Good Saturday to All!
VENETIAN NEWS
Venice Film Festival stories have burst onto the web the last 24 hours and they may tell us some things about our appointment with film in Telluride in 7 weeks.
First...the jury. Venice's jury was announced yesterday and you can get the entire scope here from The Hollywood Reporter:
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/venice-film-festival-jury-matteo-garrone-349032
The Telluride-centirc news here is that Matteo Garrone and Pablo Trapero are both jurors and I'm concluding that that means that their films are very likely off the table for Telluride. For Garrone and his Cannes prize winning "Reality" that's a fairly big conclusion. "Reality's" Telluride profile was substantial: Cannes, past T-ride connection ("Gomorrah"). I had also had Trapero's "Elefante Blanco" (White Elephant) as a T-ride possible...but both films now go off of consideration.
Second, The Playlist reports this morning that Italian newspaper La Republica is saying they have the lowdown on the Venice lineup...which, if true, might narrow the Telluride field somewhat. Regular readers of this space know that there is usually a 2-4 film overlap between Venice and T-ride so an actual list of what's playing in Italy would give us some clues about what could be in and what could be out.
The Playlist report says that high profile pics "The Master", "To the Wonder", "The Place Beyond the Pines" and "All You Need is Love" are all going to be at Venice. Also mentioned "Anna Karenina", "Something in the Air" and "The Company you Keep".
Check the entire story here:
http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/italian-press-report-malicks-to-the-wonder-pta-s-the-master-anna-karenina-more-in-venice-line-up-20120714
I might point out that The Playlist does admit some skepticism...and with good reason and flat out says that "The Master" may forgo festivals altogether.
Meanwhile, third, Jeff Wells at Hollywood Elsewhere posted his musings about Telluride, Venice, Toronto and New York. Most electrifying in that post was this:
"I don't think anyone on my level is going to have anything figured out until early August, but let's do some guessing. Not about Toronto, which is Walmart, but Telluride and New York. I can never figure out Venice.
Argo, The Master, To The Wonder, No, Cloud Atlas, On The Road, The Silver Linings Playbook, Amour, Killing Them Softly, The Place Beyond The Pines, Only God Forgives, All You Need Is Love...probably all of these. 12 in all. Venice, NY, Telluride...all over."
Look at that list and begin to salivate my friends. I hope he's somewhere close to correct AND that Telluride lands a majority of these.
Here's the full post from Wells:
If you read the comments, you'll see "Gort2" included there as well as good back and forth about whether "To the Wonder" will or won't be in Venice.
BEST OF THE WEEK
Here's a collection of some of the best parts of my posts from this week...
THIS WEEK'S TEN BETS:
1) Amour
2) Rust and Bone
3) Beyond the Hills
4) Hyde Park on Hudson
5) Something in the Air
6) No
7) Song for Marion
8) On the Road
9) The Central Park Five
10) Serge Bromberg's Charlie Chaplin Project
DAVE EGGERS IS YOUR POSTER ARTIST
Per this release from the Telluride Film Festival Press Office:
TELLURIDE FILM FESTIVAL SELECTS DAVE EGGERS
AS ITS 2012 FESTIVAL POSTER ARTIST
July 9, 2012
BERKELEY, CA – Telluride Film Festival (August 31 – September 3, 2012), presented by National Film Preserve LTD., proudly announces it has selected American writer, editor, publisher and philanthropist Dave Eggers as its 39th Telluride Film Festival poster artist.
Eggers will attend the 39th Telluride Film Festival over Labor Day weekend to present his poster design to the public and hold a poster signing for festival guests. A special reception will also be held to honor Eggers, sponsored by the UCLA School of Theatre, Film and Television.
Dave Eggers began working as a freelance graphic designer out of college and then moved in to writing and editing at Salon.com. He founded Mightmagazine while also writing a comic strip for SF Weekly. He is the best-selling author of numerous books including his first work, a lightly fictionalized memoir, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (2000), a national bestseller and finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction. You Shall Know Our Velocity (2002) was Eggers’ first published novel; an expanded and revised version was released as Sacrament in 2003. What is the What was a finalist for the 2006 National Book Critics Circle Award and won France’s Prix Medici. In 2009, the Council on American-Islamic Relations presented Eggers with the “Courage In Media” Award for his book Zeitoun. Film director Jonathan Demme has optioned the book, which has also won the American Book Award and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. Eggers co-wrote two screenplays in 2009: Away We Go and Where The Wild Things Are. His latest novel, A Hologram for the King, was released in 2012 to critical acclaim.
Eggers is the founder and editor of McSweeney’s, an independent publishing house based in San Francisco built to help emerging and underappreciated writers find their voice. The publishing house produces a daily humor website and publishes Timothy McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, the Believer, Lucky Peach, Wholphin, Grantland Quarterly, and a growing selection of books under various imprints.
In 2002 Eggers co-founded 826 Valencia, a nonprofit writing and tutoring center for youth in the Mission District of San Francisco. The program offers free tutoring, English as a Second Language classes, writing workshops, summer camps, publications projects and other services to kids ages six to 18. Local communities have since opened sister 826 centers in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Ann Arbor, Seattle, Boston and Washington, DC.
A native of Chicago, Eggers now lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife and two children.
