Announcements the Next Two Days / Venice- Additional Rumors / Predicting Toronto

Welcome to Monday...big week ahead!


ANNOUNCEMENTS THE NEXT TWO DAYS...

The Toronto International Film Festival begins to announce its 2018 lineup tomorrow.  It'll be the biggest set of clues and hints about what could be chosen for The SHOW of the entire summer.  The key is to look at the premiere status for a film.

A film listed as a World or North American Premiere means, unless there is some sort of unanticipated change, those films will not make an appearance at Telluride.  A Canadian Premiere designation almost guarantees a T-ride play unless it is a film that has played at Sundance.

An International Premiere designation is murkier and usually requires some digging and even then it can be difficult to pin its meaning down definitively.

Then on Wednesday, Venice will announce the bulk of its lineup.  As I have written before, the key about Venice is often when a film is scheduled and we probably won't know that for a few weeks.  Premiere status for Venice can tell us some things if a film is not listed as a World Premiere.

Meanwhile, we expect announcements from both New York and Fantastic Fest in the next couple of weeks or so.

Come on back here to MTFB for the latest news and analysis as we try to piece together a lineup for Telluride.

I would point out that over the past five years the MTFB success rate by the time we get to the end of the summer has been 91/95 or 96%.


VENICE - ADDITIONAL RUMORS

Last Friday we had a look at rumored titles that might be named later this week as films that would play Venice.  Why is that important?  The Venice-Telluride connection has become an increasingly relevant statistic.

Last year the two fests shared eight films.  Some played early in the Venice lineup and then moved to Telluride.  Some films played Telluride first and then moved to Venice.

The Twitterverse added fuel to the fire this weekend with increased speculation about films that could be announced that may also play T-ride including Laszlo Nemes Sunset, Jacques Audiard's The Sisters Brothers, Olivier Assassyas' Non Fiction, Mike Leigh's Peterloo, Yorgos Lanthimos' The Favourite, Julian Schnabel's At Eternity's Gate and the Coen Brothers six part mini-series for Netflix, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs:

Now, if the Coen's Buster Scruggs somehow makes the Telluride lineup...




PREDICTING TORONTO

Barry Hertz writing for The Globe and Mail took a weekend stab at predicting some of the buzziest titles that could be announced tomorrow for the 2018 edition of the Toronto International Film Festival.

In the lengthy article he names several films that are also on the MTFB watch list for TFF #45   For example:

The Death and Life of John F. Donovan
The Sisters Brothers
Widows
Mary Queen of Scots
Boy Erased
A Star Is Born
On the Basis of Sex
The Front Runner
If Beale Street Could Talk
Roma
The Other Side of the Wind
Everybody Knows
Ash Is the Purest White
Burning
Shoplifters


It's worth noting that TFF and TIFF often share as many as 20 or more titles.

The complete article from Hertz is linked here.

Meanwhile, Peter Howell, critic for The Toronto Star in a series of tweets has predicted these six films for TIFF:

If Beale Street COuld Talk
First Man
Burning
Capernaum
Mary Queen of Scots
Cold War


That's MTFB for this Monday.  More tomorrow.  I may even have a special late post that includes some of the news from Toronto.



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The First Ten Bets for TFF #45 / Awards Daily Critics' List / Burning Has a Home

Good Friday all!  Big post today!



THE FIRST TEN BETS FOR TFF #45

Here you have it.  My first official stab at guessing/predicting/projecting/hoping for films that will play at The SHOW in Telluride over Labor Day weekend.

The first set of predictions every June is fraught with uncertainty.  I look at a lot of factors:  Studios. distributors, TFF histories, especially with directors.  The buzz around films we know are coming in the fall and will almost assuredly play some if not all of the Telluride/Venice/Toronto triumvirate.  Oscar hopefuls, Cannes titles and a lot of the time, especially in early July...it's about intuition.

It all factors into my assessments.

Here's the history of success, or lack thereof, for each of the last seven years that I have been using the "Ten Bets" format:

2011: 8/10
2012: 5/10
2013: 6/10
2014: 7/10
2015: 4/10
2016: 3/10
2017: 7/10

As you can tell, last year was a bounce back after low years of 2015 and 2016.

Overall, I manage an average of  5.7 correct guesses with the initial Ten Bets of each season.

So...crossing fingers... here's the first Ten Bets for 2018 (in order of likelihood):

10) Beautiful Boy- I think Amazon Studios will land at Telluride with this, at least and maybe more.

9) The Front Runner- Jason Reitman was once a T-ride favorite.  My guess is that this film gets him back.

8) Burning- this was Cannes' unrewarded critical darling from a director who has played TFF before.   This was actually higher on my list until word broke yesterday that it had been grabbed for U.S. distribution by Well Go USA Entertainment.   See below.

