New Gurus Predicting Oscar Winners / Concrete Cowboy Rides to Netflix / Talking Nomadland

 NEW GURUS PREDICITNG OSCAR WINNERS

The latest Gurus of Gold went up at Movie City News on Tuesday after Oscar nominations were announced.  We were tasked with predicting the likely winners in all of the feature film categories.  

As of my Guru ballot on Monday afternoon I have Nomadland winning 4 Oscars on April 25th: Picture, Director, Adapted Screenplay and Cinematography.  As for its other two nominations, I am currently predicting Carey Mulligan will win Best Actress for Promising Young Woman over Frances McDormand and The Trial of the Chicago 7 winning the Oscar for film editing.

As to the other acting categories, I'm predicting Boseman for Actor, Kaluuya for Supporting Actor and Close for Supporting Actress, though I match up with the overall Gurus picks in all the categories I've mentioned so far except on the Close call.  I'm pretty lonely there with the Gurus collectively picking Yuh-jung Youn from Minari.  I'm not totally out in the cold with the Close prediction.  Mark Johnson/Awards Daily and Nathaniel Rogers/The Film Experience have also chosen Close.  

My other early predictions (and when applicable, where I diverge from the Guru collective):

Original Screenplay: Promising Young Woman

International Feature: Another round

Documentary Feature: Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution (The Gurus have Time)

Production Design: Mank

Costumes: Ma Rainey's Black Bottom

Animated Feature: Soul

Makeup/Hair: Ma Rainey's Black Bottom

Score: Soul

Song: Speak Now/One Night in Miami

Sound: Sound of Metal

Visual Effects: Tenet

Biggest locks (having a perfect Gurus score):

Chloe Zhao/Director-Nomadland

Chadwick Boseman/Actor-Ma Rainey's Black Bottom

Another Round-International Feature

Mank-Production Design

Soul-Best Score

Sound of Metal/Sound

Closest races:

Original Screenplay: Promising Young Woman and The Trial of the Chicago7 are close.

Cinematography: Nomadland and Mank look to duke it out.

Editing: Nomadland and The Trial of the Chicago 7 are tight.

Costumes: Ma Rainey, Emma and Mank are all close here.

Makeup/Hair: The battle is between Ma Rainey, Hillbilly Elegy and Mank.

Other semi-close races: Supporting Actress, Animated Feature and Documentary.

The complete Gurus of Gold first take on predicting Oscar winners is linked here.

CONCRETE COWBOY RIDES TO NETFLIX

Netflix has acquired Ricky Staub's Concrete Cowboy starring Idris Elba and Caleb McLaughlin.  The film was a selection of TFF #47.  Netflix has set April 2nd as the release date for the film and has released both a poster (above) and a trailer (below) from YouTube:

TALKING NOMADLAND

Bloomberg recently posted an interview with the original author of Nomadland Jessica Bruder.  That interview is linked here.

Meanwhile, Slashfilm linked a Chloe Zhao interview for the American Film Institute that's up on YouTube.  Here that is:

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Oscar Update: Best Actor / TFF #47 Films Score at Montclair / Concrete Cowboy Rides to Netflix / Odds and Ends: Chicago 7 and Midnight Sky

 OSCAR UPDATE: BEST ACTOR

Here are my latest Oscar nomination predictions for Best Actor updated since I last posted this category on  Sept. 24th.  A performer's past position is indicated to the right in parentheses.  TFF #47 performers are indicated in Bold.

1) Anthony Hopkins/The Father (1)

2) Chadwick Boseman/Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (-)

3) Gary Oldman/Mank (2)

4) Delroy Lindo/Da 5 Bloods (4)

5) Tom Hanks/News of the World (3)

6) Riz Ahmed/The Sound of Metal (-)

7) Steven Yeun/Minari (-)

8) Ben Affleck/The Way Back (8)

9) Joaquin Phoenix/C'mon C'mon (7)

10) Colin Firth/Supernova (-)

Others: Bill Murray/On the Rocks, Daniel Kaluuya or LaKeith Stanfield/Judas and the Black Messiah.

TFF #47 FILMS SCORE AT MONTCLAIR

Chloe Zhao'e Nomadland and Mohammad Rasoulof's  There Is No Evil were awarded major prizes at the conclusion of the Montclair Film Festival.  The winners were announced Mnday at the conclusion of the ninth annual event.

Nomadland was named winner of the audience award for a fiction feature and There Is No Evil won the jury award for non-fiction feature.

Complete coverage of all of the winners from the Montclair fest can be found linked here from Variety.

CONCRETE COWBOY RIDES TO NETFLIX

Ricky Staub's Concrete Cowboy, a selection of the "would have been" 47th Telluride Film Festival, has been acquired by Netflix.  Concrete Cowboy stars Idris Elba and was screened as a part of the Toronto International Film Festival.

Variety reports that the film will be released by Netflix at some point in 2021.

The IMDb description of the film is as follows:

"A teenager discovers the world of urban horseback riding when he moves in with his estranged father in North Philadelphia."

The Variety story about the acquisition is linked here.

