TELLURIDE #40 AND OSCAR #86
With today's post I'm going to start to try to take a look at a more comprehensive view of how this year's Telluride Festival will affect the Oscar nominations. To do this, I'll be focusing on the comprehensive predictions from some of the Oscarologists that I frequently study beginning today with the InContention potion of the HitFix website. InContention is edited by Kristopher Tapley.
What I've done is collected the predictions from InContention for every film that played at Telluride this year (and actually 4 from TFF #39). Here's what Kris and the InContention crew are currently predicting:
11 nominations (and the most for) Steve McQueen's "12 Years a Slave": Best Picture, Director, Actor, Supporting Actor, Supporting Actress, Adapted Screenplay, Cinematography, Film Editing, Original Score, Production Design and Costume.
10 nominations for Alfonso Cuaron's "Gravity": Best Picture, Director, Actress, Original Screenplay, Cinematography, Film Editing, Original Score, Sound Editing, Sound Mixing and Visual Effects.
6 nominations for The Coen Brothers "Inside Llewyn Davis": Best Picture, Director(s), Original Screenplay, Cinematography, Production Design and Sound Mixing.
5 nominations for Alexander Payne's "Nebraska": Best Picture, Director, Actor, Supporting Actress, Original Screenplay.
3 nominations for "All is :Lost": Best Actor, Sound Mixing and Sound Editing.
And single nominations for "The Invisible Woman": Costume, "Tim's Vermeer": Documentary, "The Wind Rises": Animated Feature and "Gloria": Foreign Language Film.
That's a total of 39 nominations! Additionally, four TFF #39 films are included in InContention predictions. This doesn't include the possibility of some other nominations in the "Shorts" categories.
"The Hunt" and "Wadjda" for Foreign Language Film and "Stories We Tell" and "The Act of Killing" for Documentary.
I'll take a look at Awards Daily's predictions in the next post.
INDEPENDENT SPIRIT AND TELLURIDE
The Independent Spirit Award nominations were announced on Tuesday and Telluride's 40th edition was overwhelmingly represented (TFF #39 was repped too). In all, TFF #40 films were nominated 22 times. Steve McQueen's "12 Years a Slave" led the onslaught with seven nominations: Best Feature, Director, Actor, Supporting Actress, Supporting Actor, Screenplay and Cinematography.
Alexander Payne's "Nebraska" was a close second with six nominations: Feature, Director, Actor, Supporting Actor, Supporting Actress, First Screenplay.
Other Telluride 40 films that were nominated on Tuesday included "All is Lost": Feature, Actor, Director, Cinematography. Also "Inside Llewyn Davis": Feature, Actor and Cinematography.
Also TFF #40 nominated films were "Blue is the Warmest Color" and "Gloria" for Best International Film.
TFF #39 films landing Spirit nominations included Noah Baumbach's "Frances Ha" for Best Feature and Editing. "The Hunt" was nominated for Best International Feature. "The Act of Killing" was nominated for Best Documentary. "Wadjda" was nominated for Best First Feature.
I'm personally pleased at the triumph of both "12 Years" and "Nebraska". I'm also pleased that Oscar Isaac got some love as Best Male Lead for "Inside Llewyn Davis". I'm also glad that "All is Lost" was nominated for more than Redford's incredible performance and that "Frances Ha" got some mention...though I would have liked to see it in the Best Actress and Screenplay categories as well.
NO LONGER COMING ATTRACTION
For months now I have been passing along the troubled story of "Jane Got a Gun". Initially I had it on my radar as a potential Telluride film for TFF #41 because The Weinstein Company was involved and it was originally being directed by Lynne Ramsay who has directed films that have played TFF before. Then, as the film began to have increasing difficulties with the director and then casting, I just got a little obsessive.
Now, it looks like you can wipe it off the possible Telluride list as the announcement came this week that "Jane" was going to open prior to the Telluride Festival. The Dissolve, among others, reported that it has been set for an Aug. 29, 2014 release date (which, if I have it right, is the opening day for TFF #41) so it seems you can strike "Jane Got a Gun" from your TFF #41 watch list.
Here's the link to the post from The Dissolve:
http://thedissolve.com/news/989-the-troubled-jane-got-a-gun-set-for-release-next-a/
TIM'S PRODUCER
Telluride favorite and likely Best Documentary Oscar nominee "Tim's Vermeer" producer Farley Ziegler recently talked to IndieWire about the process of tuning months worth of filming into an 80 minute film:
http://www.indiewire.com/article/watch-how-tims-vermeer-filmmakers-determined-a-runtime-with-2400-hours-of-footage
OSCAR TALKS LLEWYN
Oscar Isaac who plays Llewyn in the Coen Brothers' "Inside Llewyn Davis" sat down with Deadline's Pete Hammond to talk about the film and the music from it:
deadline.com/2013/11/oscar-isaac-inside-llewyn-davis-joel-ethan-coen-oscars/
Also, The Playlist posted the "Please Mr. Kennedy" performance from the film this morning. I think it's the funniest moment in a film that has, as you'd expect from the Coens, a lot of subversive humor. Also, it will likely remind some of you of a certain age of Larry Verne's #1 novelty hit "Please Mr. Custer". I have no doubt that that is no accident. Here's the clip from YouTube:
http://youtu.be/h9dBOi4nTm8
That's all until Monday. Have a fantastic Thanksgiving weekend and start to Hanukkah!
