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
Playing Cannes in a few weeks is the latest film from Hirokazu Kore-eda. Broker is described my IMDb as:
"Boxes that are left out for people to anonymously drop off their unwanted babies."
Seriously...that's what IMDb actually says. I have seen the film titled "Baby Broker" which gives, perhaps, a little more insight into the film.
Kore-eda played TFF in 2018 with Shoplifters. Now, with his latest film playing Cannes and competing for the Palme d'Or, we could see his return to Telluride.
Here's the recently released trailer ahead of its screening at Cannes:
Nathaniel Rogers who runs The Film Experience Blog has up his initial 2022-23 Best Picture Oscar contenders and here's what films are on it (and "in contention") that could make noise at TFF #49:
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced the nominees for the 91st Academy Awards this morning and here they are:
BEST
PICTURE
1) Roma
2) Green Book
3) A Star Is Born
4) BlacKkKlansman
5) Black Panther
6) Vice
7) Bohemian Rhapsody
8) The Favourite
BEST DIRECTION
1) Alfonso Cuaron/Roma
2) Pawel Pawlikowski/Cold War
3) Spike Lee/BlacKkKlansman
4) Adam McKay/Vice
5) Yorgos Lanthimos/The Favourite
BEST ACTRESS
1) Glenn Close/The Wife
2) Olivia Colman/The Favourite
3) Lady Gaga/A Star Is Born
4) Melissa McCarthy/Can You Ever Forgive Me?
5) Yalitza Aparicio/Roma
BEST ACTOR
1) Christian Bale/Vice
2) Rami Malek/Bohemian Rhapsody
3) Bradley Cooper/A Star Is Born
4) Viggo Mortensen/Green Book
5) Willem Dafoe/At Eternity's Gate
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
1) Regina King/If Beale Street Could Talk
2) Rachel Weisz/The Favourite
3) Emma Stone/The Favourite
4) Amy Adams/Vice
5) Marina De Tavira/Roma
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
1) Mahershala Ali/Green Book
2) Richard E. Grant/Can You Ever Forgive Me?
3) Sam Elliott/A Star Is Born
4) Adam Driver/BlacKkKlansman
5) Sam Rockwell/Vice
BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
1) Green Book
2) The Favourite
3) Roma
4) Vice
5) First Reformed
BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
1) BlacKkKlansman
2) If Beale Street Could Talk
3) Can You Ever Forgive Me?
4) A Star Is Born
5) The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
ANIMATED FEATURE
1) Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse
2) Incredibles 2
3) Isle of Dogs
4) Marai
5) Ralph Breaks the Internet
DOCUMENTARY FEATURE
1) Hale County This Morning-This Evening
2) RBG
3) Free Solo
4) Minding the Gap
5) Of Fathers and Sons
BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM
1) Roma
2) Cold War
3) Capernaum
4) Shoplifters
5) Never Look Away
CINEMATOGRAPHY
1) Roma
2) A
Star Is Born
3) Never Look Away
4) Cold War
5) The Favourite
COSTUMES
1) The Favourite
2)
Mary Poppins Returns
3)
Black Panther
4)
Mary Queen of Scots
5) The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
FILM
EDITING
1) Green Book
2) Bohemian Rhapsody
3)
Vice
4)
BlacKkKlansman
5) The Favourite
Maybe:
Bohemian Rhapsody, Black Panther
MAKEUP/HAIR
1)
Vice
2) Border
3)
Mary Queen of Scots
ORIGINAL
SCORE
1) If
Beale Street Could Talk
2) BlacKkKlansman
3)
Mary Poppins Returns
4)
Isle of Dogs
5)
Black Panther
ORIGINAL
SONG
1)
Shallow/A Star Is Born
2)
All the Stars/Black Panther
3)
I'll Fight/RBG
4) When a Cowboy Trades His Spurs for Wings/The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
5) Where Lost Things Go/Mary Poppins Return
PRODUCTION
DESIGN
1) The Favourite
2)
Mary Poppins Returns
3) First Man
4)
Black Panther
5) Roma
SOUND
EDITING
1) First Man
2) A
Quiet Place
3)
Black Panther
4) Roma
5) Bohemian Rhapsody
SOUND
MIXING
1) A
Star Is Born
2) First Man
3) Bohemian Rhapsody
4) Roma
5) Black Panther
VISUAL
EFFECTS
1) First Man
2) Christopher Robin
3)
Ready Player One
4)
Avengers: Infinity War
5) Solo: A Star Wars Story
ANIMATED
SHORT
1)
Bao
2) One Small Step
3) Weekends
4)
Late Afternoon
5)
Animal Behavior
DOCUMENTARY
SHORT
1)