"Dave is well-known for his terrific literary works, but most people don’t know he was trained as a painter, and when he was starting out as a writer, he worked as an illustrator and graphic designer. The fact that he is a gifted visual artist is a bit of a secret we want to share with the world,” comments Julie Huntsinger, Telluride Film Festival co-director. “Dave is talented, big-hearted, smart and remarkably well-rounded. We’re overjoyed to have him join the Telluride Film Festival community as our poster artist this year. Our audiences will be delighted with the fresh take he has created for the artwork of TFF 39.
“I was thrilled to be asked to do the poster for this year’s Telluride Film Festival,” said Dave Eggers. “I decided to make the poster look a bit like the national parks posters from back in the day, and to go with a light, almost washed-out palette. That’s how I think of Colorado in the summer: sun-drenched and with incredible color combinations. From there, it just seemed appropriate to have a bear filming an elk.”
Dave Eggers joins a prestigious list of artists who have shared their talents with the Telluride Film Festival. Past poster artists include Ed Ruscha, John Mansfield, Julian Schnabel, Dottie Attie, Doug and Mike Starn, David Lance Goines, Chuck Jones, David Salle, Alexis Smith, Jim Dine, Seymour Chwast, Frederic Amat, Francesco Clemente, Dave McKean, Gary Larson, Chip Kidd, John Canemaker, Mark Stock, Laurie Anderson, William Wegman, Ralph Eggleston and Maira Kalman.
For more information and a complete list of Eggers work and accomplishments, visit: www.mcsweeneys.net
39th Telluride Film Festival posters will be available for purchase throughout the four-day Festival or by visiting the TFF website atwww.telluridefilmfestival.org.
40th Anniversary of the Telluride Film Festival
Next year Telluride Film Festival will be celebrating its 40th Anniversary, scheduled for August 29 – September 2, 2013. To commemorate this special occasion an additional day has been added to the usual four-day Festival, making room for a five-day bounty of special programming and festivities. Passes will be available for purchase beginning in March 2013.
EGGERS AND TELLURIDE
The news release hit my email yesterday at 11:44 AM CDT. I had a post up at 12:02 PM CDT. The news from the Telluride Film Festival Press Office was that author Dave Eggers had been selected as the poster artist for TFF#39...and the poster was up and running...
I think I had the story up first anywhere on the web...by a ways...
The frustration, such as it was, when it came to re-tweeting/re-posting...nada...zip...zilch. As the story rolled through the afternoon all of the movie blog type outlets you'd expect got it posted and it looks like Anne Thompson's "Thompson on Hollywood" got the majority of re-production. Good for her.
I had hoped that the rapidity of getting their first would have reaped some more online love...not so much.
Nevertheless, there's an interesting side note to the Dave Eggers selection. Eggers will obviously be in Telluride to schmooze and sign the poster and the press release says he will be honored by the UCLA film school in the course of the weekend's activities...but here's the intriguing thing...Dave Eggers also has film bona fides. He was the screenwriter for 2009's "Where the Wild Things Are" and "Away We Go" (starring Jon Krasinski and Maya Rudolph. His novel "Zeithoun" has reportedly been optioned by director Jonathan Demme and if you check his IMDb page you'll find that he has provided the "story" for "Promised Land".
"Promised Land"??? Wait. Isn't that the Gus Van Sant directed (TFF in 1995-"Elephant" and 2003-"To Die For"), Matt Damon and Jon Krasinski co-written and co-starring film being distributed by frequent Telluride participant Focus Features that The Playlist has reported could well be ready for a fall film fest debut? Here's The Playlist post:
Yes to all...
So does that mean "Promised Land" is suddenly a lock for TFF #39? No...but it does make me suspect it has a much better shot at being there than it seemed to have yesterday.
AND...maybe there is a continuing connection with/to Maya Rudolph who shares three children with Paul Thomas Anderson who also happens to be directing a film with some buzz about it. You know..."The Master".
Last year my grand conspiracy theory was that George Clooney, Brad Pitt and Matt Damon might all three show up in Telluride and have an "Oceans" movie reunion while their respective films ("Descendants", "Ides of March, "Moneyball", and "We Bought a Zoo") all played...
O'TOOLE BIDS FAREWELL
News yesterday via an announcement that I believe originally appeared at Playbill.com that legendary actor Peter O'Toole has chosen to retire from the profession. O'Toole was a 2002 Tributee at Telluride and the last of his 8 Oscar nominations was for "Venus" which appeared in 2006 at TFF #33. O'Toole's 8 nominations without a win is reportedly the longest streak of acting noms without a win in the history f the Academy.
O'Toole was also nominated for:
1983: My Favorite Year
1981: The Stunt Man
1973: The Ruling Class
1970: Goodbye Mr. Chips
1969: The Lion in Winter
1965: Becket
1963: Lawrence of Arabia
O'Toole was interviewed by Roger Ebert in Telluride in 2002 as a part of the Tribute ceremony and Ebert tweeted the link to that story yesterday. Here it is:
O'Toole's IMDb page is here:
Personally, I am partial to his performances in "My Favorite Year" and "The Lion in Winter".
I'M BACK
Confirmation came yesterday afternoon that I/The Blog have been accredited as an honest to God "journalist" for the 39th Telluride Film Festival. This is my second year to get the yellow lanyard that comes with accreditation.
This year I was able to get confirmation a full month earlier than last year. It will be interesting to see if that makes some difference. I felt like last year that I might have missed out on some material from the fest and from distributors because of the late accreditation.
Also,last year, there were no party invites...so maybe that changes this year. Fingers crossed!
Have a good weekend, Everyone!
More later...
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