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
We got our first video image of Terrence Malick's latest film this week. A Hidden Life is set to compete for the coveted Palme d"or at Cannes' 72nd Film Festival with its premiere screening scheduled for Sunday night.
A Hidden Life (previously called Radegund) tells the story of a young Austrian who is punished by the Nazi regime in World War II for claiming to be a conscientious objector.
The Film Stage linked the teaser, and it is only a teaser as it runs a meager 15 seconds. Here it is via YouTube:
You have to hand it Ken Burns and his production company, Florentine Films. They have been very busy promoting his upcoming multi-part documentary called Country Music for a while now.
That has extended to a recent interview with Melissa Newman for Billboard that was up this week.
Burns discusses a wide range of topics concerning the 16+ hour, eight episode mini-series that will run in its entirety over two weeks in September (following TFF #46) on PBS.
The dating of the initial PBS screening works well to anticipate Burns' return to Telluride and also that there is a reasonable chance that at least some of the documentary will screen as a part of the film fest.
80 year old American film master Francis Ford Coppola continues work on his latest passion project. Megalopolis has been on Coppola's mind for decades and was derailed, at least in part, by the events of Sept. 11, 2001.
The latest news this week was that Coppola has actively moved into the casting phase for the project and the two names being dangled in a number of outlets were Jude Law and Shia LaBeouf..
Good Thursday friends...Yesterday was a busy day for film news...and that's an understatement!
ROMA ANNOUNCED FOR NY...VENICE NAMES FIRST MAN AS OPENER...READING THE SIGNS
The New York Film Fest announced yesterday that its centerpiece film will be Alfonso Cuaron's much anticipated Roma.
The film was listed in announcements, however , as its "New York premiere" which tells you a few things...
It won't be the film's world premiere...that could be at Venice. It also means, because it isn't the film's North American premiere, that the film will have played prior to its NY October date somewhere in North America and likely, because its named a New York preem, that it will have played somewhere in the U.S. That probably means Telluride or Los Angeles. Telluride is the more likely due to Cuaron's presentation of Gravity there in 2013 and also, probably because his buddies Alejandro Inarritu and Guillermo Del Toro have had great success there.
Does it guarantee a T-ride play...No. But it does make it much more likely.
I had Roma listed last week on the Ten Bets listed in the #9 spot. Don't be surprised if it's higher on the new Ten Bets coming tomorrow.
Linked coverage of the NYFF announcement is here from:
Both The Playlist and Entertainment Weekly specifically mention Telluride as a destination for the film.
Roma is being handled by Netflix...Who just hired Awards Consultant Lisa Taback yesterday. Those who follow Oscar season will recognize Taback's name. The hire means that Netflix is planning to play hard this awards season.
Meanwhile...in Venice news...
Venice has announced that its opening night film will be Damien Chazelle's First Man starring Ryan Gosling as Neil Armstrong.
The designation that First Man will open Venice absolutely does not preclude a shot at TFF #45. As matter of fact, Chazelle's La La Land opened Venice in 2016 and followed that with a Telluride presentation. Alexander Payne's Downsizing did the same thing last year and Guillermo Del Toro's The Shape of Water also played both places. Past Telluride films that also opened Venice include Birdman, Gravity and Black Swan.
The Playlist suggests that a Telluride play is likely.
Meanwhile, tweets from Toronto Star critic Peter Howell and Awards Daily's Sasha Stone also suggest Telluride is a good possibility for First Man:
Howell:
Stone:
Here's additional linked coverage of the Venice announcement from:
Venice will announce the bulk of its lineup on July 25th.
MALICK'S RADEGUND AT FESTS
An interview with actor Matthias Schoenaerts appears to confirm that the latest film from auteur Terrence Malick is likely to appear at fall festivals and have a fall release date. In an interview with The Independent, Schoenaerts says that Radegund, a film based on actual incidents from World War II in which a German conscientious objector is persecuted for his beliefs, is going to premiere at a fall festival or festivals. Most speculation about which focuses on Venice and Toronto but a Telluride play is not completely outside the realm of possibility.
I have to tell you that this is the first Malick film that I have been excited about since The Tree of Life.
Radegund currently has no distribution or release date set.
The last couple of days were very busy in terms of new trailers appearing. Of note, in as far as Telluride observers might be concerned were the first for Joel Edgerton's gay conversion therapy drama Boy Erased starring Lucas Hedges, Nicole Kidman, Russell Crowe and Edgerton.
Here it is from YouTube:
Boy Erased is distributed by Focus Features and is scheduled for release on Nov. 2nd.
Linked coverage is here for the trailer's release from:
Meanwhile, Universal has released a new trailer for Robert Zemeckis' Welcome to Marwen was released yesterday by Universal. The film's first trailer apparently did not strike the chord that Uni wanted when it was released a month ago. To that end, another has dropped. Again for YouTube:
Linked coverage is here for the Marwen trailer release from The Playlist and SlashFilm.
ANNOUNCEMENTS COMING SOON
New York kicked it off yesterday with its announcement about Roma as its Centerpiece. Venice added to the fun by announcing its opening night film. Now, prepare for an onslaught of film fest announcements to come next week from Toronto and Venice and all of the clues that will result.
By Friday of next week, we should know a lot more about what films are playing which fests and by inference, many films that will play at TFF #45.
It will be one of the more exciting weeks of the year for Telluride watchers and you can get all of the best guess analysis about what it all means right here at Michael's Telluride Film Blog.
That's all for today...come back tomorrow for more including the 4th edition of MTFB's Ten Best for TFF 2018.
EMAIL: mpgort@gmail.com OR michael_speech@hotmail.com