Period. End of Sentence
2)
End Game
3)A Night at the Garden
4) Lifeboat
5) Black Sheep
LIVE
ACTION SHORT
1) Mother
2)
Skin
3)
Detainment
4)
Fauve
5)
Marguerite
Telluride films that were nominated were: Roma (10): Best Picture, Direction, Actress (Aparicio), Supporting Actress (De Tavira), Foreign Language Film, Original Screenplay, Cinematography, Production Design, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing The Favourite (10): Best Picture, Direction, Actress (Colman), Supporting Actress (Stone and Weisz), Original Screenplay, Cinematography, Film Editing, Production Design, Costumes
Roma and The Favourite were tied with the most nominations and the only films in double digit nominations. First Man (4): Production Design, Sound Editing, Sound Mixing, Visual Effects (Man, how could have been so off about First Man in every possible way. I thought it was headed for at least eight nominations this morning...and, of course, still thought it could stretch into the Best Picture race...) Can You Ever Forgive Me? (3): Actress (McCarthy), Supporting Actor (Grant), Adapted Screenplay Cold War (3): Foreign Language Film, Direction, Cinematography Free Solo (1): Best Documentary Shoplifters (1): Foreign Language Film Border (1): Makeup/Hair Fauve (1): Live Action Short Total nominations for TFF #45 films-34 which exceeds the average of 27-28 since I started tracking TFF Oscar nominations. Plus one from TFF #44...the Original Screenplay nomination for Paul Schrader for First Reformed. For the record I finished the morning at 78% accuracy...which is right at my normal average. For Best Pic I was 8 of 8 (because I had 10 picked). Other perfect categories for me this year: Best Actress, Animated Feature, Foreign Language Film and Production Design. My worst category this year-Film Editing where I was a measly 2 of 5. Overall I was 95/122 for the 78%. In eight categories the film I had pegged as the #6 film ended up in the nominees...so, you know, close. Biggest shockers to me... No Bradley Cooper for Directing A Star Is Born. No Won't You Be My Neighbor for Documentary. No Score nomination for First Man. Marina de Tavira getting in Supporting Actress for Roma. The love for Buster Scruggs which I'm not sure anyone saw coming. No Film Editing noms for Roma, Star or First Man I'll have more on Thursday...
Welcome to the Lull...that week between Christmas and New Years...
THE LATEST FROM GOLD DERBY
It's not a secret that I have been really pleased to be included as an "Oscar Guru" for MOvie City News' Gurus o' Gold this Oscar season but I'd also be silly to ignore the Oscarologists compendium that is Gold Derby. So, I'm not.
I took a look at their latest collective predictions and this is where there set of pros have Telluride films situated in their prognostications as 2018 comes to a close.
I am assuming nine films make the Best Picture field;
Leading the way for TFF #45 films in Gold Derby's estimation are both The Favourite and First Man. Both films are pegged fro 10 nominations. Roma is close behind with a projected eight nominations.
The Favourite is predicted for: Best Picture, Direction, Actress, Supporting Actress (for both Stone and Weisz), Original Screenplay, Cinematography, Costumes, Film Editing and Production Design.
The Derby has First Man predicted for: Best Picture, Supporting Actress, Adapted Screenplay, Cinematography, Film Editing, Production Design, Original Score, Sound Editing, Sound Mixing and Visual Effects.
Roma is picked for: Best Picture, Direction, Actress, Original Screenplay, Cinematography, Film Editing, Sound Editing and Foreign Language Film.
Can You Ever Forgive Me? is named thrice: Actress, Supporting Actor and Adapted Screenplay.
Single nominations are predicted for:
Free Solo: Best Documentary Feature
Cold War: Best Foreign Language Film
Shoplifters: Best Foreign Language Film
Caroline: Best Live Action Short
That's a total of 35 predicted nominations for TFF #45 films.