7) Sunset- If its half as good as his first film (Son of Saul), Laszlo Nemes will return.

6) The Old Man and the Gun- This feels like Fox Searchlight's best play for Oscar season and thus its best chance at a Telluride berth...though they do have other possibles.

5) Cold War- Pawel Pawlikowski with a good shot to return to TFF.

4) Capernaum- Cannes Jury Prize winner and SPC's most likely shot for the schedule.

3) Peterloo- Mike Leigh's film about labour strife in Britain.

2) The Other Side of the Wind-Orson Welles "last film".  If this doesn't play Telluride I will be greatly surprised and, for that matter, upset.

1) If Beale Street Could Talk- It would a shock if Barry Jenkins' follow-up to his Oscar winning Moonlight does not make The SHOW's lineup.

Others on my "just under the Ten Bets" list: Boy Erased, The Sisters Brothers, The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, The Eyes of Orson Welles, Dogman, On the Basis of Sex, Girl, Happy as Lazzaro, Shoplifters, He Dreams of Giants, First Man, Widows,  A Star Is Born, Cheney (Backseat), Roma, At Eternity's Gate, Everybody Knows.

What do YOU think?  What films do YOU think might play?  What films do YOU WANT to play?

Drop me a note at any one of the contact methods listed below.

Looking at this list before I punch the button to publish, I'm saying to myself...naw...these can't all happen...but what if they did???

So, there you have it.  Let's see now how many of these films actually make the lineup.



AWARDS DAILY'S CRITICS' LIST

Jordan Ruimy, writing and compiling for Awards Daily has posted a "Best Of" critics assessment for the first half of 2018.

TFF #45 films pop up on the list with some frequency.  Included on the list are:

#31-Loveless
#24-Foxtrot
#13-Lean on Pete
#6-The Rider
#1-First Reformed

Pretty impressive for the films that played last year but weren't released until this year.  The complete list from Awards Daily is here.


BURNING HAS A HOME

As I mentioned above,  Lee Chang-dong's Cannes critical fave Burning has a distributor.  Variety reports that Well Go USA Entertainment has acquired the film and plans a limited release on Oct. 26th in NYC with expansion after that.

The film was right at the top of the critics' polls after its screening at Cannes but had languished without a distributor until yesterday.

As you see above, I still have it listed among my first Ten Bets list, albeit lower than I was thinking earlier this week, despite the fact that Well Go USA has essentially no Telluride history to speak of.

The complete story is linked here from Variety


That's your Friday MTFB.  Come back for more on Monday.


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

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The Distributors 2018: Sony Pictures Classics / Hinting at The Old Man / And Another One Moves Down the List

Good Tuesday film friends...hope all is well...


THE DISTRIBUTORS 2018: SONY PICTURES CLASSICS

No distributor has had more a presence for as long as Sony Pictures Classics.  SPC has been there the longest with the most for the history of TFF.  The "recent" history includes 67 films in the last 15 years or about 4 and a half films per year on average:


2017: A Fantastic Woman, Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool, Foxtrot, Loveless, The Rider (5)
2016: The Eagle Huntress, Maudie, Norman, Toni Erdmann (4)
2015: Son of Saul (1)
2014: Foxcatcher, Leviathan, Red Army, Mr. Turner, Wild Tales, Salt of the Earth and Merchants of Doubt (7)
2013: The Invisible Woman, The Lunchbox, The Past, Tim's Vermeer and Jodorowsky's Dune (5)
2012: The Gatekeepers, At Any Price, Rust and Bone, No, Wadjda, Amour (6)
2011: A Dangerous Method, In Darkness, Footnote, A Separation (4)
2010: Incendies, Of Gods and Men, Tamara Drewe, Another Year, The Illusionist, Inside Job (6)
2009: The Last Station, The White Ribbon, Coco Before Chanel, A Prophet, An Education (5)
2008: Waltz with Bashir, I've Loved You So Long, O'Horten (3)
2007: Brick Lane, When Did You Last See Your Father, Persepolis, The Band's Visit, The Counterfeiters, Steep! (6)
2006: Jindabyne, The Lives of Others, Volver, The Italian (4)
2005: Breakfast on Pluto, Capote, Cache, The Child (4)
2004: Being Julia, House of Flying Daggers, Bad Education, Merchant of Venice, Up and Down, Yes (6)
2003: The Fog of War, My Life Without Me, The Triplets of Belleville, Young Adam (4)

And SPC has seen the coupling with TFF pay off with Oscar nominations for Best Picture: Amour, An Education, Capote.

Best Foreign Language Film (so many here): A Fantastic Woman, Loveless, Toni Erdmann among many others.

