Ten Bets #7 for TFF #48 / Moving Parts / Julia Trailer

 TEN BETS #7 FOR TFF #48

A lot of moving parts this week with new films either seemingly confirmed for Telluride and other films nuked for TFF #48 in all likelihood.  That info is reflected in this week's Ten Bets and explained below in the section labeled "Moving Parts".  Bettin' Time!

Last week's Ten Bets:

1) The Electrical Life of Louis Wain/Sharpe

2) The Power of the Dog/Campion

3) Petite Maman/Sciamma

4) The Card Counter/Schrader

5) Something from Mark Cousins***

6) Madres Paralelas (Parallel Mothers)/Almodovar

7)  Julia/Cohen and West

8) Spencer/Larrain

9) A Hero/Farhadi

10) The Velvet Underground/Haynes

Other Possibles: Dune, The French Dispatch, Muhammad Ali, The Hand of God Where Is Anne Frank?, Cow, The Last Duel, Encounter, tick, tick..BOOM, Antlers, Being the Ricardos, Titaine, C'mon C'mon, Hallelujah/Leonard Cohen, Red Rocket, Last Exit: Space, Flee, King Richard, 7 Prisoners, The Lost Daughter.

***Mark Cousins projects that could play:

The Story of Looking

The Storms of Jeremy Thomas

The Story of Film: The Next Generation

This week's Ten Bets:

1) The Power of the Dog/Campion

2) The Electrical Life of Louis Wain/Sharpe

3) Petite Maman/Sciamma

4) The Card Counter/Schrader

5) Spencer/Larrain

6) Something from Mark Cousins***

7) Julia/Cohen and West

8) A Hero/Farhadi

9) The Rescue/Garbus

10) The Velvet Underground/Haynes

Other Possibles: The French Dispatch, Muhammad Ali, The Hand of God, Cow, The Last Duel, Encounter, tick, tick..BOOM, Dune, Antlers, Being the Ricardos, C'mon C'mon, Hallelujah/Leonard Cohen, Red Rocket, Last Exit: Space, Flee, King Richard, The Lost Daughter, Becoming Cousteau, Three Minutes-A Lengthening, Don't Look Up.

***Mark Cousins projects that could play:

The Story of Looking

The Storms of Jeremy Thomas

The Story of Film: The Next Generation

MOVING PARTS

BFI London announced yesterday that Jeyemes Samules The Harder They Fall will be their opening night Gala as a World Premiere on Oct. 6th taking it out of Telluride consideration.  Admittedly, I only regarded it as an unlikely TFF #48 possibility.

New York announced (as reported by Indiewire) that Pedro Almodovar's Madres Paralelas will close that fest as a North American premiere closing the door to its Telluride participation.  That one was a bit of a surprise.  Not that it's closing NYFF but that it wouldn't play TFF.  After the success of Pain and Glory a couple of years back, I thought a Telluride play was a serious possibility...but nope.

Toronto's latest list of inclusions yesterday seemed to point to three documentaries will be playing Telluride: The Rescue from the crew that brought Free Solo to TFF,  Becoming Cousteau from Liz Garbus and Three Minutes-A Lengthening from Bianca Stigter.

TIFF also signaled that Palme d'Or winner, Titane, and Ari Folman's Where Is Anne Frank? will not be at TFF #48 as they are both labeled as North American premieres.

Other films announced as a part of the TIFF lineup that will not be making a Colorado trek over Labor Day (and that I had thought had a small chance at it):

Lapid's Ahed's Knee, Dumont's France, Moratto's 7 Prisoners and Kuosmanen's Compartment #6.

Rasmussen's Flee is listed as a Canadian Premiere and Bentley's Jockey is listed as an International Premiere which often signals a Telluride play but both films bowed at Sundance and Flee played at the Annecy Animation Fest in France thus explaining the Preem designation.  That said, I still have sense that Flee might be that doc that plays both Sundance and T-ride.  It happens sometimes.

Here's Deadline's complete rundown of Toronto's latest wave of titles.

Meanwhile...

Telluride buzz this week focused around Pablo Larrain's Spencer, Mike Mills' C'mon C'mon and Joe Wright's Cyrano.  I'm feeling less bullish on Dune.

Meanwhile, last Monday's list of 10 Known Unknowns remain "Unknown":

Being the Ricardos/Sorkin (Amazon-No date)

Cyrano/Wright (MGM/United Artists-12/25)

Don't Look Up/McKay (Netflix-No date)

Eternals/Zhao (Disney-11/5)

A Journal for Jordan/Washington (Sony-12/22)

King Richard/Green (Warners-11/9)

The Last Duel/Scott (Disney/20th Century-10/15)

Soggy Bottom (Untitled PTA Project)/Anderson (MGM-11-26)

tick, tick...BOOM/Miranda (Netflix-Undated)

West Side Story/Spielberg (Disney/20th Century-12-10)

JULIA TRAILER

Sony Pictures Classics, it turns out, has released a trailer for Julia, the documentary about famed chef Julia Child.  Julia is directed by Julie Cohen and Betsy West, the directing duo behind Oscar nominee BRG.  Julia does not yet have an announced release date.  The doc sits at #6 on this week's Ten Bets list.  Here's the trailer from YouTube:

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Incoming from Toronto / Cannes Awards Winners / The Last Duel for TFF #48? / Late Breaking: Pedro Opens Venice

 INCOMING FROM TORONTO

It's all been speculation, slips of the tongue and cryptic references about Telluride up to this point.  That changes tomorrow with the Toronto International Film Festival's announcement of Galas and Special Presentations.  It TIFF follows what has become the custom, each film announced will include a mention of that film's premiere status and if you know what each of those designations mean you can get a very good idea of some of the films that will or will not play at Telluride.