ODDS AND ENDS

Here are a few other tidbits that I found interesting...

1)The Hollywood Reporter reports that the entire cast of Aaron Sorkin's The Trial of the Chicago 7 will be campaigned as Supporting Actors:  The link to the THR story is here.

For my money look at Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Jeremy Strong, Mark Rylance and Frank Langella.

2) ShowBiz 411 reports that MGM has re-dated Leisl Tommy's Respect, which stars Jennifer Hudson as Aretha Franklin, for August 13, 2021 which means two things.  First, the move bumps the film and Hudson out of this year's Oscar race and second...the August date guarantees that the film will NOT be a part of a TFF #48 (if that's what it's referenced as) lineup.  I had Hudson at #3 in the Best Actress predictions in last Monday's post.

Here's the ShowBiz 411 story.

3) Trailer drops for George Clooney's Midnight Sky from Netflix.  Here it is via YouTube:

The film is scheduled for release on Netflix on Dec. 23rd.

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TFF #47 Would Have Rocked! / Odds and Ends / And Then There's This...

TFF #47 WOULD HAVE ROCKED!

Despite the Covid-19 pandemic the "what would have been" list of TFF #47 films that were released on Monday morning would have been a formidable lineup:

Features:

After Love/Khan

All In: The Fight for Democracy/Garbus and Cortes

The Alpinist/Mortimer and Rosen

Ammonite/Lee

Andrey Tarkovsky: A Cinema Prayer/Tarkovsky

Apples/Nikou

The Automat/Hurwitz

The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart/Marshall

Charlatan/Holland

Concrete Cowboy/Staub

Dear Mr. Brody/Maitland

The Duke/Michell

The Father/Zeller

Fireball/Herzog and Oppenheimer

Ibrahim/Guesmi

Mainstream/Coppola

Mandibules/Dupieux

MLK/FBI/Pollard

The Most Beautiful Boy in the World/Lindstrom

Never Gonna Snow Again/Szumowska

Nomadland/Zhao

Notturno/Rosi

Pray Away/Stolakis

There Is No Evil/Rasoulof

To the Moon/O'Sullivan

Torn/Lowe

The Truffle Hunters/Dweck and Kershaw

Truman and Tennessee an Intimate Conversation/Immordino

The Way I See It/Porter

Tributes were to have been: Kate Winslet/Ammonite, Chloe Zhao/Nomadland and Anthony Hopkins/The Father.  Solid!!!

ODDS AND ENDS

Well, it has been weird throughout the summer trying to determine what we would be programmed by Telluride.   Now we know.  Thoughts:

1) The last Ten Bets (#4 posted on Monday prior to the surprise drop of the Telluride list ended up with six of the ten films being named: Ammonite, Fireball, Nomadland, Notturno, There Is No Evil and The Truffle Hunters.

2) Misses were the two Steve McQueen films: Lover's Rock and Mangrove, which, as it turns out will be playing the New York Film Fest along with  a third film from McQueen's Small Axe collection.  As a matter of fact, Lover's Rock has been named the opening film for NYFF.  

Also missed The French Dispatch...which I still think might have been on Telluride's list at one point but with Searchlight's decision to pull it from its October release date, you have to think it's headed for Berlin or Cannes next year.  And the other whiff: The Secrets We Keep.

3) Pleased to see that one of my "also possibles" made the lineup which was the Garbus/Cortes voting rights documentary now titled: All In: The Fight for Democracy.

4) Other films that I had played with as possibles at some point along the way that ended up making the grade: Charlatan, The Duke, Mainstream and MLK/FBI.

5) That list of tributes...man  oh man.  would have been super pumped for the Anthony Hopkins as well as the Kate Winslet.  Deep bodies of great work from both of them.

6) From the first Ten Bets I went 5/10.  Ammonite, All In: The Fight for Democracy, Nomadland, Fireball and There Is No Evil.

AND THEN THERE'S THIS...

We've known for some time that Telluride organizers have been planning a "Telluride from Los Angeles" drive-in screening of Nomadland on Sept. 11th somewhere in the greater L.A. area.  The word has been that director Chloe Zhao and star Frances McDormand would be attending.  Additionally, the film is set to premiere that same day as a part of both the Venice and Toronto fests and will be the centerpiece presentation for the New York Film Fest.

What's new is this passage from Rebecca Keegan's story/interview about the TFF lineup announcement on Monday:

Telluride will host a drive-in screening in Los Angeles on Sept. 11 for the Chloé Zhao Searchlight movie Nomadland, which was to have shown at the festival as part of a tribute to the filmmaker. Zhao and Nomadland star Frances McDormand will both attend the drive-in, and at least one additional potential event for another film that would have premiered in the lineup is also in the works.

Does that echo the AP story that I included in last Monday's regularly scheduled post that suggested a Telluride "drive-in series"?  Maybe, though the wording in the Keegan story-"potential event"- hints that maybe it will be something else. Also interesting is the language that says" at least one" suggesting that there could possibly be more than one additional event.  

It will be fun to see what this might be.

The complete THR story is linked here.

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