OSCAR #95 POSTMORTEM
When the Oscar's show ended Sunday night I was a bit disappointed in my 18-5 record predicting the Oscar outcome. That's a success rate of 78.3%. Respectable and about what I have averaged over the years since I started doing Oscar picks as a part of the aftermath of covering the Telluride Film Festival. Of the five I missed, the only one that wasn't in last Sunday's post that wasn't a pick or at least a possible spoiler was All Quiet on the Western Front in Production Design. Curtis and Fraser were both listed as "Spoilers" in their acting categories as were BP: Wakanda Forever and The Whale were for Costumes and Makeup/Hair respectively. So I felt a little better.
Then Monday morning I took a peek at Gold Derby's Experts chart and felt a lot better. Turns out that had I been listed among their experts I would have finished second to Perter Travers of ABC TV. Peter went 19-4. Two other experts were at 18-5 like me but Gold Derby has a points system that had me ahead of them substantially. I won't name names but I came out ahead of a lot of the pros and that, I'm a little embarrassed to say, makes me feel pretty, pretty good.
Of course, to bring me back to Earth, I finished 701 out of nearly 10,861 non-professional users...that's in the top 6.5%. My points accumulated: 12,919:
So, all-in-all...not a bad record for me in 2023.
ALSO- turns out I made it onto Awards Daily's Big Bad Prediction Chart after I posted final predictions on Sunday morning. Here's the link to that.
Over the last ten Oscars, here's what the MTFB success rate has been:
2023: 18/23 78.3% (Everything Everywhere All at Once)
2022: 21/23 91.3% (Coda)
2021: 16/23 69.6% (Nomadland)
2020: 19/24 79.2% (Parasite)
2019: 19/24 79.2% (Green Book)
2018: 21/24 87.5% (The Shape of Water)
2017: 15/24 62.5% (Moonlight)
2016: 15/24 62.5% (Spotlight)
2015: 20/24 83.3% (Birdman)
2014: 22/24 91.7% (12 Years a Slave)
That's 186/237 over the decade for a success rate at 78.5%.
Oscar 2023 was a rough year for Telluride films. TFF films earned 17 nominations but only one took home a trophy and that was Sarah Polley for Best Adapted Screenplay for Women Talking. Other places where TFF films had a realistic shot but came up short included Cate Blanchett for Best Actress for TAR, All the Beauty and the Bloodshed in Documentary Feature and Le Pupille in Live Action Short.
The 1 for 17 finish marked the lowest TFF Oscar haul since 2009 when TFF films had 16 nominations spread among seven films and none took home an Oscar. The last time TFF had a one Oscar year was 2001 when No Man's Land won Best Foreign Language Film.
As I have mentioned, you might consider Everything Everywhere All at Once TFF-adjacent due to the fest's feting of Michelle Yeoh as a part of a salute to Sony Pictures Classics 30th Anniversary with a screening of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. I suspect Yeoh's appearance was, in part, to keep her in the limelight during the fall fest season for EEAAO's and her run to the Oscars. I know nothing, but a calculation of that sort makes a good deal of sense.
Also in the "TFF adjacent" category was Documentary Feature winner Navalny which reportedly screened at one pf the parks in Telluride the Wednesday night before the fest opened.
LOOKING FORWARD
As we turn our attention away from Oscar season and back to TFF #50 speculation. We'll be looking for three areas for clues. Way-too-early Oscar predictions and the Cannes lineup and the post Berlin Film Fest's slate of films. Cannes and Telluride average a 6-8 film overlap from year to year. Additionally, early Oscar prognostications can give us insight into what Oscar watchers think will be the most "important" films of the year which usually translates into films that, at least early on, seem like films that many of the major film fests will want to program.
We already know that Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer and Greta Gerwig's Barbie are off the table as they are both announced for a July 21st release. But despite that, there are a bunch of interesting possibilities on the table.
The first too early Oscar forecast I ran across from a major outlet was from The A.V. Club. Among the titles of 23 possible Best Picture nominees were seven films that are on my early TFF #50 watch list:
AND from Yorgos Lanthimos
The Color Purple from Blitz Bazawule
The Holdovers from Alexander Payne
The Killer from David Fincher
Killers of the Flower Moon from Martin Scorsese
Next Goal Wins from Taika Waititi
Poor Things from Yorgos Lanthimos
Meanwhile, for a good listing of potential Cannes selections, take a look at Jordan Ruimy's evolving list at World of Reel which currently includes a number of intriguing possible overlapping films between Cannes and T-ride including from the list above: Flower Moon and Poor Things.
Others that seem at least possible for TFF #50:
May/December-Todd Haynes
Monster -Hirokazu Kore-eda
Priscilla-Sofia Coppola
The Royal Hotel-Kitty Green
And finally from Berlin, Gold Derby compiled as list of 20 films and among those are some titles that are worth noting as possible TFF choices:
She Came to Me-Rebecca Miller
The Survival of Kindness-Rolf de Heer
Ingeborg Bachmann-Journey Into the Desert-Margerethe Von Trotta
Afire-Christian Petzold
EMAIL: mpgort@gmail.com
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