Thursday, February 13, 2020

Oscar 2020-This and That / Other Oscar Takes: Analysis of What Went Down Sunday Night / An Early Look at Oscar for 2020 Films / Blog Updates

OSCAR 2020-THIS AND THAT



The dizziness from the Best Picture win for Bong Joon-ho's Parasite on Sunday night has begun to subside leaving a little clear-headedness to think about what occurred.

- Are the Oscars changed forever?  Does the diversification of the membership account for Parasite's success?  Maybe.  Perhaps the Oscars became a truly international award on Sunday.  You might argue that the internationalization has been creeping into the Oscar ceremony over the past decade.  Think of the Oscar Best Directors of recent years:

Hazanavicius/The Artist 2011
Lee/Life of Pi 2012
Cuaron/Gravity and Roma 2013 and 2018
Inarritu/Birdman and The Revenant 2014 and 2015
Del Toro/The Shape of Water 2017
and now Bong for Parasite.

Only Damien Chazelle  who won for La La Land (2016) hales from the USA.

It will be interesting to see if this trend continues.

-Parasite became the first film to win both International (or Foreign Language) Feature and Best Picture.

- Fully subtitled, I think it's the first Best Picture for which that is true although a friend of mine pointed out that past winners have included some sub-titling: Slumdog Millionaire, The Godfather films, Dances With Wolves.

- Parasite becomes the first Best Picture/Palme D'or combination winner since Marty in 1955.

- I took a look at how Telluride films have fared over the last decade in terms of total Oscar wins for each year.  Here's how that breaks down:

2019- 8
2018- 6
2017- 7
2016- 13 (this was the year of Moonlight, La La Land, Manchester by the Sea and Arrival)
2015- 4
2014- 7
2013- 10 (Gravity and 12 Years a Slave)
2012- 5
2011- 7
2010- 7

That's 74 Oscar wins over the decade meaning that TFF films win 7.4 Oscars per year.  That means, thanks to Parasite, Ford v Ferrari, Marriage Story and Judy, that this year's Oscar haul was better than average.  Best year, as you can see above, was 2016 with 13 , followed by 2013 with 10.  The most meager Oscar year was 2015 with four wins-that was the year of Spotlight.


OTHER OSCAR TAKES: ANALYSIS OF WHAT WENT DOWN SUNDAY NIGHT

In addition to my commentary about Oscar 2020 above I have also included some analysis posted this week from a couple of others.  Here they are:

Scott Feinberg/The Hollywood Reporter

Ben Travers/Indiewire

Zack Sharf/Indiewire



AN EARLY LOOK AT OSCAR FOR 2020 FILMS


Photo from IMDb


Matt Neglia/Next Best Picture seemed to be the first up from an Oscar watching website with a rundown of films he thinks we'll be talking about a year from now as Oscar contenders.  There willy, be others coming soon and I'll include some of those early, early looks through the prism of what are films that might land at Telluride for TFF #47.

Among the films that Matt includes:

Aaron Sorkin's The Trial of the Chicago 7- IMDb says that it went into post-production last December.  Distrib: Paramount.  Release date: Sept. 25th

Paul Greengrass' News of the World- in post production last November.  Distrib: Universal.  Release: Dec. 25th.

David Fincher's Mank- in post this month.  Distrib: Netflix.  Release: TBA

Ron Howard's Hillbilly Elegy- in post last August. Distrib: Netflix.  Release November

Denis Villenueve's Dune- in post starting in July, 2019.  Distrib: Warner Bros.  Release: Dec. 18th.

Edgar Wright's Last Night in Soho- in post in August.  Distrib: Focus Features.  Release: Sept. 25th.

Lila Neugebauer's Red, White and Water- in post production in August.  Distrib: A24. Release: TBA

Francis Lee's Ammonite- in post since last April.  Distrib: Neon (coming off of Parasite this year).  Release: TBA

Guillermo Del Toro's Nightmare Alley- currently filming.  Distrib: Searchlight.  Release: TBA.

Chloe Zhao's Nomadland- in post since last March.  Distrib: Searchlight.  Release: TBA

The complete article is linked here including Matt's opening predictions for six major categories.


BLOG UPDATES

A Couple of bits of info.  I have updated the "Unofficial TFF Oscar History" page to reflect what occurred during the just concluded Oscar season.  Additionally, the "Selected TFF History" page has been updated to include the information from TFF #46.  Check those pages out. 

Still to come are the updates to the "Expanded Telluride Film Festival History-Part Two: 1996 to the Present.  I still have to synthesize the material from TFF programs for Fests from 2006-2019.  The links to the official online version of each of those programs are still on that page.



EMAIL:  mpgort@gmail.com

TWITTER @Gort2 

MTFB is published on Mondays and Thursdays.

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