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
Here's your Oscar Update for today's post. This is a check on predicted nominees for the Lead Acting categories. They were last posted here on Oct. 23rd. Previous positions on the MTFB Oscar Update is listed to the right in parentheses. As always TFF films are Bold.
BEST ACTRESS
1) Emma Stone/Poor Things (1)
2) Lily Gladstone/Killers of the Flower Moon (2)
3) Carey Mulligan/Maestro (3)
4) Margot Robbie/Barbie (4)
5) Annette Bening/Nyad (5)
Alternates: Sandra Huller/Anatomy of a Fall, Natalie Portman/May December and Fantasia Barrino/The Color Purple
BEST ACTOR
1) Bradley Cooper/Maestro (2)
2) Cillian Murphy/Oppenheimer (1)
3) Paul Giamatti/The Holdovers (4)
4) Colman Domingo/Rustin (3)
5) Leonardo DiCaprio/Killers of the Flower Moon (5)
Alternates: Jeffrey Wright/American Fiction, Andrew Scott/All of Us Strangers and Barry Keoghan/Saltburn.
ACADEMY CONVERSATION FOR NYAD
From AMPAS and YouTube here is an Academy Conversation with Nyad directors Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin:
TFF FILMS AND CRITICS CHOICE DOC AWARDS
Two TFF #50 films scored wins last night at the Critics Choice Documentary Awards. Matt Heineman's American Symphony, which focuses on the lives of Jon Batiste and Suleika Jaouad, was winner for Best Musical Doc and Best Score. The Short Doc winner also came from Telluride and that was Kris Bowers and Ben Proudfoot's The Last Repair Shop.
The big winner of the night was Davis Guggenheim's Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie. That film nabbed five awards including Best Documentary Feature.
News this past week that TFF #50 entrant Food Inc. 2 has been acquired for distribution by Magnolia Pictures. The documentary is a sequel to 2008's Oscar nominated doc Food Inc. The director of the original film, Robert Kenner is joined for the sequel by co-director Melissa Robledo.
The Toronto International Film Festival dropped two huge lists of films at the end of last week with Centerpiece Films announced Thursday, Wavelengths, Shorts and Classics and "In Conversation With" participants and films added Friday. As always, I'm parsing premiere statuses to see what they reveal about films that may be playing Telluride before TIFF. Here's what I think we found out:
1) A couple of new films look T-ride bound. Christy Hall's Daddio and from the animated film directing team of Javier Mariscal and Fernando Trueba They Shot the Piano Player. I have mentioned They Shot the Piano Player in my June 9th analysis of which films Sony Pictures Classics might have to TFF #50 and rated it with a 25% chance to do so. Mariscal and Trueba previously had screened Chico and Rita at TFF in 2010.
As for Hall's Daddio...caught me totally by surprise. The film stars Sean Penn (at TFF in 2007 with Into the Wild) and Dakota Johnson (at TFF in 2021 with The Lost Daughter.
The IMDb summary of the film:
"A woman taking a cab ride from JFK engages in a conversation with the taxi driver about the important relationships in their lives."
As best I can tell Daddio does not yet have U.S. distribution.
2) The Centerpiece announcement also seemed to have confirmed that Fallen Leaves, Perfect Days and The Promised Land will be at Telluride.
3) The Centerpiece announcement sows some confusion about two films that we had thought were certain for Telluride after their inclusion in the New York announcement with no premiere status designation. About Dry Grasses and The Settlers are both listed as North American premieres by TIFF and if that's accurate it would mean no Telluride for them.
Announced earlier, Alice Rohrwacher's La Chimera is in that same boat.
This happens every year. Sometimes it's miscommunication. Sometimes it's mislabeling the status. Where that leaves us is that all three of these films could still be a Telluride play (I particularly think that The Settlers probably IS going to Telluride. No intell, just a gut feeling).
4) Finally from the Centerpiece announcement, Ilker Catak's The Teacher's Lounge which won a couple of awards at the Berlin Fest and a slew at the German Film Awards is listed as a North American Premiere which, if correct, means no screening at Telluride. I have been listing it as a TFF "possibility" through all 8 of this year's "Ten Bets" lists.
5) The Wavelengths announcement appears to confirm a TFF slot for Orlando, My Political Biography. It also suggests three shorts to Telluride: NYC RGB, Quiet As It's Kept and Bouquets 31-40.
6) The "In Conversation With" section announced that Pedro Almodovar will be participating and screening his short Strange Way of Life as a North American Premiere. That knocks it off of the Telluride track. I had thought there was a real possibility that it could screen in T-ride but that appears destined not to be.
EL CONDE LOOKS CRAZY
Pablo Larrain's El Conde (The Count) will likely be playing at some theater in the San Juans over Labor Day weekend. The film will World premiere at Venice and it has a screening slot early enough in that fest to make the hop to Telluride.
Well, the film looks bonkers. Here is the newly released trailer from Netflix via YouTube:
And here's the IMDb summary:
"Centers on Augusto Pinochet (infamous Chilean dictator) who is not dead but an aged vampire. After living 250 years in this world, he has decided to die once and for all."
We're kind of expecting that Fantastic Fest, the Austin, Texas based festival that runs at the end of September/Early October will probably announce a big chunk of its lineup sometime this week. Last year they announced on August 16th. The year before the initial announcement came August 6th.
FF's lineup can prove instructive each year as a confirmation or elimination for a film's possible inclusion for Telluride.
Last year Fantastic Fest included:
The Banshees of Inisherin
Bones and All
Decision to Leave
Holy Spider
The Menu
Triangle of Sadness
Bones and All and Holy Spider played at TFF #49 and that was confirmed with the FF announcement listing both of those films as Texas Premieres. Meanwhile with a U.S. Premiere designation Banshees, Decision to Leave, The Menu and Triangle of Sadness were all confirmed as not playing at TFF #49.
