Thursday, May 14, 2020

Whispers from Vulture / Cannes Reveries and Analysis / Coppola On the Rocks / HN Updates Oscar Predix

WHISPERS FROM VULTURE



Nate Jones posted yesterday on Vulture.com a piece entitled "How Each Major Film Festival Is Responding to the Coronavirus.  Included in his assessment is Telluride along with Cannes, Venice, Toronto and New York.

The Telluride segment doesn't really offer much new save for this sentence:


"However, organizers tell Vulture they are proceeding as if the festival will happen. Otherwise, the only news out of Telluride came in mid-April, when the fest proposed extending its schedule by an extra day"

The key words being: "they (TFF) are proceeding as if the festival will happen"

No clues as to which "organizers" are the source of the claim but it's encouraging.

The Vulture article is linked here.


CANNES REVERIES AND ANALYSIS



The 73rd Cannes Film Festival was to have been going by today.  The original schedule had envisioned an opening night film on Tuesday night and as you know that did not happen.  As the original start date has come and gone a variety of outlets have offered memories and retrospectives about past Cannes as well as a number of assessments of Cannes place in the film universe.

I'm passing along a link to a couple of those here.

The first is a look at Cannes and its past from the perspective of three Indiewire veterans who all have  wealth of experience to draw on.  Anne Thompson, Eric Kohn and David Ehrlich (all of which have been kind enough over the years to participate in my annual round-up of industry veterans at the end of TFF) offer up their reminiscences of their personal experiences in southern France as well as a look at Cannes' past and potential future influence on the film industry.

Take a look at their stories here.

Meanwhile, Deadline has published the highlights of a France TV interview with Cannes President Pierre Lescrue.  Nancy Tartaglione's post went up yesterday.

Lescrue revealed that Cannes would be naming films that would have been selected would include roughly 50 titles.  Previous reports had established that the announcement of those titles will come sometime in early June.

It's my belief that some of those titles that would have played Cannes will be among the films that also play TFF and it will be interesting to parse that announcement for clues and possibilities.

The Deadline story is linked here.


COPPOLA ON THE ROCKS


photo via Empire Online


One of the films that may well be on that list next month is Sofia Coppola's latest collaboration with Bill Murray.  Her film, On the Rocks, she says, is done.  That information leads one to believe that it certainly is a possible title for the Cannes list and then some presentation among the fall fests that are currently still planning on occurring in some fashion including, perhaps, T-ride.

Coppola's last Bill Murray film was, of course, Lost in Translation which played Telluride with Coppola in attendance back in 2003.

Coppola is featured in an article this week (along with Kirsten Dunst) in Empire Online.

You can check that here.


HN UPDATES OSCAR PREDIX



In an exercise of faith or chutzpah or wishful thinking, Hollywood News' Joey Magidson has updated his Oscar predictions for the month of May.  Consequently, in the same spirit, I have mined those predictions for Telluride possibles.

Among his top ten Best Picture picks are TFF potentials: Nomadland, Ammonite and Stillwater.  Also in his top ten are Mank and The Trail of the Chicago 7 both of which could be Telluride players if they're finished.

In his second tier of Best Picture picks are other "Maybes" for Telluride: The French Dispatch, I'm Thinking of Ending Things, The Eyes of Tammy Faye, Annette and On the Rocks.

Magidson's complete rundown of Oscar predictions are linked here.



EMAIL:  mpgort@gmail.com

TWITTER @TheMTFB OR @Gort2 

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