Ten Bets #3 for TFF #48 / Thinking Val is a Possible / Teasers and Trailers from Cannes

 TEN BETS FOR TFF #48

Another week closer and a few alterations to this week's Ten Bets,  Here's where I was last week:

1) The Power of the Dog/Campion

2) Muhammad Ali/Burns. Burns and McMahon

3) The Story of Looking/Cousins

4) Madres Paralelas (Parallel Mothers)/Almodovar

5) The Card Counter/Schrader

6) The Storms of Jeremy Thomas/Cousins

7) Nightmare Alley/Del Toro

8) A Hero/Farhadi

9) The Velvet Underground/Haynes

10) Cow/Arnold

Other Possibles: Dune, Julia, Mothering Sunday, Petite Maman, Where Is Anne Frank?, Paris 13th District and The Eyes of Tammy Faye, Blonde and Bergman Island.

After this last week, here's the look at my latest Ten Bets:

1) The Power of the Dog/Campion

2) Muhammad Ali/Burns. Burns and McMahon

3) Something(s) from Mark Cousins***

4) Madres Paralelas (Parallel Mothers)/Almodovar

5) The Card Counter/Schrader

6) The Velvet Underground/Haynes

7) Nightmare Alley/Del Toro

8) A Hero/Farhadi

9) Val/Poo, Scott

10) Mothering Sunday/Husson

Other Possibles: Dune, Julia,  Petite Maman, Where Is Anne Frank?, Paris 13th District and The Eyes of Tammy Faye, Blonde, Cow, House of Gucci, The Last Duel and Bergman Island.

***With what appears now to be three separate projects that could play at Telluride, you have to think Cousins is there with something and maybe all things:

The Story of Looking

The Storms of Jeremy Thomas

The Story of Film: The Next Generation

Will update again next Thursday.

THINKING VAL IS POSSIBLE

A flurry of positive responses out of Cannes and the combo of A24 and Amazon Studios is making me think a TFF bid for the documentary Val-about actor Val Kilmer- could be in the offing.  You can see above how serious I am as I included the film as one of this week's Ten Bets at #9.

The doc reportedly makes use of hundreds of hours of footage shot by Kilmer himself.

Here's the Cannes trailer from YouTube:

TEASERS AND TYRAILERS FROM CANNES

In addition to the Val trailer, here's a sampling of other teasers and trailers out as a result of Cannes' kickoff that could also play Telluride.  All clips via YouTube:

WHERE IS ANNE FRANK

THE VELVET UNDERGROUND

DECEPTION

LAMB

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LATE BREAKING: TFF CHOSES BARRY JENKINS AS 2021 GUEST DIRECTOR / Little Late and a Little Short / This and That

LATE BREAKING: TFF CHOSES BARRY JENKINS AS 2021 GUEST DIRECTOR

From the TFF press release:

Los Angeles, CA – Telluride Film Festival, presented by National Film Preserve LTD., is proud to announce Academy Award-winning director Barry Jenkins as its 2021 Guest Director. The celebrated filmmaker is set to select a series of films to present at the 48h Telluride Film Festival running September 2 - 6, 2021. 

Festival organizers annually select one of the world’s great film enthusiasts to join them in the creation of the Festival’s program lineup. The Guest Director serves as a key collaborator in the Festival’s programming decisions, bringing new ideas and overlooked films to Telluride. In keeping with Telluride Film Festival tradition, Jenkins’s film selections, along with the rest of the Telluride lineup, will be kept secret until Opening Day.

“Each year as we think about who a good Guest Director would be, Tom and I weigh different factors,” said executive director Julie Huntsinger. “Many are based in the intellectual realm: film knowledge, appreciation and, of course, serious talent. But our recipe always includes something more ephemeral – something that has to do with the quality of the human heart. Rare is the person who exceeds on each of these criteria. Barry Jenkins checks every box and more. We feel lucky and a little incredulous that our long-time friend and very talented colleague has agreed to join us as Guest Director this year. The whole world knows of Barry’s gifts, and we’re thrilled that he is taking the time to share the films he loves in a place with the people who love him dearly.”

