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
We "opened" the first ever Telluride Film Festival at Home last night with the first film we ever saw at the The SHOW, Alejandro Inarittu's Babel.
I've mentioned the story before, but briefly we got to attend the 2006 festival due to the kindness of a couple of my former students. We didn't have a clue what we were about to experience. We actually didn't get to Telluride until Saturday afternoon (I had obligations on Friday night). I had seen a little bit about Babel before we got on the road that weekend, and on Saturday evening we thought that seemed like the most attractive prospect. Lined up at the Chuck...which meant we also had to figure out its specific W2 process. We got in after some interesting conversation with people online and got settled.
Then the ringmaster brought out Inarittu to introduce the film. I had no idea that that would happen. That was the moment I was hooked. The notion that I was going to be able to see this film with the director in attendance (and answering questions afterwards). Yes please.
We had been provided about half a dozen individual passes for the weekend and used them to see:
Babel
Directed by John Ford
Fur
The Lives of Others
Venus
Volver
Here it is. My planned viewing over the next few days as the Mrs. and I celebrate the Telluride Film Festival that could not be by re-visiting some of our favorite films that we've seen from TFFs since we began attending in 2006.
I estimate that between the two of us, my wife and I have seen something more than 150 films that have been screened at Telluride over the past 14 years. From that list, I whittled down to 35+ films and then we both selected 10ish films each. About half a dozen made both of our lists and then we added two each plus a special addition of Alejandro Inarritu's Babel-the first film we saw in 2006 at TFF #33
Included is my "programming" for the next few days with the caveat that the following is what we intend to do but just like the real Telluride Film Festival...you never know how circumstances will alter your plans.
Drumroll please...
9/3THURS.BABEL (‘06 #33)
9/4FRI. FIRST MAN (‘18 #45), FRANCES HA (‘12 #39)
9/5SAT. 12 YEARS A SLAVE (‘13 #40), THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY(‘07 #34), LADY BIRD (‘17 #44)
And while we're on the subject of Telluride lists...here's my list of the 10 films from TFF #47's announced list that I would have likely sought out had the fest actually happened and I had been in The Ride (in alpha order):
All In: The Fight for Democracy
Ammonite
The Bee Gees: How Do You Mend a Broken Heart
Charlatan
The Duke
The Father
Mainstream
MLK/FBI
Nomadland
The Truffle Hunters
How about you? What would you have tried to get in?
LISTS FROM OTHERS
As promised, I am including "Telluride at Home" lists from friends who have responded to me over the last ten days or so.
From MTFB friend Jack Wertzberger:
So here, on an equal level are my top ten since 2006:
Moonlight
4 months, 3 weeks, 2 days
Nebraska
Slumdog Millionaire
Parasite
California Typewriter
Roma
The Lives of Others
Seymour
La La Land
Films I wish I had seen:
He Named Me Malala
Mr Turner
First Cow
Peggy Guggenheim
Love, Cecil
Biggest Little Farm
Eyes of Orson Welles
Judy
Uncut Gems
Carmichael & Shane
Jack's list and mine don't overlap but I can say a ton of his were nearly on mine including near misses: La La Land, Moonlight, Slumdog and Nebraska.
MTFB friend and "tiffgraffer" Rich Young:
As I mourn for many things this year, including TIFF and TFF, I hope you’re well. Here’s my list of Telluride faves from my years of attendance:
Anomalisa 15
The Artist 11 (with my 9 and 13 year old kids, transfixed in the open air screening)
Best of Youth 03 (fun banter in line with multiple directors over 2 successive midnight screenings)
Blue Is the Warmest Colour 13
The Descendants 11
Dogville 03
Inside Llewyn Davis 13
LadyBird 17
Lost In Translation 03
Son of Saul 15
Under The Skin 13
Rich and I both included Lady Bird and The Artist.
The very kind and thoughtful friend of the blog Chris Schneider:
So here is my list. Some I want to revisit and some I just haven't seen yet. I'm going to settle in this weekend and make my way through the list.
Frances Ha 2012
Inside Llewyn Davis 2013
Tim's Vermeer 2013
Wild Tales 2014
Foxcatcher 2014
Carol 2015
Hitchcock/Truffaut 2015
Toni Erdmann 2016
Moonlight 2016
The Cotton Club Encore 2017
The Rider 2017
First Man 2018
Portrait of a Lady on Fire 2018
First Cow 2019
Bonus flick in case I'm needing a late night bust of energy: Uncut Gems 2019
Chris and I double up on Frances Ha, Wild Tales and First Man.