For TIFF's announcement tomorrow the designations you need to know are:

World Premiere which means the first public screening anywhere on the planet (test screenings don't count).

International Premiere which means the first screening of a film outside the film's nation of origin.  This designation signals that the World Premiere has occurred in that nation of origin.  This designation is bit "squishy" for a number of reasons.  For example, films with multiple producers/financers from different nations make this designation difficult to nail down sometimes.

North American Premiere which means the first public screening on the continent.  You' likely see it tomorrow on films that have already screened at Cannes.  That means no U.S. play will have occurred.

Canadian Premiere which means the first public screening in Canada. 

An International Premiere or Canadian Premiere status points to a possible Telluride play but isn't a lock.  For example, if TIFF programs a Sundance Film that would be classified as an International Premiere.  If that Sundance film also played Cannes, then TIFF would label it a Canadian Premiere.  So these two designations don't automatically mean a Telluride play.

If a film is designated a World or North American Premiere...that means no Telluride.

We've already had an example of how this works this season with the New York Film Fest's announcement that Wes Anderson's The French Dispatch will have its U.S. Premiere there.  Since TFF precedes NYFF we can conclude two things: the film won't play Telluride because if it had, New York couldn't designate it as a U.S. Premiere.  We also know that it will have played Toronto because if it hadn't, New York would bill it as a North American Premiere.

Couple of other notes: there will be errors.  Sometimes that's on the part of TIFF inaccurately designating a film's status.  Sometimes it's because of the "squishy" nature of the International Premiere status and sometimes I just miss something I should have caught.

The other note is that there will be joy and disappointment.  Joy at the inclusion of films that I'll be thrilled to be chosen for Telluride and disappointment that films I am hoping for will likely not be making it to the San Juans.

There will also be that first moment that affirms or denies the efficacy of this summer's Ten Bets.

Here's the latest Ten Bets that I posted last Thursday...we'll start to see if any of this lands tomorrow:

1) Something from Mark Cousins***

2) Muhammad Ali/Burns. Burns and McMahon

3) The Card Counter/Schrader

4) The Power of the Dog/Campion

5) Madres Paralelas (Parallel Mothers)/Almodovar

6) The Velvet Underground/Haynes

7) Nightmare Alley/Del Toro

8) A Hero/Farhadi

9) Julia/Cohen and West

10) Spencer/Larrain

Other Possibles: Dune, Where Is Anne Frank?, Paris 13th District and The Eyes of Tammy Faye, Blonde, Cow, House of Gucci, The Last Duel, Mothering Sunday and Bergman Island.

***Mark Cousins projects that could play:

The Story of Looking

The Storms of Jeremy Thomas

The Story of Film: The Next Generation

My biggest hopes for Telluride at this point are: Nightmare Alley, Dune and Blonde.

I'll likely have a SPECIAL EDITION tomorrow with a rundown of what the TIFF announcement tells us.

CANNES AWARDS WINNERS

Julia Ducournau's Titane won the Cannes Film Festival's Palme d'Or from a Spike Lee led jury on Saturday.  The film's IMDB description:

"Following a series of unexplained crimes, a father is reunited with the son who has been missing for 10 years. Titane : A metal highly resistant to heat and corrosion, with high tensile strength alloys."

The film's Palme win likely increases its chance to play at Telluride but it's not a lock.  In the years since I've been doing this the Palme to Telluride connection only happens about half the time.  Titane's distributor is NEON which probably tips the scales a bit toward TFF #48 inclusion.

Other notable awards included a the Grand Prix to Asghar Farhadi's A Hero (tied with Compartment #6).  Leos Carax was named Best Director for Annette.

The complete list of Cannes' winners is here from Variety.

THE LAST DUEL FOR TFF #48?

Chris Evangelista posted an article about what is known about Ridley Scott's The Last Duel for SlashFilm last Wednesday.  It included casting info (Adam Driver, Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Jodie Comer), release dates (Oct. 15th) descriptions of the film and the book upon which it's based.  Damon, Affleck and Nicole Holofcener co-wrote the screenplay.

Of note was these two sentences early on in the post:

"For now, though, you can bank on this one being a strict theatrical release. You can also probably expect it to play some fall festivals, like TIFF or Telluride (that’s just a guess on my part, but I think it’s a good guess)."

An extra note here to remind readers that Affleck's Argo debuted at Telluride in 2012 and that worked out well for him.  Holofcener was in Telluride in 2018 with Can You Ever Forgive Me? (3 Oscar nominations).

Could The Last Duel make an appearance at TFF #48?  Evangelista thinks it's a possibility.

Here's the entire SlashFilm article.

LATE BREAKING: PEDRO OPENS VENICE

Just in as I go to post this morning is news that Pedro Alomodovar's Madres Paralelas will open the Venice Film Festival.  That keeps it in good position as a possible inclusion for Telluride.  Details here from The Playlist.

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