Obsessing about the Telluride Film Festival and the film awards season since 2008!
"The best blog out there for predicting what will be going to Telluride."-Matt Neglia, Next Best Picture
"The Nostradamus of Telluride"
-Tim Appelo, Movies for Grownups
"But it's our job." - Anne Thompson, Indiewire
Here are my latest Oscar nomination predictions for Best Supporting Actress updated since I last posted this category on Nov. 2nd. A performer's past position is indicated to the right in parentheses. TFF #47 performers are indicated in Bold.
1) Olivia Colman/The Father (1)
2) Amanda Seyfried/Mank (2)
3) Ellen Burstyn/Pieces of a Woman (6)
5) Glenn Close/Hillbilly Elegy (3)
5) Youn Yuh-jung/Minari (7)
6) Maria Bakalova/Borat Subsequent Moviefilm (8)
7) Helena Zengel/News of the World (5)
8) Saoirse Ronan/Ammonite (4)
9) Lily Collins/Mank (9)
10) Charlene Swankie/Nomadland (-)
Other possibles: Pryanka Chopra/The White Tiger, Natasha Lyonne/The U.S. vs. Billie Holiday, Valerie Mahaffey/French Exit
Hot: Ellen Burstyn, Youn Yuh-jung, Maria Bakalova, Helena Zengel, Swankie
Not: Glenn Close, Saorise Ronan
OSCAR EXPERT UPDATE: CLAYTON DAVIS-VARIETY
We last checked in with Clayton's Oscar predictions about six weeks back (on Oct. 15). Consequently, I thought it might be a good idea to get a snapshot of where he believes the Oscar race to be. Here are the primary Oscar predictions from Mr. Davis as of the end of last week:
Leading all comers: David Fincher's Mank which Davis has at 12 total nominations: Best Picture, Direction, Actor, Supporting Actress, Supporting Actor, Original Screenplay, Cinematography, Film Editing, Production Design, Costumes, Sound and Score. That's up 2 nominations from 10/15. Davis added nomination predictions for Supporting Actor, Score and Sound and dropped a prediction for Makeup/Hair.
Nomadland (7): Best Picture, Direction, Actress, Supporting Actor, Adapted Screenplay, Cinematography and Sound. Nomadland holds at 7 total predicted nominations. Davis swapped out a film editing nomination for a sound nomination.
One Night in Miami (7): Best Picture, Direction, Supporting Actor, Adapted Screenplay, Costumes, Film Editing and Original Song. Davis subtracts a previous prediction for Cinematography here.
Minari (7): Best Picture, Direction, Actor, Supporting Actress, Original Screenplay, Film Editing, Score. A big jump up over the last six weeks from a predicted three nominations to this total of seven. Previously Davis just had Minari in for Picture, Actor and Original Screenplay.
Judas and the Black Messiah (7): Best Picture, Direction, Supporting Actor, Supporting Actress, Original Screenplay, Cinematography, Film Editing. The other film that Davis has elevated significantly over the past 40 days and 40 nights. On Oct. 15 Davis had it with four nomination predictions: Picture, Actor, Original Screenplay and Film Editing.
Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (5): Best Picture, Actor, Actress, Costume and Makeup/Hair. Down one nomination with some other changes too. Boseman has moved from Supporting to Lead. The previously predicted Adapted Screenplay is gone. Production Design os also gone but Makeup/Hair has been added.
The Father (4): Best Picture, Actor, Supporting Actress and Adapted Screenplay
Promising Young Woman (4): Best Picture, Actress, Original Screenplay, Makeup/Hair
The Prom (4): Best Picture, Production Design, Makeup/Hair, Song
And the biggest dive in the last six weeks: The Trial of the Chicago 7 which Davis had with as many as 7-8 nominations six weeks back and now has down to three: Best Picture, Original Screenplay and Film Editing.
The last time we were in Telluride for the film fest in Sept. of 2019, Asif Kapadia's documentary about the life of soccer legend Diego Maradona was making waves. The film debuted immediately after TFF #46 on HBO and sports a solid 78 Metacritic score.
Maradona died on Wednesday of a heart attack at the age of 60. The world of soccer/football was shocked and dismayed at the passing of the legend.
Should you want to view the Kapadia doc you should be able to find it on HBO Max, Amazon Prime Video and Hulu.