Additionally, First Reformed from TFF #44 is predicted to earn nominations for Best Actor and Best Original Screenplay.
Just a short post today as both flu and Holiday plans have meant a truncated MTFB today.
NEW GURUS
There's a new Gurus of Gold for this holiday week up at Movie City News. It covers the Big Eight categories; Picture, Direction, Actress, Actor, Supporting Actress, Supporting Actor, and Screenplays.
The Film Stage published its list of the 50 best films from 2018 over the weekend. Included on that list:
#46-The Old Man and the Gun
#34 First Man
#20 The Rider (TFF #44)
#17 The Favourite
#14 Shoplifters
#8 Cold War
#7 The Other Side of the Wind
#2 Roma
#1 First Reformed (TFF #44)
As I mentioned in my last post, the Oscar peeps named their short lists in nine categories on Monday electing to do so all in one wave rather than separately. Consequently, here's a snapshot of where films from TFF landed in the categories that were included among the nine:
Documentary (15 on the short list): Free Solo
Foreign Language (9 on the list): Birds of Passage, Shoplifters, Roma and Cold War. Missing from the list: Border and Girl.
Makeup/Hair (7 on the list): Border
Score (15 on the list): First Man
Song: (15 on the list): Revelation from Boy Erased
Visual Effects (10 on the list): First Man
Live Action Short (10 on the list): Caroline, Fauve
No TFF films were among the short listed films in the Documentary Shorts category or the Animated Shorts.
INDIEWIRE'S CRITICS' POLL FOR 2018 SAYS TFF #45 WAS GOOOOD
The crew at Indiewire have done their annual compilation of critics' assessments for the year. The massive undertaking included the responses of 232 critics and after the dust settled, films that played at Telluride in 2018 fared remarkably well.
Indiewire posted the top films and performances in a number if categories on Monday and here's where TFF films landed.
Best Film (of 10)
1. Roma
2. First Reformed (TFF #44)
4. The Favourite
5. Cold War
6. Shoplifters
Best Director
1. Alfonso Cuaron/Roma
4. Yorgos Lanthimos/The Favourite
5. Paul Schrader/First Reformed (TFF #44)
Best Actress
1. Olivia Colman/The Favourite
2. Yalitza Aparicio/Roma
4. Joanna Kulig/Cold War
5. Melissa McCarthy/Can You Ever Forgive Me?
Best Actor
1. Ethan Hawke/First Reformed (TFF #44)
Best Supporting Actress
1. Rachel Weisz/The Favourite
3. Emma Stone/The Favourite
Best Supporting Actor
2. Richard E. Grant/Can You Ever forgive Me?
Best Documentary
4. Free Solo
Best Screenplay
1. The Favourite
2. First Reformed (TFF #44)
3. Roma
4. Can You Ever Forgive Me?
In a separate piece, Imdiewire runs down the top 50 films as rated by the 232 critics that they surveyed and both TFF #45 and TFF #44 were well represented:
43) Birds of Passage
38) Lean on Pete***
35) Border
30) The Other Side of the Wind
25) Can You Ever Forgive Me?
21) First Man
11) The Rider***
6) Shoplifters
5) Cold War
4) The Favourite
2) First Reformed***
1) Roma
Sasha Stone at Awards Daily posted a passionate endorsement of Damien Chazelle's First Man on her website this week. By and large I agree with her assessment about the film and, frankly, were I a voting member of the Academy it would be at the top of my ballot.
It seems a little unusual to me that First Man hasn't performed better at the box office and during this awards season. In part because there is a group of people that experienced the film at Telluride who all feel much the same way-people that write about films for a living and that I have come to know at least a little bit. We,have all expressed our belief in the film's quality and if you follow specific media accounts, you can deduce some the people I'm referencing...Sasha being among that group.
It also seems weird that a film that scored so well on my post-festival collection of ratings from fest-goers and business insiders, hasn't connect with the wider public.
I have come to think of Telluride as a terrific bellwether for were the awards season is likely to go. I have come to the conclusion that T-ride has become an excellent microcosm of film-goers that collectively react much like the Academy will.
But it doesn't seem that way this year with this film.
