Ten Bets #5 for TFF #51 / Conclave Reportedly to TFF and First Looks / Anora Has A Trailer / Almodovar's The Room Next Door Set for Venice

TEN BETS #5 FOR TFF #51

Some movement this week primarily around the news about Edward Berger's Conclave (see below).  Here's this week's updated Ten bets for TFF.  Next week we should know more with added information from Toronto and Venice.

1) Anora/Baker

2) Conclave/Berger

3) Emilia Perez/Jacques Audiard

4) The Room Next Door/Pedro Almodovar

5) The Seed of the Scared Fig/Mohammad Rasoulof

6) A Sudden Glimpse to Deeper Things/Cousins

7) Nickel Boys/Ross

8) Maria/Pablo Larrain

9) Queer/Luca Guadagnino

10) Bird/Arnold

Other possibilities:

The End/Oppenheimer

I'm Still Here/Salles

Parthenope/Sorrentino

In the Hand of Dante/Schnabel

Hard Truths/Leigh

The Piano Lesson/Washington

Untitled Noah Baumbach

Megalopolis/Coppola

Napoleon (new restoration)/Gance

Leonardo DaVinci/Burns

Oh, Canada/Schrader

The Actor/Johnson

SNL 1975

All We Imagine as Light

Memoir of a Snail

CONCLAVE REPORTEDLY TO TFF AND FIRST LOOKS

Jordan Ruimy writing at World of Reel reported Monday that Edward Berger's Conclave will screen at Telluride.

Here's the key line from that WOR item:

"Now, I’m hearing that “Conclave” is going to premiere at the Telluride Film Festival during the first week of September. No word yet on whether it’s a world premiere given that Venice could still be an option."

MTFB has had Conclave on each of the weekly Ten Bets lists from the initial list.

With Ruimy's reporting and Indiewire's Anne Thompson reporting that Sean Baker's Anora will also play Telluride (reported here last week).

Meanwhile, Vanity Fair has released the first images of  Conclave.  Here's a couple of those:

ANORA HAS A TRAILER

Speaking of Anora, NEON dropped a first trailer this week for the Palme d'Or winning film.  Here that is from YouTube.  Fair warning, it's billed as a "Red Band" trailer.

ALMODOVAR'S THE ROOM NEXT DOOR SET FOR VENICE

Variety reported on Tuesday that Pedro Almodovar's The Room Next Door will screen at the Venice Film Fest.  Of course that doesn't preclude a TFF North American Premiere.  We'll see where it gets scheduled for Venice when they announce that.  If it's set to screen the first couple of days there, that would be an indicator that it could head to Telluride.

The Variety story has tells us that Mike Leigh's Hard truths is not screening at Venice.  That the film wasn't selected for either Cannes or Venice is a little concerning.

EMAIL:  mpgort@gmail.com

X (TWITTER): @TheMTFB OR @Gort2 

BLUE SKY: https://bsky.app/profile/gort2.bsky.social

MTFB's Facebook Page

MTFB is published on Mondays and Thursdays

Ten Bets #4 for TFF #51 / Bits and Pieces / Another One Bites the Dust

TEN BETS #4 FOR TFF #51

There is a bit of movement in the Ten Bets this week.  One move is the result of Mark Cousin's winning the Crystal Globe, the top prize at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, last week.  Relatedly, I re-read the Indiewire article about that and discovered this line from its author, Anne Thompson:

"Word is, Sean Baker’s Palme d’Or winner “Anora” (Neon) may play exclusively at Telluride, which does not announce its slate in advance..."

 

Anne Thompson is an impeccable source so that tidbit is enough for me to move Anora up even more on the Ten Bets list.

Here's this week's Ten Bets for TFF #51:

1) Anora/Baker

2) Emilia Perez/Jacques Audiard

3) The Room Next Door/Pedro Almodovar

4) The Seed of the Scared Fig/Mohammad Rasoulof

5) Nickel Boys/Ross

6) A Sudden Glimpse to Deeper Things/Cousins

7) Maria/Pablo Larrain

8) Conclave/Berger

9) Queer/Luca Guadagnino

10) Bird/Arnold

Other possibilities:

The End/Oppenheimer

I'm Still Here/Salles

Parthenope/Sorrentino

In the Hand of Dante/Schnabel

Hard Truths/Leigh

The Piano Lesson/Washington

Untitled Noah Baumbach

Megalopolis/Coppola

Napoleon (new restoration)/Gance

Leonardo DaVinci/Burns

Oh, Canada/Schrader

The Actor/Johnson

SNL 1975

All We Imagine as Light

Memoir of a Snail

ODDS AND ENDS

I've spent some time looking at the most common distributors who screen films at TFF.  To date that has included these distribs and their most likely films to be possible for Telluride:

A24: Parthenope, Babygirl, On Becoming a Guinea Fowl

NEON: Anora, The Seed of the Sacred Fig, The End, The Actor

Searchlight: Solitary

Sony Pictures Classics: The Room Next Door, I'm Still Here, Marcel Pagnol

Focus Features: Conclave, Piece by Piece, Nosferatu

Netflix: Emilia Perez, The Piano Lesson, Untitled Noah Baumbach

Amazon/MGM: Nickel Boys, Hedda, Long Days' Journey Into Night, Unstoppable

Over the last five fests these seven distributors have been behind a number of films that have played each year.  Here's the total number of films from all seven combined from those years (leaving out the incomplete list from the Covid canceled 2020 fest):

2023: 19

2022: 17

2021: 16

2019: 16

2018: 15

So, you can see that if recent history is a guide, anywhere between 15-20 TFF #51 titles are from these peeps.