And from longtime MTFB reader and friend Patrick Pringle:
Here is the combined list from Patrick and I. It’s a bit weird. In no particular order...
Stories We Tell
The Insult
A Separation
Parasite
Biggest Little Farm
The Descendants
The Lyrebird
Ladybird
Marriage Story
Spotlight
So Patrick and I would be in the same theater for A Separation and Lady Bird.
MC CARTHY REMINISCES
Todd McCarthy, formerly of The Hollywood Reporter and currently of Deadline.com penned a wonderful look back at his time at the Telluride Film Festival on Wednesday. McCarthy first attended TFF in 1976-that was TFF #3.
The Venice Film Festival is underway in Italy. As many MTFB readers know, there has been, especially in the past few years, a significant overlap of films that screen both at Venice and Telluride and that remained true for this Covid-impacted year.
Nearly a quarter of the feature films on TFF's announced list for what would have been TFF #47 are going to screen in some form as a part of the Venetian fest over the next several days.
The Playlist published a list and descriptions this week (on Monday) of what they termed "Must see" films. I culled that article to determine what films the two fests would have shred that made that list and they were:
A couple of international films that would have played as a part of the lineup that was announced list for TFF #47 dropped trailers this week.
Christos Nikou's Apples, which will screen as a part of the Venice Film Festival, released the following trailer on Friday (from You Tube):
And from director Malgorzata Szumowska' Never Gonna Snow Again (also a Venice title) had a teaser release on Tuesday:
And also ahead of its debut at bothe Venice and Toronto, Gianfranco Rosi's documentary, Notturno, also has an international trailer. Thanks to my buddy Alex Billington at FirstShowing.net who posted this news yesterday.
TELLURIDE AT HOME-PART TWO
I'm passing along a couple more lists that I've gotten for folks that have accepted my challenge to curate their own replacement TFF #47 film fest in their own homes over the upcoming Labor Day weekend.
What I've suggested is for folks to pick 10-12 films from past Telluride Film Fests that are either films they'd like to re-visit or films that screened at Telluride but were missed.
I've completed my list of 11 (actually, a cooperative effort with the wife) and I'll be revealing mine in Thursday's post. The Mrs. and I have chosen 11 films that we first saw at Telluride and will be seeing again...many being repeated for the first time since seeing them at TFF.
So, if you'd like to play and share your choices, feel free to drop me a line about what films you've curated for your very own TFF #47 at Home. The deadline to get me your list is Wednesday at 6:00pm EDT.
Here are a couple of more lists that have been sent to me. First is from my brother Jim who categorized two lists, one for narrative features and another for documentaries:
Top 10 Virtual TFF 48 list – Combining Documentaries & Movies
Films (Alphabetic)
Black Mass
Darkest Hour
Hostiles
La La Land
Marguerite
Motherless Brooklyn
Spotlight
The Aeronauts
The Last Vermeer
Toni Erdmann
Documentaries (Alphabetic)
California Typewriter
Chasing Train
Eagle Huntress
Filmworker
Free Solo
Inside Bill’s Brain
Jerry Lewis: The Man Behind the Clown
Reversing Row
Spheres VR Experience
And from friend of the blog Jim Brooks...his list of ten films for his Telluride at Home:
1 La La Land
2 Hostiles
3 Parasite (my wife saved a seat, and when I sat down, on the other side of the seat saved was none other than Mr. Telluride predictor, Michael Patterson, in the back row of the balcony of the Palm!)
4 Free Solo (Incredible!!!!! thanks to Telluride I revisited that in Imax when it was released in the fall.)
5 The Two Popes
6 Moonlight
7 First Man
8 Cold War
9 Toni Erdmann (last film of 2016, took a chance at the Chuck, and really enjoyed it!)
10 Frantz
Jim has also done some serious work as he is tracking down where some TFF films can be streamed:
Dogman (Hulu)
Roma (Netflix)
Angels Are Made of Light (iTunes)
Peterloo (Amazon Prime)
Nonfiction (Amazon Prime)
Graves Without a Name (iTunes)
The Other Side of the Wind (Netflix)
Border (Hulu)
Dovlatov (Netflix)
Biggest Little Farm (Amazon)
Girl (Netflix)
Free Solo (hulu, Amazon)
Ghost Fleet (Amazon)
Shoplifters (Hulu)
The Great Buster (Amazon, YouTube)
Birds of Passage (Amazon)
Neruda (Amazon)
Things to Come (Amazon)
Lost in Paris (Amazon)
Una (Netflix)
Frantz (Amazon)
Chasing Trane (Netflix)
Into the Inferno (Netflix)
The Ivory game (Netflix)
Finding Oscar (Amazon, YouTube, AppleTV)
California Typewriter (Hulu)
Bright Lights (Amazon, HBO)
The Assistant (Amazon)
KATE WINSLET TALKS AMMONITE
Oscar winner Kate Winslet's latest film, the much buzzed about Ammonite, is about to screen as a part of the Toronto International Film Festival (Sept. 11). The film was one of the 29 that was announced as a film that would have played Telluride had the festival happened. It was also a Cannes choice.