Maybe this is a disconnect between the Telluride crowd and the rapidly evolving membership of the Academy as it has tried to increase its diversity over the past few years. Maybe the First Man reaction or lack thereof is an anomaly that won't repeat at TFF #46 and the track record of the last decade or so will reassert itself.
Maybe I'm just wrong. Wouldn't be the first time.
And it's not that First Man is going to be a total miss come Oscar nomination morning. It'll likely be nominated for Score, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing and Visual Effects. It may get in for Cinematography and Film Editing. Claire Foy still seems to have a shot at a Supporting Actress nomination. Even the costumes and production design could still be in the mix for nominations.
Additionally, the Broadcast Film Critics Association gave it 10 nominations last week including Best Picture and Best Direction. Oscar predictor Kristopher Tapley of Variety/InContention posted his first set of predictions last week and First Man was in seven categories including Best Picture.
But the consensus right now is that the film isn't likely to a Best Picture or Directing nominee on Jan. 22nd and that, to me, seems wrong.
Happy Thanksgiving everyone...grateful to have you along for a look at what's in MTFB today.
SHOPLIFTERS ARRIVES
Hirokazu Kore-eda's Cannes Palme d'Or winner Shoplifters opens in the U.S. this holiday weekend. The TFF #45 entrant has been a critical smash and has become one of the few films thought to be able to challenge for the foreign language Oscar against Alfonso Cuaron's Roma Pawel Pawlikowki's Cold War.
As you might expect, with its U.S. release, there has been, over the past few days, a glut of news and interviews surrounding the film.
Nicole Kidman makes a play for inclusion as Best Actress with her turn as a detective seeking redemption in Karyn Kusama's Destroyer. The film is set to open on Dec. 25th. Annapurna pictures previewed a new clip from the film this week via Indiewire.
Destroyer's official trailer is here from YouTube:
DEADLINE INTERVIEWS: GRANT AND JACKMAN
Deadline.com has a couple of interviews of recent vintage that focus on participants from TFF #45.
Joe Utichi talks to Richard E. Grant for Can You Ever Forgive Me? That's linked here.
And Utichi also filed this interview with Hugh Jackman who plays Sen. Gary Hart in The Front Runner. You can find that here.
AND THE WRAP TALKS WITH ALI ABBASI
Continuing the string of interviews with TFF #45 personal, here's an interview from this week conducted by Steve Pond of The Wrap with Ali Abbasi, the director and co-writer of Cannes Un Certain Regard winner Border.
Welcome back from the weekend and Happy Impending Halloween to all who Trick or Treat...
NEW OSCAR PREDICTIONS: FOREIGN LANGUAGE AND DOCUMENTARIES
Almost every year there is a least one Oscar category that seems like every nominee might have played Telluride. This year the Foreign Language category could go that way.
Honestly, Best Supporting Actress could as well but it's a bit more of a stretch in that category than Foreign Language.
So, here for the first time this Oscar season on MTFB is my set of opening prognostications for Best Foreign Language Film. As is usual here the films that played TFF #45 are Bold.
1) Roma 2) Cold War
3) Capernaum 4) Shoplifters
5) Burning
As you can see, at the moment I am predicting three of the five will have played TFF #45: Roma, Cold War and Shoplifters. There are a few other films that are just off this top five that could supplant some of these: Girl, Never Look Away, Birds of Passage, Border and Sunset.
Meanwhile, in the wild Feature Documentary category, these are the films that I am guessing make the top five...at least for the time being:
1) The Notorious RBG
2) Won't You Be My Neighbor
3) The Identical Strangers 4) Free Solo
5) McQueen
Others: Minding the Gap, Dark Money, The Sentence, Reversing Roe, Filmworker, Quincy, Science Fair, Whitney.
And if you missed it last week, there are new predictions up at Movie City News' Gurus of Gold for Best Picture, Actress and Supporting Actress. And, not to beat the proverbial dead horse, I'm acting as a "Guru" this year.
I am thrilled to be included with friends: Sasha Stone/Awards Daily, Tomris Laffly/RogerEbert.com, and Mark Johnson/AwardsCircuit. I'm also pleased to see Peter Howell of The Toronto Star (Peter and I have exchanged tweets and messages in the past few years about items related to the Toronto Film Fest) and Dave Karger who, among other things, appears from time to time on Turner Classic Movies, are also Gurus this year.