Got the news late last night that the legendary Buck Henry had died of a heart attack at the age of 89. Henry had an extensive relationship with the Telluride Film Festival going all the way back to appearing as a guest of the fest at TFF #2 in 1975 according to the best info I can come up with. Henry also Guest Directed in 2004 and was part of the multiple Guest Director group for TFF 's 40th Anniversary in 2013. My records also indicate that Henry was at the fest in 2007 as well.
Henry was probably best known as the co-writer of Mike Nichols classic The Graduate, a film that would be on Top Ten list of all-timers. Henry was a two time Oscar nominee. The first came for the screenplay of The Graduate the other came as co-director of Heaven Can Wait with Warren Beatty.
He also wrote or co-wrote the screenplays for Catch-22, The Owl and the Pussycat, What's Up Doc?, The Day of the Dolphin and To Die For. He was also the co-creator, along with Mel Brooks, of the 1960's comedy Get Smart.
Henry was also an early and often host for Saturday Night Live having reportedly hosted 10 times.
I got to meet Henry in 2013 in Telluride and express my thanks for his incredible career of providing thought provoking entertainment and a bunch of laughter. That's the photo you see above.
Maybe the best thing that's happened at TFF over the years that I've been going has been opportunities like that- a chance to thank people for what they've meant in your life that you're never going to see at any other moment. I don't do it often because I don't want to annoy- but my admiration for Buck was such that I knew that I'd kick myself if I didn't just tell the man "Thank you".
And thanks again Buck!
SPECIAL NOTE: FINAL OSCAR PREDIX ON SUNDAY!!!
I'll have the MTFB Final Oscar nomination predictions for this year posted at 6pm EST on Sunday, Jan. 12th
As of this morning, using the latest projections I have for each of the 21 feature categories- which will be updated for Sunday and will mean that there will be changes between now and then- here are the predicted nominee leaders:
Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood-12 (and the only film in double digits)
The Irishman-9
1917-8 Marriage Story-8
Joker-7 Parasite-6 Ford v Ferrari-5 The Two Popes-4
Bombshell-4
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker-4
Rocketman-4
Jojo Rabbit-3
All others 2 or fewer.
Other TFF #46 films: Pain and Glory-2 Judy-2 Beanpole-1
Total TFF #46 nominations predicted- 28-but that will also likely change with Sunday's final predictions.
GUILDS: WRITERS, DIRECTORS, PRODUCERS AND BAFTA
Since my last post we've seen a ton of precursors name names for 2019 giving us new information to parse about Oscar nomination possibilities. Let's run that down from the perspective of TFF #46 films.
WRITERS GUILD OF AMERICA (WGA) NOMINEES
The Writers Guild announced their nominations for screen writing on Monday> TFF #46 films which were nominated were: Noah Baumbach's Marriage Story and Bong Joon-ho and Han Jin Won's Parasite in the Original Screenplay category. No TFF #46 films were named as nominees for Best Adapted Screenplay.
Other Original Script nominees were for: 1917, Booksmart and Knives Out. Adapted script nominees included: A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, The Irishman, Jojo Rabbit, Joker and Little Women.
DIRECTORS GUILD OF AMERICA (DGA) NOMINEES
Parasite's Bong Joon-ho was the only TFF #46 director named by the DGA for their Director of the Year prize. Noah Baumbach/Marriage Story, James Mangold/Ford v Ferrari, and Fernando Meirelles/The Two Popes all failed to be nominated.
The other four DGA nominees are Sam Mendes/1917, Martin Scorsese/The Irishman, Quentin Tarantino/Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood and Taika Waititi/Jojo Rabbit.
PRODUCERS GUILD OF AMERICA (PGA) NOMINEES
The ten films named as potential winners of the PGA Award for Best Picture included three TFF #46 films: Ford v. Ferrari, Marriage Story and Parasite.
The other seven PGA nominees are: 1917, The Irishman, Jojo Rabbit, Joker, Knives Out, Little Women and Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood.
Sasha Stone, founder of Awards Daily says that this tells that these results mean that the 2019 Best Picture Oscar winner is on this list of five films: 1917, The Irishman, Jojo Rabbit, Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood and Parasite.
