THE DISTRIBUTORS 2019: MANY A FIRM PART TWO:
Today looking at the chances for two films from two different distribution companies: A24 and Annapurna
-A24
After s strong build over five years from 2012-2016. 2017 seemed like a real breakout year for A24 with three films making he TFF lineup. But the relatively new firm didn't place a film at the fest in 2018. Here's the history:
2018: No SHOW
2017: Lean on Pete, First Reformed, Lady Bird
2016: Moonlight
2015: Room
2014: No SHOW
2013: Under the Skin
2012: Ginger and Rosa
Now with the 46th edition of the Telluride Film Festival fast approaching, A24 finds itself in much the same situation as last year when Jonah Hill's Mid 90's seemed their only possible play. This year A24 looks to have only Robert Eggers" The Lighthouse as a possible TFF contender.
As of right now though, I'm feeling fairly bullish on the film's chances especially in light of its very strong positive critical reaction from Cannes. Reini Urban's collective Cannes critical response had it at #2 among the entire fest's films trailing only Bong Joon-ho's Palme d'Or winning Parasite.
Meanwhile...
-ANNAPURNA
Annapurna's connection to Telluride in its short tenure has been as a producer of films as opposed to a distributor, which is a fairly recent development for the firm. TFF films as a production/distribution company include: Destroyer (2018) and Foxcatcher (2014). As with A24, it feels like Annapurna has a single film that could possibly make TFF #46.
Up until this weekend it was references as the Untitled Miranda July project but as of this past weekend is now called Kijillionaire. Evan Rachel Wood, Debra Winger and Richard Jenkins star in a crime drama. Brad Pitt and Dede Gardner's Plan B (12 Years a Slave, Moonlight) is also producing which doesn't hurt the film's TFF profile.
The chances for each of these films...
The Lighthouse-55%
Kijillionaire-40%
DEADLINE LOOKS AT VENICE (and a little at Telluride)
Deadline writers Nancy Tartaglione and Andreas Wiseman posted a piece last week speculating about what films...especially awards season films...might find their way to the Venice Film Fest. We probably need to pay heed.
The Venice-Telluride connection has become very solid in recent years. Last year the two fests shared a total of nine films: First Man, Graves Without a Name, Non-Fiction, Peterloo, Roma, The Favourite, The Great Buster, The Other Side of the Wind and They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead.
Though the changing interactions of film fests and streamers like Netflix and Amazon may alter that symbiosis, I expect we’ll see another substantial connection between the two fests’ lineups again this year. Consequently, the programming and scheduling for Venice is valuable for TFF clues.
So back to the Deadline story...
Among the films that they suggest have a shot at the Lido are:
Joker
Untitled Noah Baumbach Project- which gets a specific Telluride mention in the article
Against All Enemies
The Aeronauts
Ad Astra
Ford v. Ferrari
The Pope
The King
The Last Thing He Wanted
The Laundromat
Bad Education (which also gets a specific Telluride mention)
Judy
Jojo Rabbit
Ema
Also mentioned are Roman Polanski’s An Officer and a Spy and Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman both of which are unlikely for Telluride for very different reasons.
The complete Deadline article is linked here.
Venice is set to announce its lineup on July 25th.
TELLURIDE AND OSCAR PART ONE: BEST PICTURE
I spent nearly a year working on my Telluride Film Festival history project in 2017-18. You can see the links for that at the top of this page.
Now, I’ve decided to dive into the relationship between TFF and the Oscars.
Regular readers know that when the fest concludes each year that I devote the blog to following the awards season with emphasis on the films that played at the festival. Then, once Oscar is done, I return to the primary reason that I started writing this thing back in 2008 which is the attempt to divine the films that will make up the program for The SHOW.
In the course of the “Oscar” portion of the year I have written a lot about how T-ride has been a huge factor in the Best Picture race. You can’t escape the fest’s track record over the past decade plus. Green Book’s win last year notwithstanding, I suspect Telluride’s presence in the Best Picture category will continue for the foreseeable future.
Recently, I decided to take a look back at Telluride’s place in the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar race. I knew on a surface level that the connection had been substantial but I wanted to quantify it. So I did the homework and put that story up back on June 10th.
After I finished the work on that post, I got to thinking that a bigger look at the Telluride-Oscar connection might be interesting...fun...worth the time.
So, I decided to expand the field and look at how Telluride films have fared in the other seven major Oscar categories: Direction, Actress, Actor, Supporting Actress, Supporting Actor, Adapted Screenplay and Original Screenplay.
I’ll be rolling these out over the next couple of weeks and by way of introducing the collection, here’s a reminder of all the films that have been nominated for Best Picture that played Telluride since 2005 (with winners denoted with ***):
2005: Brokeback Mountain, Capote
2006: Babel
2007: Juno, There Will Be Blood (I always count this and Benjamin Button even though we only saw a portion of each film in tributes to Daniel Day Lewis and David Fincher)
2008: Slumdog Millionaire***, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
2009: (first year of expanded field of nominees): An Education, Up in the Air
2010: The King’s Speech***, 127 Hours, Black Swan
2011: The Artist***, The Descendants
2012: Argo***, Amour
2013: 12 Years a Slave***, Gravity, Nebraska
2014: Birdman***, The Imitation Game
2015: Spotlight***, Room
2016: Moonlight***, Arrival, La La Land, Manchester by the Sea
2017: The Shape of Water***, Darkest Hour, Lady Bird
2018: The Favourite, Roma
In the 14 years included here 32 TFF films were nominated for Best Picture with nine of them winning Oscar’s highest honor including the incredible eight straight year run from 2010-2017.
The first TFF film to earn a nomination for Best Picture was Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation in 1974, the very first Telluride Film Festival. The second wouldn't happen until 1989 with Jim Sheridan's My Left Foot.
Tomorrow, a look at Best Director candidates from TFFs past.
FORMAN VS. FORMAN TRAILER
The Karlovy Vary Fest is ongoing as I write and one of the docs screening there that has caught my eye as a potential TFF selection is Jakub Henja and Helena Trestikova’s Forman vs. Forman focusing on the life and career of the late, great Milos Forman.
With its screening at the Czech fest, the producers have released a trailer which I have included here from YouTube:
That's your first July MTFB. More to come tomorrow...
EMAIL: mpgort@gmail.com OR michael_speech@hotmail.com
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COMMENT TO THE BLOG
1 comment:
Michael, thanks for posting the TFF histories. People should note that the info you've posted on Telluride does not exist anywhere else on the Internet, even on their own TFF site. Brilliant research and info.
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