Prior to the film's debut, Winslet talked to Tatiana Siegel writing for The Hollywood Reporter about AMmonite and her career.
Last Monday I suggested that those of us that will be missing being at the 47th Telluride Film Festival might curate our own TFF's right at home.
That's what the Mrs. and I will be doing in about a week. We'll be choosing 10 or so films that we've either seen at TFF in our 14 years of attending or films that played at TFFs during those fests but that we missed and have never caught up with. I'll be posting our list a week from today. We're even going so far as to trying to replicate meals from some of our favorite places to eat in Telluride and Mountain Village.
I also invited you readers to join the party and program your own TFF #47 using the same guidelines I listed above and then drop me a note about what films you included. My plan is to post and maybe even tweet the TFF #47 lists I get. So send those to me in any of the variety of contact methods listed at the bottom of this post.
I also reached out specifically to some acquaintances to see what they might program. I already have some responses from that quarter.
Eric Kohn from Indiewire was the first to respond with this list:
The Act of Killing
12 Years a Slave
Moonlight
Uncut Gems
Can You Ever Forgive Me?
Anomalisa
Lady Bird
Starred Up
Stories We Tell
Heart of a Dog
Scott Feinberg from The Hollywood Reporter says:
Here are my 10 most memorable Telluride screenings — not necessarily the greatest movies that played at Telluride, but the ones that I most enjoyed seeing for the first time at that fest, which I began attending in 2011
1.Gravity (2013)
2.45 Years (2015)
3.The Artist (2011)
4.Argo (2012)
5.12 Years a Slave (2013)
6.Spotlight (2015)
7.Moonlight (2016)
http://8.Free Solo (2018)
http://9.Red Army (2014)
10.Toni Erdmann (2016)
Kris Tapley, formerly of InContention and Variety was very enthusiastic:
My first year was 2009. Keeping it to 30:
AMOUR (Michael Haneke, 2012)
ANOMALISA (Duke Johnson and Charlie Kaufman, 2015)
ANOTHER YEAR (Mike Leigh, 2010)
ARGO (Ben Affleck, 2012)
BIRDMAN (Alejandro G. Iñárritu, 2014)
BLACK SWAN (Darren Aronofsky, 2010)
FIRST MAN (Damien Chazelle, 2018)
FOXCATCHER (Bennett Miller, 2014)
GRAVITY (Alfonso Cuarón, 2013)
HOSTILES (Scott Cooper, 2017)
INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS (Joel and Ethan Coen, 2013)
LADY BIRD (Greta Gerwig, 2017)
LA LA LAND (Damien Chazelle, 2016)
MARRIAGE STORY (Noah Baumbach, 2019)
MOONLIGHT (Barry Jenkins, 2016)
THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND (Orson Welles, 2018)
PARASITE (Bong Joon-ho, 2019)
A PROPHET (Jacques Audiard, 2009)
ROMA (Alfonso Cuarón, 2018)
A SEPARATION (Asghar Farhadi, 2011)
'71 (Yann Demange, 2014)
SHAME (Steve McQueen, 2011)
SON OF SAUL (László Nemes, 2015)*
SPOTLIGHT (Tom McCarthy, 2015)
STEVE JOBS (Danny Boyle, 2015)
UNCUT GEMS (Josh and Benny Safdie, 2019)
UP IN THE AIR (Jason Reitman, 2009)
WAVES (Trey Edward Shults, 2019)
THE WAY BACK (Peter Weir, 2010)
WILD TALES (Damián Szifron, 2014)
And some special screenings I adored:
AGUIRRE, THE WRATH OF GOD (Herzog Theater Christening)
APOCALYPSE NOW (40th Anniversary)
BARAKA (Guest Director Selection)
A TRIP TO THE MOON AND BEYOND (Serge Bromberg Restoration)
More to come as we get closer to what would have been TFF #47 weekend. SEND ME your "Telluride at Home" list of 10 films!