That means that Bong Joon-ho's Parasite now stands as the best bet for re-starting Telluride's trend for having screened the Best Picture winner is Parasite.
BRITISH ACADEMY OF FILM AND TELEVISION ARTS (BAFTA)
The British version of The Oscars named their nominees on Tuesday and TFF #46 films snagged 23 nominations. Here are the Telluride films that were nominated:
Marriage Story had five: Scarlett Johansson/Best Actress, Adam Driver/Best Actor, Laura Dern/Best Supporting Actress, Noah Baumbach/Best Original Screenplay and Best Casting.
The Two Popes had five: Best British Film, Jonathan Pryce/Best Actor, Anthony Hopkins/Best Supporting Actor, Anthony McCarten/Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Casting.
Parasite had four: Best Film, Bong Joon-ho/Best Director, Bong and Jin Han Won/Best Original Screenplay and Best Film Not in the English Language.
Le Mans 66 (that's Ford v Ferrari to you and me) had three: Best Editing, Best Cinematography and Best Sound.
Judy had three: Renee Zellweger/Best Actress, Best Costumes and Best Makeup/Hair.
Single nominations came for:
Pain and Glory: Best Film Not in the English Language.
Portrait of a Lady on Fire: Best Film Not in the English Language.
Diego Maradona: Best Documentary.
Joker lead all films with 11 nominations followed closely by Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood and The Irishman with 10 nominations apiece.
OSCAR PREDICTIONS UPDATED
Here's my latest calls on the probable Oscar nominees in the categories of Costumes, Makeup and Hair and Production Design. TFF #46 films are indicated in Bold.
COSTUMES (Last predicted on Dec. 19th)
1) Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood (1)
2) Little Women (3)
3) Dolemite Is My Name (2)
4) Downton Abbey (5)
5) Rocketman (4)
6) 1917 (-)
Other possibles:Harriet, The Irishman, Judy, Jojo Rabbit
MAKEUP/HAIR (last updated Dec. 19th)
1) Bombshell (1) 2) Judy (4)
3) Rocketman (3)
4) Joker (2)
5) Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood (5)
6) 1917 (-)
Other possibles: Dolemite Is My Name, Downton Abbey, Little Women, Maleficent: Mistress of Evil
PRODUCTION DESIGN (last updated Dec. 12th)
1) Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood (1)
2) 1917 (2)
3) The Irishman (3) 4) Parasite (6)
5) Joker (5)
6) Jojo Rabbit (-)
Other possibles: Little Women, The Two Popes, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Ad Astra
MTFB IN OTHER PLACES
The latest Gurus of Gold is up at Movie City News. It's got the latest Oscar predix for Best Picture as well as a specialty poll. We were asked to give 3-5 "Unlikely Underdogs" a shout out. Among mine were an endorsement for Tracy Letts as as Best Supporting Actor for Ford v Ferrari and, in the same category, Kevin Garnett in Uncut Gems.
Meanwhile, I also have a post up over at The Script Lab. I wrote about the screenplays both adapted and original that are the most likely to be nominated next Monday morning. I name a dozen for each category and include a small rundown about the film/screenplay/writers as well as providing my latest ranking of which scripts will be nominated.
First of all a big thanks to all of you who have already sent me your ratings of the films that you saw in Telluride last weekend. The numbers have been steadily coming in but we're still at about half the level of respondents that we had last year so, if you saw films and would like to contribute to the collective evaluation of the films that played TFF #46...the polls are still open and will be until next Tuesday evening at 9:00 EDT/5:00 PDT.
As a reminder, I include the collective rating for films that have received at least a level of 25% of the maximum possible of number of people that actually do participate which means that films that don't get rated by a sufficient number of respondents won't make it into the list. My feeling is that the 25% threshold provides a large enough sample size to adequately compare ratings of film to film.
At this point it looks like some films already will have enough votes to make the list including:
The Aeronauts
The Climb
Ford v. Ferrari
Judy
Lyrebird
Marriage Story
Motherless Brooklyn
Parasite
The Report
The Two Popes
Uncut Gems
Waves
On the bubble:
A Hidden Life
Inside Bill's Brain
Pain and Glory
Other films may struggle to reach the necessary threshold to make the final list.
So keep those ratings coming in. My plan is to publish The Peoples Telluride a week from today.
