Kino Lorber Acquisition Could Be a TFF Player / Cannes Has a New Palme / Initial Views of Holy Spider

KINO LORBER ACQUISITION COULD BE A TFF PLAYER

The Hollywood Reporter let us know on Friday that Kino Lorber had acquired the North American rights to Maggie Peren's The Forger.  The film was selection of the Berlin International Film Festival.  According to IDMb The Forger is:

"The true story of Cioma Schönhaus, a Jewish man who, during the Second World War, repeatedly escaped the Gestapo thanks to his ability to forge passports. But his other talent was perhaps even rarer: the gift for happiness."

The Kino Lorber buy and the film's Berlin lineage suggests at least some possibility that it could play at Telluride this Labor Day.

Kino Lorber has frequently landed films in the TFF lineup.  Some examples:

2020: (announced) Never Gonna Snow Again, There Is No Evil and Truman & Tennessee

2019: Beanpole

2017: Filmworker

2016: Fire at Sea

2015: Ixcanul, Sembene!, Taxi

The trailer for the film is linked here from YouTube:

THR says the film will be released later in 2022.

The complete THR story is linked here.

CANNES HAS A NEW PALME

I mean it literally.  The Cannes Fest has a new design for the physical award that will be handed out at the end of the month.  Awards Watch's Erik Anderson was who first drew my attention to that news with a Tweet this past Saturday.

Here's the new look Palme d'Or:

The Hollywood Reporter's Chris Gardner provided the details with this story that was posted Friday.

INITIAL VIEWS OF HOLY SPIDER

The Playlist provided some early stills from Ali Abbasi's Holy Spider.  The film is playing Cannes in the Main Competition section.  Abbasi previously played Cannes in 2018in the Un Certain Regard section with Border which then made the trip to Telluride later that September.  That opens the door to some serious speculation that this new film might also be a candidate for TFF #49.

The film's description per IMDb:

"In Holy Spider, we follow family man Saeed as he embarks on his own religious quest - to "cleanse" the holy Iranian city of Mashhad of immoral and corrupt street prostitutes. After murdering several women, he grows ever more desperate about the lack of public interest in his divine mission."

Here's a taste from the images at The Playlist:

See the complete set of pics and the full post from The Playlist here.

EMAIL:  mpgort@gmail.com

TWITTER @TheMTFB OR @Gort2 

MTFB's Facebook Page

MTFB is published on Mondays and Thursdays

Looking Ahead / Attention Email Followers / Odds and Ends: The Gaze, Berlin Fest, Flower Moon Photo

LOOKING AHEAD

I'm just a week and a day from closing out my academic year at the real job and only a couple of weeks away from an announcement from the Cannes folks about what films will play their July dated fest for 2021...which usually gives us some Telluride clues.  So... I'm starting to think about serious examination of what we know about which films are coming from what distributors and who has a serious track record in as far as playing TFF is concerned.

To that end, I did a quick canvas of distributors and films from the last five years of Tellurides (that included the announced list from last summer for what would have been TFF #47).  Over those fests both Netflix and SPC have been represented by 16 selections for a 5.2 film per year average.  This included that occasional film that was actually picked up after the fest was complete.  

Several outlets have had seven films across the five years: Searchlight (including Oscar Best Picture winners: The Shape of Water and Nomadland), A24, Neon and Amazon Studios.

The rest of list of distributors which have had multiple selections over the last five years are:

Kino Lorber-6

Cohen Media Group-5

HBO-4

Focus Features-3

IFC-3

Magnolia-3

Several outlets have shown up twice including: Warner Bros. Paramount, Roadside Attractions and Sundance.

So over the next few weeks, I'll start to look at what films these outlets have in the pipeline and assess the chances of those films making the Telluride lineup.  

ATTENTION EMAIL FOLLOWERS

For those of you who get your twice weekly dose of MTFB through email subscription: The automatic email service provider associated with Blogspot is discontinuing that service in July.  If you'd like to continue to receive MTFB as an email subscription when that happens drop me a line with the email address you'd prefer to use and I'll try to put together a mailing list to continue your ability to get the blog delivered to you.

ODDS AND ENDS

***THE GAZE

TFF favorite Barry Jenkins' The Underground Railroad arrives tomorrow on Amazon Prime.  This week Jenkins released a companion short film called The Gaze along with an essay about gthe experience of making the 10 part series.  You can access the Vimeo video of  The Gaze and the essay here from The Film Stage.