Academy Award winner Barry Jenkins’ feature film debut, MEDICINE FOR MELANCHOLY, was hailed as one of the best films of 2009 by The New York Times and received several Independent Spirit and Gotham Award nominations. In 2019, along with playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney, Jenkins received an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for his second feature the Academy Award and Golden Globe winning Best Picture MOONLIGHT. As well as earning eight Academy Award nominations, ten Broadcast Critics Choice Awards nominations, six Golden Globe nominations and four BAFTA nominations, MOONLIGHT won Best Picture and Director at the Gotham Awards and Best International Film by the British Independent Film Awards. In addition to NYFCC and NBR awarding Jenkins Best Director and LAFCA naming him Best Director and the film Best Picture, Jenkins received a DGA Best Director nomination and won the WGA Award for Best Original Screenplay. His third feature, the adaptation of James Baldwin’s IF BEALE STREET COULD TALK went on to receive three Academy Award nominations and won Best Picture at the Independent Spirit Awards. Jenkins also received the Independent Spirit Award for Best Director. Jenkins’ next feature film projects include a follow up to THE LION KING for Walt Disney Studios as well as a biopic of famed choreographer, Alvin Ailey, for Searchlight Pictures.

For television, Jenkins directed an episode in the first season of the Netflix Original Series DEAR WHITE PEOPLE. His most recent project for television is the critically acclaimed adaptation of Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner Colson Whitehead’s THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD for Amazon. Jenkins has directed all episodes and written a number of the screenplays. Upcoming work includes a script based on the life of the first American Female Olympic boxing champ Clarissa “T-Rex” Shields as well as an adaptation of Netflix’s original documentary, VIRUNGA, about the battle to save the Congo’s mountain gorilla population.

My first Telluride was the 29th festival, in 2002. In the time since, I've done many things at the festival both high -- opening the Werner Herzog Cinema as Ringmaster and, of course, the world premiere of Moonlight -- and low (rolling up the floor of the Max at festival's end was a rite of passage). When I was approached about curating the Filmmakers of Tomorrow program many years ago, I was honored to be invited deeper into the inner workings of the festival I loved so dearly; being invited to curate a program as Guest Director is an honor my 2002 self would never imagine. We've all been tucked away in our silos longing for the day when we can safely venture out into communal spaces to once again partake in the rituals of cinema we love so dearly. I never doubted that the show would once again go on. But having a role in what is shown? Yes, that is quite the honor indeed. My thanks to Tom and Julie for bestowing this wonderful gift upon me. I'll see everyone at the SHOW. 

Past Guest Directors include Pico Iyer, Jonathan Lethem, Joshua Oppenheimer, Volker Schlöndorff, Rachel Kushner, Guy Maddin, Caetano Veloso, Michael Ondaatje, Alexander Payne, Salman Rushdie, Peter Bogdanovich, B. Ruby Rich, Phillip Lopate, Errol Morris, Bertrand Tavernier, John Boorman, John Simon, Buck Henry, Laurie Anderson, Stephen Sondheim, G. Cabrera Infante, Peter Sellars, Don DeLillo, J.P. Gorin, Edith Kramer and Slavoj Žižek.

 The Guest Director program is sponsored by Turner Classic Movies (TCM). Considered throughout the industry as one of the leading authorities on classic film, the network presents great films, uncut and commercial-free, highlighting the entire spectrum of film history. 

 For more information about Telluride Film Festival, visit www.telluridefilmfestival.org.

 LITTLE LATE AND A LITTLE SHORT

Pardon the later than normal posting time for todays' MTFB.  Also pardon it's brevity.  I'm working this week as a part of the staff for the National Speech and Debate Association's National Tournament.  High School students from across the nation and even from around the world are competing remotely to be national champions in a number of events.  We'll wrap up on Saturday.

THIS AND THAT

Here's a summary of a couple of items of interest regarding the 48th Telluride Film Festival:

1) Chances that Wes Anderson's The French Dispatch screening at Telluride  seem to have dimmed this week as an alert MTFB fan sent along an article from The Playlist that labels its already announced New York Film Fest screening as its "American Premiere" which would likely indicate a slot at Toronto but not Telluride.  NYFF also claimed that the film will host the U.S. Premiere as a part of a link to their announcement back in late May.  The link to that statement is: https://www.filmlinc.org/nyff2021/announcements/

2) Dune will play Venice...which could mean that it then makes the trip across the Atlantic to bow at Telluride.  Dune's screening date, however, is claimed to set for Sept. 3rd which doesn't preclude a Venice/Telluride double play but makes it a little trickier.  Indiewire is reporting the Sept. 3rd date.