Meanwhile, the Professionals are about half way in. When those ratings get published is a bit up in the air in as far as I'm waiting for a few of them to get their ratings into me.
As always, you can rate your films via any of the methods of contact listed at the bottom of this post.
TFF OSCAR PROJECT PART ONE
Not long ago I did a quick roundup of Oscar nominees in the eight main categories from Telluride films since 2005. After that process, I started thinking that someone needed to do an entire history of Telluride films and the Oscar.
For the past three months or so, I have gone back to the beginning and researched all of the Oscar nominees and winners in the 21 feature categories that were screened at Telluride prior to their nominations.
As a result, beginning today and over the next month or so, I will be presenting the Oscar History of the Telluride Film Festival. Eventually, after I get the whole history posted as a part of the dual weekly postings, I will post a new page dedicated to the one stop spot for that history.
So, I start today with the TFF Oscar Project Part One 1974-1985 (nominations for the films from a particular year's fest and wins are in parentheses):
1974 (3)
The Conversation- Picture, Original Screenplay, Sound
1981 (2)
Eight Minutes to Midnight- Documentary
Three Brothers-Foreign Language
1983 (5)
Carmen- Foreign Language
Entre Nous- Foreign Language
El Norte-Original Screenplay
Seeing Red- Documentary
Testament- Best Actress- Jane Alexander (first acting nomination from TFF)
1984 (2/1)
Camila- Foreign Language
The Times of Harvey Milk-Documentary-WON (first Oscar win from TFF)
1985 (2)
Colonel Redl- Foreign Language
The Journey of Natty Gann- Costumes
Stay tuned for the continuation of this series over the next few weeks.
DIEGO MARADONA TRAILER
Released just prior to the opening of TFF #46, the folks at HBO dropped this trailer for the documentary Diego Maradona...which examines the life and career of the world famous soccer player.
Here's that trailer from YouTube:
FULL DISCLOSURE
So, as it turns out, I was NOT perfect this year. I misread the lineup when it was released a week ago. My final list of 25 Bets included Hirokazu Kore-eda's The Truth. Somehow I thought it WAS in the lineup announcement and it wasn't. Consequently, rather than being 25 for 25 for TFF #46, MTFB was actually 24 of 25.
Over the last four years the final pre-SHOW predictions have been 93 of 95.
EMAIL: mpgort@gmail.com OR michael_speech@hotmail.com
Welcome back from the weekend and Mother's Day...hope all the mothers had a swell day.
SO MANY TRAILERS AND TEASERS
With the 72nd Cannes Film Fest opening tomorrow a number of films that will be screening dropped video over the weekend some of which are potential Telluride entrants. Also appearing was a trailer for the non-Cannes film Judy starring Renee Zellweger as Judy Garland. So today's post is largely devoted to connecting TFF fans with some of those trailers all of which are linked here via YouTube.
JUDY
Judy is set to be released Sept 27th from Roadside Attractions which was last at Telluride in 2017 with the Oscar winning (Best Actor and Original Screenplay) Manchester by the Sea.
Along with the trailer, linked here's a story about its release from: Indiewire.
FRANKIE
Ira Sachs' family drama is set to play Cannes a week from today as a part of the Palme d'Or competitive slate. The film stars Isabelle Huppert, Brendan Gleeson, Greg Kinnear and Marisa Tomei. Huppert was a TFF tribute recipient in 1986.
The film currently has no U.S. distributor or release date.
Family Romance from Werner Herzog is also playing Cannes out of competition and is scheduled to screen Saturday night. The film is set in Japan and IMDb says it is about " A man is hired to impersonate the father of a young girl".
And finally a trailer for the documentary Diego Maradona about the life of the world renowned soccer player from director Asif Kapadia. The film comes from HBO and is set for release in the U.S. on Sept. 24th putting it in a sweet spot to screen at either Telluride, Toronto or both.
While we don't have a trailer release for Terrence Malick's A Hidden Life, we do have a peek at new stills from the film that is scheduled to screen at Cannes in Palme competition on the 19th.
Here's a look a some of those images from The Film Stage:
A Hidden Life tells the true story of an Austrian World War II conscientious objector who refused to serve for the Nazis. The film is seeking U.S. distribution and a subsequent domestic release date.