***BERLIN FEST

The Berlin International Film Festival will stage an in-person open-air Summer Special iteration of this year's festival on June 9-20 using 16 venues throughout the city.  The lineup for the Summer version of the fest will be announced May 20th.  Details are here from The Hollywood Reporter.

***FLOWER MOON PHOTO

We got a peek online this week of Leonardo DiCaprio and Lily Gladstone from the set of Martin Scorsese's Killers of the Flower Moon currently filming here in Oklahoma:

Here's a look via Fandango:

I currently am not aware of the film having a projected release date.  TFF #49?

That's all for this Thursday.

EMAIL:  mpgort@gmail.com

TWITTER @TheMTFB OR @Gort2 

MTFB's Facebook Page

MTFB is published on Mondays and Thursdays

Oscar Update: Craft Categories / Berlin's Full Lineup Announced

 OSCAR UPDATE: CRAFT CATEGORIES

In today's post I update Oscar nomination predictions for Production Design as well as take first stabs at Costumes, Makeup/Hair, Sound and Visual Effects.  TFF films are in Bold.

PRODUCTION DESIGN 

My last prediction was on Jan. 28th.  A film's position from then is in parentheses.

1) Mank (1)

2) News of the World (3)

3) Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (6)

4) The Personal History of David Copperfield (5)
5) Emma (4)

6) Tenet (7)

7) Mulan (2)

8) Midnight Sky (9)

9) The Trial of the Chicago 7 (8)

10) One Night in Miami (10)

Other Possibles: The Father, The Prom, First Cow

Hot: Ma Rainey

Not: Mulan

COSTUMES

1) Ma Rainey's Black Bottom

2) Emma

3) Mank

4) News of the World

5) Mulan

6) The United States vs. Billie Holiday

7) The Personal History of David Copperfield

8) Ammonite

9) Promising Young Woman

10) The Trial of the Chicago 7

Other Possibles: Jingle Jangle, The Glorias

MAKEUP AND HAIR (already short listed to these 10 films)

1) Ma Rainey's Black Bottom

2) Hillbilly Elegy

3) Mank

4) Birds of Prey

5) Emma

6) Pinocchio

7) The Little Things

8) One Night in Miami

9) The Glorias

10) Jingle Jangle

SOUND

1) Sound of Metal

2) Tenet

3) News of the World

4) Mank

5) The Midnight Sky

6) Soul

7) Ma Rainey's Black Bottom

8) Da 5 Bloods

9) The Outpost

10) The Trail of the Chicago 7

VISUAL EFFECTS (already short listed to these three films)

1) Tenet

2) The Midnight Sky

3) Mank

4) Mulan

5) Welcome to Chechnya

6) Birds of Prey

7) Soul

8) The One and Only Ivan

9) Love and Monsters

10) Bloodshot

BERLIN'S FULL LINEUP ANNOUNCED

The Berlin International Film Festival has announced all of its lineup.  As frequent readers know, it iis very common for Telluride to program a film or two or three from the Berlin lineup.

Glancing at the films selected, a few caught my eye as suggesting the possibility of a Berlin play followed by a Labor Day bow in T-ride.

Xavier Beauvois' Drift Away

Daniel Bruhl's Next Door

Celine Sciamma's Petite Maman

Jim Cummings and P.J. McCabe's The Beta Test

Hong Sangsoo's Introduction

Berlin will be bifurcated with a protion of the fest happening in march and then a "Summer Special" scheduled in June.

EMAIL:  mpgort@gmail.com

TWITTER @TheMTFB OR @Gort2 

MTFB's Facebook Page

MTFB is published on Mondays and Thursdays

Oscar Update: Best Director / LA and NY Film Critics Award 2020 Films / Indiewire's Best of 2020 / Nightmare at Christmas (And Maybe Labor Day?) / Two Telluride Favorites Talk Film: Barry and Chloe

 OSCAR UPDATE: BEST DIRECTOR

Here are my latest Oscar nomination predictions for Best Direction updated since I last posted this category on  Nov. 19th.  A director's past position is indicated to the right in parentheses.  TFF #47 films are indicated in Bold.

