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
4:00 PM - BERNSTEIN’S WALL 10:00 PM - STUDENT PRINTS
Le Pierre
1:15 PM - PETITE MAMAN 10:00 PM - DEAR MR. BRODY (sneak preview)
Abel Gance Open Air Cinema
8:30 PM - BECOMING LED ZEPPELIN (sneak preview)
Town Park Theater
8:45 PM - ENCOUNTER
SATURDAY'S RECKONING
JULIA- Fair
MARCEL THE SHELL WITHE SHOES ON- Great
THE VELVET UNDERGROUND- No
PROBABLE FOR SUNDAY:
The Power of the Dog and The Same Storm. I was planning on seeing The Electrical Life of Louis Wain at the Zog at 9:00 this morning but they wiped it out to add a screening of The French Dispatch.
THE PEOPLE'S TELLURIDE
For the ninth non-consecutive year MTFB is soliciting your input for The People's Telluride. All you have to do is watch films during the fest and then, when it's all over, report to me your assessment of each film on a 1-5 scale with 1 being "UGH!" and 5 being "GREAT".
Report your ratings with any of the following contact methods:
EMAIL: mpgort@gmail.com OR michael_speech@hotmail.com
My normal first day would not include driving but because U.S. 50 has a five mile construction zone between Gunnison and Montrose, the wife and I have to travel through the backdoor. That means an added couple of hours. So, yesterday we made it to South Fork and stopped there for the night. We're making the last four hours of the journey this morning.
My expectation is that we'll catch one of the films in the post-Colorado Ave. Feed time slot. Choices there are the Dinklage Tribute with a World Premiere Cyrano screening or World Premieres of King Richard, Belfast C'mon C'mon or The Same Storm. Might chose any of them.
If I still have any spunk (shout out to the late Ed Asner) I might try to get in Louis Wain. We'll see.
THE FRENCH DISPATCH WILL SNEAK
Eagle eyed friend of the Blog Chris Schneider pointed out last night that The Watch, the printed guide t the fest, reveals that Wes Anderson's The French Dispatch will be a sneak addition to the program at some point this weekend, Here's the pic Chris included with his Tweet alerting me and the TFF Twitterverse that the film would play:
The Program Guide has nine TBA slots on Friday. As the saying goes, you do the math.
PS...I am fully expecting The Card Counter to show upas well at some point this weekend after its bow at Venice.
Three films keep giving me fits regarding whether they will or won't be on the TFF #48 lineup when it's announced in nine days:
The French Dispatch
Bergman Island
Dune
In the cases of The French Dispatch and Bergman Island it's a matter of conflicting claims about the accuracy of their premiere status that has been reported.
For Dune it's a conflict between what premiere status has been telling us and definitive claims that it will not play from sources who have better access than I do.
At the moment, we await the second wave of films for Fantastic Fest. Should Dube popup there, that would all but confirm the "No Dune at Telluride" narrative. Could Dune play at FF? Well, I think that's it's possible. The genre based film fest proudly proclaims on its webpage that it has screened Parasite, There Will Be Blood and Jojo Rabbit among others so a Dune screening would not shock me.
I'm currently slightly leaning to the notion that The French Dispatch will play at Telluride. Bergman Island, I think may still be a Telluride no-show.
There are also a couple of things that I'm pretty close to saying they'll be at Telluride. I'll likely get to those in Thursday's post of the 10th Ten Bets list.
A NEW POSSIBILITY?
Friend of MTFB Chris Schneider caught a Tweet the other day that points to the possibility of the inclusion of a film that hasn't been on my radar at all.
The film: Peter Hedges' The Same Storm. Hedges has an Oscar nomination for the screenplay of About a Boy. Hedges has also directed and written Ben Is Back, What's Eating Gilbert Grape for which Leonardo DiCaprio received his first Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor and Pieces of April for which Patricia Clarkson was nominated for Best Supporting Actress. He's also Lucas Hedges' father.
The best evidence that this is a real TFF possibility? The tweet has since been deleted.
He's a Telluride favorite and an Oscar winner and he's back this year as The SHOW's Guest Director. He is Barry Jenkins. Frankly, I think he's the perfect choice for the gig.
So I began to wonder...could a guy predict what would Barry program (WWBP) ?
There's a wealth of material from the last five years about the films that Mr. Jenkins has said have influenced him. Do they point to some film choices that the 2021 TFF Guest Director might program? He's already said that the selections are locked via Twitter:
Maybe. For fun, let's say that they do and make some guesses based on publicly available interviews and such. As I recall, the TFF Guest Director normally programs around six selections. So here are some thoughts (with something of a bibliography following):
1) Lynne Ramsay's Ratcatcher. I think this popped up more than any other individual film that Jenkins has named as a a film of influence and quality. Also, there's a new restoration that's also scheduled to screen at the New York fest.
2) Something from John Cassavetes. Jenkins appears to reference Cassavetes as a director and his a number of his films more than any other single director at least from the various lists and interviews that I have come across. He mentions a number of Cassavetes' films that it's a substantial list to choose from. I'm assuming that he will only program a single Cassavetes' film (but maybe it could be more than one). So...what Cassavetes? I'm going to go with A Woman Under the Influence. I'm almost certainly wrong, but if it's not this, I still kind of expect a John Cassavetes' selection: Shadows?, The Killing of a Chinese Bookie?, Faces? Opening Night?
3) Something from Jacques Tati...Let's go with The Big Day.
4) Something from Jacques Demys...Lola?
5) David Gordon Green's George Washington
6) Claire Denis' Beau Travail
Some other possibilities (or maybe I'm just projecting): Blood Simple, Pather Panchali, Stalker, Solaris The Dekalog.
Of course, it's likely that Mr. Jenkins programs films that are not on the above list at all. Still, fun to think about.
We're pretty sure that Paolo Sorrentino's The Hand of God will be playing Telluride. We got a new trailer for the film this past week. Here it is from You Tube:
That's it for today. Will have a new Ten Bets on Thursday...
