies (TCM). Considered throughout the industry as one of the leading authorities on classic film, the network presents great films, uncut and commercial-free, highlighting the entire spectrum of film history.

FIRST GAZE AT LITTLE WOMEN


Vanity Fair revealed a first look at still photography from Greta Gerwig's highly anticipated adaptation of Louisa Mae Alcott's classic Little Women.

The film stars Meryl Streep, Saoirse Ronan, Emma Watson, Florence Pugh, Timothee Chalamet, Bob Odenkirk and Laura Dern. 

The film is being shepherded by Sony/Columbia nd is due for release on Dec. 25th.

Here's a taste of the visuals from Vanity Fair:

For a view of more of the stills and the article the accompanies them at Vanity Fair click here.

That's the Thursday MTFB.  More tomorrow.


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