TEN (PLUS) BETS #7
Here's your latest edition of MTFB's Ten Bets for the TFF #49 lineup. There is a good deal of movement after last week's announcement of Galas and Special Presentations from the Toronto International Film Festival. Also making a difference was reporting from Jordan Ruimy/World of Reel and others.
As a recap, here are the Ten Bets and Other Possibilities from last week:
1) Bardo/Inarritu
2) TAR/Fields
3) Bones and All/Guadagnino
4) Armageddon Time/Gray
5) Close/Dhont
6) Aftersun/Wells
7) One Fine Morning/Hansen-Love
8) The Son/Zeller
9) She Said/M. Schrader
10) The Pale Blue Eye/Cooper
Others Possibilities: Master Gardener/P. Schrader, Women Talking/Polley, Broker/Kore-eda, Showing Up/Reichardt, Tori and Lokita/Dardennes, Holy Spider/Abbasi, White Noise/Baumbach, The Forger/Peren,Tuesday/Oniunas-Pusic, The Fire Within/Herzog, The U.S. and the Holocaust/Burns, The Wonder/Lelio, Blonde/Dominik, The Whale/Aronofsky, Dreamin' Wild/Pohlad, March on Rome/Cousins, Living/Hermanus
And here are the new and significantly altered Ten (Plus) Bets:
1) One Fine Morning/Hansen-Love
2) Women Talking/Polley
3) Broker/Kore-eda
4) Holy Spider/Abbasi
5) The Wonder/Lelio
6) Empire of Light/Mendes
7) Good Night Oppy/White
8) Bardo/Inarritu
9) TAR/Fields
10) Bones and All/Guadagnino
11) Armageddon Time/Gray
12) The Pale Blue Eye/Cooper
13) A Compassionate Spy/James
14) Close/Dhont
15) Aftersun/Wells
Others Possibilities: Master Gardener/P. Schrader, Showing Up/Reichardt, Tori and Lokita/Dardennes, The Forger/Peren,Tuesday/Oniunas-Pusic, The Fire Within/Herzog, The U.S. and the Holocaust/Burns, Blonde/Dominik, Dreamin' Wild/Pohlad, March on Rome/Cousins, Argentina 1985/Mitre
The biggest blows to last week's Ten Bets came with the likelihood that She Said will World Premiere at the New York Film Festival and that The Son will will World Premiere at Toronto.
We expect TIFF to announce its Midnight Madness program tomorrow which will probably not have any effect regarding what we can deduce about TFF #49.
NO GDT AT TFF
Admittedly I've thought all summer that the chances pf Guillermo Del Toro's Pinocchio [laying TFF #49 were slim but that chances seem to have been laid to rest. Jordan Ruimy at World of reel reports that the film will not be finished until sometime in October at the earliest.
NO WHITE NOISE EITHER
The New York Film Festival announced on Tuesday that Noah Baumbach's White Noise will open their fest on Sept. 30th and NYFF has labeled the film a North American premiere. Assuming that characterization is accurate and Telluride maintains its unspoken policy of features being a first time North American screening, that means White Noise is off the speculation list for TFF #49.
I had been hearing some buzz that this could be true but the scheduling of White Noise as the opener for Venice kept me thinking that there was a great chance that the film would play in Italy and then slide across the Atlantic to land in the San Juans. Looks like that's not happening.
BUT PROBABLY A PALE BLUE EYE
I've had Scott Cooper's The Pale Blue Eye on the TFF #49 watch list for a long time and now there's scuttlebutt that the Christian Bale led film, is in fact, likely screening for the first time in Telluride. World of Reel's Jordan Ruimy snuck the increased chance that this will be true into a post called "What's Left-Part Deux".
This is what Ruimy writes:
"I’m getting more Telluride intel, this one concerning Scott Cooper’s “Pale Blue Eye” which will be having its world premiere over there."
Here's the IMDb description of the film:
"At West Point Academy in 1830, the calm of an October evening is shattered by the discovery of a young cadet's body swinging from a rope just off the parade grounds. An apparent suicide is not unheard of in a harsh regimen like West Point's, but the next morning, an even greater horror comes to light. Someone has stolen into the room where the body lay and removed the heart."
The film "Follows a veteran detective who investigates the murders, helped by a detail-oriented young cadet who will later become a world famous author, Edgar Allan Poe."
Previous Cooper collaborator Christian Bale (Hostiles, Out of the Furnace) as the detective and Henry Melling (The Ballad of Buster Scruggs) as Poe join to tell this tale.
For me, it's a "most anticipated". Feeling really good that it's a TFF #49 selection.
COULD LIVING PLAY TELLURIDE?
Living starring Bill Nighy made a splash at Sundance earlier this year with a number of mentions of Nighy as a possible Oscar contender for Best Actor. Clayton Davis at Variety currently has Nighy at the #3 spot for a nomination.
The case against a Telluride play is, of course, the Sundance premiere back in January. Also, Venice head Alberto Barbera is on record saying that there will less of an overlap between his fest and Telluride and Living IS a Venice selection. But...
The case for a TFF #49 play includes the fact that it is under the wing of Sony Pictures Classics (a very tight Telluride connection). It's inclusion in the Venice out-of-competition lineup, despite having already bowed at Sundance-very unusual for Venice to schedule a non-World Premiere.
And, of late, Telluride has scheduled a couple of Sundance films that were tied to tributes. In 2016 T-ride invited Manchester-by-the-Sea, a film distributed by Amazon/Roadside Attractions -decent Telluride presence for each- and featured Casey Affleck as a tribute recipient. In 2018 TFF did the same with Adam Driver featuring both Marriage Story (from Netflix-a very good T-ride relationship) and The Report(from Amazon), which had premiered at Sundance.
So, could Bill Nighy be up for a Tribute and a screening of Living? Nighy also has a film called A Beautiful Game from Netflix that has yet to be screened anywhere and is listed by IMDb as having been in post-production since January.
So it's not outside the realm of possibility.
TEASER FOR ARGENTINA, 1985
Argentina 1985 is a Venice Golden Lion competition choice and seems like a sleeper for a spot at Telluride. That it was partially produced by Amazon Studios suggests the possibility that it could make the lineup when it is unveiled on Sept. 1st.
IMDb's description intrigues:
"A team of lawyers take on the heads of Argentina's bloody military dictatorship during the 1980s in a battle against odds and a race against time."
The first teaser for the film was released last week and here it is via YouTube:
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Empire of Light is playing at Toronto.
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