As we edge closer to its domestic release (Nov. 21), Sony/Columbia released an international version of the trailer for Jason Reitman's The Front Runner.
The film stars Hugh Jackman as U.S. Senator Gary Hart and follows the flame out of his 1988 Presidential bid.
Here's the new international trailer from YouTube:
The Front Runner is set to open in Sweden on Nov. 21.
INTERVIEWS: HUGH JACKMAN (THE FRONT RUNNER), JOSH SINGER (FIRST MAN) AND EVA MELANDER (BORDER)
Oscar nominee Hugh Jackman (for Les Miserables) could earn his second nomination for his work as Gary Hart in Jason Reitman's The Front Runner. Jackman was profiled over the weekend by The Hollywood Reporter in an interview that was conducted by Katie Kilkenny. That interview is linked here.
Oscar winner Josh Singer, who won the Oscar for co-writing Spotlight, and is the script writer for Damien Chazelle's First Man sat down with SlashFilm's Jack Giroux recently. SlashFilm posted the interview on Thursday and you can catch it here.
First Man is in theaters now.
Meanwhile, Eva Melander who stars in the weird and(at least at Telluride) somewhat divisive foreign film Border shared about her experiences with that film this past week wit Erik Anderson of Awards Watch.
The final list of all submitted films from around the world for consideration for the Foreign Language Oscar has been completed this week with 87 films on the final list.
Among that list of films are a good number that were a portion of the TFF #45 lineup. By nation of submission they are:
Belgium: Girl
Cambodia: Graves Without a Name
Colombia: Birds of Passage
Italy: Dogman
Japan: Shoplifters
Mexico: Roma
Poland: Cold War
Sweden: Border
Of that batch of eight films I think Roma, Cold War and Shoplifters are strong contenders to make the final five and there is a possibility that all five films that eventually get nominated will have played at Telluride.
Here is linked coverage of the list of 87 films from:
HOLLYWOOD NEWS WEIGHS IN WITH OCTOBER OSCAR PREDICTIONS
Joey Magidson posted his first big pass at Oscar predix at Hollywood News on Friday last week. It's interesting in part because he picks all 21 feature categories. Because of that we can begin to get a sense of the overall Oscar prospects for films beyond the eight major categories.
Here's the breakdown of Magidson's picks beginning with TFF #45 films with predicted nominations in parenthesis:
First Man (12): Best Picture, Direction, Actor, Supporting Actress, Adapted Screenplay, Production Design, Cinematography, Film Editing, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Visual Effects and Original Score. One other possibility is Costumes.
The Favourite (8): Best Picture, Actress, Supporting Actress, Original Screenplay, Production Design, Cinematography, Costumes and Film Editing. Also possible: Direction and Supporting Actor.
Roma (6): Best Picture, Best Foreign Language Film, Direction, Supporting Actress, Original Screenplay, Cinematography. Also possible: Film Editing. I'm more than a little surprised that Magidson doesn't have Yalitza Aparicio anywhere in his top ten for Best Actress.
Can You Ever Forgive Me? (3) Best Picture, Actress, Supporting Actor. Also possible: Adapted Screenplay.
The Front Runner (2): Best Actor, Adapted Screenplay. Also possible: Best Picture, Supporting Actress and Film Editing.
Boy Erased (1): Best Song. Also possible: Best Picture, Actor, Supporting Actress and Original Score.
Cold War (1): Best Foreign Language Film. Also possible: Best Picture, Cinematography.
Shoplifters (1): Best Foreign Language Film.
That would be a total of 34 nominations if Magidson is 100% correct.
In addition, three other TFF #45 films land in the "also possible" camp without being picked as a nominee in any category:
The Old Man and the Gun: Best Actor, Supporting Actress.
Destroyer: Best Actress.
Birds of Passage: Best Foreign Film.
That totals 19 other "possible" nominations beyond the 34 he's currently predicting.
Among the other films Magidson is picking as Best Picture nominees (besides the TFF films) A Star Is Born leads the way (and ties First Man) with 12 predicted nominations: Best Picture, Direction, Actor, Actress, Supporting Actor, Adapted Screenplay, Cinematography, Film Editing, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing and two Best Song nominations. Magidson lists no other possibles for ASIB.