Best Documentary Feature: The Fog of War, Inside Job.

But this year looks like maybe 2015 when SPC only had Son of Saul in play at Telluride.  As it stands now, the only film SPC that could make TFF #45 is Nadine Labaki's Capernaum.  Capernaum picked up the Jury Prize at Cannes last month but suffered from middling critical response.

Deadline reported three weeks ago that SPC had picked up the rights to Denys Arcand The Fall of the American Empire but that isn't showing up on the IMDb page for either SPC or the film itself as yet.

Don't discount the possibility, though, SPC picking up some of the other Cannes players.  Currently, for example, Lee Chang dong's critical darling, Burning still has no U.S. distributor, nor does Jafar Panahi's Three Faces, Sergei Dvortsevoy's Ayka, Matteo Garrone's Dogman, Messora and Saliviza's The Dead and The Others or Sergey Loznitsa's Donbass.  So there is a large body of work out there that SPC could still acquire and submit for inclusion at TFF #45.

Last year when I did the SPC assessment it looked like this for the 2017 TFF lineup:

1) Loveless/Zvyagnistev. Chances: 80%.

2) A Fantastic Woman/Lelio. Chances: 75%.

3) The Rider/Zhao.  Chances: 60%.

4) Happy End/Haneke. Chances: 55%.

5) Final Portrait/Tucci. Chances: 40%.

6) The Silent Man/Landesman. Chances: 25%

7) The Leisure Seeker/Virzi. Chances: 20%

8) Based on a True Story/Polanski. Chances: 5%.

Ultimately, the top three played TFF  in addition to Foxtrot and Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool.

Bottom line is that I'd put Capernaum at 60% (mostly because of SPC's long connection to TFF) and The Fall of the American Empire at about 30%.

Tomorrow we'll look at Fox Searchlight.


HINTING AT THE OLD MAN

The Playlist, like a lot of outlets, featured the release of the trailer for The Old Man and the Gun last week.  I didn't get to that article until late this weekend.  Playlist head honcho Rodrigo Perez covers the familiar bases but adds near the end of the piece that the Sept. 28th release "should mean you'll see a festival bow before that and we'll assume Telluride, Venice, TIFF or all of the above."

That's the kind of assertion that makes me take note.

The Old Man and the Gun is under the Fox Searchlight umbrella and will be a part of Thursday's assessment of the films they have and their TFF #45 probability.  The speculation from The Playlist gives The Old Man a bit of a boost going into that assessment.

The complete post from The Playlist is here.


AND ANOTHER ONE MOVES DOWN (AND ALMOST FF) THE LIST

I have mentioned Paolo Sorrentino's Loro (1 and 2) as a possible Telluride 2018 selection but that appears less likely in the wake of a story from Variety's Nick Vivarelli published last week.

The film which explores the life and career of Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi has been screening in Italy in its two part incarnation.  Vivarelli reports that Sorrentino now has a solo version that clocks in at just under two and a half hours.  Vivarelli writes that the single film version "is likely to launch from the Toronto Film Fest in September."

Though the statement is not definitive, it feels solid so, at this point, I don't really expect we'll see Loro over Labor Day weekend.

The complete story from Variety is here.


That's the MTFB fix for this Tuesday.  More to come on Thursday.


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

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The Fifth Telluride Film Festival-1978 / If I Had To / The Underground Railroad: More Details / And a Re-cap

Good Friday TFF followers...

THE FIFTH TELLURIDE FILM FESTIVAL

We're winding down the review of past Telluride Film Festivals (a process over a year in the making).  Today we look at TFF #5 that took place Sept. 1-4, 1978.


TRIBUTES: Hal Roach, Sterling Hayden, The Czech New Wave: Jaromil Jires, Pavel Juracek, Jan Nemec and Ivan Passer.

SHOWS:

Always for Pleasure
American Friend
Camouflage
Case for a Rookie Hangman
China 9, Liberty 37
Cooley High
The Devil's Reporter
Diamonds of the Night
Doctoring
El Capitan
Hellgate
Intimate Lighting
Johnny Guitar
The Killing
Koko, The Talking Gorilla
Martyrs of Love
The Messiah
Miss Mend
My Love to the Swallows
North Avenue Irregulars
Of Mice and Men
On the Yard
Perils of the Yukon
Pinocchio
Roger Corman-Hollywood's Wild Angel
Siringo
The Star
Topper Takes a Trip
Valerie
Way Out West
The Wicker Man
Windjammer

GUESTS:

Carroll Ballard
Robert DeNiro
Milos Forman
Monte Hellman
Harvey Keitel
Robbie Robertson
Isabella Rossellini
Barbet Schroeder
Martin Scorsese
Joan Micklin Silver
Wim Wenders



IF I HAD TO

I'm still about three weeks away from the summer's first "Ten Bets" listing.  For those who may be new to the blog, the "Ten Bets" will become my weekly "official" guess as to what films are likely to make the TFF #45 lineup.  Those "Bets" will then continue right up until the actual lineup is announced on Aug. 30th.

