Telluride and Oscar Part Three: Best Actress / A Date for A Hidden Life / Bacurau Is Acquired

Happy Independence Day everyone...


TELLURIDE AND OSCAR PART THREE: BEST ACTRESS

Best Actress Oscar winner Emma Stone (La La Land TFF #43)

Picking up where I left off Tuesday, I'm continuing an eight part series of articles tracing the connection between films that have played Telluride's Film Fest and the eight "major" Oscar categories.

Tuesday I looked at T-ride and the Best Director nominees from the past 14 years.  Today it's Best Actress.  Here are the actresses that played films at TFF since 2005 who were Oscar nominated as leading actresses.  Additionally, if that actress won it is indicated with ***.


2005: Reese Witherspoon/Walk the Line***
2006: Kate Winslet/Little Children, Penelope Cruz/Volver
2007: Ellen Page/Juno, Laura Linney/The Savages
2008: No nominees
2009: Carey Mulligan/An Education, Helen Mirren/The Last Station
2010: Natalie Portman/Black Swan***
2011: Glenn Close/Albert Nobbs
2012: Emanuelle Riva/Amour
2013: Sandra Bullock/Gravity
2014: Marion Cotillard/Two Days One Night, Reese Witherspoon/Wild
2015: Brie Larson/Room***, Charlotte Rampling/45 Years, Cate Blanchett/Carol
2016: Emma Stone/La La Land***
2017: Sally Hawkins/The Shape of Water, Saoirse Ronan/Lady Bird
2018: Olivia Colman/The Favourite***, Melissa McCarthy/Can You Ever Forgive Me?, Yalitza Aparicio/Roma


Notes: For Best Actress 22 nominations over these 14 years (to the best of my ability, I believe Jane Alexander was the first Best Actress nominee from a TFF film.  That came in 1983 for Testament).  Over the 14 years, five women of Telluride have won the trophy.

It does feel like the festival has gained some traction as a Best Actress launchpad over the last five fests (2014-18) with half the nominees and three of the five wins coming during that span.

2015 and 2018 were the strongest Best Actress years with three nominees coming from TFF films in both of those years.

Next Tuesday: time to look at Best Actor.


A DATE FOR A HIDDEN LIFE

Although I have continued to soft pedal its chances to play at Telluride, a recently announced released date for Terrence Malick's A Hidden Life continues to make it a possibility.

Multiple sources including Deadline and World of Reel reported last weekend that the Malick film will be released in the U.S. on Dec. 13th.  smack in the middle of awards season.  That's consistent with what had been reported earlier that Fox Searchlight would be proceeding with a strong awards push for the film.

The Dec. 13th date would allow Malick to play Telluride, Toronto, New York, London and/or AFI.  It's Cannes premiere means that no Venice play is in its future.

A Hidden Life tells the true story of an Austrian conscientious objector during WWII.



BACURAU IS ACQUIRED

Specialty distributor Kino Lorber added Cannes award winner Bacurau from Brazilian film makers Kleber Mendonca Filho and Juliano Dornelles to their stable of films.

I took a brief look at Kino Lorber's Telluride chances in my post on June 28th and concluded that, at that time, KL had another Cannes film, Synonyms, that had a 50/50 chance of making the TFF #45 lineup.

Bacurau's acquisition by Kino Lorber definitely raises its profile for Telluride with the asterisk that Variety reports that the film is currently set for 2020...which isn't a complete disqualifier.

Give Bacurau a 30% chance of making this year's program.

Here's the story from Variety



That's all for this 4th of July.  More on Friday including a new Ten Bets!

EMAIL:  mpgort@gmail.com OR michael_speech@hotmail.com

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Cannes’ Award Winners and Telluride 2019 / The Critical Final from Cannes

Welcome to today’s post Cannes MTFB...


CANNES AWARD WINNERS AND TELLURIDE 2019

The 72nd iteration of the Cannes Film Festival is in the books with the announcement of award winners Saturday night.  Taking the 2019 Palme d’Or was Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite.  The film was critically heralded and was considered among the favorites to win the top prize as the festival moved along.

Other Cannes awards presented by the competition jury led by this year’s president- Alejandro Inarritu- included:

Grand Prix: Atlantics
Jury Prize (tie): Les Miserables and Bacurau
Best Actress: Emily Beecham/Little Joe
Best Actor: Antonio Banderas/Pain and Glory
Best Director: Jean Pierre Dardennes and Luc Dardennes/Young Ahmed
Best Screenplay: Portrait of a Lady on Fire
Special Mention: It Must Be Heaven
Camera d’Or: Our Mothers

Honestly, my guess had been that Pedro Almodovar’s Pain and Glory would win the Palme.  Also, no glory for Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in...Hollywood which was a bit surprising given that it was probably the "biggest" film in the competition and also it was also the 25th anniversary of Pulp Fiction winning the Palme.

Also, a shutout for Terrence Malick’s generally well-received A Hidden Life was a bit of a surprise.
So, what are the TFF #46 chances for some of the winners?

First a reminder that winning the Palme itself is no guarantee that a film lands at Telluride.  Another reminder is that Cannes and T-ride share, on average, 7-8 titles each year but those titles can and do come from across all of the different sections of the Cannes fest.

Last year’s Palme winner, Shoplifters did play TFF but before that you have to go back to 2013’s Blue Is the Warmest Colour.

Other recent Palme winners that have played Telluride include:

Amour in 2012
The White Ribbon in 2009
4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days in 2007
The Child in 2005
That's six Palme winners in the last 14 years...

So, history suggests that Parasite’s Palme win doesn’t mean a TFF berth and seems to imply it may be less likely to be programmed.  Additionally, as Bong hasn’t been a presence at T-ride before, that also diminished its chances.

Boosting its TFF profile, however, is its very positive critical reception (see below) and its U.S. distributor: Neon which has been a recent presence at TFF with Border and The Biggest Little Farm screening last year.

I also feel like the directing win for the Dardennes (and their past with T-ride) probably boosted the chances for Young Ahmed.  I suspect Portrait of a Lady on Fire and Les Miserables might have a Telluride future as a result of the attention they received in France.

From other sections perhaps The Lighthouse and The Climb will make the Telluride program.

Here are some links to coverage of this year’s Cannes winners:

Variety

The Hollywood Reporter

Indiewire

The Playlist



THE CRITICAL FINAL FROM CANNES

As I have done for many years now, I've been tracking the critical consensus for films screening as a part of the 72nd Cannes Film Fest through the work of Reini Urban who compiles an incredibly exhaustive list of the critics' takes on films that play throughout every part of the of the French fest.

Now that Cannes #72 is in the rear view mirror here is some of what his work reveals...

First that the top critics' choice won the top prize (and I don't recall that happening before).  Bong Joon-ho's Parasite won the Palme this past weekend and lead all films in all sections in the combined critical summation with an 8.77 rating on a scale of 10 (with over 400 reviews counted).  That's mind blowing.

The runner-up?  Robert Eggers' The Lighthouse which won the FIPRESCI critics' award.  It had an 8.63 combined raring.  Third was Pedro Almodovar's Pain and Glory.

The complete listing of Urban's critical compilation is linked here.



I'll have more on Thursday.

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