Others in his BP list and their predicted nominations:
Black Panther (8): Best Picture, Production Design, Costumes, Film Editing, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Visual Effects and Song.
If Beale Street Could Talk (6): Best Picture, Direction, Supporting Actress, Adapted Screenplay, Cinematography and Original Score.
BlackKklansman (5): Best Picture, Direction, Adapted Screenplay, Film Editing and Original Score.
Vice (5): Best Picture, Actor, Supporting Actor, Supporting Actress, Original Screenplay.
Green Book (4): Best Picture, Actor, Supporting Actor, Original Screenplay
Welcome back form the first weekend of October. Fall arrived here in Oklahoma over the weekend with temps in the 90's Friday and in the 60's Saturday. Hello Autumn!
TRAILERS FOR FOREIGN FILM CONTENDERS FROM TFF #45
Both Hirokazu Kore-eda's Palme d'Or Cannes prize winning Shoplifters and Pawel Pawlikowski's Cold War which won Best Director at Cannes figure to be serious contenders for Best Foreign Language Film Oscar nominations and could give Alfonso Cuaron's Roma a run for the money to win the award. Both films had releases at the end of this past week of trailers to best their hype before their U.S. release. Cold War is dated for a Dec. 21st release whereas Shoplifters is Nov. 23rd. (By the way, it appears that Roma is likely to be released in some theaters on Dec. 14th prior to its streaming availability from Netflix , which produced the film per Indiewire).
Here is the trailer for Cold War from YouTube:
And also from YouTube, the trailer for Shoplifters:
With the release of Damien Chazelle's First Man just days away (opening Oct. 12th, this Friday), it was not surprising to see Chazelle turn up at the end of last week as Kris Tapley's guest on Variety's Playback Podcast.
Chazelle talks, of course, about his upcoming film that tells the story of Neil Armstrong (Ryan Gosling) and the first moon landing. He also talks about other topics including that famous Oscar moment from a year and a half ago.
Eric Kohn, David Ehrlich and Kate Erbland at Indiewire have compiled a list of 32 independent films that they claim are the best 32 Indies of the year thus far.
The list includes several films from TFF #44. Why only one TFF #45 Indie's you ask? Many have yet to be officially released. I suspect the list will get larger and the crew at Indiewire says as much in the article.
Included on the list from TFF #44 are:
First Reformed
The Rider
Lean on Pete
Foxtrot
A Fantastic Woman
The lone TFF #45 film so far is Free Solo which opened Sept. 28th.
Their top choice of all 32 films is Tamara Jenkins Private Life (First Reformed sits at #2).
After a week and a half of voting and rating, here is the 2018 edition of The People's Telluride. This year's TPT had 60+ respondents. That's the largest response to my call for film ratings from the attendees of the Telluride Film Festival since I started the exercise back in 2012.
As a note for clarification, I have only included films that earned ratings from at least 20% of film goers that provided me ratings so as to provide a representative sample for reasonable purposes of comparison. 16 films had enough responses to earn a spot in this year's ratings.
The People's Telluride has been a solid barometer of success for films as we enter the awards season melee. For many years, the film that was named #2 by the TPT poll won the Oscar for Best Picture. Barry Jenkins Moonlight ended that string a couple of years ago by snagging the top spot. Things returned to form last year as Guillermo Del Toro's The Shape of Water finished #2 to Greta Gerwig's Lady Bird among the People.