1) Chloe Zhao/Nomadland (1)

2) David Fincher/Mank (2)

3) Aaron Sorkin/The Trial of the Chicago 7 (3)

4) Lee Isaac Chung/Minari (7)

5) Regina King/One Night in Miami (4)

6) George C. Wolfe/Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (9)

7) Florian Zeller/The Father (5)

8) Paul Greengrass/News of the World (8)

9) Spike Lee/Da 5 Bloods (6)

10) Shaka King/Judas and the Black Messiah (10)

Other Possibles: Darius Marder/Sound of Metal, Emerald Fennell/Promising Young Woman. Kornel Mundruczo/Pieces of a Woman

Hot: Lee Isaac Chung/Minari, George C. Wolfe/Ma Rainey's Black Bottom

Not: Florian Zeller/The Father, Spike Lee/Da 5 Bloods

INDIEWIRE'S BEST OF 2020

Indiewire polled over 200 critics worldwide for their 2020 Best Of poll.  The website posted their lists of top tens in multiple categories on Dec. 14th.  Among the various categories, here is where Tff $6 and TFF #47 films landed in each category:

Best Picture: #1) Nomadland (47), #3) First Cow (46), #6) Beanpole (46)

Best Director #1) Chloe Zhao/Nomadland (47), #4) Kelly Reichardt/First Cow, #9) Kantemir Balegov/Beanpole (46)

Best Performance: #2) Frances McDormand/Nomadland (47)

Best Cinematography: #1) Nomadland (47) #7) First Cow (46), #9) Beanpole (46)

Best Screenplay: #2) First Cow (46)

Best International Film: #2) Beanpole (46)

Best First Film: #7) The Assistant (46), #10) The Climb (46)

The complete listing in each category is linked here.

LA AND NY FILM CRITICS AWARD 2020 FILMS

Both The Los Angeles Film Critics Association and The New York Film Critics Circle named their "Best Of" for 2020 films over the weekend.  Here's how that played out for Telluride films from both TFF #47 and #46 is as follows:

From New York (From Variety):

Best Film: First Cow (TFF #46)

Best Director: Chloe Zhao/Nomadland (TFF #47)

The complete list of NYFCC winners is here from Variety.

Meanwhile the LAFCA had the following TFF films on its list:

Best Picture Runner-up: Nomadland (TFF #47)

Best Director: Chloe Zhao/Nomadland (TFF #47)

Best Foreign Language Film: Beanpole (TFF 346)

Best Editing: The Father (TFF #47)

Best Production Design Runner-up: Beanpole (TFF #46)

Best Cinematography Runner-up: Nomadland (TFF #47)

The complete list of LAFCA winners is here from The Hollywood Reporter.

 

NIGHTMARE AT CHRISTMAS (AND MAYBE LABOR DAY?)

Indiewire reported this week that Guillermo Del Toro has wrapped Nightmare Alley, his film noir starring Bradley Cooper, Cate Blanchett, Willem Dafoe and Richard Jenkins.  The article also includes a Tweet from the film's distributor, Searchlight, confirming an earlier Tweet from the film's co-writer, Kim Morgan, revealing that the film will be released in December of 2021.

The information that the film is wrapped combined with the release date allows for the possibility that we could see it pop up at TFF #48 perhaps after a Cannes or Venice bow or even as a first time ever screening at TFF.

Del Toro was on hand in Telluride in 2017 with The Shape of Water which had premiered at Venice.  after its Telluride play it went on to win the Best Picture Oscar and Del Toro won for Best Director.

Check out more details in the story from Indiewire linked here.

TWO TELLURIDE FAVORITES TALK FILM: BARRY AND CHLOE

They're two of the hottest directing/writing talents in the current film firmament.  They've also been at Telluride.  I'm talking Barry Jenkins, who has been a part of TFF since his college days and debuted Oscar winner Moonlight there in 2016 and Chloe Zhao who has been at T-ride with both The Rider in 2017 and this year's Nomadland.  As a matter of fact, the two met originally in Telluride in 2017 (per Variety's reporting).

So, Variety got the two together recently for a conversation.  Thanks Variety!

Here's the link to the print and video of their conversation.

BERLIN FEST MOVES AND WILL BE A HYBRID

The Berlin Film Festival, which often premieres a couple of films that make it into the Telluride lineup each year, has announced changes from their traditional dates and structure as Covid-19 continues to change the shape of the film world at large and film festivals in particular.

Variety reports that:

"The festival is now looking to present the festival selections to the film industry in early March, Variety understands, with the European Film Market running as a digital event at the same time. A mini-festival with a series of onsite world premieres is being planned for early June."

The complete Variety article with further details can be found here.

EMAIL:  mpgort@gmail.com

TWITTER @TheMTFB OR @Gort2 

MTFB's Facebook Page

MTFB is published on Mondays and Thursdays