Welcome back from the weekend. It's Monday, August 28, 2017. The 44th Telluride Film Festival begins in four days.
DEAR GUILLERMO...
This section of MTFB is going to be a little different than what you readers commonly see here but...
First, most everyone reading here knows that I have been very sure these past few weeks that Guillermo Del Toro's The Shape of Water will be announced on Thursday as a part of the TFF #44 lineup. I am very excited about the film but you know who's insane about it?
My wife.
Let me tell you why because it goes beyond the excitement about seeing GDT's new film in the incredible setting that is Telluride.
Some of you know that both my wife and I teach high school in a rural town (pop. 12,500) in the Oklahoma Panhandle. She's the art teacher here and damned good at what she does. Especially in light of our current student body.
Please understand, that's not a slam about our kids but our situation is really unique.
In 1992 a massive pork processing facility opened in our community and to fill their workforce they have scoured the planet to find workers willing to re-locate. That has meant a reliance on immigrants, refugees and others.
In the last 20 or so years our demographics have shifted from a majority Anglo population to one in which minority students are the majority. Mostly kids from about every country south of the southern border of the U.S. but we're not exclusively Latin. We have have significant student populations from Burma, S. Korea, Thailand, Eritrea, Sudan, Somalia and more.
Our school administration tells us we have somewhere between 25-30 languages spoken in our high school (enrollment is a shade under 900 kids grades 9-12). Imagine that in a Podunk Oklahoma town.
Many of you also know that Del Toro had a harrowing childhood and turned to art as a kid to deal with that. My wife sure does. Del Toro's story and artwork have become an integral part of the curriculum in her classwork because...you know..it resonates with these kids...immigrant kids. They can relate to Del Toro's story because, for many of them, it's a lot like their stories. Del Toro's body of film work plays a part too. All these kids know Hellboy.
And, of course, because it's art, the language barrier is a much smaller problem in my wife's classroom than about anywhere else in the building. For some of her students, it's the safest and most comfortable place they find themselves every day and that's not an exaggeration. Some of her refugee kids spell out the terrors that they have lived through from refugee camps to predatory traffickers to hiding from death squads and civil war.
Needless to say, Guillermo has a more than special place in her heart.
So...I've never done this before in the nine years I've been writing this thing...but
If anyone knows anyone in the Del Toro camp (and I'm assuming here that he will make the trip with the film from Venice to Telluride), I'm asking for a favor. You know what I'm going to say here...
A meeting between Kris and Guillermo would be...um...nice. Well, she'd likely lose her mind at least a little bit. She's already got a big honking copy of Guillermo's Cabinet of Curiosities and will be hauling it this weekend on the off chance that she might be able to get an autograph. I'd like to make it a little less "chancy".
If anyone has some insight about making this happen, please contact me using any of the methods listed at the bottom of this post.
And Senor Del Toro, if YOU are reading this, hear my plea and reach out to me.
Now, back to your regularly scheduled blog post.
TRIBUTES CLUES
Many of you know that in the days before the beginning of the festival that, usually a couple of films are screened in Elks Park and that they almost always hint at who the tribute recipients will be.
A Telluride local and friend of the blog, who I am keeping anonymous, emailed me the an ad that has run locally in T-ride for the films that have been scheduled:
The choice of these two films seems to confirm earlier speculation that tributes are set for Christian Bale and cinematographer Ed Lachman. As to the third tribute, I think I have that nailed down as well but am going to keep that under wraps for the time being.
WEIWEI INTERVIEW
Artist, dissident and film maker Ai Weiwei is certainly set for screening his documentary Human Flow at Venice this week and then is very likely to bring it Telluride this weekend. He was the subject of a substantial interview with Variety this past week in which he speaks about the film.
SCREEN TALK TALKS FALL FESTS
This week's podcast of Screen Talk with Indiewire's Anne Thompson and Eric Kohn spends a good deal of time focused on some of the upcoming launch of the fall film fests and Oscar season. Although neither of them can name films that will be at Telluride, they do make mention of the fest and make no bones about Downsizing being there. Among other films that they mention that I'm feeling will lay are: Lady Bird, Darkest Hour and The Shape of Water.
The Screen Talk podcast is here.
REMINDER TO RATE YOUR FILMS THIS WEEK
Don't forget, my friends, I want your ratings of the films you see next weekend. Use a 0-5 scale with 0 being "putrid" and 5 being "best film since..."
I will publish The People's Telluride film ratings a week to ten days after the festival concludes. Join in!
That's all for now. More tomorrow and on Wednesday I'll post a special edition of MTFB with the final "Bets" for TFF #44.
EMAIL: mpgort@gmail.com OR michael_speech@hotmail.com
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