3) Check out some conversations about Muhammad Ali that are a precursor to the Ken Burns' documentary about the late boxing champion that I suspect will part of the TFF #48 lineup.  You can find that link here.

4) Sean Penn's Flag Day won't rise at Telluride.  The film now has an announced release date of August 13th.

5) Here's a conversation featuring Guillermo Del Toro and Bradley Cooper about Nightmare Alley...which is still on  my list of possible TFF #48 titles.  

That's all for today...

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Indiewire's Cannes Analysis Intrigues / Exploring Amazon / Images from Cannes Films / The Greatest at T-ride?

 INDIEWIRE'S CANNES ANALYSIS INTRIGUES

As I do each year, once the dust had settled from the announcement of the Cannes lineup last Thursday, I began looking at what industry focused websites were saying about the films chosen and not chosen trying to glom onto some nuggets that could point the way to possible Telluride titles.  The most intriguing, to me at any rate, was Eric Kohn's piece for Indiewire.  Here are some nuggets of interest from that article for those of us who are Telluride junkies.

1) The French Dispatch news...If you've been reading here the last couple of years, you've likely picked up on the notion that I'm hot to see this film play T-ride.  Wes Anderson snuck Rushmore into Telluride in 1998 and hasn't been back since.  I have been thinking that there was a chance that Anderson might return to Telluride last year and then again this year with the film and Kohn adds some fuel to that fire as he writes:

"Cannes held the door open for... titles that wanted to wait. “The French Dispatch,” Wes Anderson’s imaginary vision of 20th-century journalists, has been one of Searchlight’s most promising new titles for some time. The movie was set for a Cannes premiere last year and would have later played Telluride"

Yes indeed, Kohn reports that "Dispatch" would have played TFF #47 had it happened.  To me that suggests the possibility that last year's plan could become this year's reality.  Other factors suggesting that it might play: From Searchlight, already announced fall release date post-Telluride (Oct. 22) and no suggestion of its premiere status re: its announced play at the New York Film Fest.

2) Films NOT in Cannes (barring something still to be announced-and there are other films that are still to be announced):

Dune

Soggy Bottom

The Power of the Dog

The Card Counter

Spencer

All or none of which might land a slot at Venice and then???

3) A couple of docs to keep an on: Kohn mentions a few documentaries that we maybe should keep an eye on moving toward Labor Day weekend.

The Val Kilmer doc "Val" is one.  Andrea Arnold's Cow, Todd Haynes The Velvet Underground and Oliver Stone's JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass all seem like possibilities.

The complete Indiewire story is linked here.

EXPLORING AMAZON

My look at film distributors that have had a significant presence at Telluride over the past five years continues today with Amazon Studios.

Here's their complete past at TFF:

2016: Manchester by the Sea

2017: Wonderstruck

2018: Cold War. Peterloo

2019: The Aeronauts, The Report

2020: All In; The Fight for Democracy

Best shots at TFF #48:

The Electrical Life of Louis Wain

Being the Ricardos (if it's done)

Val (see above)

AND...if the MGM deal is done and Amazon has control of the MGM inventory???  In play could be:

The Untitled Paul Thomas Anderson project (Soggy Bottom)

Ridley Scott's House of Gucci

George Miller's Three Thousand Years of Longing

Joe Wright's Cyrano

IMAGES FROM CANNES FILMS

The Film Stage has put together a collection of images from a number of the films that were announced for Cannes last week including some for films that might make the cut for TFF #48.

Examples: The French Dispatch:

And Andrea Arnold's Cow:

Check out some of the other images at The Film Stage linked here.

THE GREATEST AT T-RIDE?

Over the weekend I saw that PBS had dropped a teaser for the latest documentary from Ken Burns; Florentine Films: Muhammad Ali.

The teaser reveals that the doc will land on Sept. 19th which suggests that we could have a shot a seeing it in the San Juans over Labor Day weekend.

Here's the link to the teaser imbedded in a Tweet from PBS:

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