That said, for hoots, I thought I'd slap together a list of ten or so films that feel like the best shots to make the TFF #45 program with three months to go.  Last year when I did this I hit six titles right.  Last year's "If I Had To" list (which I posted on June 5th) included these that I got right:

Wonderstruck
Downsizing
Loveless
A Fantastic Woman
Faces Places
Battle of the Sexes

What I missed on: The Florida Project, You Were Never Really Here, BPM and The Current War.

So, if you made me surrender ten titles today (in alpha order):

Beautiful Boy
Burning
Capernaum
Cold War
If Beale Street Could Talk
The Old Man and the Gun
The Other Side of the Wind
Peterloo
Roma
Sunset

Just outside: Boy Erased, Dogman, The Front Runner, Girl, On the Basis of Sex and The Sisters Brothers.

THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD: MORE DETAILS

Two weeks after the close of TFF #43 and the triumphant and ultimately award winning success of Barry Jenkins' Moonlight, we got word that Jenkins was set up to adapt Colson Whitehead's Pulitzer Prize winner The Underground Railroad.

We got more details this week about that project which looks to be the next thing Jenkins will be working on after the completion of If Beale Street Could Talk.

Indiewire's Steve Green reports that Jenkins will direct the full run of what will be an 11 part limited series for Amazon.

Here's the link to the complete story from Indiewire.

P.S.  Mr. Jenkins...will be glad to audition for any role at all...

AND A RE-CAP

Still from The Old Man and a Gun 

(and hoping I am sitting in a theater with Redford and Spacek on Labor Day)

It sure felt like a wave of Oscar-y and fall fest films made some noise this week with trailers for The Old Man and the Gun, A Star Is Born, Widows, White Boy Rick, Serenity, Kidding, stills from First Man.

There's some buzz that a First Man trailer might drop today or in days timed with Ryan Gosling's appearance tonight on Jimmy Kimmel's NBA Game Night prime time show.

And I have made my application for media accreditation again for this year's festival...fingers crossed.


That's a wrap for this Friday and this first week of June.  I'll have more on Monday.


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Widows Pics and Trailer / Indiewire Scans Foreign Language Oscar Players

Welcome to the first Monday in June and the start of the MTFB grind to TFF #45.

I start the summer posting protocol with the expansion of posts.  Normally, I post on Monday and Thursday mornings but starting this week, I'll be adding posts on Tuesday and Friday as we move our way closer and closer to TFF #45 scheduled for this year from Aug. 31-Sept. 3.

Hope you enjoy and find the next three months of goo...useful.


WIDOWS PICS AND TRAILER

Any number of sources reported over the weekend that Steve McQueen's Widows had dropped stills and would be dropping a trailer today.  I have included a couple of stills from The Film Stage here and will include the trailer in tomorrow's post.

I'm about 50/50 on Widows' chances of making the TFF #45 lineup.  Working in its favor is the strong presence that McQueen has had at the fest over the years with screenings of Hunger ('08), Shame ('11) and 12 Years a Slave ('13) and personally, Shame and 12 Years are two of the best films that I have seen at Telluride.  So that kind of track record suggests TFF #45 could happen.

Countering that are two factors.  Widows, from all descriptions, sounds like a genre film which none of McQueen's previous Telluride films could be called and it's housed at 20th Century Fox, which has certainly had plenty of play at Telluride via its indie arm-Fox Searchlight, but 20th Century Fox itself...not so much.

So that's why Widows is a 50/50 prediction for TFF #45 at this point.

Trailer tomorrow here on the blog.


INDIEWIRE SCANS FOREIGN LANGUAGE OSCAR PLAYERS

Anne Thompson posted a speculative piece on Indiewire Friday looking at films that she feels have the best inside track for a Foreign Language Oscar nomination as the summer begins.  All five of what Anne lists as front-runners are films that played at Cannes and are all possible Telluride players.

They are:

Capernaum
Cold War
Everybody Knows
Happy as Lazarro
Shoplifters

Among other films listed as contenders that I feel, at least at this point, like T-ride players are: Ayka and Girl.

In an interesting twist, Anne does not include Lee Chang-dong's Burning.  The film was the undeniable critical champ at Cannes but also received no prizes in the official competition.

I have it on my T-ride watch list because it scored so well with critics and because Chang-dong has played Telluride previously with Secret Sunshine and Poetry.

The complete article is linked here.


More tomorrow including, I hope, the Widows trailer.

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