AMMONITE HAS A TRAILER
One of the buzziest of titles on Telluride's list of films that would have played had the fest been able to occur is Francis Lee's Ammonite starring Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan. Neon (who distributed last year's Best Picture Oscar winner-Parasite) released a trailer for the film earlier this week. Here that is from YouTube:
The Hollywood Reporter, among others, provided coverage of the release of the trailer. That is linked here.
Ammonite is set to be screened at the Toronto International Film Festival.
THE TRUFFLES HUNT UP MORE FESTING
TFF #47 selected documentary The Truffle Hunters is on a roll as we found out this week that the film had been added to the Toronto lineup and had also been selected for the San Sebastian Film Festival.
Indiewire's Kate Erbland reported the TIFF addition on Tuesday. Also added were a number of "conversations" including one between Claie Denis and Telluride favorite Barry Jenkins.
There had been hints that Telluride might schedule another "special event" after originally announcing that the fest would screen Chloe Zhao's Nomadland at a drive-in location in Los Angeles on Sept. 11.
That seems to be a special screening of the voting rights documentary All In: The Fight for Democracy. The film will be screened in conjunction withe the Mill Valley Film Festival on Sept. 2/next Wednesday.
According to the press release:
Mill Valley Film Festival (MVFF) Director/Founder Mark Fishkin and Telluride Film Festival (TFF) Executive Director Julie Huntsinger announced the World Premiere of the Amazon Original All In: The Fight for Democracy, to be screened Wednesday, September 2 in the SF Bay Area at the West Wind Solano Twin Drive-In located in Concord.
“We are delighted to be presenting the World Premiere of All In: The Fight for Democracy, and partnering with our long-time friends at the Telluride Film Festival,” said Mark Fishkin. “All In: The Fight for Democracy is a film for our times and also timeless; the subject matter could not be more important as we enter this election season. The ability of a great film to not only create empathy, but to activate a cause can never be underestimated. It’s also the personal story of Stacey Abrams, who has devoted her life to equity and a democratic society. All In, the Fight for Democracy, is all that, and so much more.”
Julie Huntsinger adds, “How incredible it is to be able to share the important message of a singular woman - the one and only Stacey Abrams! Lisa Cortes and Liz Garbus have created an exhilarating portrait of Stacey and the fight against voter suppression. This is a film for everyone and we hope our spotlight leads to many others.”
Fishkin also announced that the 43rd Mill Valley Film Festival (MVFF) will take place Thursday, October 8– Sunday, October 18, 2020 online and in drive-in locations.
Staying connected has rarely been more important than now, during this crucial time of social distancing and social turmoil. The Mill Valley Film Festival will continue to provide a beacon of connection, information, and inspiration through the power of visual storytelling. Utilizing digital platforms, virtual cinema, and nightly drive-in events, MVFF43 will offer a selection of film screenings, online conversations, workshops, and panels to our loyal audience here in the Bay Area, as well as new audiences around the nation.
About All In: The Fight for Democracy
In anticipation of the 2020 presidential election, ALL IN: THE FIGHT FOR DEMOCRACY examines the often overlooked, yet insidious issue of voter suppression in the United States The film interweaves personal experiences with current activism and historical insight to expose a problem that has corrupted our democracy from the very beginning. With the perspective and expertise of Stacey Abrams, the former Minority Leader of the Georgia House of Representatives, the documentary offers an insider’s look into laws and barriers to voting that most people don’t even know are threats to their basic rights as citizens of the United States.
The film will launch globally on Prime Video September 18, 2020.
About Stacey Abrams
Stacey Abrams is a New York Times bestselling author, serial entrepreneur, nonprofit CEO and political leader. After serving for eleven years in the Georgia House of Representatives, seven as Minority Leader, in 2018, Abrams became the Democratic nominee for Governor of Georgia, when she won more votes than any other Democrat in the state’s history. Abrams was the first black woman to become the gubernatorial nominee for a major party in the United States. After witnessing the gross mismanagement of the 2018 election by the Secretary of State’s office, Abrams launched Fair Fight Action to ensure every Georgian has a voice in our election system. Over the course of her career, Abrams has founded multiple organizations devoted to voting rights, training and hiring young people of color, and tackling social issues at both the state and national levels. In 2019, she launched Fair Count to ensure accuracy in the 2020 Census and greater participation in civic engagement, and the Southern Economic Advancement Project, a public policy initiative to broaden economic power and build equity in the South.
She is a lifetime member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the 2012 recipient of the John F. Kennedy New Frontier Award, and a current member of the Board of Directors for the Center for American Progress. Abrams has also written eight romantic suspense novels under the pen name Selena Montgomery, in addition to Lead from the Outside, formerly Minority Leader, a guidebook on making real change.
