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What We Are Yet To See

The four major film festivals that produce most Oscar-nominees are, believe it or not, halfway over. Cannes (which is in May) and Telluride (late August) are done. And the Toronto Film Festival (running from September 4th through the 14th) is well under way. The only one left of the four is the New York Film Festival, which begins September 28th and goes through October 12th.

The pedigree of these festivals in terms of Oscar-bait is impressive. Argo premiered at Telluride. Slumdog Millionaire and The Hurt Locker premiered in Toronto, and The Artist dazzled at Cannes. New York hasn’t premiered a Best Picture winner in a bit, but it has recently shown sneak-peeks of Hugo and Lincoln (arguably the two runners-up in their respective Oscar years), and opened with movies such as Captain Phillips and Life of Pi.

So what can we expect to come out of these festivals? I won’t list potential nominations for any movie until I have personally seen it. Here, I will go through a basic primer of where the buzz is so far so that readers can start getting used to seeing these names - they will probably be with us through the end of February.

From Cannes

Although other movies that we may yet hear again from premiered at Cannes, the two main movies to track from this festival are Bennett Miller’s Foxcatcher and David Cronenberg’s Maps to the Stars. The former is by the acclaimed director of Capote and Moneyball - both Best Picture nominees - and tells the story of Olympic Wrestling Champion Mark Schultz (of whom I had not heard before reading about this movie). It stars Channing Tatum and Steve Carell and has what is heralded as a surefire Best Actor nominated role. The film will have its North American premiere in Toronto, at which point we should have a better idea whether it’s a contender or a pretender.

The second entry, by the director of Eastern Promises and a History of Violence, tells the story of two child stars and how they deal with being famous as they grow up. Cronenberg has never found much love from the Academy, which makes me immediately skeptical of this movie’s Oscar chances, but Julianne Moore won Best Actress at Cannes, so she is at least a force to be reckoned with for a nomination in that category for the Academy Awards.

From Telluride

Cannes always scores the artsy names and quirky pieces, but Telluride is right now the official beginning of the movie awards season throughout the world. And yet, for whatever reason, nothing huge seems to be coming out of Telluride exclusively at least for now.

Perhaps the biggest name out of the Colorado mountains is Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman, starring Michael Keaton as an aging actor, and another supposed threat for a Best Actor nod. However, this film actually premiered in Venice the week before it had its North American coming out party at Telluride.

Other potentially award-worthy movies were screened at Telluride, including Foxcatcher and Marion Cotillard’s acclaimed Two Days, One Night, about a factory worker in France who has 48 hours to convince her co-workers to forego bonuses so she can keep her job. And the list goes on - Mike Leigh’s (Oscar winning director for The Graduate) Mr. Turner, about the 19th Century British poet; The Imitation Game, about the life of computer programmer Alan Turing, and Wild, starring Reese Witherspoon and telling the story of a hiker’s unfathomable journey, were all screened at Telluride.

However, these films are not exclusive to the festival, marking perhaps the first year that its original lineup will not showcase a Best Picture frontrunner.

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