BUT...there are also distributors that are hit and miss with Telluride but with enough history to at least take a quick glance at what they might bring to The SHOW.  That group includes:

Cohen Media Group, Janus Films, Mubi, Apple, IFC Films, Magnolia, Kino Lorber and Bleecker Street.  Among those outfits, here's what I think might have a shot to be a TFF #51 selection:

Cohen Media Group: Black Tea

Janus Films: All We Imagine as Light, Caught by the Tides

Mubi: Bird, Grand Tour, Dahomey, The Substance, The Girl with the Needle

IFC Films: Memoir of a Snail

Magnolia: Ernest Cole: Lost and Found

Bleecker Street: Hard Truths, Rumours, The Return, The Wedding Banquet

I don't think we're likely to see anything from Apple (since Blitz is World Premiering in London) or Kino Lorber this year.

ANOTHER ONE BITES THE DUST

On Tuesday the Toronto International Film Festival announced five more films that will World Premiere there.  Among them was John Crowley's We Live in Time which I had been listing as a TFF #51 possibility for some time.  The WP designation means that the film will not be making a stop in southwest Colorado over Labor Day weekend.

Other films announced by TIFF on Tuesday were Eden, Superboys of Malegaon, K-Pops and Shepherds.

EMAIL:  mpgort@gmail.com

X (TWITTER): @TheMTFB OR @Gort2 

BLUE SKY: https://bsky.app/profile/gort2.bsky.social

MTFB's Facebook Page

MTFB is published on Mondays and Thursdays

Checking the Distributors: Amazon & MGM / A Sudden Glimpse / Metacritic's Ranking of Best Picture Winners

 CHECKING THE DISTRIBUTORS: AMAZON AND MGM

We're close to winding up our look at film distribution outfits.  Today's look is at the amalgam that is Amazon Studios, Amazon-MGM and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer as those are all under the same umbrella now.  Thursday we'll do a grab bag of smaller companies some years get to TFF.

Here's what has been at Telluride from Amazon and the rest since 2016:

2023: Cassandro, Saltburn

2022: Wildcat, Good Night Oppy

2021: Encounter, A Hero

2020: All In: The Fight for Democracy

2019: The Aeronauts, The Report

2018: Peterloo, Cold War

2017: Wonderstruck

2016: Manchester by the Sea

This year the conglomerate of companies has these films in play:

Nickel Boys/Ross

Hedda/DaCosta

Long Days Journey Into Night/Kent

Unstoppable/Goldenberg (added to this list on 7/10 after a comment from a reader)

Then there's the film that you'd think was a T-ride possible but looks like it's not .  I'm talking about Rachel Morrison's The Fire Inside (Flint Strong).  Even with a pedigree that includes Barry Jenkins writing and producing, it appears it's not going to make it to the San Juans.  Jordan Ruimy writing at World of Reel on Tuesday said that the film has had a troubled production history.

So,  here are the chances for these films to make the TFF #51 lineup:

Nickel Boys 40%

Long Days Journey Into Night 25%

Unstoppable 25%

Hedda 10%

The Fire Inside 2%

A SUDDEN GLIMPSE

I had already placed Mark Cousins documentary A Sudden Glimpse to Deeper Things on the "possibles" list for Telluride and likely I'll bump it up into the 4th Ten Bets on Thursday in the wake of the film winning the Crystal Globe.  That's the top prize from the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival just completed on Saturday.

Cousins who is a TFF "regular" and a member of the fest's "Esteemed Council of Advisors" has had a number of films over the years appear as a part of TFF lineups including: The Story of Film, The March on Rome, My Name is Alfred Hitchcock and and The Eyes of Orson Welles among others.

Here's the IMDb description of the film:

"Exploring the pivotal 1949 experience atop Switzerland's Grindelwald glacier that reshaped British modernist painter Wilhelmina Barns-Graham's artistic perspective for decades to come."

You can find a complete rundown of all the award winners for KVIFF here from Indiewire.

METACRITIC'S RANKING OF BEST PICTURE WINNERS 

I ran across this list from Metacritic a couple of days ago and was curious as to where TFF films that had Best Picture ranked.  The list's oldest film is The Last Emperor from 1987.  It includes 37 films with 1988's Rain Man the lowest ranked film.  Last year's BP winner, Oppenheimer is at #9.

Here's where the 11 films that have screened at TFF and then won the Best Picture Oscar rank with their Metacritic compiled rating:

22) Slumdog Millionaire (84)

18) Argo (86)

15) The Shape of Water (87)

13) Nomadland (87)

12) Birdman (87)

11) The King's Speech (88)

10) The Artist (89)

7) Spotlight (93)

3) 12 Years a Slave (96)

2) Parasite (97)

1) Moonlight (98)

You can find the entire list here.

EMAIL:  mpgort@gmail.com

X (TWITTER): @TheMTFB OR @Gort2 

BLUE SKY: https://bsky.app/profile/gort2.bsky.social

MTFB's Facebook Page

MTFB is published on Mondays and Thursdays