Here are the top rated films from the People for each year since I started doing the poll:
2012:
1) Stories We Tell (4.80)
2) Argo (4.75)
3) The Attack (4.70)
2013:
1) Tim's Vermeer (4.67)
2) 12 Years a Slave (4.55)
3) Gravity (4.40)
2014:
1) The Imitation Game (4.73)
2) Birdman (4.46)
3) Wild Tales (4.23)
2015:
1) Room (4.47)
2) Spotlight (4.45)
3) Beasts of No Nation (4.35)
2016:
1) Moonlight (4.37)
2) La La Land (4.33)
3) Maudie (4.29)
2017:
1) Lady Bird (4.38)
2) The Shape of Water (4.22)
3) Darkest Hour (4.04)
Going into this year's festival, these have been the top ten People's choices overall since 2012:
1) Stories We Tell (4.80) (12)
2) Argo (4.75) (12)
3) The Imitation Game (4.73) (14)
4) The Attack (4.70) (12)
5) Tim's Vermeer (4.67) (13)
6) 12 Years a Slave (4.55) (13)
7) Room (4.47) (15)
8) Birdman (4.46) (14)
9) Spotlight (4.45) (15)
10) Gravity (4.40) (13)
Sooo...drumroll please...here are this year's results (with the average rating following in parentheses:
1) Roma (4.47)
2) First Man (4.34)
3) Shoplifters (4.29)
4) Boy Erased (4.23)
5) Free Solo (4.19)
6) Cold War (4.02)
7) White Boy Rick (3.88)
8) Can You Ever Forgive Me? (3.81)
9) The Favourite (3.76)
10) The Front Runner (3.69)
11) Meeting Gorbachev (3.68)
12) Destroyer (3.44)
13) Trial By Fire (3.43)
14) The Old Man and the Gun (3.39)
15) Non-Fiction (Double Lives) (3.14)
16) Border (3.07)
That means that Alfonso Cuaron's Roma will join the top ten of The People's Telluride ratings tied with Lenny Abrahamson's Room from 2015.
Another tidbit for those of you who obsess over this stuff as I do...Here are what appeared to be the most watched films from TFF #45 (based on the percentage of my respondents that reported having seen the film at TFF:
1) The Favourite (78% of respondents say that they saw this film)
2) The Front Runner (70%)
3) Boy Erased (65%)
4) Roma (63%)
5) First Man (58%-tie)
5) Destroyer (58%-tie)
7) Cold War (55%)
8) Can You Ever Forgive Me? (53%)
9) White Boy Rick (50%)
10) The Old Man and the Gun (40%)
I'll have The Professionals' Telluride ratings up in Monday's post and The Composite Telluride a week from today.
BREAKING DOWN TFF #45
Now that TFF 2018 is in the books, I took a little time to inventory some of the information that helps me to come to some decisions every year. It's sort of my post-action assessment to learn lessons and trends and then apply that to the process of predicting the TFF lineup for the following year.
So, if you're interested...
33 films were announced as a part of TFF #45's main SHOW.
Film Fest Crossover:
As best as I can tell, this is the count of films that crossed over between Telluride and various other film festivals-
Toronto-17
London-10
Venice-9
Cannes-8
New York-7
Karlovy Vary-4
Berlin-1
Distributors that had films play-
Netflix-6
Fox Searchlight-3
Amazon-2
Magnolia-2
Sony/Columbia-2
And one each from: The Orchard, Neon, Focus Features, Annapurna, Universal, NatGeo, A+E, Sundance Selects, Cohen Media and Sony Pictures Classics.
Notes on the unusual from distributors-
Only one SPC film and that was late breaking acquisition The White Crow.
No A24 films after some great success in recent years at TFF.
Big showing from Netflix fueled by Roma and the excitement about Orson Welles The Other Side of the Wind.
A larger than normal presence of big studios with 3 films from Sony/Columbia and Universal.
The Usual Suspects-
The list of people that are or seem to have become "TFF Usual Suspects" for 2018 includes Damien Chazelle, Pawel Pawlikowski, Matteo Garrone, Rithy Panh, Werner Herzog, Olivier Assasyas, Mike Leigh , Alfonso Cuaron, Jason Reitman, Peter Bogdanovich, Ralph Fiennes, Charles ferguson and Yann Demange.
NEW U.K. TRAILER FOR FIRST MAN
Anton Volkov's Trailer Track website reports that Universal has released a new trailer for Damien Chazelle's First Man for the United Kingdom. Here that is from YouTube:
I GOT A NEW GIG
Though I am a little intimidated, I'm also pleased to announce that I have been invited to participate this Oscar season as one of Movie City News' Gurus of Gold.
The invitation came as a result of a recommendation made by my friend Sasha Stone who runs Awards Daily and is herself a Guru.
Here's my first chart (that's me on the far right, which will make my friends that know my political proclivities laugh really, really hard):
Thanks to Sasha for the recommendation and to Davis Poland and Ray Pride at Movie City News for giving me this opportunity. I'll try not to screw this up.
That's your MTFB for this Thursday. More on Monday including The Professionals' Telluride.
EMAIL: mpgort@gmail.com OR michael_speech@hotmail.com
